Black Beauty's Family Read online

  Another time Sweetbriar told me of the destitute in London, under the arches at Charing Cross, covering themselves with newspapers in a vain attempt to protect their thin bodies from the winter’s bitter cold. She mentioned children with running eyes and sores around their mouths sleeping on benches; their eyes dark pools in waxen faces pinched with lack of food and care; she spoke of drunk old men, dressed like scarecrows, coughing themselves to death in the street rather than go to the workhouses in which healthy human beings hide away their aged poor.

  ‘Truly they are worse off than us horses, for we are worth something to our masters, and so we must be kept warm and fed and fit. But things are changing. Clarences were everywhere when I left.’

  ‘Clarences?’

  ‘Motor cabs, my dear Princess; they’re replacing the growlers. My master at the livery stable bought a beautiful young carriage horse last week – Maharajah, they call him – straight from London. And Maharajah says we are finished in London. Soon men won’t need us any more. They’ve become so fond of motors, don’t you see? Why Maharajah says there are only one or two horse buses left in the whole metropolis, and the park hacks are being discarded, my dear, like sacks of grain. The auction rooms are crowded with horses being sold like cattle. Oh, it’s good in one way and bad in another. Take St James’s, my dear.’

  ‘St James’s?’

  ‘A very famous street. I should have thought you would have heard of St James’s. Every cab horse dreads St James’s for the cobbles are always slippery and more cabs overturn there than anywhere else. There’s such a crowd, smart people in a great hurry as smart people usually are, wanting the cabmen to go faster than they should, and all amongst the carriages, the victorias, the clarences and the cabs, are the bicycles. My dear, I can’t stand bicycles. They pop up from nowhere and upset one’s stride. They are even worse than tricycles because they are less obvious, so narrow; they slip in and out of the horse traffic like little adders, and handicapped as we are with blinkers, we don’t see them until they are right under our noses. Oh, I’ve seen several good horses come down in St James’s, and one poor gelding shot where he lay, for it was said his off fore was broken just above the fetlock and he would be of no further use to his master. The poor fellow was floundering and kicking like a bird in a strawberry net, causing such a commotion that quite a crowd collected, but the ladies were escorted away before the farrier put an end to him.’

  ‘What worries me most,’ said Sweetbriar after a long silence, ‘is not so much men’s callousness, as the fact that I’ve never had a foal. You know, my dear, I would have dearly loved a little fellow gambolling in a field beside me. I dream of it sometimes: a grassy meadow, noble trees, a bubbling stream, high thorn hedges thick with birds’ nests and, beside me, a foal tottering on dear spindly legs. I can see it all so clearly, and I feel the fresh spring grass under my hoofs. I smell the flowers as I pull the pasture, my teats heavy. I long to feel the little fellow taking the warm milk from me. It is hard to explain, but sometimes, Princess, the longing is like a pain, but what is the use? I am fourteen and, although I have good blood in my veins, no human would wish to breed from me now. My life is almost over.’

  ‘But you look so young,’ I said. ‘If you had the chance, you would be a wonderful mother. I have always admired the star on your forehead. It is such a perfect shape. It is like the real stars that shine so bright at night, except for its colour, that is like snow.’

  Sweetbriar pulled a mouthful of hay from the rack, chewed a moment then turning her head, said, ‘My dear, that is man-made. I was born bay right across my temples.’

  ‘Man-made?’

  ‘You are very innocent. You have not learned much of human vanity, of dealers’ tricks and ladies’ fancies. I was bred by a dealer who specialised in park hacks. He knew very well how much store a young lady sets on a white star on a horse’s forehead, how she feels such a decoration lends for her romance and beauty to the mount of her dreams. So he learned how to make the stars himself to enhance those youngsters who were born plain. This is how he did it: he cut two holes in my skin two inches apart and then two more at the same distance straight across. He then pushed a skewer into each hole in turn, working it up and down and to and fro until a sort of passage had been made between them under the skin. He pushed two strands of wire along these passages, so that an end stuck out about half an inch long from each hole. These he lapped round with packthread as fast as he could tie it, and finally he covered the whole contraption with pitch to hold it secure.’

  ‘But wasn’t it painful?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes it hurt, but he held a rag against my nostrils which soothed me strangely, then this man put a twitch on, and I dared not move. The aching was worse afterwards. I felt as though hot needles were being pushed under my skin, but after a time this was replaced by numbness.’

  ‘But how long did the wires stay?’

  ‘Only three days, and after they had been removed, he dressed the wound daily with honey of roses and tincture of iodine, pouring some into each hole and rubbing the rest all over the star.’

  ‘It’s beautiful now. The hair simply turned white?’

  ‘Yes, I have seen it now and then reflected in shop windows and once in a mirror and it suits me well, and I have almost forgotten the pain, but I have met horses who say it is terrible that we should be so mutilated to suit the vanities of human beings.’

  In the New Year Sweetbriar went back to the livery stable.

  ‘I shall miss you,’ she said, ‘but I am tired of pulling the doctor’s trap. There’s too much waiting about for a mare of my temperament and your Alec is so old and decrepit. My dear, I prefer a younger, smarter driver with a little dash about him.’

  ‘He cannot help it,’ I said.

  ‘No, it’s simply his age, but, although I hide my feelings, I do find his cough plays on my nerves most terribly.’

  When she had gone, Sweetbriar’s influence remained with me, and when spring came her longings became my longings . . . a little fellow gambolling in the field beside me . . . I can see it all so clearly, and feel the fresh spring grass under my hoofs. I smell the flowers as I pull the pasture, my teats heavy. I long to feel the little fellow taking the warm milk from me.

  The cows were out in the meadows with their calves, the hens pecked in the farmyards with chicks like balls of fluff or peered through the bars of coops with motherly clucks and advice. And I continued trotting down the long, dusty roads pulling my master’s trap, blinkered, obedient and sad. I wanted a mate, as every animal wants a mate. I began to sniff the air to catch the scent of a stallion, and the humans seemed unaware of my need, although one day I heard Alec tell the master, after I had shied twice, that mares were sometimes unreliable in the spring.

  Then on a fine April day, with the sun playing peep-bo with white scudding clouds, and the breeze stirring the young grass, I thought I had my chance.

  Master had been called to visit a young girl of good family with incipient tuberculosis who would not recover in spite of all the love and money lavished on her by doting parents. Master’s servants said he liked to call on this particular young lady partly because of her prettiness and charm, and partly because of the grandeur of the place and the glasses of good Spanish sherry he drank with her parents, who were both titled. He was, therefore, in good humour as I trotted the seven miles to the mansion, and bore my rather skittish behaviour without complaint.

  After leaving the doctor at the front door old Alec unhitched me and led me away for a drink of chilled water, then tied me clumsily in a stall to wait while the stud groom took him for a glass of porter in the Medicine Room, where the chief grooms usually went for a smoke and chat when they wanted to be rid of the stable boys.

  The yard normally a busy place full of comings and goings, hoofbeats, neighs and whinnying, (for the Master here bred thoroughbreds) was now quiet. I pulled at my rope in a sudden mood of impatience, and the knot fell apart, then in a moment I was
outside. Nobody was around. Several horses looked over loosebox doors at me, but instinct turned me away from them and within seconds I was trotting along the back drive. It must have been instinct again which guided me in this direction for I cannot remember choosing which way to go. I passed gun dog kennels, a little turreted house and came into a different world of paddocks, white fencing and carefully planted spinnies. And there in a meadow, etched against the April sky, stood a stallion with dark flowing mane and tail and such eyes as come only in dreams, set in a noble countenance. Now I neighed, I flung out my hoofs, carried my head high for, in human words, this was love at first sight.

  Seeing me, the stallion came across the field like a deer, graceful and fleet, but with fine, strong shoulders and high-crested neck; the breath from his wide nostrils making patterns in the air. We touched muzzles. He was barely six for his corner teeth was still short. We ran our muzzles down each other’s necks, gave little cries of pleasure and then I let out a little squeal of excitement, which must have been instinct again for it came without any request from me. We moved closer, leaning across the top bar of the fence to sniff each other’s forelegs. His lips were very soft, his breath warm and there was a wild look in his eyes. We knew that one of us must jump the fence if we were to come together. I put a foreleg through the lowest bar, then drew it back. The stallion reared, letting out a high shrill neigh which the hills echoed and brought back to us in all its strength. It was a call that lives for ever in the memory, a call of passion belonging to all stallions going back down the centuries and forward into eternity. It was a call of the wild, of instinct and blind nature. But even as the echo thundered across the midday landscape, footsteps crunched on the gravel, human voices spoke my name in the flat, soft tones of country people.

  ‘Whoa, my little Princess, Whoa, steady there!’

  And the stallion wheeled in one beautiful pirouette, swift and nubile as a circus horse, and galloped away across the field with his dark mane and tail streaming in the wind. And then I was alone again, standing in my black harness, blinkered and ready for work. I jingled the hard bit in my mouth, shook my head as though to wake myself from a dream, but it had been real, and now I felt as though the very core of my being had travelled across the green pasture with the lovely grey stallion’.

  ‘Poor old girl, wanted a mate, did you?’ asked Alec, taking my rein, stroking my neck.

  ‘That’s Snow King. She chose well. He’s a champion,’ said the stud groom. ‘His stud fee is a hundred guineas.’

  ‘I reckons every mare should be allowed one foal, the same with every bitch. Well it’s nature, ain’t it. It’s only right,’ said Alec, turning my head, starting to lead me back down the gravel driveway. ‘Them looked a picture standing there! Come on old lady.’

  I never went again to the mansion. Perhaps the fine titled people found a doctor they liked better than my master. Perhaps the girl died. I shall never know the answer. But the stallion is as clear in my mind now as he was then. I see him still etched against the merry April sky his spirit unbroken by man, his eyes full of fire and beauty.

  6

  I LOSE A FRIEND

  WINTER CAME AGAIN, and now every morning it took Alec longer to harness me to the trap, for his breathing seemed to grow harsher and more difficult and his hands clumsier. A thin blue film, pale as the plumage on a jay’s wing, was spreading across his old red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘The cataract,’ the servants called it, speaking in whispers so that the old man should not hear their verdict. ‘He’ll be blind in a year, you mark my words, if he ain’t under the daisies, poor soul.’

  His large red spotted handkerchief was often dragged from his pocket to wipe his red-veined nose, which dripped pitifully in the sharp frosty air, and he was forever rubbing his hands together in a vain attempt to warm them.

  One night Master was called out to visit a farmer’s wife, who had collapsed while filling her stone hot water bottle. Roused from his bed in the loft by Albert, Alec crept down the yew ladder to my stable like a phantom, a cough rattling in his throat, his face pale as sand. He struggled to lift the collar over my head, which I lowered at once, then fumbled with the buckles, then could hardly raise the strength to double up my tail and push it through the crupper. While Master started hollering in the yard wanting to know why we were so deuced long in coming.

  ‘The lady will be dead by the time I get there at this rate!’

  I backed between the shafts as straight and swiftly as possible. I waited, till Alec was well seated with the reins in his cold clumsy hands, before moving off.

  The night was crystal clear, the moon riding like a queen amongst her stars, and everything touched with silver.

  My thoughts turned to the grey stallion but I made no attempt to take the road which led to the mansion, for unlike the doctor who refused to see unpleasant facts which might affect his existence, I saw plainly that Alec was very ill. I knew with an animal’s instinct that he wanted to creep away in a corner, like a sick dog, and drift into eternal sleep. He could work no more and without work his fate lay within the walls of the hated workhouse.

  Master said not a word as we trotted through the moonlit countryside, although occasionally he cleared his throat with a little cough. Beside the old groom he always looked robust, even portly, with his bright red cheeks, thick jowls and bull neck.

  The farm was at the top of a steep hill, looking across a valley, dotted with trees and broken by tall hedgerows, all edged now with silver. In summer it was a pleasant spot, sweet with the scent of thyme and rosemary, but in winter a devilish place, because the east wind caught it, killing all the tenderer plants and shrubs in the little garden, which was normally tended by the farmer’s wife.

  ‘Don’t unharness the horse. I expect to be out again directly. Wait where you are,’ said Master, hardly glancing at Alec as, bag in hand, he strode away to the house.

  A dog chained to a kennel started to bark. His coat was matted, his eyes strangely pale in the moonlight. Old Alec put a waterproof sheet over my loins.

  ‘That’s better my little sweetheart,’ he croaked. He tried to swing his arms, banging his hands against his sides, to keep warm, but he hadn’t the strength, so he took to stamping his feet instead. The moon slipped away behind banks of slate grey clouds and the garden darkened. The east wind whistled down the hill into the valley.

  ‘A warm bran mash when we get home, a warm bran mash,’ said Alec.

  Half an hour must have passed before the doctor returned.

  ‘Too late! Dammit, they should have called me yesterday. The woman’s been in and out of bed for a week.’ He climbed angrily into the trap. ‘Come on, Alec, what’s the matter? Let’s get back to our warm beds. Fools, utter fools! Such a nice lady, too!’

  But old Alec could not drag himself up into the trap. His watery eyes looked helplessly at the step, and even as he looked the light seemed to be dying in them, sucked from him as dusk sucks away the light of day. He tried; he raised one bandy, gaitered leg, then slipped and fell, and lay still on the frozen, silver earth.

  My master, to give him his due, was down in a trice, leaping from the trap like a man half his years. He turned the old groom on his side, loosened his collar, then summoned one of the farmer’s sons to help. In a minute or so Alec was borne away into the house, my presence utterly forgotten. The dog barked again straining at his chain; a cow lowed sadly in the frozen meadows, a thin blackbird fell dead from its perch in a young oak tree. Winter was bearing away the weak and old to eternal rest as she had done since time began.

  Presently Master came back. ‘So you waited, good horse! Well done!’ He patted me quite kindly, then he took two swigs from a flask of brandy, climbed into the trap and drove me home at a rousing trot. Albert was wakened to see to my needs.

  ‘So he’s finished,’ he muttered. ‘Come on, get over! I never thought to find myself tending a horse.’

  There was no bran mash for me that night, just a bucket of wat
er, a handful of plain oats and a nibble of straw.

  I never saw Alec again. I heard the housekeeper tell a tradesman that the old groom had died in the night.

  ‘A good way to go! Our Lord was kind to him,’ she said. ‘But Master should have taken the horse himself, not dragged Alec out in the cold. But there, that’s how he is. And, to look on the better side, Alec was past seventy-five and that’s a good age for a man to live. Heaven knows, many don’t reach fifty!’

  I missed the old groom, his coughing in the night, his foot on the ladder, his gentle hands and soft voice. In his place came a red haired youth, an urchin who cared nothing for horses, but needed money for his mother and his fags. ‘Fred is just a temporary measure,’ the housekeeper said. ‘The Master has other plans for the future.’

  I felt all at once that I was no longer needed or wanted. I still took the doctor on his rounds but he paid little attention to me, and Fred let my harness grow so stiff through lack of cleaning, that it chafed me. The truth was that my owner had decided to enter the motor age.

  ‘Do my rounds in half the time in a Tourer, might even have time for a rubber of bridge of an afternoon,’ he said. ‘By jove, it will feel deuced odd to have the afternoon off. I shan’t know myself, shall I?’

  The motor, a BSA Tourer came just three days later, green shiny, beautiful as the finest carriage with great brass lights, leather seats and a hood that went up and down. The steering wheel was brass too, and there was a horn which made a weird honk when squeezed. The older villagers called this motor car a stinkpot, but the younger ones and Master’s servants were as excited as children with a new toy, and many a time the horn was honked when Master was out of earshot. Our jobbing gardener was replaced by a chauffeur-gardener, a smart young man, with a small, well-trimmed moustache and slicked-down dark hair; very slim he was with a cocky air about him and sharp features and eyes bright as beads. The housekeeper said this new chauffeur-gardener was too clever for his own good.