Smuggling Horses out of Liverpool.
The dream begins with me astride a large, dappled grey horse. Its breath snorts and steams in the thin morning light. Behind us is the whirling traffic of Liverpool, chaotic and flashing like the blades of some monstrous blender. We have already risked much to come this far. We are hidden in shadows beneath a scabrous railway bridge, contemplating the path before us. Switch Island. A maelstrom of traffic scything around a calm expanse of detritus-strewn tarmac, all cracked and slick with weeds and old oil. That is our way. Straight through the middle.
I adjust my grip on the reigns and puff out my cheeks. The horse snorts and bobs his head. We’re ready.
‘Yah!’
We burst out of the shadows, the horse galloping with all his primordial might, me leaning close to his neck, breath hissing through my teeth as I steer him through the flashing ring of traffic and onto the old, clear tarmac. There are old, fading and chipped markings on the tarmac outlining ancient and long disused “horse lanes” which I stick to with a grim smile. We are half way across before the police spot us and open fire. Bullets blast fragments of old tarmac and concrete around the horse’s hooves but he is too fast for them. We blast through the far ring of screaming traffic and into an opening leading beneath the city.
We are in the city’s guts, now, surrounded by countless miles of iron pipes, slimy brickwork and sickly old marble fixtures. The horse doesn’t like this place, and neither do I, but it’s the only way out and the horse trusts me. It’s paid me a lot of money to bring it this way.
We can hear the city’s agents in pursuit, sometimes close and sometimes far away, undefined growls and snarls and the clicking of claws echoing in the clammy darkness. A pale light glows ahead, sickly and anaemic, and the sound of a withering wind grows loud enough to scare our pursuers back into their beloved shadows. I pull my heavy coat about me as we walk out of the labyrinth and onto the storm-scoured Cumbrian Fells.
The ground is frozen hard with the most threadbare carpet of beige heather, white with frost and the thinnest mist of swirling snow meandering over its surface like ghostly snakes in the steel wind. The horse shivers but not at the cold. The entire side of the Fell is covered with Cumbrian land seals, huddled together in groups to keep warm. These miserable creatures lie and wait, hardly moving, enduring the intense and shifting cold with all the patience of boulders. They don’t attack or threaten, just watch and pretend not to see. They wait for things to fall.
Like teenage girls, they jostle us as we pick our way through them, then look away and pretend it wasn’t them. They bring things down to the ground and then, once the cold has extracted the ghost from the shell, they feast, consuming everything from the nails of the toes to the druff of the nap, leaving not even a bone to posterity. Horrid, lazy, frigid things.
We journey down the Fells, gradually leaving the malevolent land seals behind, and come at last to the warm sandhills and grassy dunes of Ainsdale Beach. We’ve made it. A warm red sun is lowering over the strawberry sea and gulls call and wheel contentedly overhead. I pull the saddle from the grateful horse and it drops to its knees before kicking onto its back and writhing ecstatically in the warm sand, whinnying and snorting and allowing all its tension to fade away. It kicks itself back to its feet and walks over to me, pressing its face into my chest and allowing me to cuff its chin and ears in simple thanks. It nods its head towards the dunes and I smile. I know what it wants now.
I turn and look into the dunes, watch the grass shimmering in the gentle breeze, and hear the horse gallop away behind me. It doesn’t want me to see what happens next, doesn’t want me to see where it goes, streaming along the beach in the company of the spirit of Red Rum. Soon the sound of its hooves fades to nothing and the beach is deserted once again.
I bend and pick up the heavy saddle, throw it across my shoulder and start walking into the dunes, towards the distant sound of traffic and the Coastal Road. From there I can stick out my thumb and hitch a ride back through Formby and Maghull.
And back to Liverpool.
(I mean – what the actual fuck was that all about??)
