Black Beauty's Family

by Josephine Pullein-Thompson

  France’s victory had left Master poorer in every way than he had been in earlier days and this irony ate into his soul and drove him to find solace in the brandy bottle.

  So on the way home he would usually slip into drunken slumber, and I could set my pace to suit my mood. If it was cool I would trot most of the way, but when the sun was fierce and bright I dawdled, even allowing donkeys to overtake me.

  My master’s farm was divided into narrow strips, each one cultivated as fully as possible all the year round. In the late afternoons I was tethered on the bits and pieces which were left over, along with his two cows. At night I was tied in a smelly stall, alongside his pigs, who were very noisy at times and reminded me of the gas masks. I was always harnessed or tied, never free, which was very irksome.

  On Sundays I took the Forels five miles to a grey turreted village on a hill, to see their relations. For these occasions Monsieur Forel would shave the grey stubble from his chin, don a suit and occasionally replace his black beret with a straw hat. Madame Forel would change into a slightly newer black dress which sported a little lace on the cuffs and collar. Sometimes she would take a lace shawl which she would wear over her head on the homeward journey when the sun had gone down and the blue light of evening drowned the landscape.

  As the weeks went by, I found this Sunday journey growing harder. The long climb up the curling grey road to the hilltop village seemed to drain me of strength. I found my breath coming quickly in gasps and every so often a harsh cough rose in my throat as the dry food, hard work and dust increasingly affected my wind. My body too was losing its beauty. Untended sores on my withers and back festered, my fetlocks swelled, my proud head carriage disappeared as my step became slow and reluctant. The days ran into one another with little respite. Dawn was no longer a joy but a summons to further toil. In summer the nights were always too short to revive me for my master worked me until the light had gone from the fields, and farrowing sows often kept me from the nocturnal doze so essential to hard-worked horses. I grew careless and clumsy, for as time wore on, I did not care whether I lived or died.

  One afternoon coming home from market I tripped, falling on my knees and breaking their skin. In England such a fall would have been considered a tragedy, for I was now broken-kneed, a grave condition because it meant that I could never again fetch a high price. But my French master was not at all upset, and I realised then that he intended to work me until I died. Indeed the poor man’s despair and apathy were so deep that he did nothing to tend my wounds. It was Big Ben’s master, a splendid young farmer, who defeated the flies that clustered on them, by simply coating my knees and all my sores with stockholm tar.

  My owner’s despair now entered into me and the cheerful willingness which had survived as part of my nature throughout all the terrors and misery of war disappeared. I became sour towards animals and humans alike. Leaning down one day I bit a little child in a pinafore who came to pat me as I stood waiting for my nosebag under the lime trees in the Square. I also kicked my owner’s dog, a miserable mongrel who spent much of his time barking at the end of a chain.

  A bitter winter came. The cold seemed to eat into my poorly covered bones, and my left eye, already irritated by dusty roads, was red and sore. Lice returned to my coat. Monsieur Forel shook powder along my back and mane and rubbed it into the roots of my tail to deal with these, muttering angrily in French. He even took to grooming me a little, perhaps because one or two men at the market had remarked on my poor condition. Indeed some of the horses that stood with me under the trees had improved during the summer and I was now one of the most decrepit looking in the group.

  Although at the time I hated my master and blamed the French character for my condition, looking back now I see that there were many Frenchmen who cared for their horses. Indeed Big Ben’s owner had two beautiful Percherons of which he was justly proud, and Monsieur Forel’s relations often rebuked him for neglecting my welfare and sometimes his nieces brought me sugar and carrots. Just as in England, many men here were kind to their animals, a sizeable number neglected them and a few were deliberately cruel.

  12

  THE END OF THE ROAD

  THERE IS AN old saying that it is always darkest before dawn, perhaps we should never despair, for we cannot know what forces are at work to save us from final disaster or early death. Fate is full of surprises.

  I was now without hope, convinced that I would be pulling my ill-fitting cart until I dropped, living forever in a country whose language and customs I did not understand. For the first time in my life I felt no joy at the coming of spring. The fresh green grass, the young leaves and first flowers no longer lightened my spirits. Yet the French countryside, recovering from the ravages of war, was beautiful; the skies each day as clear as crystal, the sun at noon a glory of gold and red. And at the time, unknown to me, rescue was almost at hand; a chain of events was leading me nearer home. Letters were being written on my behalf, men harassed in London and chivvied in France. I had become very important to two people on the other side of that grey stretch of water known as the English Channel, and if horses’ ears burned as humans are said to do, mine would have been red-hot.

  But my first indication of rescue came on one of those sleepy noontides when all the world seems still and the heat lies on hot cobblestones, so that dogs creep into doorways to take their midday naps. I was dreaming, too, my eyes half closed; the scent of wine, garlic, coffee and ripe melons in my nostrils; the drowsy flies busy around my eyes. And the English voice which broke this stillness was at first part of my dreams, and then it was real, and I saw that it belonged to a long-legged English lady who came striding across the square with head high and arms swinging in a way which could never belong to the French. Behind this lady was a tall thin girl in a cotton summer dress and a straw hat like a pudding basin, and behind her the postmaster, a fussy little man with a white moustache, gesticulating helplessly as though he had lost an argument.

  ‘Black,’ said the English lady. ‘No not cavalry, artillery, no, not a gun carriage horse, an officer’s charger. Noir cheval, noir. Out, Anglais. Ici?’

  She stood looking at me, her head on one side, her face oddly familiar.

  ‘I don’t know, this doesn’t look like an officer’s charger. Dear me, she looks more like a poor cab horse. But she’s the only black, isn’t she, and they said under the lime trees. These are lime trees, aren’t they, Rosemary?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure. They’re the same as in Granny’s London Square,’ the girl answered in a voice which reminded me suddenly of Augustine.

  ‘Well, come on, don’t be a mutt, pick up her hoof, and see if it’s stamped with a number. I wish this little man would go away. What a poor creature she is.

  The Postmaster was now joined by Big Ben’s master.

  ‘You are in difficulties, Madame, yes? I speak a little English, yes. Can I help? I try.’

  ‘Oh good, oh, thank you. We are looking for my late son’s horse, an artillery officer’s charger . . . You understand? You follow me?’

  ‘Yes, Madame. I buy horse from English army. Big horse. Here. And Monsieur Forel, he buy also, smaller horse, charger, yes? Charger. This one you have . . .’

  ‘At auction?’

  ‘Sorry, I do not understand it is too difficult for me.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said the English lady. ‘Come on, Rosemary . . .’

  ‘I do it for you, a minute.’

  Big Ben’s master had my leg up before you could say Jack Robinson and there was a cry of delight from the English girl when she saw the number on my hoof.

  ‘It’s Emily. Oh, Emily, we’ve found you.’ She flung her arms round my neck. ‘And now we shall keep you for ever, you shall never work again.’

  ‘My son wrote to me just before he was killed, I believe he had a premonition,’ went on Augustine’s mother for that is who she was, ‘saying that he had this wonderful mare, Emily.’

  ‘Emily, Emily, yes I believe the name
was in the cata-how do you say it?’

  ‘Catalogue,’ said Augustine’s mother rather sharply. ‘Now let me finish my story. My son wrote to say that if anything happened to him we were to see that Emily came back to England and was cared for in her old age. He said he owed his life to her, and that she had been his dearest companion. I’m afraid I thought at first, what sentiment! I did nothing. The letter lay in my desk, but the words haunted me and, after a year, I wrote to his fellow officer, Bellamy, who told me the mare had been auctioned somewhere in this part of France along with others in the regiment. After that it was a matter of getting round red tape, and then coming over here and talking to the local populace in my appalling French.

  ‘And now Madame you find. It is good,’ said Big Ben’s master, who clearly had understood very little of Mrs Appleyard’s statement. ‘Now I fetch Monsieur Forel, yes? Just a minute, I return.’

  Presently he came back with my master whose grasp of matters was somewhat handicapped by the cheap brandy he had been drinking. At last his ferret-like eyes lit up with interest.

  ‘Mon Cheval. Ah so, mon cheval. C’est bon. Combien, Madame?’

  ‘How much you pay?’ translated Big Ben’s master.

  ‘Ten pounds.’

  ‘Pounds, pounds, C’est impossible. Cette jument est bonne, tres bonne, compris, madame?’ The old man gazed up at Mrs Appleyard, his face like cracked leather, his eyes small and quick.

  ‘N’est pas vrai,’ said Big Ben’s master, sharply, pointing to my broken knees, my lean flanks and staring coat. Then he continued in rapid French; the two men moved away and Mrs Appleyard followed them. Before long money was changing hands, and I knew that I had been sold again, as swiftly and suddenly as the day I left the Duke’s Hall. My master was well pleased, although he continued to grumble as though he had lost a good horse too cheaply.

  Mrs Appleyard started to make inquiries about transport. Big Ben’s master said I could spend the night on his farm and he would find a lad to lead me to the railway station the next day. Quite a crowd had now collected, for the Appleyard’s foreignness was like a magnet to the people of this sleepy market town. Another horse was found to take my master’s cart home and Monsieur Forel was recommended to buy a mule to replace me, because they are hardier than horses.

  I spent an agreeable night in a stall next to Big Ben who was pleasant though a little strange owing to the shell-shock.

  A few days later after two wearisome train journeys I was again on a steamboat tossing on the English Channel. I came out of the hold of the ship into the soft watery light of an English sky. There were white cliffs and customs houses, and Englishmen with bright cheeks and soft, slow voices. And I swear the air was different, the meadows greener, the trees more beautiful than anywhere else in the world.

  But when ashore, travelling from boat to train and from a village railway station to my new home, I saw that this was not quite the same England as I had left in 1915. The ladies’ skirts were short now, their legs visible; maid servants no longer curtsied to their betters, black bowlers and homburgs had replaced the top hats and deer stalkers. Only old men still boasted side whiskers, beards were few and I saw several young men with cheeks smooth as pumice stones.

  Walking through the English dusk, I passed again a carrier’s cart pulled by an old grey mare. I saw two great Shire horses bringing a felled oak from a forest on a long wagon, cars buzzing through the drizzling rain like grounded wasps. And there was electric light in many shops, tremendously bright, much stronger than gas. Here and there we passed petrol pumps and once a great bus, very frightening with lights burning inside its wooden frame.

  So at last I came to my new home, a manor house of soft red brick, flanked by beeches, where Augustine Appleyard had grown to manhood.

  It was a long wet summer’s day, grey as the guns belching fire and death over those sad and broken fields of France, grey as the soldiers’ faces after a long battle, grey as Monsieur Forel’s despair. And yet through all the greyness I now saw hope, quietness and peace. Such was the tranquillity of the house and its paddocks, the atmosphere created by all the people, the dogs and horses, the hens, yes even the hens, which had known happiness in the shadow of the house and the trees which were so much older than any of us.

  A horse knows when he enters a yard whether or not it is a place of happiness or misery; the odours of cruelty and kindness are quite different from one another. So I had entered the dealer’s yard with misgivings and the Lady Angela’s with a light and easy step, so now, walking under the arch over which the red roses spread with wild abandon, I knew that I had come home, for the buildings seemed to encircle me, to protect me from all horrors of the past and the future, almost to greet me as a friend. Yet there were no horses here now that Augustine was dead.

  The paddocks were let to a sturdy farmer, a man with a broad, jovial face and eyes like violets faded in the sun, a man with thirteen children and a wife with coal-black hair, and dark flashing eyes, and plump arms adorned with bangles that jingled as she moved. This farmer kept two Clydesdales, lovely big bays, called Punch and Judy with beards of dark hair and long whiskers and splashes of white like spilled milk running down their faces. Beside these gentle giants I felt narrow, small and old. My terrible experiences, my life in foreign lands seemed to set me apart from ordinary, English horses. I felt withered by my part in the war, by events too awful to relate to these kind simple creatures, who had never known a cruel word or deed. But the Apple-yards bought me a donkey to keep me company while Punch and Judy were at work, a little biscuit-coloured fellow with a black list down his back and the mark of the human Christ’s yoke across his shoulders. They called him Daniel. Donkeys are the holy men amongst us horses; around them hangs an aura of quietude that brings peace to the most agitated of us.

  So, now that I am at the end of my story, I want you to picture me under the beeches with Daniel, Punch and Judy, a fatter Princess with a coat sleek as a panther’s paw, hoofs well trimmed, eyes bright. At the creosoted five-barred gate stand Augustine’s parents, his mother with all the elegance of an ageing greyhound, his father of wider, squarer build, a man smelling of tobacco, whisky and tweeds, rather loud-voiced, a trifly lazy I suspect, but kindly. Rosemary, grown gawkier still, with bobbed, fair hair, observant grey eyes and Augustine’s wide, frank smile. They are looking not at me, nor the donkey, nor the Clydesdales, but at someone much smaller and newer to the world; a little being lying beside me, a blue roan, who may turn darker or lighter as the weeks pass, a little body which slipped out of me so easily without help then waited for my tongue to break the envelope and set her free. She has, this little foal of mine, great eyes under lashes black as night, a stumpy tail like a scrubbing brush and long legs like stilts. I hope she will be grey like her father, Harvest Moon. Miraculously, unbelieveably my dream has come true. The Long, Long Trail, in the song the soldiers sang, has led me to home and a longing satisfied.

  The farmer joins the Appleyards; his wide, country face creased in smiles. It was he who brought Harvest Moon to me, ‘She’s getting old, but it’s worth a try,’ he had said. For the farmer only has to see an animal to want it to multiply. His yard is full of puppies, chicks and kittens; his meadows with calves and next year Judy is to have a foal. He is looking forward to his own grandchildren.

  ‘Will she be big enough for me to ride?’ asks Rosemary, ‘for I mean to learn you know.’

  ‘What the little-un? Don’t you worry, she’ll make fifteen two. That’s a grand foal, that is.’

  I turn then to nuzzle my foal, and I hope that there will be no wars for her, no dealers, no purges, bleedings and restoratives, that she will live here for ever in the shadow of the beeches; her life passing gently and kindly, her good nature and looks winning admiration and affection everywhere.

  BLACK VELVET

  Christine Pullein-Thompson

  Black Beauty’s Family

  1

  A FAIR BEGINNING

  I WAS BO
RN on a farm. It lay in a valley with gentle green hills on each side topped by tall trees. The fields were fenced by high hedges so there was always plenty of shelter from driving rain and clumps of trees gave us shade in summer.

  My mother was dark brown with a beautiful head and a large, kind eye. Our master called her Ladybird and she was a great favourite with him. He rode her to hounds and about the farm. Sometimes on market days she pulled the high-wheeled trap.

  There were five other horses on the farm, Merlin and Mermaid, the Shire horses, which pulled the plough and the wagon at harvest time. They were grey with huge fetlocks, and so large that even my mother, who was sixteen hands high, looked small and slender beside them. There was Rosie, a cheerful chestnut mare who did all the odd jobs, carting mangolds and kale to the cattle in winter, helping out when times were busy by pulling the harrow and the hay rake at harvest time. She was used on market days as well when the cart was needed instead of the trap. She did more work than any of the other horses on the farm, but I never heard her complain. Smallest of us all was Sinbad, the little piebald pony which our master’s children rode, and who pulled the governess cart when our mistress went shopping or visiting friends.

  We were a happy bunch of horses, well-fed and kindly treated. I was the youngest and came in for a good deal of teasing; but my mother always took my side, and I knew my master was proud of me for I heard him say once, ‘You’ve really produced a good ’un this time, Ladybird. He’s the best looking colt I’ve seen for a long time.’

  And though my mother told me I was wrong to listen to what was being said, she also told me that my father was one of the best looking horses in England.