The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  On the days of the week following Leo ran out of school and to the yard. He trained the filly with plough-traces then full cart harness, walking her round the paddock. Then they yoked her to a heavy log and had her drag it to get the feel of pulling a weight.

  On the following Monday Leo watched his father and Herbert harness the filly alongside Pleasant the old mare, and so begin her working life.

  May

  The boy walked from the keeper’s cottage. He heard a sound and looked up. Three geese flew idly above. They passed over him and on. The sound they made was like that of old friends talking to one another, sightseers commenting on the view below. Perhaps on the weather, too, for it was the warmest day of the year by far. He cradled the skeleton against his chest with his hands as he walked. He believed it was that of a hawk, but it may have been a kestrel, his brother was not sure. A raptor of one kind or another.

  He walked slowly through the wood. The sun forced its way here and there through the burgeoning canopy of leaves. He was certain that she would like this one, though he had heard nothing of her response to the others. If there had been one at all. For all he knew she might have thrown each one away at once. Most of this bird’s bones were contained in a ball of ribs and wings. Its sternum hung forward and was shaped like the keel of a boat. He wondered if ducks had sternums in like construction, and stopped to have another look at it. The spine extended from the rib-cage to the head, at the front of which the skull was hooked into a bony beak.

  At the opposite end of the bird’s skeleton, beyond the long, thin legs, with their femurs and tibias and fibulas, along with a third limb it did not share with humans, were four large and terrifying claws. Sharp talons of bone.

  The boy heard the sound of drumming. It seemed to come from inside his skull. Then he realised it was outside, and increasing in volume. Approaching him. Not drumbeats but footsteps. A momentary silence.

  The runner launched himself. Leo fell, winded, to the ground. He could not move. He lay on his front. He tried to get his breath back but his assailant lay on top of him, a dead weight. He pushed up from his elbows and purchased a little room for his chest, and was able to inhale in short panting gasps, precious pockets of air into his lungs. For a moment it seemed that his attacker was doing exactly the same, mimicking him for amusement, but then he heard laughter and understood that he or she was giggling.

  The boy summoned what infuriated power he possessed and, with a grunt like that of a pig, made an enormous effort to push himself and that other upon him off from the ground. He did so, and got to his hands and knees, breathing hard. There Leo took stock and tried to work out what to do next. He propelled himself forward, a four-footed animal, but the other simply rode him. She found this as funny as before, so he stopped, only to feel himself rolling or rather being rolled over. Now he lay above her, his back upon her front, her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped around his torso. He could feel her chest rising and falling beneath him as she laughed. A chuckling spider. He was a fly, immobilised. Breathing hard. His sweat slid into his eyes. In time she was still.

  ‘You are so light, Leo Sercombe,’ she said by his ear.

  Her arms were tight across his throat. He could not speak, but even if he could there was nothing to say. The master’s daughter unwrapped her arms and legs from around his body and released him. He rolled off her and rose and stumbled over to where she’d first jumped him. The skeleton lay amongst twigs and dead leaves and grassy undergrowth, all in pieces, where between them they had crushed it.

  The girl came over and stood beside him. ‘It was you,’ she said. ‘I thought it was. Who else? Shattock wouldn’t say, but I knew it.’

  She turned to him and must have seen his desolation. She knelt down and picked amongst the fragments, studying one broken or dislocated bone after another, as if calculating the order in which she intended to glue them together.

  ‘Hawk,’ he whispered.

  ‘I think they’re beautiful, Leo Sercombe.’

  He looked at her and she said, ‘No, it’s true, I promise.’

  Leo looked back down at the shattered skeleton. It was as if the bird had suffered a second mortality in this desecration of its bones. Or that he grieved for it now as he had not before.

  ‘I promise,’ the girl said again. ‘Come. I’ll show you.’

  She took his hand and they walked through the sun-spangled wood. They came out of the trees and crossed a patch of rough lawn towards a brick wall. They were observed from on top of the wall by a peacock, its iridescent feathers draped over the bricks like a long dress. The girl opened a wooden door set into the wall and as they stepped through she let go of his hand.

  ‘Follow close behind me,’ she said.

  The walled garden was huge. Only a small section was tended. An old man knelt on canvas sacking, carefully sowing some kind of seed in the earth, and he did not seem to be aware of them passing behind him. Much of the garden was wild, weeds and long grasses rampant. Fruit trees stood along one wall, their branches pinned there like Miss Pugsley’s insects on display in the schoolroom.

  Miss Charlotte led him into a greenhouse. Here the air was twice the temperature it was outside, though some panes of glass were cracked or fallen. The air was pungent too with the smell of soil, and other things – vegetation, turpentine, flowers of which sort he could not identify. Large plants. Leo could taste or feel moisture but that did not seem likely, unless it was his own.

  In the middle of the greenhouse were some steps, which they descended. The boy looked up and saw through unclear glass the big house looming above him, and understood as they went through a doorway that they were now beneath it. The cellars smelled dank and musty. They walked along a corridor off which were rooms on either side. Many were empty. Their walls and ceilings had once been whitewashed but it must have been long ago for the paint was flaked and fallen. There were patches of damp from which tiny flowers bloomed. He could not understand how there could be light, murky though it was, but he looked around and saw a long strip of glass panes so covered in moss or algae that all appeared as if inside a pond.

  They passed stacks of bottles covered in dust. A room full of furniture: tables, chairs, chests of drawers, beds. It was as if some branch or generation of the master’s family had wished to live as certain animals do, underground, only for their successors to abandon the idea. Or perhaps they hadn’t. Perhaps they would see some figure that was half human and half badger scurrying away along a darkening passage.

  They came to a small door that gave on to an enclosed circular staircase. The girl told him to take off his boots and leave them there. She ascended and he followed. The staircase was narrow; even his bony shoulders brushed its wooden sides periodically. Miss Charlotte climbed fast and he kept up with her, though the stairs went on for an impossible time, as long as any beanstalk. He became dizzy. He could hear her chuckling again above him. Then his head bumped against the backs of her legs. Above them was a roof of dirty glass. She opened a door and poked her head around the frame. One way, then – around the open door – the other. She turned back and reached for his hand and stepped through the door, pulling him up the last stairs behind her. Bending low, he followed her through the doorway.

  The room was enormous, larger than the village schoolroom. As large as the nave of the church. Along one side was a fenced-off strip of floor, at the far end of which lay a number of skittles on their sides.

  ‘The nursery,’ the master’s daughter said. ‘Look.’

  He followed her to a bookcase. Along its top were the five skeletons he had already passed to her. In front of each was a folded piece of card on which were written, Weasel, Mole, Hare, Shrew, Adder. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Pride of place, Leo Sercombe. I’m so sorry about the hawk. Stay there. I’m going to have one of the maids fetch us something to eat. Don’t look so fearful, boy! I shall bring it up myself.’

  The girl left the room through a different door from the one by which they had en
tered, and which he could no longer see. He looked about him. Across the room stood a house. It was a model of the big house itself, about the size of the upright piano in the Tuckers’ parlour. He saw that its façade rested on hinges at one side. Carefully he opened it. Inside were many rooms on five levels, all furnished. At the top in miniature was the room in which he now stood, complete with bowling alley, bookcases, a tiny model of the house.

  Leo walked to a window and looked out. He could see past the lawns, over crooked fields, across the estate far into the distance. So gods and masters saw the world. Hawks and other birds likewise. Looking down, he saw two people crossing the shingle between house and lawn, toy-like figures. He turned back to the room. He found a box of lead soldiers. From the Boer War of which his father spoke, or some other? There were dolls in various states of undress. Stuffed animals. A table was laid with a dinner service for eight people, with plates, too many items of cutlery, three glasses of differing shapes. All miniature, and covered in dust.

  At the far end of the room was a sofa and chairs, as he had seen once in the vicarage. Huge upholstered shapes, like sacks of grain or squashed-up beds. The vicar had sat in one and half disappeared. It had looked as if it might swallow him up while he sat there, reading his Good Book.

  Leo walked past the chairs and sat on the sofa, putting a hand out to each side for balance. He now saw a large, almost human-sized doll seated in the armchair directly ahead of him. It was the doll of an old lady, dressed in white ancient lacy threads. Her powdered skin was too wrinkled to be entirely life-like. Her hands in her lap were little claws. Her tiny feet, far above the ground, were shod in blue slippers. Her cheeks had spots of rouge upon them, which he fancied the girl had daubed there. His sister had but one small doll, passed down from their mother; its body was porcelain, it had a wig made of human hair, and glass eyes. The eyes of this huge doll were dull, perhaps dimmed by its great age. Then they blinked and the boy’s heart stopped.

  The wizened old lady gazed at him. Leo felt himself pinned to the sofa. He dared not breathe. She blinked again, assessing him, for which she had all the time in the world, before calling for servants to evict him. Leo heard a noise and turned. Miss Charlotte came through the door carrying a tray and he waited. He did not move nor make a sound but he took a breath. She walked over and placed the tray upon the table that stood between the sofa and chairs. ‘Milk and biscuits,’ she said. ‘Oh, I see you’ve met Great-grandmama.’

  The girl sat down next to Leo and offered him the plate. He glanced down and shook his head, returning his gaze to the old woman. She blinked again.

  ‘Great-grandmama lost her mind a long time ago,’ the girl told him. ‘No one has been able to find it. It’s awfully sad. She’s outlived all her children. Can you imagine? My grandpa was her youngest son. Great-grandmama had nine children. I sometimes imagine them playing together up here. They’re all gone. She should have followed them, but she doesn’t know how to die.’

  The girl helped herself to a biscuit. She put it between her lips, then opened Leo’s left hand, which was clenched into a fist upon the sofa, and placed one on his palm. She took the biscuit from between her lips and bit into it. As she chewed he could hear it crackling between her teeth. He nibbled an edge of his. On his tongue came the taste of lemon.

  ‘We’re no longer even sure which century Great-grandmama was born in. Father says that God has forgotten her. He’s rather annoyed with Him, actually.’

  There were two glasses of milk. The girl took one and rose and stepped over to the huge armchair. She knelt upon the threadbare carpet and held the glass to the old lady’s lips, while she put her other hand on her little head and tilted it forward, speaking all the while. ‘There we are, Great-grandmama, a lovely sip of milk for you, fresh from the dairy herd.’ Like Moses Pincombe to the horse. ‘Lovely milk to keep your frail bones from breaking. That’s it, Great-grandmama, a little more.’

  She broke a biscuit too and fed it to the old dowager countess in pieces, as she might to a tamed bird.

  The boy watched, nibbling on his own biscuit. His mouth was dry but he did not take the milk until the girl offered it to him. ‘It’s yours, Leo Sercombe. Great-grandmama and I will share this one, won’t we? And then you had better leave. My governess was downstairs. I have to study German soon.’

  Leo drained the glass of milk in one long draught. He wiped his lips. The girl stood up and he did likewise. ‘Thank you, Miss Charlotte,’ he said.

  ‘My name is Lottie,’ she said. ‘I cannot bear the name Charlotte. I have a new pony, Leo Sercombe. I should like to show her to you. You could accompany me on a picnic. Can you meet me in the wood, where the hawk bones are, in one week’s time?’

  Leo nodded.

  Lottie turned to the door by which she had come with the tray. ‘Now you must go. I believe I can hear her footsteps.’

  The boy looked frantically about him.

  ‘Here,’ said the girl. She walked over to a panelled wall beneath the eaves. Balling her hand into a fist, she rapped against the panel once. Nothing happened. She did so a second time, a little higher. The panel swung a few inches into the room. The girl opened it fully and the boy stepped through to the narrow staircase. He heard the door click shut behind him as he descended the stairs.

  At the bottom he put on his boots. He retraced his steps carefully through the empty cellars, tiptoed into the greenhouse and out to the walled garden. The old gardener was nowhere to be seen. Leo went through the door in the wall, across the rough grass into the wood, and began to breathe easily once again.

  June

  The days were long. In the hay meadows the grass was rampant. Albert and Fred came home for tea. They ate a stew of bacon bones and cabbage. Kizzie spoke to her father of school and how Miss Pugsley was driven wild by Gideon Sparke. He would not stop showing off and acting stupid.

  ‘He’s already known as a twily lad, at his age,’ Ruth said. ‘He’ll have to travel abroad to find work when the time comes.’

  ‘If he’s fit to work and wishes to,’ said Albert, ‘which I doubt he does.’

  Kizzie said that when at last Miss Pugsley lost her temper, she screamed at him and her voice was like that of a tomcat in the night, it was frightening. They were all frightened. And then Miss Pugsley wept.

  Leo watched a daddy longlegs walk along the window sill on its six spindly legs, daintily choreographing itself.

  ‘I hear your Herbert’s in trouble again,’ Ruth told her husband. She named a girl in the next village. ‘I heard she got herself a bastardy order against him. You never told me.’

  ‘Aye,’ Albert said. ‘You know I ain’t one for gossip. Obliged to pay her a shillin a week. He’s been bendin my ear at every opportunity with his moanin. I’ve ad about as much as I can take.’

  ‘Tell him he should a studied the matter and worked out the consequences before he had his way.’

  ‘Don’t think I ain’t, mother.’

  Dessert was plums preserved in suet. Fred ate a mouthful and told his mother it was his favourite and she hadn’t let him down. She told Fred that Herbert’s behaviour stood as a fair warning, a fine lesson, and that he could invite a certain young lady she had heard about to tea any Sunday she should like to come. Fred nodded. Then his sister Kizzie yelped, and reached a hand beneath the table to rub her shin.

  Albert said that he’d run into the master’s groom Herb Shattock today and they had spoken of their boy Leo here. Herb had asked if when the boy was ready he might fancy becoming a strapper at his stables. Leo looked up but it seemed his father might not have known that he was in the room or had ears to hear.

  ‘I told him, if I have anything to do with it, when he leaves school in two years’ time he will have a number of offers. But Herb’s would be a good one, probably the best.’

  When the men had finished eating, Albert asked his wife if she might read a little more of the newspaper to him later, then Leo accompanied the men back to the farm. They ha
d left the horses eating their evening bait, which as the grazing was so good was minimal and long since consumed. Herbert brought a message for Fred from his uncle, that Enoch had an errand to run and so Fred should put their horses into the field on his own. Leo volunteered to help his brother, while Albert and Herbert took out the head carter’s team.

  As the four of them came back into the yard, so they saw in the distance Dunstone approaching, in his customary nervous, bustling haste.

  ‘Here comes our evenin entertainment,’ Herbert said.

  ‘T’will have to do for you,’ Fred told him. To his father and brother he said, ‘Lover boy here’s forsworn women. Forever, he says.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Albert. ‘Or till Saturday night, whichever comes sooner.’

  ‘Women ain’t worth the expense, uncle,’ Herbert said. His face often bore a scowl, occasionally as now a half-grin, as if there were some game going on only he knew of.

  Dunstone walked into the yard. He wore a pair of trousers that were far too large for him, turned up at the ankles almost as far as his knees, and flapping all around his skinny legs like sails.

  ‘What you seen, Dunstone?’ Herbert addressed him. ‘Tell us all what you seen in your travels.’

  ‘I seen im,’ Dunstone said. ‘I seen im.’ He was in a state of agitation, eyes wide, saliva at his lips, but such was not unusual. ‘He’s goin round ’n’ round. Come see,’ he said, tugging at Herbert’s shirt. ‘I’ll show you.’

  Herbert took Dunstone’s wrist and pulled his hand loose. ‘I’m busy, old boy,’ the youth told him. ‘I’d love to else.’

  ‘Goin round in circles,’ Dunstone said, turning to Fred. Albert had already disappeared into the tack room. ‘Come and see.’