The Horseman

by Tim Pears

  Leo turned back and walked over the hot granite and dived forward off the rock. She saw that the soles of his feet were dirty. She saw his boy’s penis like that of cherubs or putti she had seen in paintings but not in life. She saw his hands thrown before him as if he’d leaped forward to grab something on the surface of the water. Then he entered the pool and in a moment was gone and the broken surface of the black water recomposed itself as before.

  The sun beat down. The birds of the air and the beasts of the earth had found shelter and were silent. She called out his name. It came back to her off the grey cliffs of the quarry. Nothing moved. She looked up, squinting, and scanned the top of the cliffs, and saw a little old man there. Then she blinked and looked again and saw nothing. Another cloud blocked the sun. She turned back to the water. The boy had disappeared and there was no help for it. No explanation. The still black water reflected nothing, it absorbed the light into its darkness and had absorbed him.

  Then Leo’s head burst up out of the water. As it did so he gasped, as if shocked by what he found in this world above. He shook his head, spraying water from his hair all about him, which speckled the surface of the pool like a tiny cloud of rain. Then he trod water, breathing hard.

  The girl stood. Leo watched her. He looked away and then he looked back to see her jumping. She could not dive but wished to make no more of a splash than he, so kept her feet together and arms by her sides. She slid into the water. It was warm, at first, but as she fell the temperature plummeted with every inch. The buoyancy of her body in the water perhaps slowed her descent. For a moment she hovered, and could feel her forehead warm and her toes cold, as if her body had been dipped in the pool as the gauge of some strange thermometer. Then she kicked and rose to the surface.

  Lottie could swim but like a dog, working all her limbs below the surface and her head above, facing the way she wished to go. Whichever way she faced, so she went. She paddled into the pool some yards, then turned around in a slow arc to see the boy.

  They trod water. The girl was shivering. ‘Is it cold enough for you, Leo Sercombe?’

  The boy tried to speak but found that his teeth were chattering too much and so he nodded.

  They looked at each other and around the rocks of the quarry pool and up at the empty blinding sky and back at each other, like conspirators unsure of their purpose.

  Leo gritted his teeth and said, ‘I seen a light.’

  Lottie turned and paddled back to the rock. She reached up and grasped it and hauled herself out. Leo followed. Drops of water fell from their bodies onto the hot rock and evaporated. They lay naked on their clothes and in the hot sun they soon stopped shivering and their skin dried, they no longer gasped from the cold and the need for air in their lungs. Their hair dried last.

  ‘What kind of light?’ Lottie asked.

  Leo shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He stood. ‘I’ll have another look.’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘I’ll not be long.’ He walked to the edge of the rock and this time jumped in with a splash, bobbed on the surface, took a deep breath then spun his body and dived down. He wriggled like a fish to a good depth then righted himself and turned around. He saw it. White light coming from he knew not where. The boy swam towards it. It was a little further than he thought but soon he reached a wall of rock and the light beckoned him into a breach a little wider than himself. He put his arms in front of him and half swam, half pulled himself into and along the tunnel. In some part of his brain he knew the tunnel was becoming more narrow, yet a stronger part ignored it in the light’s allure. Then he was stuck. By his shoulders. He tried to push against the rock in front of him to ease himself backwards but his arms did not work well, and he could get no purchase.

  To die was not the end of it, but it had come too soon. His lungs burned. He writhed and pressed and tried to struggle free but he could not. Then he felt something odd. The creature of the deep that Lottie had been warned of had wrapped its tentacles around him. No. Her hands around his ankles. He felt himself being pulled, and coming free, and flowing backwards through and out of the tunnel. She let go of his ankles and he turned and kicked and swam up to the surface. As he rose he had to breathe and only swallowed water. He broke the surface and gulped air. Choking and coughing, he flailed towards the rock and grasped it and floated there, unable to move.

  The girl swam around him and clambered out of the pool then turned and took one of his hands and helped him struggle onto the rock. There they lay, once more drying in the sun.

  Neither of them said a word for a long time. Perhaps for hours. The heat of the day spent itself and the sun began to wane from its height above them. Eventually the girl rose and began to clothe herself. The boy did likewise. They dressed in silence. Then Lottie gathered the remains of their picnic. She had brought a bar of chocolate but it was melted to a brown liquid. One hard-boiled egg remained, a crust of bread, one tomato. Blue-veined cheese, which like the chocolate had melted. All the food she tossed into undergrowth for insects to feast on.

  They did not speak. Leo fetched the pony, and tied the bags to the saddle. They walked slowly, one each side of the horse, back the way they had come. Up the winding metalled track, across the scrub and out of the quarried land, through the fading bluebell wood, into the valley of willow trees along the stream. Leo walked on the left-hand side of the horse, his hand once more upon the cheek piece of the bridle. They walked along the gallops, across pasture round the Burial Mounds, then through the wheat fields. There at last they stopped, for the stables were not far distant.

  The girl walked around the front of her pony. Leo let go of the bridle and stepped back. He found it hard to look at her. She evidently felt likewise for she fussed with the bridle, checking the straps as if they might have worked loose.

  He spoke to the back of her head. ‘You saved my life, Miss Lottie.’

  The girl gripped the saddle and put her foot in the stirrup and, flexing her leg twice, sprang up from that foot and mounted the pony. She looked down at Leo from under the brim of her hat and smiled. Then she turned the pony and heeled her and within a few yards they were cantering away towards the stables.

  Leo walked home across the estate by the same route along which ten or eleven hours earlier he had run. A light breeze had blown up from the direction of the coast and as he walked below the line of poplars their leaves shimmered and whispered to him. A man he recognised but did not know by name passed him at the corner of Home Farm and walked on.

  The boy knew some things and others he did not. He was a carter’s son and always would be, even after he became a horseman of whatever mettle himself. This he knew.

  Had God shone that light or had the Devil? This he did not know. Had not God known Leo even before He formed him in his mother’s womb? Before he was born had He not sanctified him, and all others too? Was He not the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last? He wished to show the boy His power and His mercy.

  Or had Satan been at work, tempting him with what would most draw the boy, which was not the light but his own desire to see it for himself, no matter what. Or perhaps neither was present at the moment of his deliverance. The light was some phenomenon of nature he might usefully study, a riddle to solve. And it was simply his good fortune that the girl had followed him down into the cold water.

  As he approached the cottage Leo saw to his surprise that the big new waggon stood outside, Pleasant and Red in the traces. The waggon was piled high with what? As he came close he could see that it was furniture. And then he recognised his mother’s dresser from the parlour, denuded though it was of the blue and white china. His narrow bed and that of Fred stacked one upon the other. The kitchen chairs including his father’s wooden armchair. He could not comprehend the spectacle. His sister Kizzie came around the far side of the cottage carrying gardening implements, a fork, a hoe. She stowed these in a space in the bed of the waggon. Turning, she glimpsed her brother. Her hand flew to h
er mouth and she ran into the cottage.

  Leo walked through the open front door. The parlour was empty, and but for a broom leaning against a wall the kitchen likewise. The sight was strange, comical. As if someone was pulling his leg. Yet he knew this was not possible. The cottage was larger, empty, than he would have believed it to be. It was dowdy, in need of fresh paint, and the rooms were misshapen. He looked at them uncluttered and saw that walls curved and bulged, timbers were crooked, floors uneven.

  The house smelled of dust and charcoal, as if the furniture itself had been imbued with a homely scent, now gone. Leo climbed the stairs. The three bedrooms were emptied likewise. Only flaky debris on the wooden floorboards. If it had not been for the waggon outside he would have thought he’d been hurled out of time, many years into the future.

  He heard heavy footsteps on the wooden stairs. His father rushed into the room Leo had shared with his older brother.

  ‘What have you done?’ Albert Sercombe yelled, advancing across the boards. ‘What have you done, you little bastard?’

  He punched his son on the side of his head and the boy went down.

  ‘You little fucker. You stupid little bastard.’ He kicked the boy. Leo curled up to protect himself and felt his father’s boot on his back, his thighs, his buttocks.

  ‘You ruined us all … your mother … all I’ve done, in ruins,’ his father yelled. He kicked his son as if to emphasise certain words.

  Leo scrabbled to all fours and stumbled to the door. His father pursued him. He staggered along the landing but at the top of the stairs Albert caught him at the back of his legs and he tripped. The cottage became a toy flung by a giant. It tumbled about him, banging his bones. At the bottom of the stairs he looked up groggily and saw his father coming down after him, and he crawled into the kitchen. The broom leaned against the wall. Albert grabbed it and struck his son. Leo crumpled and fell once more. He begged for mercy but none came. His father beat him with the broomstick.

  There were voices. Whose he did not know, except for his father’s saying, ‘I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.’ But he was no longer being hit.

  The voices went away. Leo lay upon the floor. His mouth was full of blood. He opened his lips and the blood poured out. He could hear groaning. He realised it came from himself.

  Leo heard his mother’s voice. He understood that she was weeping and pleading but his father told her to come away, to leave him.

  He tried to sit up. He could not see well, for some reason. He saw someone come in and heard himself whimpering. It was not his father. Fred knelt beside him. His father yelled, ‘Leave him, I said,’ but his brother stayed. He had a jug of water. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and balled it into his fist and dipped his hand in the water. He brought out the handkerchief and wrung it out and applied it gently to his brother’s face. With his other arm he held Leo sobbing against him.

  ‘Dunstone come into the yard,’ he said quietly. ‘All atremble. Herbert asked him what he’d sin. Herbert told Uncle Enoch. Enoch went directly to the manor.’

  Fred cleaned his brother’s face as he spoke and told him how fast it had all happened.

  ‘The master had no choice, see,’ Fred said.

  Leo asked his brother to help him to his feet. He stood unsteadily. Some parts of him throbbed, others burned. Were no bones broken? Fred supported him. Leo asked in which direction they were headed. Fred told him that their father knew of a farm on the other side of Taunton where he believed they might find work.

  ‘That’s east, ain’t it?’ Leo said. The words his bruised and swollen mouth could form came out misshapen. ‘I’ll go west.’

  He turned and hobbled out of the open back door of the cottage, and through his mother’s vegetable patch, and into the lane. There he clambered painfully over the stile and stumbled across the pasture and on, into the west.

  June

  The boy limped slowly towards the setting sun. The sound of hooves coming from behind made him stop and turn. A horse and rider were approaching through the evening haze, the two indistinct, a single entity in silhouette. What he saw was that figure from mythology, half-man, half-horse. It cantered towards him in the twilight. He felt a shiver of fear tremble through his bowels and understood how terrifying it must have been for people who’d never seen a horse before to have marauders bear down upon them out of the east. The hordes of Genghis Khan.

  Had enough not been inflicted upon him? Who was this advancing, to mete out further punishment?

  The creature was forty yards away when all of a sudden his anxiety gave way to comprehension. He recognised the straight-backed gait of the rider atop the pony.

  Perhaps she did not see him standing in the gloom for she did not rein in her mount until they were almost upon him. The animal seemed to rear up in surprise but Leo knew it was her horsemanship and the animal’s trust in her and as the horse stopped and stood, quivering, she slid from the saddle and stood facing him. He looked at her then glanced over her shoulder in the direction from which she had come, as if he should look out for some further figures in pursuit of her, or of him.

  Then he turned and looked westward once more. A strip of red lay between the black horizon and the grey sky. The girl walked around in front of him so that she could discern him in the vestigial light. She studied his bruised and broken face.

  ‘What have they done to you?’ she said. ‘What have they done?’

  He reached his right hand towards her, though it hurt to lift his arm, and wiped tears from her eyes.

  ‘The horse,’ she said. ‘Blaze, she’s for you.’

  The boy tried to mount the horse but could not, for his body and all his limbs ached, but then with her help he managed. There was no saddle. She pulled herself up behind him and they rode together in the dark.

  ‘Will you come back?’ she asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she told him. She seemed to rack her brains for the answer though really she knew it but not how to say it. Then she blurted it out. ‘For me.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘A course I will,’ he said.

  ‘One day,’ she said.

  ‘One day,’ he agreed. His voice was more constricted and gravelly than ever, for it hurt to speak. ‘Or another.’

  She leaned against him and put her arms around his belly. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked him.

  He told her he was heading west, and when she asked why he explained that his father had gone east.

  ‘Ours is a big country,’ she said. ‘A big island.’ It occurred to her how little he must have seen of it. There were those on the estate who reputedly had never seen the sea, so close that on some days you could smell it. ‘There’s not much that way,’ she said. ‘Only the south-west peninsula.’

  He asked her if she knew of a place called Penzance. She told him she had heard of it, and he said he would aim in that direction.

  They rode towards the sunset in the west. In the dark they came up out of the fields. The western horizon curved across the moor ahead of them like the convex rim of the world itself.

  She leaned her head against the nape of his neck. He felt the faint sensation of her breath on his skin and it occurred to him all at once that he, Leo Jonas Sercombe, would one day become a man. That until that moment a boy or youth remained a lifeless form, a sleepwalker, to be animated by the breath of another. Such as this girl, Lottie Prideaux, who would become a woman as sure as he would a man.

  He tried to think further on this path but could not do so. The horse walked on. He realised in due course that Lottie had fallen asleep, leaning against him. He prised open her fingers gently clasped and took her hands and laid them by her knees. He raised his right leg, the one least injured, and swung it over the neck of the pony, and slid to the ground with a jolt that hurt his ribs.

  She did not wake. He took the reins and put them in her hands. He grasped the bridle at the pony’s neck and slowly turned her until she was pointing back the way t
hey had come, and then let go. The horse kept walking, at its own pace, making its way home. The girl did not stir but rode on in her sleep.

  Leo watched them disappear into the night, and he stared into the darkness some while more until he could no longer hear the horse’s hooves. Then he turned and walked on alone.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Behind and interwoven through this book are many others.

  Those of Fred Archer describing rural life in the Evesham Vale in the early years of the twentieth century were particularly inspiring. fredarcher.co.uk

  Also: Herbert L. Day’s memories of farm labouring in Yorkshire, and George Ewart Evans’ research among horsemen in Norfolk.

  Oral histories of country life under the rubric ‘Tales of (the Old Gamekeepers, Old Countrywomen etc.)’ published by David & Charles.

  The Great Shoots: Britain’s Best – Past and Present by Brian P. Martin.

  The Working Countryside 1862–1945 by Robin Hill and Paul Stamper, wonderful photographs and descriptions of rural life in Shropshire.

  Old Farming Days: Life on the Land in Devon and Cornwall by Robin Stanes.

  All Around the Year by Michael Morpurgo.

  Especially useful horse books were:

  The Manual of Horsemanship by the British Horse Society, the Pony Club Annual 1950 and Veterinary Notes for Horse Owners by Captain M. Horace Hayes FRCVS, 1877 and subsequent revised editions.

  Special thanks to horsewomen Clover Stroud and my mother Jill Scurfield; to Victoria Hobbs at AM Heath; and to Alexandra Pringle, Angelique Tran Van Sang, Lynn Curtis, and Myra Jones at Bloomsbury.