The Redeemed

by Tim Pears

  Lottie wished to caress the stallion too, but held back, letting her father enjoy the moment. Watching the two men, master and closest servant, so alike in physical stature, it occurred to her that with a slight calibration or adjustment of class relations they could be best friends. Or perhaps without, in fact, realising it, they actually were. She did not know. Perhaps the differences between them, of wealth, of power, of freedom and opportunity, were insignificant compared to what united them. Horses, the land, their love and care for herself, and her mother before her.

  The boys were in the yard. Alice implored them to keep away from the stallion. ‘Come back here,’ she cried as each boy took a step closer than his brothers. Lottie turned and looked behind her. At the end of the stable block a crowd had gathered. Word had spread through the house, the gardens, across the estate amongst those perambulating on their afternoon off. A maid, a gardener, farmers and their wives, children, ploughmen who worked every day with heavy horses, all stood and beheld the remarkable beast.

  *

  On the day following, Lottie returned to the stables after breakfast. There was no one around but she heard noises and followed them to the paddock. Herb Shattock’s eldest lad led the grey horse on a long rope, circling him. Arthur Prideaux and his head groom leaned against the upper pole of the fence, watching. Lottie joined them, and stood beside her father. She asked how long they had the stallion for. How many mares did her father intend him to cover?

  Her father turned to her with a grin upon his whiskered face. ‘I’ve not hired him, my dear,’ he said. ‘I’ve bought him. He’s ours. We’ll breed from him, but we’ll also hire him out. I’m convinced there’s nothing to compare with him in the entire West Country. Unless they’re deeply camouflaged.’

  ‘I had no idea, Papa,’ Lottie said. She shook her head. ‘I thought my father was a man of caution.’

  Arthur Prideaux removed his hat with his left hand and with his right wiped the sweat from his forehead. He nodded in the general direction of the big house. ‘Not a word to Alice. I’ve not told her yet. She still hopes to persuade me to make our main home in London, when George goes off to school. But once I’ve explained it to her, she’ll realise that with this new commitment to the stud farm, I couldn’t leave it in someone else’s hands. I mean, behold this fellow. This beautiful hot-blooded horse. I intend to come and regard him every day.’

  Lottie’s father was rarely so exuberant. He told her that the stallion had raced thirty times over five seasons. He’d won only four races. ‘But he was placed a further eighteen. If he’d won one or two more races I’d have had to pay a lot more for him, do you see? But he was often unlucky.’

  The lad led the horse towards the spectators, then turned and led him away, his hooves kicking up the dry dust. The lad was in his shirtsleeves and there was sweat at his armpits and on his back.

  ‘You can see,’ Arthur Prideaux said, ‘what outstanding straight paces he has.’

  ‘Abundance a bone, there, sir,’ Herb Shattock agreed. ‘Excellent feet an all.’

  ‘He’ll add size and bone to our lighter mares, and quality to the heavier ones.’

  ‘That he will,’ the groom agreed. ‘And he seems to have a good temperament from what I seen so far.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Lord Prideaux said. ‘I wish to ride him.’

  When Lottie turned to look at her father, she saw that Herb Shattock had done likewise. She herself wore, no doubt, a similar expression of consternation or dismay. Her father still gazed at the stallion with a benign grin. Herb Shattock narrowed his eyes. Lottie caught his gaze and glimpsed an infinitesimal shake of his head.

  ‘Is that a good idea, Papa?’ she said.

  ‘After lunch, Shattock,’ he said. ‘I shall ride him on the gallops.’

  ‘With all due respect, your lordship, do you not think he might be a bit high-strung for you, sir?’

  ‘I’ve ridden some of the meanest hunters in the Quantocks. With far worse tempers than this fine chap.’

  ‘But with nothin like his power, master. Look at him quiverin. Unless you hold him back. If you’re even able to. I mean, I don’t know as anyone could, the speed of him. You bain’t as young as you was, sir.’

  Arthur Prideaux chuckled. ‘You’re saying I’m too old, my dear Shattock?’

  The groom looked at a loss for words. ‘Maybe if Miss Charlotte wished to ride him for you, sir. Or there’s one a my lads I reckon I’d trust.’

  Lord Prideaux laughed as if his groom had cracked the best joke imaginable. ‘My daughter ride him,’ he said, ‘but not me?’ He turned and began to walk away, still chuckling. Half-turning, he said over his shoulder, ‘I shall come back after lunch. See if you can sort out a half-decent saddle.’

  5

  ‘Is it merely indigestion?’ James Sparke asked. ‘’Tis merely indigestion, yes? I think so.’

  The boar lay upon the straw of his sty.

  ‘I let ’em give ’im too many raw spuds, Miss Charlotte, that’s what it is, no?’

  Lottie stepped into the sty and examined the pig. He did not object.

  ‘I mean, ’tis not swine fever, that’s for sure. He ain’t so languid as all that and his skin ain’t cold, see?’

  Lottie had been halfway through her lunch when Gideon Sparke knocked upon the door of her cottage and stood there, sweating and breathless in the heat of the day. He apologised for coming on a Sunday. Perhaps he had run there, but he was an overweight man, of much the same age as Lottie, so it was possible he had only walked.

  ‘Please, miss,’ he said, ‘Father asks if you’ll come and look at our prize pig.’

  James Sparke held the tenancy of Wood Farm, the smallest on the estate. Though like all the others it mixed animal and arable, with varieties of each, he had a monopoly on breeding pigs. He sold a piglet or two for fattening to almost every farmer and labourer, and when the time for slaughter came he travelled around and did the job himself. The pigs were his main concern. He believed he had a gift for both understanding their character and tending to their welfare. He worried constantly that should he fail to reach his usual high standards the master might relieve him of his unique responsibility.

  As a rule James Sparke kept two boars and half a dozen breeding sows at any one time, as well as one or two of his own fattening pigs.

  ‘How long has he been so inactive?’ Lottie asked.

  ‘No more an a day,’ James Sparke said. ‘Two at most.’

  ‘Has he taken any food?’

  The farmer shook his head. His son Gideon watched from outside the sty. One or two other members of the family hovered there too. Whenever Lottie made a visit to a farm, she often found her diagnostic examination being witnessed by a small crowd.

  ‘If it was merely indigestion he would eat a little and would move about the field like the others.’

  ‘But those red blotches, miss.’

  ‘Symptoms, I believe, of measles.’

  James Sparke groaned. ‘No.’

  Measles was a parasitic disease caused by small bladder-worms in the substance of a pig’s muscles. On consumption by human beings in pork these developed into tapeworms. Measly pork was one of James Sparke’s worst fears.

  ‘Just because he has measles,’ Lottie said, ‘doesn’t mean the others have, but we’ll keep an eye on them. And separate him for the time being.’

  The farmer asked her what the treatment was, and she said that oddly enough it was much the same as for indigestion. ‘Add ten drops of croton oil to a small teaspoonful of sugar, and put this on his tongue. Give him some warm-water enemas if he needs them, which I imagine he probably does, and put some bicarbonate of soda in his drinking water. You might add some milk to it to tempt him. What’s the matter, Mister Sparke? Do you not have these substances to hand?’

  James Sparke was frowning. ‘I do, miss,’ he said. ‘It ain’t that. It’s just that I don’t believe he’ll let me put nothin in his mouth never mind his rear end. I do adore him but he’s a c
ussed beast and he don’t like me.’

  Lottie smiled. ‘Then he is a most ungrateful creature, Mister Sparke. Will he take it from Gideon here?’

  ‘He might, Miss Charlotte. The trouble is, I wouldn’t let Giddy nor no one else near him.’

  Lottie shook her head. ‘Get an old clog,’ she said. ‘Drill a hole in the end. Mix the oil and sugar in a solution of warm water. Press the clog into the pig’s mouth and pour the medicine in.’ Lottie knew how impatient she sounded but could not help herself. She doubted whether she would ever develop the soothing manner required of veterinary surgeons. She knew that she should be more indulgent of her patient’s owner’s foibles, and reassure him that he cared for his animal with unrivalled solicitude. But at least the more she asked James Sparke to do for his pig, the happier he would be. ‘Use a clog and he will swallow the medicine, and do so without choking.’ She turned to go. ‘Oh, and as soon as he begins to resume eating, mix one or two teaspoonfuls of both bicarb of soda and flowers of sulphur in his meal.’

  James Sparke nodded. ‘Mornin and evenin, Miss Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes. Both.’

  Lottie walked home from Wood Farm along a footpath that ran across a wheat field, her veterinary instruments in a rucksack on her back, her shirt damp beneath it. She wore a wide-brimmed hat that shaded her eyes from the full force of the sun. She reached out and tugged loose an ear of corn, and worked a grain from it with her thumb and forefinger. She put the grain in her mouth, and chewed it as she walked along, enjoying the nutty taste on her tongue.

  Lottie had planned to watch her father ride the grey stallion. James Sparke and his prize pig had taken two hours of her time. Perhaps, she thought, her father had come to his senses and let the stable lad ride instead. Or would let Lottie herself. Despite Herb Shattock’s declaration of her competence, the prospect frightened her.

  The ground on the path through the wheat field was hard as stone, and fissured with cracks. It was amazing how the crop thrived in the arid soil.

  There was no doubt that the farmers called on Lottie now more often than they ever had on a vet, for whose services they’d had to pay. Hers were free, though being proud men or perhaps married to proud women they paid her in kind. Items of food were delivered to her cottage. Joints of meat, fruit, vegetables, butter, cheese, eggs. Often she could not eat it all herself and took her bounty in turn to the big house and handed it over to the cook.

  It was equally not in doubt that under her ministrations there were already fewer animal fatalities, illnesses, contagious diseases. Lottie’s father had given his daughter an allowance to live on. Now they called it her salary and both of them were happy. Arthur reckoned this arrangement was enormously beneficial to the success of the estate. Word spread. An article about them had recently appeared in Country Life. Lord Prideaux was held up as a model landowner.

  Lottie walked past the empty paddock and through the spinney and up past the stable block. There was an almost buried sound of buzzing in the air, a hum in the background in the afternoon heat of the day. A crow rose from some shrubbery, croaking and squawking like one affronted by a rude remark and leaving in high dudgeon. Lottie gazed towards the gallops and saw a shimmering figure approaching out of the middle distance. She stood and watched. Through the haze, Herb Shattock led his own horse, a brown hunter of medium height, towards her. Then he altered direction, away from the stables, towards the manor house, and as he turned so Lottie saw something slung across the saddle. A dark object. It was the body of a man. His legs hung to the side Lottie could see, boots swaying slightly with the movement of the horse.

  She ran towards them. As she came closer Lottie called out, but Herb Shattock did not seem to hear her. Neither, it seemed, could he see her through his tears.

  They laid her father’s body on his bed. A boy was sent to fetch the doctor, another the vicar. While they waited, the valet Adam Score asked to undress his master and wash him and dress him in clean clothes, but Alice said they must wait for the undertaker. She did not seem shocked or saddened but rather enraged by what had happened, her jaw clenched, bunched fists white at the knuckles. Maids kept the boys away. The house was silent.

  Alice knelt beside the bed and took Arthur’s hand in hers and squeezed it and yelled once, furiously, then leaned against his body and wept. Lottie looked out of the window. She saw Herb Shattock walk towards the gallops accompanied by two of his stable lads. He carried something with him. At first Lottie thought it was a stick. Then she realised it was a rifle.

  She had once, in very different circumstances, dissuaded him from destroying a horse. She would not do so this time, and did not move from the window. She recalled that blue roan with a twisted gut, the vigil she had held in its loose box as it died in agony, how selfish she had been. She should have let Herb Shattock destroy the horse and held her vigil for it after death.

  Lottie recalled too the boy who had joined her and would not leave until after the roan had expired. When would Leo Sercombe return? He had said that he would, and she reckoned him to be a person of his word. Perhaps he had perished in the war, like so many. She did not think of him as often as she used to.

  No, Lottie thought, even if she could get there in time, she would not stay Herb Shattock from his plan of action. Instead she turned and walked to the bed and knelt next to Alice and put an arm around her shoulders and allowed herself to weep beside her.

  6

  The vicar told the congregation packed into the village church for the funeral of Arthur, Lord Prideaux, that in the midst of life we are in death. Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower. He fleeth as it were a shadow. And if the Lord God saw fit to take the master from us at the age of fifty-seven there must be some purpose to it, though he, a mortal priest, could not see it. He said that he wished to provide consolation to Lord Prideaux’s young widow, his three boys, his daughter, his friends, and all those who lived and worked upon the estate, not to mention their kin in the village. But he could not do so. Only the Lord God could. They must seek consolation from God, there was nowhere else. Put your trust in Him.

  ‘And now, Lord, what is my hope? Truly, my hope is even in Thee. Deliver me from all mine offences, and make me not a rebuke unto the foolish.’

  Arthur Prideaux’s coffin rested on trestles in the chancel. Despite the season, and the congregation packed inside, the church was musty and damp. Lottie could smell the candles too. She was not the only unwed woman in the church. Even all these years after it had ended, the absence of men lost in the Great War was evident.

  The atmosphere amongst the mourners was strange. Lottie glanced around. She understood that beneath the grief and sadness lay a thick sediment of fear. So many livelihoods relied upon the master. A hundred people on the estate, in the house, in the timber yard, on the farms. Others in the village, like the blacksmith and the wheelwright. Including Reverend Doddridge himself, for Lord Prideaux was patron of the living. All feared for their futures.

  Soon they would lower his coffin into the grave in the corner of the churchyard reserved for the Prideaux family, beside the plot holding Arthur’s first wife, Lottie’s mother. She imagined she would join them there one day. She looked at her three half-brothers. And presumably they would follow. One child after the other, time leading them like beasts in procession through the abattoir. It was impossible to imagine life in any other configuration than finite, mortal, doomed from birth to ultimate destruction. A more miserable scheme could not be imagined. Lottie looked up through the high windows. The sky was grey as the grey stone of the church. But the windows were oddly in flux, liquescent, as if the glass were reverting to the molten form from which it was once fashioned. Then all at once Lottie understood that, after these blue cloudless weeks, it was raining outside, water sliding down the long windowpanes.

  *

  Rain fell on the thirsty earth, but the surface was hard and impervious and so at
first water filled the streams, which overflowed and overwhelmed the field drains, or coursed across slopes or pooled in puddles. When the rain ceased, water still dripped from trees and buildings. The earth softened. It rained again and soil turned to warm mud.

  Some days later Lottie went to the stables for the first time since her father had died. Herb Shattock was not there. A lad was in the bothy but she did not bother him. She walked to the field and haltered her horse, Pegasus, a big grey gelding, and led him back to the stables. The day was hot, the sun shining then disappearing into white clouds, then coming out again. Lottie saddled up the horse and mounted him and rode out to the gallops. Although her grey gelding was nothing like the stallion, she could feel what power lay latent in his form as if for the first time. She asked the horse how fast he could go and urged and kicked him to make him find his limit. The grass was slippery and the turf sodden. She rode the horse hard. When they came back to the stables, woman and horse were both sweating, Lottie’s clothes splattered with mud and the grey gelding muddy too. She slipped her boots from the stirrups and dismounted, sliding to the ground and staggering backwards, exhausted.

  The stable lad appeared and came forward to help her if she fell but Lottie regained her equilibrium. When he asked if he should take care of the horse, she thanked him and said he could. Then she asked him where Herb Shattock was. He would not say.

  ‘Do you not know?’ Lottie persisted. ‘Or you know and refuse to tell me? Is he not well?’

  ‘He is well, miss,’ said the lad.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘You’d best ask her ladyship.’

  Lottie strode up from the stables. She felt the urge to run but restrained herself and so marched, breathing hard, to the house. She walked straight to the back yard and through the kitchen. She was aware of one or two people that she passed but only at the edge of her vision, outside her concern. She glimpsed them pause and watch, without addressing her.