by Tim Pears
He knew this horse would beat whatever was put up against it. He knew it. The animal became more alive as his blood warmed. When his blood was hot, galloping, the colt was most fully himself. And the boy astride him felt himself carried into the same fire-filled realm of existence. Yet the faster they flew, the cooler his brain. Ease the colt round, dig your heels into him now, pull him back. The ground, the hedge, the people watching, blurred past him and the horse but he did not seem to be afeared or even aware of the danger. He could think clearly. Perhaps he was stupid. It was very strange.
In the afternoon they went to the showground. Leo carried George’s water bottles and a bucket. At the boxing ring Edwin had taken over the hawking and a crowd milled about. The ring consisted of four heavy posts driven into the ground, one at each corner of a fifteen-foot square, with three cables of rope strung tight around them. It was open to the air. The gypsies had not erected a tent but rather a canvas fence or screen around the outside of the ring. Each man who paid a shilling received a blue ticket as he passed through to the space between screen and ring. A tanner for lads. No children.
Those who wished to challenge Gentle George paid five shillings, customarily from their pals who formed a syndicate for the purpose. All those who survived three five-minute rounds would receive their money back plus the same again. Any who put George down would win a prize of ten guineas, a man’s wage for a year. Was that not worth a man of courage bravin a bruise or two? So Edwin sold the show. Punters jostled to get a ticket, ardent for blood. Whether that of those they knew from hereabouts, their friends or acquaintances, or of the gypsy fighter, the boy did not know. He followed George through the nervous, surly throng.
*
George Orchard undid the buttons of his shirt with a dainty, deliberate precision belying his thick fingers. Then he stretched both arms out behind him and his brother Edwin pulled the shirt off. The crowd grew quiet. The big man had no discernible muscle that the boy could see. His ribs were lost in solid flesh. He was made of great slabs of meat any butcher would be glad of, no more man than beast, half-bull, half-human, just risen on his two feet.
The first punter in the ring was tall and brawny, but facing Gentle George he looked puny. Warming up, he threw quick jabs in the air as if a wasp was bothering him and came forward ducking and bobbing like a man whose nerves had been shot. Long ago or perhaps just now, when Edwin removed the big man’s shirt, it was hard to tell.
Gentle George advanced ponderously, clumsily, leading from the shoulders. The punter took some wild swings but even as his fists flew he was already retreating from the big man’s retaliation. One or two blows landed and were lost in flesh. Gentle George kept coming. He raised his hands, gathered loosely into fists. He didn’t throw punches like the tall punter. It was more like his fists were solid objects or tools he carried at the end of his arms. The big man gently swung his huge fist at the punter. He pawed him like a bear. The right hit so slowly it seemed like an affectionate gesture, a stroke of the cheek, and that was why the punter had not avoided its foreseeable trajectory. Yet his face distorted strangely. Then the left came around in like manner from the other side, a slow hammer swing. The tall man’s jaw cracked and blood exploded from his ruined face.
They dragged him out unconscious. Leo poured water from a bottle into the bucket. Edwin raised the bucket to his brother. George lapped from it like a beast of burden. The next punter came forward, a fat, belligerent little man with eyes set close together and misshapen ears. Perhaps he thought he could keep low enough, out of range of the big man’s blows.
Leo looked up. Dotted around the top of the screen were faces peering over. As if a band of Cornish giants with small heads, perhaps that county’s fabled wrestlers, had turned up to watch. Then he realised they were all boys much the same age as he himself, sitting or standing on the shoulders of friends.
*
In the early evening back at the camp they counted their earnings from the boxing ring. In addition, the women had done much hawking of goods and telling of fortunes. Nimble-fingered boys and girls had procured money by other means. Henery had sold a couple more of Gully’s ponies.
‘We’ll not be short a tin for the winter,’ Rhoda told the boy. ‘The winter will tell you what you did in the summer, see, and how we do in Okehampton is a good sign. We should be bok but we’re not, on account a those Penfolds. We have to do somethin about it. And we will, Leo, don’t you worry about that, you’ll see.’
Leo believed her. The men acted each as if someone had just insulted them. Samson sat staring into the fire on which his Kinity had set a pot stirring. Every now and then she muttered, ‘So you’ll do nothin, is that it? Getting old, are you now?’ Samson sat hunched over as his wife continued to goad him. ‘You’ll let it go, will you? You’re no husband a mine, are you?’
All of a sudden Samson clambered to his feet. ‘Right. I’ve had about enough,’ he yelled. ‘That’s it.’
The others must have been waiting for this word for as Samson walked out of the camp all the men, of the Hicks as well as the Orchard family, gathered in his wake and followed him. Leo stood watching them. Gully turned and nodded to him to join them and he ran to catch up.
They skirted the town. Gully told the boy that the Penfolds had not even set up camp on the opposite side of Okehampton but just a short way around it on the southern side. This supposedly was further evidence of their perfidy.
The Orchards’ arrival appeared unexpected for it caused panic in the Penfold encampment. As Leo approached he could see women crawling into their benders, calling their children after them. Men stood in the clearing, backs against tree trunks, or at the wheels of their waggons. They might have been kin to the Orchards yet everything about them was different. The men’s faces were darker. Their clothes were in tatters. The waggons were ramshackle. The fires smoked without visible flames. A pony stood roped to a tree, its skeleton discernible beneath its sorry skin.
Samson took up position facing a man of a similar age. The family arrayed themselves around him. ‘I’m callin you out, Naylor Penfold,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m callin you out, you filthy, dirty, thievin bastard. You’re not fit to wipe a pig’s foot on. I’ve a crow to pick with you, Naylor, you nasty scum. You’re the dregs. You’ve been followin us around, stealin our patch, sullyin our name, and I’m callin you out.’
Samson paused, to take a breath or perhaps to remember his lines rehearsed over the days preceding. All were quiet around and before him, intent upon the performance.
‘Ye’ll never amount to no more’n a piece a shite – and the same goes for the lot a you. You’re the biggest liar that ever stood on two feet, Naylor Penfold. Look at you . . . chewin your tobacca like a sheep chewin its cud. Your old woman there looks as sour as a crab apple tree. All your women chatter like magpies.’
Samson paused again and the man Leo took for Naylor Penfold stepped forward. ‘Look at yourself, Samson Orchard,’ he said. ‘You’re a big man with a small heart and you’re good for nothin. You’re a large puddin with nought in it, so you are.’
‘Aye, and you’re an ugly bastard, Naylor Penfold. Ugly enough to frighten the Devil himself. I’m callin you out here and now for all to hear. I’ll fight you meself like I fought your father and I’m nigh on sixty year of age, an old man, but I’ll fight for me and all a my breed.’
Edwin put his hand upon his father’s arm and stepped up beside him. ‘To be a Penfold?’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on a dog. I feel sorry for your horses, they don’t deserve it. We’ll fight you, any one of us, any one of our breed’ll take you on. The Orchards or the Hicks, the Isaacs or the Smalls if they was here. We’re the tribe of Orchard and we’re callin you out.’
Gully and Edwin stepped aside from Samson, and George took their place. Though he had meted out much punishment in the show field that afternoon, he had taken some too. Gully explained to Leo that it was only the sight of blood, of blows landing on the big man, that beckoned punters
into the ring. His eyes were swollen and there was a purpling yellow bruise on one side of his face, and his lower lip was misshapen. Leo could not tell whether this made him look less fearsome or more so to a prospective opponent.
Samson put his hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘My boy George here,’ he said, ‘will fight any one a your boys. He’s a bare-fisted fightin man. If you like, he’ll fight em one after the other. I tell you what, Naylor, he’ll take em on all at the same time. Or you can put em on a rope and he’ll take em on in a tug a fuckin war. There’s not one a you’s fathered enough sons to beat him. Look at your boys. Will you look at em there? They’ve seen our George and their hair’s liftin the hats from their heads. You’re a bunch a miserable cowards and we’ll see you in the mornin in that field yonder.’
Samson turned and walked through the middle of his family, who followed likewise and formed a phalanx around him, and so they returned to their camp.
*
In the morning the Orchards and Hicks rose and went all together once again to the field Samson had stipulated. The Penfolds were not there. They went back to the Penfolds’ camp. The people, the animals, the waggons, the tents, all were gone. They had vanished. Stolen away in the night. One or two fires still exuded a weak plume of damp smoke. Scraps of metal and wood and clothing lay around. There was a smell of rotting food and shit, whether of dogs or people Leo could not say for sure. ‘They’ve left nothin but a load a junk to give us all a bad name,’ Samson declared. The mood was exultant. To have the Penfolds run was even better than to fight them.
6
On the days following Leo rode the white colt. He would have liked to gallop on the open moor but they would not let him take the animal out of the field so he practised there. Often there were others besides Gully watching him. It rained almost every day, and the horses obtained what shelter they could from overhanging branches of trees in the hedgerows, but the colt was always eager to exercise.
Leo recalled the sight of Lottie suppling her blue roan in the paddock and tried something of the same exercise to see how the colt responded. He took him alongside the hedge on their left-hand side but with the front right leg, followed by the head, neck and spine of the horse, arching as if about to make a circle and the back legs keeping the line along the hedge. The horse did not like it, resisting the pressure Leo exerted, with his legs or on the reins. It was difficult for the colt to bend his spine and as he understood what his rider wished him to do he created the illusion of doing so by bending his neck only.
The boy did not expect immediate acquiescence, nor wish it. He liked the feel of the colt’s resistance; there was something subtle and articulate about it, as if the boy had spoken and the horse disagreed, as if they were conducting a conversation in some arcane language each understood.
Leo still had his chores to run, but now he had assistance. Others helped him gather wood and stack it beneath trees to dry. Even Priscilla, his chief tormentor, aided him in lighting damp kindling, and Thomas the little pugilist carried water.
*
The gypsies possessed no timepiece yet seemed to know when their brethren would gather for the races. ‘They’ll be here tomorra, the Burtons, up from Tavistock,’ Samson declared. On what evidence, the boy could not tell. On the morrow it transpired that something unforeseen had delayed them. ‘But the Francombes down from Barnstaple, we’ll see them soon enough.’
7
In due course four bedraggled families gathered on the eastern side of the village of South Zeal, east of Okehampton. Men bought jugs of beer at the Oxenham Arms and carried them back to camp. There was singing and dancing around the fires. A Burton girl of not much more than Leo’s own age danced to music three men of her family made on a banjo, a violin and an accordion. She danced on a board put down for the purpose. Her black hair swung about her head. She held her arms aloft like a soldier in the act of surrender, yet there was no trace of submission in her expression. Perhaps the opposite. Sweat glistened on her brow in the firelight. All were quiet, watching. She swayed her hips in a manner Leo was sure he had never seen before, and he realised that his body wished for things his mind had not decreed. This was new to him.
Then the girl rapped her feet hard upon the board and grew hot and more ardent and whirled about. The spectators were stilled save for older women sporadically yelling or yelping encouragement. The musicians sped the music up. The girl’s black eyes widened like those of the colt galloping as she spun, in a furious vortex, until all of a sudden the music ceased and she did too, and knelt on the board bowing for the applause.
*
In the early morning they had trotting races on the open road but the boy did not attend for Gully had no interest in them. He told Leo of a Scottish island where gypsies ran bareback races but not with their own horses. Instead they had to steal a neighbour’s, and ride it with their wife or girl behind. The old man took a miniscule bag from his pocket and loosened the string. He drew from it a single tooth. ‘I took this from the mouth a the best horse I ever had,’ he said. ‘A skewbald she was. A small, sweet head but a broad chest, well muscled. Flashy action.’ The old man gazed at the tooth in his hand, as if he could see in its place the horse it had belonged to. ‘A proper cob,’ he said.
*
The day of the first bareback races dawned cool and clear. The sky was a sheer unblemished blue as if it had been rinsed clean. They walked from their encampment to a stretch of the road to Whiddon Down that lay straight and flat before them.
The first race was between the Orchards’ and Hicks’ white colt and the Francombes’ big grey mare. Some kind of committee made up of men from each family examined the horses. Then the riders. They took Leo’s boots and his jacket and shirt. Gully had given him a pair of gypsy trousers, high-waisted, narrow-legged, that would not flap around as he rode. These were all the clothes they were allowed to wear. The other rider was a much older youth, wide-shouldered and muscular, and he regarded his slight, pale opponent with a look of incredulity as each was inspected and patted down for concealed whips or spurs with which they might provoke their own mounts or attack their rival’s.
Edwin and Henery took money for wagers. Samson came over. He grasped hold of each of Leo’s ears with either hand and brought his face close. ‘My brother says that this horse of ours is fast,’ he said. His breath smelled of stale beer and rich meat. ‘He says that you can ride. Well, boy, here’s where you begin to repay your debt. Number one you win. Number two you make it look lucky. That way we’ll get more money put down on the final race. Do you understand?’
Leo nodded that he did. Samson squeezed his ears in his rough hands. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’
Then the riders stood side by side facing the crowd of spectators as a pot-bellied man explained that the turnpike would forthwith be closed off. The horses would be ridden west to a post the keen-eyed among them might discern in the distance. They should go clockwise around the post and back here. Between these two poles, planted either side of the road, which formed both the starting and the finishing line.
The riders were helped aboard their mounts. The big grey mare was two or three hands taller than the white colt, statuesque and powerful. Leo studied her. If God had designed her for a purpose it was not for speed. At least not speed alone. Her rider needed his strength for he had to manhandle her up the road and turn her and force her back towards the starting line. He was already a-sweat himself. Leo waited for him. The white colt did not seem concerned by the bustle of human beings nor the grey mare but let Leo turn him this way then the other in a slow circle, on a tight rein.
A man beside the pole on one side of the road removed the red scarf from around his neck and held it up above his head. When the two horses were more or less abreast before him he swept his arm downward and yelled, ‘Run.’
The Francombe youth uttered a great roar as if to frighten his horse to action and Leo’s to the spot, but they both took off. The mare forced herself forward and into
the lead. The colt followed in her wake. He seemed uninterested, yet though both horses sped up, once the mare was at a full gallop the colt continued to accelerate. He almost overtook her, then settled back behind. Leo did not know what else to do. If he did not hold the colt back they must win easily. He had to restrain him. But surely it would be clear that he was doing so. Clear to any horseman. He glanced to his left-hand side as if inspiration might lurk there. He saw a stand of oak trees. Dartmoor rose in the distance, up over the curved horizon.
They galloped along the road. Up ahead Leo could make out a post stuck in the middle of the turnpike. Then it came to him. He let the mare turn first around the halfway point, but kept the colt going another ten or twenty yards. Ahead of him half a dozen gypsies stood across the road. Beyond and above them a single farmer stood on the seat of his waggon, baulked of his passage on the highway but keenly watching the spectacle.
As he slowed his horse Leo looked back and saw that the mare was only now completing her own clumsy pivot about the post, her hooves ruining the patch of shingle and rough tarmacadam. He turned the colt and pursued them. Francombe jerked back and forth on the back of his horse and threw the reins forward and kicked the mare, his exertions as great as those of the animal beneath him.
Leo took the colt as wide as he could, out to the right-hand verge of the road. He still held him back somewhat with the reins and felt sorry for doing so. He hoped that none would realise, that they would see his arms and shoulders flailing and not notice the grip of his hands, distracted by his gradual improvement, the prospect of victory in an ever-closer race, and be caught up in the excitement. His colt overtook the big grey mare a few yards from the finishing line. Leo did not see the crowd on either side nor hear them. He kept the colt reined in even now. There was no alternative for if he let him go all would glimpse his true potential. Leo cantered the horse up the road, trotted him, turned and came back, shaking his head. He could feel the colt resentful beneath him, angered with this rider he’d thought would give him the freedom he desired.
