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the nerve to call out that I should look and learn how to show an animal who’s the boss. After a fierce shake of the reins he kicks sods of caked mud at Poached Eye’s behind, and roars, “Walk proper, you fucking dumb beast.” He pulls down on the left rein to turn in a circle. Then the right rein, kicking sods and roaring at every falter. “Who’s boss now?” he growls to the horse and scowls at me, kicking more sods for Poached Eye to trot up the hill away from me.
    I must respond to this disobedience. How dare this disappointed man talk back to me. He, a disappointed man, has slighted me—my father’s son. Me, heir to that horse, heir to this land. I refuse to be reduced to an inferior to a disappointed man. A man with no education. A failed Englishman. A Gunna.

    I have to put him in his place. He doesn’t realise what he is, a Gunna. Yet he needs to know how obvious it is for others to see it in him. He needs to know that when I order him to do something he better do it. No cough-laughs, no scowls, no spitting.
    He has reached the stable. He flicks for Poached Eye to get through the gate, rows him to the right and flicks him through the horse-box door. His darling-talk has returned in case The Duke is somewhere about. But still he will manage one quick punch into Poached Eye’s ribcage as his daily get-even. I’ve seen him do it before and I see the signs he has done it now—the horse is shuddering and fear-snorting when he should be snorting like a sigh, like relief that another day’s work is done. Churchill’s fist is relaxing back to being fingers. He unthreads the reins from the stirrups, leans down to unbuckle the saddle. He clucks and darling-talks for Poached Eye to stand quietly.
    The horse-box floor is stripy with a few strokes of sun through the wall panels. Straw motes swarm and swirl. My shadow bends across the timbers, a skinny shadow, armless because of my hands being behind me. I begin to say, “You were told to work around him,” but before I can complete the sentence Churchill turns his head to speak to my shadow, to speak over the top of me.
    “So boy, what are you going to do when you grow up?”
    I shuffle my feet. My hands have gone from my back to my pockets. I was not expecting questioning from him. Least of all that particular question. I don’t have an answer for it. I’m under no obligation to answer questions from his type. He has no right even to speak to me about my private business. And to call me boy as if I’m junior to him. Boy when the truth is my height alone must be six inches bigger than his.
    I do not have to answer him, but I do. I shrug, I shuffle and say “I don’t know” without thinking. Without saying to myself first that here I am in the presence of a disappointed man and even he knows what he wants. He wants a reputation, a name. Am I in the early stages of being a disappointed man with my “I don’t know”?
    Doctor I should have said. Barrister. Politician . These are not lives that a disappointed man like Churchill could ever lead. They are occupations well above and ahead of him. They are what I should have said. Instead I’ve given him the opportunity to cough-laugh at me again. Worse, at the very moment he does cough-laugh he releases the saddle’s surcingle with such a dangerous, deliberate jerk its elastic strap springs free like a slingshot towards me. It misses, but I feel its wind against my cheek.
    Churchill undresses the horse of its rope and sack clothing, its leather and steel headdress. He saddles his arm with it all and grazes past my shoulder. A deliberate act of grazing, I’m sure of it. A challenge, the equivalent of poking or pushing. He has gone too far now. It’s time to report this rudeness, this impudence to The Duke, these assaults on me.
    That is exactly what they are—assaults. First the assault of insults—the cough-laughs, the scowls, the spitting which might have been a spit into grass but only an idiot would