by Alex Miller
And meanwhile the black horse is leaping and rearing around, threatening to pound Alsop into a stone wall any second. And the major himself only just staying up there, reefing and jerking on the reins, ripping the bit backwards and forwards as if he’s riding a one-wheeler for the first time.
A spectacle! Alsop, sixty years old, wrinkled, skinny, got up in the garb of the local gentry, living out some crazy idea here in Tiger Westall’s yard! All the way from the other side of the world. Paying a social call. Being a trick rider. Something! An Australian horseman in fancy dress prancing around on Exmoor. Out of a book, this bloke. A tourist!
The Tiger’s the first one to wake up and he starts yelling and waving his stick. Trying to get in a jab without coming into danger. A dwarf attacking a giant! ‘Get on out of my yard, you mad bastard!’ Something like that. Incoherent. Okay to sell this fancy prancer hay and milled oats and one thing and another at twice the going price! Laugh at him behind his back. Dig your neighbour in the ribs when you see him turned out with the Staghounds. Terrific! But the Tiger’s not going to put up with this. You can see that.
I’m enjoying it.
I’m hoping the Tiger might get a bit trodden under foot.
The bull takes an off-hand look around at all this capering and yelling and he tosses his head and walks straight into his pen. Going for the honeyed sugar beet without any more fuss. Morris is in after him in a flash and has him chained up again.
Alsop’s off the horse by now and he and the Tiger are working something out. A bit of heat from Tiger, but after all, this man’s got money to spend and there’s no real harm done. I’m ordered over to hang on to the horse while they go into the house for a drink and a chat to settle it all up. Alsop greets me by my first name but I pretend I don’t hear him. I’m glad to see the back of him. Tiger’ll fix him up. And that’ll cost him a pound or two one way and another. Still, he’s ripe for it. He’d be over at the cottage attending Morris’s card nights, this bloke, if Morris weren’t a bit too cagey for him. He’s a dreamer. That’s clear.
Morris comes to the door of the bull pen and stands in the sunlight and rolls a smoke. His back to the Diplomat. Everything under control. Taking his time. Getting his reward now. Idling. Enjoying the moment of leisure while he attends to the details of his own pleasure. He doesn’t look across at me. Not on this occasion. He’s no help when it comes to horses. He’s not interested in this impressive entire that I’m hanging onto. Tractors. Motor cars. He knows all about them. Machinery. That’s his idea of what it’s all about. Given half a day off he’ll follow the hunt from the front seat of his motor car with a pair of binoculars. That’s the way to do it, according to Morris. Stay dry and comfortable. Never far from a thermos of tea, and if things don’t work out you can head home without any fuss and bother. That’s the way he goes hunting. His wife beside him. They’re very close those two. There’s a lot I don’t know about them. It’s another world. And they keep it closed. But horses are his blind spot. And this animal of Alsop’s doesn’t impress him. He doesn’t want to know about it. Anyone else would come over and start theorising about breeding and condition and schooling and all that stuff. But not Morris, he wanders away after a minute, down to the orchard to take a look around.
I’m left here holding the stallion on my own. Like Diplomat, I can see there’s no fear in this animal. Energy! Lots of energy. And maybe a touch of insanity too. But no fear. He’s shivering, a continuous tremor running over the surface of his skin. Prepared for anything. Ready to go. So I decide to walk around with him. Something to do. Show him the place.
He can kill me if he wants to. The decision is his. He’s a big energy-packed aristocrat stepping alongside me. Keeping the reins loose. Not hanging back and waiting to be led, not waiting to be told what to do. None of that. Not plodding along behind me but right here next to me. Head up and alert. Intelligent. He’s not going to miss anything. Wanting to check it all out. Wanting to know where he is and what it all amounts to. He has a curiosity in him that alerts me too. A matter of paying attention. Keeping my mind focused.
We go along, from one end of the yard to the other. He stares into the bull pen, nostrils working, eyes seeking it all out in the half-light of the interior where the massive bulk of Diplomat is imprisoned.
Shoulder muscles just brushing against me as he breathes.
Let’s move on!
His decision.
What’s over there? I go along with him and he hurries me, energy flowing through him, moving me faster than I want to go comfortably, making me keep on my toes. Then he stands and stares at the cow. She’s chewing again. Her back still arched. Big brown eyes dull and dreamy. Set for eternity! Kabara lets out a tight, aggressive grunt and moves away sharply, almost wrong-footing me, his head going down without warning; snuffling the cobbles, grunting and blowing.
We complete the circuit and stand in the middle of the yard. Surveying the scene. Has he missed anything? He is still. His hard-muscled shoulder leaning against me. And it begins to seem to me that he doesn’t mind being with me. I can feel it. The way he’s looking out and away from the two of us. And not peering down sideways at me, suspicious of what my intention might be. I try returning the pressure of his shoulder, wondering how conscious he might be of my touch. I’m not pushing at him, just holding a pound or two firmer. He’s a sire! Words like noble, beautiful, heroic, they’re making sense. I’m beginning to see what all the fuss is about.
It’s something new to me.
Tiger’s two chestnut hunters don’t have it. They are just horses. Nobility doesn’t come into it with them. H for horse. That’s about it with Tiger’s geldings. I should know. No comparison to this thing of Alsop’s. May as well be another species. Horseradish.
It’s looking after Tiger’s hunters that’s my special job. My particular area of responsibility you might say. The horses belong to me the way the machines belong to Morris. And the Tiger tutors me himself. It’s not all fun and games. Clipping, shoeing, grooming, feeding, exercising, cleaning out, polishing the gear, worming, whatever. You name it. He likes to turn out just right on hunting days. He doesn’t want anything left to chance. Hunting is his reward in life for all the skimping and grinding. Hunting the wild red deer. They’ve been doing it here since the Anglo-Saxon kings were around. It’s not something they just decided on yesterday. It’s in their blood. And the Westalls have been here forever, so when it comes to his hunters the Tiger watches me every inch of the way. Criticising mostly. Offering abuse. Sarcasm. Looking for perfection where it isn’t to be found. If he says nothing I know I’m doing extra well.
I do the best I can. But perfection is not something you can get from those geldings.
Kabara, I’m deciding, is another story. I can feel the quality of this beast standing next to me. It’s got something to do with ancestry. Breeding. Lineage. Stuff like that. Oats and polishing and clipping and grooming won’t fake it.
The horse and I make the decision together and walk over to the gate. We stand staring down the road. Just looking. I have read in an old book on venery that men are better when riding, more just and more understanding, and more alert and more at ease . . . The sun is warm on my back and the day is calm. Going on towards noon now, and everything quiet down the road.
But that was last April when, despite the warmth of the day, there were still packed scallops of dirty snowdrift left out in the sunless hollows of Codsend Moor and Dunkery Hill. Remnants of the vicious winter that had gone before. And the strange sight of the new shoots of the deer sedge and the dark green cotton-grass poking up through flutes of melted ice, where the peat bogs had frozen to a depth of eight inches and more during the February blizzard.
Alsop and Kabara both a world away then from where they are now.
Alsop and his wife got smashed up coming back from Taunton at high speed one night in July. Midsummer and living it up. Carefree! Driving like a young man and the T junction at Handycross slipping his mind. So t
hey hit a four-hundred-year-old wall. Which wouldn’t have happened to a local. No matter how carefree. A reflex swing of the wheel at that point and a local would have gone past laughing. One of the dangers of being an alien. A local’s always got something extra on you. They can feel the shape of the country in their bones. And they can afford to wait for outsiders to make a mistake. Saying nothing. Being there and waiting. Like the wall. Six foot thick. A remnant from a sturdy past and Alsop speeding along with his foot held confidently on the throttle as if he were still in the emptiness of Australia.
She’s probably going to keep going till she’s a hundred, but he’s finished. You’ve only got to look at him. Getting out of the house is just him proving to everyone that he can still walk. Grey and struggling. Whatever it was that got smashed inside him, it will never come right again. He’s not certain whether he can still hope for something or not. No confidence about anything now. It’s downhill all the way for him from here. Staggers and slogs his way across the fields, struggling against the wind, and stands there panting, watching me and Morris getting a putt-load of mangolds out of the clamp. You get the feeling he’s about to hop in and start helping you. Then he’ll see we’re not breaking our rhythm and he’ll pass some remark. A comment he’s made up. Nothing much. And away he goes. Dragging himself back the way he came. Pausing on the horizon to wave his stick and look down on us. Morris has been kind to him from time to time and I suppose that’s it.
He came to the stables a couple of times and stood looking at Kabara. Nothing to say on those occasions. There’s always been something about him that was totally out of step with this place. That couldn’t be accounted for simply because he was a foreigner. Something that led him from time to time into being ridiculous. He turned up at his first meet of the Staghounds wearing hunting pink. Everyone, except him, knew this was something reserved for the Huntsman and the whips, but no one said a word to him about it. They exchanged glances, not smiling, not passing judgements, and they looked at each other again the same way when they heard he’d hit the wall at Handycross.
I could have told him. You’ve got to keep your head down in a place like this. Take it all a step at a time. Wary! Charging around in red coats and leaping bang into the middle of them on black stallions is not the way! Provide yourself with back-up and keep something in reserve! Let them do some of the guessing.
His wife came over to see the Tiger a couple of days after the smash. A few scratches and a bruise here and there, but apart from that you can see she’s going to live forever. One of that sort. Hardy. And a touch of luck about her. The kind that walks away from a bomb blast with all her clothes blown off but herself still intact. A cigarette stuck in her mouth all the time and messy-looking. Wearing an old black dress and gum boots. Not the peacock of the family in other words. And swearing a lot. Which has the Tiger on edge at once.
She wants someone to look after the stallion till things get back on an even keel. Can the Tiger assist? She’s practical. Matter-of-fact. Straight to the point almost before she’s through the front gate. No hedging around with, It’s a nice day, or, How are you? Just, Let’s go! Let’s pick up the pieces and get things rolling again! That’s her attitude. You can see the way she operates. Not in mourning for any lost dream. Expecting everyone to drop what they’re doing and to start listening to her. Every now and then there’s a hint of an English accent in her voice that makes you wonder. And she has an aggressive way of looking at you suddenly, when she’s not actually talking directly to you. Challenging. As if she almost expects you to be on the point of disputing what she’s saying. I get the feeling she could come down pretty hard on someone she decided not to like.
The Tiger comes to some financial arrangement and I’m sent off with her to do what I can with the horse. Even though it’s only going to be extra work for me, what with haymaking under way and everything else going full pelt in the middle of July, I still consider this a windfall. I’m looking forward to seeing something of Kabara on a regular basis. And anyway, the days are long.
The house is a big red-brick place with stone windows and timbering. Not a real manor house. A replica in a few acres of park, with a terrace looking across the valley towards the Quantock Hills. High clipped beech hedges and a gravel path raked clear of weeds and rubbish. All spick and span.
She bends down and snatches at fallen twigs as we go along towards the stables. These are off to one side, through an arch in a brick wall which is connected to the kitchen end of the establishment. There’s a sandpit and first-class accommodation for four hunters with a tack room and feed store. Through a gate in the adjoining hedge I see an extensive vegetable garden, laid out in rows, and several hothouses.
She’s watching me taking it all in.
And I realise it’s her. She’s the worker round here. Not a minute to lose.
She doesn’t go near Kabara. He’s checking us out from his stall. She points in his direction and says, ‘I suppose you must know what to do or he wouldn’t have sent you would he?’ I get the impression she’d be happy to see the back of the horse. ‘Give us a yell when you want a cup of tea,’ she says and heads for the house.
The horse is no trouble to me. As the weeks go by I realise it’s a decision he’s made. I’m no Irishman to work magic with horses. It’s him. He has decided I’m okay. And pretty soon the Tiger starts showing more than an idle interest. The ease with which I get along with Kabara intrigues him. But he keeps his distance. Leaving it all to me. Not making his interest too plain; watching to see how things work out. Making no move to get to know Kabara. Nothing like that. Staying a stranger to the horse. And that’s his mistake.
I’m watching the Tiger too. Keeping abreast of his little schemes as they’re running through his head. I have to. And I don’t think he understands that this horse is not really the good-natured nag he seems, but is a potential stroke of lightning. Looking back it is easy to see how Tiger makes this mistake. He sees me crawling all over Kabara without any caution and jogging along the Wiveliscombe road with a loose rein and no saddle.
But I never forget for a minute the energy of this entire, and his potential for something like heroic action. You can’t touch him without knowing it, no matter what you might imagine from a distance.
It’s in his blood.
A feeling that he’s preparing for something.
A big day when it’s all going to come together for him. When all the lineage, and all the breeding and all the care and all the years and the generations of refining are going to be called finally into action. He has a performance in him, and being close to him I feel it. But it’s held in reserve and would have to be called out of him at the big moment. His rider would have to be his equal in potential or the limit would not be reached. That’s the way he makes me feel. He’s ordered, disciplined, quietly under control. Waiting. For the day. This is the only way it makes sense. My ‘good’ reflexes are a joke in comparison with his. Kabara can react and restore his balance in the instant before I have had time to register what is going on. So I don’t kid myself. I’m just taking care of him. He’s out of my class. Out of Alsop’s too. Out of most people’s. Needing someone as special as himself to call out that performance. So I don’t try anything fancy with him. I let him know what’s going on, but I let him lead.
I say nothing to anyone about all this. And between haymaking and everything else, whenever we get the odd chance, which turns out to be mostly around late evening, me and Kabara are left alone to get on with things for a while. The Tiger keeps his eye on us and slips the odd question about the horse, but I don’t say too much and I can see he’s seriously starting to entertain the idea of hunting on him one day himself. Maybe it’s no more than an outlandish fantasy at this stage rather than an actual idea. But the germ of it’s there sure enough.
This horse is not an Exmoor hunter. Without superior horsemanship he’s the wrong horse for this place. The first time I take him out on the Chains he panics when his feet
start sinking into the bog. The local ponies skip their way over such places. Kabara thinks the earth is opening under him. And when I show it to him again, dismounting and leading him forward, giving him a good look, he makes it clear we aren’t going that way. Ever!
It was about then that I decided to let him take over. Thundering along on the sound heather of the table-lands suited him just fine. But getting among the bogs and drainage ditches and old broken bits and pieces of sheep fencing, the worst of which was downed wire hidden among the bracken, was not something that interested him at all.
And it wasn’t courage he lacked.
He had too much sense. Too much instinct for himself and for his own preservation. I could point him down the steepest combe and it wouldn’t worry him. He’d pick his way without fear. Alert to every danger. Then one day, when there was a brief lull before the beginning of the harvest, I took him out early. Had him ready and saddled up in the yard before daylight so we could get away straight after milking, taking my breakfast with me and heading for the remote streams at the headwaters of the Barle. Taking Kabara to visit the lonely spot where I had discovered the soiling pit of the Tivington nott.
By midday we were there. Out on the tops. Then down through the steep larch woods rising up on either side of us and at the bottom a black and peaty wallow. The air rich with the stench of wet earth and rotting vegetation.
Private here. Unvisited. The depth of the wood, where the great stag-without-horns rolls and soils, cooling his body in the black mud, away from any eyes but those of the wilderness.
As we step forward, entering the dim glade, there’s a whiff of mint hanging in the still air. He has moved out silently ahead of us, crushing the wild herb that grows on the edge of the stream as he stepped away. I can see his slot there, the brown mud still circulating slowly where it has filled with water. And a tiny whirlpool where his dew claws have shifted a pebble.