The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  Albert pulled tight the drawstring and returned the bag to his pocket. He said that at a summer show he might rub a horse down lightly with a rag dipped in paraffin, for not only would it bring up a quick shine but it would also keep flies off and help the horse stand steady in the ring. ‘Wet their chaff with a little piss now and again,’ he said. ‘Keep a good bloom on their hide.’

  ‘Whose?’ the boy asked.

  Albert frowned. ‘Your own, a course.’

  Leo shook his head. ‘I never seen you do it.’

  Albert grinned. ‘Never will. Not you nor no one. Let’s plait em.’

  Albert returned to the other stall. They plaited the black manes and tails of the bay geldings, keeping the twisted patterns in place with straw, tying ribbons into the hair. The horses ate an extra portion of oats, chaff and mangel in their mangers. By the light of the lanterns they checked the horses’ feet, poking the last bits of reddish mud from around the frog with picks. When they were done they put on new halters Amos Tucker had bought for the purpose and led them out of the stalls.

  The farmer had by now appeared and he told Albert that he would see them in town. ‘Keep an eye out,’ Amos said. ‘We don’t want some crooked horse coper spoilin or spookin em.’

  Albert tied the halter rope of one horse to the tail of the other. He led the foremost gelding out of the yard. The boy walked behind. His uncle Enoch and brother Fred watched their horses leave the farm.

  They walked the dark lanes. Others would be going but perhaps they were the first. They heard sounds from neighbouring farms. Whether those carters too were preparing to take their animals was speculation. As a grey and streaky sky became visible above them Albert called his son forward beside him. Leo had been to the town, twice, but never yet to the Fair. His father told him that one hundred years before, fifteen thousand sheep were sold there. But the wool trade died. Now the numbers were pitiful. Carthorses were sold instead, and wild Exmoor ponies herded and driven on the hoof. Others, too. Dulverton Fair had folded when he was a youngster, then Tiverton Fair too, and now all the horses came here. He said that the first horse the old gaffer had asked him to sell was one he had watched being born, broken himself and worked behind the plough for two years. He would not do that again. ‘I’ll break em and work em but I won’t sell em.’ He had spoken of this problem with Amos Tucker’s father and they had resolved it. He only sold the under carter, Enoch’s, horses. His own were not sold until they were too old to work, and then not for serious profit.

  They led the two bay geldings into Bampton. Others were on the road. The boy had imagined there would be one large sale ring, like the show ring at the village fête, when his father competed with other carters roundabout in classes for the best-decorated horse in cart harness or in a pair of plough gears, and the master gave out shining trophies. There were a number of these at home in the parlour.

  Instead, the High Street was unrecognisable. It was aswarm with livestock. Cattle roamed, sheep and horses, seemingly unattached to each other or anyone. Moorland ponies and carthorses and also young, unbroken colts and Welsh cobs. The boy stuck close to his father, who led their geldings slowly through the crowd. He stared glassily ahead to demonstrate that he had no concern for the behaviour of his own beasts while all around him was a pandemonium of cattle lowing and sheep bleating, of horses backing up and kicking. Collie dogs slunk around small flocks or else cowered, defeated by the impossibility of herding their charges in this chaos. Farmers shouted at their lads. Lads yelled at their beasts. The High Street reeked of ammonia.

  Past the Taunton Hotel Albert Sercombe turned off and they walked through a yard of parked carts and waggons, all unyoked. Behind the hotel was an orchard. In amongst the yet leafless fruit trees, horses stood like a troop of cavalry mounts waiting patiently for battle. They found a vacant tree and tied their horses’ halter ropes to another cord that Albert slung around its trunk.

  Albert Sercombe filled his pipe with his old black shag and lit it, and watched the horses that passed them by. Shires in ones and twos like theirs but also droves of others. He pointed out purebred Exmoor ponies to his son. They stood eleven or twelve hands high. He said that Exmoor ponies were superior to those of Dartmoor. The biggest could carry a man of thirteen stone in weight. The boy asked his father how much he weighed. Albert said it must be many years since he had stood on a pair of scales, though he had grown neither heavier nor lighter as far as he knew and so he supposed he weighed twelve stone as he had before. He allowed that he might be surprised. He pointed out a packet of half-bred colts. He reckoned they might fetch thirty guineas each and the moorland ponies half that.

  There was a sudden distant whistle and the geldings startled. Albert hushed them and made soothing noises, stroking the more nervous of the two. The boy reached up and did likewise to the other. A breeze blew through the orchard and he smelled the coal-burning smoke of the train.

  ‘Now you’ll see it busy,’ his father said.

  They came into the orchard on a spree. Auctioneers had their own sites and set up. His father pointed out dealers, Exeter buyers of dray horses for the railway and breweries and mills. There were farmers, farm suppliers, veterinary surgeons, gentry, town dandies. Men wore tight breeches, cloth leggings, coloured waistcoats. Bowler hats, flat caps, some straw boaters as if it were a summer’s day and not a grey March morning. One or two carried long whips, perhaps for the horse they intended to buy. There were no women present, none at all.

  ‘Here he comes,’ Albert said.

  They saw Amos Tucker barrelling his way through the crowded orchard towards them. It was as if he knew which tree was theirs.

  ‘How’s it lookin?’ Amos said.

  ‘Ripe, gaffer,’ Albert replied.

  They untied the halters of the geldings and led them to an open field beyond the orchard. Two long lines of men three deep faced each other across an avenue. Behind those standing, others sat in crowded waggons. Albert Sercombe joined a queue of men with carthorses. When their turn came Amos held the less nervous gelding while Albert ran the other up and down the avenue. Then they swapped the animals and he ran the second horse. Red-faced and blowing hard, Albert took some time to get his breath back. ‘Ain’t used to runnin,’ he gasped. The gaffer and the boy held the horses until he had recovered, then they led them back to their tree.

  Now spectators from the field came over to inspect the geldings. They opened the horses’ mouths, rolled back their eyelids. Felt their forelegs, pulled at their hides. The boy wondered that the animals did not jib at these intrusions, but even the anxious one seemed to enjoy them.

  Some knew Amos Tucker, some his father. They asked questions of the geldings’ characters or qualities. The answers were not exactly lies but close enough. Both horses were amenable to all work and had no weaknesses. Amos Tucker was very solemn and said that, to be fair, he would rather not sell them but would do so out of foolish generosity only if a fine judge of equine flesh were desperate to have them. The boy’s father said the animals’ condition spoke for itself and all but a blind dawcock could see it; he would not demean a man by describing what he could make out plain for himself, only he did feel obliged to point out this. And mention that.

  They led the geldings to a spot which belonged, said Amos Tucker, to his auctioneer. This man stood upon a wooden rostrum, with a counter across in front of him on which he had papers and a hammer. It did not look either permanent or stable. The ring had no fence but was formed by the bodies of those in attendance. Albert led one of the horses inside it. The auctioneer said, ‘Now, gentlemen, the first of Mister Amos Tucker’s geldings. Warranted sound in wind and limb, a good worker in all gears. Free from vice.’

  The auctioneer spoke yet his voice had the volume of someone shouting. The boy did not know how he did it. It was as if he had an affliction the opposite of Leo’s own, and had found a use for it.

  ‘You couldn’t buy from a better farm nor buy animals broken in by a better carter.’<
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  Albert led the gelding around the ring. A man in a velour hat with a blue and black jay’s feather in its broad band stepped forward to feel the horse but Albert told him to back off. He’d had his chance. The crowd nodded and tutted their approval of the carter who would not tolerate this breach of local custom or manners.

  ‘Gentlemen. Who will start me at forty guineas?’

  A man nodded and the auctioneer spoke suddenly in some breathless hiccupping language the boy could not understand. The men around the ring seemed to, for one would raise a finger, another lift his hat, and each time the auctioneer nodded back at them. Then abruptly he lifted the wooden gavel and banged it upon his counter and announced that the gelding was sold for fifty-two guineas to an Exeter man.

  The second, less nervous, gelding was auctioned likewise and sold for fifty-five guineas to a man who knew the gaffer, for he came up to them.

  ‘Good horse, Jack.’

  ‘Better be, Amos.’

  They did not shake hands but each struck the palm of his right hand against the other’s and both shouted, ‘Sold,’ for all to hear.

  ‘Luck money, Amos?’

  The gaffer extracted from his leather purse a half-sovereign and gave it to the man. This buyer was another farmer, from a village close to theirs. He and the dealer took the geldings, and the men from Manor Farm found themselves unencumbered. Amos Tucker could not stop smiling. He gave Albert five shillings beer money and the boy a shilling too.

  ‘Don’t get lost,’ Albert told his son. He and Amos walked off talking to each other, the gaffer with his hand on the taller man’s shoulder. The boy looked around the orchard, teeming with horses and men. His father and the gaffer had disappeared into the crowd. The boy turned and made his way back towards the open field. All had changed. There was no longer the wide avenue through the middle of two banks of spectators but knots of men, and horses being run haphazardly. Some being ridden. He joined a group and realised that it contained the master and his groom Herb Shattock. The boy eased his way between the closely jostling bodies of men.

  One man spoke to the master. Others listened. ‘A good warmblood horse, sir. She’ll yoke up in anything you put her in, sir. A lovely mane. She’s good to shoe, easy to catch. Nothin bothers this mare, sir. And will you look at the colour of her! Strawberry red she is and with one lucky white ear.’

  The gypsy horse dealer sang the praises of what looked to the boy like an ordinary cob. He could not believe the master would wish to buy her.

  ‘Or this one comin here, sir, I know this one. He doesn’t hot up or get fizzy on you. A huntin man like yourself, you could take him huntin, sir, he doesn’t kick hounds. Lovely stable manners. Sixteen hands high if he’s a foot and he’s Hungarian blood in him, I swear to God on that.’

  The groom looked down and saw the boy and said, ‘It’s you, laddie, are you here with your father?’

  Leo nodded. ‘Sold two Shire geldings for Mister Tucker.’

  ‘I hope he got a good price.’ The dealer had stopped speaking and Herb Shattock added, ‘Not from one a these diddy thieves here.’

  The gypsy said he would overlook the offence as it came from one so uncouth. Herb Shattock asked the master if he remembered the carter Sercombe’s son and the master said of course he did. The gypsy said they should look at this one now and all turned to watch a gypsy lad run a beautiful white horse.

  ‘Now has he got good bone, sir?’ the dealer asked. ‘Behold him.’ They watched. The lad ran around the field in figures of eight or perhaps randomly, and the group of men shifted round to follow them. ‘Three-year-old colt, never been raced but he’s all ready to, sir. You could bring him on yourself if you’ve a mind to.’

  The lad sprinted across the field. The horse cantered gently behind him, rather as if he were not being led but was shadowing this spindly youth in mockery of his species’ inferior condition.

  ‘How tall do you think he is?’ Lord Prideaux asked.

  ‘Fourteen hands, master,’ his groom answered. ‘A little more, possibly.’

  ‘I should like to see him ridden.’

  ‘I’ll tell the lad to hop aboard, sir,’ the dealer said. ‘Right away.’

  ‘No.’ The master turned to Leo. ‘How would you like to ride this fine colt?’

  Leo opened his mouth to speak but could not. He nodded. The master asked Herb Shattock if he thought it was a good idea. The groom said it was. The boy would probably be thrown but he was light and might escape injury. The master said he would enjoy seeing the colt ridden by one other than its owner. The gypsy raised his arm straight up and made a gesture with his hand and the lad brought the horse to them. The other men in their loose group fell back.

  ‘Help the nipper aboard,’ said the dealer. The lad tied the end of the long rope to the ring on the other side of the halter then looped what were now rudimentary reins over the colt’s head. He cupped his hands. Leo put his left boot into them and stepped up. The lad tossed him more forcefully than he needed to, perhaps he misjudged his weight, and the boy had to grab the horse’s mane to save himself from sailing clear over the colt’s body.

  ‘Have you ridden bareback before?’ Herb Shattock asked.

  The boy nodded for he had, many times. Their cob. The geldings when they’d been half-grown. None though like this white colt.

  The boy held the rope rein and turned the colt towards the open field. He saw a way clear to the far fence a hundred yards away, and dug his heels into the horse’s flanks. The horse loped slowly forward. Leo did the same again. Still the colt only walked. Leo heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw the gypsy lad running after them. ‘Kick the fucker hard,’ the lad yelled, and as he drew alongside he gave the colt an almighty slap upon his rump. ‘Git on,’ he yelled. Leo kicked with all his strength and the colt leaped forward. He accelerated from walking pace to a canter to full gallop in the space of a breath and they flew.

  The boy thought he would be hanging on in desperation to the reins, the horse’s mane, anything he could get hold of. It was not like that. He found himself hugging the horse with his whole body from his face upon the mane, his torso on the horse’s neck, his crotch on its spine, his thighs and knees and feet pressing upon the horse’s muscular hurtling form. He was less hanging on than moulding his body to that of the galloping animal. He thought it was a most interesting phenomenon and he wanted to laugh even as he knew that he was terrified. The grass sped by beneath him. He had no control over the horse. It was as if the colt had been told where he should go and the boy was merely following, yet the horse went where the boy wished him to. As if by coincidence. It was inexplicable.

  As they neared the fence the colt slowed. He turned to the right and cantered along the fence to the corner of the field, then back again. As he reached the point he had come from so he turned back to the distant knot of interested men, the boy kicked him hard and he accelerated in their direction. He raced towards and then away from the group. He saw space between others and the pair of them made for it at full pelt. It seemed that people were yelling to them, but out of some other realm of existence which he and the colt had left and were no longer attached to. They raced from one point to another in the field as if other men and horses had been placed in position for just this spectacle. Nothing could stop them. The boy did not know that such exhilaration existed, save for in the last days when young men shall see visions, all see wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth beneath, blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke.

  They turned once more from the fence. The boy aimed for the right-hand side of the men. Whether the colt read his mind or had received some other twitching communication from his limbs the boy was not sure but they galloped past the group and slowed down, turned and came back around the other side.

  The gypsy lad stepped forward and took the rope from the boy. Leo could feel the colt breathing hard beneath him. Lifting his right leg, he swung around and slid off the colt to the ground. He realised that despite
the cool temperature he was drenched in sweat, as was the horse. When he stood upon the grass he did not know what to do. There were men around him talking but he could not hear them. The master’s tweed coat or jacket was made of a thousand brown twists of living breathing thread. The gypsy dealer’s fingers were stained with a nicotine of the same intense brown colour precisely as the new halters the geldings had worn this morning. How could that be? He looked up. The sky was no longer grey and streaked but clear and the deep pale blue of a hedge sparrow’s eggs, then all went dark as he heard the words, ‘Catch him, man.’

  When Leo came round, the master told the boy that he could ride. He really could ride a horse. The dealer said the boy had gypsy blood for sure, look at those dark brown eyes, too dark for a gentile. ‘You’ll surely wish to buy the colt now, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll find out how much they want for him but I’ll beat em down for you, don’t worry about that.’

  The master said that he was not in the market for such a beast, fine as he was, but that he had enjoyed the demonstration. He gave the gypsy lad a shilling, and Leo the same. The dealer was about to speak but the master promised that he would not insult him with such a gratuity, and looked forward to doing business with him another time. The dealer said his lordship might not be here again but the master assured him that he came every year. The dealer said that he himself might not come again. The master smiled and said that would be a shame and wished him good fortune. He turned and walked out of the field into the orchard.

  The groom said to Leo, ‘You should eat, boy. Come with us.’

  The High Street was awash with men and horses. The boy saw as he had not before that shops and dwellings were boarded up for the day. They walked past public houses from which the windows had been removed, not merely their glass panes but the entire frames, and through one the boy glimpsed his father’s head and that of Amos Tucker amidst the throng. The master took them to one of the tea rooms. Leo thought he could recall being brought here with his sister by their aunts, but he remembered being impressed by brightly patterned carpets and today the wooden floor was covered with straw.