by Alex Miller
I’ll yell out! I’ll plead with the Tiger for a bit of relief. The minute I see him coming round with his grease gun I’ll scream out, ‘Hey, Master!’ That should do it. That ought to stop him in his tracks. Pull him up with a jolt. That should be worth some rest. Maybe he’ll even let me drive the Ferguson for an hour or two. Get out there in the field with the loaders and the clean air. Driving along the aisles looking over my shoulder. Watching the yokels work! Run over one of them. Crush one. Pin him down under the fat tyres and watch him staring up at me. Gasping for air! Make him an item in next week’s Free Press: YOKEL SQUASHED ON EXMOOR FARM!
But where’s the Tiger? I don’t see him coming round and the sheaves are pelting down thicker and faster than ever. Thump! Wallop! Here they come! Two, three, four at a time! An avalanche! They’re burying me. My feet are pinned by the rising mass. I can’t move. I’m stuck fast in the pile-up and they’re still pushing them down on me. I can’t keep my balance. I’m tilting towards the feed tray. Going into it. I’m going over. More sheaves pounding right on to me. Suffocating me. I scream out. No one can hear. I’m going over. Being overwhelmed by rural England!
Suddenly the barrage stops. And here comes the Tiger yelling at me to clear the elevator and switch off the motor.
‘Yes, Boss.’
It’s midday.
And there they all go. Heading for the food and drink on the other side of the rick in the shade. I pile on the sheaves. Clearing the knotted heap from around my feet. Emerging. I slap the last one on and watch it riding up on the claws of the elevator. I’ve got my finger on the button and the moment it clears the pitch hole I short-circuit the motor. Everything rattles to a standstill and Morris peers out the hole. He’s done for and praying there’s a breakdown at last. He doesn’t dare hope it’s really midday. But I give him the thumbs up and he grins with relief.
I’m drenched with sweat. I don’t want to move. The soaked crotch of my breeches is filled with chaff and thistle debris and has rubbed me raw. I’m all pain. It’s washing over my body in waves. Waves of hot blood. And I stand here with my eyes closed. I’m rocking along. Buzzing and humming and vibrating. A jangling bundle of dancing nerves. I’m getting off a merry-go-round after six hours of non-stop spinning, and I’ve got to get myself together into one whole piece before I move or I might fall over.
I’m standing here letting my arms hang by my sides. My body won’t be ready to go again in one hour. Suddenly this Australian voice breaks in on my thoughts. Clear and close to me in the quiet drift of settling dust. ‘The missus tells us you’ve been doing a good job with my horse. Would that be right?’
Alsop’s standing at the corner of the rick. He’s cool and clean. Pale blue shirt with pockets and white cotton trousers. With some kind of Spanish espadrilles on his feet. No socks. It’s the first I’ve seen of him since his accident. He looks older. An old man now. Thin, and crouched. As if someone’s just kicked him hard in the stomach and he’s trying to pretend it doesn’t really hurt. He’s putting a lot of his weight on a stick and he’s staring hard at me. Tense. Not really being friendly.
‘She reckons you’re a bit of a wiz with the horses.’
I suppose I’m just staring at him. He’s after something. I sense it at once. The way he’s come up on me suddenly like this. And now pushing and anxious. As if he’s worried he might get the wrong reaction out of me or something. I don’t know what’s going on.
‘Well good on you,’ he says. Picking up on my mistrust and trying to sound at ease. ‘You must have it in you. That horse was never easily managed.’
Who cares what he thinks? I don’t want to talk to him. I’ve had it, and anyway it’s obvious he wouldn’t like the idea of me and Kabara getting along. He’s supposed to be the magic man with horses. The horseman! Not me. That’s his claim to fame round here, if he has one. Or was. And he might have believed it, though no one else ever did. And not much hope of going on with that now, by the look of him. He’s not recovered. Despite the bright new summer outfit. He’s just up and about. And only just. Teetering, if anything, on the brink of being entirely feeble. Even this eddying luminous air charged with barley particles still whirling round the rick is making him gasp.
He’s moving towards me. I bend down and give the motor a quick wipe, avoiding his stare. ‘I’ve just been looking after him,’ I say, keeping my chin down on my chest and starting to clear out. I’m getting away from him. Going for some drink and food. Putting the elevator between us. Let him talk to the Tiger if he wants conversation. I’m too whacked to care about him. He’s a nuisance. And anyway, what’s he up to? He’s not being straight. And that’s his trouble here. He’s playing at life. Playing at being a retired gentleman. And now he’s getting some other thing going. I don’t want to know what it is. Nothing in it for me. That much is certain. It’s hard enough round here for me keeping myself intact without working out some mystery with a foreigner. I can do without his attention.
But he’s following me round the rick. And I can see the two yokels down there coming round behind him. Looking for me and getting a bonus. Mimicking his frailty. They’re munching already on hot home-baked pasties, clutching spares, and swinging a bottle of cider around. Brushing up against each other and giggling. Looking for a bit more fun at my expense.
As I come round the corner of the rick Morris looks up at me and jabs his thumb down at the space he’s saving alongside him. I get over there as fast as I can. Safety. Barley! I’m in! He nudges me with his knee and gives me a really good smile. I close my eyes and rest my back against the solid wall of the rick. Built by a good man. Built by my friend . . .
Mrs Roly-Poly’s fussing around out front. Grabbing baskets and drink and cloths and pushing Morris’s wife ahead of her too. Making sure everyone gets a big serve of everything. No skinflinting when it comes to food. Eat as much as you can. Her reputation hanging on it. Do the Westalls know how to feed men or don’t they? Tiger watching her. Keep the thing intact! Push out the fat pastries and the corned-beef and the loaves of bread and the fresh butter and the cucumbers and the tomatoes and lettuce and the scones and the cream and the whortleberry jam and the fruitcake!
Feast them!
And it’s working. No one’s saying a word. Everyone reaching for food and putting it away as fast as they can. Jaws doing all the work now. Cheeks bursting. Swallowing and chomping and gulping. All going at once. Eyes staring. Taking the edge off! The food disappearing faster than the stooks did.
And the Tiger squatting out in front of the whole show. His bum on the hub of a cart. And he’s packing away a big share. Bullfrog! And he’s still wearing his boss’s jacket! A thick dark tweed with the temperature in the eighties. His notebook on his knee. He’s starting to do a few sums. Adding and subtracting and dividing. Letting himself begin to feel the worth of it all. Giving his dreams some exercise. He doesn’t want to sit in the shade. He wants to keep feeling the strength of the sun. He wants to see Solomon’s carried and then it can rain. Too bad if it blasts acres of standing corn down the road. That’s the way the market works. He licks his pencil and jabs another equation into his book. He’s having fun. His mind far away. He looks up suddenly and catches me watching him.
Alsop comes round the corner of the rick and stops in his tracks. He’s facing a solid wall of feeding labourers. Everyone looks at him. Saying nothing. Watching him to see what he’ll do. The Tiger not seeing him yet. This hot cluster of sweating men jammed into the narrow lane of shade down the side of the rick not really interested in Alsop. But he’s out there. Something different.
He doesn’t see the Tiger.
Now he’s lost confidence. On the point of turning away. Lacking the force to push in amongst us. Hesitating in the bright sun. Inexpert with his stick. Swaying and not actually going in any definite direction. His pale blue shirt and white trousers a weakness against the hard-worked field of shaved stubble and machinery. He could be swept aside by something. And it looks then as if he wi
ll collide with the tailgate of the waggon.
We stop chewing.
Waiting for the accident to happen as if nothing can prevent it. Feeling his pale forehead striking the metal. But Morris calls, ‘Would you like a drink, Major?’ And Alsop steadies himself, everyone chewing again, and he swerves in our direction. At the sound of Morris’s call the Tiger looks round, intercepting Alsop. Taking over. And at once pushing food and drink at him and laughing.
Someone to crow to!
Swigging from his stone bottle of cold, bitter cider and thrusting it at the Australian. Aggressive. Powerful in sight of his men, his substance and all this energy directed towards his success. Stumped on the hub of the cart there in the sun. Sweating king bullfrog on his throne!
Wiping the neck with the palm of his hand. ‘Here Major! Here! Drink!’
Alsop’s overwhelmed. Pushed back. Can’t resist him. He coughs and gulps and gets some of the vile stuff down. He’d sooner be drinking tea in the shade with someone reasonable. You can see that. But here he is instead and he can’t escape. Drops splashing from the bottle onto his shirt. Someone laughs. No longer immaculate. The Tiger’s excited, forgetting his manners and grabbing the bottle back. Taking a big drink. Who’s Alsop anyway? And he’s not talking, he’s yelling. Bellowing. ‘All set for the big stags then, Major?’ And what’s he saying? Alsop won’t be hunting stags this autumn. Any fool can see that. Or ever again.
But it’s just what he wants to talk about all the same. Tiger’s hit the nail on the head. And Alsop dives on to the subject and snatches at it before giving himself time to think: ‘Why don’t you take Kabara along as your second horse to the Winsford meet next week?’ he says.
Straight out like this it’s too much for the Tiger. He’s startled. As if he’s been caught stealing something. And he slows right down at once. Comes to a dead stop. On guard. No longer the bullfrog, but wary now as a roused snake. He glances across at me. What’s going on?
I don’t want to know about it. I look away quickly and nudge Morris. ‘We’re getting there,’ I say.
He stares out across Solomon’s at the remaining stooks. ‘We’ll have her under the tin this evening,’ he says, a little too serious. He doesn’t look the best.
‘You okay?’ He doesn’t answer me. Just smiles and gets on with his eating. Every now and then he stretches out his chin and drags in an extra-deep breath, then lets it out with a sigh. The stubble on his cheeks and the wrinkles under his eyes are lit up from underneath by the bright reflection of the day into our shade, and there is a dusting of tiny golden particles clinging like pollen to his eyelashes. ‘You look tired.’
He turns to me: ‘The boys are giving you a hard time on the elevator, eh?’
‘I can handle them.’ Morris laughs. We both know I can’t handle them. We don’t need to talk about it. I half listen to the Tiger and Alsop, fencing with each other now, circling around the business of Kabara. Both on to something very special. The Tiger holding a natural advantage and seeking to make the most of it. Probing around. Suggesting faults. Almost insulting the Australian. Rousing him . . .
The heat’s coming out of my body and rising up in an envelope around me. A pie straight out of the oven! Spit would sizzle on me! But I can feel the strength flowing back with the food. Morris’s wife comes over and pours us both some more tea. She kneels down, steadying herself with a hand on his knee. He watches her, and she looks at him when she’s finished pouring. They don’t say anything and Roly-Poly’s calling out for something or other.
Alsop’s voice is rising up, becoming more nasal as he gets excited. The Tiger’s got him where he wants him. He’s playing with him. Starting the squeeze. The Australian loud and foreign: ‘Irish, Mr Westall! First-class Irish blood and not a fault in him!’ It’s true. Kabara’s all that and more. Too good for the Tiger by a mile. No legitimate way a tenant farmer like Tiger can afford a piece of pure Irish bloodstock up to his weight; fifteen stone if he’s an ounce!
‘What are you saying, for Christ’s sake?’ Alsop affronted now. ‘He was bred for one of your bloody dukes!’ The Tiger making a laughable comparison with his own chestnut hunters.
‘He’s not an Exmoor hunter, Major,’ Tiger says and whips out his watch, looking around, pretending to be getting fidgety for a start. But it’s too early. The men are only now getting out their smokes. Tiger gets up and dusts himself off, he’s going for the grease gun. ‘You’ll have a job selling him on the moor,’ he says over his shoulder, moving off unexpectedly and leaving Alsop standing by the wheel. But Alsop’s after him at once. Strident! Amazed! ‘Who’s talking about selling him?’ The Tiger laughs and keeps going. Enjoying himself now. His instincts have got it right and he’s opened the show on a hot note. He’s got the man who wants to sell the horse chasing him!
‘Take him to Winsford with you and give him a run. That’s all I’m saying.’ The crippled Australian lets the world know that he needs this sale badly. And if Tiger does take Kabara with him to Winsford next week, which is more than likely, because it doesn’t look as though there’ll be anything stopping him from going, it will look by then as if he’s doing Alsop a favour. To some. There’s a lot of screwing and grinding, undermining and probing, testing and poking into private situations, and there’s a lot of shifting and shuffling around to be done before the Tiger parts with cash.
There he goes. Squirting grease again!
Alsop mopes along behind him, watching the stuff oozing out of the hot bearings and dropping in black sluggish blobs on to the stubble. He knows in his heart of hearts how badly the Tiger wants the horse and it’s nearly killing him that he can’t get any leverage on it. ‘They don’t look as though they really need greasing,’ he says in the end.
The Tiger’s hard at it, bum in the air and elbows going; ‘They need it!’ he growls, moving briskly to the next nipple and pumping.
So Alsop stands. Frustrated. Staring at the broad back of the Tiger ahead of him. No longer following.
He must feel me watching him because he looks across, directly at me. Shrugs and gives his head a shake, as much as to say, What can I do with a man like this?
I look away and drink some tea. It’s a little late for him to be asking questions like that. I could have told him long ago. If he were smart he wouldn’t be here. He’d be at home in Australia.
I’m enjoying watching the Tiger exulting. Digging himself confidently into this one! He should have got to know Kabara while he had the chance. But he let that slip and it’s not going to be as easy now as he thinks. When it’s too late it’s going to hit him that he was right about one thing anyway; the horse may have the blood to give him superior speed and stamina, but it would take an extra-special horseman to make an Exmoor deer-hunter out of Kabara.
It’s a dream that’s drawing him in now; seeing himself right up with the leaders, in at the death, going the distance in the winter with the hinds, when things get really tough, when only the fanatics, the silent obsessed hunters go out on the moor and pursue their crazy passions. Worse than gamblers! The old Tiger’s been seduced by a dream: the greatest hunting farmer Exmoor’s ever seen! And now here he is hooking himself firmly on getting a bargain out of Alsop’s weakness. Sidetracked. Too smart for himself. He’s going to have that stallion for a hunter! Well, let’s see if he can coax Kabara across the bogs and channels of the Chains without coming to grief! Let him wade in! We’ll see what happens. He’s going to wish he’d forgotten all about Kabara and stuck to his chestnut nags.
But I shall say nothing. He is supposed to be the master of his situation.
A day off tomorrow. Everyone is going to the Winsford meet. So Morris and his wife are out there in the kitchen with the stove hot and a midweek bottle of stout between them. Something special. Nattering. The place is being torn apart by an Atlantic storm that came roaring in over Dunkery an hour ago and it’s still pounding and ripping at this prefabricated junk heap. Blasting its way across the empty moor! My room’s the pla
ce to be! Sitting on my bed with my legs drawn up and the eiderdown round my shoulders. Trying to read Ewart’s Elementary Botany, and being distracted.
Boom! Crash! Smashing into the ridge! Inches away! It’s a blitzkrieg! We’re being pounded and deafened by the lightning explosions. Our ridge cops it. It’s an attraction. A natural conductor. Bearing the full brunt of the ocean-bred storm. There’s a piece of tin going smash, smash, smash on the roof but I can only just hear it for the wind.
But we haven’t blown away yet!
And here comes the cold air. Whoosh! Like a big door opening and driving through the cracks and joints. There goes the last of the warm air!
The Tiger’ll be over there all nicely tucked in with Roly-Poly, gloating on his good fortune. Every last scrap of his corn packed in under the tin. Safe and sweet. Acres of the stuff round here are being blasted into the mud tonight.
Well, too bad . . .
I keep looking at this same page without really taking it in: GYMNOSPERMS—Pines, Firs, Larches, Yews, & Cycads. Synopsis of Description & Classification. The more important natural orders indigenous to Britain. That’s Ewart setting things up to be as exact as it is possible to be; scientific in other words. Leaving nothing to chance, hearsay or tradition. But checking it all out. Which is just what I want. I can do without guesses. Folklore, chit-chat, rumours, gossip. They’ve got all that stuff at their fingertips round here.
They know it, I don’t.
It’s imparted by word of mouth and sign language. You can never be quite sure what they mean. Nothing clear-cut and final about their answers. Everything’s got to be spiced and packed and knotted up with ambiguities before they’ll let you have it. And even then they grudge it. Ask them a straight question and they’ll spit and cough and look over their shoulder, then say something you can’t understand and move away. After he’d put the scythe into Solomon’s the other day and we were all sitting under the hedge having a cup of tea, I asked Sam Jones how he’d cured the ringworm on the calves last year without ever coming near them. He breathed and wheezed and stared around, then mumbled, ‘It’s in the book,’ before getting up and shifting himself.
