This passage is situated at the beginning of the second chapter of the novel. The date is September 1820.
Please note that this is not necessarily the final version, since I am still in the process of revising my manuscript.
Feel free to comment and let me know if you like or dislike it, what you think work or doesn’t work, and if this taster makes you want to read the rest of the book!
Extract of Chapter 2
He looks at the fresh horses being harnessed to the stage coach. They already seem exhausted as if by the thought of the journey ahead. No rest, for them, no rest. A life spent trudging through the heavy mud of the road, with the wind and the rain flung at their faces. They sigh, life has been unfair to us. They did not ask to be born horses. They did not ask to pull the stage coach or for the road to be impracticable.
Two of them are bay, there is also a grey and a roan. After a few miles, they will be so splattered in mud there will be no telling what their colour was. The roan is skittish and rears and steps aside. The darker bay, which is especially bitter, tells him off by biting his neck. The driver cries hoarsely and lashes his whip over their ears. They sigh, we have a long way ahead.
Dennys looks at them and remembers the chestnut horse he left in Africa. He’s forgotten much but not that horse. He can see again every single hair on the gleaming coat, orange and gold, copper and brown, the white whiskers around the mottled-pink nose, the eyes reflecting the ochre-coloured land they gazed upon, the curved tips of the ears. How many days did he spend on the Chestnut’s back? How much of the two years he was in Africa? More than a companion, a friend. He left him where the palm trees dance and a great river flows.
They sent me to buy horses on the day after we arrived. You go, Oliver said, you always had an eye for them. When we’d arrived, when we’d got off the boat, it was night. We were greeted by the warmth of an African night as we first set foot on this land. A few buildings, a few houses, and beyond, the night. I imagined Africa before I even saw her.
He joins his fellow passengers back inside the coach. Andrew is there, asleep in a corner, along with a newly-wed couple, a middle-aged woman carrying two baskets, one with a hen in it, and one without, and a shrunken old man with a face wrinkled like an apple. The couple is whispering and holding hands oblivious to their cramped surroundings.
A crack of the whip and they’re off. Whinnies, squeals. The roan must be annoying the dark bay again.
“Those roads are real bad,” the woman with the baskets mutters as they’re jostled and tumbled about. The hen squawks in assent. The old man is chuckling alone and rubbing his hands. The couple stops whispering for a bit to look at him surreptitiously.
The woman opens the basket in which there is no hen: it contains a whole roasted chicken instead. She takes a wing and eats it with relish. The hen becomes very quiet all of a sudden. The old man licks his lips.
The chickens in Africa, they weren’t as fat. Small and lean. Stringy ‘cause they ran too much. The cows were different too, like another breed of animal altogether. Thin and long-legged. Horns curved in the shape of a crescent, and a hump on their back. They raised clouds of dust as they were taken to market. Sacks full of spices, some common, some rare, and their smell was stronger than that of the fish and the meat. Meat and fish that’d been too long in the sun. Covered in flies they were. But the heady scent of the spices, they smothered the rest. Pointed domes, red and yellow and orange. Dried herbs. A sugary tea in a dusty glass; on the surface float two shrivelled mint leaves.
He gazes at the landscape as he would at a strange land. The low, thatched houses, the bramble in the hedgerows, where blackberries ripen, the yellowing leaves of the trees. A village. Dogs bark, big burly sheepdogs with thick coats. A woman stands in her doorway, rubbing floury hands on her apron, gazing at the coach with dumb, hostile eyes.
He joins his fellow passengers back inside the coach. Andrew is there, asleep in a corner, along with a newly-wed couple, a middle-aged woman carrying two baskets, one with a hen in it, and one without, and a shrunken old man with a face wrinkled like an apple. The couple is whispering and holding hands oblivious to their cramped surroundings.
A crack of the whip and they’re off. Whinnies, squeals. The roan must be annoying the dark bay again.
“Those roads are real bad,” the woman with the baskets mutters as they’re jostled and tumbled about. The hen squawks in assent. The old man is chuckling alone and rubbing his hands. The couple stops whispering for a bit to look at him surreptitiously.
The woman opens the basket in which there is no hen: it contains a whole roasted chicken instead. She takes a wing and eats it with relish. The hen becomes very quiet all of a sudden. The old man licks his lips.
The chickens in Africa, they weren’t as fat. Small and lean. Stringy ‘cause they ran too much. The cows were different too, like another breed of animal altogether. Thin and long-legged. Horns curved in the shape of a crescent, and a hump on their back. They raised clouds of dust as they were taken to market. Sacks full of spices, some common, some rare, and their smell was stronger than that of the fish and the meat. Meat and fish that’d been too long in the sun. Covered in flies they were. But the heady scent of the spices, they smothered the rest. Pointed domes, red and yellow and orange. Dried herbs. A sugary tea in a dusty glass; on the surface float two shrivelled mint leaves.
He gazes at the landscape as he would at a strange land. The low, thatched houses, the bramble in the hedgerows, where blackberries ripen, the yellowing leaves of the trees. A village. Dogs bark, big burly sheepdogs with thick coats. A woman stands in her doorway, rubbing floury hands on her apron, gazing at the coach with dumb, hostile eyes.
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