Already a subscriber? Log in
As I got to the car, I heard a shout. Coming down the road was a man on a horse. He looked like an extra in a spaghetti western: long, greasy hair, four-day stubble, torn overcoat, mud-encrusted boots. His horse was in a lather about something — my car, possibly — and in its reluctance to pass was clattering and slithering all over the tarmac. ‘Is he not behaving himself?’ I shouted up, cheerfully, to the man. I was amazed by how natural my voice sounded.
‘He’s getting better,’ said the man, standing up in the stirrups and hauling back on the reins with all his might. His was a deep West Country voice. There was anger in it and recklessness. He spoke sharply again to his horse and the great lummox of a thing finally made up its silly mind which was the lesser of two evils, the car or the brute on its back, and at last it came snorting and prancing by. Once he was past, the man stopped the horse, swung around in the saddle, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘And are you behaving yourself?’ The stare was hard and direct. He was menacing me. This larger-than-life man on his larger-than-life horse, my initial point of contact with humanity after days of silent seclusion, had taken my cheery greeting, given it a threatening edge and thrown it back at me.
Had solitude made me hypersensitive or, worse, still prone to delusions, I wondered? No. This man who looked as if he lived outdoors was demanding to know whether, and how often, and perhaps how far, I overstepped the conventional limits of accepted behaviour, and whether overstepping these limits wasn’t the tenor of my life, as it ought to be, life being short, and this being sort of bandit country.
What next? Was this about to become a scene from the British version of Deliverance? Was he going to ask if I squealed like a pig, then squeal like one himself, to give me an example? I wasn’t prepared for any of this.
‘No,’ I said, with stupid honesty, ‘I haven’t been behaving myself. Not at all.’
He raised his face to heaven in joy and gratitude, closed his eyes and let out a sort of rebel yell. Then he brutally yanked his horse’s head right around, jabbed the beast repeatedly with his heels and forced it to canter towards where I was standing rooted to the spot next to the car. ‘Well, I’m coming after you, then, my beauty,’ he crowed.
I wondered whether I should open the car door and fling myself in, nip around to the other side of the car and keep it between us, or stand my ground and, if the worst came to the worst, start punching — either the horse or him. Then I reminded myself that my right wrist was sprained. I’d sprained it yet again on the heavy bag, one of the few personal possessions I’d trundled down to the cottage in the wheelbarrow.
Before I could decide, the horse was rearing and dancing before me and the man was leaning over its neck and stretching out a hand. A disarming, neighbourly hand, as it turned out. Nick lived over yonder, he said. I must take no notice of his eccentric ways, everyone up here was mad, and if I ever wanted a rabbit or a pheasant or fancied a glass of cider, I must give him a knock.
I thanked him and got in the car. If this, the first person I’d spoken to in days, was this difficult to fathom, what was a room full of inebriated motor mechanics going to be like? I put the car into gear and set off.
Trending
Also in Society
Also by Jeremy Clarke
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in