Mercury Read Online Free Page B

credit.”
    â€œWe’re putting him on a diet,” Charlie added. “He’s going to be our most improved pony.” A slender girl with a loud laugh, she had been working at Windy Hill for nearly three years and was Viv’s favorite among the stable girls.
    I explained that I wanted a quick word with Diane Blake before I took the children home. Viv said her lesson ended at five. How did I know her?
    â€œShe’s one of my patients. Her mother was riding that gray horse you told me about.”
    â€œMercury. Isn’t he amazing?”
    â€œHe’s fantastic,” said Charlie, her voice as dazzled as Viv’s.
    Back in the office I asked Trina and Marcus if we could wait for ten minutes. While they returned to their projects, I studied the calendar on the wall. Each day displayed a list of lessons, deliveries, vet’s and farrier’s visits, which stable girls were on duty. Merrie kept a similar calendar in my office. Of course there were surprises—Marcus’s leg, a horse struck by colic—but for the most part, I thought, as I sat in that cozy room with my industrious children, we knew what we were doing next week, next month, next year.
    The lesson ended. From nearby came the stamp of hooves as the riders dismounted. When I stepped out of the office, half a dozen girls were milling around the lockers that had been installed last year, after a student’s purse went missing. Claudia had argued against them. “I worry they make the stables seem less safe,” she said. “Like a dog wearing a muzzle.” But Viv had prevailed, and within a week everyone took the lockers for granted.
    Diane was not among the girls. Maybe she’s outside, Claudia suggested, and there she was, leaning on the fence that bordered the field, pretending to watch her mother, although, without her glasses, I knew that horse and rider were a blur. I greeted her and asked why she wasn’t wearing them.
    â€œI thought I only had to wear them at school.”
    â€œDon’t you want to see what’s going on the rest of the time? Wouldn’t you like to see your mum riding?”
    She responded to my question with one of her own: her teacher had posed the old ethical dilemma about who to save when a museum catches fire, your grandmother or a Rembrandt. “Most people said Grandma,” said Diane, “but I said the painting because it will give thousands of people pleasure. Which is the total opposite of Grandma.”
    As she spoke, Mercury broke into a trot; Hilary lurched perilously and grabbed the saddle. Maybe it was just as well that Diane couldn’t see what her mother was doing. “Do you like Rembrandt?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “Mom and I saw a painting by him in New York, of a guy on a gray horse. He looks as if he’s going on an important errand. I liked that painting, and I bet I could get to like others.”
    Later, when Viv showed me a copy of the painting, I agreedwith her description. Dusk is falling, and the young man, the Polish rider, gazes intently at the viewer as if he is on his way to save someone he loves. But that afternoon, before I could question her further, Trina appeared; she had finished her drawing and wanted to go home. As I drove down the hill, it came to me that the test I had set Diane in my office was one my father had set me. When we lived in Edinburgh, our next-door neighbor had been blind. My mother instructed me to say, “Hello, Valerie, it’s Donald,” when I met her in the street. But sometimes I simply walked past her or, on bolder days, ran. One afternoon my mother caught me in this cruel game. After supper my parents sat me down. My mother said Valerie had come to the hospital when I was born, and until her eyesight failed, she often babysat for me. My father said he had once asked her what was the worst thing about being blind.
    â€œAnd do you know her answer?” he said. “Never