The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  ‘Show us, old boy,’ Herbert said. ‘How’s it goin?’

  ‘Round ’n’ round,’ Dunstone said. He trotted, describing the circumference of a circle in the yard, its diameter twice the length of a man. ‘Round ’n’ round,’ he said.

  ‘Keep goin,’ Herbert goaded him, grinning. ‘Keep goin, old boy.’

  ‘Round ’n’ round,’ Dunstone said, breathless.

  Herbert tried to encourage Dunstone further, but he could barely do so for laughing as the old lad began to stagger.

  ‘Round ’n’ round,’ Dunstone gasped. ‘I’ll show e.’

  Fred too could not contain himself as Dunstone grew more giddy and the circle he trotted ever less certain.

  Herbert stepped forward and took hold of Dunstone. ‘That’s enough, old boy,’ he said. ‘You’ve convinced us. Walk in a straight line and us’ll follow.’

  Dunstone looked about him with the eyes of a drunken man, took his bearings and set off out of the yard, only to reel giddily, try to right himself, lurch again and fall over. He sat upon the ground, perplexed at what gravity had done to him. Herbert had to lean against Fred to save himself from falling over too, inebriated with the comedy. The two cousins headed for the tack room, Herbert slapping Fred upon the back, sharing the pleasure of their amusement, which he had both predicted and brought forth.

  Leo had stood and witnessed proceedings. He walked over to Dunstone and offered his hand, and though he lacked the size or strength to yank him to his feet he helped the man up. Dunstone stood unsteadily, warily, a hand on the boy’s shoulder, not yet quite trustful of his ability to stand upon his own two feet.

  ‘What was it?’ the boy asked him.

  Dunstone gazed back at him as if Leo had spoken in some foreign tongue.

  ‘What went round in circles?’ the boy said.

  Dunstone’s eyes opened wider. ‘Sheeps!’ he said. ‘Sheeps. I’ll show you.’

  They walked out of the yard and along the lane past the field with the dairy herd and on towards the pastures below Little Wood. The evening was advanced but much light remained. In the small field was a flock of castrated rams Ernest Cudmore had fattening. One of them was indeed going round in circles, much as Dunstone had demonstrated. The animal did not bleat but bore his plight silently.

  ‘Round ’n’ round,’ the old lad said. ‘Dunstone seen it. Round ’n’ round.’

  They found Ernest at the farm. Mrs Tucker was working with her daughters in the vegetable garden and pointed to the kitchen door. Ernest had finished work for the day and was inside the house, for like Isaac Wooland he was a lodger. He sat at the table with Amos Tucker, drinking cider from a pewter mug. Though there were hours of daylight outside, in the kitchen it was dim.

  ‘And for what grand reason do you disturb us at our rest?’ Amos asked the old lad and the boy. The farmer looked indeed to be in need of sleep. He had been performing Isaac’s labour since the stockman’s death. Dunstone described what he had seen, as before, but now he had Leo Sercombe beside him nodding gravely and so was listened to.

  Ernest Cudmore shook his head. ‘One a they wethers is got the Gid, gaffer,’ he said. ‘Sounds like.’ He drank what remained of his cider and put down the empty mug upon the table and rose and went out. He fetched certain things from his bothy but the boy did not know what they were for when Ernest Cudmore emerged, whatever he’d chosen was now in the pockets of his jacket. They walked with him to the field, the boy in the middle. He looked to either side and reckoned their trio stood the same height.

  When he saw the giddy ram Ernest said that there was no gain in carrying him, the wether should walk by his own means to the place of his doom. Ernest deftly hooked his crook behind one of the animal’s front legs and tripped him. Then he pulled a length of cord from a pocket and tied it around the sheep’s neck and let it stand. He walked back to the farm and the sheep, on a short lead no more than a yard long, followed him.

  Dunstone walked at his usual agitated pace in front. Leo walked beside the shepherd and asked him what was wrong with this ram.

  ‘Some kind a maggot,’ Ernest told him, ‘or worm, has got in and eaten part a his brains. Won’t be no good for nothin now, poor feller. Won’t know to graze.’

  Back at the farm Ernest put the giddy sheep in a makeshift stall he made from hurdles on a patch of grass. He explained to Leo that he would despatch the wether in the morning. The boy wondered why he did not do so now. Was it a mercy to give the doomed animal one last night upon the earth or a cruelty to prolong its suffering, if such it was?

  ‘Gid don’t affect the flesh,’ Ernest told him. ‘Not so far’s I know. I’ll have time to dress him tomorrow, give the gaffer’s wife fresh mutton.’

  When they looked around for Dunstone he was gone. ‘Off to secure his sleepin spot,’ Ernest said. He thanked the boy for alerting him and bade him goodnight, and Leo walked home in the fading light.

  June

  On Saturday morning at breakfast Leo’s father told him that the gaffer needed certain items for his wife collecting from the railway station in Wiveliscombe. Leo could put the filly in the small cart and take her; she was ready for such light work alone, with the right man driving her.

  The boy glanced up. His father did not smile but his mother did, as if her son did not already understand the compliment he was being given.

  ‘I cannot,’ he said, and all looked towards him, his parents and his brother Fred and sister Kizzie. Albert Sercombe coloured. ‘Said I would help Mister Shattock with a horse.’

  Ruth Sercombe put her hand upon her husband’s. ‘Why, that is good news, is it not, father?’

  Albert’s teeth had clenched. His mouth remained taut as he spoke. ‘Aye, and might the boy not have told me so before?’

  ‘Well,’ Ruth said. ‘Will you apologise to your father, Leo?’

  ‘Sorry, father,’ Leo said in his gravelly voice. ‘I should a liked to drive the filly.’

  ‘Aye, well, someone else can do it,’ Albert said. ‘You can go, Fred, later this mornin.’

  The boy trotted across the estate. The sky was a clean unblemished blue all around the earth and the day was already warm. He entered the wood and made his way to the spot where the remains of the hawk skeleton were scattered in the undergrowth. Some parts, he thought, had disappeared. Perhaps ants had studied them and devised some use for certain bones, as tool or decoration, and had their gangs of workers carry them into their hills. Leo wondered whether he had arrived early enough. It must be shortly before or after seven o’clock. She had not specified a time. The idea that he was late and that Miss Charlotte had come here, waited, given up on him, tormented the boy but he remained. He barely moved, but sat upon the ground. Or she had been forced against her will to do something other. Or she had forgotten their arrangement.

  The boy studied insects. He found some dandelions and picked them and sucked the nectar from their stems. He heard occasional voices in the distance, and sounds of waggons and horse gear. Of wood being hammered. He listened to birds in the branches above him and attempted to identify them but could not. Wood pigeons he recognised, but smaller birds he knew only by sight, not sound. A cuckoo called, seeming to mock him.

  When she came it was not from the direction of the house, as he’d anticipated, but from the stables. She led the pony through the trees. It was already saddled up and across its rump lay a pannier of two bags.

  ‘There you are, Leo Sercombe,’ she said. She turned to the pony as if to present it, or make a formal introduction. ‘Her name is Blaze,’ the girl said. ‘You did not have the chance to ride Embarr, but you shall ride Blaze today.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Charlotte.’

  She told him that unless he addressed her as Lottie she would return the pony to the stable and take the picnic in the saddlebags back to the house and eat it with her great-grandmama. Which she did not wish to do.

  They walked out of the wood. Then the girl mounted the pony, and the boy walked beside them.
The sun was high in the sky and out of the shade of the trees its heat bore down upon them. The boy wore a cap. The girl wore a felt hat in keeping with her boy’s attire. Leo could not help wondering how she came by such clothes.

  ‘My cousins come down at Christmas. The year before last, they were ready to leave, their luggage packed. I found the suitcase that belonged to Eustace and stole his clothes.’

  The boy put his fingers on the cheek piece of the pony’s bridle so that he would at least appear to any who might observe them to have some use, as they walked along. ‘Did no one notice the case was empty?’ he asked.

  ‘I filled it with skirts and petticoats,’ Lottie said. She laughed as if the event were being re-enacted in front of her. ‘Fortunately my cousin Eustace has a keen sense of humour. He also loves to play charades. We repeated this game last Christmas, to keep each other stocked up with the items we prefer, and shall no doubt do so again. No one else knows of this arrangement. Indeed, Leo Sercombe, you are the first person I have told, so you must keep your lips sealed.’

  They walked along the track between Home Farm’s wheat fields and through pasture around the hillocks known as the Burial Mounds and on to the gallops. This stretch of turf and dirt was clear for Herb Shattock’s lads had long since exercised the master’s hunters and racing horses. Here they laid the panniers upon the ground and rode the young mare, Lottie first to show Leo how it was done, then graciously inviting him to take her place in the saddle. He did not tell her that he’d ridden this horse already, before she ever had. He did not, however, trust his ability to dissemble if he tried to act surprised or delighted and so he was merely quiet and grave, nodding at the words of advice she gave him. He walked the pony a long while before he trotted her, trying Lottie’s patience. He trotted Blaze back and forth, back and forth, until eventually after much exhortation from the girl he let the pony canter.

  One day, Leo thought, he would be up here on these gallops, riding the master’s horses. He would learn all there was to from Herb Shattock, for he was a man the boy believed he could trust like no other. And one day he would take over from him as head groom on the estate, as Lottie Prideaux would take the estate on from her father.

  The girl galloped the pony and rode her hard. She brought her over to where Leo stood, and said, panting for breath, ‘That will be enough for now. Put back the saddlebags, please. We shall take our picnic.’

  She did not tell him where they were going. They walked from the gallops down into the valley, where willows lined the stream, and up past grazing cows into the bluebell wood, the flowers wilting and faded now. Beyond the wood was bleak terrain, the least cultivated on the estate, scrubby copses, thin soil on rocky ground. Here and there was evidence of human occupation: a stone wall covered with moss; the ruin of a shack; a stairway cut into a slope, its stone steps scalloped by the tread of generations. All the stone for all the buildings hereabouts and further distant was said to have come from these quarries.

  The heat was such that Leo had to keep removing his cap to wipe his forehead. They followed a winding metalled lane. The young mare plodded along but then her nostrils quivered and she looked up and snickered with pleasure or anticipation, though she could not yet see what she could smell. Then the vista opened before them and they looked down upon the great pool.

  The track led to the water’s edge and the mare drank. They watched her stretch her neck forward and suck the water into her mouth and swallow. The girl said that when Embarr was a foal and first weaned from taking milk from his mother’s teats he did not know how to drink water. He would plunge his mouth in too deep. ‘Or he would try to bite the water, as if it was food,’ she said, smiling.

  On this side of the pool they stood now in the shade of trees. From hoof and claw prints in the mud they could see that other animals had come to drink here before them. There was duckweed on the surface of the water. It smelled dank. Midges hovered, blue-green dragonflies flew above them. This was where Leo had collected polliwogs, which he took in a bucket to the school and left for Miss Pugsley. She had never known it was from him. The class watched the tadpoles develop. Frogs and newts now inhabited the pond. There were many bulrushes and also yellow flowers – flag iris. Leo told Lottie that he and his sister collected its seeds for their mother, which she roasted and used to make a drink for their father they called coffee, though all knew it was no such thing.

  They walked out of the shade and circled the pool. On the far side a huge slab of rock jutted out over the water and here Lottie laid the saddlebags. Leo led the filly back away out of the sun. He removed her bridle and replaced it with a halter Lottie had brought and tied the rope to the trunk of a sapling surrounded by grass, and there left her grazing.

  The girl unfolded a rug upon the rock and laid their picnic. ‘It’s very simple, I’m afraid,’ she said. Bread, blue-veined cheese, two cold chicken drumsticks, four hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes. A pork pie Lottie cut in half. A flask of lemonade. They ate greedily, then the girl lay back. The rock was hot from the sun such that they could not rest their hands or elbows upon it without scalding them. They spread their jackets and rested on them and still felt the heat in the rock rise through the material.

  ‘Do you know what my governess said, after she saw you in the stable?’ the girl asked.

  Leo looked towards her. Her light brown eyes were hard to see in the shade of her hat brim. He shook his head.

  ‘She said, “The carter’s boy has an old man’s face.” She does say such stupid things. I have to put up with her, it is one thing Papa insists on. I would so prefer to have a chic Parisian governess, imagine that. Or a Florentine, to teach me the most musical language. But, no. Papa claims that one can think more clearly in German, so I must put up with that Prussian cripple. Do you know what I told her? I said, “He does have a name, the carter’s boy, Ingrid. And so does the carter. The family is called Sercombe.” I did not indulge her with my theory. Do you know what my theory is?’

  Leo appeared to ponder the matter a while, before slowly shaking his head once more.

  ‘My theory is that it’s because you never laugh.’ She peered at him from beneath her hat, as if studying his physiognomy, or colour, diagnosing some half-hidden malady. ‘Well? Is there a reason for it?’

  He let the question sink in. He clearly had no need to answer before considering it fully. His silence was unnerving. Lottie and her cousins and even her governess were quick-witted. The Sercombe boy contemplated the question, regarding it from all sides, revealing a depth or complexity of which she herself had been unaware.

  ‘A reason for what?’ he said.

  ‘Why you do not laugh. Or even smile.’

  The boy’s blank expression did not alter. She would have thought that it might, if only to prove her wrong. He did not look at her, but gazed at the sun-dazzled water before them.

  ‘I smiles from time to time,’ Leo said. ‘You just can’t see it.’

  ‘And why do I not see it?’ she demanded.

  Again he was quiet, and peered into the distance. He might have been considering her question, or some other topic entirely unrelated, or perhaps his attention had been distracted by a passing heron.

  ‘Do horses smile?’ he asked. ‘There’s some say they seen their dog grin, but I ain’t.’

  The girl laughed. ‘Leo Sercombe,’ she said, ‘your voice still sounds like it has sand in it.’

  They both gazed at the pool. A cloud passed in front of the sun and the water was black.

  ‘How deep is it?’ Lottie asked.

  Leo stared at the pool, as if his gaze if of sufficient concentration could see to the bottom. ‘Old Isaiah Vagges says his grandfather worked here, as a quarryman, but others say the big pool quarry’s not been worked in a thousand years.’ He turned to the girl. ‘Isaiah says he can recall the quarry as a boy and tis the biggest he ever saw.’ Leo lifted his gaze and surveyed the rocky perimeters of the pool. On the far side were sheer cliffs of stone. ‘Mind you,
I shouldn’t reckon he’s sin a great many.’

  Lottie looked at Leo’s face for signs of amusement, but it remained as blank and solemn as before. ‘Do you know what I think of when I look at it?’ she said. ‘I think of Avalon. I imagine the sword rising out of the lake.’

  Leo looked at her and waited for her to continue.

  ‘Yes, I know it’s stupid,’ she said. ‘Of course there was no pool here in Arthur’s time. It was never a lake. But it’s so black it makes you wonder what’s in here. When I was small I had a nanny who told me there was a monster down there, a kind of octopus or squid.’

  The boy stood up and undid the buttons of his waistcoat, from the top, one by one, and let it slide off. He removed the cap from his head. It floated to the rock he stood on.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

  He yanked his braces off his shoulders. They hung at his sides. He undid the buttons of his shirt, pulled the shirt-tails up out of his trousers, shucked it off and bundled it into a loose cotton ball which, bending, he placed beside the waistcoat. ‘One way to find out,’ he said. He sat down and untied the laces of his boots, loosened them, and cupping the heels pulled off one and then the other, followed by his socks, all different shades of black or grey wool where they’d been darned and re-darned.

  ‘Are you feeble-minded?’ she asked him.

  The boy said nothing but unbuttoned his trousers and let them fall around his feet. He grasped his underwear and, bending his knees, slid the grubby garment down his legs then let go and stood up, and stepped out of the wodge of material around his ankles. His shoulders were narrow, his back was long, his buttocks and his legs slender. He looked taller naked than clothed. His neck and hands were brown but the rest of his skin was pale. He took a step towards the water.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. The girl took off her hat. Her long brown hair fell loose about her shoulders. Then she stood and as he had done divested herself of her clothes, garment by garment the same, waistcoat, shirt, trousers, until she too stood naked. There was a scribble of hair upon her pudenda. Her nipples were larger than his though she had no breasts. The girl squatted on the slab of grey rock and pissed. The boy looked away. Then he looked back. The water trickled across the rock, staining the granite a darker grey.