The Dark Horse

by Rumer Godden

  ‘You’re sure they don’t come for nuts and bananas?’ said John.

  ‘Nuts and bananas!’ Ted said scornfully. ‘That’s just about what they had, begging your pardon, sir,’ and, ‘Stand up. Keep still. This is a hanky, see. You blow your nose on it, not on your fingers. Disgusting!’

  It had culminated on a Sunday morning when he had met Dahlia on the drive, wearing a linen suit, stockings, high-heeled shoes and a hat; she was carrying a bag, parasol and gloves and was accompanied by the children dressed as their usual selves.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To church.’ Dahlia gave him her happy smile. ‘I am taking the children, m’n.’

  ‘Taking the children like that!’ Long ago memories of Sunday School came up in Ted; Sunday School, clean collars, being scrubbed even behind his ears, his nails inspected, and he was shocked. ‘To church like that!’

  ‘I do try,’ wailed Dahlia. ‘Their clothes are all laid out. Clean shirts and shorts and frocks. They have them all, my God, and clean socks and shoes, but they won’t… ’

  ‘Won’t they!’ To Ted, this was something far more important than the respect due to John and Dahlia as his superiors, to John’s expertise as a trainer. What would Ella have done? and, ‘I’ll give you ten minutes,’ he said to the bandar-log. ‘Wash faces and hands and knees, clean nails. Brush hair. Change into your clean clothes, be neat and tidy and come back ready, and I mean ready,’ said Ted.

  John took Ted to the races; the Quillan stable had more than thirty runners that season, ‘So I’m here on business,’ said John. ‘Not as one of your groomed-up apes.’ Ted thought the ‘grooming-up’ very pretty, ‘like Ascot, it is,’ he said, but it brought him another pang. When Dark Invader won here, and Ted was sure he would, it was Sadiq who would lead him round the paddock, Sadiq who would attend him and Mr Leventine when Mr Leventine led him in. He, Ted, would have no part in it except to watch as he was watching now. John kept to the paddocks, the rubbing down sheds and the reserved stand which trainers and jockeys frequented. He accepted no invitations for iced coffee or tea. He had reason to be sour; Lady Mehta’s Flashlight running in the Viceroy’s Cup, was not even placed.

  ‘Never mind, Johnny,’ said Mr Leventine.

  ‘I do mind,’ said John shortly, ‘and I mind for Lady Mehta.’

  ‘She should never have bought Flashlight,’ Mr Leventine seemed basking in some warm secret thoughts of his own. He had no need to shake out his suits from airtight boxes, they travelled with him to Europe, or he bought new ones. Now he was impeccable in his usual pale grey from head to foot. ‘Like one of our state elephants,’ said Bunny. ‘He only needs some ornaments and tassels,’ but Mr Leventine had no need of tassels; with his rose in his buttonhole, he was perfectly contented.

  Every morning too he braved the mist and appeared, the Minerva dropping him at the stands, from which he walked, ‘actually walked!’ said John, to join him, then stood, his binoculars trained on the striding figure of Dark Invader and the dot on his back that was Ted.

  Mr Leventine had an appointment with Sir Humphrey Hyde in his Chambers. Sir Humphrey was not surprised – ‘I had guessed he wanted something.’ Now he leaned forward, his elbows on his desk, his fingertips joined – he was a mannered judge – and said, ‘Well?’

  The room with its littered table, bookcases filled with heavy, leather-bound books, its austere look, not of an office, but of a study of a particularly learned style, subdued Mr Leventine and, ‘It’s good of Your Honour to see me,’ he began.

  ‘Not at all. I’m here to see people,’ and the Judge said gently, ‘Sir Humphrey would be in order.’ Then, ‘I gather we are not on legal business.’

  ‘No, Sir… Humphrey. It’s a racing matter. Matter of a jockey who is here – name of Mullins. As I understand it, he had ridden a lot in England but now he has no licence, and I wondered if it would be possible to find out, on the quiet, how he really came to lose it – I have heard one side of the story and it seems he was blameless – and whether there would be any bar to his riding here?’

  ‘I could do that easily,’ said Sir Humphrey. ‘One of the Jockey Club Stipendaries is an old friend of mine. I could send him a cable, but tell me about this man – Mullins, did you say? What is so special about him?’

  ‘You remember the new horse we spoke about in the Club the other night? Mullins came out with the shipment. He tells me he was Dark Invader’s groom at Lingfield and the other races.’

  ‘Ah! Dark Invader, the well-bred horse with the slightly questionable racing record.’

  ‘Mullins swears the horse is genuine at bottom. Only needs to be ridden in a style that doesn’t frighten him.’

  There was a pause. Sir Humphrey was obviously searching the filing cabinets of his legally trained memory. Then, ‘Diamond Jubilee,’ he said. ‘His lad rode him in all his races.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Mr Leventine positively sparkled. ‘Diamond Jubilee, the King’s horse. Wouldn’t have that leading jockey, Mornington Cannon, at any price. Actually savaged him but, when they put up his lad, Jones, he won every race. The Two Thousand, St Leger, Derby, everything.’

  ‘I think I remember Mullins. Ted Mullins, wasn’t it?’ Sir Humphrey leaned back in his swivel chair. ‘If your Mullins and mine are the same, I owe him a good turn. I often had a bet on him when I was a young barrister and the nimble shilling was hard to come by.’

  Mr Leventine smiled dutifully. He had no idea what a nimble shilling was, but it seemed Sir Humphrey was favourably inclined. Mr Leventine, though, thought it still necessary to press the point. ‘The important thing, Your Honour, I mean, Sir Humphrey, is to find out if he can race here.’

  ‘That I have understood.’ Mr Leventine was not sure if that was a rebuke or a reassurance. ‘I’ll find out for you with pleasure.’

  Mr Leventine had to wait ten days, and Sir Humphrey did not summon him to his Chambers; they met, it seemed by chance, in the billiard room at the Club, but it was Sir Humphrey who challenged Mr Leventine to a game. It was not until they had finished and Sir Humphrey was carefully putting his cue away in the black japanned tube that carried his name in white letters that he said, ‘By the way, Leventine, good news. Your man is all right. Nothing against him. Could have had his licence back long ago but didn’t apply.’

  ‘So he could have a licence now?’

  ‘Certainly. He has only to apply with the necessary backing.’

  ‘We shall, but of course we shan’t be ready till next cold weather.’

  ‘Well, don’t go telling me any stable secrets,’ Sir Humphrey laughed, ‘and Ted Mullins is my man. Give him my compliments and tell him he used to carry my money twenty years ago.’

  Mr Leventine ordered the Minerva and drove straight to Scattergold Hall to see John Quillan.

  ‘You mean I can ride again?’ asked Ted.

  India is a land of timelessness and time had slipped past for Ted, immersed in his work with Dark Invader and the children.

  The cold weather ended. February began to grow warm and Calcutta’s glory of flowering trees, the scarlet flowers of the silk cotton trees, the riot of orange and red of the gol-mohrs, the pink and white acacias, purple jacarandas, heralded the hot weather, too hot for pampered racehorses and Dark Invader was taken by Sadiq and Ali and led over the bridge of boats that spanned the Hooghly and through crowded streets to Howrah Station. There he was loaded into a massive horse-box with padded partitions and the railway trundled him majestically to the cooler low-lying hill town of Bangalore and the Quillan stables there. His ex-shipmates stayed behind, being already far enough forward in training to be entered among thinning fields for the last races of the Winter Season, but a few chosen ones went as well, including Flashlight, and a fidgety chestnut called Firefly that Lady Mehta had impetuously bought for fifteen thousand rupees after, by a fluke, it had won the King Edward Cup. ‘He won’t again,’ predicted John.

  With the horses went, with reluctance, Gog and Magog, a yearly
ritual. ‘Big dogs can’t stay down in the hot weather,’ John explained to Ted. ‘They wouldn’t survive.’ He did not say how much he missed them – his ‘mates’ he could almost have called them. It was part of the penalty of living in Calcutta.

  Ted was in charge and would be in Bangalore to continue the patient day-in, day-out training and supervision and Ted took, too, the three eldest of the bandar-log to go to boarding school. ‘Poor school,’ said Bunny. John himself hardly knew his two sons in grey flannel shorts, grey shirts and jerseys, school ties – ‘Ties!’ said John – or his daughter in a blue pleated skirt, blue blouse with a sailor collar and a straw hat – ‘A hat!’

  Dahlia wept but, ‘If you settles down and behaves proper,’ promised Ted, ‘I’ll take you out every Saturday and give you a sausage tea.’ Sausages had only entered their lives with Ted; though they could be bought tinned, they were out of Dahlia’s ken; to the bandar-log they were delectable.

  Now, in late June, John had travelled down to see them, but, he had to own, more importantly to see Dark Invader and to bring Ted the application forms for him to sign. ‘You just sign here – and here – and here,’ John said.

  When John had told Ted, the little man had got up from his chair, stared incredulously, swallowed, then walked to the office window and stood with his back to John for at least three minutes. Then, ‘You mean I can really ride again?’ As he turned, the blue eyes were wet.

  ‘Not only ride. You will be up on Dark Invader.’

  ‘Dark Invader!’ Ted sounded as if he were in a dream.

  ‘Yes.’ John was deliberately brisk. ‘You are being retained by Mr Leventine as his jockey – with an increase of pay, of course. You will bring the horses back in September and we start Darkie in October. The Alipore Stakes, I think, Class IV. Of course, he’ll run away with it, then we shall see what we shall see.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ Ted’s voice was firm now. Then, ‘May I ask you, sir – was it you who thought of this about my ticket?’

  ‘Not me. Mr Leventine.’

  ‘Mr Leventine! Did this for me!’

  ‘Wake up, Ted. Mr Leventine didn’t do it for you. He did it for himself. He doesn’t give favours away.’

  That was true. Just before they had left for Bangalore, Mr Leventine, down on the racecourse, had called Ted aside. ‘You have been so excellent with the horse I should like to give you this,’ but Ted had backed away from the wad of notes.

  ‘Very kind of you, sir, but I don’t need nothing. It’s what you done for the Invader, sir, that counts.’

  ‘Not without you. I know. I have watched,’ and Mr Leventine said at his most beguiling, ‘Please, Mullins,’ but Ted still shook his head.

  ‘What am I to do with this then?’

  ‘Tell you what.’ Ted was still haunted by what he had seen on that journey from the docks, what he saw every day as he and Dark Invader crossed the road, and, ‘If you wants to make me happy,’ he told Mr Leventine, ‘give it to the R.S.P.C.A. for the ponies and buffaloes and oxes and – oh yes! – to them nuns where Mrs Quillan goes and they feeds the old. That would be something.’ Ted was carried away. ‘You’re so rich, sir. Think what you could give.’

  ‘Give!’ Mr Leventine’s voice rose with horror. ‘If I am rich it’s because my money is for use, to reward those who are worthy, not for derelicts,’ said Mr Leventine.

  ‘Not even for them what suffers through no fault of their own?’ Ted’s voice had changed too and was oddly stern. ‘Me and Ella, my wife, we had a donkey once, beaten almost to death it had been. We had four cats – strays covered with sores they was.’ Ted stopped. Then, ‘You rescued Dark Invader.’

  ‘Rescued? By no means. I bought him for my own advantage. I believe in that horse.’

  ‘And God bless you for that,’ said Ted. ‘But… ’ He looked at the notes again. ‘Give it to R.S.P.C.A., sir.’

  Mr Leventine put the wad back in his pocket.

  ‘Suffer through no fault of their own.’ It had been a terrible hot summer in Calcutta; the rains were late in breaking, ‘which puts the Monsoon Meeting all out of gear,’ said John. ‘Which means there might be famine,’ said Mother Morag in dread – she had lived through two famines. Already the price of rice was high and peasants had begun flocking in from the villages, always an alarming sign. ‘They hope for work or food and there isn’t any.’ They swelled the lines waiting at the Sisters’ street kitchens. ‘I had hoped we could have opened another in Bow Bazaar,’ she had told the Community. ‘I’m afraid we can’t,’ and, ‘Thank God for our “collecting”,’ she said. ‘At least we can feed our people in the Home,’ but the collections had lessened. Few people went to restaurants in the heat and, ‘Solomon is so slow,’ said Sister Timothea. It was all the Sister said, but Mother Morag knew how punishing was ‘collecting’ in the heat, especially wearing the habit which, though in India made of white cotton, had not changed since the days of Thérèse Hubert: long-sleeve, high-necked, coming down to the ankles and finished by the close-fitting muslin coif, as worn by a Belgian peasant woman in the 1840s. ‘But that was in Europe,’ Sister Joanna had not quite learned the utter disregard of self. ‘This is India! Those starched white strings under our chins!’

  ‘They don’t stay starched for long,’ Mother Morag consoled her and laughed. ‘You should see yours now – spotted with gravy!’

  ‘From the curry canister. Ugh!’ It had been Sister Joanna’s turn that early dawn to help carry the canisters in. ‘Curry of all things! I must smell.’ As they talked they were still storing the food and she saw, when Mother Morag lifted her arms to set some sweet puddings on a high shelf out of the way of ants, how, when her sleeves fell back, the white skin of her arms was covered in scarlet from prickly heat and Sister Joanna was ashamed of her own small grumbling but, tactfully, all she said was, ‘I had better put on a fresh bonnet to go round the offices this afternoon, or I shall hardly impress the young men,’ and tried to laugh too.

  It was, though, no joke. In these stifling nights sometimes the food had gone bad before Solomon and the cart reached home. No wonder – one night it was after two o’clock. ‘Well, it’s too hot to sleep anyhow,’ said Sister Ursule. ‘We might as well be up,’ but, ‘How long have we had Solomon?’ Mother Morag asked Sister Ignatius next day.

  ‘It must be ten or eleven years.’

  ‘And he wasn’t all that young when he came.’

  ‘No, he was a gift.’ Like the wise older Sister, Mother Morag knew that people do not give young horses away, and she looked thoughtfully at the dip in Solomon’s back, his legs that had thickened; though he still kept his high step, it was awkward and growing stiff. The hollows over his eyes were deep now and, in spite of Gulab’s grooming, his coat was rough. Mother Morag sighed and a pucker, what the Sisters called her ‘worry line’, showed between her eyebrows.

  The rains broke, to the relief of everyone and everything. ‘You can almost hear the plants drinking,’ said Sister Barbara and, ‘I want to dance in the puddles,’ said young Sister Mary Fanny, as the bandar-log did up the road. There were brief furious deluges of almost vertical rain, then blue skies with piled up clouds that would presently burst again, but meanwhile the whole earth steamed as the water dried. Colours of grass, trees and flowers shone vivid and glistened in the washed light. The Convent, Scattergold Hall, all the old houses smelled dank; green stains appeared on the walls and mildew on shoes and books, anything leather, ‘including saddles and harness,’ said John.

  Racing began on the Monsoon Track, sometimes run in a downpour when the jockeys wore celluloid motor-goggles and came in soaking, mud bespattered, their silks clinging to their backs. Few of the outside owners were there, not Lady Mehta, nor John’s Nawab, nor Mr Leventine. The Monsoon Meeting was casual, friendly; it was too hot for raincoats, so members sheltered under golf umbrellas to distinguish them from the crowd’s bazaar black ones. Everyone knew everyone else – except for John. For him, as for other trainers, the Monsoon was an anxi
ous time; the early British had called it ‘the sickly season’, and it was sickly still. ‘I seem to do nothing but scratch one horse after another from a race,’ said John. Captain Mack was called out night and day.

  ‘Racehorses! What about humans?’ said Sister Ignatius. There were ‘ten-day fevers’: chills: pleurisy. The old people, even in the Home and under the Sisters’ care, died as easily as flies. ‘As soon as a bed is empty there are twenty waiting to fill it,’ and it was not only the old people; the babies died too, and children… Mother Morag was too harried to have time to think about Solomon.

  Then it seemed to her only a matter of weeks, though it was almost three months, when, looking down from her window to watch John Quillan’s horses pass, she saw he had a greatly augmented line; augmented too, by horses of a different quality and, after them, kept well back as usual, because his stride outdistanced every other, the big dark horse she had noticed before and the little English rider she knew was Ted Mullins.