Black Beauty Read online

  No good luck had Larry

  He couldn’t afford to marry

  He longed for a busty bride

  Alas, his fortune was at low tide

  The nearest he could get to a busty girl

  Was screwing a local barmaid called Pearl

  Her father caught them screwing on the grass

  So he gave Larry a kick in the arse.

  36

  THE SUNDAY CAB

  He was regretting not working on day seven

  Even tho’ the rule had been made in heaven

  Turning down Mrs Muir’s cash

  Was a decision oh, very, very rash

  He and his family were starving, to refill the larder

  He’d have to work a lot bloody harder.

  One morning, as Jeremiah Barker had just put me into the shafts and was fastening the traces, a gentleman walked into the yard. ‘Your servant, sir,’ said Jeremiah Barker.

  ‘What about my servant, Mr Barker?’ said the gentleman. ‘I should be glad to make some arrangements with you for taking Mrs Briggs regularly to church.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Jerry, ‘but I have only taken out a six day licence, and therefore, I could not take a fare on Sunday.’

  ‘Oh!’ said the other, and did a backward somersault. ‘I did not know yours was a six day cab; but of course it would be very easy to alter your licence. I would see that you did not lose by it; the fact is, Mrs Briggs very much prefers you to drive her. Of course,’ said Mr Briggs, ‘I should have thought you would not have minded such a short distance for the horse, and only once a day.’

  ‘Yes, sir, that is true, and I am grateful for all favours, and anything I could do to oblige you, or the lady, I should be proud and happy to do.’ He was now prostrate on the ground, placing Mr Briggs’ boot on his head. ‘But I cannot give up Sundays, sir.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mr Briggs, ‘fuck you, and your horse.’

  ‘Well,’ says Jeremiah Barker to me, ‘we can’t help it, Jack, old boy, we must have our Sundays.’

  ‘Polly!’ he shouted. ‘Come here this minute.’

  She was there that minute.

  ‘What is it all about, dear?’

  ‘Why, my dear, Mr Briggs wants me to drive on a Sunday.’

  ‘I say, Jerry,’ she said, speaking very slowly, ‘I say, if Mrs Briggs would give you a sovereign every Sunday morning, I would not have you a seven day cabman again. We have known what it was to have no Sundays; and now, thank God, you earn enough to keep us, though it is sometimes close work to pay for all the oats and hay, the licence and the rent besides, and we only have oats for dinner.’

  Three weeks had passed away, but Mr Briggs didn’t. What a bloody fool Jeremiah’s wife was, to encourage him not to drive on a Sunday. For the last week they had been having hay for dinner.

  Oh, terrible only having hay for dinner

  That’s why they were all getting thinner

  By not driving on the seventh day

  He was losing money, they say

  Not only losing money, they state

  But also rapidly losing weight

  He on his own

  Barely weighed five stone

  To prevent him being blown off the box

  In his boots, they had to put rocks.

  But Polly would always cheer him up and say:

  ‘Do your best,

  And leave the rest,

  ’Twill all come right,

  Some day or night.’

  ‘What a lot of bollocks,’ he thought, as he put more rocks in his boot.

  It soon became known that Jerry had lost his best customer, and for what reason; most of the men said he was a fool, but two or three took his part. Where they took his part, or which part, is unknown.

  Jeremiah Barker had promised on Sunday not to drive

  So he couldn’t go anywhere, leave alone a ride

  He would lose the trade of Mrs Briggs

  Whose custom helped them pay for the digs

  Losing his customer would lose him money

  Something he didn’t think very funny.

  37

  THE GOLDEN RULE

  Oh, hurrah, hurrah for Mrs Briggs

  Whose money helped pay for their digs

  She wants Jerry’s cab for hire again

  But never on Sundays for shame

  She only wanted him on a Monday

  Which is dangerously near Sunday

  The Barkers were happy to say

  ‘Thank God, we don’t have to eat hay’

  Three cheers — Hip, Hip, Hooray.

  Two or three weeks after this, as we came into the yard, Polly came running across the road with a lantern in bright sunshine. It made her feel safe.

  ‘It has all come right, Jerry; Mrs Briggs sent her servant this afternoon to ask you to take her out tomorrow. She says there is none of the cabs so nice and clean as yours, and nothing will suit her but Mr Barker’s.’

  ‘Oh, I’d better get all the crap out of it then. The last customer had sheep with him.’

  Jerry broke out into a merry laugh: ‘Ha hah hee hee oh ha ha ha oh ha ha ha. Run in and get the supper.’ After this, Mrs Briggs wanted Jerry’s cab quite as often as before; never, however, on a Sunday; but there came a day when we had Sunday work.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ said Polly, ‘poor Dinah Brown has just had a letter brought to say that her mother is dangerously ill, she’s got piles and nothing can get through. It’s only half Sunday without you, but you know very well what I should like if my mother was dying of piles.’

  ‘Why, Polly, you are as good as the minister, but a terrible accountant. Go and tell Dinah I will be ready as the clock strikes ten; but stop!’ Polly stopped. ‘Just step round to the butcher and ask for a meat pie to be put away.’

  She went and came back and said, ‘That will be a pound for the meat pie.’

  ‘Well tell the swine he shouldn’t be doing business on a Sunday. Fog will strike him dead for selling a Godfearing woman a meat pie on the Sabbath. Now put me up a bit of bread and cheese, and I’ll be back in the afternoon.’

  ‘And I’ll have the meat pie ready for an early tea, instead of for dinner.’

  ‘Oh no! Not again!’ said Jeremiah.

  Dinah’s family lived in a small farmhouse, up a tree, close by a meadow: there were two cows feeding in it.

  ‘There is nothing my horse would like better than an hour or two in your beautiful meadow,’ said Jeremiah.

  ‘Do, and welcome,’ said the young man. ‘We shall be having some dinner in an hour, and I hope you’ll come in; we will lower a rope and pull you up.’

  Jeremiah thanked him, but said he would like nothing better than to walk around the meadow with meat pies in his pocket. He picked flowers in the meadow. When he got back he handed Dolly the flowers; she jumped for joy. She cleared the dining table with six inches to spare.

  ‘Your meat pie is ready,’ she said.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Jeremiah, and hurled it out the window.

  38

  DOLLY AND A REAL GENTLEMAN

  Oh terrible carter, whipping his steed

  His were sinful deeds

  To his horses, which numbered two

  A man tried to stop him and was struck down

  He was wearing a suit of brown

  He told the police, despite being frail

  So the carter will wind up in jail

  Before that, one recalls

  His horse kicked him in the balls.

  The winter came in early April, with a great deal of cold and frost. Jeremiah Barker’s things were all shrivelled up. There was snow or sleet or rain, almost every day for weeks, changing only for keen driving winds, or sharp frosts. The horses all felt it very much. I felt mine and it felt frosty.

  When we horses had worked half the day we went to our dry stables, and could rest. I would get in my bed and pull up the blanket. The drivers would sit on their boxes until two in the morning if they had a party
to wait for. It was usually the Conservative Party, and they were so pissed none of them knew where they lived.

  When the weather was very bad, many of the men would go and sit in the toilets in the tavern close by, and get someone to watch for them; why they wanted someone to watch for them in the toilet seems a perversion. Jeremiah never went to the Rising Sun, but he went to the toilet; he resented drink. It was his opinion that spirits and beer made a man colder, and pissed. He believed in dry clothes, good food, cheerfulness and a comfortable wife at home, none of which were available at the Rising Sun. Polly always supplied him with something to eat — meat pies. Sometimes, he would see little Dolly peeping from a crack in the pavement to make sure if father were on the stand. If she saw him, she would run off at speed and come back with something in a tin or basket — a meat pie. It was wonderful how such a little thing could get across the street, often thronged with horses and carriages, and police dynamiting a way through; but she was a brave little maid, and felt it quite an honour to bring ‘father’s first course’, as he used to call it. She was a general favourite on the stand, and there was not a man who would not have seen her safely across the street — they threw her.

  One cold windy day, Dolly had brought Jeremiah something hot — it was a meat pie — and was standing by him to make sure he ate it all. He had scarcely begun, when a gentleman walked towards us very fast, so fast he went past us and had to back up. He held up his umbrella. Jeremiah touched his hat in return, gave the meat pie to Dolly, and was taking off my cloth, when the gentleman cried out, ‘No, no, finish your meal, my friend.’

  ‘It’s all right, my daughter is finishing it for me.’

  He asked to be taken to Clapham Common. I think he was very fond of animals because when we took him to his own door, a zebra and two hyenas came bounding out to meet him. This gentleman wasn’t young, he was about 104. There was a forward stoop in his shoulders, as if he was always going into something, like walls, trees, lamp posts and zebras.

  The gentleman stopped at a veterinary surgeon to take his huge tomcat in for an operation. The window was full of clocks and watches. When the tom’s operation was finished, he said, ‘Why have you got your window full of watches and clocks?’

  The veterinary surgeon said, ‘What would you put in the window?’

  There was a cart, with two very fine horses, standing on the other side of the street. I cannot tell how long they had been standing. (They had in fact been standing there for seven months.) They started to move out, the carter came running out, and with whip punished them brutally, beating them about the head. Our gentleman saw it, and stepping quickly across the street, was immediately knocked down. From the prone position he said:

  ‘If you don’t stop that directly, I’ll have you summoned for leaving your horses, for brutal conduct, knocking me to the ground and displacing my false teeth.’

  The man must have been doing the white-eared elephant, as his trouser pockets were pulled inside out, his flies were open and his willy was hanging out.3 The man poured forth some abusive language, but he left off knocking the horses about. The gentleman took the number of the cart.

  ‘What do you want with that?’ growled the carter. The gentleman replied, ‘I’m going to report you for doing the white-eared elephant without a licence.’

  The carter was fined a million pounds, hung and deported to Bexhill for life.

  39

  SEEDY SAM

  Poor, poor Seedy Sam

  Said, ‘Oh, what an unlucky bastard I am

  I’ve the arse out of my trousers

  I can’t afford to buy any fresh horses

  Driving out in the wind and rain and ice

  Is not very nice

  How long I can carry on I don’t know

  At any moment I can g

  I nearly went yesterday

  So the end can’t be far away.’

  I should say, that for a cab horse, I was very well-off indeed; my driver was my owner, and it was in his interest to treat me well, and not overwork me, otherwise (1) I would have kicked him in the balls, (2) I would have trampled on his head.

  One day, a shabby, miserable-looking driver who went by the name of Seedy Sam (he had the arse out of his trousers, actually he had his arse out of somebody else’s trousers), brought in his horse which was so ill, he was carrying it over his shoulder. The Governor said:

  ‘You and your horse look more fit for the knackers.

  The man flung his tattered rug over the horse, put some sticks around it to hold it up, turned full round upon the Governor and said, in a voice that came from the arse out of his trousers:

  ‘If the knackers have any business with the matter,’ it ought to be with the masters (cough, cough) who charge us so much, or with the fares that are fixed so low. You know how quick some of the gentry are to suspect us of cheating (cough, cough, cough) and over-charging; why, they stand with their purses padlocked in their hands, counting it over to a penny, and looking at us as if we were pickpockets (cough, gob, cough, cough, cough, gob).’ The men who stood round much approved his speech and his display of coughing and gobbing.

  My master had taken no part in this conversation. He was willing to take the part of Joseph of Nazareth, but nobody had asked him.

  A few mornings after this talk, a new man came on the stand with Sam’s cab.

  ‘Halloo!’ said one, ‘what’s up with Seedy Sam?’

  ‘He’s ill in bed,’ said the man. ‘His wife sent a boy this morning to say his father was in a high fever and could not get out.’

  The next morning the same man came again.

  ‘How is Sam?’ enquired the Governor.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said the man.

  ‘What? He’s gone without telling us? That’s not fair.’

  ‘He died at four o’clock this morning, then five, then six; finally, at eight, he snuffed it. All yesterday he was raving (cough, cough), raving (cough, cough), raving (cough, cough).’

  The Governor said, ‘I tell you what, mates, this is a warning for us. If we want to go on working, we must avoid death.’

  40

  POOR GINGER

  One day, I saw a horse in a state

  I thought I better wait

  It turned out to be Ginger, my friend

  He was coming to a terrible end

  He threw his legs around me and cried

  ‘Oh, I wish I’d died’

  His tears flooded the floor

  I was forced to say, ‘Stop crying, no more

  We’re drowning by the score.’

  One day, a shabby old cab drove up beside ours. The horse was an old worn-out chestnut, with an ill-kept coat; you could see the lining, and bones that showed plainly through it. The knees knuckled over, and the forelegs were very unsteady. He was the worst case of horseitis I had ever seen. I had been eating some hay, and the wind rolled a little lock of it that way, and the poor creature put out his long thin neck and picked it up. There was a hopeless look in the dull eye that I could not help noticing, and then, as I was thinking, he looked full at me and said, ‘Black Beauty, is that you?’

  It was Ginger! But how changed! The beautifully arched and glossy neck was now straight and lank, and fallen in; the clean straight legs and delicate fetlocks were swelled; the joints were grown out of shape with hard work; the face, that was once so full of spirit and life, was now full of suffering, and I could tell by the heaving of his sides, and his frequent cough, how bad his breath was. It was the worst case of horse halitosis I had ever known. It was a sad tale that he had to tell.

  After twelve months at Earlshall, he was considered to be fit for work again. In this way he changed hands several times, but always getting lower down.

  I said, ‘You used to stand up for yourself if you were ill-used, and kick them in the balls.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I did once; no, wait, I did it fifteen times. I wish the end would come, I wish I was dead. I wish I may drop down dead at my work.’r />
  I waited for him to drop dead, but he didn’t. He said, ‘I don’t feel like dropping dead today.’

  A short time after this, a cart with a dead horse in it passed. The head hung out of the cart-tail, the lifeless tongue was slowly dripping with blood; and the sunken eyes! He would soon be a dinner in some French restaurant. It was a chestnut horse with a long thin neck. Wait! I saw a white streak down the forehead. It was Ginger; I hoped it was, for then his troubles would be over. Soon, he would be a tin of cat food.

  41

  THE BUTCHER

  The butcher was a prompt man

  Delivering meat by horse or van

  His delivery boy rode them very fast

  The butcher said, ‘If you go on like this he won’t last’

  The boy said, ‘I have to deliver on time

  I have to, so the customer can dine

  If only they’d order in advance

  We wouldn’t lead this merry dance’

  So he bought the boy a bike

  ‘I hope,’ said the butcher, ‘this is something he’ll like.’

  We horses do not mind hard work if we are treated with a dinner at the Savoy, or taken to a music hall. I am sure that many are driven by quite poor men who have had a happier life.

  It often went to my heart to see how the little ponies were used, straining along with heavy loads, wearing a truss over their hernias. We saw one doing his best to pull a heavy cart back to Africa with ten elephants.

  Pulling ten elephants back to Africa

  For a little ruptured horse is much too far

  Try, try, try as they may

  They’ll be lucky to get as far as Herne Bay

  The ruptured horse to Africa will never get