The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  ‘I’m sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘The swallows don’t be long in their labours this time a year.’

  Miss Pugsley frowned. ‘Swallows?’

  Leo told her of their nests in the eaves of the school house, and how they built them or renovated old ones from the year before.

  ‘You were studying birds?’

  ‘Most of the time I be listenin.’

  ‘To what, may I ask, if not to me?’

  ‘I believe, miss, there be an owl in yon chimney.’ He glanced across to the chimney breast above the iron stove. He saw Miss Pugsley turn that way too. ‘This time a year, one day you lights it, another day you don’t. Owls like the shelter of a chimney. They don’t know if they likes the heat. It gets too hot, they fly off. Then they comes back and it’s cooled down and they don’t know where they is.’

  ‘I see.’

  Leo looked down at Miss Pugsley’s ornamented shoes. The cotton thread of her black stockings was finer than that of his sister’s or his mother’s. He knew she was no longer gazing at the chimney breast but was studying him.

  ‘I believe that is the most I’ve heard you utter in all these years,’ she said. ‘And you were listening to the owl come and go?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘She never went today. She bin there the whole time, I reckon. I could hear her frettin.’

  ‘Oh, Leopold,’ Miss Pugsley said. She stepped towards him. He felt her hands at the back of his head and her arms sliding around and drawing him towards her chest. He felt her neck against his mouth. He could smell a sweetness of powder and of the perspiration of her skin. She kissed the top of his head as she squeezed him to her. ‘Oh, Leopold,’ she said. ‘What am I to do with you?’ She clasped him to her. He stood with his arms at his sides. As long as he kept his head down he could breathe unobstructed. He feared that she would lift his head, what would happen if she did. But she only held him tight and kissed the top of his skull through his hair and then she let him go, and stepped back. He looked up at her.

  ‘What will become of you, Leopold?’ she said.

  ‘I shall work on one a the master’s farms,’ he said.

  ‘For your father, I suppose?’ she asked. ‘He does not mind your truancy as your mother does.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sons do not work for their fathers. The master won’t allow it. He said it be a sure recipe for discord. I could not be Father’s lad, nor his under carter. I should like to work on the master’s stud farm.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Then you surely will. You may go. Go home, Leopold.’

  He turned and walked to the door, and opened it, and closed it behind him, and trotted out of the playground and along the lane.

  April

  ‘He gets up and goes with you to help with your early chores, it’s no wonder he forgets to go to school.’

  ‘Would you stop him?’

  The boy listened as they spoke of him though he was there beside them. Ruth put a log in the stove and closed the lid. ‘I’d rather he slept longer, yes, and woke later, like Kizzie,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘And went to school with her.’

  His father considered this long before answering. By the time he did so, Ruth was seated at the table too. ‘If you can keep him sleepin, good luck, mother.’

  When either of them spoke their breath disturbed the candle flame, and the light fluttered in the room. His father sipped his tea.

  ‘Do you hear your mother?’ he said at length. ‘T’would be a help to the gaffer if I could write out orders and that. You needs to read and write, for certain, to be a carter these days.’

  ‘Or something better,’ said his mother.

  The boy looked up and saw the colour in his father’s face darken as the blood rose. One of his hands clenched into a fist upon the table.

  Leo looked down. In time his father’s voice came, steady and low. ‘Stay here this mornin. We’ll be turnin out tonight. Come then. Is that a bargain, boy? Go to school today.’

  After Albert and Fred had left, Leo rose to go back upstairs. His mother took his hand and he turned. She gazed at him. ‘Your eyes are dark as sloes,’ she said. Her own were pale blue. ‘How strange that you all have your father’s eyes.’ She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Sleep a little longer if you can.’

  Leo tried but he could not. In time he heard Kizzie stir and came directly downstairs once more. Ruth still sat at the kitchen table, sipping at her tea though it had long gone cold. She gazed at the wall. The boy asked his mother what she was thinking. She told him she remembered the days of her childhood. The sea, the restless churning waves, breaking on the esplanade. He asked her where it was she grew up, though he knew the answer, for he liked to hear her say the word, ‘Penzance.’

  She had come east for work and met the young carter and married him in haste. Leo had not met any of her family. ‘My mother and my father,’ she told him, ‘your grandparents, are long gone in the ground. But I have a brother, if he be there still.’

  Leo waited in the yard. He heard horses’ hooves in the lane and saw Herbert leading Noble, Red and Captain. He took them to the stable, and gave them each corn in their stalls.

  ‘You want to groom one a the big pair?’ Herbert said.

  There was a box of grooming implements the boy had the use of, since in his grandfather’s time there’d been a second lad in each team. He brushed down Red as the great carthorse ate. Leo lifted the horse’s front left foot and removed mud and grit from it with the hoof pick. He worked down towards the toe, so that the point of the pick might not penetrate the soft parts of the frog. He cleared the cleft of the frog and studied it for signs of thrush but found none. He tapped the shoe to see that it was secure and ran the tips of his fingers round the clenches to see that none had risen. The Shire horse helped him, holding his leg up so that the boy did not carry the whole of the weight.

  ‘Yon horse been workin on the offside today,’ Herbert called over from the next stall. ‘Every time I turned em on the headland the bugger tried to grab young buds in the hedge with his teeth.’

  The boy took up the dandy brush and climbed onto the stool he’d brought into the stall for this purpose. He began at the poll behind the crest of Red’s head on the nearside. He brushed to and fro with all the vigour at his disposal, shifting caked dirt and sweat marks from the horse’s coat. He brushed Red’s belly, then moved to the legs and brushed the dirt from the points of the hocks, from the matted fetlocks and pasterns. As he worked on the hind limbs the boy held the horse’s tail out of the way with his free hand.

  ‘I don’t know who’s more keen to get em out a the stable, them or I.’ Herbert’s voice came from further away. He’d finished Noble and was now in the stall of Captain the black gelding.

  Leo took up the body brush, with its short and close-set hairs. He threw Red’s mane across to the other side of his neck and brushed the crest. He brought back the mane and commenced work upon it at the lower end by the withers. Using a finger of his free hand to separate some locks of hair, he brushed first the ends of the hairs to remove tangles and then the roots in the same way. He worked slowly up the neck, dealing with a few locks at a time. He inhaled the smell of the horse as he did so. The incomparable concoction of hay, dust, flesh and sweat. The scent was best just behind Red’s ears. Each horse had its own smell. Red’s was sweeter than most, but all that Leo had encountered were good. His father reckoned that the smell of a horse sometimes offered the first sign of illness.

  When the mane was clear the boy passed to the body, now taking up the curry comb in his right hand. He began once more at the poll region on the nearside, brushing in short circular strokes in the direction of the lay of the coat, leaning the weight of his body behind the brush. After every fourth stroke he drew the brush across the teeth of the curry comb to dislodge the dirt. He tapped the comb on the floor to clean it out in its turn. When he had completed the nearside he walked around behind the horse and began on the offsid
e, switching hands.

  When he had finished the body the boy unstrapped the halter and tied the rope around Red’s neck. He returned the curry comb to the box and with his free hand steadied the horse’s head. He worked more gently now and spoke quietly to the carthorse as he did so. When he had brushed its head he replaced the halter.

  The tail the boy dealt with as he had the mane, a few strands of hair at a time, teasing and shaking the locks out.

  ‘Your old man’s harrowin. Be in soon, let’s hope. He says we’s turnin em out tonight. Captain’s frisky summat awful. I reckon they know, somehow.’

  The boy took up a wisp, a fresh one that he reckoned had not been used before. He filled a bucket of water, wet his fingers and shook them over the wisp, in a way the Bishop had sprinkled holy water at Confirmation. He told the horse what he was about to do and showed Red the wisp and then he brought it down with a bang upon the side of the horse’s neck and ran it across his skin in the direction of the lay of his coat. He banged the horse in the same way ten times, counting them off, then he moved on to the horse’s quarters, and thighs, the hard flat muscular regions of his body. Then round to the other side.

  Albert Sercombe came in from harrowing with Coal and Pleasant. ‘Finished already?’ the boy heard him say. ‘You’ve got Leopold groomin Red?’

  ‘Your boy’s only a little tacker, uncle. A course it takes him longer.’

  ‘Thought you’d give him the big horse, did you?’

  ‘Yes, and he has to keep gettin on and off that stool, poor little sod.’

  Leo dipped the sponge in the bucket of water and wrung it out. He pushed the stool with his foot against the wall by Red’s head and stepped up onto it. He sponged away from the corners of the horse’s eyes and around the eyelids. He stepped down and wrung out the sponge and stepped back up and sponged the muzzle region, cleaning the carthorse’s lips and the inside and the outside of his nostrils. Again he watered the sponge and wrung it out then moved to the other end of the horse. He lifted the tail and gently cleaned the dock region.

  The horse breathed contentedly. The boy found the jar of his father’s hoof oil. He dipped the small brush in it and lifted the horse’s foot and gave a thin coat of oil to the whole of the hoof and the bulbs of the heel as far up as the coronet, each hoof in turn. Then he returned the jar and all the equipment to their cupboard in the stable room.

  Leo returned to Red’s stall and spoke to him and then climbed the partition between that stall and the next. He climbed along the cribs past Noble and Captain and squatted on the next partition to watch his father complete the grooming of Pleasant. Beyond, Herbert worked on Coal, the second black gelding. Albert sponged the old mare’s face. Then he stopped and peered into her eyes. The mare gazed straight ahead, munching her corn, and to the boy it appeared that man and horse looked long into each other’s eyes. His father shifted position slightly, studying the mare’s eyeballs from different angles. Then he stepped away and leaned down, filled his sponge with water and wrung it out, and began to clean the horse’s muzzle.

  Albert glanced up. He did not openly acknowledge his son’s looming presence but said, ‘I been to the Glenthorne Estate when I were a lad. Had to deliver a horse there for the master. A big hunter, he was. I got lost, I reckon, and I come to it along a track through a gateway in the middle a nowhere. The hunter spotted somethin above us and reared up beneath me.’ Albert raised his arms above his head and spread his hands apart. Water dripped down his sleeve. ‘A great archway over our heads. On top of each a the pillars was a crouchin gargoyle.’ He resumed cleaning the old mare’s mouth. ‘Never seen nothin like it. That’s what you’s like up there, boy. A crouchin damn’ gargoyle.’ Albert chuckled to himself. ‘Why I was lookin in her eyes was to see if her lens is cloudy. I’m thinkin there’s the start a cataracts.’ He picked up the bucket and moved to the back of the horse. ‘Nothin to be done about it if there is.’

  When Albert had finished he said, ‘Let’s get em out, then,’ and they took the horses, the carters with a pair each, Noble’s foal following her, the filly too, the boy leading Red, towering above him, out of the stable and through the yard and into Back Meadow where they let them loose.

  ‘You and me better sweep the stables out,’ Albert said to Herbert. They returned to the yard but the boy stayed and watched the horses. The young black geldings galloped around the field. Noble rolled on her back. Old Pleasant, cataracts or not, could smell the new grass and pulled it from the ground and munched it. Leopold saw that for her it was like the new potatoes of early summer eaten with no more than a knob of butter and a leaf or two of mint, or like the first green peas his mother shelled from their pods and boiled and which he savoured in his mouth. So was this first meal of pasture grass of the spring for the old mare.

  Red came up to Noble and nibbled at her withers. Noble turned her head to her fellow Shire horse but she did not move. The foal stuck close to his mother. Captain trotted over towards the fence and then twenty yards away passed directly across in front of Leo, kicking his legs behind him as if in some balletic display for the boy, to show him of what acrobatics a big horse is capable.

  ‘Their antics is amusin.’

  The boy had not seen or heard Amos Tucker approach. The farmer leaned against the fence pole upon which Leo sat.

  ‘Just turned out?’ Amos said.

  Leo nodded.

  The farmer and the boy watched the horses. Enoch and Fred brought their own groomed animals, the four Shires and the two young bay geldings, to the pasture and let them loose, then returned to sweep their stable. The two teams of horses, who saw little of each other at close quarters through the winter, began to reacquaint themselves in their liberty. They cantered to and fro across or around the pasture on a particular course, from this point to that point, with great purpose that no human being could quite fathom. The boy doubted whether any horse other than the one in motion could either.

  ‘Your father will let em out each evenin, then let em out all night come Friday, I reckon. That’s what he does. What his old man did an all.’

  Amos Tucker lit his pipe. The horses grazed each a while then took off again. Dusk began to fall. The carters came and collected their horses. It took them longer than they wished for whatever awaited in the cribs, however deep the straw in the stalls, nothing could compare to fresh grass and open space. But the evening cooled, and darkness fell, and the horses allowed themselves to be haltered, and led back to the yard.

  April

  In the morning, rain fell light but steady upon the land. Leopold and Kizzie walked to school as did other pupils off the estate and round about. Kizzie spoke with girls from the other farms. The boy looked around him. Cattle gathered on the least windswept side of their grazing pasture. Sheep sought shelter in bushes or in the lea of walls. Horses stood in the rain with their heads down as if suffering punishment. Or perhaps showing defiance. Leo took a detour through the wood. Birds did not fly but huddled on branches. Each shrank within a carapace of its wings and feathers. Rain dripped through the leaves.

  The children ran through the schoolyard. They were glad to be in the warm dry schoolhouse, but the boy was not. At lunchtime he walked back to the farm.

  In the afternoon the rain fell harder.

  ‘There’s harness to be oiled, gaffer,’ Herbert said.

  ‘Aye,’ Albert replied.

  ‘I’ll light the fire if you want, gaffer.’

  ‘Don’t push it, lad, don’t push it. Never too wet to cart muck.’

  Albert sought out his brother Enoch, the under carter, and told him he would take the black geldings to the blacksmith for it was near as dammit time for their shoes to be refitted. Enoch said he believed it was. Albert told him that Herbert would follow with Noble and Red, and that Leopold was here and would bring Pleasant who was due new ones as hers were a quarter-year old. Enoch said he and Fred would oil tack in the saddle room. Albert nodded his approval.

  They took empty canvas
sacks, cut gaps along the seams for head and arms and wore them as capes against the weather. Herbert and the boy, leading their horses, passed Albert in the lane, leading Coal and Captain in their refitted shoes, though the falling rain splashing on the stone of the road muffled the noise of them.

  ‘Wait,’ Albert Sercombe called to his son. Herbert did not hear and carried on. The boy halted the mare and stood. The carter tied his horses to branches in the hedge. He came back and took the mare’s halter from the boy. ‘I’ll walk her up the lane and walk her back. Watch and tell me what you see.’

  He walked his great old mare up the lane. The rain fell upon them all. After the length of a cricket wicket, which was as far as Leo could see before the rain blotted out all things visible, Albert turned and walked back. ‘What did you see?’ he asked. ‘Did you notice owt?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘When?’ his father asked. His eyes were narrowed against the rain that beat against his face and ran in the wrinkled fissures of his weathered skin.

  ‘When she put her hind leg to the ground,’ the boy said. ‘Nearside.’

  ‘Good. Tell the smith to study it.’

  Others too had come. Herbert tied the horses to iron rings on the outside wall of the smithy and left them standing patiently in the rain.

  The boy stood between the bay mare and Red, the nearest of the Shires, sheltered from the cold rain by their great bodies and warmed by them likewise, if only a little. He peered inside the forge. He could see Herbert with other lads and men. They stood, morose, steam rising from them as their wet clothes dried out in the heat of the smithy, speaking doubtless to complain of their lot and to share bad news of their fellows. Then Herbert spoke and the lad nearest to him swung his arm around behind Herbert and slapped the back of his head. His head bowed forward and his damp cap flew off, and the men laughed. Herbert bent forward to retrieve his cap and as he rose with it in his hand he was laughing too.