Joe and the Gladiator, page 5
‘I thought that an’ all when I first heard it, Mam, but you get used to it, and when you know him it sort of fits him.’
‘Well, there you are. Get yourself away. Oh, an’ here’s a carrot for The Gladiator.’ She thrust the carrot at him and Joe put it in his pocket with a laugh. Then, his hand on the parcel, he asked quietly as he jerked his head upwards, ‘What’s she doing at Christmas?’
‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know.’
‘Is she coming down to dinner?’
She turned her head over her shoulder and looked at him. ‘It’ll be a nice Christmas dinner if she does, won’t it?’
‘It won’t be very cheerful even as things are.’ He now asked the question he had wanted to ask for days. ‘How are things, Mam?’
She walked from him and into the scullery and came back with a tray of crockery in her hand before she said, ‘It’s difficult to answer at the moment.’ She now put the tray down on the table and, still holding it, she looked down at it as she added, ‘Your dad is up to something. I don’t know what, it’s just a feeling, but he’s up to something.’
‘He hasn’t been going upstairs lately, has he?’
‘No, but there’s something, and I can’t lay me finger on it. Anyhow you go on and get your presents to the old man. And don’t worry. And mind how you go; it’s like a skating rink outside.’
And it was like a skating rink outside. Joe almost lost his balance as soon as he put his foot on the pavement. It had been bad enough when he came home from work but now it was freezing even harder. It was no use trying to get a bus to Brick Fields Gate, it was much quicker to take the short cuts; but even so it was almost half an hour later when he pushed Mr Prodhurst’s gate open, and then came to a standstill. The yard was as black as pitch. There was no light shining from the kitchen window, but there was a noise coming from the stable. It was The Gladiator, and the sound he was making was not really like a neigh at all, it was as if he was in pain or something.
Joe picked his way across the yard and knocked on the door. Mr Prodhurst had likely fallen asleep and forgotten to put the light on, but it was nearly seven o’clock and he would have needed the light from four o’clock, because the whole day had been overcast with it snowing.
‘Mr Prodhurst!’ He called out the old man’s name as he pushed the door open. Groping his way to the table he dropped the cardboard box and shopping bag onto it, then made towards the wall where the electric switch was.
When the naked bulb lighted the room he stood staring towards the bed. Mr Prodhurst was lying on the top of it fully clothed. His hands were joined together and resting on his stomach; his face looked very still; all of him looked very still. Joe couldn’t make his legs move towards the bed; he had the desire to turn and run out into the yard, and into the street, anywhere but stay here.
‘Mr Prodhurst!’ The name was just a whisper now. ‘Mr Prodhurst!’ He again whispered the name as he moved across the room, and then he was standing looking down on the old man. Mr Prodhurst’s eyes were closed and he looked as if he were asleep but Joe knew he wasn’t asleep. He stood staring at him. He didn’t look frightening, only very, very quiet, sort of relaxed looking.
He gave a great start when a loud neigh came from the next room. He turned towards the door. Poor Gladiator. Aw, poor Gladiator. And poor Mr Prodhurst. He had brought him all these things an’ all. All day he had been thinking what he would say when he gave him the cake and things, all home-made. He jammed his teeth tightly down into his lower lip and screwed up his eyes, then went blindly into the stable.
The Gladiator was usually lying, or standing, in his stall but tonight he wasn’t more than a yard from the door and at sight of Joe he made that strange sound again, a sound that wasn’t horse-like at all, and Joe, going to him and resting his head against him, said, ‘Poor fellow. Poor fellow.’ The horse, after tossing his head twice, became quiet, and Joe’s voice cracked as he murmured, ‘Come on, lie down, lad. Come on, lie down.’ Turning the horse about he led him into the stall and, stroking his nose, he said softly, ‘You know, don’t you? You know.’ And the horse remained still, almost as still as Mr Prodhurst. Joe now looked at the manger. There was no seed hay in it tonight. He said brokenly, ‘Stay put. I’ll be back and get you something, but…but I must go and fetch somebody first.’
When he went into the kitchen again he didn’t look towards the bed but made straight for the door, and closing it after him he ran slipping and sliding across the yard and into the road. Looking first one way and then the other he asked himself would he go home and get his mam or fetch the pollis?
But the decision seemed to be taken out of his hands for when he reached the corner of the street a patrol car was turning in slowly from the main road, likely on its round of the warehouses, and he found himself shouting at it, ‘Hi! Hi! Pollis!’
The car drew up alongside the kerb and he bent down to the window and gasped, ‘Will you come? There’s an old man, Mr Prodhurst. I go and see him now and again. I…I think he’s dead.’
The police looked at him for a moment, then said, ‘Whereabouts, sonny?’
‘Along at the end here, the taggerine yard.’
‘You mean Taggerine Ted?’ said the other policeman.
‘Aye, that’s him.’
‘Get in,’ said the policeman, opening the back door of the car; and Joe got in, but within seconds he was out again and leading the way across the yard and into the room.
The two policemen stood looking down at Mr Prodhurst. Then they looked about the room; then they looked at Joe, and one of them said, ‘When did you find him?’
‘Not five minutes ago. Well, perhaps ten.’
When the neighing sound came from the other side of the wall the policeman turned in the direction of the stable and Joe said, ‘That’s his horse; he knows something’s wrong.’
The two policemen looked at one another and then one of them said, ‘I’ll phone for the ambulance,’ and went out.
‘It was his birthday the morrow,’ said Joe; ‘I brought him a cake and things; me mother made them.’ He looked towards the box and shopping bag on the table, and the policeman nodded understandingly, then said, ‘He hadn’t many friends, he was a bit of a recluse. He worked hard and he never did anyone any harm that I know of and yet he had to live like this, in this pigsty.’
‘He was happy,’ said Joe; ‘he had The Gladiator.’
‘The what?’
‘The…the horse.’ Joe thumbed towards the wall.
‘He called it The Gladiator?’
‘Yes.’
The policeman smiled tolerantly and Joe felt he should defend Mr Prodhurst’s right to call the horse The Gladiator if he wanted to, but policemen were policemen and you had to be careful what you said.
Joe was a bit hazy about the sequence of events in the next two hours. He knew the ambulance came in no time and he knew that he couldn’t watch them put Mr Prodhurst onto the stretcher but went into the stable with The Gladiator, who was making that weird noise every now and again. But he couldn’t remember if he quieted The Gladiator or if it was Mr Billings, the vet.
Mr Billings had come into the stable and spoken to the horse as if he knew him. ‘I’m the vet,’ he said; ‘and you must be Joe. The old man mentioned you.’
‘Aye,’ said Joe. He was sitting on the straw near The Gladiator’s head, because the horse seemed to like to have him there. ‘What are you going to do with him?’ he asked.
‘There’s only one thing,’ said Mr Billings gently. ‘He’s a very old horse and they’ll be together. He wouldn’t want to be separated from the old man.’
Joe stared up at Mr Billings. ‘How do you do it?’ he said.
Mr Billings swallowed, moved his feet in the straw, then said, ‘Oh, it’s done very humanely, very humanely.’
Aye, thought Joe. Then he’d be boiled down and made into dog food. The thought drove him to his feet. ‘Couldn’t he be buried?’ he said.
‘No, no, they don’t bury horses, not like that. Now don’t worry. Has he had anything to eat?’
‘I’ve given him his feed but he won’t touch it.’
‘I’d go home now,’ said Mr Billings. ‘He’ll be all right.’
‘He’ll not,’ said Joe under his breath.
‘Well we can’t do anything about it, can we?’
Mr Billings and Joe exchanged glances, and Joe, walking towards the door without looking at The Gladiator again, said, ‘What time will you be coming the morrow?’
‘Oh, I’ll have to make arrangements, and it being Christmas Eve things will be difficult. I couldn’t give you a definite time.’
‘I’ll come round first thing,’ said Joe, ‘and see to him.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ said Mr Billings; ‘but I could get in touch with the RSPCA…’
‘No,’ said Joe quickly, ‘I’ll see to him.’
‘As you wish. As you wish,’ said Mr Billings soothingly.
Joe slowly gathered the box and the shopping bag from the table and as they went out of the door he said, ‘What about locking up?’ and Mr Billings answered ‘Oh, I suppose the police will see to that. Anyway,’ he added sadly, ‘there’s nothing to steal. He had nothing of any value to my knowledge. But’—he inclined his head—‘he always paid on the dot and never asked for charity. If he thought anything was wrong with the animal he called me in right away.’
They stood outside the main gate for a moment, then Mr Billings said, ‘Goodnight and don’t worry,’ and Joe turned away without making any remark at all. And he didn’t notice his feet slipping and sliding on the ice-covered streets; he had his chin buried deep in his collar, almost resting on the box, and his eyes cast downwards. He was glad it was dark. He hoped there was nobody at home when he got in because he wouldn’t be able to talk about it without blubbering right out.
Chapter Four
When Joe entered the kitchen at quarter past seven the next morning he was surprised to see his mother up and dressed and the table laid for breakfast. She turned to him and said, ‘I didn’t hear you stirring else I would have brought you a cup of tea in.’ To this he just jerked his head because he was finding he couldn’t talk properly, in fact he felt worse than he had done last night when he came home and found them both in the house and tried to tell them what had happened.
When his mother put a plate of bacon and eggs before him he looked at it, then without looking at her he pushed it to one side, mumbling, ‘I couldn’t. I just want a cup of tea.’
She leant towards him now and said softly, ‘It’s no good you know, Joe, getting upset like this; he won’t know anything about it. Your dad says they do it very quickly…in the head.’ She pointed to her temple and Joe screwed up his eyes and, tossing his head, in almost the same manner as The Gladiator himself did, cried out, ‘Don’t, don’t, Mam! Haven’t you any sense?’
His mother didn’t reprimand him for this, but, her voice still quiet, she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then after a moment she added, ‘But if you take my advice you won’t go round there any more.’
‘I’m going.’ He was spooning sugar into his tea, two, three, four spoonfuls; then he stopped abruptly and looked down into the cup, and his mother took it from him, saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you another.’ And when she handed him a fresh cup he said to her, ‘He’s got to be cleaned out and have something to eat.’
He raised his head now to see his father standing in the doorway looking at him, and he thought, If he says, ‘The condemned ate a hearty breakfast,’ I’ll throw tea at him, straight I will, because his dad had the knack of capping things.
But Mr Darling didn’t joke in an effort to ease the situation; instead, he said, ‘Would you like me to come along with you?’
Joe stared at his father for a moment; then said, ‘No. Thanks all the same.’
‘It’ll be no trouble; it’s on my way to work.’
Joe shook his head and his father said no more.
When he was ready to go his mother came to the front door with him and as he stepped out into the bleak, breath-cutting morning she put her hand gently on his shoulder and whispered, ‘It’ll pass. I mean how you’re feeling.’
Aye, they said everything passed, Joe thought as he walked down the street, but before it passed it had to be present, hadn’t it? It was like being nearly round the bend with toothache and some bloke saying to you, ‘I know how you feel, lad.’ They didn’t know how you felt, they only thought they did. If they knew how you felt they’d be crying out inside, ‘I can’t bear it’, like you were.
And he was crying out inside now, ‘I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it.’ Yet at the same time he tried to take an objective view of the situation, telling himself that if anybody had told him three months ago that he’d be upset beyond measure about an old ragman dying, and at the thought of an old horse, who was ready to die anyway, being put to sleep, he would have said they were barmy. Yet here he was experiencing an anguish that no words in his vocabulary could explain.
When he opened the gate there was no sound, nor when he crossed the yard, and when he reached the stable door he couldn’t open it because he was seized with a feeling of panic.
Mr Billings had been and taken him already.
When he thrust the door open and saw The Gladiator standing in his stall in that queer still way, he drew in a deep breath and, going towards him, touched the animal’s muzzle and said softly, ‘Hello there, boy.’
The Gladiator did not toss his head this morning; it was as if he knew the time for greetings was almost past, there was nothing more to look forward to, not even on the narrow horizon of the stable and the yard outside in which Mr Prodhurst had been wont to exercise him, and for which purpose he had made a circular path around the junk.
The Gladiator’s attitude made Joe feel even worse, if that were possible, and he started to busy himself cleaning out the soiled straw and carrying it to a place near the main gate where Mr Prodhurst stored it, and from where it was collected by a market gardener from the outskirts of the town.
He hesitated before taking fresh straw from the bale in the corner and putting it in the stall. But why not? For the time left to him, why not give him comfort, put all the straw down? On this thought he went back to the bale and tore out armful after armful of straw and heaped it on the floor beside The Gladiator. ‘There you are, boy. There you are. Look, a nice bed,’ he said gently. ‘And eat your breakfast.’ He pointed to the manger.
The horse now jerked its head and nuzzled Joe’s shoulder as if to say, Thank you. The affectionate gesture was too much for Joe, and he had to go into the other room. He had never seen it in the daylight before. Without the comforting glow from the fire, it looked terrible, and it smelt damp.
When The Gladiator began to neigh loudly, as he had done last night Joe, returning to the stable, stood looking helplessly at him from the doorway. He watched him toss his head wildly now, and he thought, He knows. He knows what’s coming. Oh God! I can’t stay in here with him. I just can’t. It’s like being in a cell with a condemned human, but I can’t leave him alone waiting.
He looked at his watch. It was just turned nine o’clock. How long would he have to wait? It was freezing cold. He began to move about in a desperate effort to keep himself warm. Presently he came to a halt in front of the grime-stained window and through it he saw to his amazement his mother coming up the yard, followed by a policeman. He met them at the door and his mother said, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. It was just that there’s a letter for you and I thought I would come along…’ Her voice trailed away.
The policeman smiled down on Joe. He was a new one, Joe noticed, but he seemed to know all about the situation for, holding out a letter, he said, ‘This was found among the old man’s belongings. It’s addressed to you.’
Joe looked at the envelope and read, ‘To Mr Joe Darling, Junior.’ Then he looked at his mother and she said, ‘Go on, open it.’
Slowly he slit open the envelope and drew out a folded sheet, in between which reposed a number of pound notes. He cast a quick glance at his mother again, and then at the policeman, before reading the letter. It said simply, ‘Dear Joe, I’ll be pushing up the daisies, at any rate nearer to doing it than I’ve ever been before, when you read this. You’re a good lad, Joe. I’ve found that out over the past weeks. You’ve given me something to look forward to in my last days. You’ll never really know what you did for me dropping in like that that night, or what your company has meant to me, so in return I’m leaving you The Gladiator. I enclose six pounds. That’ll help you with his feed for a time, and you might get a little for the books. You’re a bright lad, Joe, and you’ll work out a way to keep him until his time comes, I’m sure of that. Just remember this, Joe. No kindness ever goes unrewarded. Your dear friend, Edward Prodhurst.’
Joe looked from his mother to the policeman and back to his mother again. Then handing her the letter, he exclaimed on a high note, ‘He’s left me The Gladiator!’
‘WHAT!’
‘There!’ He stabbed at the letter. ‘He says I’m to have him and this money’s to help keep him.’
While his mother was reading the letter he glanced back towards the stable. He wanted to rush to The Gladiator and shout, ‘You’re all right, lad, you’re all right.’ Then even before his mother, or the policeman, who was also reading the letter over her shoulder, could voice any comment, good, bad, or indifferent, he put his hand tightly over his cheek and groaned aloud, ‘But…but I can’t. I can’t see to him, I’ll be at work.’
‘Of course you will.’ Mrs Darling’s voice sounded full of indignation. ‘It’s an imposition. He should never have done such a thing. And six pounds! What’s six pounds? There’ll likely be rent to pay for this place…Really! I never heard anything like it.’
The policeman looked sadly down at Joe and said, ‘He was an old man and couldn’t have understood things clearly; they get a bit like that as they get on. I understood the horse was to be put down the day. I think that’s the best thing that could happen to it.’
