by Tim Pears
The riders worked furiously but it seemed to the girl that they and the horses were slowing on the incline as they came to the post. By now they filled the lens and she lowered the binoculars and looked up to see them flash past just yards away from her, the sound of their hooves thundering loudly into the turf even with the crazed yelling of the crowd around and behind her. The huge beautiful beasts with their small jockeys like insane parasitic creatures, past her and gone at a speed she could not fathom. She turned and watched them, now slowing to a canter, the jockeys’ backsides lifting clear of their saddles, easing their mounts down.
A second pack of also-rans followed, one of them riderless, and behind them the crowd spilled onto the track and rushed to the finish to see the winner in the ring. Herb Shattock and the girl did likewise. She had no idea who had won in the blanket finish, it had happened so fast, but he said it was Craganour for sure. Who came second or third he did not know, and did not envy the stewards’ job.
*
They found Lord Prideaux and Lord Grenvil in the crowd around the winner’s enclosure. There was no sign of Alice. If the girl or the groom thought that her father might be relieved to see her they were mistaken, for all he said was, ‘There you are, Lottie, did you enjoy the race?’
The stewards had put Craganour first by a head from Aboyeur and a neck from Louvois in third. There was no objection made by the loser, though some expected one, for all the rough riding in those final furlongs, so the clerk of the scales gave the instruction that the winner was all right, and the flag was hoisted. There was a great roar, for Craganour being clear favourite had the most backers amongst all those punters present, and many rushed to the bookies to collect their winnings.
Duncan Grenvil was dejected for he had put his money on Danny Maher, riding Prue, swayed – so he claimed – by Arthur’s eulogies of the American rider. Arthur Prideaux said that his friend was surely swayed more truly by the winnings he’d made on Maher in the past, but though once a great jockey he had not won the Derby in almost ten years.
Then there was unrest among the crowd. The flag had been taken down. This, Lord Prideaux said, was unprecedented. He sent Shattock off to find out what had happened. Some around them gabbled their own theories but most were simply confused, and gaped, waiting for enlightenment.
Meanwhile Alice Grenvil appeared. She was in a tearful state. She told Lottie that she had gone out looking for her and seen a terrible thing. Right in front of her. Directly across the course a madwoman had bobbed under the rails and calmly walked out into the middle of the course. The first group of horses had already passed and the second group bore down upon her. One missed her. She tried to grab the reins of another. ‘The king’s horse,’ Alice said. ‘Anmer. I saw the rider’s silks.’
The groom returned and said that one of the stewards, Eustace Loder, had demanded an enquiry. This Loder claimed Craganour had jostled Aboyeur and a stewards’ adjudication was necessary. The girls’ fathers and the groom went to stand amongst those milling about outside the stewards’ room.
Alice held Lottie’s arm and stopped her following them. She said that Anmer hit the madwoman at full gallop head on with his shoulders, knocking her with great force to the ground. ‘She rolled over and over and lay unconscious,’ Alice said. The horse had stumbled, pitching the jockey clear over its head.
‘Anmer missed her somehow. And the horses following swerved by and missed her and the jockey too. Anmer rose up and went on.’ Alice took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. ‘The poor jockey, Lottie. His foot caught in a stirrup and he was thrown. He didn’t move. They brought a stretcher for him and when they lifted him up, it was like they were lifting up our Lord for the Deposition. The poor, poor man. I pray to God he lives.’
Then the verdict of the stewards’ enquiry was announced. Craganour had bumped and bored Aboyeur and interfered with other horses too and so was disqualified. Herb Shattock came over and told the girls that the jockeys had all spoken out against Johnny Reiff and his use of the whip. Arthur Prideaux and Duncan Grenvil were in contrasting moods. Lottie’s father had won more money than ever before today, it was a miracle. Duncan Grenvil said it was a poor show that Prideaux had failed to advise him to put money on a horse he had a stake in. A very poor show. ‘They didn’t even let the beast into the parade beforehand,’ he said. ‘They saddled him separately from all the others.’ He looked to the girls for support.
The fat man Lottie had seen on the hill with Herb Shattock passed close by, but neither her father nor the groom acknowledged him, nor he them. Alice tried to tell her father and Arthur Prideaux what she had seen, but neither paid her any mind for there was so much to ponder and to argue over, which they did all the rest of the afternoon, and upon the train back into London, and on into the evening of the day.
Part Four
COPPER
1
Leo, June–July 1913
The boy rode the white colt to the moor, up on to the granite massif. The tors loomed on the horizon, small in the distance but when he came to the first one he saw the great weight of granite. Once upon a time volcanoes had bubbled and erupted here and left huge boulders on the hillocks and ridge crests, the tors of Dartmoor, like the ruins or relics of some geological religion, as if an enraged earth had erected monuments to itself.
He rode on, bare-chested, barefoot, saddleless upon the colt. He knew that none of the gypsy horses could catch him and did not believe they would try. But they might. The tors had patches of moss or lichen but were mostly grey. Yet somehow, coming closer, he fancied one was blue, and rode up to study the rock. The closer he came so the tinge of blue was lost, in the manner of a blue roan horse. Perhaps not like a roan exactly for he touched the granite and was able to trace the veins of some finer-grained and lighter rock. It was curious.
Leo rode on. He turned the horse westward, across purple grass and bog cotton, searching for paths over the wet moor. The horse trod warily on black soil, sodden, soft and springy. The moor was empty, and quiet save for a light soughing wind.
The day was cool but the noon sun warmed his white skin. He came across a circle of stones, granite obelisks planted at two- or three-yard intervals. For what purpose it was not possible to say. Beyond it was a small herd of ponies. They were like Exmoor ponies but had more variety of colour. They had small heads and large, wide-set eyes. They watched the pale rider, or more likely his mount, like plain maidens at a village dance into which a beautiful visitor has trespassed. Their ears twitched, suggesting that listening to this passing vision was as important as seeing it. They had strong bodies, with broad ribcages, well-muscled hindquarters. Their manes were full and their tails long and flowing as they turned as a group and moved away.
The ground dried and Leo and the colt crossed heather and the dark leaves of whortleberry bushes. The moor opened out and he could see the full extent of it looking westward laid out before them, sloping away into the distance. He saw a man digging on his own surrounded by nothing on that windswept heath. No horse or cart. No dwelling, not a tree. Only the lone labourer, who dug narrow spadefuls of black earth that did not crumble but cohered in rectangular tablets, which he removed and laid down to one side in a row then dug the next. The man stopped working to watch the shirtless and unbooted rider pass, each an apparition to the other on the empty moor.
Leo rode down past gorse bushes studded with yellow flowers whose pungent scent reminded him of something he could not specify, through green, aromatic bracken, and on into a steep valley, its bevelled sides ridged with buttresses of rock. In some of these granite was visible in black seams. In others, sparkling quartzite or some such mineral. The horse walked on silt, then sand, then on to valley gravels. They came to a stream in which cold clear water ran over smooth shining cobbles. The horse and the boy both drank deep.
They rode on. Sheep grazed on unfenced grass. Leo smelled a farm before he saw it. First smoke, then the muck pile. A wooden gate hung open, spars bent, split, th
e lowest rotting. The horse’s hooves sounded in the stony lane and a dog barked. Leo walked the horse into the yard. Two muddy geese hissed at them. Grey stone outbuildings were closed or had their doors opened to darkness. Beasts resided within them, he was sure. The dog bared its teeth then slunk away.
The house was a different shape from Amos Tucker’s commodious farmhouse. This was long, with a cattle byre evident to one side downstairs. Leo pulled the reins over the colt’s head and tied them to a post and stepped forward and rapped upon the dark, heavy door. It opened, inward, almost instantly. A woman stood in the hallway, peering out at him.
‘Do you have clothes?’ the boy asked.
The woman did not answer.
‘I’ll work for em,’ Leo said. ‘Have you jobs? For food as well. I’ll do anythin.’
The woman gazed out of the dim interior of her house at the bare-chested, puny boy before her. Then she looked past him.
‘I’s stronger than I looks, I can chop wood, or carry aught.’
The woman stepped out of the house and to one side and studied the white colt, with the avidity of one long hungry. She swallowed.
‘I’ll give ye clothes,’ she said, ‘for yon horse.’
The boy shook his head.
‘I’ll feed ye up an all.’
‘No.’
The woman did not look at Leo. She addressed not him but the colt directly. ‘I’ll give ye all a my dead boy’s clothes. They’s in the wardrobe, the lot of em, not that there was many. We buried im in his best. You can have them others. I’ll keep the horse.’
‘I can’t give up the horse,’ Leo said. ‘Let me work.’
‘Ye can ave my old man’s too. Ye’ll grow into em.’
Leo shook his head. He wished to take hold of the woman and force her to look at him, see his need.
‘I’d like that horse,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll feed ye for a week.’
She looked at him now. They assessed one another. Weighed each other up. She was taller than he and rangy for a woman or at least a farmer’s wife. He wondered if she had killed the man and the boy of whom she spoke. Or perhaps the man still lived and cut peat up on the moor. The afternoon was cooling. The sun fell. Leo trembled. He had no choice. The woman had white in her hair. She was not as muscled as she might once have been. The boy walked past her, through the open door and into the house.
‘Where do you think you’s goin?’
‘I need clothes,’ he said over his shoulder. She came after him. He saw the stairs off to the side and took them barefoot two at a time. At the top were two doors off a tiny landing. One was open, the other shut. He heard the woman climbing the stairs behind him.
‘Get out a my house,’ she yelled.
He stepped forward and opened the closed door. Some mouse or other rodent scuttled across the floorboards.
In the small room was a bed and a wardrobe, each of dark heavy wood. Nothing else. The boy opened the door of the wardrobe as the woman stepped through the doorway. There was a mirror attached to the door, which swung open and gave him a view of himself, a thin pale wraith with a faint diagonal line etched in pink across his torso. Then a view of the woman as she advanced towards him. Except that it was not her. Yet it was. He could make no sense of the sight. What was she? Leo turned from her reflection to see the woman true. She had lost twenty years, had climbed the stairs and become again the young woman she had once been, swift and strong. He shielded himself with his arms and backed into the corner, flinching. What infernal magic did this house contain?
‘Is this he?’
‘No.’
Leo cowered yet he was not struck, or seized. He opened his eyes and peered between his fingers. The woman scrutinised him. She now wore, he saw, a muddy smock. And behind her stood herself, aged as she truly was.
‘It is,’ said the younger version. ‘Tis him or the ghost of him.’
‘No,’ said her mother.
‘The white horse brung him.’
‘He’s a beggar come to steal your brother’s clothes.’
‘That white horse brung him back.’
The young woman came towards Leo. She placed an arm upon his shoulder and turned him away so that he faced the wall and could not see her. All he possessed were his gypsy riding trousers. Perhaps they would soon hang in the wardrobe of this devilish abode.
He felt the young woman’s fingers upon his back. Measuring him or probing his skin. For the point of a blade? Like a butcher?
‘Don’t pull em,’ said the older woman from the doorway.
‘I shan’t,’ said the other. ‘I twist em.’
Leo could feel her fingers on his skin but not what she was doing. ‘Did ye ride through bracken?’ she said. ‘Picked yourself a couple or three ticks ere.’
When she had removed the blood-sucking insects she bade the boy sit upon the bed and picked out clothes for him. Her mother had disappeared. She chose a white flannel shirt, woollen socks, and a black serge suit. She told him to take off his trousers. Unabashed by his nakedness she had him put on her dead brother’s clothes. They smelled of someone other, yet they fitted Leo well. The boots were too big but he believed his feet would soon grow to fill them.
Downstairs in the kitchen the mother had warm stew. There was no meat in it. Leo ate greedily. The vegetables were soft and collapsed upon his tongue. The bread was hard and tasted stale but he ate all she gave him, and drank the tankard of flat beer too. The young woman had gone. She reappeared and said that the white horse was feeding and the boy thanked her.
The two women watched him eat. The light in the room was fading. The young woman told the boy he should stay the night, but he said that he could not, he must press on. She did not insist, nor ask him whence he came or where he aimed to go. The mother said that if he sought work he should try the mines, though not the one in which her son had drowned. Her daughter said that he’d be lucky to find such work for most of the mines had closed. Wheal Friendship remained, east of Mary Tavy, not two miles from here, he could not miss it.
‘There was a man,’ Leo said. ‘Digging turf. Is he yours?’
The two women looked away from the boy and at each other. ‘I warned im,’ said the mother.
Her daughter shook her head.
The mother said, ‘I warned im for the last time.’
‘I knows you did,’ said the young woman. She rose from the table. From the corner of the kitchen she took up a wooden post or cudgel the boy had not noticed before and left the house by the back door. The boy rose too. He thanked the woman for the food and the clothes and walked to the front door.
‘Wait,’ said the woman.
Leo turned and saw her take down a cap from a peg in the hallway. She gave it to him. He thanked her and put it on his head. Like the clothes it fitted him snugly.
Outside, the colt stood where he had been left. He munched the last of the hay from an empty tub. Beside it was a half-drunk pail of water. The reins had been removed and lain down on the ground by the wall of the house and in their place the colt had been restrained by a halter. Leo picked up the reins and walked the horse out of the yard. He did not mount up but walked on in the darkening afternoon until he saw a barn in a field. Its stone-tiled roof was half caved in but one end of the building was dry and there was straw, many years old by the look and musty smell of it. The boy gathered stalks and wisps of straw into a pile and lay down and slept, the white colt standing hobbled for the night close by, sentinel of his safety and his dreams.
2
In the morning, the boy in his new suit rode the horse bareback. He rode down deep, winding lanes. Hawthorn trees blossomed white, or pink. Crab apple trees likewise. Birds sang of his passing. He rode past white cottages with grey slate roofs. Leo asked their inhabitants where the mines were. All were friendly and assured him how fortunate they were to live here, in this land so rich in minerals. In the coombes and woods on the western margins or periphery of the granite moor, mines had flourished for centuries. The
y told him of the lead at Florence Mine up in Lydford parish, of silver at Crandford Mine in Bridestowe, of zinc at Wheal Betsy just up the road. Sadly all were closed at present. They directed him to the village of Mary Tavy and Wheal Friendship mine nearby.
*
The mine was not one pit or shaft but covered acres. Granite buildings shaped in squat blocks. High pyramids of black spoil. Chimneys, from one of which spouted pungent fumes. Others stood unused. There were rail tracks leading out of the earth. Along them a man pushed a barrow filled with some kind of rock, clattering loudly. Many buildings appeared abandoned. The noise of machinery issued from inside one, pumping and stamping. The colt looked askance at it, but let Leo lead him past. One massive waterwheel turned. Others did not, the water courses that fed them blocked or dried up or otherwise defunct.
The boy was directed to an office in the Counting House. He tied up the horse outside and knocked upon the door and entered. One man sat at a desk, writing in a ledger. He looked up.
‘Yes, boy?’
‘Have you work, sir? I’m lookin for work. I have a horse. He can work, too. The horse and me.’
The man removed his wire-rimmed glasses with long, thin fingers bent like claws and peered through rheumy, grey eyes at the boy. He did not answer but turned to another man, who was reading something at a table with his back turned to the room.
‘Did you hear that, Arnold?’ he said. ‘We have before us an optimist.’ He glanced back at the boy and studied him a little longer, then once more addressed the other man, or at least his back. ‘The young men hereabouts are leaving or have left already. Gone to work in the iron mines of Cumberland, so we’re told. The coal mines of the north. As navvies on those new railway lines in the Home Counties. Yet here we have one hopeful lad, and with his own horse no less, come to offer us his labour. Will you not stir yourself to look upon him, brother?’