by Ann Bridge
It was not dark, however, when the temple party crammed themselves into the open tourer and drove off. The clear light poured over the fields, where the tender green of springing crops showed delicately against the brown newly raked earth, the still tenderer silver of budding willows against the pale early sky. The lake was steaming gently among its reed-beds as they passed it; a couple of duck flew up off the water, with a scatter of bright drops. Hawtrey was apparently inspired by the brilliance and freshness of the early hour; he talked incessantly, relating the latest information as to Mimi de Bulle’s griffin, St. Lawrence. “I don’t think much of him—I wish you could tell me what Crème de Cacao’s time for his last quarter is,” Old Bill grunted. Then he gave his chuckling laugh, which reminded Amber so much of her father. “It always seems so absurd that Mimi’s horses should be called after lakes and rivers—water, in fact; while Rothstein, who is an unusually abstemious man, calls his after drinks.”
“I expect Rothstein does it out of compliment to his wife, ha-ha-ha,” was Hawtrey’s comment.
“Good! We’ve got the place to ourselves,” Bill observed as they arrived. The horses were waiting under a group of willows down by the paddock. While Bill and Mulholland went over to them, Hawtrey escorted Aunt Bessie and Amber to a favourable station by the rails, close to the grand-stand, which stood up, white, clean and empty in its new paint in the morning light. Coolies with paint pots were at work on the pari-mutuel buildings behind them, and were erecting mat-sheds for luncheons under the willows beyond the stand. Hawtrey adjusted his field-glasses, got out the stop-watch, and explained the proceedings to Amber. “Each of those white posts over there is a furlong post. Bill may want their speed over the whole mile or whatever he’s taking, or just for the finish, say for the last quarter. So you set this needle here”… he went off into technicalities. Presently Bill rode up.
“Now Joe,” he said, in his loud emphatic tones, “we’re giving Northcliffe his full mile and a half. I shall take him round for the mile and Kuo will bring Walters in at the three-quarters post and give him a finish. I want the last two quarters. Doesn’t matter if you take the first mile too—but Mulholland won’t press him then. But it’s the finish we want. See?”
Joe saw, and Old Bill rode off. He was so broadly built, though spare, that walking he struck the beholder as a short and even rather an awkward man; but on a horse he gave at once that definite impression of being one with his mount which in itself amounts to grace, or at least gives the eye a pleasure of the same quality. Craning over the rails, watch in hand, Hawtrey waited for the start, and accurately clicked off the watch as the two ponies got away. Round the double circle of white rails they sped, flicking past the furlong posts one after another, down past the watchers by the grand-stand, out towards the willows in the distance, and back round the curve again towards the winning-post. As they passed Amber watched Mulholland appraisingly; he rode well, a nice easy seat; he wasn’t fussing the horse, but he was in command. Presently Kuo, on Walters, joined them from his allotted position, and Old Bill pulled out. Joe started another watch going, to time the last half mile. But it was soon evident that something was going wrong, even at that distance. “What on earth is Kuo doing?” Amber exclaimed, as the mafoo shot two lengths ahead. “Sshh!” said Aunt Bessie. Joe clicked his stop-watch; and then said “Hell!” very loudly. “Sshh, Joe!” said Aunt Bessie again. No one heeded her. For the groom, having succeeded in checking his horse, instead of keeping abreast of Northcliffe and giving him a race, pulled up, and in a moment or two dismounted. Mulholland rode on alone. “Thirty-three—take it down, Auntie,” Joe called, “thirty-two—got that?—thirty.” He clicked the watch as Mulholland passed the stand. “Well, that’s a washout,” he said handing it to Aunt Bessie. “What that hoodoo Kuo is thinking of!” He strode off up the course towards the groom, who was leaning over the rails at the further end of the straight, apparently being sick. Old Bill galloped past in the same direction, with a face as black as thunder. Other grooms ran up, pattering over the grass in the black sateen slippers which look so odd under jódhpores. The women waited, while comminatory sounds floated down to them on the clear morning air. “Your Uncle will be so disappointed,” said Aunt Bessie distressfully. Amber thought that disappointed was rather a mild word for Uncle Bill’s state of mind, judging by the tones of his voice that reached them. Then Hawtrey came back, giggling.
“What’s wrong with Kuo, Joe?” Aunt Bessie asked.
“The lunatic! He’s as sick as a cat. He wanted to get over this last bout quickly, so he says he went to a magician, who gave him a potion made of lion’s bones or something, to set him up. ‘Tajen, he has mixed a sick man’s bones with the bones of the lion’—that’s what he keeps saying. He swears it’s entirely the magician’s fault.”
Amber laughed. However, from the training point of view the morning was disastrous. And the second gallop was no better than the first. The griffin Berry was to have two companions for a one-mile scurry, and Kuo being out of action, Hawtrey was called in to ride. He gave Amber and Aunt Bessie the most minute instructions in the use of the stop-watch before he went off to the paddock. But Amber’s rather considerable experience of horses had not hitherto extended to timing; and though she and Aunt Bessie clicked, and stared across the white circuit of the course at the furlong posts, and jotted down seconds on a pad with the utmost fervour, their results were greeted by Hawtrey with yells of derisive laughter, and by Old Bill with the gloomy statement that they were impossible. Berry galloped beautifully—but as no one knew precisely how beautifully, it was felt that the morning was wasted. As they got into the car to drive back to the temple the Rothstein ponies were arriving at the course, and the party all stared eagerly at Crême de Cacao, a blue roan of a peculiar mauve tinge. Hawtrey suggested remaining to take his times secretly. “No use,” growled Old Bill. “Ee-tzü knows you by sight” (Ee-tzü was Rothstein’s head mafoo)“and he’d see you got nothing to do you any good. Tsou, Chang!” The chauffeur drove off.
Three mornings later, in Peking, Old Bill’s stop-watch was missing. When Wang, his Number One, was summoned to explain the loss and institute a search, it trans-spired that Wang was missing too; breakfast was served by the Number Two. “Have go out” was all that could be got from the servants, and Bill went off to his office mystified. When he returned at lunch-time the watch was back in its place in the drawer in his “den,” and on his table lay a slip of paper with several sets of figures on it, neatly dotted down. “Lai!” roared Old Bill, and Wang appeared, immaculate and complacent. Nakö piao, he explained, indicating the paper, showed the very great swiftness of time in which Lo Lao-yeh’s peach-flower pony had passed the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth white sticks that morning. (Lo was the Chinese version of Rothstein’s name.) Hearing from Chang, he proceeded, looking more complacent than ever, that the Grandfather desired to know this, he had taken the dial and a ricksha, driven out to P’ao-ma-Ch’ang, and with the dial made this computation. “Hao!” (It is well) said Old Bill shortly, and Wang withdrew. When he had gone Old Bill studied the figures again. H’m! It was pretty much what he expected—but fast! “Wang’s probably got it right,” he said to Hawtrey and Mulholland later at the Club, when he had shown them the paper. “There’s very little the Chinese don’t know about horse-racing—they’re all as mad on it as Yorkshiremen.” And then he gave his chuckle. “We’d have done better to take him the other day, instead of Bessie and Amber.”
“Can Berry better it?” Hawtrey asked.
Uncle Bill sipped his drink. “No wise man ever prophesies in China,” he said with his usual loud emphasis. “Time will show.”
Chapter Fifteen
ON the last Sunday before the Spring Meeting in Peking, the morning gallops at the racecourse lose their professional status and are elevated into the dignity of a social function, which is attended with enthusiasm by many who never otherwise leave their beds before 10 A.M. and have neither stak
e nor serious interest in the subject at issue—the horses. This gathering was spurned by such serious spirits as Henry Leroy and Old Bill, but the Leicesters had invited Amber to go under their escort, and she accordingly found herself, at about 9.30 on this particular May morning, seated at a small white table in front of the grand-stand, eating grilled kidneys in company with a largish party which included the Rothsteins, Hawtrey, and Dickie Roberts, and at intervals watching the rather lackadaisical gallopings of various ponies through the screen of pink geraniums which fringed the white rails. On this occasion the gallops are rather a farce—there is too much publicity for serious business; but when Crème de Cacao idled past, she rose, like his owner, to admire his peculiar beauty of shape and movement; then she settled down again, a contented spectator of the scene about her.
It was undoubtedly a pretty one. The graceful little grand-stand with its attendant buildings, the rails of the course, the paddock, stood up, gay and snowy in their fresh paint from turf which had been brought by diligent watering to some semblance of greenness, against a fragile background of tall willows, the undersides of their leaves showing white too as the morning breeze stirred them. Oleanders and pink geraniums bloomed everywhere. The masses of flowers on the scheme of green and white, the groups of people at little tables, eating such an unwonted meal as breakfast in the open air, above all the extraordinarily brilliant light, gave to the whole picture a certain theatrical quality, a novel and rather moving, though artificial, gaiety. Without nervousness, now, Amber observed all this, while she ate, and chatted with M. Rcthstein; she knew these people, she had no need any more to look round for someone to make her a personal safety. Since leaving the Legation and coming to Uncle Bill’s she had been living mainly in the safe world of horses and those who deal with horses—but, oddly enough, during these weeks, she had felt increasingly that this world was less safe, and the other less dangerous, than she used to think. She had become aware of a certain sense of division in her life, particularly when she met or visited the Grant-Howards—on the one side they and Rupert, and all that they, somehow, were and meant; on the other her uncle and aunt and the Leicesters, the de Bulles, the Rothsteins and the rest. What exactly she meant by this division she could not frame to herself with any definiteness, but that she went from one sort of world to another was certain, even if she made the transit by the mere crossing of a room. Hawtrey alone seemed to bridge the gulf between the two, and yet—oh, so oddly!—without knowing there was a gulf to bridge. Affectionate, amiable, extravagant and witty, he moved from one to the other, unaware of the difference. Yes, unaware—that was what he was; he was being gallant now to Dolly Rothstein with precisely the same lively folly that he would show to Joanna at dinner, or to Aunt Bessie at lunch, or to her, Amber, in a few minutes. Well, no—not to her; he was a little different to her, and at the thought the honest colour stirred in her face, even while she smiled at the memory of his absurdities. And yet he was shrewd—painfully shrewd; the sweeping veracity of his comments on the t’aipans, and the racing set, had startled her more than once.
When they rose from the table, the Hamburger took her off to the paddock. Amber had become rather a favourite of his, and as they looked at the ponies, and Amber praised their points with some discernment—“Do you want to make money?” he asked her confidentially. “Oh yes,” the girl answered gaily. “No, but if you do, seriously, I tell you something. You keep it to yourself, of course.” He leant to her ear. “Back my griffin on Friday. You can make enough to buy yourself a good horse. The odds will be long. No one knows his form but Roberts and I.”
As Amber thanked him, Mimi de Bulle came up with Tom Shaw. “Secrets, Monsieur Rothstein?”
“I give Mademoiselle a tip,” said Rothstein, raising his Homburg. “To back St. Lawrence!”
“Ah! You hear?” she said to the jockey, triumphantly.
“Morning, Mr. Rothstein. You got some nice little horses here,” observed Shaw, paying no attention whatever to Mimi. Her enthusiasms bored him, and his chilly ignoring of them in public was, as Hawtrey often said, almost conjugal. He and Rothstein studied Cointreau now, raising his cloths. “H’m—funny; he reminds me a bit of Bengal,” Shaw said at length. Bengal was the name of the best race-pony then in China—probably the best that Mongolia has ever produced. “Know what district he came from?”
Rothstein didn’t. The peculiarity of racing in China is that it is impossible to tell the pedigree of any given pony. Stallions are not at stud; they run with the mares on the Mongolian uplands in flocks, like sheep, and the geldings alone are sold to the European dealers who go up to Hailar and Kalgan in the early autumn. Thence they come down in great droves, and are parcelled out between Peking and the Treaty Ports; but for the individual buyer in those places each purchase is a lottery; the pony, selected on his appearance, may prove a second Bengal or a complete dud. The dealer himself may know that a given pony came from the flock of a khan in a particular district, and ponies from certain districts have fairly defined characteristics, like the height and carriage of the head, suggesting a touch of Arab blood, of the Hailar ponies; but more than this can never be known, and even so much only by personal acquaintance with, and veracity on the part of, the dealer himself.
Mimi, soon bored by any other ponies than her own, dragged Amber off to look at Huron. Presently they were joined by Shaw, and Mimi introduced Amber to him as “Beel’s niece.” “Seen much of your uncle’s stable this spring, Miss Harrison?” the jockey asked as they strolled back towards the enclosure. “I hear he has a good griffin for the Maidens.”
Amber was not to be drawn. “No, very little,” she said civilly. Shaw glanced at her pretty blank face with a sort of respectful amusement. He knew quite well that she had spent most mornings on the racecourse for the last month. His wide close-fitted mouth shaped the syllables “Good girl,” silently; he had formed the habit of thus communing with himself with his lips, and it afforded him much relief. On reaching the Enclosure, Amber looked about for the Leicesters—it was nearly eleven and she judged they would soon be leaving; but loud screams from Mimi announced the arrival of Fraçois de Bulle with some commodity which was anxiously enquired after. “No—you don’t go, Miss ‘Arrison—you come and drink good luck to Huron. ‘Arry! ‘Arry! Come too!” she screamed to Leicester, who was idling, cigar in mouth, among the pink geraniums by the rails, with a curious air of solitude. Laughing and screaming, Mimi collected a considerable multitude round several little white tables. They had assembled, Amber presently found out, for the purpose of drinking champagne, and for the next half-hour they drank the healths of Mimi, her horses and her jockey, and of one another, with a good deal of banter, much of it aimed, rather openly, at Mrs. Leicester, who had gone off to the paddock with Bruno. Watching Harry’s face, Amber was first embarrassed, then discomfited. For some weeks now M. Bruno’s magnificent presence had caused her a definite discomfort—but whether more on Harry’s account or Mrs. Leicester’s, she could not have said. The world of horses and those who dealt with horses was not, it seemed, such a safe place after all—not here in Peking; nor wholly a happy one. Looking at the scene about her, the pretty flowered enclosure, the smooth curve of the course with the graceful groups of willows drooping above the white rails, she felt a swift distaste for it all; it was too glaring, theatrical, too highly coloured for real life; and this party, drinking champagne in the open air in the freshness of the morning, was like the company in some vulgar farce. Hawtrey, watching the shifting colour and the movements of lip and eyebrow in her face, realised that something was upsetting her, and made a well-intentioned effort to distract her mind. “This is quite an experience for you, my dear Amber, isn’t it, ha-ha?”
“Oh, do shut up!” the girl answered explosively, irritated beyond endurance for the moment by his clumsiness. Hawtrey shut up, with a certain complacency. In his experience, when they started being cross to you it was rather a good sign.
Chapter Sixteen
THE private preoccupations of those who set out in a stream of cars for P’ao-ma-Ch’ang on the Friday after Amber had had the valuable experience of drinking champagne out-of-doors at 11 A.M. were quite as various as might be expected. Mr. George Hawtrey’s principal concern was somehow to see enough of Amber to push forward what he regarded as his recent advantage. Aunt Bessie was thinking about her lunch-party at the temple, and whether the King of Spain would have tied up those stocks in the garden before they returned to it. François de Bulle’s meditations revolved round the question of whether he had really provided sufficient champagne for lunch, and the effect of a possible failure of some horse on Mimi’s temper. Sir James Boggit, smoothing his white top-hat in his saloon car, alternated between deciding that he really must have a new one for next year and hoping fervently that this manifestation of le sport would produce no “incidents.” Rothstein, cigar in mouth, was thinking—quite legitimately—about his ponies, registering a resolve not to let Dickie Roberts out of his sight for a moment, and to keep him away from the women and the wine; Shaw, on the other hand, was concerting schemes to keep Mimi away from the horses. Nugent Grant-Howard was fidgeting as to whether Dickie (who, white but effervescent, was to be allowed to come for the morning and to lunch at the Harrisons’ temple) would get too hot, too cold, or too tired: Joanna was wishing Nugent wouldn’t fuss—it was so bad for the child—and expecting to be pretty thoroughly bored, an expectation in which Rupert seconded her. Miss Carruthers was thinking bitterly that Mr. Grant-Howard placed very little reliance in one, and arranging in her mind the sentences in which she would later point this out to his wife; at intervals the consciousness that she had forgotten her face-powder surged up, drowning all other feelings in the certainty that her nose would shine. For the rest, broadly speaking, the men were thinking about their bets and the women about their clothes.