The Horses Read online

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  www.transitlounge.com.au

  First Published 2015

  Transit Lounge Publishing

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover image: kipscottphoto.com/shutterstock

  Cover and book design: Peter Lo

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  This project is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

  A cataloguing-in-publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-1-921924-90-3

  1

  The staffroom doors flew open and a figure strode from the darkness. It was Capon, the headmaster, swishing forth across the flagstones in a purple gown. The retinue of masters followed, bounding down the steps onto the lawns. They went crunching along a gravel path, the sound crisp in their early-morning ears, but rather lost in the broader expanse of buildings. Gregory followed eagerly in the rear. He was puzzled by a clinking sound that drew closer as they walked. The men descended a second flight of steps en masse, reaching a third. Here they halted and peered down at an area the size of a football field, covered with ranks of men in suits of armour. No, not men – boys, and many of them quite small. The ranks tapered from tallest to shortest. The armour flashed in the morning sun.

  The waiting boys became conscious of the masters above, and their clinking subsided. A few mothers and fathers were departing from the parade ground’s edge, perhaps by request. A tiny jet flew in a line far behind.

  ‘Breathtaking, isn’t it,’ muttered Parsons, the master to Gregory’s left. Parsons wore round spectacles, and had a bald, peaked head.

  ‘I had no idea how different this place would be,’ said Gregory.

  ‘Better get them into the hall, or they’ll start collapsing in the sun,’ said the master to his right. This was Val, a compact, efficient-looking person with small black eyes.

  A man dressed in a black uniform bounded up the steps. The Whipper had a strained and taut red face, with flaring nostrils. Gregory had seen him pacing the assembled rows, occasionally darting forward to strike a boy’s armour with a baton. Now he strode onto a balcony that skirted the edge of the nearest building and overlooked the parade ground; stopping at the midpoint, he turned, stamped his boot, thrust out his chest and chin, and barked a command. The school came to attention with a metallic report. Greaves clapped greaves, gauntlets smacked tassets. Gregory jumped.

  ‘This is the bit I like,’ said Parsons, breathing through his mouth, rubbing the peak of his skull. His spectacles began misting up.

  The Whipper’s face twisted like a chamois as he screamed another command, as unintelligible as the first. Yet the mass responded, and as one were put at ease.

  Gregory’s head was beginning to ache. ‘Do they do this every morning?’ he whispered to Val.

  ‘Every morning.’

  The boys were turned right. All rigid. Then Capon bounded down the steps with another swish of his gown (Capon was a canon, a church man), and the masters followed in a tweed pack, past the front rank of boys, across a road, along a bed of roses, down more steps, stringing out as they filed under the towering flank of the school hall. Down they strolled, some masters exchanging collegial chatter and guffaws. Gregory was pushed along with the pack, first through an entrance at the back of the hall, then up some steps, until he found himself standing on a stage. Before him, tiers of seats receded far into the hall. As the boys filed in, the space reverberated with the clatter and din.

  He realised his sleeve was being tugged. ‘Sit next to me!’ Val shouted in his ear, and the older master led Gregory to a row of chairs at the front of the stage. The Whipper perched below, directly in front of the stage, from where he glared up at the boys. Not far from him the famous school organ clung like a monstrous squid on the wall. This instrument was being administered by a frog-like man with a pea-shaped torso. Head jiggling, jowls wobbling, the little man played upon two keyboards simultaneously, while his elongated legs pumped at pedals. Sometimes he stabbed at a switchboard of stops to one side, while the organ notes kept cascading down, overwhelming the clamour of settling armour. Then the triumphant music was abruptly silenced, and the little organist swung about on his stool to face the stage and arrange his pressed trousers: he looked up, pop-eyed. The silence was highlighted by the occasional chink of gauntlet or slither of chain mail, sounds registered in the tense musculature of The Whipper’s face. Then Capon strode across the stage. At his entrance the boys leapt up and clapped their breastplates, a tremendous cacophony, followed by a strange tinkling. Gregory automatically followed the other masters in clapping, while looking about for the source of this light noise.

  Capon glided to the lectern on the stage.

  ‘Sit down, boys, sit down.’ The headmaster gathered his robes, gave them a practised flourish. He mustered his papers. ‘How very, very wonderful to be back. What a wonderful first term we had.’ He paused. Capon was short. The lectern was too high for him, and, unseen by the students, he stood on a fruit box. ‘Now, boys, I know many of you have been working hard on your farms over the past three-week holiday. I know that if your hands aren’t calloused and your back isn’t aching, you’re one of the lucky ones.’

  A wave of laughter broke over the stage.

  ‘May the harvest be a fine one: we’ll be checking the weather around the state every day and praying for rain at the appropriate times. We will pray for rain today. As always we’ll be watching the wool and stock prices as term goes on and keeping you informed. We’ll make the assembly short this morning, since I know that you all want to get back to your boarding houses to see to the horses and unpack your bags. On that note, before I go any further – and I know you’re all eager to hear this – here’s Mr Val’s report on the horses. Mr Val!’

  Val took to the lectern. He also stood upon the box, but bent at the knees. He gave the impression of being a little steel ball, bursting with energy. His report concerned the welfare of the school’s horses – how they had been exercised over the past month, their appetites, what mares were in foal, the progress of new foals, mishaps and injuries, escapees. Gregory hurriedly gleaned that the school possessed many horses, and of many different unsuspected varieties. As Val’s report continued, Gregory realised that he had underestimated the importance of the horses. He had assumed that they were for promotional brochures; or perhaps an extra-curricular focus for boys with learning difficulties.

  ‘He knows nothing about horses,’ Gregory heard a master snigger from a back row.

  Val ended, ‘Horse duties are posted in each boarding house. Neglect of these duties carries the heaviest penalties.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Val,’ said Capon, resuming the lectern. ‘Oh, yes. A brief reminder, boys, on this our first day back. Don’t be cruel to the horses. If you must be cruel to an animal, find a fly or a cockroach or even a bird. But not a horse, please, not a horse – not even the donkeys or asses. Each and every one of them is extremely costly, and equines as a rule are very, very sensitive animals. In a nutshell, if you hurt the horses, you hurt the school. That can’t be stressed enough. You will be made to pay any veterinary bills should we discover the culprits. I’m not joking. Ask the boys caught cutting off the horses’ tails last term. Those boys’ parents were none too pleased when they received the bill, I assure you. Those particular horses are scarred and will never trust humans again. Boys are always cruel at the beginning of term, there’s no accounting fo
r it.’ Here Capon turned to the masters seated behind him, and they laughed and nodded.

  ‘Do not expect your parents to make even greater sacrifices than they already are making!’ yelled Capon with an unexpected burst of volume and intensity. Just as abruptly his voice grew small and honeyed. ‘And there you have our key word for this morning: sacrifice. I want to impress upon each and every one of you, as I am wont to do, that your parents make great sacrifices to send you to this school. Great sacrifices.’ In a ferocious voice again, ‘Rest assured that there are many boys out there, on the other side of that school fence, who would go through hell and high water to fill the seats where you now sit! Don’t ever doubt that!’

  The masters closest to Capon nodded again. Some muttered, ‘Hear, hear.’

  After Capon’s talk a succession of masters made announcements concerning various clubs and associations, announcements interspersed with hymns. Gregory could see some of the boys smiling in the gloom. Towards the back, where the older students sat, boys were chatting, joking, some were even dozing. Gregory found himself staring at a structure dangling from the roof, some kind of sculpture made of metal plates with sheets of foil as connective tissue. It shifted, and tinkled. That was where the celestial sound had been coming from, up there above his head.

  Another hymn was sung. The frogman played a solo on the organ. A ginger-bearded master in a white gown – Mr C, the school’s minister – finally got his turn and led the school in prayers, a prayer for the horses and a prayer for the rain. The structure above moved contemplatively, stirred by the sounds below, thinking, tinkling. Gregory slowly realised that it was an enormous mobile of a horse.

  No school assembly Gregory had ever attended had been so highly choreographed, or even a quarter as long. His headache was growing worse. He could not keep from jiggling one leg or the other. Yes, he badly wanted to start classes and get to know the boys, he couldn’t settle until then. It was his first day on the job, and he was nervous. The longer this assembly dragged on, the less confident he felt.

  At last it ended. When the school rose, some boys remained seated, and had to be woken. The masters milled around the backstage door, crowding to congratulate Capon on his address, given hours before. Gregory stood smiling fixedly, until Val plucked him by the sleeve, and led him towards the body of masters drifting back to the staffroom. The peak-headed Parsons tripped close behind, breathing audibly, and someone said there would be no classes that day.

  2

  The bell rang for the end of school, despite the lack of classes. While walking about the school Gregory had seen the boys scattered around buildings half hidden in the trees. Others had gathered in groups on a distant slope, in the jumble of the horse yards. At the bell they reassembled on the parade ground, trickling in from different directions, dressed in full armour. The Whipper, seated on a black stallion, marched them off. The columns fed into one long flashing centipede, moving downhill from the parade ground. The centipede crawled down the road between an enormous sports ground (a lush green circle contained by a white picket fence), and an Olympic-sized pool (a gelatinous blue oblong set in a concrete concourse). The centipede’s nose dipped, disappearing briefly into the creek bed that divided the school grounds: the head reappeared as the centre dipped, and then the tail. The centipede seemed to reproduce itself as it scaled the far hill, making steadily for a sandstone chapel behind a dark run of hedge. The Whipper drove his horse back and forth alongside the centipede, and his strikes on the armour echoed across the grounds.

  Cars dawdled along the crest of the ridge, beyond the spiked perimeter fence.

  Gregory watched all this from a small and tinted staffroom window. His headache might now be called a migraine. The sound of the bell had found him in the toilet waiting to vomit. Nothing had come up, however, and he had gone to the window for air. The window, unfortunately, could not be opened. Watching the metal centipede, and the figure on the horse, Gregory had the strange thought that if classes did not start soon, he could forget everything he had ever learnt about teaching: he saw it crumbling and washing away.

  Val approached. That afternoon he was going to put the fifth-formers through their ‘rugby paces’; Gregory had agreed to accompany him. Parsons suddenly appeared as they set off from the staffroom, and he kept himself between Val and Gregory through a series of dexterous side steps and spurts of pace. But as they forded the creek, stepping from one stone to another, Parsons had to fall behind.

  ‘How are you finding the place, Gregory?’ asked Val.

  ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed, actually.’

  Val was quiet.

  ‘I mean by the ceremony. And the scale of it.’

  ‘Perhaps it does take a bit of getting used to,’ Val conceded. Parsons was scrabbling on the stones to catch up. ‘We need new blood at this school, Gregory, young blood. That’s why I recommended that the interviewing panel recruit you. To tell the truth, we’re very thin on competent masters. Our venerable headmaster has hardly been active in recruitment. The staff is full of dead wood. Most of them don’t even have a teaching degree. A disgrace, really, given the resources we have. That’s why I put my hand up for you. I stuck out my neck for youth.’

  Parsons got back between them as they climbed to the ridge. Val’s tone became peremptory. ‘Know much about football, Gregory?’

  ‘No.’

  Parsons gave a snort. The scales of his spectacles glittered as the day darkened.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Val. ‘Watch me.’

  They passed a row of boarding houses to their right, built on the slope along the creek. To the left stretched the horse yards, which Gregory had long been able to smell, a tang on the breeze which seemed to sharpen his headache. He suddenly remembered that once, when a very little boy, he had been kicked by a horse. The yards were a shanty town of sheds and stables and fences, covering the slope leading up to the playing fields. The horses scattered about were unlike any he had seen. Somehow luminous and barrel-chested, they shone in buttery colours, cream and vanilla, coffee and chocolate. Proud and beautiful they were, rounded and tall, straight from an Uccello painting. Were they draught horses, he asked? Parsons snorted again, and stamped his foot.

  ‘But they don’t look normal,’ persisted Gregory. ‘They look – well, polished, or something. Like ivory, like chess set horses.’

  Maybe it was the time of day, autumn’s late afternoon light.

  The path snaked up through the high-smelling yards, to the dark plateau of the playing fields. Val explained that there were fifteen full-sized fields. The three men reached level ground, and began moving over the grass towards the sunset, past the glum spires of goal posts. The grounds they crossed disappeared behind them into darkness. A far fringe of dark bush marked the edge of the fields.

  The masters found the assigned field in the gloom. At that moment boys began spilling down a bank dividing the higher fields from the lower. Gregory watched the boys spreading forward. ‘Val’s brilliant,’ Parsons was whispering in his ear, something like antiseptic and onion on his breath – Gregory’s headache suddenly worsened – ‘he gets results. You’ll learn a great deal simply by watching him.’ Gregory could now hear the breathing and jogging of the approaching boys, but their faces remained undifferentiated. ‘Val was a state tennis champion, he played club football, and represented the country at chess. He was a first-rate debater – he’s won national debates. He’s a fine natural horseman. An excellent baritone. Give him a chance and he’ll sing you a song. A remarkable man, a Renaissance man. That’s what he is: a Renaissance man.’ Parsons rubbed his broad crotch with one hand, and his pate with the other, lingering on this phrase. ‘Renaissance man. Just watch how he fires up the boys.’

  A mob of perhaps eighty fifth-formers milled around them. Val sent the boys on a lap.

  Now a figure in white drew near, floating and flapping in the black. It was Mr C, the minister.

  ‘What brings you here?’ demanded Val.

 
Mr C’s ginger beard rose. ‘I was rostered on to help.’

  ‘We don’t need help. There are already three of us.’

  ‘Then I’d like to help.’

  Val turned away, as the fastest boys returned from their run.

  The sun had disappeared. Trees and sheds scattered around the fields were dark. The boys were lined up and their sports uniforms inspected. Some wore black shorts with red jerseys, others red shorts with black jerseys.

  ‘They’re already exhausted,’ Mr C muttered to Gregory. ‘They march them and march them –’

  ‘Reds against blacks!’ cried Val, and threw a ball in the air. A complete mêlée followed. The boys simply set upon one another. The injured rolled on the ground groaning, others yelped. After a few minutes of this chaos the young men were reeled in; sprinted in strict relays; run passing the ball; sent side-stepping; then ploughed into tacklers. A ballet-like routine followed, the lads in ten lines of eight being lifted high into the air to a whistle. This was line-out practice, explained Parsons. Then the groups were set on each other to rehearse the ruck, the maul, the scrum. The fifth-formers were tired but Val berated them; he forestalled their dropping away, he baited and soothed them, flattered and threatened them, humiliated, divided, cajoled and congratulated them.

  Gregory dared not glance at the minister nearby. He sensed Mr C was open for a conversation, an alliance even. Val would not like it, however, Gregory already knew that.

  Now the packs of boys were set against metal contraptions squatting in the gloom along the sideline: ten padded ‘scrum machines’. The contraptions screeched as their giant springs ground onto backing plates.

  ‘Harder, harder!’ yelled Val. ‘Get into those machines! Bums in the air!’

  ‘Harder! Bums in the air! Harder!’ seconded Parsons, running up and down the line of high bottoms.

  ‘You’re not pushing hard enough. Not one lot has budged a machine yet! Last year’s boys got them rolling over the paddock! Get lower. Get those bums in the air! Personal bests!’