The Dark Horse (5 page)

‘But will Ted go?' asked Michael.

 

‘In'ja,' said Ted. ‘
In'ja!
You mean you're sending the Invader all that way? 'Mong all them heathens,' said Ted in anguish.

‘They're not heathen, Ted, but yes, India and not only him – you.'

‘Me!' For perhaps the first time in his life Ted's voice was shrill.

‘Mr Leventine,' said Michael, ‘has asked that, to give Darkie the best possible chance, his own lad should take him out. His own – which means you.'

‘Strewth!' said Ted. The voice had become almost a whisper. ‘To Calcutta?' asked Ted.

‘To Calcutta.'

There was a silence. Then, ‘You mean this gentleman,' it was seldom Ted used that word, ‘this gentleman will pay my ticket there and back?'

‘There and back, and pay you.'

‘Just so as the Invader's not upset?'

‘That's it.'

‘I'll go,' said Ted.

Papers in hand, John Quillan waited on the quay of King George's Dock while cranes swung the horses ashore.

‘There's one mitigating thing about Darkie,' Michael had told Annette. ‘He'll be going to John Quillan.'

‘John Quillan?' Annette was startled.

‘He's Leventine's trainer.'

‘
John?
A trainer in Calcutta!
John!
But isn't he in the Queen's Own?'

‘Was. Should have had his majority by now.'

‘John has left the regiment?' Annette, herself a Colonel's daughter, could not believe it; not the John Quillan she had known in her twenties, danced with, ridden with, watched play polo. And, ‘Why?' demanded Annette. ‘Why?'

‘There was some blow up. Pity. John was the younger son, but he was sitting pretty. Some exalted uncle or godfather must have been watching over him – expect gave him an allowance. I believe that when it happened John was A.D.C. to the Governor of Bengal.'

‘Calcutta in the winter. Darjeeling in the hot months.' Annette knew the ritual.

‘Yes. Could have been one of the chosen ones, silly idiot, until… '

 

John Quillan could remember that day. The Governor's Military Secretary, Colonel Maxwell, had sent for him.

‘Sit down, John.'

‘Thank you, Max.'

‘His Excellency,' – the Colonel did not say H.E., which showed the formality of the occasion – ‘His Excellency has decided that you should go on immediate leave.
Home
leave,' the Colonel emphasised that point, ‘and on your return you will rejoin your regiment.'

Silence. Then, ‘I don't have to tell you why,' said Colonel Maxwell.

John had met Dahlia at a party, a ‘B' party. ‘In this salubrious city,' Robert Kerr, a fellow A.D.C. had said to John, then a newcomer to Calcutta, ‘there are A and B girls, the latter for the hot weather only – naturally most of ours go Home then.'

‘I see,' said John. ‘What happens at the party?'

‘Usual thing. They behave very well and we behave very badly and then they behave worse.'

Dahlia, then eighteen, had been brought by her cousin, cajoled into it – ‘They need more girls' – and had sat terrified in a corner in her overbright cheap net dress, a little fish out of water; indeed, every now and then she gave a little gasp and her eyes, not confident, nor even interested, were like a sea anemone's that drop their fringes against the next wave they see coming.

John had taken pity on her. ‘You're not enjoying this.'

‘Oh yess. Yess,' but he knew she meant, ‘No, no.'

‘Let me take you home.'

A sharper gasp. Dahlia had been warned about those five little words.

‘You mean – my home?'

‘I mean your home,' and she had trusted him.

‘At least,' he told Mother Morag, ‘she has trusted me ever since.'

Even then John had been disgustedly against ‘the hypocrisy and callousness of this hateful city,' he told Mother Morag. ‘The endless protocol and snobbishness of Government House; come to think of it, of my own regiment,' and he had defiantly made friends with Dahlia's father, an Irish Eurasian mechanic on the railway who had married an Indian woman. John had liked Patrick McGinty and his big calm wife and was soon openly calling for Dahlia and protecting her at the parties to which he still went – ‘from monsoon boredom, I suspect.' Dahlia had also been wonderfully pretty, with a dew of innocence that touched John's heart and often, in his car, they escaped into the night where, between deluges of rain, the drenched spaces of the Maidan were dense and dark as velvet and there was no-one to see them except, when the clouds parted, stars big as sequins of Indian gold, and, nestling in his arms, Dahlia was sweet and, unlike other Calcutta women, absolutely without guile. ‘How many people are that?' John asked Mother Morag and, ‘She wanted me so badly,' but he could not say that to a nun.

He had been warned by the young but more experienced Robert, ‘Don't get too enchanted, John. It can be expensive, you know.'

‘Expensive?'

‘If you have to buy them off – for a reason,' said Robert.

John had been warned off too, surprisingly, by Dahlia's father. ‘We would please ask you, Captain Quillan, not to take our daughter Dahlia out any more.'

‘Why not?' John had been furious but Mr McGinty was not intimidated.

‘Dahlia is our only child. We think she is beginning to love you very much and we know, and you know, what happens to girls like Dahlia.'

‘You don't know anything,' John had said, ‘about this.'

‘Don't we? You are Captain Quillan of a famous regiment. Also you are A.D.C. at Government House. As soon as your superiors hear, conveniently you will be sent back to England. In our world we are used to broken promises and broken hearts, but please not for Dahlia.' Mr McGinty was not angry, only sad.

John was silent, then he asked, ‘Do you play chess, Mr McGinty?'

‘Chess?'

‘Yes. In chess there are Kings and Queens, Bishops, Knights – I'm not any of those – and pawns that can be moved any way the player likes. I am not a pawn, Mr McGinty.'

 

‘We have booked you a sleeper on the Blue Train tonight,' said Colonel Maxwell. ‘
Tonight,
John. You sail on the
Orion
next Tuesday. His Excellency has written to your Colonel.'

‘He could have saved himself the trouble,' said John. ‘I have written to him myself. Sent in my papers.'

‘John!'

‘You see, I married Miss McGinty this morning.'

‘You
what
?' and then, as Max took it in, ‘You young fool!'

‘Exactly the congratulation I thought I should get,' said John.

 

‘He
was
a bloody fool,' Michael told Annette. ‘No doubt about it; he could have paid the girl compensation, if he felt he had to do, as dozens of others have done. Maybe she had started a child, but he was let out of it already. Think, Annette, his father, grandfather, great-grandfather were all in the regiment, but John was always uncommonly quixotic.'

‘Or uncommonly honourable. Odd,' said Annette. ‘He always seemed so cynical and yet I remember him getting angry about things the rest of us just accepted, and I think,' said Annette, ‘though he kept it hidden, he was the kindest young man I knew.'

 

On the quay this morning of October the sun was already hot. John's bush shirt was sticking to his back, he could feel the sweat on his neck running down from the band of his felt hat. Dahlia would have liked him to wear a topee – to her the mark of the true English – she was always running after the bandar-log with the topees they too refused to wear, ‘and come to no harm,' said John.

Other trainers were waiting too but, after the first greeting, they kept apart. His, and their, Indian grooms, waiting to meet their new charges, squatted, gossiping and smoking; a hookah was passed round or biris, the small strong-smelling Indian cigarettes, were offered; some of the men chewed betel. An owner came down, obviously on his way to the office to speak to the popular Australian trainer, Dan Regan. He nodded to John then turned his back.

On the railway siding a gang of twenty brown-skinned crop-headed bare-footed men in dirty loincloths formed up behind a closed iron goods wagon. Another brown man wearing a coat shouted an order and the gang broke into a chant: ‘
Hull
a lai,
Hull
a lai.' The wagon wavered, swayed and began to move.

Somewhere invisible a kite called kee-ee-ee, a sound seemingly unending, infinitely remote.

‘God! What ages they take,' thought John.

 

Dark Invader and Ted had been shipped with a dozen other racehorses by the
City of London
from Birkenhead. It had been a cold, dark, drizzling day and now, a month later, the ship moored in warmth and sunlight to discharge passengers at a jetty in a broad river where kites swooped for floating offal and fought aerial battles with shrill mewing cries. Leaning over the rail with the other grooms, Ted saw the domes of a great building in dazzling white marble, brooding over a wide expanse of grass and trees.

‘Thought it would be all dry and brown and dirty,' said Ted. ‘Look, there's flowers,' and there were white people, some of them riders among the flotsam of Indians; motor cars drove past and in the distance was an English-looking church with a spire, and Ted saw what made his eyes light up – the familiar white rails of a big racecourse. ‘Doesn't seem such an outlandish place as I thought,' Ted had said.

The horses and grooms were not to get off here, and next day the ship dropped down the river to the docks and the cranes swung the horse-boxes ashore. ‘At long last,' said John.

The horses walked out of their boxes, stepping gingerly on overgrown shoeless feet under the hot sun. The light was a bright glare and some of them held back, their lads holding them short on the leading rein, being jerked half off their feet. The Indian grooms ran to help them.

Seven of the newcomers were for John Quillan. Two were Lady Mehta's, five for Mr Leventine. With Lady Mehta, John could not guess what he would get; spending every summer in France, she bought as she fancied. ‘It's no use advising Meena,' Sir Prakash – Readymoney – Mehta said. ‘She was born wilful.' Now John saw a mare – light bay, silky mane, lustrous eyes, a lovely appealing thing but, ‘Back at the knees,' groaned John, ‘narrow-bodied as a board on edge.' He flipped over the papers to find the vet's certificate. ‘Sound', written aggressively in green ink. ‘You might have been then, you may be now, but you won't be in a year's time.' John tried to keep the pity out of his voice as he patted the silken head. The next was better, a solid dark bay with the broad, well-muscled quarters of a sprinter. ‘Thank God we can do something with you,' but John's real interest was in Mr Leventine's five, his first experience of what that enigma would buy.

Two mares, a gelding and a young colt, sharp little horses good for races of six furlongs to a mile. Sound legs and good feet, bright-coloured coats, even after a long voyage and little or no grooming. The stuff to turn out week after week in the Winter handicaps, to stand the stifling heat and the bashing of the raised course in the Monsoon meetings. No-nonsense types, thought John. His respect for Mr Leventine increased.

Last out of his box, overtopping the others by a hand, was Dark Invader. John looked at his papers. Leventine couldn't have bought this one, surely? But there it was: ‘Brown colt, off hind fetlock partly white.' No mistake about that. Seventeen hands at least, thought John, too big for the Course. John looked at the paper again; unplaced since a win first time out eighteen months ago. John frowned. He wouldn't have thought Mr Leventine would have thrown money away. Then, ‘Good morning, sir,' said a hoarse croaking voice, and John found himself looking down at a little man whose blue eyes were appraising him – from head to toe, thought John. The polite ‘Good morning, sir,' was quite unlike the ‘Hy-ah', or ‘Hullo there', of the other travelling grooms who relinquished their charges with a pat, sometimes even without a backward glance, as they went off with the trainers to collect their pay – and blow it during their few days in Calcutta, thought John. Why not? Their fares home were paid.

In contrast to their sloppiness, this little man was spruce in a clean shirt with a celluloid collar such as John had not seen for years, a waistcoat with a silk watch chain – probably made for him by his wife or admirer, thought John – cord breeches, box-cloth leggings and worn but brilliantly polished boots; those boots sent John back on a wave of almost unbearable nostalgia to his father's stable yard and the standards he knew now he had lost.

There was even the inevitable cloth cap, touched respectfully by the finger of one hand; the other hand held the big horse with an authority that kept the Indian grooms back.

‘You must be from Mr Traherne.' Emotion always made John terse.

‘Yes, sir. The name is Mullins. Ted Mullins.'

‘And I'm John Quillan. I train for Mr Leventine.'

‘Yes, sir, and this is Dark Invader.'

If Ted had expected eulogies he did not get them. John Quillan walked slowly round Dark Invader, appraising the horse as closely as Ted had appraised him. ‘Certainly fills the eye,' was all he said, exactly as Peter Hay had done. That was too much for Ted and, in his turn, he said what he had told Peter. ‘He's a bloody lovely hoss, sir, and such a gentleman with it.'

The horse was not the only gentleman. ‘Would it be in order with you, sir, if I walked the Invader home?'

John noted the use of the word ‘home'; evidently Ted's appraisal had ended in approval, but John had to hesitate. ‘It's a longish walk, all of three miles.'

‘Good. After tramping round and round them decks the Invader'll feel a bit strange. He's used to me.'

‘Of course, but… would you just walk with him?'

Ted flushed. ‘You mean out here an Englishman shouldn't be seen leading a hoss?' He was nettled.

‘It's a question of prestige, yes, but not yours,' said John. ‘I'm thinking of Sadiq and Ali who will be Dark Invader's grooms – we call them “syces” out here. Sadiq is waiting to take charge and if he doesn't… well, there would be a loss of face.'

‘I see, sir. Would he – Mr – is it Saddick, sir? Would he mind if I walked along?' asked Ted.

 

Ted never forgot that first walk in Calcutta.

Sadiq was a head taller than Ted, the turban he wore making him seem even taller. He was burly – would have made two of Ted, dark with a fierce upturned moustache and prominent brown eyes with curiously yellowed whites, so that they reminded Ted of snail shells; already they were looking at Dark Invader with the pride of a mother in her first-born son and Ted had to swallow and turn his head away.