by Tim Pears
Around him the others were talking.
‘Well done, boy,’ said Cyrus Pepperell. He passed Leo a bottle. The boy drank the cider, washed it round his mouth, and spat it out. ‘I wagered on you with the missis here and won.’
‘I never thought he would,’ Vance Brewer said.
‘We’ll celebrate with sparrow pie tonight,’ said Juliana. ‘Nice and sweet, not like robin or tit.’
Wilf patted the boy on the back. ‘You can keep yon horse,’ he said. ‘I knew you would.’
Leo turned and staggered away. He made his way to the stable and went over to the white colt and hugged the horse around its neck, sobbing.
9
One evening a week later Leo went to the loft to fetch some hay for the colt and the carthorse. There was an uncanny feeling in the air, something like warmth yet not of the temperature, for it was still cold. What was beginning deep inside the soil and within the roots of plants and trees was discernible in the atmosphere above. Spring.
Leo climbed the ladder. Just as he put his left hand upon the boards above, the white colt whinnied in his stall below and the boy stopped and looked down at him. He told the colt that he’d be but a moment with the food, he was doing the best he could. He stood on a rung of the ladder, his hand still resting on the board of the hayloft, and thought that horses were strange because they understood some things very well and others not at all. It would take a lifetime to know them, and he was already wasting too much of his with sheep.
The sensation when it came he could not identify. Then he could. Pain, intense and searing, in his left hand upon the loft board. Leo stepped up the next two rungs of the ladder with a sense of dread. He rose and found himself looking into the dark brown eyes of a tawny owl. The eyes were rimmed with a pink or reddish circle and around them were feathers that were like tiny Christmas trees when the needles had dropped. He looked into the eyes and could see nothing but the reflection of himself.
Then he looked at his hand. The owl had gripped it with the four talons of its right foot. Blood appeared around the talons. Leo tried to prise them loose with his other hand but he could not. The owl watched him calmly. The pain was unbearable. The boy gripped his left arm and raised his hand off the board and climbed down the ladder. The owl seemed to expect this for it wrapped the talons of its other foot around his wrist as if it were a branch, and let him carry it.
Leo ran across the yard, calling out for help. He held his left arm out from his side with the owl facing behind him, as if covering his back. He rushed into the kitchen. Wilf cursed in amazement at the sight and Juliana screamed at him to get that creature out of her house.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Vance Brewer. ‘The boy’s took up falconry.’
‘Help!’ Leo sobbed. ‘Please.’
Cyrus Pepperell studied the boy’s arm and the owl upon it.
‘You’m up a tree there, boy, and no mistake,’ Cyrus said.
‘Come back outside,’ Wilf told him. He led the way and Leo followed. His friend walked around the side of the house and told the boy to sit on the bench, facing the wood. ‘Put your hand on the arm a the bench and sit,’ he said. Leo did so and Wilf sat beside him in the dusk.
‘There’s nothin to do but wait,’ Wilf said. ‘He’ll let go eventually, but you can’t make him.’
‘I’ll die a pain afore then,’ Leo sobbed.
‘No, you won’t. I know it’s bad but, believe it or not, boy, there’s worse.’
‘Is there?’
‘There is. I’ll tell you what I can’t work out, though. And that’s what a tawny owl was doin in the barn.’
Leo glanced at the stockboy and found him looking back. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t invite him there.’
‘I never heard a such a thing,’ Wilf said. ‘Never.’ He shook his head. As he did so the owl lifted its wings, as if to hide what it had caught from greedy eyes.
‘Now listen,’ Wilf said. ‘Tis better for you if I leave. He’ll be off quicker without me here for him to worry about. You just sit there. Don’t make no noise nor sudden movement. You have to give im the time to work out what’s goin on. Owls look wise but they ain’t.’
Wilf Cann stood up and walked back round the side of the house. Leo let go of his left arm with his right hand and wiped the tears from his eyes and looked at the owl. The bird faced the wall of the farmhouse. It appeared to be studying the brickwork. Leo stopped sobbing and sniffed and his breathing calmed. The pain was still intense but he bore it. Darkness deepened with each passing minute. He wondered how long the owl would stay there. It seemed relaxed and content where it was. Leo remembered his brother Sid telling him that an owl inserted its talons into prey and kept them there without the need for muscular effort. Its bones locked into place.
Night fell. Surely the others would not let him suffer all night long. Could he not kill the bird and cut off the legs? But perhaps there was no way to extract the talons. They would then stay in his hand forever. The brand of a bird of prey stamped into his flesh. The owl gazed at the wall. Leo could not see if its eyes were open. It might have fallen asleep. The night was milder than it had been for many weeks. The last of the snow had melted, Leo could hear water dripping and gurgling underground. The long slow thaw was in progress.
Suddenly another bird hooted from the wood. Perhaps a companion. The owl swivelled its head at the sound. It seemed to reassess its surroundings. To become aware of the open air behind it, of the wood beyond. Leo felt the grip of its talons loosen. After another minute or two the owl began to extract them from the boy’s hand. Leo did not move. He waited until the owl had removed his talons and waited longer. Finally, the bird looked behind him again and hopped up on Leo’s hand and wrist and turned and took off, and flew towards the trees.
Leo got up from the bench and trotted around the house and indoors, holding his throbbing left hand. Juliana was at the table. ‘Come here,’ she said. The men had gone to bed. Leo stood beside her. She took his hand and he winced. She placed it on the table. It was already swelling. She poured Jeyes Fluid onto a rag and rubbed it on his skin. For a moment the pain was worse than from the owl but he gritted his teeth and held his breath and it passed. He thought it wrong to be treated with the same disinfectant as sheep, but said nothing. Juliana told him that was it, and sent him to bed.
10
In the old orchard, full of gnarled cider apple and a few pear and one or two damson trees, the grass came up earlier than it did elsewhere on the farm. The ewes and lambs were put there. The boy watched the lambs play. One would climb onto a fallen log then suddenly dash off around the orchard and all the others followed. They came to a stop and walked around in the sun or bleated for milk. Each one’s mother recognised the sound of her own and made herself available for suckling. Then another lamb would rush off and all joined in.
‘About time to cut em, I reckon,’ Vance Brewer told the boy. ‘We’ll put em back in the big barn.’
That night when they climbed up to the attic Wilf told Leo that he would not be seeing him tomorrow. It was one job he refused to assist with. Leo asked him what he meant but all the stockboy said was, ‘E uses his own fuckin dominoes. You’ll see. Now blow out the candle.’
*
The rainfall was so light the boy did not notice it nor could he feel it on his skin. It left no impression on his clothes, only a slight dampness on his hands. They brought the flock into the barn and put them in a pen. The shepherd told Leo to lift the lambs over the hurdle into another pen, while he whetted his bone-handled shut knife. He then tied a sack around himself, as an overall or apron.
On the shelf beside the shepherd’s pipe and morning croust and cider was a packet of twist tobacco. This was not his usual weed, he told Leo, it had been bought by the gaffer for veterinary purposes. He pulled loose some threads, put them in his mouth and began to chew. He had a bucket of cold water ready too.
‘With a ewe lamb, all we do’s dock the tail. Get yourself a tup lam
b for us to start with.’
Leo caught a young ram. Vance Brewer told him to stand against a wall post and hold the lamb tight, with its back against his chest, arms wrapped around it, each hand gripping two legs. The shepherd took delicate hold of the lamb’s empty scrotum and with his sharpened knife sliced it off. Then he leaned towards the lamb and grasped one testicle in his teeth and pulled until the cord broke. This ball he spat into the bucket of water, then pulled the second likewise. The lamb squirmed in Leo’s grip, pushing its head up against his chin. The boy held him tight. Vance Brewer spat some of the tobacco juice from his mouth into one testicle cavity, then again into the other.
‘Put im down, boy,’ the shepherd said.
The boy glanced up. The old man’s unshaven face was stained with brown tobacco and the blood of the tup lamb. Leo held the lamb upon the ground and with the same knife Vance cut off its tail. Leo carried the lamb away, bleating furiously, and lifted it over the hurdle to seek its mother amongst all the ewes.
Vance told Leo that they would give the stones and the tails to Juliana to cook. He licked his lips. ‘She’ll make us a lamb’s tail stew with chopped onion, and a pie-crust on top, summat lovely.’
That night Leo told Wilf that he was right. This farm was an infernal place. He would be leaving in the morning. The stockboy told Leo that he would depart penniless. Leo said that he intended to ask for the wages owed him and that if Wilf left too they could present their demands together and so make a stronger case.
*
In the morning the boy checked the sheep with Vance Brewer as on any other day. They studied the lambs to see that their wounds were healing. All of them were subdued in their behaviour compared to the playful young of two days before. Wilf brought the cows in for Juliana to milk, and took them out again after.
At breakfast, when they had eaten their customary sop, the gaffer said they should get to work.
‘Not me,’ Leo said. ‘I’m leavin today, Mister Pepperell.’
The farmer and his wife and their shepherd stared at the boy as if he had spoken in some strange language they could not understand.
Then the stockboy said, ‘Me, too, gaffer,’ and all turned to gape at him likewise.
‘You cannot,’ said Cyrus Pepperell eventually.
‘We can,’ Leo said. ‘I must ask you for my wages. I been here over six month. Call it twenty-four weeks. Half a crown a week. It come to three pound, gaffer.’
Cyrus Pepperell laughed, and said, ‘Your horse fodder cost me more’n that, boy. You owes me. You want to leave, you’ll ave to give me a good five shillin.’
He turned to Wilf and said, ‘I sin you. I minds how you bin lazin about, ever since the boy show up. And now you wish to up sticks and quit on us after all my missis and me done for you? You’ll leave on the day I kick you out, lad.’
The farmer might have finished what he had to say then or he might have had much more. Leo could not be certain. Whichever it was he spoke no more, for Wilf rose to his feet and as he planted them upon the floor so he leaned back and then came forward, swinging his fist, and caught Cyrus upon the jaw. The farmer fell back in his chair. He cracked his head upon the flagstones and lay inert, though he may have been unconscious already when he hit the floor.
Juliana Pepperell began to whimper and shrink back from the blow she imagined might be coming her way, but Wilf ignored her. He went instead directly to the bureau in the corner, pulled out a drawer and began to rummage amongst what he found there. Vance Brewer watched through wide, frightened eyes. He did not move, or say a word. Leo rose to his feet.
‘Grab us some food,’ Wilf told him. ‘And some a that best cider of is.’
Leo found a loaf of bread, a jar of jam, potatoes, turnips, and put them along with a flagon of cider in a basket.
‘Here’s your three quid,’ Wilf said, handing him the coins. ‘I’ve took five. No more.’ He nodded towards Cyrus. ‘Had you best not see to yon gaffer, Juliana?’
The farmer’s wife rose, quivering, and took a step towards the prone form of her husband. Leo saw blood on the stone beside Cyrus’s head. He turned and went out of the house and directly to the stable. There he bridled the white horse and brought him out. Wilf came from the house carrying the shotgun and a canvas sack containing his best suit. They mounted the horse as on one of their Sunday expeditions, Leo holding the reins, Wilf behind him, carrying the gun, and rode away from the farm.
11
When they gathered firewood in the trees around their chosen site Wilf searched upon the ground but Leo looked up as the gypsies had shown him and found dry kindling in the branches overhead. Wilf was neither impressed nor distracted.
‘We’re still too close,’ he said.
Leo wished to tell him that his moaning made for a sorry song, but did not.
‘We should a gone further,’ Wilf said.
‘The horse wouldn’t stand it,’ Leo told him. ‘We rode him all day. All the way up over the moor and beyond.’
‘Should a rid him down.’
‘Don’t we need him tomorrow?’
They lit a fire and began to drink the cider. Wilf rolled himself a cigarette and lit it with a burning stick.
‘I tell you what, though,’ Wilf said. ‘My days as a stockman is over, boy. I’ve had enough a beasts a burden. I know you likes your horses but me, I don’t like any of em, not really.’
Leo asked Wilf what he intended to do instead. He said he would seek work as a navvy. Or in a factory some place. ‘Must be plenty a jobs up country,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I’ve had enough a workin. Might help myself to what I wants for a while.’
Darkness fell. The fire crackled. When they had a bed of red hot embers Leo used two sticks to place four potatoes amongst them.
‘Spose us better have a bite a bread,’ Wilf said, ‘to soak up some a this cider.’
In time they grew tired waiting for the potatoes to bake. Leo retrieved one with the sticks and passed it over. Wilf took it but it was too hot and he passed it from one hand to the other for a while before dropping it on the ground and cutting it open with his knife. He dug out a piece and raised it to his lips, blew upon it, then ate it. Leo watched him chew, his mouth open and inhaling air to cool the food further as he did so. He tried to speak while eating but could not and shook his head. When finally Wilf swallowed he exhaled loudly and said, ‘It will do. Leave t’other one in a while.’
They ate in silence. When they had each finished their first potato Wilf said, ‘It isn’t much, bread and spuds, and it’s about all we got, apart from this fine cider, and there won’t be none a that left in the mornin.’
Leo said they should have brought a pan to cook in. ‘Could a mashed the spuds up with herbs. Garlic. I smelled some back there.’
As the night cooled, the horse came closer to the fire and stood, the forward part of his white form illuminated, looming like the spirit of a horse. A spirit visitor brought forth as if the lads were not cooking their supper but conducting a seance such as Wilf said he had heard of. He asked Leo if he believed in ghosts. He himself did not believe that everyone who died passed directly to the other side. Up top or down below. ‘Some folk ud lose their way, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Some ud get left behind. Or wander off, just like in life.’
Leo said he thought that perhaps Wilf never went to Sunday School. Or he’d attended but was not listening. For he seemed to have forgotten that there was a place where those destined but not yet ready for heaven were obliged to dwell, a place by the name of purgatory, and if we saw ghosts that was who they were. ‘They are waitin to be let in,’ he said. ‘We should give em a wave, that’s what my mother always said us should do.’
They drank. Leo went away from the fire to piss. He looked back and saw the orange flames in the trees, the lad his friend, the horse. All aglow in the darkness.
Wilf asked Leo if he planned to accompany him in search of work. Leo told him that he was headed for Penzance. ‘You could come too,’ he said. �
��We might even find us another horse on the way. Ride together.’
Wilf said he had enough of an idea of the shape of the West Country to know that Penzance lay at its western tip and there was more chance of escape by going east. The land opened out that way. It closed up the other. ‘You realise they’ll be lookin for us,’ he said. ‘The last place I want to go’s back to Bodmin Clink.’
They remembered the second potatoes and ate them, though the skins were charred. The flesh was much softer than the first time. They drank the cider. Wilf rolled a cigarette and passed it to Leo. Then, though his fingers fumbled, he built himself one the very same. After he had smoked that one Leo gave him the first. Wilf thanked him and said he was a generous lad to give away his last fag and he proposed a toast to friendship. He raised the flagon to his lips and drank. Then he placed it on the ground and stared at the fire.
‘We should a brought blankets,’ he said.
Leo agreed and said so, though he heard the sound come out of his mouth more like a gurgle or a burp than in words. He staggered away from the fire through the trees to piss again and came back. He sat clumsily and gazed at the fire that he might see how it functioned. Where was its engine? What made this twig flame, that branch smoke? What caused those sparks to fly up into the night sky? He tried to see the pattern or logic but was unable to. It made no sense. He told Wilf that he was going to lie down now, though again he doubted whether he had said the words aloud. Wilf grunted.
The boy laid his head upon the unsteady earth. He closed his eyes, and a rolling sleep absorbed him.
*
Leo woke, shivering, in the early-morning light. The fire had gone out, though the smell of woodsmoke was strong on his clothes. His head throbbed and his eyes ached. Blinking, he rose stiffly to his feet and looked around. Wilf was not there sleeping by the fire. Perhaps he had just woken and gone for a piss or a shit and a wash. There was a stream nearby that had made them choose this spot. Leo looked around for the horse. It was not there either. He found their tracks and followed them through the wood. A low pale sun flickered between the trees. After fifty yards or so Wilf’s footprints disappeared where he’d mounted the horse and ridden on, eastward.
