Black Beauty's Family Read online

  ‘You mean he stole you? He was a thief?’ asked my mother. ‘I would not serve a thief.’

  ‘He rescued me from a bad home,’ said Tomtit stamping again. ‘You have always been well treated, working for lords and ladies. You do not know what it is like to be a common cob with no mane or tail and little sympathy. That tinker was a brick with a heart of gold, a poor man earning a few pennies where he could – sharpening knives, soldering pots and pans and so on.’

  ‘A common gipsy,’ said Mother severely, ‘and a thief to boot.’

  ‘A tinker, I said,’ snapped Tomtit. ‘A kind, humble man and I am glad he stole me. He never harmed a body except for a rabbit now and then, which he snared for his dinner. He loved the birds and fed them with crumbs, and I’ve seen him rescue a kitten thrown into a pond with a stone tied round its neck. Now Master here is good to us, but he cares nothing for the bullocks except that they should grow fat to bring him riches. There is often blood on his hands and spattered over his striped apron, and the smell sickens me; it clings even to his hair. My old tinker smelt of trees and earth, of hot metal, wood fires and sweat from honest toil.’

  ‘I can’t abide thieves,’ said my mother rather irritably swishing her tail. ‘I’ve known many a stable of horses go short of corn, because the grooms have been selling it without their master’s knowing. One bad deed leads to another and so on and on.’

  ‘You are preaching like Black Beauty,’ said Mollie.

  ‘A great horse,’ said my mother. ‘Mark you, I never thought to finish my life owned by a butcher.’

  ‘Go on, Tomtit,’ urged Seaspray.

  ‘Well the tinker joined a band of gipsies and we all made our way to Kent, where the men, women and children could earn good money picking hops. It was beautiful. The air so clear and fresh and the fields gloriously green, and the trees just beginning to turn. We horses and ponies were not tethered or hobbled any more, but turned out in the farmer’s fields.

  ‘For two weeks we rested, and you may well imagine our pleasure and joy. There was a brook winding between willows, and, although autumn was already in the air, the grass had kept its freshness. It was wonderful to lie down under the open sky again, to see the stars and the moon, a harvest moon large and full and beautiful in the night sky. I would have dearly loved to spend the rest of my days with my tinker friend, for he had a way with horses which brought a calmness to them. He was so near to nature himself, so much part of the earth that it was not possible to be frightened of him. But the farmer had taken a fancy to me. He saw that I was strong, willing and good natured, and persuaded the tinker to sell me to his cousin, a baker in a neighbouring village, so I went on the rounds again, slept in a stall, and pulled a little van. I was still living in the country, and the baker was kind enough, but without the tinker’s special understanding. I could not grow to love him, although I liked the smell of yeast which was always about him. You see I was simply a necessity to him, not a character as I had been to the tinker. Do you understand? Do you follow me?’

  ‘Yes,’ we chorused.

  ‘Well, presently another baker opened a shop in the village, full of fancy bread and cakes, for this man was half Austrian and knew what the wealthy ladies liked. And in no time my new master, a very plain baker, was pushed out of business. And not understanding horses very well he made no efforts to secure me a good home, but sent me to a sale and that’s how I came to be a butcher’s horse.’

  ‘I am glad I am too well bred to pull a butcher’s cart,’ said Flyaway. ‘I couldn’t stand the smell of blood at all, but Master always looks his best when he takes me out. If you are a show hackney you expect that sort of thing of course. It’s not at all similar to being an ordinary run-of-the-mill working horse.’

  We fell silent, Seaspray and I musing on our futures. Then Marigold said, ‘Seaspray, do not look so sad, you have thoroughbred blood in your veins. You take after your father and will never have to toil as I have done. Your path will be eased. No windgalls shall spoil your beautiful fetlocks nor spavins your hocks. You will be worth a deal of money, and human beings value money above all else, so they will take care of you. Your father is famous.’

  ‘And Princess?’ asked the little grey.

  ‘My daughter has breeding, too,’ answered my mother gravely. ‘But that is not a complete guarantee against cruelty and ill use. A fall, an accident, a careless groom and, in one week, a horse’s outlook and future can be changed through no fault of his own, and once you start moving downwards it is not easy to come up again – you mark my words.’

  So the days passed pleasantly marred only occasionally by such seriousness. In the nearby meadows bullocks came and went, and winter arrived with snow and hail, and then Seaspray and I were taken away from our mothers and locked together in a loosebox. How we neighed! And how they neighed back! The yard was full of noise and Flyaway was much irritated by our bellowing. He stamped his feet and kicked his door and snapped at Will Aken’s back whenever he passed by. But, after the first terrible night without our mothers we grew calmer, although we missed the sweet warmth of their milk, the comfort of their bodies and the tenderness in their eyes as they watched over us.

  When the weather was fair we were put out in the meadow during the day but at night we always came into our fine loosebox which was deep in golden straw. Will soon taught us to be led and handled, and the blacksmith came and filed our hoofs so that they should grow shapely and strong.

  When we were three Will Aken put bits into our mouths and left us in the stable to sample them. They were not at all to our liking but presently we started to play with them and make them jingle in our mouths. Then he put surcingles over our backs and he fixed reins from the bits to the rings on the surcingles, tightening them a little each day until we learned to bow our heads to the pressure from the bits. After a week he took us out across the fields on long reins walking behind us. By now we understood ‘Whoa, Steady and Walk!’ And, knowing and liking Will, we tried to please him, and so our breaking-in went well.

  2

  A BROKEN GIG

  I NEVER MINDED Will Aken on my back, for he was a friend whom I wished to serve. Indeed I loved those early morning rides with the dew still wet and silver on the sleeping fields, and the sky bright with the glow of sunrise; the spiders’ cobwebs lying on the hedges like gossamer, and the petals of the wild flowers tightly closed against the last rigours of the night. How I loved then to gallop with the early breeze soft and damp against my face. Sometimes I would buck with sheer joy at my own sense of youth and well being, to be checked sharply by Will.

  ‘None of that! None of that! Mind your manners! Steady there. Now then!’

  He knew that my whole future depended upon my good behaviour. And, looking back now, I only wish every youngster could be broken in by so kind and thoughtful a man. For we all must work or die by the gun, and to be soured at the start is a terrible fate for a horse.

  But, although I was glad to go out I was also glad to return for I loved the company of my friends. Marigold and my mother now had new foals, long-legged ungainly, handsome youngsters with manes like humans’ tooth-brushes and large bright eyes full of mischief and curiosity. We were jealous of these brothers, gaining the succour and warmth from their mothers which would never again be ours.

  When I was quiet under the saddle, obedient to leg and rein, I went out with Mollie in the breaking cart. With so steady a friend beside me I felt little fear and quickly learned to obey the stroke of the whip and the command of the voice, although I found the blinkers rather unpleasant until I grew accustomed to them, for no one likes to have their view restricted. After a few weeks Will Aken took me out alone in the gig along the quiet high-banked lanes, rich now with flowers and tall sweet grasses, up hill and down dale, through the thick woodlands out on the plain where the young wheat sprouted green and strong from the dark, rich earth. Occasionally we met young men on bicycles and once three young ladies wearing knickerbockers, with berets with pom
-poms on their heads and long scarves wound round their pearly throats. But usually my steel shod hoofs broke the silence of an almost deserted landscape.

  One day Master decided to drive me five miles to market, where he hoped to buy a dozen bullocks for fattening.

  ‘She will soon be ready to sell,’ he said. ‘And you never know we might find a buyer if we show her around a bit.’

  The morning was windy, and I hate wind; the trees creaked and shivered like old men, unlatched gates swung to and fro: strange noises seemed to come like whispers of hell from every hedge and ditch. And the road was strange to me. I needed Will or Mollie to calm my nerves and give me confidence, to show me that the road was all right, that no wild cats or dangers lurked in wait for me. Men do not always understand our fears any more than we do ourselves, for they go back to the days when we horses were wild, with speed in flight our only protection. We have no long fangs, no tenacious claws or poisonous bite with which to fight our enemies.

  But Master, whose mind was probably on the bullocks he hoped to buy, seemed unaware of my terror, and merely shouted and whipped me when I hesitated, as though I was being lazy. Presently we overtook a carrier’s covered cart pulled by a patient brown mare with a goose rump, then two bread vans pulled by willing but ugly horses and afterwards a wagon pulled by a beautiful Suffolk Punch with a plaited mane and proud carriage. Each time I passed another horse I neighed and the hills caught my neigh and returned it to me, a weak echo of the original, sad as a cry heard through shut doors. Humans, I have noticed, do not like the continuous neighing of lonely or frightened horses and my master was no exception.

  ‘Give over! Enough of that!’ he shouted, and sensing his annoyance I felt even more frightened. A lady with a parasol turned my legs weak with fear, a dog scratching and whining like some weird and dangerous animal behind a gate almost stopped me in my tracks. And in front of me, mile on mile, stretched the dusty road, leading me away from my friends and home.

  There were two more miles to go. We had just climbed a steep hill, caught a glimpse of the plain below, and were about to round a corner, when I met my first motor car – a carriage, I thought wildly, without a horse, a carriage gone mad running all on its own. In this motor car sat a young lady and gentleman smiling and talking in loud upper-class voices; the gentleman wearing goggles and ear flaps, which made him seem like a giant toad. The lady with a large blue straw hat tied with a white scarf.

  Of course I knew about motor cars. Tomtit had seen them both in London and the country. Mollie had met them occasionally on her rounds, and often we had heard them in the distance grinding up the hill, and smelt the vile air which they exuded like poison from their tails. But when I met this one, face-to-face, I took leave of my senses; every bit of advice I had received fled with the wind across the patchwork plain. My heart pounded as though it would break and the sweat broke out on my flanks. Indeed I cannot now find words to describe the terror which gripped me. The gig was forgotten; my master’s shouts were in vain. I stood for a moment stockstill, my flesh flapping as a fit of trembling overtook me. The monster was now advancing. Its great brass eyes empty of colour; a little smoke coming from its front, a rumbling in its belly. It seemed to be running straight for me; its eyes, like coach lamps, were on me now; and blind instinct must have decided my actions for I cannot remember a single thought crossing my mind, before I had turned on my hocks, swinging the precious gig over on its side as I attempted to flee back up the road. The shafts splintered but the traces held pulling me down into the gritty road, where the surface grazed my flesh in scores of places. Master was down there beside me in a moment slashing the traces with his knife. Then he was at my head.

  ‘Hup!’ he cried. ‘Hup there!’

  And then all the drama seemed to end in a trice. With a man at my head I was safe. The monstrous motor was no longer breathing, although its stink still hung in the air. The driver and his lady had dismounted and were standing in the road. And I was shaking from head to foot.

  ‘By jove, I’m sorry! What a devilish thing to happen. I’m afraid my motor frightened him. I thought nags were accustomed to meeting us by now.’

  ‘Are you both unharmed?’ asked the lady

  ‘The gig ain’t,’ said my master, ‘and the horse is scratched, and the traces are cut.’

  ‘But no serious damage?’ suggested the young gentleman.

  ‘Shaft’s broken, that’ll cost a mint of money. Most folks in them machines have the good sense to pull into the side of the road when they see a horse coming, and they switch off the engine, that’s the civil thing to do. If you’d ever driven a horse yourself you would know better than to keep on coming.’

  ‘Give the poor man something towards the shaft,’ said the lady, touching her friend’s arm with a gloved hand.

  The young gentleman hesitated a moment. His neatly trimmed chestnut moustache twitched twice as though he was a rabbit sniffing the air, then he brought a brown wallet from his pocket.

  ‘Will this help? I’m dashed sorry.’ He held out a five pound note.

  ‘Thank you, sir, thank you very much.’

  Master was at once all smiles, putting on the expression he wore habitually for his best customers ‘Very good of you, sir, I’m sure.’ He touched his cap, pocketed the note, and pushed the gig to the side of the road. He took off all my harness, except for the bridle, giving me a couple of angry digs in the ribs as he did so, and put it in the cart. Then he jumped on my back, gave me a sharp clap with his hand on the flank, rode me past the stationary motor car, and on to market, where he was greeted with many ribald jokes and remarks.

  Returning in the late afternoon, I met two more motors, but the drivers of these stopped and turned off the engines and there were no more mishaps. The gig was brought back later and left at the wheelwright’s shop for repair.

  Flyaway called me a clumsy fool. My mother said a young horse must learn to control her feelings and fears. ‘Otherwise,’ she said, ‘you will never gain a good position and you could end your life walking in a circle all day cutting chaff.’

  Master, who could well have saved himself a broken gig had he been sensible enough to go to my head when I met the motor car, now blamed Will Aken for the accident.

  ‘I’ve never sold a horse yet which is not tractable and quiet on the roads and I ain’t going to have a good reputation dragged in the mire through the fault of a careless horseman,’ he shouted. ‘It’s your good fortune that the young gentleman paid up, Will Aken, or else you would have been going short on your wages till the gig was repaired. Now see to it that this kind of thing does not happen again. I want that mare quiet with motor cars and steam engines. Is that clear?’

  Will Aken, who had been gently cleaning my scratches, stood respectfully with bowed head. There were many men out of work and he could not risk losing his job by defending himself. He had of course ridden and driven me on the roads a number of times and it was through no fault of his that we had not chanced to meet a motor car.

  Master went on to say the price of horses had dropped. He had hoped to recommend me to a chum at market, but felt he could not when I had just behaved so badly.

  ‘I cannot remember the demand for carriage horses being so low. The gentry are all copying the King and going in for them stinkpots,’ he said, ‘heaven knows how it will end. But there’s no doubt she’s a fine looking mare, a pleasure to the eye you might say, and we shall find a place for her in time.’

  A month later, when completely quiet in all traffic, I was found a buyer, and sadly left my friends, mother and two brothers.

  3

  A LONELY LIFE

  MY NEW MASTER was a well-to-do doctor called Miller, portly red-cheeked with a voice which could be soothing and quiet, so long as he was not thwarted when it would rise to a shout which was very unpleasant. A bachelor, he was tended by a valet-butler, a housekeeper and two daily maids. His house was quite new with every comfort an ordinary English gentleman requires, incl
uding a bathroom whose overflow pipe came out into the stable yard and was much in use owing to the doctor’s liking for very deep baths.

  Although quite attached to her master, the housekeeper was heard to say on occasions that he was as selfish as a spoiled child. His weakness was for well bred, charming people; he would bounce their children upon his knees like the most charming uncle in the world, but the grubby village children he would dismiss curtly if they so much as took his hand.

  He wanted a smart horse to pull his trap, a horse with naturally high head carriage, now that bearing reins were no longer in fashion, and when he saw me he decided that I would suit his needs, for I had then my mother’s air of breeding and my action was straight and lively.

  Will Aken rode me the ten miles to my new home, then took a lift in a carrier’s cart half-way back and walked the rest, at least that is what he planned to do and I suppose the journey worked out the way he wanted. I was sorry to see him go, for he had been my first and best human friend and, alone in a stall, I felt anxious and bewildered. I neighed and pawed the Staffordshire brick floor until my new groom Alec, a wizened old man, came to calm me.

  ‘Steady, my little sweetheart, whoa, my beauty!’ his voice was kind, though cracked with age. His hands knotted with disease, soothed me. I could tell by his touch that he loved horses and had spent his life with them. In build and manner he was the exact opposite of the doctor. It would indeed have been hard to find two men less alike.

  ‘I do like a good black,’ he had remarked on seeing me the first time, ‘them’s hardy and with spirit.’

  Every morning now I took the doctor on his rounds, driven by Alec, who knew how to handle a mettlesome horse. Sometimes if there were many people ill I went out in the afternoons as well. The journeys were pleasant enough, but I disliked waiting while the doctor saw his patients, for I was only five years old with little patience and scant wisdom, and often I allowed old Alec no rest at all. If he stood at my head I would keep pushing him with my muzzle and if he remained in the trap I would not stay still. Sometimes I would neigh for the friends I had left behind in the butcher’s fields. But the doctor liked me because I covered the ground at a brisk pace and I was quite happy to trot five miles without a break. We called at many large houses in the district and sometimes the doctor would be asked to stop for lunch. Then I would be unharnessed and taken to the stables, where the contents of my nose bag would be tipped into a manger. Alec would be asked indoors to eat in the servants’ hall or, if the household was modest, in the kitchen.