The ‘little general’, as he was called, was visited every Sunday afternoon by a retired war horse who had been his companion in many a fierce battle. They reminisced about those far off days, the ‘general’ drinking Campari and soda while the horse enjoyed an occasional peppermint. The old soldier was called the ‘little general’ firstly because he was only four feet tall, and secondly because he wasn’t in fact a general but a retired colonel with rather fixed opinions on the propriety of drawing the curtains at sunset, how a table should be laid for supper, and other such topics. The horse had seen better days and parts of him would sometimes fall off, a hoof for example, or his tail. When this happened a maid servant appeared with a pot of glue and the missing part would be reattached. On this occasion, while the colonel was recalling an heroic charge at a place the name of which he no longer remembered, it was an ear which came away. It dropped to the floor and rolled under the upright piano on which the colonel entertained his infrequent guests with renditions of popular military marches. The servant knelt down and searched under the piano with a feather duster but could not find the ear. The colonel ordered the instrument to be pulled away from the wall but still nothing was found. While the horse was changing seats to be able to follow more easily the rest of the colonel’s story, the remaining ear dropped off and rolled under an antique chiffonier. The maid groped about in the narrow space beneath the cabinet but the ear was nowhere to be discovered. While they were debating what to do an enormous stag beetle appeared on the lawn below, holding the horse’s ears in its two pincers. It moved off steadily across the grass heading for the nearby woods.
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Simon Collings
Picture Nick Victor
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