A Man of his Time. Alan Sillitoe

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СКАЧАТЬ heart. Lightning might go for men, if they got in its way, but never horses, those who cared for them also immune. A higher power looked after horse and farrier, and Burton supposed that even the first blacksmith on earth didn’t know where such protection came from, though they believed in it, and that the only friend of a horse was the blacksmith who fitted its shoes and sent it well-shod to work in comfort.

      No blacksmith ever harmed a horse, let alone killed one, and no horse wantonly killed a man, though many a man had been killed or injured while riding because he had done something daft, or hadn’t understood the animal. You had a feeling for horses other people didn’t have. You were born with it, and picked the rest up along the way, no horse impossible to tame, though he wouldn’t ride one, because no horse would trust him again, would smell the breath of the other horse, and think the blacksmith was sharing his favours. A horse, which will do what you want if you know how and what to tell it, would never stand for bad treatment.

      Oliver knew all that was in his father’s mind as he watched him still the horse. He had often seen him do it, but the thought now came, and he felt a spurt of triumph at the knowledge, that Burton, in spite of all his experience, had an inborn ancestral fear of horses that would never leave him. He had spotted his father’s one weakness, and wondered why it had taken him so long; because he himself had never been frightened of horses, but was glad at having found a slit in Burton’s armoured covering so small it could only become apparent to a son of his in the same trade,

      ‘Always get the shoe off slowly,’ Burton told the shoeing smith. ‘They think you’re going to hurt them if you don’t make them think you’re doing it in their time.’

      The train frightened it. It wasn’t my fault.’

      ‘It’s always the farrier’s fault. Learn to take care of them.’

      ‘I do take care.’

      He stood at the door before going inside. ‘Don’t answer back. Wait till you’ve got eight young ‘uns to feed like I have, then you’ll hold the horses still.’

      ‘Old Burton’s a hard one,’ said the drayman whose horse it was. ‘I wouldn’t like to work for him.’

      The shoeing smith looked towards the noise of hammering. ‘I’m fed up with the way he treats me.’ ‘Pack it in. Go somewhere else.’

      ‘I’d like to, but you work where you can. And every day there’s more motors on the road.’

      ‘Yeh, one day horses won’t be needed anymore.’

      ‘We get enough trade here,’ the shoeing smith said, ‘because Burton makes sure the work’s good. People know where to come. But he’s a hard man to be under.’

      ‘That’s because of the way he was brought up,’ the carter said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be one of his sons. He must have taken some stick from his own father to make him the man he is.’

      ‘It was his brother George who put him through the hoops. Or so I heard Burton say the other day when he was telling one of his lads off.’

      ‘I wonder what Burton was like when he was young?’

      ‘He never was young, if you ask me.’ The shoeing smith stood erect to rub his pained back. ‘Here you are. That should keep your nag going for a while.’

      ‘I hope so,’ the drayman said. ‘Two bob a time’s getting a bit expensive.’

      Burton had so much sweat on him as he stood in the doorway it looked as if he had dipped his head in the waterbutt. He held a hand over one eye where a spark had chipped the flesh below. ‘If you can find somebody to do it for less go and trade with them. But if you do, God help your horse.’ ‘Times are hard, Burton.’

      ‘They always were.’ Two of his daughters came along the lane. ‘What do you want?’

      Oval-faced Sabina, ten years old, shook her chestnut hair, and flushed at his sour greeting. He knew very well why they were there, because couldn’t he see the billy-cans of tea in her hand? ‘We’ve brought you your dinners.’

      ‘Put them down there.’

      Emily set the snap tins on the bench and stepped back as if he might hit her should she get too close. Eight years old and Burton’s youngest, everyone in the family regarded her as a bit touched, being slow-witted and more unpredictable than the others, with too much willingness in her smile to please whoever she met that she was never allowed out of the house on her own. Mary Ann told Burton that while it was his right to treat the children as he thought they deserved, he was never to strike Emily since, when she misbehaved, she didn’t altogether know what she was doing. He found it easy to do as Mary Ann wished because a mere look was enough to scare Emily. He picked up the cans with no word of thanks. ‘I thought you two were at school?’

      ‘We’re just going,’ Sabina said.

      ‘Don’t be late. I’ve told you never to miss any of it. See that you don’t.’ His glare at their backs seemed to force them into the right turning. Inside the forge, his eyes roamed over the tools, materials, state of the fire. He missed nothing, but looked again as if he might have done, ever on the lookout for discrepancy, damage or misplacement. ‘Where’s the hammer you were using?’

      Oliver stood. ‘It’s over there.’

      ‘Where’s there?’

      ‘On the bench.’

      ‘Don’t I always tell you to put the tools back in their right place when you’ve finished with them?’

      ‘I didn’t have time to do it.’ The veins jumped on his father’s temples, and he knew that what was coming couldn’t be avoided, the blow at his head too quick. ‘Don’t answer back,’ Burton said. ‘I don’t want to have to tell you again.’

      Oliver balanced the weighty hammer as if to swing in for the kill, but didn’t much relish the vision of his body hanging from a gallows. He had long regretted having the misfortune to be Burton’s firstborn and prime competitor.

      ‘Put it in its proper place, and be quick about it. How shall I be able to find it if it’s not where I think it is?’

      ‘There won’t be anymore of that.’ But he did as he was told. ‘I’m telling you now. You aren’t going to hit me again.’

      A smile shaped Burton’s lips, much of himself in Oliver from almost too long ago to be remembered, except at moments like this. He admitted that the time had come to stop the punches but, even so, he had made him one of the best young men at the trade, who in a few years would be as good a blacksmith as himself, though all you got for such effort was the insolence of being answered back. ‘I hear a horse coming along the lane, so get outside to see to it. And send Oswald in to me.’

      ‘We haven’t had our dinners yet.’

      He softened a little, which for Oliver was far too late. ‘If you’re thirsty drink some tea from one of the cans. You can eat when things get slack. Never delay a customer longer than you have to. So do it now.’ Hunger could wait. Burton only felt thirst, a fire inside always there to be put out. He wiped sweat from his face with a large red spotted handkerchief, took a scoop of water from a bucket covered by a wooden lid, and carried it outside.

      Oliver sat СКАЧАТЬ