Story for performance #799
webcast from London at 07:57PM, 28 Aug 07

On the 19th January 2008 a horse was discovered wandering about the Meadowhall shopping centre, Sheffield. Deputy Security Supervisor Steve Bidcup was the first to spot the animal—drifting from one CCTV monitor to another like a ghost, trotting unperturbed along the service corridor that linked House Of Fraser to its dedicated loading bay—and before the alarm could be properly raised the horse had managed to enter a public area, at the far end of the concourse known as ‘Park Lane’.

The reaction of the shoppers present that afternoon was remarkable. Despite the fact that it was 5.52 on a Saturday and the mall was simmering with the usual consumer tensions implicit in the last desperate scrape towards closing time, the crowds outside Debenhams simply stopped in their tracks and silently, almost reverently, watched the impossible creature wander amongst them. Sure, a child or two produced the occasional whoop or tootle, but for roughly three minutes all you could hear was Bryan Adams creaking uselessly from the PA system and the clop, clop, clop of hooves on heavy duty tiling.

Maybe the shoppers’ reverence was for the grace and majesty of the beast—brilliant white, lithe and muscular, regal in bearing. But it’s more likely that they were shocked into silence by something else altogether: namely, that the horse was utterly covered in struck-home arrows, shafts peppering its hide, bristling, porcupined. And across the animal’s skin: darkened patches of what was unmistakably blood, dried and caked by some appalling and unmerciful sun, and most of all the terrible puddles of gore still sloshing about the leather saddle on the horse’s back. As this equine Saint Sebastian sauntered past open-mouthed gawkers and wide-eyed, whitening faces, further onlookers assembled in the upper level of the arcade, peering down at the horse as it moved from atrium to atrium. It gave the shopping centre an air of the bullring, and of the tense silence just before the bull drops.

As Steve Bidcup and a hastily summoned assortment of uniformed men clattered the wrong way down a rising escalator, the horse halted and registered the humans for the first time. It assayed its would-be captors for a matter of seconds before snorting lightly and continuing on its way, seemingly having decided they weren’t worth a second glance. The horse was—arguably—correct in its assessment: Bidcup was a line and ledger man, a by-the-book man, a spreadsheet sort of guy. He spent the next seven minutes on his mobile phone, trying to drag his immediate superior away from a garden barbecue in order to ask of him the ‘custom and practice’ concerning horses wandering loose in a shopping centre…by which time the horse in question had got as far as Virgin Megastore and wandered calmly inside.

Within, some strings-heavy declamatory hip hop was playing as the horse made its way, in meandering fashion, to the World Cinema DVDs. It tried to eat a Jean-Luc Godard box set and a recent reprint of Doctor Mabuse—The Gambler before deciding instead to focus its efforts on the relatively small supply of books in a far corner. The general public’s reaction to the horse within Virgin Megastore was somewhat more diverse: a few people actively ran from the shop, shouting, whilst at least one elderly gentleman decided that the apparition was a cynical marketing device for some pointless piece of crap and, unconcerned, resumed browsing. Clusters of teenagers spat out expletives as Virgin staff decided the premises ought to be evacuated. The horse ignored them all.

Outside the store, a desperate assembly of Meadowhall employees was calling the RSPCA, the fire brigade, the city council, anyone and everyone. At one point someone walked into a wall in panic. The horse was clearly visible through the glass shop front, and as Meadowhall staff made increasingly ludicrous plans to somehow lure the creature out of harm’s way (seeing as, covered in arrows and blood, it was something of a health and safety nightmare) members of the public began to chip in with suggestions that demonstrated a touching concern for animal above employee. Someone half-heartedly started a chant: ‘Come on, horse.’ A few people joined in, the security staff looked momentarily alarmed and out of their depth; but in the end the rabble-rousing went nowhere and the voices died away.

The horse itself signalled a coda to the events of the afternoon when it quietly nudged open a fire escape and slipped from the shop, arrow shafts clacking against the frame as it went. Beyond the exit, the beast was easily tracked: hooves leaving dried blood on the concrete in a rust-like trail leading to one of Meadowhall’s sizeable car parks. It was there, with the M1 overpass roaring in the middle distance, that a massive crowd of shoppers watched the horse falter at the car park’s perimeter. Keeping their distance, they saw the animal sway as if drunk, before falling heavily to the ground—at which point a collective gasp went up. By the time the crowd surrounded the horse in an impromptu circle some ten bodies thick, it had ceased breathing. Once this information circulated a great many people were seen to cry.

At 6.42pm the RSPCA joined the fire brigade and the police in the lengthy process of documenting and removing the carcass. And of course there were TV news items, and grainy mobile phone footage uploaded to a slew of websites, and of course there was chatter and theories and finger wagging. That the horse had died real, there was no doubt. From where it had materialised was another matter, and the terrible events that spat the beast out into a grey January afternoon in Yorkshire were much imagined. But time passed, no answers transpired, and ultimately—some would say predictably—no-one was any the wiser.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Tim Atack.