The Horses

by William Lane

  At one point The Other stopped in front of David: ‘You’re new, aren’t you? They don’t like new people here, do they? You’re listening closely. If you ever want to visit me here – Mondays and Tuesday mornings are my only days now – you’re welcome. I’ll teach you to draw. Look, this book’s got the best reproductions of Pisanello and Botticelli you’ll ever see. You like them? Oh, I wanted to ask you all – boys! Boys! Don’t throw those cameras! – why was no man able to cast a horse for over a thousand years? It was up to Donatello to rediscover how to cast a horse. How could that knowledge be lost for a thousand years? And how did Donatello feel when he rediscovered it? Think about it – boys!’

  ‘That man’s mad,’ said Donald as they walked away from the art building. He looked less gloomy for The Other’s madness, however. David looked up into that nascent, nacreous light no one else apparently cared for, or even saw. Now he knew it was Pisanello’s light – the light of revealed light, at this present moment gilding the undersides of the clouds.

  9

  An extraordinary meeting of the school council had been called for that night, in response to the Mace disaster. After a general discussion of the calamity, Black, puffing away on his pipe, speaking in his assured, even reassuring, way, presented a summary of the situation from the point of view of insurance and compensation. Then Tait, wiping the tiredness from his eyes, outlined the resources available for the rebuilding of the lost boarding house.

  Also present that night, besides Capon and Val, were Crib, the anonymous-looking secretary who never missed a meeting, and Mr C, who had arrived as proceedings began. Val, hardly able to challenge the minister’s presence, contented himself with staring at him across the table.

  ‘Every Tom, Dick and Harry feels free to attend now, I suppose,’ Black was heard muttering darkly to Tait. The lawyer tamped a wad of tobacco into his pipe with a horny thumb.

  Crib read to them that the result of the engineers’ inspection of the nine remaining houses, all built along the creek, was that, at present, all houses were ‘stable’.

  ‘We need a weekly report if this weather continues,’ said Black. ‘To be on the safe side.’

  ‘But that would be so expensive!’ Capon exclaimed. He seemed touchy tonight.

  ‘These things do cost a little. But we were jolly lucky no boys were in Mace when it slipped,’ said Black. He said it easily enough, yet only now, it seemed, did this dire possibility present itself to the headmaster.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so,’ conceded Capon. ‘But the school has bounced back wonderfully well, wonderfully well. All were present at the regatta, except one, and all turned out remarkably well –’

  ‘Nevertheless, losing Mace means we’re stretched financially,’ said Val grimly, speaking for the first time that night. ‘Obviously we’re going to have to postpone this term’s fund-raising activities.’

  ‘Quite possibly, yes,’ said Capon. ‘I think you’re right, Val.’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, unfortunately,’ said Val. ‘Mr Tait will back me up on this one. We need to tighten our belts for the present.’

  ‘He’s probably right,’ muttered Tait.

  ‘No stone fund, I’m afraid,’ said Val. ‘And definitely no confirmation camp.’

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right, Val. You’re probably right.’

  ‘As to the confirmation camp,’ said Mr C, ‘I’m sorry, but the fund-raising letter has already gone home.’

  ‘Then send another letter,’ shrugged Val, ‘cancelling the first.’

  ‘Money is not an issue,’ said Mr C. ‘We’ve just heard from Mr Black that in regard to the recent disaster with Mace House we’re covered as far as insurance goes. So money is not an issue. Why conflate the two issues, Mr Val?’

  ‘Well, if you’ve any experience of insurance companies, Mr C,’ said Black, ‘you’ll know we’re compensated when, and only when, that money’s in the bank, and not a second sooner.’

  The old boys laughed.

  ‘Well, I agree we should tighten our belts at least until the issue is cleared up,’ said Capon. ‘Building inspections, extra feed for the horses – who knows what lies ahead? And building the bridge has put a hole in our budget. That was completely unforeseen.’

  ‘I propose a compromise,’ said Val. ‘If there is going to be any fund raising this term, then priority must go to the stone fund. It should be first in, first served. Cobblefield was good enough to be here at the last meeting to tell us about it. It would be pretty rough to pull the plug on him at this point.’

  ‘I won’t let this go,’ said Mr C. He kept raking his hand through his hair in agitation. ‘The camp will go ahead. Don’t paint it as placing a financial strain on the school. It isn’t.’

  ‘There, there, Mr C, you must calm down,’ said Capon. ‘Don’t take these things personally.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tait heavily, with the ultimate authority of the money man, ‘what Mr Val proposes is a fair enough compromise. You have to see it in the broader school context.’

  ‘I’ll speak more about the camp later,’ said Mr C doggedly. ‘I came tonight for a second purpose. I came to plead a more personal case. May I do that now?’

  Capon shrugged, and his head twitched.

  ‘I’ve heard the 5A English class has been assigned a new list of books,’ said Mr C. There were groans about the table. What could be less important? ‘As some of you know, that class was to have been mine. At the very last moment I was assigned another class. Be that as it may. But 5A’s class texts were chosen by me for a reason. They were to dovetail into my Divinity classes. I’d prepared the entire programme. Now I find all my work has been wasted.’

  ‘Teach the books in your Divinity classes,’ suggested Tait. ‘You’ve still got those.’

  ‘There’d be no time. I only get one period of Divinity a week for each form – just one! It’s paltry enough as it is. I can’t teach the literature in that time as well as my core subject matter.’

  ‘Mr C, perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding,’ said Capon. ‘And perhaps this is not the time or the place –’

  ‘No, let him go on,’ said Black, leaning forward. Capon mottled.

  ‘Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’d like to propose a compromise on the matter of the curriculum,’ said Val suddenly.

  ‘Look, Mr Val,’ said Black, ‘we were in the middle of something else, and we haven’t come here to –’

  ‘But it’s most opportune,’ persisted Val, ‘as classes for this term are still only getting underway. What I propose is this: the Divinity classes stay, but the additional scripture lessons given to first- and second-formers go. We’ll have room for at least some Greek then.’

  Tait rolled his eyes and looked at his watch. Black chewed impatiently on his pipe.

  ‘This is important, gentlemen,’ said Mr C, ‘we have here a debate about the very foundation of our school. Let’s talk about Val’s choice of literature. Seneca, Cicero, Homer. He’d have them well versed in pagan literature, and nothing of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. That is a false education, for it’s only one side of our story. He wants to fill the boys’ minds with one strand of our culture and suppress the other.’

  ‘It’s the only strand still relevant, Mr C,’ said Val. ‘Haven’t you realised? Greece and old Rome have won. Jerusalem and Bethlehem are extinct, dead, irrelevant.’

  ‘Aren’t we a Christian school?’ cried Mr C, throwing up his hands.

  ‘Yes, Val,’ said Capon, ‘after all, we are a –’

  ‘The boys need a Christian education,’ continued Mr C, ‘they need their souls opened and educated. Believe me, I get to speak to the boys on a very personal level and this is what I’m hearing – they need God’s Word, they cry out for it –’

  ‘Bah!’ said Val.

  ‘They need to study the Bible. It’s not only a spiritual need, it’s a cultural need. They need to understand what their culture consists of, they thirst for it. If we don’t slake that thirst w
e fail them, we produce a generation who know nothing of themselves.’

  ‘That’s completely one sided, Mr C,’ said Val. ‘The boys need to understand the intellectual underpinning of the Western mind, and that’s the Greco-Roman heritage. That is how they will learn to know themselves. Know thyself – one of my personal mottos, no less. That is how the boys will achieve excellence. Excellence. Not a triumph of barbarism and superstition. You’d take us back to the Dark Ages.’

  ‘My vision for this school is a Christian community that –’

  ‘We didn’t ask for your vision,’ said Capon irritably, shuffling papers. ‘This is all far off the agenda.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ boomed Black. ‘Once again the council’s agenda has been hijacked by those with their own drum to beat.’

  ‘A bit harsh!’ Val exclaimed. Mr C looked as if he could have said the same thing.

  ‘My point, gentlemen,’ said Black, ‘is that we are not a debating society. You are going to have to do something about this, Capon. This is not what I would call a tight ship.’

  ‘Do something about what?’ cried the headmaster, really flustered now.

  ‘The open breach appearing on your teaching staff, that’s what. We can’t have it. The school’s fabric is at stake. And you need to act, Capon.’

  ‘Breach? There’s no breach. Any further items, Crib?’

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Black. He rose to cries, shouts, angry mutterings, and the meeting had dissolved.

  10

  The rain cleared for one week that term, and then the stench of horse lingered on everything, even inside Gregory’s lodgings. Fresh horse droppings lay rain-pocked on the silver, waterlogged paths. With the lifting of the rain the school was presented anew to Gregory, altered from how he had first seen it. His knowledge of the place was still growing by fits and starts, and it was a puzzle-like place. Small things intrigued him. He was struck by the number of steps. Slight inclines were stepped for great distances. All the buildings had numerous stairwells and staircases leading to almost every door. Great care was taken to have steps swept and polished. Gregory’s legs were always sore, not only from walking the long distances between one building to the next, but from climbing so many steps.

  He was also becoming more aware of the intense animal activity taking place in the school grounds. The school was a kind of game park. Several times he had seen wild pigs rooting by the fence in the morning rain, or wallabies nibbling, then hopping languidly on the wooded lawn in the evenings. At night he would be woken by the trampling of hooves shaking his bed. He heard other animals too: birds abounded, and dogs, apparently, as well as the ubiquitous possums and rats. The school had an ongoing vermin plague with so much horse feed being stored on site. Sometimes, at night, he heard what sounded like bands of running boys.

  On one of the clear mornings, Gregory rose earlier than usual. He wanted to write to a friend who had been on the staff at his previous school; he stopped the letter after a few paragraphs, however, unable to capture how they once talked. He also found that he could not describe his new situation. Laying down the pen, Gregory felt alone, and realised he had wanted to confide in his old colleague about his teaching troubles, For his classes were not working, and he did not know why. He was even having difficulty remembering his students’ names, a problem he had never experienced before. Of course many boys wore helmets when not in class, and classes had been few and irregular. He had come to recognise five or six types of boys, but was constantly confusing individuals within those categories – the sandy-haired, freckled country boy who might be a Duncan or a Donald, or the blonde, smooth-skinned eastern suburbs type, who might be a Peter or a Paul. He had never taught in a boys school before: perhaps that was the problem, he told himself.

  Or perhaps it was simply a matter of getting to know this place better. Putting aside the abandoned letter, he searched amongst his books for some old pamphlets and publications on the school. In the past weeks he had been confused by some of the insignia about the school. He had noticed different coloured horses, in different poses, on the back of some cars. Perhaps there was a code, that might be translated somewhere; if he better understood the symbols, perhaps he might begin to understand the place.

  He soon gave up. There was no code, not in writing. No: what he needed was to remind himself of what he knew before he came to this place – remind himself of the person he had been. To this end Gregory took out his old teaching notes, then was surprised to find that Val had been mentioned in his lectures. His former self had even made notes from articles on education authored by Val.

  Finally Gregory was left staring at his accreditations, at his excellent grades.

  The next morning, the fog was so thick around his lodgings that he had to keep his eyes on the boggy red path just to find his way across the grounds. It was one of those woollen fogs, woolliest in the creek bed, rising to smother the boarding houses, clinging to the fields, burying the entire school right up to the front gate, where it abruptly ceased. Gregory moved slowly through the cloud, hearing only his feet upon the path. He was headachy, and his hand, still not healed, throbbed. Disoriented, isolated in the mist, he felt the earth begin to tremble. Then the sound of galloping came quickly upon him, and the horses were all around him, even above him. He threw himself on the path, his existence surrendered to the fog and mud, and utterly exposed to the hooves.

  When they were gone he sat for some time, trembling. He returned slowly to his lodging to change again. His hand had been trodden on, the wound reopened, and the throbbing had increased.

  Gregory did not mention the horses as he breakfasted with the other masters that morning. He was glad of the fog for having hidden his fall. The horses do not like me, he kept absurdly thinking, they want to get rid of me. And he kept ruminating on the moment Mr C berated him, when he had glanced back, and had seen the minister pulling at his own hair. But Gregory could now only think in a confused, haphazard way: the weeks of rain, this starchy food, his hot and sick hand, the pervasive stables stench, the trampling of the horses, that look on Mr C’s face – somehow related to him, Gregory – all were gumming together as he ate his porridge, all gluing up his thoughts.

  Last night he had lain in a similar clouded state, feverish, listening to the occasional car passing beyond the school fence, measuring the silences between. Far away he thought he heard wailing, even keening from several boarding houses. He had remembered a confused horse that had appeared one morning on the parade ground. It trotted up just as The Whipper was barking at the boys to stand to attention. It was only a little horse, a pony, moving agitatedly down the rows of armour. Nobody had known what to do, so nobody did anything. They had simply marched past it, into the hall, while the pony paraded in its lost way up and down, sometimes dashing forward to try to break ranks, before baulking.

  Hadn’t he seen boys throwing stones at the pony, later, in the gloom of evening, catching it in a corner of a yard? Hadn’t he heard the skitter-skatter of its upended hooves? Perhaps that had been a nightmare from another night?

  And three times the day before he had tried to ride an old nag that ‘had never bucked anybody’: yet she bucked him. Why must he remember that now, while in full view of the boys? Three overly-helpful lads had led the horse to him, and as they did he remembered bridles rubbed and straps greased in the shadows of some stables in his early childhood. His father had taken him to that place, he remembered now. Maybe it was the day the horse had kicked him … yes, he felt sure it was. Yesterday’s horse had sized him up with a knowing eye, even as the little boys lauded her docility. After his third fall, Gregory had steadily pulled the bit tighter, and tighter; he felt the little horse grow still, as she considered the pain in her mouth, and her body began to recall what this might mean. So deep inside, after all, he did know how to ride.

  Reaching for the sugar, Gregory decided he would seek out Mr C that day.

  ‘Aren’t there classes this morning?’ he asked Val. T
he masters were loitering outside the hall after the assembly, another assembly so late and long that the morning was already almost gone.

  ‘No. Cancelled. There’s a working bee to finish digging the trenches around the houses.’ (Many of the houses were being surrounded by trenches, ostensibly to drain away the rain, which everyone was convinced would return.) ‘And it’s a hunt day today.’

  ‘A hunt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We all go hunting, of course. Happens once a term, or whenever there’s a consensus that the boys need to let off a bit of steam. Never hurts.’ Gregory watched Val rolling some black gloves down over his little fingers. ‘It’s a school tradition. You can come with me, if you want. I’m riding with some of the boys.’ Val suddenly smiled at him, and he began feeling a bit better. ‘Everyone’s expected to catch something. All the boys are. It’s left to their ingenuity how they do it. As long as they get something. There’s a reward for the biggest catch.’

  ‘What do they catch?’

  ‘Oh, you’d be surprised. It’s remarkable what they come up with.’ Val began making towards the staffroom, drawing Gregory after him.

  ‘How are you finding your lodgings, Gregory?’ asked Val. ‘You’re not lonely?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re welcome to visit me whenever you wish. I hope I don’t have to keep telling you.’

  ‘Thank you, one day I will.’