Крис Бекетт - The Turing Test

It was too dark inside to see anything at first, but I gathered from the acoustics that the inside of the building was a single space. We seemed to be standing on a gallery that ran round the sides of it. William motioned to me to squat down beside him, so only our heads were above the balustrade.

Almost as soon as we entered I heard the animal snorting and snuffling and tearing at its food. Now, as my eyes adapted, I made it out down there on the far side of the great bare stable. It must have been nearly the height of an elephant, with shoulders and haunches bulging with muscle. It was pulling with its teeth at the leg and haunches of an ox that had been hacked from a carcass and dumped into its manager.

“He hasn’t noticed us yet,” whispered William. “He wasn’t looking in our direction when we came in.”

“I take it this is the same horse that your uncle gave you?” I asked him, also in a whisper.

William nodded.

“But you never rode him?”

“No.”

“And will you ever ride him?”

William gave a little incredulous snort. The sound made the fire horse lift its head and sniff suspiciously at the air, but after a second or two it returned again to its meat.

“No of course not,” he said, “even if I knew how to ride a fire horse, which I don’t, I couldn’t ride this thing now. No one can ride an adult fire horse unless it was broken in as a foal.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I’ll tell you something, Clancy. If you or I were to go down and approach him, he would tear us limb from limb. I’m not exaggerating.”

I nodded.

“So why do you keep him?”

It seemed that I had spoken too loudly. The beast lifted its head again and sniffed, but this time it didn’t turn back to its food. Growling, it scanned the gallery. Then it let loose an appalling scream of rage.

I have never heard such a sound. Really and truly in all my life and all my travels, I have never heard a living thing shriek like that dreadful fire horse in its echoing prison.

And now it came thundering across the stable. Right beneath us, glaring up at us, it reared up on its hind legs to try and reach us, screaming again and again and again so that I thought my eardrums would burst. The whole building shook with the beating of the animal’s hooves on the wall. And then, just as with my hands over my ears I shouted to William that I wanted to leave, the brute suddenly emitted a bolt of lightning from its mouth that momentarily illuminated that entire cavernous space with the brilliance of daylight.

William’s face was radiant, but I had had enough. I made my own way back to the door and back into daylight. Those decaying woods outside had seemed sour and gloomy before, but compared to the dark stable of the fire horse they now seemed almost cheerful. I went down the steps and, making myself comfortable on a fallen tree, took out my notebook and began to record some thoughts while I waited for the poet to finish whatever it was he felt he needed to do in there. I was surprised and pleased to find my imagination flowing freely. The imprisoned fire horse, it seemed, had provided the catalyst, the injection of venom, that sooner or later I always needed to bring each book of mine to life. Inwardly laughing, I poured out idea after idea while the muffled screams of the tormented monster kept on and on –- and from time to time another flash of lightening momentarily illuminated the cracks in the door at the top of the stairs.

After a few minutes William emerged. His face was shining.

“I’ll tell you why I don’t get rid of him, Clancy,” he declared, speaking rather too loudly, as if he was drunk. “Because he is what I love best in the whole world! The only thing I’ve ever loved, apart from my Uncle John.”

Behind him the fire horse screamed again and I wondered what William thought he meant by ‘love’ when he spoke of this animal which he had condemned to solitude and darkness and madness.

“I feel I have fallen in your esteem,” he said on the way back to the house.

There had been a long silence between us as we trudged back from the dank little valley of brambles and stinging nettles and out again into the formal, public parkland of William’s and his mother’s country seat.

“You are repelled, I think,” William persisted, “by the idea of my doting on a horse which I have never dared to ride. Isn’t that so?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so he answered for me.

“You are repelled and actually so am I. I am disgusted and ashamed by the spectacle of my weakness. And yet this is the only way I know of making myself feel alive. Do you understand me? You find my work a little constipated and bottled up, you say. But if I didn’t go down to the fire horse, shamed and miserable as it makes me feel, I wouldn’t be able to write at all.”

I made myself offer a reassuring remark.

“We all have to find our way of harnessing the power of our demons.”

It would have been kinder, and more honest, if I had acknowledged that the encounter with the firehorse had been a catalyst for me also, and that for the first time in this visit my book had begun to flow and come alive. But I couldn’t bring myself to make such a close connection between my own experience and his.

That night William slipped out shortly after his mother returned, without goodbyes or explanations.

“I suppose he showed you his blessed horse?” said Lady Henry as she and I sat at supper.

“He did. An extraordinary experience I must say.”

“And I suppose he told you that the horse and his Uncle John were the only things he had ever really loved?”

My surprise must have shown. She nodded.

“It’s his standard line. He’s used it to good effect with several impressionable young girls. Silly boy. Good lord, Mr Clancy, he doesn’t have to stay with me if he doesn’t want to! We are wealthy people after all! We have more than one house! I have other people to push me around!”

She gave a bitter laugh.

“I don’t know what kind of monster you think I am Mr Clancy, and I don’t suppose it really matters, but I will tell you this. When William was six and his uncle tried to get him to ride, he clung to me so tightly and so desperately that it bruised me, and he begged and pleaded with me to promise that I’d never make him do it. That night he actually wet his bed with fear. Perhaps you think I was weak and I should have made him ride the horse? But, with respect Mr Clancy, remember that you are not a parent yourself, and certainly not the sole parent of an only child.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she dabbed at them angrily with her napkin.

“His father was a violent, arrogant drunk,” she said. “Far worse than my brother. He was the very worst type of Flainian male. He pushed me down the stairs you know. That was how I ended up like this. He pushed me in a fit of rage and broke my back. It was a miracle that William survived, a complete miracle. And then, when I refused to promise to keep secret the reason for my paralysis, my dear brave husband blew off his own head. I wanted William to be different. I wanted him to be gentle. I didn’t want him to glory in strength and danger.”

She gave a small, self-deprecating shrug.

“I do acknowledge that I lack a certain… lightness.”

“Lady Henry, I am sure that…”

But the poet’s mother cut me off.

“Now do try this wine, Mr Clancy,” she cried brightly, so instantly transformed that I almost wondered whether I had dreamed what had gone before. “It was absurdly expensive and I’ve been saving it for someone who was capable of appreciating it.”

In the early hours of the morning I heard William come crashing in through the front doors.