The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  He walked home as night came down like cold, early darkness clamped upon the earth. He bent low to the ground along the avenue and gathered acorns. There was just sufficient light by which to do so. It was his habit to fill his pockets, for not only were acorns a piquant delicacy for the pig but they were poisonous to horses, and if he could he would have cleared them from the ground every autumn all across the county and beyond.

  The pig snaffled the acorns. He was grown tremendously obese and could barely move but dragged himself in and out of the shed of his sty and into its tiny yard.

  The pig shit the boy’s brother Fred piled in a heap at the end of their mother’s kitchen garden, with all manner of other waste added to it: soot, ashes, each family member’s hair cut by Ruth including her own, their night soil, rotten fruit, mouldy bread, fish waste, seaweed, bloody rags, woollen scraps, residue of Albert’s pipe tobacco he tapped onto the heap, human piss, pigeon shit, weeds. Any vegetable matter the Pharoah disdained … All was thrown on the heap and turned into black compost to be dug into the garden soil, as manure on the farm would be dug into the fields.

  January 1912

  The wheelwright’s shop was next-door to the smithy. His name was Hector Merry. The boy watched as he walked from the smithy to his shop, from his shop to the waggon outside. Merry’s right foot hit the ground pointing outwards, as if he were planning to veer off at a diagonal. But then his left foot did likewise: now he appeared about to strike out leftward. His torso too shifted, following each foot’s lead. Yet each time he came back on course, and despite his corporeal burlesque Hector Merry marched straight ahead. He might have given the impression of a vacillating man, one undecided about which direction to take along the village road, along the path ahead of him, changing his mind from one footstep to the next. Yet he did not. Shoulders back, spine straight, Hector Merry looked like a man of purpose and conviction.

  After the iron tyres had been heated in the forge and put onto the new wheels, the wheels were rolled into the wheelwright’s shop and attached to the new waggon. Then Hector Merry’s lads and the Crocker sons pushed the waggon outside.

  A number of old men and some women had gathered by now. A new waggon from Hector Merry was something to see. Amos Tucker was there too, it was his waggon, but he stood among the old men in the road, sucking on their pipes, appraising the workmanship, while Albert Sercombe studied it up close, moving slowly around the vehicle. The great rear wheels were as high as his chest, and he was a tall man. He kept one hand upon the wood, assessing it by touch as well as sight, or getting the feel of it, or simply out of pleasure. All seasoned ash, it was a cock-raved waggon with strouters. The boy kept close to him. Albert ran his hands along the curved timber, the chamfered spindle sides.

  Hector Merry followed Albert at a few yards’ distance, reliving the glide and flow of his plane, perhaps. Or recalling the knotty struggle of this stock, that joint of spoke and felloe. Jacob Crocker too was a keen spectator for the waggon was a collaboration, not only in the tyres but the iron axles too and other smaller parts for which the boy knew not the name. It was a thing of wonder. Put together like some intricate puzzle, yet the wheels and the body of the waggon would have also to bear great weight and to withstand shocks and jolts of uneven roads and frozen rutted tracks.

  When Albert had finished his circular inspection he climbed up into the bed of the waggon and walked around, stamping his boots. Then he jumped down and walked over to the smithy, where Noble and Red were tied up. He brought one and Leo the other to the waggon. The horses already wore their harness. He backed them into the curved shafts and hitched them up. He took longer than usual, as if there were some ceremony to the ritual in this public place.

  Albert gave his son a knee-up to Noble on the nearside and he rode her side-on. Albert walked beside them, and they headed back to the estate. Old folks waved them off. The tall hunched Crocker son came out, swinging a dirty empty bottle tied to a length of cord. He swung it against the side of the waggon. It looked as if he wished to play some strange variant of the game of conkers, glass versus wood. But on the second swing the bottle smashed and the spectators cheered for the Crocker lad had launched their waggon on its maiden voyage as was done for boats built in the yard at the Port of Bridgwater.

  As they walked out of the village Leo looked back. Hector Merry was following them, with that distinctive gait of his. Perhaps he could not bear to let his waggon go. He did not close the gap but kept a consistent distance of some twenty yards between them. Perhaps it was required for a wheelwright to follow his conveyance to its farm. Would he seek payment from the master, not Amos Tucker?

  Leo watched the wheelwright walk along. Sometimes he lowered his head to his chest. At other times he looked away, off to one side or the other, as if something had diverted his attention. Then he would look back at the waggon, pondering it afresh.

  Albert Sercombe glanced up at his son. He saw the boy turn and followed his gaze. He watched a while himself, looking over his shoulder as he led the horse. ‘If it makes a bad noise,’ he said, ‘he’ll have us take it back to the shop to fix it.’

  The boy watched again. Hector Merry kept turning his head so that one ear was cocked forward as he walked, listening to the wheels turning and the waggon creaking as the joints settled into one another on the move.

  ‘You’re more’n likely thinkin what a fine craftsman that Mister Merry is. And you’d be right, boy. But they say he’s nowhere near as good’s his father Josh Merry was. That’s what they old folks will have been whisperin. Take these wheels.’ Albert gestured behind him. ‘Beautiful four-inch wheels. In the days before roads was paved with stone the heavy waggons had wheel-rims nine inches wide. They was so wide the tracks they made formed footpaths in the mud. Think of the skill it took to make them.’

  Leo glanced back. Hector Merry was diminishing behind them. The wheelwright waved. ‘Father,’ Leo said.

  Albert looked over his shoulder. ‘Reckon us ave got the nod,’ he said, and waved in reply.

  February

  James Sparke’s wife wrote out his itinerary then copied it, each assignation on a separate strip of paper. A name, a place, the date. These she delivered to the farms and cottages upon the estate to which he had sold one of his fattening pigs, plus one or two others who had bought elsewhere. There was a reason the job was done here in the unusual month of February, though none could tell Leo what it was. On the Tuesday allotted to Ruth Sercombe, Leo and his sister Kizzie stayed home from school. Albert and Fred returned from Manor Farm once they’d fed the horses. Fred carried a rough bench borrowed from the gaffer Amos Tucker upside down on his shoulder.

  Ruth gathered necessary implements in her kitchen. Kizzie swilled the yard by the back door of the cottage and brushed it down. Drops of water froze instantly and became beads of ice she brushed away. Fred laid a bed of wheat straw in the yard. Leo helped his father fill kettles and pans of water heating on the stove. They conducted their preparations quietly, calmly, for Ruth told them that the righteous have regard for the life of their beast. She told them also that the bacon would cure better if the Pharoah were neither fretful nor fierce at the hour of his death but content as he had been all his life in the palace.

  They heard James Sparke approaching. In one hand he carried a wicker basket of knives, hooks, ropes, steelyard weighing tackle, the iron and metal scraping and clanking. His nose was red. He bore his pole-axe on his shoulder. ‘It wants to rain,’ he said. ‘But it’s too cold to, no?’ Ruth whispered to him, her breath smoking, asking him to set his basket on the ground. He sharpened his knife while she spoke in his ear.

  Leo followed his father round the corner to the sty. There was barely room for the Pharoah to turn around in his tiny compound. The boy believed the pig did not feel the cold as they did. Albert talked to him as he climbed over the fence. He slipped a length of plough-string into the pig’s mouth and pulled it tight around his upper jaw. There was no gate for they had no need of one
save for this moment. Fred had joined them and he and Leo twisted and heaved a side section of fence loose and removed it.

  Albert led the Pharoah out of his compound for the first time since he was dropped into it when they brought him home. He led him round the corner of the cottage and into the yard. Ruth requested of the members of her family that they look away, that they pretend to be involved in other activities, but they could not. Fred dropped some meal onto the straw. The Pharoah ignored it. Perhaps he could eat no more, this day was so timed that such a creature was full and could be made no fatter. Instead he squealed as he had when they took him from his sow and began to pull against the taut string.

  ‘Steady,’ James Sparke said. ‘Hold him steady.’ He raised the pole-axe up over and behind him, then brought the flat head down on the Pharoah’s forehead. The animal ceased squealing and staggered, but did not fall. Sparke cursed and raised the axe and struck the pig a second time. The Pharoah keeled over. Sparke laid the head of the axe on the ground and took the knife he had sharpened from his basket and slit the pig’s throat. Ruth held a bowl and collected the blood as it poured out, bright red. Kizzie stood by, and when the bowl was full she passed her mother a fresh one and took the full bowl and poured the blood into a bucket. Fred stirred the blood in the bucket with a long spoon so that it would not thicken and clot.

  When the blood flow slowed Albert forked straw over the dead pig. James Sparke inserted a bunt into the pig’s mouth and another into his arse. He stood and sniffed at the wind. ‘Westerly, yes?’ he asked Albert, and lit the straw at one end of the pig. The flames hissed and crackled as they travelled along the carcase. Sparke forked loose straw onto the pig. Smoke blew this way and that. The boy ran around as it engulfed him and made his eyes water. The pig was a burnt offering, the straw and the singeing bristles were fragrant incense, James Sparke the ritual slaughterer consecrating their sacrifice. All was as it had ever been or would be.

  ‘Let’s turn him,’ James Sparke said. Kizzie had taken over stirring the blood. Fred helped his father roll the pig over to his other side. Sparke covered the corpse with fresh straw using his fork then delicately lifted a wisp that was still alight and set it to the pyre. He never left the fire alone but constantly agitated the burning straw with his fork. Twice more they turned the pig, to burn off the hairs upon his back and belly, then Sparke took a broom Ruth gave him and brushed the blackened corpse.

  ‘On the bench now, yes?’ James Sparke said. He laid aside the broom. The bench that Fred had borrowed was a form of thick elm plank into which strong oak legs were tenoned. Along the middle of it ran a V-shaped channel, joined by further channels running into it on either side.

  James Sparke and Albert took hold of the pig’s front trotters, Fred and Ruth the hind. At a word from Sparke they lifted the carcase. They carried it a few steps, staggering with its weight, to the foot of the bench. There they swung it forwards and backwards. ‘Count a three,’ Sparke said, and on the third swing ordered, ‘Yup!’ He and Albert lifted the pig’s head and trotted along either side of the bench, and at the end of the swing Ruth and Fred set the dead pig’s rump on the bench and the rest of his body was lowered along it.

  Albert and Fred carried out buckets of hot and boiling water and threw them over the pig’s inert steaming body. Leo stirred the bucket of blood. Ruth and Kizzie scraped off any bristles that had escaped the flames. It was known that James Sparke would not scrape a pig. A strange squeamishness considering all else he did. He did not like it. He said it gave him the crinkum-crankums.

  Their black pig the Pharoah became a hairless, mottled brown carcase. James Sparke pulled the horns from off the toes with surprising ease and threw them away. The boy picked one up. It was warm, and had a bowl like a cup. Sparke cut the tongue from out of the pig’s mouth and handed it to Ruth. Then he made a cut to the middle joint of one leg after another and turned each hock backward. He opened up the belly with one longitudinal cut of his sharp knife. Delving into the pig’s innards, Sparke separated and removed the organs and entrails and put them on plates Ruth held out for him. Liver, lights, heart, chitterlings. They steamed in the cold morning. Some she put in bowls of clean cold water.

  Kizzie stirred the bucket of blood. Sparke removed the Pharoah’s bladder and passed it to Albert, who drained it and inserted the broken stem of one of his clay pipes. He held the bladder with one hand and the pipe stem with the other for Fred to blow into. Albert told Leo to take a length of string from his left-hand jacket pocket, nodding towards it. Fred blew into the pipe stem, his cheeks reddening. Albert kept saying, ‘A little more.’ They inflated the bladder to a size it was not possible to believe had ever been done while it was inside the animal. Albert claimed that it would be easier to clean the bladder now, ready to hold the rendered fat, but Leo reckoned that this was not so, that in truth his father found some boyish pleasure in producing this strange balloon.

  ‘Should do us,’ said Albert. He took the bladder and, pinching it with his fingers, held it while Fred tied up the tube.

  James Sparke inserted a hook into each of the pig’s hind-legs, and tied a length of rope between them, then the men lifted the pig and hoisted it onto a spike sticking out of the wall of the cottage. With a hazel stick James Sparke propped the pig’s belly open to the frosty air. Then without a further word he picked up his pole-axe and, leaving the basket of other tools in Albert’s shed, walked away. Albert and Fred returned directly to the farm. The boy swept the yard, and poured water onto the bloody surface of the bench and brushed it down. Ruth cut and cleaned the entrails of the pig. Her hands were pink. When she was ready she called Kizzie inside and mother and daughter cooked the first dish from the Pharoah, a Bloody Pie of heart, liver, chitterlings, groats and blood.

  In the afternoon the boy harnessed their pony to the small cart and took it to the village. At the shop he handed Alf Blackmore a piece of paper with his mother’s order. Three oblong lumps of salt. The boy was not big enough to carry one unaided so Alf Blackmore’s lad put them in the cart and Leo brought them home.

  On the day following James Sparke returned. First he weighed the pig. While it hung from the spike, members of the family had estimated its weight. So too had other cottagers. None were quite accurate, though Fred was closest. The pig weighed fourteen stone and seven and one half pounds. ‘Heavier than any man you’ll be familiar with, no?’ James Sparke told Leo. ‘Save Amos Tucker, I suppose.’ Why they measured it the boy did not know, other than to play this game. To see if James Sparke’s fattening pigs were improving or in decline? To assess the diet that the family had given the Pharoah?

  They lifted the carcase from the scales and laid it on the elm bench, then as before Albert and Fred, the carters, went back to work on the farm.

  James Sparke cut off the pig’s head. He divided the head into two halves. He severed the ears, and extracted the eyes. The boy held out a saucer Ruth had given him. James Sparke lifted out the brains and put them in the saucer and Leo carried it inside to his mother. Ruth took the saucer and asked her son if the cold had got to him for he looked wobbly on his feet. He said it was not the cold. He told her he could not believe the Pharaoh, who had been grunting and snuffling in his customary, comical manner the day before, was now no more than this gross profusion of meat.

  ‘He lived that we could eat him,’ Ruth said. ‘That we can live. Who ordained it? None but the Lord.’ She added that it was a mystery and Leo was right to ponder it. He nodded, and went back outside.

  James Sparke cut the carcase into halves. He cut the hams, gammons, spare ribs, hazeletts, griskins and rearings. All this he explained to the boy and girl as he did it. They ferried the parts inside.

  It was not the boy who noticed Lottie but his sister. Kizzie nudged Leo and whispered in his ear, ‘The master’s daughter.’ Leo looked up and saw her standing a few yards away, watching the butcher at work. Kizzie fetched her mother. Ruth came out, wiping her hands and forearms with a cloth, and asked if the y
oung mistress wanted something or if there was anything they could do for her. The girl said she wished only to stand and watch this dissection, for it interested her, if the carter’s wife wouldn’t mind. Ruth said she would not and returned inside.

  When all the bony parts had been cut there remained only the two great flitches. James Sparke took payment from Ruth and left with his basket of tools. The boy saw that Lottie had vanished as ghostly as she’d come. He and his sister crushed the salt from the blocks he’d fetched the day before and helped Ruth rub it into the hams and flitches and all the rest until they had a good covering to soak in over the months to come. As each was completed Ruth hung it from a hook in the kitchen or the parlour.

  March

  The boy went with his father to his uncle Enoch the under carter’s stable and brought out the two five-year-old bay geldings. Herbert emptied Albert’s stables of his horses. Father and son led the geldings to two adjacent stalls and worked on them. They groomed the horses as every day, then wet their hooves and scrubbed them. Albert twisted hay into a wisp and dried his horse’s legs, and the boy did likewise. They sponged under their cruppers and when the feather hair dried below the fetlocks they combed it until it hung over the great hooves like silk.

  Albert came into the boy’s stall. ‘You should know this,’ he said. ‘See how his brown coat shines.’ He took a small linen bag from his pocket and untied the string and loosened it. The boy imbued a strong, unfamiliar aroma. Something like rosemary. ‘Tansy,’ his father said. ‘I bakes the leaves dry then rub em between my ands into powder. Sprinkles a little into their meal.’ Albert looked over his shoulder. ‘Your uncle has no need to know. Your brother neither. My father told me, and I tell you.’ He looked around him again, for fear that someone might be lurking in the shadows. ‘Don’t put too much in, else they’ll sweat it out and all the world’ll smell it.’