‘Away my four footed friend. Away.’
Darcy that Dancer with a length of white thorn ripped from a tree. Landing swishing thwacks on the quarters of this steed. Head stretched forward galloping. Straining at the bit. Foam breaking from his mouth. Hooves pounding slapping the dried tall sharp pointed stalks of rushes. Flying over ditches. Up hillocks, down the other side. Slam splashing through the cow pats. Scooping out the turf to catapult it back into the sky. Crashing through the withered bracken and fern. Past the tall rusty dock weeds, brushing off their winter brown leaves of seed. Blue green of the grass growing fat up this double bank. Whoopee. Leap. And plunge straight down. Horse’s belly asplash in the stream. And up the other side. You stout hearted fellow. Sloshing through this bog. To high firm ground. On all your bloody fours. Make the wind whistle. I know this country now. Fly your ears like wings. Keep west. Scare the pheasants up. Towards those rising wooded lands ahead. The rooks and jackdaws. From tree tops. In their cloaks of black shiny feathers calling me. Like a dream. That all fox hunters have. To meet one’s end in the sport one loves so well. With a busted neck I could get vaulting this monstrous fallen beech. Up. Up. Good boy. Thank god. So many times thanked today. And not that far now in miles. Past the white grey bark of these beech. That old stone bridge there on the road. Where Foxy told me a man called Pulling Tom always stood. Without much brains. Who each evening if he wasn’t in the bushes yanking his prick was instead scratching and scratching his head. Because he said he was thinking. And he’d be asked what he was thinking. And he said he was thinking he was scratching his head. And that Master now should be without wits. Imagine. Left miles out in the middle of nowhere. With a total stranger taking away your horse. How utterly humiliating. Not to say profoundly irritating and inconvenient in the extreme. But indeed, for such a foul ignoble person, so splendidly well deserved.
Darcy high in his stirrups. Head crouched streamlined over this blue beribboned mount’s plaited mane. Cantering into the woods ahead. Towards a path both Foxy and I know straight through an overgrown old avenue of lime trees. A short cut to the other side of the forest. And get there without an overhanging branch sweeping me off. And what’s that. Just behind that great oak. One black and one white tail swishing. My goodness. Two riderless horses tethered. Giddy yap. Fast. Down between these limes. And good gracious. Something scarlet. Dead ahead. Dear me. Two chaps writhing one upon another in the grass. Quite the usual thing of course. Two hunt members in a fight. But the one underneath. Has a lady’s loose long blonde hair. And on top, between the uplifted knobs of a pair of knees, is a gentleman’s exposed bottom sticking out from under his redcoat. With his very face now upturned to regard me with consternation. And wearing the features of none other than the Mental Marquis. With my recent diet of wild damsons and rose hips, perhaps I’m seeing things. With me thundering down upon him and the person over which he presently somewhat indiscreetly presides. But my god, the clarity of reality. Even as I head straight at them his bare bottom is still going up and down between the lady’s parted naked legs. Her black garmented arms around his back. Her boots and breeches strewn beside her. O my goodness. Got to jump clean over them. And clear the upraised top of the perspiring Marquis’s balding skull not to mention the twin mounds of the unbelievably unbecoming hairy cheeks of his arse. If they’ve only got the sense to lie low. Down there in the rather moist grass beneath these flying hooves. Up. Over. Banging myself in the branches. Nearly smacked by a big one. Looming and brushing back the hair of my head. Still can’t believe the absolutely unmistakeable. Even when one’s eyesight gets so fantastic at such times. As I look down and back flying over. To see facing straight up. The smooth creamy skinned face. The long brown lashes across eyes closed and now flashing open, in the lids widening back from their blue blue cold colour. Teeth sparkling athwart a blood red mouth agape in groaning rapture. Baptista Consuelo.
Bursting forth in sunlight out the end of the lime avenue. Darcy Dancer raging down the side of a great gentle sloping meadow. Head down low to the side of the steed’s steaming neck. The big bellowing lungs nearly sound bursting. That pair back there will never dare to tell their tale. And if I do the hunt will have my trail. Between these ancient parkland oaks and especially straight through this flock of hysterically bleating and rapidly scattering sheep. Which no one will thank me for disturbing and putting to rout. Up. My boyo. Over this white iron fence. Down this entrance drive. Hooves clattering on the stony road. Lickity split, sparks flying. Past the front of this country house. In order that one may get between two points the fastest and not have to negotiate an entire lake. Past the great gloomy ivy covered elevation of this mansion. Standing in its velvet aprons of grass. That indeed I’m indenting deeply right across their ruddy front lawn. Where the five spinster sisters live. Called Rose, Camellia, Iris, Pansy and Marigold. Famed for their copious lashings of fortified wines and tubs full of butter melting hard boiled eggs at their splendid lawn meets. And known widely over the countryside as the bunch of flowers. Just hope one of their dear kindly number quietly sipping her port in some window bay after lunch isn’t watching. And such refreshment get choked back in her throat in a fright or more likely in umbrage as I go streaking by their polished windows, pounding over their tonsured paddocks. Leaving holes as big as turnips. O my goodness, there indeed in the window is regrettably one of their dear number and I do believe she has elevated her lorgnette to look with concern upon this trespassing marauding horseman. Who madam, I assure you, will be pronto gone if only this steed’s heart holds out. Just this little bit longer. Poor wretch it must be beating at its limit. Thumping deep down there in his chest. So sad sometimes that the most ill bred of people own the best bred of horses. At least the momentum left will take me blazing through this ruddy stable yard now. Much asplattering. Scattering and even cowering the barking dogs. Chickens and geese flying in all directions. And a shout from the men.
‘Hey where are you going.’
‘To the races.’
‘Ah jesus, will you look at that. Your man’s in the Grand National.’
Darcy that jumper just clearing the top of the farmyard gate with the gelding’s hooves clipping the iron and clattering its hinge and rocking its pinion in its spud stone. Pounding along a road between stone walls. Up over another gate. Five barred and wooden and merely splintering the top rung. With the tall woods beyond now. Past the old plantation of oaks. No sign of pursuers. In any event, if they ever reached the lime avenue at all they will have had to return to render medical assistance having trampled Baptista and the Marquis into a broken bunch of bones. So I shall walk this good horse. Give him a well earned breather. And what a sight back there those two. Rolling enthralled and pumping one upon the other. Saw the very flecks of colour in Baptista Consuelo’s sapphire eyes. Totally utterly calm. As they flashed open and closed. The whites so white. As if a horse or anything jumping over her in such displayed position was an everyday occurrence. As indeed it rather might be. With the good seat the Mental Marquis was displaying in riding her. Bare of arse. With her own as I remember quite amply big. Along with her mouth which had referred to Miss von B in such distressing words. And poor Mr Arland who in every kind of inclemency, wasted all his hours and hours of time. To plead his cause. With nosegays on her doorstep. And maybe even dreaming of inviting some major philharmonic orchestra to play her a symphony from right outside her house in the middle of the road. But at last he seems to have come upon his own reward.