The Hobby Horse

A tired Dublin father goes out on Christmas Eve to find the one gift his son asked Santa for, a rocking horse he can't afford.
After every shop fails him, a strange figure by the canal offers him a beautifully carved hobby horse for free, in exchange for a small and very unclear bargain.

The gift works. His son loves it.

But over the following weeks the boy grows stronger, stranger, and more alive, while his parents begins to feel something quietly draining away.

A bargain isn't just for Christmas, it's for life. 

Transcript

Speaker 0:35

They say you shouldn't tell stories like this at Christmas, that the season is for cheer or whatever passes for cheer on an eighth of a tank of heating oil and last month's overdraft. I disagree. If there is any time to talk about bargains and gifts and the price of both, it's when the lights are up and the bank account is down. So I will tell you about a man, a very ordinary man, who lived with his lovely but very ordinary wife, and a small son in a rented apartment between a motorway and a shopping centre, in one of those places that estate agents describe as well serviced, and the rest of us describe as handy for nothing except traffic. His name doesn't matter a jot. He had what once would have been considered a good job, the sort that in his parents' day came with a mortgage paid off in their fifties, a pension, a respectably sized roast on Sundays, and a car that was washed more often than it was repaired. Now it came with a ninety minute commute each way, a laptop that never quite shut up, and a rent of two thousand one hundred a month for a two bedroom unit whose walls were thin enough to share the neighbour's arguments as well as their making up in surround sound. His wife, of course, also had a good job. She went in another direction in the mornings, out past the ring road to a business park that had given itself an English aristocratic name, and a glass facade, as if pretending to be abroad would keep the rain away. Her commute wasn't as long, but it involved a bus, a LUAS, and a sprint in between. Between them they saw more of the M-50 than they did of their son in daylight through winter, five days a week. The boy who was five and had the sort of serious eyes you see on saints in paintings before they perfected perspective, went to a créche that charged more per month than the rent on the house his grandparents had bought in the eighties. For all that, as is the way of children, he was not unhappy. He had a tablet, cartoons, other small people to collide and pass colds with, and the near infinite resource of his own imagination never needed to be plummed or even rippled on top of. He didn't know the electricity bill and the cost of food enough for both of them to join him eating their meagre dinner, fought for space in his parents' heads like crabs in a bucket. It was early December when he saw the rocking horse and the big toy advertisement that was packaged as an online video series with his favourite cartoon. He studied the video very carefully, repetitively as if he was a barrister preparing to cross examine evidence. Then, he brought the screen separately to each of his parents, telling them each the other had said he could have it if they agreed. The boy had mastered the ask your other parent ploy early, which says something in itself. That one, he said. That's the one I want from Santa. A real horse for inside, not in the screen, the proper kind. It was a wooden horse, or so the picture claimed, with painted eyes and a red saddle. It looked sturdy and benign, and of only a short window of use before the child loses interest. Just the way middle class childhood is meant to look. It cost more than a week's groceries. His parents did what parents do. They told him that Santa has lots of children to think about. They hinted gently that Santa might bring something else, something smaller but just as nice. And would that not be exciting too? The boy listened, nodding, and then said, with the quite certainty of someone who has not yet learned compromise, that Santa would understand. Santa knows when you really mean it. They tried to change the subject to things that normally excite him, which worked well enough, but only for short enough before he caught himself and repeated Santa knows. After he went to bed, the parents sat at the small kitchen table with the tablet between them like a legal document. We cannot, said the mother, rubbing her forehead. We genuinely cannot. If we get that, something else doesn't get paid. Can we not? Can't we? We'll find a knock off version or something, said the father. There'll be one in Griffin's half the price, or in Farren's, or somewhere, and if not, we'll improvise. We'll make something, the way our parents would have. When she said, and the word was a blade. When will you make it? Between the long commute and the short night. He'd no answer to that. They put the catalogue aside, as if not looking at the pictures would make the horse less real, or less wanted in their son's mind. The month ran away. Work was chaos. There were end of year things, reports, deadlines. The boy had a small part in nativity play. Second King, which neither parents saw live, only a video sent on the parents' group chat with emojis attached. They managed the lights, the tree, something approximating festive food, with at least some of the trimmings. They wrapped small presents bought in haste in crowded shops. They kept meaning to deal with the horse. There was shared and unspoken hope his desire would desert, the way one expects the fickle whims of five year olds to. On the morning of Christmas Eve the boy, who had been remarkably patient, asked very casually if they thought Santa would need help carrying in the hobby horse. He called it that himself, though no one had used the term. The father felt a small cold spot behind his heart. It sank as he vividly relived getting a pedal powered sit in Batmobile one Christmas morning. It seemed a lifetime ago now, which it was. He tightened up his gut in effort to buoying his heart back up. That afternoon the grandparents arrived from two different counties, empty handed and with diverting small town news. The cold snap had taken Mrs. Finucane and the sort of chat that took up everyone's time while not doing anything about the real problems. By the time the boy went to bed the parents had still not produced the impossible horse. In their small kitchen, under the hum of an extractor fan that did nothing, the mother finally snapped. You'll have to go, she said. You'll have to try. Some shop will have something. Even a plastic one, even a little one. It's the only thing he asked for. I can't look at his face tomorrow if there's nothing. Go will ye go now, please. He said the shops will be crazy. He said the buses would be mad. He said they did not have the money. She said all of those things were true. Even jaded inner city district court judges were known to have greater compassion, at least at Christmas. And none of that changed the fact. He put on his coat and went because sometimes that's what a man can do. Even if he's no idea what happens when he closes the door. The buses were indeed mad. Town was heaving. He got as far as the big toy shop on the quays and stared at shelves that had been stripped by better organized people. There would have been plastic dinosaurs, electronic dogs, ten thousand figurines from ten thousand franchises, but no rocking horses. A faintly stoned teenager in a red shirt told him they'd sold out of those weeks ago, and if he wanted one he should think about it next year. He went to another place, and then another. He found a garish thing on springs that looked like it had been made from recycled guilt. But it was too dear, and it was too ugly. He stood in the fluorescent light and felt the walls press in. Outside the air by the river was cold and smelled of metal and old beer. Lights hung off lampposts in the kind of resigned way lights hang when they know they are temporary, and their day was nearly done. He walked along the canal instead of going to another shop, because he had reached the point where more options only meant more failure. He went into a small off license that also sold sandwiches and cleaning products, and he asked for a naggin. The man behind the counter looked at him with the unflappable neutrality of someone who has seen every type of person, experiencing every type of Christmas Eve. He put the bottle in his pocket and walked to a spot by the canal where there was a bench under a bare tree. He sat. The water beneath the lights looked black and slow. Somewhere close a group of people laughed too loudly. A blue light flashed in the far distance and went away again. He opened the bottle and drank from it without ceremony. It didn't make him feel any better. It made the shame go softer at its edges. He thought about his son's face in the morning. He thought about the rent due in the fortnight. He thought about the emails he had left unanswered. He thought about the fact that if he slipped now and went into the canal, the newspaper would say man in his forties, and that would be the most precise thing they would say about him. Long face for a festive night, said a voice. It came from over near his right, from the direction of the railings. It had a quality he didn't like, not threatening exactly, curious, like a stranger who already knows your name. He turned his head. There was a figure standing by the rail, one hand resting on the coal metal. The figure was man shaped if he wanted to be generous, coat shaped, hat shaped. In the corner of his eye it looked tall, then short, then neither. When he looked at it directly, it seemed ordinary enough. A person you might see at a bus stop. When he glanced away it was as if antlers might be there, or hooves, or roots instead of legs. The air around it had a thickness. It's nothing, he said, because talking to strangers late at night is safer than not talking to yourself. Nothing, said the figure, in a tone of deep interest. And you drinking on that nothing. Expensive nothing, so is it the money or the other thing that money stands in for? I don't have what my son asked for, the father said, surprising himself with his directness. I don't have the means. We're doing everything and it isn't enough. I have feck all if you want the plain version. That's why. The figure tilted its head. The lights from the canal reflected off its face in a way that didn't match the angle. Ara now, what does the small one want? A horse, he said. A toy horse, a thing to rock on inside. That's all. The figure made a small approving noise. A noble request. Simple, as you lot measures simplicity, and you, who have brought yourself to the edge of water with nothing but a small bottle and a pocket full of rent arrears, think it impossible. I've been to the shops, he snapped. I've done the things. I don't have room in my account or my day for magic. Magic is the cheapest thing there is, said the figure, with what might have been amusement. It only costs what you are not using at the time. The father felt a warmth of drunkenness rising, or exhaustion, and felt just so hollowed out enough to be reckless. Have you a horse in your pocket? he said. Is that it? The figure's hand left the rail. For a moment its fingers looked like twigs, then like long, pale human fingers, then like neither. It reached behind itself, or into itself, or into the shadow between the railings, and it drew out an object. It was a hobby horse, child sized. Carved from wood so dark it was almost black, with a sheen that might have been polish or sap. The grain ran along it like veins. The head was finally done, ears pricked, nostrils flared, eyes set deep and bright, there were no paint spots or cheerful smiles. There was a small leather bridle, cracked and soft with use, and a curved base so that it could rock. When he looked at it straight on, it was no bigger than a standard rocking horse. When he caught it at the edge of his sight, just for a second, it seemed longer, as if it might carry more than a child. The craftsmanship was exquisite. The wood had the knotted look of blackthorn, the kind of timber you see in walking sticks and old hedges, not in toys. The surface was smooth where a child would sit, but along the neck and the curve of the stand there were tiny thorn like barbs, carved in, as if to remind anyone who picked it up that this was once a thing that defended itself. It had a beautiful wrongness about it. He stared. The drink in his stomach went cold. How? he said, which was the smallest part of what he wanted to ask. Your want calls and we answer, said the figure. There are rules about these things. We are not allowed to interfere without an invitation. You have been inviting all day, with every hopeless step through these tiny shiny shops. I've no money, he said, automatically. The figure laughed, a sound like water under ice. Money, it said. You are already paying in money. Look at your life. Look at your hours. Money is the least interesting part. We do not need your cash. We require a different consideration. What? he said. And his tongue felt thick. There was a pause, he felt, very clearly, that this was the moment at which a sensible man would stand up and walk away, and that he was not going to. You will take the horse, said the figure. Give it to the child. You will keep it in the house. You will not sell it or throw it out. You will not tell anyone where it came from, except your wife if you must. You will watch. We will take a share of your fear and your strength. You are not using either property. That sounds like a threat, he said. That sounds like a description, replied the figure. If we wanted to threaten, you would know now, a small thing, to seal it. It stepped closer. The smell of it was of damp earth and something older than petrol. It reached out one hand and took his wrist. The touch was cold and tasted of metal inside his bones. It turned his hand palm up. With the other hand it drew a little thorn from the wood of the horse, a splinter of black, and pressed it into the centre of his palm. He hissed, a bead of blood rose. The figure watched it with intense interest. Then it leaned in, as if smelling a strange wine, and touched the blood with its tongue. Thin, it said, but we have done more with less. That will do. The mark on his hand was a small red dot, already closing. The hobby horse was suddenly in his hands, heavier than it looked, the curve of it fitting his chest in a way that made him feel like a child himself. The figure was back at the railings. For a moment its face shifted. He thought he saw a stag's eyes, then something like a fox, then something like nothing he had words for. Happy Christmas, it said. He blinked and it was gone. He stood a long time at the canal, the horse in his arms, the bottle forgotten on the bench. At last he walked to the bus stop because there was no other way home. On the bus people stared as they do at anything out of place. A man with such a carved horse on Christmas Eve is out of place, even in Dublin. The horse sat on the wheelchair space, its dark head rocking gently as the bus shuddered over potholes. A child opposite cried until her mother turned the tablet away from the horse and back to cartoons. At home the apartment was bright, stale and too warm from the grandparents. The mother met him in the hall, face tight. Well, she said, and then saw it. Oh Christ, where'd you get that? He put it down in the living room. It seemed bigger under the ceiling light. The grain in the wood caught the glow like muscle. You wouldn't believe me, he said. Try, she replied. He told her about the canal, the voice, the figure, the horse. He didn't mention the blood. He watched her face move through disbelief, anger, fear, and something like temptation. So you're telling me, she said, very quietly, that some stranger at the canal gave you this, and you just took it into our house for our child. Do you have any idea how? She stopped. Those grandparents whose hearing allowed were pretending not to listen in the kitchen, a skill practised over decades, but gave themselves up by stage whispering what they heard to the others. I panicked, he said. I couldn't come back with nothing. Look at it. He'll love it. We can throw it out after or we can bring it back. Or we can burn it. I dunno, look just for tomorrow. Will you will you please? She knelt and touched the horse's flank. Her fingers ran over the grain and the thorns. For a moment she shivered. Then she stood up sharply. Just a toy. She said, maybe to herself, Wood is wood. You've had a few. You imagine the rest. We're not having this nonsense. We'll give it to him, and that'll be that. And if you frighten him with stories, I'll kill ya. They hid it under the old blanket behind the tree. Too early in the morning, the boy came running in in his pyjamas, hair sticking up like a question mark, eyes wide the way children's eyes are on that morning of all mornings. He opened the small things first. The usual plastic tat, the books, the socks, the things that parents can afford. He was pleased, polite, excited in little bursts. Then his mother said, as casually as anyone has ever lied, What do you think that big lumpy thing behind the tree is? I wonder. He pulled off the blanket. The hobby horse stood there, black and gleaming, the curve of its base on the cheap laminate like it had grown there. The boy stopped. His whole body went still. For several fast breaths his parents were afraid he hated it. Then he ran to it and threw his arms around its neck as if meeting a long lost friend. You found it he said into the wood. You found it. Thank you. His father opened his mouth to say you're welcome, and then he didn't. The Thanks had not felt aimed at him. It had gone past him, into the air. All that day the boy rode the horse. He rocked it until the bass todded a steady rhythm into the little apartment, until a counter rhythm of thumping from downstairs neighbours punctuated his made up games. He talked to it in low voices. He ignored the tablet when it chimed. He didn't seem to even hear the cartoons. The grandparents on the video call said it was the finest thing they had ever seen and how on earth had your parents managed it. Fair play to them. The mother said nothing and watched the boy's hands on the dark wood. In the weeks that followed life went on. The commute didn't shorten, the mortgage didn't fall. The job didn't suddenly become secure. Yet small changes crept in, the way drafts do. The boy grew bolder. He would stand on the horse's back, arms out, balancing as if on a beam, eyes bright. He'd always been a cautious child. Now all of a sudden he wasn't. H He slept deeper, yet sometimes when his parents peeked into his room at night, they found him turned towards the corner where the horse stood, one hand sometimes flung out in that direction as if reaching it in a dream. The father began to feel tired, not the ordinary tired of work and childcare. This was a weight that didn't lift with sleep. His limbs felt heavy, like there were small stones in his muscles. His eyes ached. He told himself it was just the season, the dark, the damp. Everyone was saying the same. The mother snapped at him more often, then apologized, then snapped again. She said the horse was in the way. She said the boy was obsessed. She said it was creepy. Then when she could see the boy laughing on it, she'd soften, and stopped asking about the canal. Once at the edge of sleep on the sofa, the father saw the horse move. Not rock, move. The head turned towards him very slightly, the way an animal would register a sound. The eye, carved so carefully, seemed for an instant to gleam with something other than the reflected light. He sat up, heart punching his ribs. The horse stood exactly as it had. The noise from the neighbour's television seeped through the wall. He told himself he dreamt it. One night, in the middle of a dream about a spreadsheet that would not stop expanding, he woke with his heart sprinting. The room was dark, the air felt thick. He had the sensation that somebody was in the room, not his wife, someone standing at the end of the bed, watching. The whole animal part of his brain screamed. He forced himself to sit up. At the foot of the bed stood the hobby horse. It had no business there. They had always left it in the boy's room. It was taller than he remembered, the head level with his chest, the curve of the base steady on the carpet. In the half light the wood seemed darker, the grain deeper, as if it had drunk up the night. For a moment he had the mad impression that there were small hoof prints on the duvet. His wife slept on, breathing thickly, sweetly oblivious. His first thought was of his son. He threw off the covers and stumbled past the horse, resisting the urge to give it a wide berth. The hallway was dim. The door to the boy's room was open. The bed was empty. Cold hit his stomach like a fist. He called the boy's name once, quietly, not wanting to wake anyone or anything. No answer. He called again, louder, nothing. Every horror story he had ever watched came and sat on his chest. Then he heard a murmur. He followed the sound to the end of the hall. The boy was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, legs straight out, head tipped to one side. His eyes were closed, his lips moved, very fast, in a whisper that sounded like a conversation overheard through water. The father knelt beside him. Buddy, he said, trying for lightness and missing. You should be in bed. The boy's eyes opened. For a second there was a look in them that was not his. Older, sharper. Then it was gone, and he was just five again. Just five and blinking. I was talking, he said. To who? said the father, and his own voice sounded so far away. The boy frowned as if the question was strange. To my horse, he said. We were going for a ride. He didn't see us. The father picked him up and carried him back to bed. The boy's limbs were heavier than they had any right to be. The father tucked him in and said something about dreams and sleep and everything being fine. The boy smiled a little and was gone back under. In his bedroom the hobby horse was no longer at the foot of the bed. It somehow stood in its usual place, as if it had never moved. The father didn't sleep again until the sky began to turn bright. After that the tiredness in him only deepened. He started forgetting small things, then big things. He went to make a cup of tea and found himself standing at the sink, with the kettle in his hand, and no idea how long he'd been there. He arrived at work one morning and couldn't remember the train journey. The doctor, when he finally dragged himself there, suggested stress and vitamin D and possibly therapy. Blood tests showed nothing conclusive, which he took to mean in doctor language. Something is wrong but not in a way we can bill for. The boy, on the other hand, thrived. His cheeks flushed, his appetite was vast. He came home from school full of stories and odd little turns of phrase that made his parents glance at each other. He started using words he could not have read yet. Old words, country words, the kind that his grandparents hadn't spoken in front of him. Certainly. He ran upstairs without panting. When his father tried to lift him in play, he felt as if he was lifting someone larger. The mother grew thin without meaning to. Her sleep was full of strange noises. Once she woke certain she had heard hoof beats on the laminate floor. Another time she smelt very clearly the sharp scent of hawthorn blossom, though it was late January by then, and the windows were closed. They argued more about money, about work, and about the horse. Just get rid of it, she said, one night when the boy was at a birthday party. Leave it out for the binman. Donate it. Something. I don't care if he cries for a week. There's something not right about it. I made a deal, the father said, and the words came out before he could catch them. She stared. With who? she said. He couldn't say. He shrugged and looked away. Jesus, she said, and laughed, not kindly. You're forty three not four. You didn't make a deal with anything. You found a weird toy and you brought it home. He wanted to believe her. He also wanted to believe his eyes, which now and then saw the horse in places it shouldn't be. In the reflection of the telly when it was off, in the glass of the balcony door at night. Once in the window of a passing bus, though they'd left it at home. On an early February night, when the city was quiet and the canal lay black under the sky, he found himself walking that way again, as if pulled. The bench was still there. The railing was still there. The figure, of course, was not. He stood and spoke to the dark anyway. I kept my side, he said. He loves it. We have done what you said. I'm paying more than I thought. Is that how this works? You take from me and you give to him, is that it? For a long time there was only the sound of water in a distant siren. Then, from somewhere at the edge of the night came a voice. You are not empty yet, it said. He turned but saw nothing. You were wasting yourself, the voice went on. Spending your hours on screens and motorways, feeding your strength to systems that do not even know your name. We are more honest in our taking. You're taking from me, he said, what you are giving him. Balance, said the voice. A little courage, a little power. He will need it in the world you are leaving him. You should be grateful. Will you stop? he said, surprising himself with his anger. Will you ever stop? There was a pause. The canal rippled. When we are bored, said the voice, or when there is nothing left, we can fix it, but it can't be fixed tomorrow. At home that night he stood in the doorway of his son's room and watched the boy sleep. The hobby horse stood in the corner, its shadow tall on the wall. For a moment he imagined the wood breathing. In the dark of the small hours he woke to a pressure on his chest, as if a very small hoof had stepped there and was pushing down, testing. He couldn't move. He could hear the faint creak of wood in the hall, the sound of something rocking once, twice, very slowly. Underneath that, like a whisper heard through thin walls, his son's voice saying thank you, thank you, thank you, to someone who was not in the room. In the morning he looked older. The boy looked fine. The horse, of course, only gleamed.