The Dark Horse (6 page)

‘You'll need a hat,' John Quillan was saying. ‘That cap's no good. The sun is hot even though it's October. Perhaps you bought a topee at Port Said?'

‘Didn't think it was worth it, sir, seeing as I'm going straight back.' John noticed, too, that Ted's face was white.

‘Sure you want to walk? All right, I expect I have a topee in the car – my wife puts one in.'

A second groom had joined Sadiq on the off-side. Dark Invader led the way, the other Quillan horses coming behind but, even with the stiffness that came from the weeks of being boxed, his great stride soon outpaced them. ‘Him fast.' Sadiq prided himself on his English.

‘Ji-han!' the other groom panted as he tried to keep up. Ted was glad to see neither of them jerked on the reins. He put a restraining hand on Dark Invader's bridle. ‘Steady, boy, steady.'

‘S-steady. S-steady.' The s's hissed through Sadiq's teeth.

Their way led, at first, through streets lined with one-, or two-, or three-storeyed houses, ramshackle, most of them hung with notices in Hindi and English, ‘Malik Amrit Lal Patney, advocate', ‘Goodwill Electric Company', ‘Happiness Coffee and Tea House', alternating with shacks and open-fronted shops. Each street seethed with traffic – trams, buses, carts drawn by heavy white bullocks or even heavier massive wide-horned black water-buffaloes at whom their drivers shouted; Ted shuddered as he saw how the men cruelly twisted their tails and the sores, rubbed raw, on the bullocks' necks. Queer high box-carriages passed, shuttered and closed, with a clatter of hooves and bumping wheels, and again he was sickened by the thinness, rubs and sores of the horses that drew them, some no more than ponies; though they wore strings of blue beads round their necks, and some had aigrettes of feathers in their browbands, their ribs and hip bones stood out, and some were lame but driven on with whips. The trucks had jewellery too, hung with tassels, as did some of the cars and taxis, with turbanned black-bearded drivers who seemed never to stop sounding their horns; now and again a shining well-kept car slid through, with perhaps one person in it and a smart, capped or turbanned chauffeur, but each taxi seemed to hold a dozen people and there were rickshaws, laden too, each with a skinny little man, glistening with sweat, running between the shafts and sounding the clank clank of its flat bell and, around and among them, on the pavements and in the gutters and in the road itself was a river of people.

Ted had never seen so many people, brown-skinned, some in only a loincloth, like those men on the dock, but here pushing loads on carts or with yokes balanced across their shoulders, or on their heads, women too, balancing a pitcher or a basket, or even a bucket, with a poise he could not help admiring. A few men were dressed in immaculate flowing white, a loose shirt, draped muslin instead of trousers, slipper shoes, and carried umbrellas and briefcases – Ted was to meet one of them, John Quillan's office clerk, or babu, Ram Sen – but babies were naked except for a charm string; they crawled on the pavements. Some of the boys were naked too, with swollen stomachs, and it seemed people lived in the streets; Ted saw women washing themselves under the street tap; true, they were wearing a sari, but the thin cotton, wet, showed every curve. A man, squatting on the pavement, was having his head shaved; another was dictating a letter; the letter writer had a desk, without legs, on the ground. Men turned their backs and relieved themselves in the gutter and Ted saw women slapping cakes of dung – yes, manure! thought Ted, astounded – to dry on walls; it was only afterwards he learned dung was used as fuel. Pigeons picked grain from the grain shops, pai dogs nosed rubbish and everywhere was a hubbub of voices, creaking wheels, motor horns, shouting, vendors' cries, mingling with a smell of sweat and urine, woodsmoke, acrid dung smoke and a pungent smell that later he was to learn came from cooking in hot mustard oil and, now and again, a waft of heavy sweetness as a flowerseller passed, or from a garland of flowers hung on a door, or from a woman in a clean, softly flowing sari, with flowers round the knot of her hair. Ted saw that between her short bodice and her waist, her midriff was bare and, What would Ella say? he thought; already his tuft of hair was standing on end and he was shocked to the depths of his clean Methodist soul – this is a dreadful place – yet, at the same time he was fascinated, so curiously drawn that he almost forgot Dark Invader.

Dark Invader though, with his customary calmness, passed unruffled; he did not know it, but this was his first encounter with his public.

 

Ted was more than glad when they left the streets and the hordes of people, to strike off across the green turf he had glimpsed from the ship. ‘Maidan,' said Sadiq and here again were the white rails of a racecourse, well kept lawns and paddocks.

They passed mounted policemen, Englishmen in white uniforms and Indians in khaki. In the distance Ted saw mounted troops, the glitter of swords and the flutter of pennoned lances; a parade was going on but Sadiq turned away to the right, crossed a wide busy road and led the way up another, quieter, tree-shaded, with broad verges on which the horses' hooves made only a light sound. As they turned in through two huge open gates, once painted green, Dark Invader went still faster as if he knew he was coming to what Ted had called it – home.

 

‘Good Lord,' said Ted. ‘Good Lord!' It was the first time he had seen Indian syces grooming.

He had seen Dark Invader into a roomy stall, open-fronted, fenced in by two wooden rails, seen what a good feed was waiting, not in a manger as in England, but in a heavy galvanised tub, seen the crows, big black and grey birds with strong beaks and darting pirate eyes, fly down to perch on the rails, waiting for droppings of corn. They were, John Quillan told him, every horse's constant companions. Then Ted had gone with John. ‘I have booked you into the Eden boarding house. It's supposed to be good. I hope it is.' After a lunch, when Ted was waited on by two table servants and, out of curiosity, tasted curry for the first time – he hastily ordered roast mutton instead – exhausted by the, to him, heat and strangeness as much as by the long walk, Ted had slept in his spacious room until John had come to fetch him. ‘Thought you might like to see my string.'

Ted had blinked at Scattergold Hall, blinked more at the sight of the bandar-log; two were fighting over a large pet ram which, in its turn, was fighting them; one, a girl, was swinging like a monkey on a branch of a tree. An older boy was earnestly schooling a pony, while two, almost babies, were making mud pies on the edge of the drive, pouring red dust and water on each other's heads. Dahlia, in a rocking chair on the verandah and wearing her usual loose wrapper, sat peacefully rocking and fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan. She smiled over the fan at Ted with her dark fringed eyes and called ‘Hullo.'

‘My wife and children,' John had said absently. Ted took off the topee John had lent him and bowed, but John did not introduce him; instead, ‘Come and see the horses and our evening grooming.' He had led Ted to the stable square and Ted blinked again; more than blinked. He had never seen anything like it.

The horses were tethered outside their stalls to rings set in the wall, the syces, two to a horse, ranging themselves one each side. As Dark Invader was so big, Sadiq and the second groom, Ali, stood on upturned food boxes, set far back so that they could throw their weight on their hands, then laid into him with what John told Ted was the classic hand-rubbing – ‘hart molesh' in Hindi – of Indian horse care. ‘You mean they groom with their
hands
?' asked Ted.

‘Every part of their hands, fingers, thumb, the ball of the thumb, the heel of the hand and right up to the forearm. Watch.'

Now and again Sadiq or Ali turned to rinse hands and forearms in a bucket of cold water to wash off the dead hair, then sweating and panting, back again, while Dark Invader grunted with ecstasy and nipped playfully at Sadiq's plump bottom. ‘Ari! Shaitan!' Sadiq cursed him happily and Ted saw, with another pang, that already they understood one another perfectly.

At a call from the Jemadar, the Quillan head man, imposing in his maroon-coloured turban, well-cut coat and small cane, the hand rubbing stopped and each man fitted his hands with leather pads, stuffed like boxing gloves, and began using them in a rhythm that resounded round the square: right pad, left pad hard on the horse, then both pads hit together in the air to free dust and sweat; thump, thump – thrump: thump, thump – thrump, over and over again for at least fifteen minutes while Ted stood as if mesmerised, watching. At last the rhythm ended, pads were put away, then came the final polishing with soft brushes and cloths; manes and tails were brushed out, tails bandaged into shape, hooves lifted and cleaned inside and out, then oiled. Finally the men stood by their horses as the Jemadar walked round. Sometimes he stopped, pointed with his cane, criticising sharply; sometimes he gave a nod of satisfaction. When he had made his inspection, he came up to John.

As John approved them, one by one, the horses were led out to walk round and round the track of tan for an hour's gentle exercise. This was the time when, in the cool of the evening, the owners, and sometimes jockeys and riding boys, gathered to watch, discuss, saunter on the grass or sit under the trees. Meanwhile the undergrooms prepared the feeds, each inspected by the Jemadar, cleaned and filled buckets of water, hung rugs and surcingles ready and made the bedding for the night, carefully edging it with the plait of straw Mother Morag had seen. Then they laid out the bed roll of their particular senior syce on his charpoy – a wooden-framed string bed – set on the verandah: ‘They
sleep
with their horses?' asked Ted.

‘They pull their charpoys right across the stall,' said John. ‘A good groom like Sadiq hardly lets his horse out of his sight all day.'

To Ted it was as if, in more ways than one, he had stepped into a different world. It was not only the, to him, torrid air, the pale glare of the sky – the glare was dimming now as it fell towards evening; not only the strange smells and sounds, the brilliant colours in the garden of the boarding house. He had seen a whole hedge of poinsettias; their garish scarlet and upstanding stamens had startled him – they hardly seemed like flowers; nor did the crimson hibiscus bells, the beds of flaming cannas, and here, in the Quillan garden, the tumbled masses of bougainvillaeas, the gorgeous blue of morning glory, paler blue of plumbago. Ted could not then put a name to any of these flowers, but he could to the parakeets, flying wild in the trees. It was not the shock of Scattergold Hall either, nor of Dahlia and the children, nor the surprise of the stables. Ted felt as though barriers that had penned him all his life had fallen down. After that sleep, when he had come out on the boarding-house verandah, a travelling bearer had been waiting for him – ‘bearer', he gathered, meant ‘valet'. ‘I look after you, sahib. Save you much trouble. I, Anthony, have many good “chits”' – which seemed to be references. ‘I look after you.'

The fellow, with his smooth English, was almost in Ted's room and, ‘I look after meself,' Ted had said gruffly, but the man had called him ‘sahib', him, Ted, who, except for a few short seasons and the three years of the war, had always been a ‘lad'. ‘Sahib!' Though they had only exchanged a few words, Ted felt free and more equal with John Quillan than he had ever done with Michael Traherne, for all their mutual affection and respect. When Michael had been a little boy, Ted had called him Master Michael and he had never sat down in the presence of Annette. Now, feeling happier than he had done since Michael had told him Dark Invader was sold, happier than he had thought he would ever be again, happier and somehow taller – ‘Such a little squirt of a man,' people usually said of him – Ted stood with John Quillan, watching Sadiq and Ali at work.

Then he watched even more closely. It seemed to his experienced eye that now and again, especially when the strapping approached the Invader's neck, a muscle twitched and he flinched. At once Sadiq's hand discarded the leather pad to smooth and gentle the place and Dark Invader grunted with pleasure again but, ‘Might be,' said Ted as he watched and, as he saw it repeated, ‘Might be – might do the trick.' He thought he had said it under his breath, but John's sharp ears had heard.

 

Next day a big sandy-haired, soft-voiced man in breeches and Newmarket boots appeared with a sheaf of papers. This time John did introduce Ted: ‘Ted Mullins, Captain Mack, our Turf Club Official Vet. He has come, as you have probably guessed, to identify Dark Invader as the horse of that name and breeding entered in the Stud Book.'

‘Pleased to meet you,' Ted said primly, but he watched anxiously as Captain Mack examined Dark Invader, checked his colouring and markings, looked at his teeth. Then he completed his notes and closed his book with a snap.

‘What did he make of him, sir?' Ted asked John when the Captain had gone.

‘Mack doesn't say much unless he's making a diagnosis. He said Dark Invader looked very like a horse.'

Ted was visibly disappointed. ‘Was that all, sir?'

‘Yes, Mullins.'

That forbade any more questions but it was not all Captain Mack said. The same night he called round at Scattergold Hall for a drink and, when the bandar-log had got tired of their exuberant welcome and gone to their own occupations and Dahlia was singing the current baby to sleep, the two men sat comfortably drinking their whisky. Dahlia's slow lullaby punctuated their talk, the ayah's song that had lulled generations of foreign babies to sleep:

‘How I remember that,' said Captain Mack. ‘I was out here as a child, you know,' and his big body relaxed into peace.