Devils And Unicorns

Chapter 13

Charlie moved into the vacant stable in between Zac and Last Unicorn. As far as the agreement was set out, he was just staying for a few days – a couple of weeks at the most – while he gathered some capital to move on somewhere else. But after a couple of weeks, he had still been unable to amass the funds; by the end of four weeks he was no closer to finding a place of his own. By the time six weeks had passed, he had attached as many of his framed pictures as he could fit to the walls of his stable. And after two months, he was just as much a permanent feature of the Acreman yard as Martha, Zac and Dissent.

Charlie's presence on the yard was at times a pleasure, but generally a nuisance. He was good-humoured enough about his predicament, and was content to pitch in with some of the more menial tasks such as mucking out and shifting bales. But he was of less use with the horses (by his own admission, he was not a horseman) and he developed an awkward tendency to get into frequent quarrels with Zac, generally over the ride he was giving Jersey Devil, or Last Unicorn, or even Nolsen, for that matter. Charlie was quick to make objective comments about the horses' work. Zac, who had never counted himself amongst Charlie's fans from the moment the trader first set foot on the yard one year earlier, always took these comments as criticism, and then matters would spiral from there.

Relations between all four human residents of Marsh Crossing took a turn for the worse after Last Unicorn worked against Jersey Devil for the first time. Having watched him work fairly well with Nolsen and Dissent, Florence decided that a gallop with his classiest stable mate would do the horse some good. She sent Jersey Devil out onto the gallops with Martha up, to see how well Last Unicorn performed when faced with a gritty opponent like the little chestnut mare.

Martha had, on Florence's instruction, pushed the mare to gallop quite prominently against Last Unicorn, in the hope that it would compel him to pick up his feet a bit and throw off some of the laziness that had been blighting his work. But Zac, aboard Last Unicorn, kept letting Jersey Devil pass him until his mount lost interest completely and fell back sluggishly.

"This is all wrong," Charlie said, pushing his forehead into his palm as the two horses cantered past for the final time at the end of their gallop.

"What is?" Florence asked from where she stood a few feet down the fence.

"He's trailing off too easily."

"Well, it's his first run against her. You know what Jersey Devil's like, Charlie. She fights once she gets the lead. That's why we hold her back until the last minute, remember?"

"He needs to be up there. He forgets what he's doing, otherwise. He's lazy as hell, you can see that."

"Charlie, please..." Florence sighed irritably. "You asked me to train the horse. Just let me train him, okay?"

"Hey, I'm sorry." He held up his hands. "Just... forget I said anything." He turned and stormed away. Florence was dumbstruck. She had never known him appear flustered by anything or anybody before; she was unprepared and unsure how to react. In the end, she decided to adopt the approach she always used for Zac's tantrums and to leave him alone to cool off, so she let him go and waited for the horses to return by herself.

"Men..." She sighed. "Hey, good job Martha! How did he go, Zac? Didn't look like he was very engaged, shall we say?"

"I think he needs to be up there, Squeaky," Martha called over her shoulder to Zac, leaning forward to pat Jersey Devil's neck. "He didn't even try to get past this mare!"

"I think she's right," Florence added sympathetically as she walked back to the yard at Last Unicorn's shoulder. She was glad of Martha's unprompted advice. She had no desire to pass on any suggestion that had originated with Charlie, for fear of inciting more mayhem.