Black Beauty

driven from the spot
where he fell. It was a tiny spot, three inches in diameter.
    ‘I wanted to keep my place
by his side, but under the rush of horses’ feet, it was in vain. When they had
finished, he was flat, flat as a piece of cardboard, and they rolled him up,
took him off the battlefield, and posted him back to his widow.
    ‘Other noble creatures were
trying on three legs, and some on two, to drag themselves along; others were
struggling to rise on their fore feet, as their hind legs had been shattered by
shot, shit and shell. There were their groans, “Ohh, help, arghh, ouch, yaroo!”
After the battle the wounded were brought in, and the dead were buried.
Sometimes the wounded were buried by mistake.
    ‘I never saw my master
again because they buried him. I went into many other engagements — 1 did a
week at the Palladium.’
    I said, ‘I have heard
people talk about the war as if it was a very fine thing. They only say it
before they go through hell.’
    ‘Do you know what they
fought about?’ enquired a civilian.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they fought
about two years.’
    I wondered if it was right
to go all that way over the sea, on purpose, to kill Russians, and in return
get killed yourselves.
    Briefly they rode into the
mouth of hell. But what was that terrible smell? It was the gallant six
hundred.

35

JERRY BARKER
     
    My new master wore a wig
    It looked like a crow’s nest made from bits of twig
    One day a crow tried to lay eggs in the nest
    To Hatch the eggs, she tried her best
    Alas, the nest was found by a pussy-cat
    And that was that
    My stable boy was always jolly
    He wanted to do what he could, so he did it to Dolly.
     
    Jerry Barker had tried to
shoo the crow away with a catapult, but he rendered the crow unconscious just
as an RSPCA crow warden came by who reported it to the police. He was charged
with cruelty to a crow, fined five shillings, and sent for life to Van Demon’s
Land.
    I never knew a better man
than my new master; he was kind and good, and as strong for the right as John
Manly; and so good-tempered and merry that few people could pick a quarrel with
him. He was very fond of making up little songs and singing them to himself:
     
    Come, father and mother,
    And sister and brother,
    Take all your clothes off
    And do one another
     
    Harry was as clever at
stablework as a much older boy, 1 and always wanted to do what he could. He did
it to I Dolly. Dolly and Polly used to come in the morning to — help with the
cab — to brush and beat the cushions, and rub the glass, while Jeremiah Barker
was giving us a cleaning in the yard and Harry was rubbing the harness. »
Jeremiah Barker would say:
     
    If you in the morning
    Throw minutes away
    You can’t pick them up
    In the course of the day.
    You may hurry and scurry,
    And flurry and worry,
    You’ve lost them for ever,
    For ever and aye.
     
    It was poetry, but bloody
dreadful.
    He could not bear any
careless loitering, and waste of time — very much like Mrs Doris Wretch of 22
Gabriel Street, Honor Oak Park — and nothing was so near making him angry as to
find people who were always late, I wanting a cab horse to be driven hard, to
make up for their lateness.
    One day, two wild-looking
young men called, ‘Hey cabbie, look sharp, we are rather late; put on the
steam, will you, and take us to Victoria in time for the one I o’clock train?
You shall have a shilling extra.’
    Larry’s cab was standing
next to ours; the bastard flung open the door and said, ‘I’m your man,
gentlemen! Take my cab, my horse will get you there all right,’ and he shut
them in, with a wink towards Jeremiah Barker. Then, slashing his jaded horse,
he set off as hard as he could. Jerry patted me on the neck — ‘No, Jack, a
shilling would not pay for that sort of thing, would it, old boy?’ Although
Jeremiah Barker was determinedly set against hard driving to please late
people, still they used to walk to their work, often being killed under horses
and carriage.
    I well remember one
morning, as we were on the stand waiting for a fare: he did not know why a
young man, carrying a portmanteau, tripped over a banana skin (that Jeremiah
had specially placed there) and fell down with great force, with the portmanteau
on top of him.
    Jeremiah Barker was the
first to run and lift him up, and led him into a shop. He came back to the
stand, but in ten minutes one of the shop men called him, so he drew up.
    ‘Can you take me to the
South-Eastern