by Tim Pears
‘Embarr won’t eat a thing,’ the girl said. ‘Whatever he’s offered, he turns away from.’
‘Just as well, miss,’ Leo told her. ‘The last thing he want’s a ruptured gut.’
‘Why can’t he just be sick? Why doesn’t the groom give him salted water?’
‘Do you not know?’ Leo asked. ‘Horses cannot vomit. Any food has to pass right through em.’
Some time in the evening an old man was brought into the box. Leo recognised him from church. He was one of those Leo’s father would speak with afterwards, outside the lych-gate. The groom told the girl this man’s name was Moses Pincombe and that he had helped bring many foals into the world upon the estate during her father and her grandfather’s time. The roan lay on the straw. The old man asked the groom to boil some pints of linseed oil and to bring him pure lard. He removed his cap, nodded to the girl, folded the cap and put it in his pocket. He had a walking stick which he leaned against the wall and then with some difficulty lowered himself to his knees by the pony’s head. He had some white-ish hairs scattered around the sides of his skull but otherwise was bald. He pulled back the pony’s eyelids and examined his eyes.
The old man struggled to raise himself up. Leo helped him as best he could. ‘I’s awful sorry, miss,’ the old man said, leaning a hand still on the boy’s shoulder even though he was now standing. ‘Herb’s told me. I’s afeared his eyes is dulled. See how he sweats. He’s on the way out.’
While they waited for the groom to return, the roan became animated, rolling in the straw from side to side as if trying to rid himself of a terrible itch within the bones of his spine. Then he ceased just as suddenly and lay still once more upon the floor.
A lad appeared with a pan of lard he said the cook had given him. The old man asked the lad to put the pan upon the straw. Still leaning on Leo with one hand he reached the other towards the lad, who took it, and between them they helped the old man kneel beside the horse’s rump. He pulled up the sleeve of the right arm of his jacket and folded it over. He did the same with his shirt. Then he put his right hand into the pan and slathered his fingers with the lard. With his left hand he lifted aside the roan’s tail, then inserted the tips of his fingers into the pony’s arse. He worked them in further and then his hand followed, and his wrist. The old man lay on his left side, his right arm deep inside the pony’s rectum, delving into his insides. The roan did not object. The old man said nothing, either to the horse or to the people there. The groom entered the box and joined the girl and the boy and the lad watching, by the dim yellow light of the paraffin lamp, the ancient quack immersed in his intimate diagnosis.
At length the old man withdrew his arm and hand and fingers with a sticky sound. Leo thought his hand would be filthy with shit but it was not. The groom handed the old man a towel and he wiped the lard off himself. The lad and the boy helped the old man to his feet.
‘Can’t be sure, Herb,’ he said. ‘I would think his guts is twisted but it could be a section is ridden over a length behind or before it. Either way amounts to the same thing.’ He turned to the girl who still sat beside the pony’s head, stroking him. ‘I’s awful sorry, miss.’
The old man left, as did the lad, and finally the groom. The girl poured liquid from the flask into a cup and drank it. Then she refilled the cup and passed it to the boy. Leo sniffed it. It had a subtle aroma of something that made saliva materialise in his mouth. He took a sip. He felt its taste on his tongue, and threw back his neck and emptied the cup, savouring it as it washed through his mouth. He gasped, and asked the girl if what he had just drunk was nectar. She asked him what on earth he meant and he said nectar was mentioned in the Good Book and in other ancient tales. He didn’t know it still existed. She told him he was talking nonsense, that he had merely drunk a cup of lemon barley water.
A maid brought blankets. Leo climbed up into the hayloft and slept. He woke occasionally. The pony rolled as it had before. Leo went outside to piss. The moon was only just on the wane from being full and cast a silver tinge upon all it illuminated. He knew that he would work with horses all his life but understood as he had not before that there were different ways and places to do so. He doubted whether one life was long enough to know all there was to know of horses. Perhaps that was why the Good Lord gave us many lives. And he understood that as the girl would not forsake her roan, so he would not leave her.
In the morning when the boy awoke and crawled over the floorboards to see into the box below he saw the blue roan was now standing. The girl stood beside him, scratching his withers. Leo clambered down into the manger and then over it to the ground.
‘He’s better, look, do you see?’ the girl said. ‘I think he’s better, don’t you, Leopold?’
Leo said nothing, and the girl said, ‘He’s standing, can’t you see? On his own legs. He has risen from the dead like an equine Lazarus, don’t you see, Leopold Sercombe?’
The boy said nothing but stood on the other side of the pony’s head and stroked his flank.
A servant maid brought a silver tray of food for the girl’s breakfast. The girl carried the tray into the yard where lads saddled hunters and brushed down trap-carting cobs, and flung the tray as far as she could, scattering its contents. Plates snapped into shards of pottery. Food was strewn upon the ground. Bacon. Sausages. Egg yolk. Slices of toast. Silver cutlery lay amongst the debris. The girl returned to the loose box. The maid began picking up what she could.
The girl wept for a time then stopped. The horse tried to kick himself where he stood. He began to breathe rapidly and to expel air through his nostrils, snorting loudly. He did this until the girl implored him to stop, but he continued. The girl cried to the roan and begged him to cease. It was no use. The pony inhaled and exhaled like some furious child engrossed in a tantrum. Eventually he slumped, standing, exhausted, and looked like an old nag, all worn out.
The groom entered the box with a man the girl greeted with great enthusiasm. ‘You’ll save him, Mister Herle, won’t you?’
‘Let us see what we can do,’ the man said.
The groom brought four stable lads in. They surrounded the horse, two on each side, and stood firm against him. The surgeon took the roan’s pulse. He attached the listening pieces of a stethoscope to his ears and placed the other end upon one part and then another of the pony’s body, as if roaming around in search of some quiet thing inside. Some other tiny creature hiding there, subtle and malign, causing the roan all this distress.
‘Dear girl,’ the surgeon said. ‘It would be kinder, dear Charlotte …’ He looked at the girl but did not finish what he’d begun to say. He looked to the door, where the boy saw the master standing, just outside. The surgeon shrugged. ‘I shall give him morphia and chloral. It will help to ease his pain.’
The surgeon opened his bag of medicines and filled a syringe with liquid. He attached a long needle. ‘Hold him steady,’ he ordered. ‘I need to hit the vein.’ The stable lads pressed upon the roan, but he trembled and shook. The surgeon took aim at the pony’s neck, and slid the needle in. He withdrew the plunger of the syringe an inch, or less, then cursed and pulled the long needle out from the pony’s flesh. ‘Hold him,’ he said again, and made a second attempt to find the jugular. Again he failed. The girl shivered, and squeezed her eyes shut each time the surgeon missed. Eventually he drew a little venous blood into the syringe and then he pressed the plunger slowly down and sent the medicine into the pony’s bloodstream.
The vet Herle promised to return that afternoon or evening. The pony spent the morning standing gazing at the wall in front of him. He looked like some strange monk-like version of his species who had taken a vow of silence and stood in contemplation of mortality. Of eternal life in the Elysian fields. Or the American plains. Was it not true that horses ran free there? Droves of wild mustang. Following a proud stallion leader. Perhaps he imagined himself allowed to remain entire and be that stallion. Was it not true that an Indian brave chose a wild horse, lassoed i
t, handled it? He mounted the horse and they rode out on the prairie together. Of such a rider the roan dreamed.
Lunch was brought for the girl. She did not throw this meal away. Again she shared it with Leo. In the afternoon a young woman visited. ‘I thought I should see the poor creature responsible for my inactivity, Lottie,’ she said. She spoke with an odd accent. Whether from another country or some far distant part of Britain the boy did not know for sure. ‘I have a translation for you. Goethe.’ She leaned on the lower door of the box. ‘Everyone in the house talks of your vigil. They talk of nothing else.’
The girl asked what they said.
The woman removed her spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief she pulled from a pocket in her skirt. ‘Some say you are foolish and your father he is indulgent. That this here is only a pony while the world goes to hell in a hand-cart. The miners and dockers and railwaymen of your North strike and riot and hold this nation, if not your Empire, to ransom. The suffragettes wish us women to become Vandals and Goths and destroy all in our way. Half the Irish threaten you with civil war unless they receive Home Rule, the other half threaten civil war if it is given. You know nothing of such matters, Lottie, why should you? But this is what they say. At such a time, a child clinging to her dying pony is unseemly.’
The woman asked if it was safe to come in. The girl said it was so she entered the box. Leo saw her limp, though not, it appeared, with pain. One leg looked shorter than the other. Her white shirt was sewn with ruffles down its front. She stood just inside the door.
‘What do others say?’ the girl asked.
‘They say your love for this horse is something rare, Lottie,’ the woman told her. ‘There are not so many of them. Dear child, I came to see if there is any point in bringing books down here. Clearly there is none. I suppose we could practise some German conversation?’
The girl shook her head.
The governess smiled. Her teeth were discoloured. ‘I look forward to resuming our lessons in due course,’ she said, and left.
The roan lay in the straw. The girl and the boy lay down too. ‘You smell of horse,’ the girl said.
Leo sat up. ‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ he said. ‘But if I does, don’t you too?’
‘Yes, but you can’t smell it on me,’ she told him. ‘I can on you and on myself. And I will change these clothes and bathe and then I will no longer.’
Leo did not know what he was permitted to say. He said what came to mind. ‘You are most fortunate, miss.’
‘No, I am not,’ she said. ‘Don’t you understand? I am forced to wash some kind of truth or knowledge from myself.’
They spoke no more, and lay there in the straw.
*
Some time later Leo sat bolt upright from a nap. He did not know the reason only that there was one. The girl dozed. The roan lay quiet. Leo rose and walked to the door of the loose box and opened it a fraction and slipped out. He walked across the yard. It was something he had heard. Or someone.
The tack-room door was open. He stood against the wall outside and eavesdropped on his mother speaking with the groom. She had traced Leo’s steps here, she said, via the sawyers. The groom said her son had given him no message so Ruth gave it to him. He addressed her as Mrs Sercombe, she him as Mister Shattock. The groom explained what had happened to the pony of the master’s daughter. That she would not leave it, and neither it seemed would the boy. He said that Ruth could take her son home, or try to, but that he the groom would not send the boy away. No, he was sorry, but he would not do that.
Ruth said her son could come home when he was hungry. Herb Shattock agreed. Leo walked back to the loose box.
The veterinary surgeon did not return that day, or evening. The pony rolled and twisted in the straw. He tried to kick his own belly as he lay. Not once did he neigh, or whinny. Leo climbed into the hayloft to sleep. He woke and thought that the hunters had come in from the pasture and all were stampeding in the loose box below. Somehow. He woke fully. The girl’s voice cried out in the dark. She called to him for help. She was climbing into the hay manger. Leo crouched on the boards and leaned down towards her. She grasped his hands and he pulled and helped her climb up. They lay side by side and watched the roan jump and kick, contorting himself in pain and rage.
Moonlight spilled into the loose box as the groom opened the upper door. ‘Are you all right, Miss Charlotte?’ he called. ‘Are you safe?’
She called out that she was, but perhaps he could not hear her above the cacophony of the dying horse’s frenzy, for he yelled louder, ‘Are you safe?’
This time he did hear her reply.
The roan jerked and reared, bucked and kicked for longer than seemed possible. Leo held the girl’s hand, trembling. Eventually the roan ceased and lay down in the straw. The girl and the boy climbed down. The pony was covered in sweat and panting, his flanks heaving. His mouth was surrounded by bubbly foam. His eyes were no longer dull but open wide, inflamed with some frantic understanding of his plight. The girl lay beside him stroking his damp neck and talking to him. The boy stood above her. Herb Shattock watched from the doorway, his head and torso casting moon shadow across the pony’s rump.
The roan calmed. He kicked his legs once behind him. He closed his eyes. He let out an exhalation and the pause before he inhaled grew longer than before. Leo waited for him to breathe. The wait continued until the boy understood that it was over for the roan’s heart had finally given out. The girl wept as she spoke to the dead horse. The boy walked past her to the door. Herb Shattock opened the door and let him out. The groom walked across the yard. The boy followed him.
In the tack room was a cot, where the groom must have slept. It explained how he’d reached the box so swiftly when the roan went berserk. ‘I’ve a stove in here,’ he said. ‘We’ll make Miss Charlotte a mug a tea.’
‘Do you wish me to fetch her father?’ Leo asked.
The groom shook his head. ‘Tis only three o’clock in the mornin,’ he said. ‘We can send word once folk stirs.’ He opened the baffle on the little stove. The black coals glowed orange. He filled the kettle from a brass tap above the sink. The room was unlike Albert Sercombe’s tack room. It was as tidy as the Sercombes’ parlour. As if Herb Shattock expected important visitors. It was not a tack room at all, but the groom’s bothy. The cooking grate shone with black lead. An iron saucepan stood on the second hob. On the mantelpiece above were a tea caddy and a jar of tobacco. On the wall hung pictures of horses.
‘I do not like that surgeon,’ the groom said. ‘I never have, to tell the truth. That Mister Herle. He could a come back to give the poor beast another shot. To help out Lord Prideaux. He said he would. He must a took hisself off elsewhere.’
The boy asked the groom if he could ask him something. The groom nodded and the boy said he had tried to work it out but could not. He did not know if what he had witnessed was cruel or kind. Which was it?
The groom shook his head. ‘I do not know either,’ he said. ‘All I know is she went with her horse right up to the gates. The pearly gates or whatever portal our horses go through. She went all the way to the threshold with im. That is what you just seen there, boy.’
Christmas
It was the custom to give the teachers in the village school some gift at Christmas. This year one of the Haswell boys came up with a plan with which most agreed. On the last day of term the children got to school early. Miss Pugsley could not believe one single child was there before her, yet this day all were. They would not let her in, but said they must wait for Miss Pine too and so kept her talking in the yard.
When the junior teacher arrived Kizzie Sercombe as the eldest girl told the women that their presents were in the classroom. Miss Pugsley thanked the children. It was Miss Pine’s first Christmas and it appeared that Miss Pugsley had not told her to expect anything and she was clearly delighted. The children made way for the teachers and ushered them in. Then they closed the door, tied the handle to the drainpipe,
and ran to the windows to watch.
They had given Miss Pugsley a Christmas goose, Miss Pine a duck. Each was still alive. It would have been churlish to refuse the gifts. The teachers chased them around the classroom. Neither had been brought up with animals, and looked as terrified as their prey if not more so. Miss Pugsley cornered her goose but it hissed and flapped its wings and rushed past her. Miss Pine ran to the door but the children there would not open it. In the end she sat upon a bench and wept, and the Haswell boys went in and caught the birds and wrung their necks for the teachers, and the last day of term resumed.
At the end of the day Miss Pugsley informed the class that she was off to spend the festive season on the far side of Taunton with her sister’s family, whom she was sure would appreciate the goose. She wished them all a Merry Christmas. Then she asked Leo Sercombe please to stay behind.
He stood before her desk. She picked up off the surface a postcard, and studied the double portrait of the King and Queen, George and Mary, on its face. A souvenir of their Coronation. Miss Pugsley turned the card over. She examined what was written thereon then turned it for the boy to see. The card was scribed with fine, consistent copperplate.
‘Who else,’ she asked, ‘would have written this?’ She turned it back so she could see the words and read aloud, ‘Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.’
Miss Pugsley lowered the card and looked Leo in the eye. ‘It is such beautiful script,’ she said.
He shifted his gaze. The floor was dirty. It would surely be cleaned while the school was closed. ‘It is from the Book of Revelations, miss,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Leo,’ Miss Pugsley told him. ‘Thank you very much. Enjoy your Christmas.’
The boy smiled and turned and walked out of the room.
