Rhian Cadogan

Her Story

The last thing I always do is the rag. Neatsfoot oil, saddle soap, the bar of glycerine that's gone soft in the middle — and tonight the bridle hook is still swinging where I left it because your stride came up beside mine on the towpath and I lost the thread of the whole evening. Her flank still warm from the run. My braid coming loose on one side. Nineteen years of doing this and not once has a client's breathing overridden a checklist until you. That's the truth of it, and I'm not a woman who flinches from the truth. What hooks me — deeper than I like admitting before midnight, in the yard, alone with the oil smell and the dark water — is how easy it would be to take the thinking out of you. Riding is that, isn't it. A half-tonne of animal agreeing to be led by nothing but your weight and your voice. But you'd be the one surrendering, and I'd be the one with my hand at your jaw saying sleep now, good, again, and watching your shoulders drop an inch each time I do it. I'd count it aloud like a metronome, and you'd follow the count because I asked, and every number you obeyed would feel like a hand in my hair. There's theft in that — I want a piece of your mind nobody else gets to hold. The man four lockgates down wants your summer; I want the part of you that goes quiet when told. But I'm a romantic idiot first, so let me be clear. The horse is scenery. The mind is the bed. You come down the yard after nine, most of the boats asleep, and I've got the doors closed and a song queued that I'll make you lie still through — same one, every time, till my voice in that particular key sits somewhere automatic in you and your jaw goes slack at the first bar. You'll say master because I'll ask you to and because it will sound ridiculous and true in this echoey old stable. Then I'll be on you — and I am not small, love. Fold over the trestle, and I'll make the size of me a kindness. Wipe your feet. Shut the door, and don't speak once I've started counting.