by Tim Pears
‘My lad here’s keen to keep. I’ve told him there’s likely no future in it but he won’t listen. Will you, Stan? You could walk about with this boy and he’ll show you where a fox has made his spring upon a rabbit. A pheasant without its head, what’s done that, Stan?’
The boy had been watching the men intently as they spoke. Now, required to speak himself, he looked away. ‘An owl,’ he said quietly.
‘That’s it, an owl gone bad. And how’s about if just the brains is gone?’
Again Stanley looked elsewhere. ‘Jackdaw, more an likely.’
Sid nodded, and turned to Leo. ‘See? Knows his stuff already. Only just turned eleven. I swear he’s better an me with his imitations. If I’m after a stoat or a weasel, Stan here can imitate the shrieks of a dyin rabbit someit lovely, bring the vermin out for me to shoot. I’ve took im out at night, though Gracie don’t like it, do you, me lover?’
Gracie said, ‘I do not.’ She said to Leo, ‘What if he meets a bad ’un?’
‘I’d run along, don’t worry. Us’d hide and run along, Stan, right? And you and your sister better run along now. Go on.’
Stanley whispered, ‘Can I show Uncle my ferret?’
‘You heard right, Leo,’ Sid said. ‘He’s got his own ferret. No, boy, show him later. You git on to school now.’
The children rose obediently and their mother too rose from the table and tended to them.
‘That’s when I like it best,’ Sid said. ‘At night. It gets a hold over you, so I’ll allow it’s got a hold over our Stan.’
‘What’s got a hold?’ Leo asked.
‘The land,’ Sid said. ‘The creatures.’ He looked out through the window. ‘The whistling flight a plovers. Or hedgehogs fightin, makin sounds like the moans a children. Night walkers, I call ’em. They gets to you.’
Gracie returned to the kitchen. She brewed the men more tea and ushered them into the front room, then left them to their conversation or reminiscence. Each man sank into an armchair. There were glass ornaments on the whatnot. An embroidery sampler, framed and hung upon the wall, held an array of birds and leafy decoration, and was signed in stitchwork: By Gracie Crump, aged ten.
‘Mother,’ Leo said, once they were alone. ‘Kizzie. Where are they? Do you know?’
‘I was waitin for you to ask that,’ Sid said. ‘They went over into the Somerset Levels. Old man got a job on a farm there. Still there far’s I know. Mother writes me Christmas time.’
‘And our sister?’
‘You’ll not believe it, Leo. Her’s a teacher.’
‘I do believe it.’
‘And not just with little tykes, in a local school. Her’s up in Bristol now, teachin older ones. Her’s done real good.’
Sid took a cake of plug tobacco from his pouch and with his penknife he cut it. The larger part he returned in the pouch to the pocket of his jacket. The smaller part he rubbed in the palm of his left hand with the palm of his right as he spoke more of their family. Leo rolled a cigarette. He asked how things were on the estate. Where were the Prideauxs?
‘Remember the Wombwell lads?’ Sid asked.
Leo nodded.
‘Their ma, Florence? Had the ducks?’
‘I do.’
‘Miss Charlotte lives in their old cottage.’
Leo was not sure he understood. ‘Why?’
Sid lit his pipe. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘The big house is empty most a the year.’
‘I need to see her,’ Leo said. ‘I have to tell her somethin.’
‘She might not be in,’ Sid said. ‘Her’s always vettin on one farm or another, racin round on her motorcycle. It’s her who rents out the shoots. Estate manager, she is.’
Leo nodded. He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and said, ‘Well, I better be lettin you get to work.’ He rose from his chair.
Sid stood too. ‘You stayin?’
‘I intend to,’ Leo told him. ‘Hereabouts a while.’
9
Lottie Prideaux rode her motorcycle to the farm of Percy Giffard in the Quantocks. His father had been a friend of her father’s. She remembered the bumbling old man from shoots. He was a gun of notorious inaccuracy. Those placed on either side of him begged to change position.
The colonel had died. His son Percy inherited the farm and came home reluctantly from London. He had no instinct for farming and left it to his foreman, but fell in love with horses and spent his time hunting with others or hacking on his own, without learning very much about either the art of equitation, it seemed to Lottie, or the animals themselves. His three children had a pony each. His wife languished in the role of a country squire’s wife, and her maids ran the house as they wished.
Percy had a big chestnut mare of which he was particularly fond. She was presently in foal. He escorted Lottie to the stables.
‘We’ve been giving her bran and linseed mashes,’ he assured her. ‘Three or four times a day.’ He paused Lottie with a hand on her arm and pointed to their right. ‘And we let her exercise in that field now. Removed her from the small paddock, as you advised, where the ground could get soiled and stale.’
As they came into the yard they saw the Giffards’ groom lead an old pony out of the small barn. ‘That’s the quiet old girl we put in with her,’ Percy said. ‘Retter there says she’s due any day. Her udders are swollen.’
The groom saw them and hitched the pony to a gate and trotted over. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Miss. Foaling’s started.’
‘Righto,’ said Percy Giffard. ‘Good timing, Retter. Well done.’
They strolled to the door of the barn and looked in. Percy Giffard gasped. ‘Good God,’ he said. There, well bedded down with straw, the chestnut mare was heaving herself up from the ground, with part of the foal clearly emerging from her.
‘For God’s sake,’ Percy said. ‘Do something, man.’
The chestnut mare lay down again in the straw.
‘Help her,’ Percy ordered.
The groom unbolted the lower door and began to pull it open. Lottie shifted her foot and blocked the door.
‘What do you plan to do?’ she asked the groom. ‘As far as I can see from here, the foal’s forefeet are under its chin, as they should be.’
‘I’ll grab a hold of it, miss,’ the groom said. ‘Give ’em forelegs a good pull.’
‘You are more likely to tear the ligaments or dislocate the bones of the foal than help the mare.’
The chestnut mare once more staggered to her feet. Perhaps the foal was a little further on in the process of its birthing, but not much.
‘We can’t just do nothing, Charlotte,’ Percy said.
‘We watch,’ Lottie told him. ‘She might appear to be in distress but she’s almost certainly not, really, and neither is the foal. Not yet anyhow.’ She nodded to the groom, Retter. He let go of the door and Lottie closed it and slid the bolt back into place.
When the chestnut mare lay back down, the upper parts of the foal fell awkwardly on the straw.
‘She’ll crush it or smother it,’ Percy said, but they could see this was not happening.
The mare lay, breathing hard. Then she once more rose, and stood, and, as they watched, the foal shifted a little further down and out of the mother. Then all of a sudden it came slithering loose and free, with an audible suck and then a plop, and it flopped upon the straw.
‘Thank God,’ Percy Giffard said.
They watched as the mare bent and licked the newborn foal. Lottie asked the groom if he had string. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a coil of brown twine and handed it to her. Lottie took a knife from her own pocket and opened it and cut two lengths of string, each some inches long. She gave the coil back to Retter, then let herself into the barn, holding the door open for the groom to follow.
‘Mind her for me, will you?’ Lottie asked.
The umbilicus still connected the foal to the mare. While the groom made soothing noises to the horse, Lottie tied the pieces of string tight around the birth cord, an
inch apart, some six inches from the foal. Then with her knife she cut the cord in between the ties.
The groom told the chestnut mare what a clever beast she was, and what a handsome colt she had brought forth into the world. The mare seemed to display a certain quiet pride in her achievement, or so it seemed to Lottie. She had noted this often. Perhaps it was an illusion that human admirers ascribed to the animal’s accomplished labour. She knelt on the straw and studied the foal to make sure that his nostrils were clear, not blocked by birth matter, his breathing unimpeded. Having done so, she rose and stepped back, for the foal was already attempting to struggle to its feet.
Lottie let herself out of the barn and stood beside Percy Giffard, watching the foal climb to its feet and stagger then fall back on the straw. He lay there with a look of surprise on his small face, as if things out here were not as he’d expected them to be. Then he attempted to rise once more.
‘Determined little chap, isn’t he?’ Percy said.
Lottie left him watching the newest member of his stable, with his groom, and went to have a look at the others. The ponies were in a field, grazing. Lottie walked among them and studied them and judged them to be sound. Then the groom’s lad came riding Percy Giffard’s chief hunter, a big black horse. Lottie walked across to block his way and the lad slowed the horse.
‘Been exercising him?’ Lottie asked.
‘Yes, miss,’ the lad said.
Lottie stroked the horse as she studied him. ‘He’s a fine animal,’ she said. Then she stopped and said, ‘What’s this blood here at his lips?’ She wiped the horse’s mouth and the blood on her fingers was fresh.
The lad slipped his boots out of the stirrups and lifted the reins and dismounted, carrying the reins to the front of the horse. ‘Mister Retter put the prick-pad on ’im,’ he said. ‘He’s been leanin to the left, see?’
‘What prick-pad?’ Lottie asked, but she knew. They walked the big hunter back to the stable yard. The lad replaced the bridle with a head collar. Lottie found the home-made device that the groom had placed inside the ring of the snaffle on the left-hand side of the bridle. She studied it. The device consisted of tin-tacks stuck into a small round wad of leather, their points projecting through the leather and pressing against the lips of the horse.
Lottie walked to the barn. Percy Giffard and the groom turned in her direction. She carried the bloodied piece of leather in her palm and held it out to them.
‘Aye, the prick-pad. What I told you, sir,’ Retter said to his employer, ‘to cure his inclination.’
‘That’s right,’ Percy said. He turned to Lottie. ‘The damned animal is leaning to one side every time I ride him.’
‘This is a cruelty, not a cure,’ Lottie said. ‘If your hunter is leaning to the left, Percy, there must be a cause. Possibly in his right foreleg. More likely in his mouth.’
‘Aye, miss,’ Retter said. ‘I’ve studied his leg, like you say. Can’t find nothin wrong.’
‘And his mouth?’
Retter grinned. He held up his left hand. The top of the index finger was curtailed, just above the knuckle. ‘I’m not as keen as I once were on stickin my fingers in a horse’s mouth,’ he said. ‘Them molars can get razor sharp.’
Lottie frowned. ‘That sounds extremely unusual,’ she said. ‘You were unfortunate.’ She turned and walked away. She glanced back once and saw the two men bent towards each other, sharing some wordless communication about her wider knowledge or abrupt manner. Well, to hell with them. From her motorcycle pannier she took certain implements, and walked back to the yard. When she reached the two men, who still stood watching the newborn foal, she held up a metallic contraption and said, ‘This is a mouth-opening bridle.’ To Retter she said, ‘Come and watch, see how it is used.’
The lad had tied the black hunter’s head-collar rope to a ring and removed the saddle, and was rubbing the sweat off him. Lottie said that she would rather study the horse after he had been fed, but she did not have time, they would have to do it now. She asked the lad to fetch salt, and also to light the brightest lantern they possessed.
The mouth-opening bridle consisted of two steel platforms, which fitted round the hunter’s front teeth. She dipped this bridle in the bowl of salt. When she introduced it, the horse licked the salt, and allowed the strange implement into his mouth.
‘The salt will soothe him,’ Lottie explained, ‘and also numb his gums a little.’ She told Percy that unlike humans’, a horse’s teeth do not stop growing. Fortunately, the grinding of their upper and lower jaws in mastication wears the teeth down and keeps them at a correct level. If a tooth is damaged, however, its opposite number may keep growing.
The horse licked the salt. Then Lottie inserted a ratchet between the platforms and, by turning it, pushed the upper and lower front teeth apart. She asked the lad for the lantern, which he had lit. In the open air its light was negligible, but when she held it close to the horse’s mouth it added a little illumination. She handed it to the lad. Retter stroked the horse. Lottie invited him to step closer and see what she saw.
The groom peered into the hunter’s mouth.
‘Do you see there?’ Lottie asked. ‘On the right-hand side. The upper molar there has grown too long. No doubt the corresponding lower molar has been broken. By a stone in the grass or suchlike.’
The groom nodded, frowning.
‘I don’t doubt the overgrown molar has caused a cut or sore on the inside of the cheek. That is what’s causing his inclination.’ Lottie had laid her instruments in their cloth upon the cobbles of the yard. Now she bent and unrolled the cloth and selected a rasp. This she dipped in salt as she had the bit, and introduced into the horse’s mouth from the side, and let it lie there, holding it by its handle. Again the horse licked the salt, and bit the rasp, and lost his fear of it. Then Lottie filed the tooth down. She told Percy that a horse’s teeth were not hard and could be filed like bone. It took her less than five minutes. When she had finished she asked the groom if he had rasps.
He said, ‘One or two.’
Lottie suggested that Percy let Retter buy a mouth-opening bridle like this one. ‘Care of a horse’s mouth is as important as care of his feet. Something like this,’ Lottie said, taking the prick-pad from her pocket, ‘is more likely to create a fresh vice than cure one.’ She asked the groom if she could trust him to remove the mouth-opening bridle, if he had watched her and was capable of reversing the operation.
Retter tightened his lips and said, ‘A course.’
While he proceeded, Lottie crouched and put her rasp back in the cloth and rolled it up. Percy Giffard invited her to the house for a drink, saying his wife would wish to see her, but Lottie said that she could not. She took the bridle from the groom and walked back to her motorcycle.
10
When Lottie Prideaux had first ridden the motorcycle across the estate, every animal was spooked, but she fancied that they were growing used to it. Other vehicles with internal combustion engines, with all their snarling racket and sudden loud reports, had appeared. James Sparke at Wood Farm had recently bought the first tractor.
Light showers of rain had settled the dust on the lanes, and now the grey clouds were breaking up, blue sky revealed here and there above them.
Leo Sercombe sat on a bench outside the Wombwells’ old cottage. When he heard the petulant whine of the bike, he stood. Soon motorcycle and rider appeared. He watched the rider dismount, yank the bike onto its stand, take off her goggles.
Lottie unstrapped the panniers and lifted them off the bike and carried them up the path. When she glanced up and saw the man outside her home she slowed, and came to a halt some three or four yards away. They stood looking at each other in silence. Lottie studied the man for a long time. Then she said, ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’
Leo nodded. ‘It is.’
Lottie shook her head. ‘I knew it was.’ She smiled. ‘I did know you would come back. One day. And so you have.’
Leo saw
her turn pale, the blood fading from her face. She stepped past him and sat upon the bench. She leaned back and closed her eyes. Leo waited. After some time Lottie opened her eyes and sat up.
‘For a moment it struck me that you were not real,’ she said. ‘That you were some kind of visitation. Forgive me.’
‘Perhaps I am,’ he said. ‘And you was right. I mean, I’m alive, but I sometimes wonder if I really is. How I survived. If I am all here.’
Lottie patted the seat beside her and said, ‘Won’t you sit down?’
‘Thank you,’ Leo said. ‘But I must tell you something first. I have decided. If you wish it, I shall work for you and your husband.’
Lottie frowned. ‘I have no husband.’
Leo looked away. Then back. ‘I shall work for you and your children.’
Lottie smiled. ‘I have no children, Leo.’
He looked at the ground. His hands were clasped together. ‘I am might sorry,’ he said, ‘for your loss.’
‘What loss?’
‘You had a child.’
‘I did not.’ Lottie put her hands out to the sides. ‘I do not.’
‘I saw you,’ Leo said. ‘I came here on leave from the Navy. Ten year ago. I saw you playin with your child on the lawn.’
‘With my father’s child,’ Lottie said. ‘It must have been one of my brothers. My half-brothers.’
Now it was Leo’s turn to feel unsteady and so he took up the invitation to sit. Lottie told him how her father had married Alice Grenvil, and with her produced three sons. How he had died, thrown from a horse. How Alice and the boys had moved to London and came down here infrequently, their summer residence a brief visit.
‘I imagine she would like to be shot of it,’ Lottie said. ‘But she has to wait until James is of age. So I manage the estate. I don’t do a great deal. The farms pretty much look after themselves, although we had to sell your old one, Manor Farm, to pay death duties after Papa died.’
She asked what Leo was doing. He told her he was living for the moment on the farm of a man called Wally Luscombe. Lottie pondered this information.