Black Beauty's Family

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  Turned out now in a paddock, my job finished, I felt my solitude even more keenly. Master, it was said, was looking out for a new situation for me. Meanwhile my thoughts turned again to the grey stallion. I tried in vain to force myself to leap the high hedge which parted me from the road, but Will Aken had never taught me to jump and my courage failed me. Every time I heard hoofbeats I was mad with excitement. I neighed and neighed again, galloping up and down as though I had lost my senses, and in the stable I would paw the ground until there was not a stalk of straw left under me. Master grew increasingly irritated by the noise I made, until at last he lost patience with me.

  ‘Take her to next month’s horse sale, see to the details, put a good description into the catalogue, Albert,’ he said. ‘Warranted quiet to ride and drive, and sound in wind limb and eye, you know the form.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said Albert standing in the yard, looking perplexed. ‘But who shall lead her over, sir? The new man has no interest in horses, and I know little about them. As likely as not I shall let hold of the rope at the first steam engine we meet.’

  ‘Hire a man from the farm. I leave it to you. But I want that mare away by the end of the week. With that neighing I can hardly think. It’s almost worse than having a donkey in the field.’

  7

  A MOVE UP IN THE WORLD

  I WILL NOT dwell on the horse sale. It was like all such events, humiliating for the horses and a sad spectacle of misery and despair. In a great hall showing our paces before a circle of men we were auctioned to the highest bidder. Being one of the fittest there, I went for two hundred guineas. Many broken-down horses changed hands for as little as twenty, and with heavy heads and sad eyes were led away by new masters to end their days dragging carts through the hard streets.

  My new owner was a dealer, his yard like every dealer’s yard, smart on the surface, but dirty and dark if you looked deep into the heart of things. This story will be too sad for you to bear if I relate all the miserable tales I heard and the cruel scenes I witnessed, during my week’s stay there. One horse in particular stays in my memory, perhaps because she was grey and I have a weakness for greys; a mare called Moonlight, who was incurably lame in the off-fore and was therefore lamed in the near fore also, that she might not limp. Because she was frightened of motor cars and steam engines, Moonlight refused to leave the yard and much cruelty was employed to make her change her mind; bottles of water were broken over her head when she reared; red hot pokers pushed under her tail. All manner of cutting whips slashed her sides. But these only increased her fear, until her whole body was lathered with sweat, and foam lay about her mouth like milk straight from the cows’ udders.

  It was Moonlight who was first brought out when my future owner came to the yard, for she was sleek and lovely in appearance with a fine spirited eye and splendid carriage.

  And the Lady Angela, come with her brother, Lord Wareing, had said, ‘I need a horse, a beautiful horse, something that moves like a dream, a storybook horse.’

  ‘Got a beauty here, see that grey?’ said the dealer.

  ‘Lovely little mover, gentle as a lamb. Take first in any show. Here, George, trot her up and down for the lady. Come on, look slippy. Take a side-saddle lovely she does, a grand lady’s horse.’

  But poor Moonlight having two painful legs, made a bad showing and her stunted gait did not escape Lady Angela’s watchful eye.

  ‘The poor creature doesn’t step out very freely. What about that black? Can we see her move, please?’

  To and fro I went, head and tail up, longing to be away from the dealer’s yard.

  ‘She’s rather divine, Charles, isn’t she?’ said Lady Angela.

  ‘Looks a corker to me,’ said the young Lord Wareing. ‘But I shall see I am not present when you tell Papa you’ve bought a horse from a dealer’s place. Do you want me to try her first?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, certainly not. A saddle on her please.’

  ‘Never tried a side saddle on this horse, milady,’ said the dealer. ‘Though likely as not she will go well enough, being kind as a kitten.’

  ‘I ride astride,’ replied Lady Angela, a trifle haughtily. And indeed she was wearing breeches and boots partly obscured by her long-waisted riding coat.

  ‘What are you waiting for, George? You heard what the lady said. Clap a saddle on the mare,’ said the dealer, taking off his cap to scratch his balding head. ‘You’re the first lady we’ve had wanting to ride astride, though truth is not many ladies come here any time, I know it’s the modern way as you might say.’

  ‘My twin sister could be described as a modern woman,’ said Lord Wareing, smiling. ‘She’s a better rider than I am to be sure and she likes her horse to be a pal.’

  While a saddle was put on my back by George, the stable man, I took a long look at the young pair as they stood in the December sunshine, smiling and laughing like those who have never met grief or sorrow, and lovely they were, too; fair-skinned, green eyed, with hair the glorious russet of autumn beech leaves; their voices imperious, a little mocking but full of merriment, as though buying a horse was the biggest joke in the world.

  ‘A great mare this,’ continued the dealer, ‘only had her a week. Belonged to a doctor who’s switched to a motor car. Princess, they call her, Black Princess directly related to the famous Black Beauty. No fault in this mare, no vice, absolutely trustworthy, moves straight as a die.’

  Lord Wareing inspected my teeth, ran his hands rather inexpertly down my legs, then asked that I might be galloped so that my wind was well tested. Lady Angela mounted me. Her touch on the reins was light, but her seat in the saddle firm. On the bare field the last of the frost lay like sprinkled silver; the trees in the hedgerow stood still as tired men waiting for a lift in the carrier’s cart. I was glad to be out; I pranced and danced and when the time came galloped like a young racehorse.

  ‘She’s glorious,’ said Lady Angela, back at the gate again. ‘She goes like the wind.’ She ran her small hands along my neck, patted me. ‘How much?’

  ‘Three hundred guineas, worth every penny. You’ll never regret it.’

  ‘Too much,’ replied Lord Wareing. ‘The days are past when a good park hack fetched four hundred guineas, bicycles and motor cars have seen to that.’

  My breath rose in the air like clean white smoke. Two pairs of green eyes looked into the dealer’s crafty, scarred face. For a moment the world seemed to stand still.

  ‘Worth every penny,’ repeated the dealer.

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Lord Wareing, turning as if to go, ‘but that is more than we are prepared to pay.’

  ‘Not so hasty, not so hasty,’ said the dealer, ‘I could reduce it a little seeing it would be a good home, as you might say.’

  At this, Moonlight, who was tied in the yard gave a snort of derision.

  ‘It all depends by how much. I’m damned sure you didn’t pay more than two hundred for this mare, you dealers never go beyond that price as a matter of principle. Come on now, admit it.’

  ‘I’ll take two hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty,’ said Lord Wareing.

  ‘All right, seeing I haven’t had the mare long . . .’ said the dealer. ‘You’ve a bargain at the price, sir.’

  And so I came to be sold into the aristocracy.

  8

  THE LULL BEFORE A STORM

  I NOW MOVED to one of England’s most gracious houses. Built of mellowed stone it stood on the brow of a hill, looking down into a valley through which a silver river flowed like a satin ribbon. The stable yard behind the house formed a square with a tower and a clock above its arched entrance way.

  Lord Wareing’s father, the Duke of. . ., still kept a coach and four, with beautiful Yorkshire carriage horses, matching bays, named after stars: Venus, Mercury, Jupiter and Gemini. There was also a phaeton pulled by two grey ponies, Flotsam and Jetsam, and other vehicles too numerous to list. The bustle and busyness of the Duke’s well-run stable made the
doctor’s establishment seem like a grave in comparison. Here the routine was so regular that after only a few days I felt as though I had spent half my life within its walls. And I may as well say now that there is nothing a horse likes more than a good routine, which is very calming for the nerves, just as uncertainty and disorder are very upsetting.

  At five minutes to six each morning every pony and horse was looking over his loosebox door for the arrival of his groom. Mine was a twenty-five year old called Terence, a fair freckled man very quick and efficient at his work, but not at all affectionate; indeed he rarely patted me or the five other horses in his charge, but along with the other grooms he always appeared as the clock’s hands reached the hour of six, often with a joke on his lips.

  And how fine it was not to be tied! To be able to look over a loosebox door again to see all the happenings in the yard; the arrivals and departures; the tradesmen coming and leaving the back door; the servants busy about their work. This was a world in itself with its own rules. The stud groom, Jim Watkins, expected to be treated with respect and he gave nothing away. The local tradesmen tipped him well, so that he should bring the Duke’s work to them. It was said by the younger grooms that the saddler and farrier each gave him five pounds a year and the corn merchant ten. In addition he received many a tip from visitors who came to the Hall. He was said to be a religious man who read his Bible each night. His sons were well disciplined and his daughters demure and shy, but he was not liked because he kept all the tips to himself never sharing any of them with the under-grooms.

  There were many week-end parties, especially in the shooting season, for the Duke was a fine shot and his coverts full of game. The beaters were out early then, driving the beautiful pheasants up into the sky to meet their death from the gentry’s cartridges. We horses hated these times, for the bangs tried our nerves and the killing disgusted us. One of the ponies used to take a cart up into the coverts to bring the dead pheasants home, and a gelding called Nutcracker took the older gentlemen with their guns in a dogcart to a clearing in the woods.

  Once King George V came and there was a great fuss all because he was a king. The servants’ children put on their Sunday best clothes and some of them were given flags to wave. The grooms worked twice as hard as usually till our coats were like satin and you could see your faces in the coachwork. Yet to me the King looked a very ordinary man, bearded, balding, rather short and stocky with a stomach a little too large to be healthy, not nearly important enough to receive such homage. But he was a crack shot. He used three hammer guns with two men to assist him, one to load and one to cock them, and one day he brought down six hundred birds, rarely missing. Nutcracker heard the beaters say that there had been a record that day, a total of one thousand, one hundred and two birds. Heather, who pulled the cart was sickened by the rows of corpses, but the people on the estate looked forward to shoots, because they received most of the game; the rest being given to the Duke’s friends or stolen by the game-keepers to be sold to publicans and butchers.

  Lady Angela and her brother took no part in these shoots, which they called ‘ritual and barbaric slaughter’. Their friends were not sportsmen, but would-be authors and artists and their like, handsome young men and pretty girls, sometimes brave and reckless, nearly always indolent and spoiled. Lady Angela took a delight in telling people how she had found me without Jim Watson’s help. She called me ‘her little adventure’ and congratulated herself on her skill and judgement as a horse buyer, not seeing how deeply annoyed the stud-groom was by her behaviour.

  She took me out most afternoons sometimes with friends, sometimes alone, but rarely without a good hard gallop. Now and then she would race me against other horses urging me with whip and voice until I thought my wind would break and my heart burst. I wanted to please. Some other wildness entered into me and I was willing to gallop until I dropped, but although I could beat most of the Duke’s hunters on races of a mile or less, I was a loser on a longer course and regularly beaten by a young thoroughbred owned by the Squire’s son, a poet studying at Oxford University.

  So life galloped by; summer came and went; the great beechwoods were aflame with colour; autumn smells were everywhere: wet leaves, cobwebs on the hedges, Michaelmas daisies, chrysanthemums, roses, bonfires and the dying bracken. Cub hunting started and the grooms came earlier to our stables, but I stayed home because the twins did not hunt. Murmurings of war were in the air. Germany and the Kaiser were words now commonly used. Long serious conversations took place amongst the servants. What did it all mean? We horses hardly knew. The oldest of the Duke’s hunters, a great dun called Napoleon, had known a cavalry horse who had taken part in a war called the Crimean.

  ‘It’s a wicked thing, war,’ said Napoleon. ‘It brings nothing but grief. There’s no sense in it, no sense at all. Nothing but muddle and mistakes, cold, hunger and disease. A horse is lost. There’s nothing to cling to.’

  But war there was, next summer, and many farewells as men on the estate left to join the Colours.

  My Lady Angela’s friends still came to discuss ways to end the conflict and took us for many a long ride over hill and down dale, through deep woods and open plains, their conversations grave, and sometimes angry. They spoke of Russia and revolutions, a revolt by working people against their masters. They cursed Britain’s leaders as fools and talked of uniting the world’s artists, authors, musicians and philosophers, who would put an end to the useless slaughter of men to satisfy the needs of the world’s rich. I could not understand what all this meant. Strange names spattered their conversation: Rothschild, Litvinov, Lenin and Trotsky, Lloyd George, Haig and Joffre are just a few which lodged in my memory. Yet it seemed surprising to me that Lady Angela should so bitterly dislike the rich when she lived amongst them in a mansion and had never known want in her life.

  Winter came; the frost was hoary again on hedges, the fields lay like iron waiting for the blacksmith’s furnace to soften it. The sun often lay low in the sky, a great red ball behind the elms, powerless against the bitter cold. More men left. Our routine suffered. The Duke put his phaeton aside and Flotsam and Jetsam were found new homes with local children.

  The remaining servants were often sad. Terence, my groom, was said to have been killed at the Front. Posters started to appear in the village appealing for army volunteers.

  Jim Watson started to make nasty remarks about the Duke’s children. Why should the young Lord Wareing amuse himself with talk and parties, while others more humble went out to fight for their country in France?

  Then suddenly, without warning it seemed, both Lady Angela and her brother left, suffering, people supposed, a sudden change of heart. The servants talked of the young pair driving ambulances in France. And now all at once it was suggested that the Duke was unpatriotic to keep so many horses, for the army had lost many in the first disastrous battles in France and Belgium and needed more to replace them.

  A man came in uniform from the army to look round the Duke’s stables and Jim Watson, who had never forgiven Lady Angela for buying me without his advice, suggested that I would make a fine charger. ‘Plenty of spirit and tough and no use to us here, now that the young mistress is a V.A.D.’ he said. Money passed between this brisk broad shouldered moustached man from the army and Jim Watson; and overnight I suddenly changed hands. You see Napoleon was right; there is no security in war. Changes come suddenly without warning. One day I was a lady’s hack and the next on my way to a Remount Depot, the property of His Majesty’s army. It was very distressing.

  The Depot was a huge place with so many stables you lost count of them. The regular army horses were steady enough, but the rest of us were uneasy and irritable. On arrival each one of us was branded with a number on the hoof. The heavier horses also had their manes hogged, but, earmarked as an officer’s charger, I was spared the clippers. And I soon found myself with a master, a fair, open-faced young man with the unusual name of Augustine Appleyard, known by most of his friends as A.A.
He was a very fine young man with a loud infectious laugh, gentle hands and a kind nature, and I liked him from the moment I set eyes on him. He was a friend to me as well as a master, and I trusted him as I had trusted no one since I parted with Will Aken. Not knowing my name, Augustine decided to call me Emily after the brave suffragette, who had died for her cause under the hoofs of a racehorse in the Derby. (Oh how I pity that horse, for not one of us would wish to kill a human being.)

  ‘You have spirit, too, haven’t you, Emily? You are a good brave mare who will face everything. And we shall have to face death, Emily, you and I together. We may die together, you and I.’

  Often I believe, Augustine spoke his thoughts aloud to me, thoughts which he kept secret from all his fellow men. Now as he spoke he pressed his face against my coat; his hair smelt of soap and fresh straw and his skin of a young man much in the fresh air. His kindness and affection made me feel safe.

  Life now seemed to pass again at a gallop; days flashed by. Snowdrops pushed through the earth, their little flowers like tiny paper lanterns, forsythia shone like bright stars in cottage gardens.

  ‘It’s France for us, Emily. This is it,’ said my young master one February morning. ‘Tomorrow we go to strike a blow for England!’

  Sure enough the very next day it was all change again, and I found myself trembling and shaking in a railway truck racing across the Kentish fields bound for foreign soil. With me were four stouthearted artillery horses: Pioneer, Floss, Joey and Sampson. It was a long and tedious journey with many halts. But, soon after we smelt the sea, the train drew puffing and spitting to a halt, and we were hurried down the ramp into the soft grey light of an English dusk with the wind blowing from the south west and the waves throwing up gentle foam like the head on a glass of porter.