by Tim Pears
The sawyer beheld the boy and raised his chin and eyebrows both. ‘Do for you?’ he said.
‘Father says he’ll bring his team tomorrow,’ Leo said.
The sawyer stared at him. Working out who this boy was, whose son, to which team he was referring. He blinked slowly. ‘Gaffer’s up in Hangman’s Wood,’ he said. ‘Go tell him.’
Now it was Leo’s turn to stare back at the sawyer. Why could he not tell his own boss later? Did it please him to send this boy on an errand that was not required?
Leo swallowed. ‘Tis a simple message,’ he said.
The sawyer made a strange movement with his lips. It appeared that he was working something out of the depths of his mouth to the front. A shard of timber, perhaps. He spat it to the ground. ‘It’s takin us about a week to cut coffin boards from this tree,’ he said. ‘I’m lookin out for nails, bullets, wire. Keepin the line.’ He tapped his skull, to indicate perhaps that it was full. ‘Hangman’s Wood. Go tell im yourself.’
The boy glanced into the pit. The apprentice peered up at him. His eyes, encircled by sawdust that sweat had stuck to his skin, were round like those of an owl.
*
The boy walked up from Warren Farm to the wood on the hill in the middle of the estate. Four of the six farms abutted its circumference. He passed a gang of men coppicing, cutting shoots with their bill hooks from the stumps of trees. From hardy birch a man was making broomsticks. From willow stools they cut rods for baskets. A lad built stacks of them. A boy collected the remnant twigs and smaller branches and tied them into bundles for fuel. Leo wondered if any of them saw him. He thought they must but none acknowledged him.
He walked through the wood. He had in his time climbed many of the trees. He passed an oak he’d not noticed before. The vertical wrinkles in its bark were spiralled, as if its roots were the handle of a carpenter’s brace and some sleepy giant of the soil turned the trunk from below, screwing it as it grew, over years, decades, centuries, rotating slowly up towards the light.
He found the sawyers. A pair of men attacked the base of a great oak with their long-bladed felling axes.
From the trunk of one already felled three men severed the limbs with axes and saws.
Over the trunk of another barkers teemed. One man cut lines through the bark, around the circumference of the tree, every couple of feet. The trunk had been brought down upon another, lying crosswise so that it was raised above the ground along its length. A second man used his light axe to make one longitudinal cut. A third and a fourth inserted heart-shaped barking irons, worked the wooden handles to and fro like the boy’s mother paddling bread in and out of the oven, and lifted sections of bark. The men stripped the trees like teams of insects. A fifth man took the shells of bark as they were passed to him and a sixth stacked them in shocks to dry before they’d be sent to the tan yard. This last man was the oldest. Leo approached and when the man came to him he gave his message.
The man nodded. ‘Albert Sercombe and his timber waggon and his horses. Tell im us’ll be ready. Six trunks to haul to the yard, and a couple a loads a good branches.’
Leo turned to go.
‘Wait.’
Leo turned back to the sawyer.
‘Do me a favour, boy? Go back by the manor. Find the head groom. Herb Shattock. No one else. Tell him us is in for the meetin. Got it?’
Leo nodded.
‘Tell me.’
The boy gazed up at the man. He had grey curly hair and red-rimmed eyes. Perhaps over time tiny specks of sawdust sneaked inside the lids.
‘Sawyers is in for the meetin.’
‘Good. Here, boy.’
The red-eyed sawyer put his right hand into his trouser pocket and withdrew it in the shape of a fist. He flicked his thumb and a coin spun into the air towards the boy. Leo caught it in his own fist, then opened his hand so that the farthing lay on his palm. Her old Majesty’s bun-head gazed towards the west of her Empire, in the year 1893. The boy looked up to thank the sawyer, but he was already on his way back to the job he’d briefly abdicated.
*
The boy walked through the wood, seeing no one, and walked out of it across fields of sheep towards the big house. In one field crows grubbed the animals’ dung for worms and suchlike savoury morsels. The boy counted precisely as many crows as sheep, for each white ewe one black bird, small avian familiars of the beasts, feeding from their excrement. Black hooded goblins. As he walked through the field, sheep bleated and parted for him and crows minced away. Some gave a hop and were airborne, witchlike, in taking to the air, doing what their woolly ovine acquaintances could not.
Leo approached the stables cautiously. He did not wish to meet the lad who would blame him for the thick ear the groom had inflicted two months earlier, and would surely give Leo one the same or worse. He estimated that the lad was both a bully and a coward, and according to his father there were none so dangerous. He wished indeed to avoid all but Herb Shattock.
The boy walked through the back yards of the big house and past outbuildings whose purpose or function he did not know. There were people but he kept his head down and they were no more than figures briefly seen, when he glanced this way or that. One addressed him with a brief – ‘All right?’ – but the boy ignored everyone and walked on. As he approached the stable yard there was a great clattering of hooves. Sticking close by the wall he entered the yard and saw the master’s half dozen hunters being ridden away by lads and grooms.
They disappeared and the sounds of the horses faded. Leo stood still and listened. The yard was empty but not deserted. He knew there was a horse or horses here for he could sense them, he did not know how exactly. Whether he could smell their rich odour or hear their calm deep breathing. He walked along one side of the yard, looking into the half-open boxes. All were vacant. He came to the tack room and glanced through the open door and stepped back. Two men stood close to one another. Neither spoke. The master, and the groom he had encountered before. Leo took another step back and watched them through the window. They seemed to be pondering some question, perhaps mathematical, as if doing so at the same time in the same vicinity might improve the working of their brains.
The master shook his head. The groom said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. He was rollin in the pasture and he wouldn’t stop. That’s why I brought im in.’
‘You cannot keep them all immune from such catastrophe, Shattock,’ the master said. ‘I don’t expect you to.’
‘All I can tell you is, whenever I seen a horse in pain like this, tis no helpin im.’
‘I hear you.’
‘To put im out of is misery, sir, tis the kindest—’
‘I said, I hear you, man,’ the master said.
The two men might have been brothers so alike were they in colouring, and in their mid-size height and stout frame. Leo heard a horse stamping in one of the loose boxes across the yard.
The master stepped out of the door of the tack room and stood there gazing ahead of him. There was perhaps a yard between him and Leo but the boy did not breathe or shift or twitch, so still was he. He did not look at the master and the master surely did not see him. The master spoke to the groom behind him. ‘If I allow you to, I worry that I shall not be forgiven, you see. I would rather the animal suffered than that should happen.’
Leo watched the groom through the window. The groom said nothing. The master waited but the groom would not or was not able to help him. So the two men stood in this manner, facing the same way, Mister Shattock behind the master, each waiting for the other to speak. Leo could not restrain himself. With the slightest movement of his head and the utmost swivel of his eyeballs he saw the master. Lord Prideaux’s face was set hard but whether in an expression of anger or pain or fear the boy could not tell.
The master took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Destroy him,’ he said, and turned away from Leo and walked out of the yard.
The groom did not move. He appeared to be contemplating the empty space that Lord Pridea
ux had recently occupied, as if it took time for the master’s absence to sink in. Then he turned around and, pulling from a pocket a ring of keys on a chain whose other end was attached to his waistcoat, he selected one key and unlocked a tall cupboard. The groom lifted a rifle from a rack within the cupboard and a box of bullets. He took a single bullet from the box and put it in a pocket of his jacket. He paused, then took a second bullet and put it in the same pocket.
Leo heard the sound again of a horse kicking its feet against the ground or perhaps the walls of its box. He walked briskly across the yard towards it. The upper door of the box was open. The blue roan was inside. He stood still, grinding his teeth. Then he pawed at the ground.
The groom came across the yard with the rifle over his shoulder, holding it by the barrel. ‘Albert Sercombe’s son,’ he said. ‘You times yer visits to moments of commotion, boy.’
He stood beside Leo. They looked at the pony. ‘You ever see a horse shot?’ the groom asked.
Leo shook his head.
‘Do you wish to?’
The boy began to shake his head again for he had no desire to see any horse killed. Not ever. But if a horse had to be put down it would be an education to see how it was done. This man would do it properly. He nodded.
The groom handed the boy the rifle and, hissing between his teeth, opened the door of the box and stepped inside. It was a similar whistling sound to the one the boy’s father made when working close by the horses, though each man had his own particular tone. The roan had on a halter. The groom tied a rope to the halter and patted the pony’s head and led it out of the box. The boy, carrying the rifle as the groom had, over his shoulder, followed behind. They walked out of the yard and around a paddock and into the glade from which Leo had seen the girl riding the roan. The groom must be taking them to some quiet peaceful spot on which to execute the animal. Perhaps also with soft soil to dig a grave. Or perhaps they would butcher the carcase and boil the meat for the master’s dogs. There was so much he did not know.
They had entered the glade when he heard a scream behind him and rapid footsteps and, turning, saw the girl dash towards them. There was a figure running behind her whom he could not identify. The girl in a long white skirt, the other in black. He stood still. The girl ran past him and he turned. The groom had not stopped but carried on walking, a further ten or twelve yards. The girl ran alongside the pony and flung her arms around his neck. The groom stopped walking.
‘No,’ the girl yelled.
‘Miss Charlotte,’ the groom said.
‘No,’ she cried again. Then, looking wildly towards Leo, she ordered, ‘Take the gun.’
Leo felt the rifle yanked away from him. As he was spun round he grasped tight hold of the barrel with both hands. The maid who had revealed herself to be his cousin had hold of the stock with one hand and the barrel around the trigger with the other and was pulling it. The two of them conducted a fierce tug-of-war. The maid was the weight of the boy and half again and dragged him backwards with her, but he would not let go. The rifle bucked this way and that in crazy ways as if it had its own vitality and the boy and maid were merely holding on. Leo reckoned that he could keep his fingered grip upon the barrel indefinitely, but that his shoulders and upper arms might not last. He crept forward, allowing the barrel of the gun to point towards the ground, bending his knees and crouching to keep hold of it as he advanced. Coming almost alongside the maid, he swung his foot around and kicked her with all his might at the back of her left knee. She squawked. Her leg gave way and as she sat upon the ground she let go of the gun. Leo walked away with it to a spot some yards distant from the scene and turned and watched.
The groom said, ‘Miss Charlotte, please.’ The girl would not let go of the blue roan but clung tightly to his neck. The groom could have prised her loose but did not have the will or perhaps the authority to do so. He turned to the maid and said, ‘Gladys, fetch Lord Prideaux.’
The maid Gladys sat weeping. She hauled herself to her feet and limped away from them back towards the big house.
‘Here, Miss Charlotte,’ the groom said, stepping towards the girl and handing her the halter rope. ‘Let’s us take him back to the yard.’
The boy did not believe the girl would budge, but to his surprise she took the rope from the groom and, holding the rope where it was tied to the halter, turned the roan and walked him out of the glade. The groom followed. As he passed close to Leo he held out his hand and the boy stepped forward and gave him the rifle, then he walked after them.
The master came to the loose box and explained to his daughter that her pony was in great pain and should be released, but she would have none of it. ‘He might recover, Daddy, he could, you don’t know,’ she said. ‘We must give him a chance.’
The boy stood in the background and either no one saw him or all accepted his presence, for not a word was said to him.
The groom told the girl that the roan had a twisted gut. Torsion or strangulation of the intestine. It could happen to any horse, it was the physical flaw endured by their species just as certain dogs had back legs that gave out before the rest of their frames and the hips of female humans were barely fit for childbirth. The girl said that if they shot the horse they might as well shoot her for she should wish to die and would otherwise kill herself somehow.
The master left the yard. The groom put the rifle back in his cupboard and the bullets in his pocket back in the box they came from. The stable lads returned from exercising the hunters. The groom sent one of them off to fetch the man on Home Farm who was the castrator of horses on the estate, another to seek a certain old man in the village, a quack who possessed knowledge of horse anatomy that he the groom did not.
Leo explored the stable yard. Lads were grooming the hunters and the other horses. When they passed close to one another they whispered the news of what was happening. Leo kept well clear of the lanky one. He found a stairway to the hayloft above the stables. He took off his boots and carried them, tiptoeing across the rough boards, and lay down looking through the opening into the box below where the girl stood stroking her pony and speaking to him, too quietly for the boy to make out the words. He heard the door open and a man’s voice. The master told his daughter how disgraceful it was that even in this day and age a telephone could not be connected to a place like this in the godforsaken back of beyond. They reaped the rewards of their obtuse ancestors for settling here when there were doubtless a hundred places closer to civilisation there for the taking. Be that as it may, he’d had a telegram sent to the veterinary surgeon in Taunton.
The girl said nothing. Her father asked her to come to the house shortly for supper but she refused. He told her he was her father and commanded her to obey him. When she replied, it sounded as if she spoke through tears but the boy could not tell for sure from his hiding place.
‘I won’t leave, Daddy,’ she said, sniffing. ‘How do I know they won’t take Embarr out again and murder him?’
‘I will tell Shattock not to,’ her father said. ‘I promise.’
‘I don’t care,’ the girl said. ‘I have to stay anyway, Daddy. I’m not leaving Embarr.’
No one spoke for some time. Leo inched his body forward until he could lean over the edge of the opening and see the scene below. The master stood in the doorway. Asking himself what a father was supposed to do. Or wondering how much obstinacy or mettle his daughter possessed.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I’ll have food sent over.’
No sooner had the master left than the horse castrator was brought to the box by the groom. He said there were many kinds of colic, caused by many things. The horse could be constipated and be suffering grass sickness. Or he could have eaten his straw bedding which had impacted in the gut. These were only examples. He said that probably the pony would die but that they could give it liquid paraffin and salt water and this might clear the blockage, he could not say. ‘Tidn’t my area of expertise, Mister Shattock.’
After h
e had gone the boy heard horses being led out of the yard to pasture. He wondered where the stable lads went for their tea if they lived in. He thought they would be considered too dirt-ridden to sit in the kitchen of the big house. Light began to seep out of the hayloft and the loose box below. Suddenly the girl spoke. ‘Leopold Sercombe,’ she said.
He was stunned by what he heard, and did not move. He felt his heart beating against the floorboards where he lay.
‘I know you’re there.’
Leo raised himself up on his elbows, releasing his lungs that he might speak. ‘T’wasn’t my idea,’ he said.
‘Of course it wasn’t,’ she replied. ‘I know that.’
Leo squirmed around half a circle and let his legs drop through the opening and lowered himself into the wooden crib. To his surprise he saw the horse was now lying on his side on the straw. He seemed to be trying to paw or kick at his own belly.
In time two maids appeared, one bearing a tray of food, another flasks and cups. The groom lit a paraffin lamp which he hung on a nail protruding from a rafter. The first maid laid the tray on the straw. The second looked up and saw the boy crouching in the manger like some strange stable sprite, and gasped. The first maid, his cousin, turned. She said, ‘You wait, boy, you just wait. When I catch you, I’m goin to give you such a hammerin.’
The maids left and the girl said, ‘Do you have many friends, Leopold Sercombe? You make them so easily.’
‘Every time I come here, miss, I makes another enemy,’ he told her. ‘I don’t intend to.’
The girl told him that she wasn’t hungry. ‘Come here and help yourself.’
Leo climbed down. The girl lifted the muslin veils from the tray of food. There was a plate of meat and vegetables, a jug of gravy, a bowl of some kind of pudding and another of various fruits, only one of which, an apple, he recognised. What occasion warranted such a feast? The master’s birthday, perhaps, or that of the master’s grandmother, the dowager countess, who lived still in the house, or indeed the girl herself? The boy had not eaten for many hours and had a keen hunger. As he ate, the girl recovered her appetite somewhat and joined him. Between them they cleaned the plates.
