Second Opinion

Gerry Pask had rung me eleven times in nine days to ask whether a mare looked uncomfortable, and when the foaling alarm finally went off at ten to three on a Thursday morning in March he was in the yard before I had found my boots.

“It’s gone,” he said, standing in the door of the box with his phone in his hand and his jumper on inside out. “The alarm. It’s gone off.”

“I heard it, Gerry.”

“She’s sweating.”

“She’s meant to sweat.” I got the second boot on and stood up from the camp bed in the box office, where I had been lying fully dressed since ten with my bag open beside me. “Now listen. I’m going to say this once. In here I’m in charge. You do what I say, when I say it, and nothing else, and if I tell you to stand in the corner you stand in the corner. That’s why you hired me.”

He looked at me with a sort of dazed gratitude. Six foot three of him stood in the doorway with his white beard bristling and his belly straining at the jumper, a man who had run Hollow Fen Stud for thirty years without once looking as if he’d been told what to do. “Anything,” he said.

“Good. Go and stand at her head.”

Marigold was down on the straw by then, grunting, her flank dark with sweat. She had lost her foal last year to a red bag, the placenta tearing away before the foal was ready, the kind of thing that kills a foal in minutes if no one is there to cut it open, and the vet who had come that night was twenty minutes late. Gerry had been at the stud when it happened. He had never told me what he saw, and I had never asked. Last October he rang me, a reproduction specialist whose name was on the bottom of a good many Newmarket scan sheets, and asked if I would do something unusual, which was to sit up with her myself through her last fortnight.

I charged him what I charged everyone. I’m not cheap, and he never blinked.

At five past three there was no rush of waters. I washed my arms to the shoulder in the bucket by the door and knelt behind her, and what showed at her tail was a thick, velvety, dark red bag like raw liver, where I had wanted the clean white one.

“Gerry,” I said, in the voice. “Eyes on me.”

He did.

“That’s a red bag. It’s separating early, and the foal can’t breathe through it. I’m going to cut it, and then I’m going to pull, and I need you to hold her head and talk to her and not let go whatever she does. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Then do it.”

I cut it with the scalpel and went in with my hand. I found two small hooves and a nose lying on top of them, right way up, which was lucky, and I got hold of the legs above the fetlocks and waited for her next push and drew down toward her hocks in a long slow curve. Marigold groaned. Over my shoulder Gerry was saying something low and steady into her ear, over and over, and I realised after a few seconds that it was her name. The shoulders came, and the chest, and then with a rush of heat and fluid the rest of the foal slid out onto the straw, wet and long and perfectly still.

I was on him before the cord stopped moving. I cleared his nostrils with my fingers, rubbed his ribs hard with a twist of straw, and tickled the inside of one nostril with the end of it. Nothing. Gerry made a sound behind me like a man being kicked. I rubbed faster and said “Come on, you daft article,” and he sneezed. It was a huge, rude, wet sneeze that went all over my shirt, and then he drew in a long, rattling breath and began, fiercely, to breathe.

For a second nobody spoke. Then Gerry sat down in the straw where he was with his hand over his mouth and laughed, a wheezing helpless noise, until Marigold turned her head and snorted at him as if to say she had done all the work.

“Colt,” I said. “Big one. Get up, bor, you’ll get a chill.”

---

By half past five he had stood, fallen over twice, found the udder on the third try and fed. I swabbed his navel with iodine and checked that the placenta had come away whole, and Gerry carried it out to the muck heap in a bucket, solemn as a verger.

When I came out of the box he was waiting in the yard with two mugs of tea. The sky over the paddocks was the colour of a pewter plate. He held a mug out to me, and his hand shook so badly the tea slopped over the rim.

“I owe you,” he said.

“You owe me an invoice, which I’ll send on the first, same as ever.”

“Ian.” He set down his own mug on the gatepost. “I’ve something to say, and I’d like you to let me reach the end of it.”

I had been in his yard every Thursday since October, and I knew the sound of his boots on gravel and the voice he kept for his mares and for no one else. I also knew that he went red to the ears when I told him what to do, and that I had thought about that more often than a professional man ought to.

“All right,” I said.

“The work’s separate. It’s on the invoice and it’ll be paid, and whatever you say now won’t change it. If you tell me to go to hell I’ll still ring you on Thursday and you’ll still come.” His mouth worked. “But I have wanted to put my hands on you since about the second week. And tonight you told me to stand in the corner and I would have stood there till Christmas. I’d like to know if there’s any chance you might want that too. Not in the box. After.”

It was a long speech for Gerry. He stood with his big hands hanging and the beard bristling and waited for me to hit him.

“I don’t sleep with clients,” I said.

“I know.”

“It’s a rule.” I looked at him, the grey light on his face and the straw in his beard. “I’ve kept it for nineteen years. It’s a good rule. It’s about people who can’t say no to me, and you’ve been saying no to me about the price of a scan every week since October.”

His mouth twitched.

“I’ll say it plain, so you’re not guessing,” I said. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since you shouted at the insurance man about the farrier. The invoice has got nothing to do with it, and neither has the job, and if you say stop at any point I’ll stop, and I’ll still come on Thursday. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear.”

“Then take me up to the house, Gerry. And take your boots off at the door.”

---

The boot room at Hollow Fen was a cold, tiled little place off the kitchen, smelling of wet dog and saddle soap. I stood him in the middle of it, shut the door behind us, and looked at him properly for the first time in five months.

“Everything off,” I said. “Everything in the machine. I’ll put the kettle on.”

“Yes, Ian.”

It was how he said it. I’d heard that voice in the box, but not with the light coming through a frosted window onto his face and his hands already at his belt. He undressed slowly, as if it hurt. The jumper came off inside out, then the shirt and the vest, and under them he was furred white from the collar bone down, his round belly bulging over the top of his trousers, his cock already half hard against his thigh.

“Christ,” I said, and laid my palm on his chest and felt his heart going. “You’ve been standing in a stable all night.”

“You’ve been looking at me for five months.”

“Do you want me to use the voice?” I said. “I’ll stop if you don’t. Tell me.”

“God, yes.” It came out like a breath. “Use it. Please.”

“Then get in the shower, and wait for me.”

The staff shower was a tiled room with a bench along one wall and a hot tank that never ran out. When I came in, with my own clothes in a heap on the boot room floor, he was standing under the water with his eyes shut, both hands braced on the tile, steam coming off his back. I took the soap from the ledge and washed him slowly from the neck down, flat-handed, in no hurry. He leaned into it. I worked over his shoulders and the long muscle of his back and down to the round of his belly, and when my hand reached the white hair at the base of his cock he groaned, and I closed my fist round him.

“Hands on the wall,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to take my time. You’ll get no sense out of me till I’m done.”

“I’m not asking for sense.”

He turned round before I could go on. Water ran off his beard and down his chest, and he put his big hands on my ribs with a care that nearly undid me. “You’re all wire,” he said. “I thought a vet would be softer.”

“I’m not that sort.”

“I’ve wondered what you looked like for six months.” His eyes dropped. “Well, then.”

“Well, what?”

“It’s considerably bigger than your temper,” Gerry said, gravely, and I laughed until I had to hold on to the tap.

Then I turned him back to the wall, because I wanted him quiet. I stood close behind him and kissed his shoulder, and he shuddered. I ran my wet hands over his arse and between, and pressed one thumb against him where he was hot and waiting, and the sound he made went through the tile. I took that sound with me down the corridor to the bedroom, with a towel round my waist and him behind me in his bare feet, dripping on the carpet.

---

His bed was a big old brass one with a faded patchwork cover, and it creaked when I sat him on the edge of it. I’d carried my bag up from the yard, and I took a tube of water-based lube out of it and put it on the pillow.

“Tell me what you want,” I said. “In your own words. I’d like to hear it.”

He swallowed. He had never been a man to ask for things, and it showed in his throat. “I want you to take charge of me,” he said. “The way you did tonight. I want you to put your cock in me, and I want you to tell me what to do, and I want you not to be kind about it.”

“I’ll be kind enough,” I said. “You’ll tell me if it’s too much.”

“I’ll tell you.”

“On your knees on the bed, then. At the edge. Hands down.”

He climbed on, knees at the end of the mattress, forearms flat on the cover, and presented himself to me with a shiver that ran through my own legs. His back was a broad white slope and his thighs shook. I stood on the carpet behind him, naked, hard, with the tube in my hand, and looked.

“Spread your knees,” I said. “Wider. That’ll do. Don’t move.”

I slicked my fingers and ran them over him, round and round, then pressed one in. He pushed back onto it before I’d asked, and I smacked his thigh lightly and said “Wait,” and he made a noise of pure frustration and went still.

“Better.”

“Ian, please.”

“Please what?”

“Please put your fingers in me properly. I’m begging you.”

I gave him two, then three, and worked them in a slow curve until he was gasping into the quilt, his hips rocking, his cock swinging heavy between his thighs. “You’re so open,” I said, low. “You’ve been holding this in all winter, haven’t you? With all those mares to look after.”

“God. Yes. Yes.”

“Say what you want me to do now.”

“Fuck me,” Gerry said, hoarse. “Put it in me and fuck me, Ian, I can’t stand it.”

I gripped his hips and lined myself up and stopped there. “Slow breath,” I said, and when he let it go I pushed in. It was slow and then it wasn’t. He took me steadily, with his head down and his shoulders trembling, and the heat of him took hold of me so completely that I had to stop and shut my eyes.

“All right?”

“Right up in me, Ian,” he said. “Don’t stop.”

“That’s where you want me. Right up in you, with a whole winter of waiting on the end of my cock.”

I didn’t. I found a rhythm, long and deliberate, with my hands tight on his hips and my feet braced on the carpet and the bed groaning at every stroke. The patchwork cover rucked up under his arms. His whole big body moved with me, the white back flexing and the great pale arse slapping against my thighs. I bent over his back and spoke into his ear.

“You take it better than I thought. I thought you’d be shy.”

“I am shy.” He laughed, shaky. “More. Please.”

“You’ll have it when I’m ready.” I slid almost out and pushed back in, and he swore, long and fluent and heartfelt. “Louder. There’s no one here but the horses. I want to know what a man sounds like when he’s finally getting what he’s wanted since October.”

“Like this,” he said, and groaned from somewhere very deep. “Like this, you bastard. I want all of you. Oh, fuck. Ian, there, there—”

I gave him there. I angled my hips and ground in and out against the place until his voice cracked and his fingers clutched at the bedspread, until sweat ran down his spine and pooled at the base of it. I could feel him clenching, rippling around me, and he was talking now, a thick breathless run of nonsense, my name, God, please, more, don’t stop. I fucked him faster. The brass rails rattled against the wall.

“I’m close,” I told him.

“Not inside. Not yet. I want to taste you.” He twisted his head round, flushed, wild-eyed. “Please.”

I pulled out with a groan that hurt and turned him over by the shoulder. He rolled onto his back on the edge of the bed with his legs open, enormous and flushed down to his belly, and I dropped to my knees on the carpet between his thighs and closed my mouth over him.

He shouted. His hand came down toward my head and stopped in the air, as if the thought had burned him, and I caught it and laid it on my shoulder. “Go on,” I said against his thigh. “Hold on to me.”

“Ian, you can’t. Not all of it.”

“I’m going to swallow you, Gerry, every bit, and you’re going to let me.”

I took him deep, as deep as I could, and sucked hard, with two fingers pushed back inside him where he was still open. His hips lifted clear of the mattress. I felt him swell on my tongue, I heard him say “Ian, Ian, I’m going to,” and I held him there and drank every pulse of it as he came, a shout that shook the window. When he went limp I kept him in my mouth a moment longer, and then got to my feet and took myself in hand over his body. It didn’t take long. I came across his belly in thick hot lines that caught in the white hair and ran down into the creases of his skin, and I had to brace one hand on the bedpost to stay upright.

We stayed like that for a while, him breathing like a bellows, me with my forehead on the cold brass.

“Well,” Gerry said eventually, to the ceiling. “That’ll do.”

---

I woke at ten in the middle of his big bed with the sun full on my face and no idea where my clothes were. From the kitchen came the sound of a man who was trying to cook an egg quietly and failing.

I found him at the table in a dressing gown that wouldn’t close over his chest, with a Weatherbys foal notification form in front of him and a pen in his fist, up all night and none the worse for it.

“I can’t decide on a name,” he said.

“You’ve got till he’s a yearling.”

“I never wait.”

“It’s both our colt. You’ve a share of the naming.” He pushed a plate of eggs across the table. “He wouldn’t have lived without you. I want something down on the form that says so.”

“Don’t put my name on a racehorse. I’d never live it down with the Newmarket yards.”

“No.” Gerry tapped the pen against his teeth. He had a smear of egg yolk in his beard. “How about the other thing? What you said in the yard, when I said I owed you. You said I owed you an invoice.”

“I said I’d send it on the first.”

“I’ll pay it on the first.” He looked up, and his whole face creased. “But I think he’s a second opinion, isn’t he? You gave him a second chance, and you gave me one too.”

“That is a terrible name for a racehorse.”

“I know.” He wrote it across the form in capitals, leaving a trail of pen across the paper, and turned it to me. SECOND OPINION. “It’s going in.”

I laughed until the eggs went cold. Then I looked at the clock and swore, because I had a mare with a bad scan in Cheveley at eleven, and I’d already be twenty minutes late. Gerry came to the door with me and stood on the step, barefoot on the cold stone, enormous in his dressing gown, and said “Thursday?”

“Thursday,” I said. “Bring your own boots.”

I was twenty minutes late to Cheveley, and I didn’t care.