Muck (4 page)

If still the creature won’t bend to his rule, he fetches more rope, he fetches the baton with a loop of rope in it called the twitch. He grabs the horse’s top lip and twists the rope-loop around it and screws and screws until the lip turns white and pain spreads deep into the horse, locks it in paralysed defeat. If there’s still fight in it, another twitch will do the job, screwed onto its ear.

I’ll make sure, when I address Churchill, that my voice is pitched low like a serious man’s, my vowels round in the mouth, not a hint of nasal which would be unimpressive to someone English. My hands are behind my back as usual. I keep them there though I list off balance and slip on horse dung that bursts open with oats and chaff like a bread, a burnt bread, mouldy green and crusty.

“Don’t talk to the horse that way,” I say, I order. “Work around him, not through him.”

If I tell Churchill to do something he has to do it, even though I am sixteen and he’s a man of forty. One day Tudor Park will be mine. In the line of the dynasty I’m second in charge. The only person who can tell me what to do is The Duke. He is the first in charge. I can’t tell him what to do. Feet is a mother and not counted in rank and power.

If Churchill does not do what I say, then he would answer for it. He’d be
let go
. He is not king of me, it’s the other way around.

He must be a deaf fool and hasn’t heard me. “Work around him, not through him,” I repeat.

Now he looks at me, I have his attention. He squints. His arms row the reins to bring Poached Eye to a halt. He laughs, a laugh snorted out of him, more a cough than a laugh, a belligerent cough that brings up sputum which he spits into the grass while looking at me. I make sure my chin is held high and my shoulders are square, my hands clenched behind my back, my chest pushed out. The stance of someone in authority who better have his directives obeyed.

Churchill cough-laughs again and flicks Poached Eye into a prance. “I’m the fucking boss of you,” he tells the horse, though surely it’s really me he speaks to. “Come on you bastard, I’ll show you who’s boss.”

Poached Eye rears and jumps sideways. Lashes out with his front hooves to strike Churchill though Churchill is too far away and continues flicking the reins and rowing: “I’m the fucking boss here you cunt.” He flicks and rows again, flicks and rows as if trying to punish the animal with confused commands.

Churchill calls out to me, “You watching, boy?”

He then has the nerve to call out that I should look and learn how to show an animal who’s the boss. After a fierce shake of the reins he kicks sods of caked mud at Poached Eye’s behind, and roars, “Walk proper, you fucking dumb beast.” He pulls down on the left rein to turn in a circle. Then the right rein, kicking sods and roaring at every falter. “Who’s boss now?” he growls to the horse and scowls at me, kicking more sods for Poached Eye to trot up the hill away from me.

I must respond to this disobedience. How dare this disappointed man talk back to me. He, a disappointed man, has slighted me—my father’s son. Me, heir to that horse, heir to this land. I refuse to be reduced to an inferior to a disappointed man. A man with no education. A failed Englishman. A Gunna.

I have to put him in his place. He doesn’t realise what he is, a Gunna. Yet he needs to know how obvious it is for others to see it in him. He needs to know that when I order him to do something he better do it. No cough-laughs, no scowls, no spitting.

He has reached the stable. He flicks for Poached Eye to get through the gate, rows him to the right and flicks him through the horse-box door. His darling-talk has returned in case The Duke is somewhere about. But still he will manage one quick punch into Poached Eye’s ribcage as his daily get-even. I’ve seen him do it before and I see the signs he has done it now—the horse is shuddering and fear-snorting when he should be snorting like a sigh, like relief that another day’s work is done. Churchill’s fist is relaxing back to being fingers. He unthreads the reins from the stirrups, leans down to unbuckle the saddle. He clucks and darling-talks for Poached Eye to stand quietly.

The horse-box floor is stripy with a few strokes of sun through the wall panels. Straw motes swarm and swirl. My shadow bends across the timbers, a skinny shadow, armless because of my hands being behind me. I begin to say, “You were told to work around him,” but before I can complete the sentence Churchill turns his head to speak to my shadow, to speak over the top of me.

“So boy, what are you going to do when you grow up?”

I shuffle my feet. My hands have gone from my back to my pockets. I was not expecting questioning from him. Least of all that particular question. I don’t have an answer for it. I’m under no obligation to answer questions from his type. He has no right even to speak to me about my private business. And to call me boy as if I’m junior to him.
Boy
when the truth is my height alone must be six inches bigger than his.

I do not have to answer him, but I do. I shrug, I shuffle and say “I don’t know” without thinking. Without saying to myself first that here I am in the presence of a disappointed man and even
he
knows what he wants. He wants a reputation, a name. Am I in the early stages of being a disappointed man with my “I don’t know”?

Doctor
I should have said.
Barrister. Politician
. These are not lives that a disappointed man like Churchill could ever lead. They are occupations well above and ahead of him. They are what I should have said. Instead I’ve given him the opportunity to cough-laugh at me again. Worse, at the very moment he does cough-laugh he releases the saddle’s surcingle with such a dangerous, deliberate jerk its elastic strap springs free like a slingshot towards me. It misses, but I feel its wind against my cheek.

Churchill undresses the horse of its rope and sack clothing, its leather and steel headdress. He saddles his arm with it all and grazes past my shoulder. A deliberate act of grazing, I’m sure of it. A challenge, the equivalent of poking or pushing. He has gone too far now. It’s time to report this rudeness, this impudence to The Duke, these assaults on me.

That is exactly what they are—assaults. First the assault of insults—the cough-laughs, the scowls, the spitting which might have been a spit into grass but only an idiot would think it was anything other than a substitute he was using for my face.

Second, his deliberately letting the surcingle fling close to my face. I hate to think of the damage it could have done to my appearance, a permanent disfigurement if it had connected.

Third, the graze against my shoulder, outright physical contact. A violent threat to my authority, which is no less a threat therefore to The Duke’s authority.

But would reporting these assaults lessen me in The
Duke’s eyes?

If I am the showpiece’s heir, if I am to follow in The Duke’s footsteps in the dynasty, isn’t it for me and me alone to assert myself? Isn’t it for me to enforce
our
rules and
our
way of doing things over a man who is no better than a common cowboy, someone so lowly he is hardly worthy of my hate?

T
HE CHESTNUT FILLY IN
the other horsebox is more advanced in the breaking than Poached Eye because, says Churchill, she is sensible.

“Hello Sensible,” he greets her. “You’re not going to give me trouble today, are you Sensible?”

He fits the headdress to her and she takes the bit into her mouth without struggle. She allows the saddle to be jiggled into the hollow of her back, its leather arm, the girth, strapped and buckled around her body’s own breathing girth. He asks a question of her: “So tell me something, Sensible. What do you think
boy
here will end up being?”

Churchill nods and cough-laughs as if Sensible has whispered an answer.

“I see. Mmm. I think so. Yes, I think you may be right.” He cough-laughs more theatrically, more mocking of me. “Yes, you’re right indeed. He won’t have to do anything. He can be a
nothing
because he’s set up with a silver spoon in his mouth, and instead of work he can be a fucking gentleman farmer.”

He leads Sensible from the horsebox to the yard to mount her for trotting figure eights. He cocks out his left leg for my hand to hoist him as riders do because they’re small and need help in that way. For receiving help they should thank the lifter as a courtesy. But Churchill cocks and criticises me with “Come on, don’t take all day” even before my hand cups the bony front of his ankle.

Now is when I must say it: “You’re a Gunna. Gunna go nowhere.”

But that won’t be enough to punish him. There must be physical retaliation for his grazing me and the surcingle episode. I must pair saying “Gunna” this very second with his performing the little hop that begins his rising from ground level. A hop that signals I’m to take his child-like weight in my palm, stiffen my wrist and boost him higher.

“You’re a Gunna. Gunna go nowhere.” And as I say the “nowhere” I lift him, higher and faster than ever before. Toss him over Sensible’s saddle like a piece of luggage onto a rack.

Churchill lets out a squeal-cry of shock and protest. He lands the other side of Sensible where hooves from figure-eighting have worn grass to an
8
of mud.

Sensible stutter-steps free of the commotion, snorting to gauge its warnings and messages on the air.

Churchill scrambles to his feet, making sure he’s clear of Sensible’s back legs, one of which is tucked ready for kicking as she pirouettes and bucks. He rushes towards me, waves his whip to let me know I’m in for a thrashing, so enraged no words form in him to make a voice. He is ten feet from me now. He shakes his whip madly, thrashes the air.

I hold up my fists. I walk backwards, faster, run backwards until I collide with the rail fence.

He stops. Shakes his whip like a bendy spear and cries out a vowel gutturally.

I am about to be beaten. I’m about to feel pain to my body and shame to my soul for being beaten by a disappointed man who thinks so little of me, fears me so little he’ll take a whip to my skin. He couldn’t care less that he beats The Duke’s son and will pay dearly.

Churchill lunges, the whip flexing over his head to deliver blows.

I punch him. My right knuckles scrunch bone-flesh low down on his left cheek. He topples. His skullcap is pushed over his eyes by the fall. A blood trickle leaks from between his lips. He unfastens his skullcap, throws it to one side, blinks to clear his sight, sits to catch his breath.

There is a throb and ache inside my index knuckle from hav ing made skewed contact. I’ve hit cheeks before—a dirty punch in rugby where with dirty punches you enfear. In bull-rush at The Mansions and its toilets where you smoke and fight against your head being flushed. At first it’s you the puncher who feels fear, fear that more harm was done to the fightmate than was intended. Churchill is so much older than those I’ve punched before. I cannot fear harming him, a grown man.

I’m not certain I have won the fight yet. But he does fear me, I think. He climbs to his feet and steps away from me. His hand swipes across the ground to retrieve his skullcap. He doesn’t look at my eyes. He jog-walks out the gate, muttering to himself, though I hear it well enough, that I’m a mongrel cunt. Any self-respecting father would take me by the shirt collar and give me a thrashing I’d remember to my dying day. He turns and yells with his finger poking at me to emphasise every word that I’m mad, mad, mad. That’s all I am. I’m nothing but mad. Then he leans off into a jog towards the house, calling for The Duke to come out if he’s inside and hear what must be said about this mad son of his. “Mad, mad, mad,” Churchill keeps chanting all the way to the back door where he flings open the fly-screen and knocks so hard he must be hurting his hand.

The Duke comes to the door, patting his hair flat from his day nap. “What’s the racket?”

Churchill wants him to know this: that he refuses ever, ever, ever to set foot on this property again while I am allowed to follow him around like a spy, a watcher, a boy who thinks he’s Master Muck. “I won’t be talked out of it,” Churchill says, though The Duke has made no attempt to talk. “I’m sorry but those are my terms.” He takes a few hurried steps away as if to walk to his car and leave immediately. “There’s nothing you can say to talk me around.”