The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  The job was short-handed but Albert Sercombe could not abide his brother working in the same field and Tucker put up with the restriction. Enoch Sercombe mowed the Back Meadow. They could hear the machine clattering on the other side of the hedge on the eastern side of Watercress Meadow.

  The boy as he raked glanced often at his father. Albert rose by degrees upon the hay he stacked beneath himself, levitating like the Prophet Ezekiel or some ecstatic saint contemplating the mystery of the Lord’s harvest. When he nodded, the boy trotted to the farm and entered the stables. Captain had already had his halter put upon him. The boy led him back out to the Meadow. Amos Tucker was at the gate and said to him, ‘“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and a child will lead them.”’ He grinned and called to the boy’s mother, ‘See him lead the beast, Ruth. I swear he’s no need for the halter. Is it not a wonder?’

  Leo did not look to either side and did not acknowledge those who now considered him but led the great black Shire gelding to the waggon, where Herbert hitched Captain to the front of Noble as the trace horse. Dunstone watched, moving from one foot to the other.

  ‘He talks to the creatures, Dunstone,’ Herbert said. ‘Don’t you, Leo? Speak to the dumb creatures more than thou speakest to man?’

  Dunstone could not keep still. ‘What shall I do?’ he asked of Herbert. There were no more than half a dozen teeth left in his mouth. He turned to the boy and said, ‘What shall I do?’

  Fred tied ropes to the sides of the waggon and threw them to his father atop the load. Amos Tucker wound them around the pins on the other side and threw them back to Albert, and so did they criss-cross the mound of hay and secure the load. Albert stood and looked about him for a moment, enjoying this unusual perspective on the land he knew. Then he came over the side: grasping a rope, he lowered himself hand over hand to the ground. Ruth raked down the sides of the load and Amos Tucker applauded her neatness.

  Leo climbed up and rode Noble side-saddle, his father beside the horse’s bridle, holding Captain’s long leading rein. He ordered the horses forward. The boy looked back and saw that Amos Tucker was now in the second waggon, loading with a sheaf pike the hay thrown up by Herbert and Fred. Dunstone led the horse, Red, forward when told to. The boy’s mother and his sister raked another line of hay into cocks.

  The waggon joggled and swayed across the field, through the gateway, along the lane. Hay caught in the hedge and was pulled off the load, decorating the branches like the scattering of some midsummer festivity. As they approached the long slope towards the farm the horses sped up, though Albert Sercombe had said nothing and pulled the full waggon up the incline and into the yard.

  Ernest Cudmore the shepherd and Isaac Wooland the stockman were waiting for them. When the waggon was in position Isaac leaned a ladder against it and they climbed on top of the load of hay. Albert unhitched the ropes from the pins and the other two men began to pitch forkfuls down to him, into the foundation Albert had laid at the break of day.

  The boy fetched the second gelding, Coal, from the stable and walked him to the Meadow. Herbert walked towards him and they passed each other through the gateway.

  The field was quiet. Amos Tucker’s daughters had joined the boy’s mother and sister in raking the swathes into cocks across the great meadow. Their white smocks and bonnets were smirched with dirt. His uncle Enoch had taken over from Herbert, pitching forkfuls up to Amos Tucker. The boy led the horse to the front of the waggon. Enoch hitched it to the traces. When they had tied the load down, Dunstone led Red and Coal close to the gateway and stood them there. The men slaked their thirst with cold tea. Herbert returned with the empty waggon, standing aboard it, driving Noble and Captain with their separate reins. He brought them to where his father Enoch indicated. The boy held the horses. Herbert walked to the gateway and took the reins from Dunstone and led the second, full waggon out and along the lane. Dunstone came trotting over and took Red’s bridle from the boy.

  So they worked through the afternoon and the warm evening. As the light ebbed, the women left the field. The men completed a load in the fading light. They followed the last waggon into the yard, sweat-soaked flannel shirts cooling on their backs.

  A second rick had begun. The boy watched his father put the roof on the first rick in the dying light. He came down the ladder. ‘Let it settle,’ he told Herbert. ‘Then top it up a little. Thatchers’ll come in two to three weeks, gaffer?’

  ‘Don’t ye worry, Albert, I’ll have a word with they,’ said Tucker.

  The boy helped his father groom the horses. Herbert lit the paraffin lamp and hung it on the wire above the stalls. The boy followed each brushstroke with his bare hand, as his father did, to rid the horses’ shoulders of sweat marks where the heavy collars had been.

  He walked home with his father and his brother. His mother gave them cold ham and eggs fried in pig fat, bread and butter. They ate in silence, then hauled their weary bodies up the stairs to bed.

  July

  Noble had gone to work each day but returned to the pasture in the evening and suckled her foal. Albert Sercombe took the foal, now a colt, from her one day in July. He led the colt out of the yard. The boy led old Pleasant after. He watched the colt yank and strain on the unfamiliar halter, saw the force his father was obliged to exert to restrain him.

  They let them loose in the near paddock, climbed out between the fence poles and leaned upon the upper pole and watched Pleasant graze and the colt scurry and stop. He looked around, cantered to the far side of the paddock, returned to Pleasant, studied her.

  ‘Her’ll educate him,’ Albert said.

  They watched the colt gallop in one direction then stop, as if he had been ordered to, or so commanded himself. He stood still and they watched him, then he all of a sudden took off swerving somewhere else.

  ‘Is he lookin for his dam?’ Albert said. ‘Is he forgettin, then rememberin? I don’t know. No one knows how the brains of horses reason.’

  Pleasant ignored the colt, and grazed.

  ‘I like the look of him,’ Albert Sercombe told his son. ‘His testicles ain’t fallen but when they do I’m not keen to geld him. I’ll talk to the gaffer. See if the master’d care to come and take a look.’ Albert filled his clay pipe, watching the colt. In due course he lit it. ‘We’ve not had a stud go from Manor Farm since your grandfather’s time.’

  The boy felt his father grip his upper arm with one hand and his wrist with the other. ‘How much muscle you got there, boy?’

  The boy remembered one thing about his grandfather: he wore leather straps on his wrists, weakened by a lifetime of working the plough reins.

  ‘You’s strong enough, I reckon,’ Albert Sercombe decided. ‘How do you fancy bein the one to swing this colt? If you needs a hand, Dunstone will do your biddin. You seen me do it, boy. Don’t touch him. Let the colt touch you.’

  On the afternoon following the boy took a halter from the saddle room. He found the old lad walking between Manor Farm and the crossroads, saw him walk along the lane then turn and walk twenty yards and turn again.

  When he reached Dunstone the boy said, ‘Will you help me?’ The old lad followed him gladly. Dunstone walked in tiny steps, on his tiptoes, like one child creeping up on another. He spoke of what he had seen. ‘I sin many things this day, Leo. I sin Isaac send his dog to fetch the cows for milkin and that dog he don’t hurry them, you know, he brings em in slow with their full udders swayin, like. That’s a clever dog.’

  Dunstone trotted on his mincing feet. Leopold had heard his reports before, as had all who lived upon the estate, for Dunstone ranged across it when he was of a mood to. On rare occasions he witnessed something new and added the account to his repertoire.

  They walked to the paddock. The boy bade Dunstone hold the long coiled rope and wait outside the fence. He tucked the halter inside the back of his trouser belt, under his jacket, climbed in and walked to Pleasant, and stroked the old mare, and spoke to her. The colt regarded him from a d
istance. The boy walked into the middle of the paddock and waited. The colt ignored him and moved away in a circuit, but his curiosity betrayed him and he kept coming nearer.

  When the foal was not far away the boy took aniseed from his pocket and rubbed it between his fingers and the colt’s head went up. His nostrils trembled. His head went down and he paced slowly, steadily, towards the boy. The boy spoke to the colt and then he reached behind him, released the halter, brought it round and slipped it over the colt’s head. He waved to Dunstone to join him. The old lad scampered across the paddock. Leopold clipped the rope to the tie-ring on the halter, beneath the horse’s head. He bade Dunstone hold the halter in a firm grip while he made his way slowly, inviting the colt to watch him, to the fence. There he took his time to remove his jacket and lay it over the upper pole, before ambling back across the paddock. He took over once again from the old lad.

  Leopold walked backwards, letting the rope uncoil. When it had reached its full extent he bade Dunstone hold the end while he grasped the rope a little way along and they stepped back and took up the slack. The colt felt the pressure and backed away, pulling Leo and Dunstone forward. They dug their heels into the hard grassy ground and strained, and dragged the colt towards them. The colt set his hooves four-square upon the earth and held them. The boy and the old lad held their ground likewise. The young horse and the pair of diminutive humans were well matched. This tug-of-war continued, until the colt could bear the strain on his neck no longer, and jumped forward. The boy stepped back smartly, knocking into Dunstone, who staggered backward until the rope was taut once more.

  And so they continued, moving by increments across and around the paddock, until the colt was weary. The boy thanked Dunstone for his help and said that mother would feed him should he care to go to their cottage. Dunstone nodded and turned and made off at his fast shuffling pace. The boy chewed aniseed and spoke to the colt and blew his breath into its nostrils. He removed the halter, and left the paddock.

  ‘Avoid the soap, boy.’

  Leo turned to his father, who never usually whispered in this manner. Ruth had left the kitchen, to fetch something from the garden or to visit the privy, and Albert kept an eye out for her return. He stirred sugar into his tea and sipped it.

  ‘When mother heats the kettles tomorrow,’ he said, indicating the zinc bath hung from a hook on the kitchen wall, ‘you disappear.’

  ‘How?’ Leo asked.

  His father shook his head. ‘You’ll think a somethin.’

  The boy looked to his older brother Fred for guidance but he only shrugged. They heard voices outside approaching, Ruth and Kizzie.

  ‘Why?’ he whispered urgently.

  His father looked at him as at a fool. ‘A man should not wash,’ he said, ‘while breakin horses.’

  On the second day swinging the colt Leo did not seek out Dunstone but went to the paddock on his own. He hung his jacket on a post and secured the halter inside his shirt, and walked to the centre of the field. He laid the coiled rope at his feet. The colt did not come at first but pranced here and there. The boy put his arms out to his sides horizontally and then he turned, slowly, and the colt stopped and watched him. The boy spun or pirouetted, then as if a spring inside him was unwinding he did so with less velocity and came slowly to a halt facing away from the colt. He lowered his arms. The colt watched and then took a step and walked forwards until he reached the boy and stood just behind him. The boy turned and put the halter upon the colt.

  They played out their game. The boy pulled the rope, the colt tugged back, until it could take the strain no more and yielded. The boy was stronger than the day before and needed no help, he was not sure how. He took up the slack and they resumed. He knew he was being watched but did not look to see who it might be. His father valued this colt and if he had shared this assessment word would spread around the estate, for the carter was respected as his own father had been before him.

  The boy finished as he had the afternoon before. He spoke to the colt and told him he was the finest young beast in God’s creation, and that he, the boy, was his master. He inhaled the foal’s lovely scent. A younger smell than that of the full-grown horses but Leo could not say how, exactly. He slipped the halter off the colt then walked back a few paces. The colt turned away in the manner of one insulted, holding himself stiffly, then he shook or sneezed himself loose and galloped away across the paddock bucking and kicking, as if some invisible simulacrum of his tormenter were being thrown off. The boy watched the colt, his young lean muscular beauty in motion, then turned and walked towards the fence. There was but one spectator there, sitting on the top pole, feet resting on the lower, a youth in Homburg hat, shirt, breeches, and riding boots of a sort worn by the master and his kind.

  The boy walked slowly with his head down, coiling the loose rope elbow to thumb as he did so. The youth sat beside Leo’s jacket where he’d left it draped over the post. When he reached the fence he laid the halter and rope upon the ground and took his jacket and pulled it on, one arm and then the other. He did not look up but saw at the outermost of his vision the brown leather riding boots, diminutive in size.

  ‘Are you not ashamed to treat a foal in so cruel a manner?’ The youth spoke in a voice that was unbroken. ‘Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?’

  Leo reached down and picked up the halter and the coiled rope.

  ‘I asked you a question, boy. Your silence is insolent.’

  Leo bent and climbed out between the poles of the fence. His anger made him clumsy and he knocked his head upon the underside of the upper pole. He glanced up at the youth. The master’s daughter looked down at him, her torso twisted, one arm gripping the upper pole for balance. Her hair was gathered up above and behind her head, inside the hat that was too large for her, but he glimpsed beneath its brim the same expression on her face as when her father had presumed that she would wish to fondle this foal new-born four months before.

  He bent his head towards the ground.

  ‘Are you shaking your head?’ the girl asked. She raised her right hand from the pole and gripped it with the left instead and swung her legs over and jumped to the ground. The boy kept his head down and stepped aside.

  ‘Are you walking away when I’m talking to you?’ the girl said. ‘How dare you?’

  He heard her footsteps hurry after him. She overtook and placed herself in his path. He stopped.

  ‘Do you know who I am, boy?’ she said. ‘Of course you do. Shall I tell my father of the carter’s boy’s insolence?’

  The boy shook his head. He kept his gaze on the finely tooled seams of the girl’s brown riding boots. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Tis not cruel, miss. Yon colt enjoys it.’

  The girl released a laugh that held no trace of humour. ‘Yes, of course, do you think I’m blind? Can I not see with my own eyes? He enjoys it … and the more fool him. He believes it is a joust, a bout between equals. He doesn’t know it to be but the first stage of his submission, in a life of abject ceaseless slavery, does he?’

  The boy looked up. Their eyes were level. Hers were brown, though not as dark as his own and those in his family. They were the colour of hazelnut shells. She had freckles too, much lighter brown. He looked back down before he spoke. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I doubt he do.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Good. You can speak, and you are not entirely stupid. How old are you, carter’s boy?’

  Her boots, though they had been polished recently, were dusty. ‘I be twelve year old, miss. Last month.’ He glanced up, long enough to see the girl smile.

  ‘We are alike one year older than the century, you and I,’ she said. ‘Born in the last year of the old one. It is a strange privilege, I believe. What is your name?’

  Her boots were relatively new. She must have worn them often. ‘It be Leopold, miss.’ He looked up briefly to find her gazing directly at him, and looked back down.

  ‘You have eyes the colour of blackberries, Leopold,’ the girl said. She took
a step to the side, and walked away, in the direction of the manor. After a while the boy raised his eyes. He watched, keeping his eyes upon her until, two hundred yards or further hence, the curve of the lane took her out of sight.

  July

  Ida Tucker the gaffer’s wife was a musician. On Sunday afternoons she gathered her family around the piano and all manner of wailing could be heard faintly from the farmhouse. None of her daughters played their upright piano in time but she did not give up; there was surely an instrument to suit each one of them if they could but discover it. She asked Leo Sercombe to ride over to the village of Huish Champflower, where the Rector’s wife would give him an oboe in a wooden case.

  The boy did not hitch the cart but found panniers, which he secured with straps around the chest, buttocks and abdomen of the skewbald gelding. He attached bridle and reins and rode the pony bareback out of the estate, passing a wheat field in which his mother, sister and other women laboured. All wore bonnets to shield their faces from the rising sun. The wheat was seven or eight inches high. Each carried two implements, the length of walking sticks. One was forked, the other had a blade fixed at its end at right angles to the stick. With them the women and children worked slowly through the corn, cutting thistles.

  *

  It took Leo time to find the Rectory for unlike those he knew it stood some way from the church. A woman he took to be the housekeeper or cook answered the door. She was expecting him. She turned and picked up a flattish box from a table in the hallway. It was upholstered in scuffed and faded red leather, and was heavier than he expected. The woman told Leo to wait, and disappeared. She returned with a tall glass, which she handed to him. He rested the music case against the wall, raised the glass and drank in one long draught until the water was gone. It tasted faintly of metal. He gave her back the glass and she gave him a carrot. Then she stepped back inside and closed the door.