‘I didn’t know they liked apples’, I said to the man feeding the horses on the Farmleigh Estate on a beautifully sunny Saturday morning.
Three horses, two smaller-built chestnuts and a bigger white male had been grazing on the field beside the road when the man appeared at the fence and started calling them with short whistles. I turned my head to have a good look at the horse-charmer. The man must have been in his sixties. He was wearing a light jacket, loose grey shorts and a ragged, sun-baked, khaki hat from under which thick curls of silver-grey hair were hanging out. His face was red as it so often happens to people of his age in this part of the world. I just call it a ‘pub face’ without the slightest hint of being judgemental.
When the horses heard the whistles, one of them lifted its head immediately and another one did so shortly afterwards. They turned around, fixing their eyes on the man, their ears moving side to side with curiosity. It was the younger looking chestnut that made a move first, followed by the big white. As they got near the fence, the man stopped whistling. And that’s when I noticed the old blue plastic bag. The man lifted it with one hand and pulled out an apple with the other. He pointed at the chestnut horse, murmuring and signalling with his index finger that this treat is meant to be hers and then threw the fruit over the fence. The horse trotted over and quickly devoured the delicacy. The next apple landed at the feet of the white horse, after some pointing and murmuring. By this time the third horse had walked over to join the feast. He got his share too. After about ten minutes, the man ran out of his apples. He nodded goodbye to his four-legged friends who were still happily munching and turned away from the fence. That’s when our eyes met.
‘I didn’t know they liked apples’, I repeated as he didn’t hear me the first time.
‘Oh, well, they are normally a lot more enthusiastic’, he said. He spoke with an English accent. He made the impression of an educated, thoughtful man.
‘They must be full of fresh, green grass, those horses’, I concluded.
‘Grass, that’s what they’re supposed to eat, not apples’ he chuckled. ‘They are like children. When someone comes along they stop chewing the apple. They pretend not to be eating anything.’
‘Do they know you well? You got their attention very quickly.’
‘I’ve known those two for over a decade’, he said nodding over at the chestnut and the white one who had first answered his call. ‘Since they were this small’, he said with the flat palm of his left hand facing downward at hip height.
‘Am I a supplier of the drug?’ ‘I suppose, I am’, he said in amusement.
I chuckled.
‘Have I created the market for myself?’, he continued. ‘Yes, I did!’, he said proudly.
‘You certainly did!’, I agreed.
‘I take pleasure out of it anyway.’
‘It doesn’t do them any harm either.’
He considered the conversation finished and he nodded goodbye to me just like he had done to the horses a few minutes before. He started walking down the road.
‘Enjoy your day!’ I called out after him. He was already further down, on the other side of the road, walking slowly with the empty, creased plastic bag dangling at his side.
The Greater Picture 