Free Testimonies: A Novel by Patrick O'Brian Page A

was a question of manual demonstration, raking or scything for example, he was the best teacher in the world: that was one of the reasons why the farm was so popular among the villagers who wanted their sons to start farming. He was acknowledged as a master in the complex skills of a farmer: I remember a man as far off as Llechog pointing out a stack and saying that it was as well thatched as if Emyr Vaughan, Gelli, had done it.
    He had many of the qualities that I lacked—qualities I had always envied in others. He was a great big fellow, to begin with; and he was young. In a way he was good-looking: tall, rather bony, obviously very strong, with red hair and light blue eyes. He had the poor skin that goes with that hair, however, and his eye-lashes did not show at all, which made one think of albinos. Then again, both he and his father had a poor carriage, a heavy and shambling walk, fast enough, but laborious and ungainly; so many country men have that walk, and the same uneasy stance.
    On the other hand, he could look downright magnificent. He had brought me up a load of dung one day, a heavy load, and he put the strong young mare to the cart to bring it up. She was turning to vice, nervous and untrustworthy, a huge beast, tight in her skin with muscle, but as quick as a pony.
    Emyr had dumped the manure and he was standing at the side of the cart leaning against the wall and talking to me as I stood on the road above him. He was about level with the mare’s head, but at that moment he was not holding her. We were talking quietly when for no cause she reared and hurled forward: the shaft drove to crush him against the wall and the wheel to smash him. He was up, lithe as a cat, with his shoulders against the wall and his feet on the shaft, and with the force of his body he thrust the cart out and away from him. It passed clear by inches. He was down and at the horse’s head, dragging, hanging and jagging at the bit, tearing her head back in an arch. Then he was in front with a hand on each side of her mouth, forcing her back and back until she stood quiet, sweating and trembling. His face was transfigured: his eyes were blazing and there was foam at his mouth. He took the mare straight down the road, leading her fast and brutally; she was quite cowed.
    Whenever I thought of him like that it seemed reasonable that he should be married to Bronwen.
    Still, I was willing to dislike him, if I could find a cause: it would have clarified the situation. But I could no longer behave with my former naturalness to him, and that reduced our communication very much indeed, so I could not learn more about him.
    It was fortunate that the turning year brought the farm much more work; it enabled me to keep away without remark or offense. I did not quite give up my evening visits; I had been there too often to do so. But they were uneasy visits now.
    It was at this time that I made a discovery that others make (I suppose) in their adolescence. I had never understood lyric poetry, sonnets, love-verses before; my taste had been for narrative verse, the Canterbury Tales and the Dunciad I liked, epigrams and vers de société. I had perhaps admired the technical ability of the other poets, but behind I suspected that they were rather silly. Now how different it was. I cannot give any measure of the difference. But now Troilus called after Criseyde and my heart ached for him: Marvell could write
    My love is of a birth as rare
    As ’tis for object strange and high.
    It was begotten by Despair
    Upon Impossibility ,
    and he wrote for my understanding; I knew what the words stood for now.
    I found, too, that I could tell the difference at once between the right poetry and the artificial: there was all the difference in the world, but I had never known it before.
    So there was poetry, a consolation; and there was fishing. Perhaps there is bathos in the conjunction, but there was consolation in both.
    But all the time, reading or fishing, or in the