Black Beauty

drive
    So he couldn’t go anywhere, leave alone a ride
    He would lose the trade of Mrs Briggs
    Whose custom helped them pay for the digs
    Losing his customer would lose him money
    Something he didn’t think very funny.

37

THE GOLDEN RULE
     
    Oh, hurrah, hurrah for Mrs Briggs
    Whose money helped pay for their digs
    She wants Jerry’s cab for hire again
    But never on Sundays for shame
    She only wanted him on a Monday
    Which is dangerously near Sunday
    The Barkers were happy to say
    ‘Thank God, we don’t have to eat hay’
    Three cheers — Hip, Hip, Hooray.
     
    Two or three weeks after
this, as we came into the yard, Polly came running across the road with a
lantern in bright sunshine. It made her feel safe.
    ‘It has all come right,
Jerry; Mrs Briggs sent her servant this afternoon to ask you to take her out
tomorrow. She says there is none of the cabs so nice and clean as yours, and
nothing will suit her but Mr Barker’s.’
    ‘Oh, I’d better get all the
crap out of it then. The last customer had sheep with him.’
    Jerry broke out into a
merry laugh: ‘Ha hah hee hee oh ha ha ha oh ha ha ha. Run in and get the
supper.’ After this, Mrs Briggs wanted Jerry’s cab quite as often as before;
never, however, on a Sunday; but there came a day when we had Sunday work.
    ‘Well, my dear,’ said
Polly, ‘poor Dinah Brown has just had a letter brought to say that her mother
is dangerously ill, she’s got piles and nothing can get through. It’s only half
Sunday without you, but you know very well what I should like if my mother was
dying of piles.’
    ‘Why, Polly, you are as
good as the minister, but a terrible accountant. Go and tell Dinah I will be
ready as the clock strikes ten; but stop!’ Polly stopped. ‘Just step round to
the butcher and ask for a meat pie to be put away.’
    She went and came back and
said, ‘That will be a pound for the meat pie.’
    ‘Well tell the swine he
shouldn’t be doing business on a Sunday. Fog will strike him dead for selling a
Godfearing woman a meat pie on the Sabbath. Now put me up a bit of bread and
cheese, and I’ll be back in the afternoon.’
    ‘And I’ll have the meat pie
ready for an early tea, instead of for dinner.’
    ‘Oh no! Not again!’ said
Jeremiah.
    Dinah’s family lived in a
small farmhouse, up a tree, close by a meadow: there were two cows feeding in
it.
    ‘There is nothing my horse
would like better than an hour or two in your beautiful meadow,’ said Jeremiah.
    ‘Do, and welcome,’ said the
young man. ‘We shall be having some dinner in an hour, and I hope you’ll come
in; we will lower a rope and pull you up.’
    Jeremiah thanked him, but
said he would like nothing better than to walk around the meadow with meat pies
in his pocket. He picked flowers in the meadow. When he got back he handed
Dolly the flowers; she jumped for joy. She cleared the dining table with six
inches to spare.
    ‘Your meat pie is ready,’
she said.
    ‘Oh Christ,’ said Jeremiah,
and hurled it out the window.

38

DOLLY AND A REAL GENTLEMAN
     
    Oh terrible carter, whipping his steed
    His were sinful deeds
    To his horses, which numbered two
    A man tried to stop him and was struck down
    He was wearing a suit of brown
    He told the police, despite being frail
    So the carter will wind up in jail
    Before that, one recalls
    His horse kicked him in the balls.
     
    The winter came in early
April, with a great deal of cold and frost. Jeremiah Barker’s things were all
shrivelled up. There was snow or sleet or rain, almost every day for weeks,
changing only for keen driving winds, or sharp frosts. The horses all felt it
very much. I felt mine and it felt frosty.
    When we horses had worked
half the day we went to our dry stables, and could rest. I would get in my bed
and pull up the blanket. The drivers would sit on their boxes until two in the
morning if they had a party to wait for. It was usually the Conservative Party,
and they were so pissed none of them knew where they lived.
    When the weather was very
bad, many of the men would go and sit in the toilets in the tavern close by,
and get someone to watch for them; why they wanted someone to watch for them in
the toilet seems a perversion. Jeremiah never went to the Rising Sun, but he
went to the toilet; he resented drink. It was his opinion that spirits and beer
made a man colder, and pissed. He believed in dry clothes, good food,
cheerfulness and a comfortable wife at home, none of which were available