The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [45]
Evelyn Carrick, the young daughter of the owner, stands by the table I sit at and asks what I’d like. She doesn’t look at me, which is all right, because I don’t look at her, either. I look at the little printed card on the tablecloth in front of me.
There are some French words on the menu. The items in English are long and descriptive. Even if I wanted to order tea, I’m not sure I would recognize it.
“I’ll wait,” I say.
She hesitates. Her eyes flicker to me and away again, like a horse uncertain about an unfamiliar object. “May I take your coat?”
“I’ll keep it.” Having dried on my radiator overnight, my jacket is crisp with salt water and stained with mud and blood.
Every day that I’ve been on the beach is written on it. I can’t imagine her touching it with her small white hands.
Evelyn does something complicated and useful looking with the napkin and saucer on the other side of the table, and then slips back down the narrow stairs. I listen to the creak of her footsteps; every single step pops and groans. The tall, narrow teahouse is one of the oldest buildings in Skarmouth, pressed right against the grocer and post office. I wonder what it was before it sold petit pain.
Malvern is late for the appointment he has set, an appointment whose timing I was expecting, if not the location. I turn to look out the rose-curtained window at the street below. Already there are a few long-necked tourists down there, here in advance of the festival, and I can hear the drummers practicing a few streets away. In a few days, I think the tables on this level of the teahouse will be full, as will the streets. At the end of the festival, the other riders and I will be paraded among the crowd. If I still have my job.
I pull up the cuff of my sleeve a little to look at my wrist; the stiff jacket has rubbed my skin raw during the morning’s training. There was a fight this morning among the horses and I had to intervene. I wish Gorry would give up trying to sell the piebald mare; she’s a bad influence on the others.
The stairs pop and growl as someone heavier than Evelyn climbs them. Benjamin Malvern strides across the room and then stands by the table until I rise to greet him. Malvern, who has been moneyed for his whole life, has that air about him of well-cared-for ugliness, like an expensive racehorse with a coarse head. The glossy coat, the bright eye, the bulbous nose over too-fleshy lips.
“Sean Kendrick,” he says. “How are you?”
“Tolerable,” I reply.
“How is the sea?” This is where he makes a joke to show empathy with me, and where I pretend it is funny to show I appreciate my salary.
I smile thinly. “Well as always.”
“Shall we sit?”
I let him sit first, and then follow him. He picks up the menu card but doesn’t read it. “So you are ready for the festival this weekend?”
The stairs creak again and it’s Evelyn. She sets a cup full of frothy liquid in front of Malvern.
“What’ll you have?” she asks me again.
“I’m fine.”
“He’ll not abuse your hospitality, dear,” Malvern tells her. “Bring him a cup of tea.”
I nod to Evelyn. Malvern doesn’t seem to notice her going.
“No sense going without, when there’s unpleasant business making it unpleasant enough,” Malvern says. He drinks his strange, frothy tea.
I am still and silent.
“You’re a man of no words, Sean Kendrick,” he says. Outside the window, the practicing Scorpio drummers beat a tripping, ascending beat firmly at odds with the soft pink world we’re in. He leans forward, elbows on the table. “I don’t think I’ve told you the story of how I got into horses, have I?”
I meet his eyes.
He goes on. “I was young, poor, an islander, but not on this island. I had nothing to my name but my shoes and the bruises on my skin. There was a man who sold horses down the road from us. Royal horses and nags, jumping horses and eating horses.
Every month there would be an auction and people would come from farther than you’ve been in your life to