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Gunna. Gunna go nowhere.”
    He is darling-talking Poached Eye, flicking the horse into a rocking, head-flinging walk. The breaking-in route passes behind the stable. Down the hill and alongside the pit gouged out by the front-end loader for burning rubbish to stop rats scavenging. When he reaches the pit he knows he is far enough off, and behind pit-smoke mist, to switch to hate-talk when Poached Eye bucks: “I’ll show you a kicking in a minute you mongrel cunt. I’ll kick your fucking guts out.”
    I’m going to catch him doing it. I’m going to tell him he better not move onto the next stage, the whip-hate stage, hate that sends a fist into horse ribs while the other fist grabs its ear and squeezes. I march over the straw-manure pile that spills down the pit’s face. I stand a short distance behind Churchill, easily in earshot.
    The Duke says a disappointed man, a man who has fallen short of his ambitions, takes the disappointment out on others —on wives, on children. Trackwork cowboys also have horses. I know this from watching Churchill. Cowboys may have no education but they know that to a horse a yelling, angry, disappointed man can be king of all its world. Such a king rules by forcing a steel bar in its mouth, he has a whip to punish its hide. He has straps that tighten around its belly, ropes to hitch up a fetlock behind the knee so the horse stands helpless on three legs instead of running away on four.
    If still the creature won’t bend to his rule, he fetches more rope, he fetches the baton with a loop of rope in it called the twitch. He grabs the horse’s top lip and twists the rope-loop around it and screws and screws until the lip turns white and pain spreads deep into the horse, locks it in paralysed defeat. If there’s still fight in it, another twitch will do the job, screwed onto its ear.
    I’ll make sure, when I address Churchill, that my voice is pitched low like a serious man’s, my vowels round in the mouth, not a hint of nasal which would be unimpressive to someone English. My hands are behind my back as usual. I keep them there though I list off balance and slip on horse dung that bursts open with oats and chaff like a bread, a burnt bread, mouldy green and crusty.
    “Don’t talk to the horse that way,” I say, I order. “Work around him, not through him.”
    If I tell Churchill to do something he has to do it, even though I am sixteen and he’s a man of forty. One day Tudor Park will be mine. In the line of the dynasty I’m second in charge. The only person who can tell me what to do is The Duke. He is the first in charge. I can’t tell him what to do. Feet is a mother and not counted in rank and power.
    If Churchill does not do what I say, then he would answer for it. He’d be let go . He is not king of me, it’s the other way around.
    He must be a deaf fool and hasn’t heard me. “Work around him, not through him,” I repeat.
    Now he looks at me, I have his attention. He squints. His arms row the reins to bring Poached Eye to a halt. He laughs, a laugh snorted out of him, more a cough than a laugh, a belligerent cough that brings up sputum which he spits into the grass while looking at me. I make sure my chin is held high and my shoulders are square, my hands clenched behind my back, my chest pushed out. The stance of someone in authority who better have his directives obeyed.
    Churchill cough-laughs again and flicks Poached Eye into a prance. “I’m the fucking boss of you,” he tells the horse, though surely it’s really me he speaks to. “Come on you bastard, I’ll show you who’s boss.”
    Poached Eye rears and jumps sideways. Lashes out with his front hooves to strike Churchill though Churchill is too far away and continues flicking the reins and rowing: “I’m the fucking boss here you cunt.” He flicks and rows again, flicks and rows as if trying to punish the animal with confused commands.
    Churchill calls out to me, “You watching, boy?”
    He then has