Ten Sorry Tales

by Mick Jackson

  Mister Edwards wasn’t used to having people of Thelma’s size knocking on his front door. In fact, he wasn’t used to having callers of any sort.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he said, looking down at her.

  Thelma could see no point in beating about the bush. She turned and pointed back up the lane.

  ‘That horse of yours …’ she said. ‘He ate my button.’

  To support her claim she pointed to her coat, where the button had once resided.

  ‘He nearly broke my blummin’ neck,’ she said.

  The farmer winced, as if he’d stubbed his toe or slammed a door on his finger. Then he shook his head in a sorry sort of way.

  ‘He’s a ruddy menace, that horse,’ he said. ‘If you let him anywhere near you he’ll ’ave you.’ The shaking of the head turned effortlessly into nodding. ‘And, oh yes – he’ll ’ave your buttons. Every one.’

  These words of warning came a bit too late for little Thelma. The memory of the attack came flooding back to her and she felt her eyes filling up with tears. The farmer could see the little girl was upset but wasn’t sure what he was meant to do about it, so he just continued to run his old horse down.

  ‘He’s got a ugly nature,’ he said. ‘Very ugly. And got more buttons in him than an ’aberdasherers.’

  Apparently, it wasn’t just buttons that took the horse’s fancy. Anything not properly attached to a person seemed to be in danger of disappearing. The horse had snatched and swallowed several earrings, an old man’s spectacles and, on at least one occasion, a dummy right out of a baby’s mouth.

  ‘He has a special compartment, you see,’ the farmer told Thelma and patted his own stomach, round to the right. ‘That’s where he keeps his booty. And when he pleases, he can cough himself up any old badge or button. To show it off to the world.’

  The theft of the dummy, the farmer reckoned, had taken place six or seven years earlier and the boy was now quite grown up, but whenever he happened to pass by, the horse would still bring the dummy back up and proudly display it between its yellow teeth.

  ‘You know,’ the farmer said, ‘… in order to taunt the boy.’

  Thelma was amazed that an animal would go out of its way to be so callous. She was also amazed that such behaviour could go unpunished.

  ‘You should put a sign up,’ she said. ‘To warn people.’

  ‘You’re right,’ the farmer conceded. ‘I keep meaning to. But I never seem to find the time.’

  For a while Mister Edwards just stood on his doorstep, as if he had run out of things to say on the subject. Thelma could see that he was genuinely sorry and she appreciated, perhaps better than anyone, what sort of miserable, bad-tempered horse he had on his hands. But she could also see that, at this rate, the farmer would do precisely nothing to help her, so she told him, in no uncertain terms, that she thought the least he could do was offer to try and get her button back.

  ‘You’re right. Yes, I should,’ he said, still quite hopeless. ‘He’s never returned anything up to now. But, yes. Let’s go up and I’ll have a word.’

  So, once he’d found his jacket and managed to tuck all his loose socks into a pair of wellingtons, Mister Edwards led the way through the chickens and back up the lane. As they walked along Thelma asked what the horse was called, thinking that knowing its name might make it a little less intimidating, but the farmer started shaking his head again.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ he said, rather wearily. ‘Tried all sorts of names on him. But he wouldn’t wear ’em. No, not a one.’

  After this exchange Mister Edwards sank into such sombre contemplation Thelma felt that it would be rude to interrupt, so the rest of the journey passed in total silence, except for Mister Edwards’s occasional grunt or groan.

  As soon as they reached the gate the old horse began to make its way over. It spotted Thelma and fixed its mean old eyes on her. To be more precise, it fixed its eyes on her five remaining buttons. The farmer could see what the horse was after and shielded Thelma from it and made sure she stood a few yards back. He took a moment to prepare himself and when he finally spoke he did so directly to the animal, as if talking to an aged relative who’d been caught shoplifting and brought home by the police.

  ‘This little girl tells me you’ve ate her button,’ he said.

  The horse said nothing.

  ‘Is that true?’ the farmer said. ‘Have you stole a button off her?’

  Again, the horse declined to comment and went so far as to turn away. It held its head up in the air in a lofty fashion, as if any accusations or criticism would simply bounce right off it. It was clear to Thelma that the horse wasn’t about to own up to anything, but the farmer persisted and slowly worked himself up into quite a state.

  ‘You mean old nag,’ he said. ‘You’ve stole this little girl’s button. I know it. Now you just cough it right back up.’

  The horse turned right around, so that its back was towards the farmer and gazed off towards the horizon, as if considering going there on holiday. Thelma had never seen such wilful ignorance. But Mister Edwards persevered and was about to launch into another tirade when the horse lifted its tail and let loose a blast of wind which was so strong and suffocating it nearly knocked the farmer off his feet.

  Thelma was standing some distance away but still caught the edge of it. The merest whiff was enough to make her head spin and bring tears to her eyes. Poor Mister Edwards, however, had taken the full force and staggered about, as if he had just been punched in the stomach. He put his head between his knees to try and stop himself falling over and for a minute Thelma thought he was actually going to be sick. When he finally stood up straight – or as straight as any old farmer is likely to manage – his face was riddled not just with pain but humiliation.

  ‘You horrible, horrible animal,’ whispered Mister Edwards, and without another word, either to the horse or Thelma, he stumbled off down the lane.

  The horse turned and watched him disappear. It seemed almost disappointed. But as soon as its owner was out of sight it looked back over at young Thelma and flashed its evil eyes at her. She was obviously the horse’s last hope of a little entertainment, but Thelma shook her head at the horse and set off home herself.

  As she walked along, the horse walked beside her with the fence between them. It kept glancing over towards her and Thelma wondered if she couldn’t perhaps detect in the horse’s attitude the merest trace of regret. But right at the point where Thelma’s path veered away from the field, the horse cantered ahead, stopped, turned to face her and proceeded to pull the most extraordinary face. It stuck its tongue out, its eyes rolled back in their sockets and for a moment Thelma thought that perhaps it was building up to some almighty sneeze. Then it coughed – a single, bone-jangling clearing of the throat which started out deep down inside it and slowly developed into a rattling wheeze. The horse stretched its neck out towards the ground and jiggled its head up and down for several seconds. Then, after it had regained a little composure, it took a step in Thelma’s direction. It seemed to wink before peeling its lips back. And there, clamped between its yellow teeth, was Thelma’s button. Thelma instinctively reached out towards it, but the horse pulled its head away. And once it was sure that

  Thelma had actually seen the button, it flicked its head back and gulped the button back down again.

  The horse laughed out loud but Thelma was absolutely livid. ‘You bully,’ she said, ‘You big fat ugly bully,’ and shook her little fist at it.

  The horse laughed long and hard – laughed for what felt like several minutes. Its wickedness knew no bounds. And whenever it paused to catch its breath and saw the look of indignation on Thelma’s face it started laughing even harder, until it fell into a paroxysm of wheezing and whinnying and generally succumbed to horse-hysteria.

  Thelma was ready to leave the horse to its self-indulgence when its celebrations suddenly ceased. The horse stood stock-still with a puzzled look on its face, closely followed by a look of profoun
d alarm. Its mouth fell open and its eyes grew wide. Something seemed to have got lodged deep in its breathing apparatus and in a matter of seconds the animal was coughing and frantically fighting for its breath.

  Its whole body clenched and rocked backwards and forwards, as it tried desperately to clear its gullet. It started retching and choking and writhing-about. And this continued until, with one great lunge of its head, a huge torrent of buttons came gushing out over the fence in a button rainbow which forced Thelma to skip to one side to get out of the way.

  A single, powerful snort fired one last button out of a nostril. Then the horse hung its head over the fence and stared wretchedly down at what it had just brought up. Thelma bent over the pile of buttons which nestled in the grass, covered in a thick gloop of horse-spittle. There must have been well over a hundred buttons there – all different sizes and colours. Among them Thelma spotted a pair of old-fashioned spectacles, a couple of earrings and a baby’s dummy.

  She pulled her dad’s motorcycle gloves right up to her armpits and began to carefully pick through the button mountain, with the horse still watching. And there, deep in the pile, she found her own precious button. She picked it out, wiped it on her trousers and lifted it up between her finger and thumb.

  She turned and showed it to the horse.

  ‘Hah!’ she said.

  *

  Once Thelma got the button back home and it had been thoroughly washed in hot soapy water, her mother sewed it back where it belonged. Then Thelma put her coat back on, buttoned it up to her throat and proudly marched around the garden, as if she’d just had a medal pinned to her chest.

  The following Sunday, at Thelma’s request, she and her parents spent the morning making their own home-made signposts. In the afternoon they took them up to the field and erected them at regular intervals – close enough to the fence so that it was clear to whom they were referring but not so close that the horse could get its teeth into them.

  The horse watched Thelma hammer them home and looked thoroughly sickened.

  There was no mistaking the information the signs imparted.

  BEWARE.

  BUTTON THIEF.

  they said.

  Author biography

  Mick Jackson is the prize-winning author of the novels, The Underground Man, Five Boys and The Widow’s Tale. He also published, with the illustrator David Roberts, two acclaimed curiosities, Ten Sorry Tales and Bears of England.

  Copyright

  First published in 2005

  by Faber & Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2014

  All rights reserved

  © Mick Jackson, 2005

  Illustrations © David Roberts, 2005

  The right of Mick Jackson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–31719–6