2

When I was older I learnt to ride a horse. His name was Jeremiah. There was a girl who lived on a farm nearby. We passed each other notes in the one-roomed school that smelt of sweat and chalk and old sun-washed wood. We each rode to school on our horses. One day we raced each other, galloping on the sand beside the waves, as hard as a dry road. At the end of the ride we looked at each other. We got off our horses trembling. We lay down in a space among the cutty-grass. Her mouth tasted of salt and her body was like the curves of the sandhills. It was as if I had found a spring of water where nothing had been before. I can’t remember her name. It was either Ella or Eila or Leila. That year her father died and she and her mother left the district. I did not see her again.