War Horse by Micheal Morpurgo

Chapter 3

GRADUALLY DURING THAT last summer on the farm, so gradually that I had hardly noticed it, Albert had begun riding me out over the farm to check the sheep. Old Zoey would follow along behind and I would stop every now and then to be sure she was still with us. I do not even remember the first time he put a saddle on me, but at some time he must have done so for by the time war was declared that summer Albert was riding me out to the sheep each morning and almost every evening after his work. I came to know every lane in the parish, every whispering oak tree and every banging gate. We would splash through the stream under Innocent’s Copse and thunder up Ferny Piece beyond. With Albert riding me there was no hanging on the reins, no jerking on the bit in my mouth, but always a gentle squeeze with the knees and a touch with his heels was enough to tell me what he wanted of me.
I think he could have ridden me even without that so well did we come to understand each other. Whenever he was not talking to me, he would whistle or sing all the time, and that seemed somehow to reassure me.
The war hardly touched us on the farm to start with. With more straw still to turn and stack for the winter, old Zoey and I were led out every morning early into the fields to work. To our great relief, Albert had now taken over most of the horse work on the farm, leaving his father to see to the pigs and the bullocks, to check the sheep, and to mend fences and dig the ditches around the farm, so that we scarcely saw him for more than a few minutes each day. Yet in spite of the normality of the routine, there was a growing tension on the farm, and I began to feel an acute sense of foreboding. There would be long and heated exchanges in the yard, sometimes between Albert’s father and mother, but more often, strangely enough, between Albert and his mother.
‘You mustn’t blame him, Albert,’ she said one morning, turning on him angrily outside the stable door. ‘He did it all for you, you know. When Lord Denton offered to sell him the farm ten years ago he took out the mortgage so that you’d have a farm of your own when you grow up. And it’s the mortgage that worries him sick and makes him drink. So if he isn’t himself from time to time you’ve no call to keep on about him. He’s not as well as he used to be and be can’t put in the work on the farm like he used. He’s over fifty, you know – children don’t think of their fathers as being old or young. And it’s the war too. The war worries him Albert. He’s worried prices will be falling back, and I think in his heart of hearts he feels he should be soldiering in France – but he’s too old for that. You’ve got to try to understand him, Albert. He deserves that much.’
‘You don’t drink, Mother,’ Albert replied vehemently. ‘And you’ve got worries just like he has, and anyway if you did drink you wouldn’t get at me as he does. I do all the work I can, and more, and still he never stops complaining that this isn’t done and that isn’t done. He complains every time I take Joey out in the evening. He doesn’t even want me to go off bell-ringing once a week. It’s not reasonable, Mother.’
‘I know that, Albert,’ his mother said more gently now, taking his hand in both of hers. ‘But you must try to see the good in him. He’s a good man – he really is. You remember him that way too, don’t you?’
‘Yes Mother, I remember him like that,’ Albert acknowledged, ‘but if only he wouldn’t keep on about Joey as he does. After all, Joey works for his living now and he has to have time off to enjoy himself, just as I do.’
‘Of course dear,’ she said, taking his elbow and walking him up towards the farmhouse, ‘but you
know how he feels about Joey, don’t you? He bought him in a fit of pique and has regretted it ever since. As he says, we really only need one horse for the farmwork, and that horse of yours eats money. That’s what worries him. Farmers and horses, it’s always the same. My father was like it too. But he’ll come round if you’re kind with him – I know he will.’
But Albert and his father scarcely spoke to each other any more these days, and Albert’s mother was used more and more by both as a go-between, as a negotiator. It was on a Wednesday morning with the war but a few weeks old, that Albert’s mother was again arbitrating between them in the yard outside. As usual Albert’s father had come home drunk from the market the night before. He said he had forgotten to take back the Saddleback boar they had borrowed to serve the sows and gilts. He had told Albert to do it, but Albert had objected strongly and an argument was brewing. Albert’s father said that he ‘had business to attend to’ and Albert maintained he had the stables to clean out.
‘Won’t take you but half an hour, dear, to drive the boar back down the valley to Fursden,’ Albert’s mother said swiftly, trying to soften the inevitable.
‘All right then,’ Albert conceded, as he always did when his mother intervened, for he hated to upset her. ‘I’ll do it for you, Mother. But only on condition I can take Joey out this evening. I want to hunt him this winter and I have to get him fit.’ Albert’s father stayed silent and thin lipped, and I noticed then that he was looking straight at me. Albert turned, patted me gently on the nose, picked up a stick from the pile of lightings up against the woodshed, and made his way down towards the piggery. A few minutes later I saw him driving the great black and white boar out down the farm track towards the lane. I called out after him but he did not turn round.
Now if Albert’s father came into the stable at all, it was always to lead out old Zoey. He left me alone these days. He would throw a saddle onto Zoey out in the yard and ride out onto the hills above the farmhouse to check the sheep. So it was nothing special when he came into the stable that morning and led Zoey out. But when he came back into the stable afterwards and began to sweet-talk me and held out a bucket of sweet-smelling oats, I was immediately suspicious. But the oats and my own inquisitiveness overcame my better judgement and he was able to slip a halter over my head before I could pull away. His voice however was unusually gentle and kind as he tightened the halter and reached out slowly to stroke my neck. ‘You’ll be all right, old son,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll be all right. They’ll look after you, promised they would. And I need the money, Joey, I need the money bad.’