Tivington Nott by Alex Miller Read Free Book Online

then lets it out with a sigh. The stubble on his cheeks and the wrinkles under his eyes are lit up from underneath by the bright reflection of the day into our shade, and there is a dusting of tiny golden particles clinging like pollen to his eyelashes. ‘You look tired.’
    He turns to me: ‘The boys are giving you a hard time on the elevator, eh?’
    ‘I can handle them.’ Morris laughs. We both know I can’t handle them. We don’t need to talk about it. I half listen to the Tiger and Alsop, fencing with each other now, circling around the business of Kabara. Both on to something very special. The Tiger holding a natural advantage and seeking to make the most of it. Probing around. Suggesting faults. Almost insulting the Australian. Rousing him . . .
    The heat’s coming out of my body and rising up in an envelope around me. A pie straight out of the oven! Spit would sizzle on me! But I can feel the strength flowing back with the food. Morris’s wife comes over and pours us both some more tea. She kneels down, steadying herself with a hand on his knee. He watches her, and she looks at him when she’s finished pouring. They don’t say anything and Roly-Poly’s calling out for something or other.
    Alsop’s voice is rising up, becoming more nasal as he gets excited. The Tiger’s got him where he wants him. He’s playing with him. Starting the squeeze. The Australian loud and foreign: ‘Irish, Mr Westall! First-class Irish blood and not a fault in him!’ It’s true. Kabara’s all that and more. Too good for the Tiger by a mile. No legitimate way a tenant farmer like Tiger can afford a piece of pure Irish bloodstock up to his weight; fifteen stone if he’s an ounce!
    ‘What are you saying, for Christ’s sake?’ Alsop affronted now. ‘He was bred for one of your bloody dukes!’ The Tiger making a laughable comparison with his own chestnut hunters.
    ‘He’s not an Exmoor hunter, Major,’ Tiger says and whips out his watch, looking around, pretending to be getting fidgety for a start. But it’s too early. The men are only now getting out their smokes. Tiger gets up and dusts himself off, he’s going for the grease gun. ‘You’ll have a job selling him on the moor,’ he says over his shoulder, moving off unexpectedly and leaving Alsop standing by the wheel. But Alsop’s after him at once. Strident! Amazed! ‘Who’s talking about selling him?’ The Tiger laughs and keeps going. Enjoying himself now. His instincts have got it right and he’s opened the show on a hot note. He’s got the man who wants to sell the horse chasing him!
    ‘Take him to Winsford with you and give him a run. That’s all I’m saying.’ The crippled Australian lets the world know that he needs this sale badly. And if Tiger does take Kabara with him to Winsford next week, which is more than likely, because it doesn’t look as though there’ll be anything stopping him from going, it will look by then as if he’s doing Alsop a favour. To some. There’s a lot of screwing and grinding, undermining and probing, testing and poking into private situations, and there’s a lot of shifting and shuffling around to be done before the Tiger parts with cash.
    There he goes. Squirting grease again!
    Alsop mopes along behind him, watching the stuff oozing out of the hot bearings and dropping in black sluggish blobs on to the stubble. He knows in his heart of hearts how badly the Tiger wants the horse and it’s nearly killing him that he can’t get any leverage on it. ‘They don’t look as though they really need greasing,’ he says in the end.
    The Tiger’s hard at it, bum in the air and elbows going; ‘They need it!’ he growls, moving briskly to the next nipple and pumping.
    So Alsop stands. Frustrated. Staring at the broad back of the Tiger ahead of him. No longer following.
    He must feel me watching him because he looks across, directly at me. Shrugs and gives his head a shake, as much as to say, What can I do with a man