The Dark Horse

by Rumer Godden

  ‘Humph!’ said Mr Leventine.

  ‘More coffee?’ John had to ask it twice, but Mr Leventine said neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’. He beckoned to his henchman and was gone.

  In the evenings, after his visit to the stables, Mr Leventine liked to play billiards at the Turf Club. The Royal Calcutta Turf Club was the only Club where he was an acceptable member; its criteria were not colour, race or class, but a true interest in racing and absolute integrity, points on which no-one could have failed Casimir Alaric Bruce Leventine. He was more than proud of his membership, loving the Club’s spacious flower-filled park, its airy rooms, the prestige of its portraits of past Senior Stewards, and admiring its members with most of whom he could not have fraternised except through racing and games like billiards. On this particular evening, it was by a lucky chance that, in a tournament, he was playing against one of the most eminent, the High Court Judge Sir Humphrey Hyde, who was also a Steward and, ‘one of Calcutta’s monuments in the world of racing,’ John Quillan would have said.

  The game was a close one and, though Mr Leventine was good – indeed, was known to have a surprising virtuosity – he lost by a narrow margin. Sir Humphrey, who did not mind winning, was amused by the ingenuity with which Mr Leventine allowed it. ‘I wondered what the fellow wanted,’ he told a crony afterwards. ‘Favour from the Bench? Hardly, he’s too shrewd and far too well established. Racing? Probably. I suspect he wants to be a Steward. Well, in a year or two’s time, why not?’ but that, for once, was not in Mr Leventine’s mind. ‘I have a new horse,’ he said.

  ‘Several,’ said the Judge. ‘I have been looking at the new arrivals you have just registered. One of them puzzled me. Dark Invader – is that the one?’ Mr Leventine nodded. ‘More fashionably bred than we usually see here,’ said Sir Humphrey. ‘Indian stake money doesn’t as a rule justify the price you must have paid.’

  ‘I got him cheaply,’ said Mr Leventine. ‘Spoiled by a hard race as a two year old. I’m hoping he’ll change his ways.’

  ‘Rogues don’t as a rule.’

  ‘Perhaps he won’t, but he’s not a rogue; besides… ’

  ‘Besides?’

  ‘I don’t like to see such beauty and breeding thrown on the scrap-heap.’

  ‘You’re a good chap, Leventine,’ the Judge did not say it aloud, but his look of approval said it for him and, for the first time, for anyone in that Club, he gave Mr Leventine a pat on the shoulder. ‘I wish you luck with him.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir Humphrey,’ said Mr Leventine with just the right touch of deference. ‘I expect I’ll need it.’ He did not say any more that night.

  Ted fitted quickly and happily into the life of the Quillan stable and, to his own surprise, into Scattergold Hall. John had suggested he move from the boarding house into a one-roomed annex among the many at the Hall. Ted’s scrupulous soul was satisfied when John let him pay his rent and board from the salary – to Ted enormous – that Mr Leventine paid him. Michael had agreed without demur to his staying – ‘I can’t imagine anything happier for Ted,’ he had told Annette – so that there was no disloyalty. Ted liked his stone-floored room; its windows and doorways had shutters, no glass or door – in the daytime a curtain hung across the doorway; the furniture was so plain that his scant possessions did not seem too cheap, yet there were things he had never had before – and appreciated – a bathroom of his own and a private verandah with cane chairs and a table; along the verandah edge the gardeners put pots of violets and carnations. ‘I didn’t think vi’lets grew in In’ja.’

  The bearer, Danyal, looked after Ted’s clothes, made his bed and dusted his room, ‘But you mustn’t ask him to touch any food,’ said John. ‘It’s against his caste.’ It was Ahmed, a Muslim, who brought Ted his meals from the kitchen. The sweeper, called Khokhil, a handsome, tall man, but an Untouchable, swept the floors and cleaned the bathroom, ‘except the basin,’ said John, ‘or the drinking and tooth glasses – he mustn’t touch them. They are Danyal’s province.’ Another of Khokhil’s permitted functions was to look after the dogs and he was as proud of Gog and Magog as Ted was of Dark Invader – but an Untouchable! Ted shrank from the idea of that; indeed, it all seemed topsy-turvy to him. ‘What would Ella say?’ and he was sometimes embarrassed. Ahmed had wanted to stand behind Ted’s chair while he ate, but Ted begged John to tell Ahmed to leave the dishes and go away. John did tell Ahmed but, ‘You will have to get used to it, Ted,’ he said. ‘In a way it’s a sort of respect – not for us but from us.’

  ‘You mean we recognise their ways.’ That made Ted feel easier – he was used to giving respect, not to getting it – and soon he fell into the routine, almost the rhythm of the day. It began with the rise at dawn, a tray of tea and, to Ted, extraordinary, buttered toast and bananas brought to him by Ahmed, who seemed to work at all hours and never, Ted was to discover, had a day off or a holiday. Then came the ride down to the racecourse – Dark Invader coming behind as he had done at Dilbury – and the morning’s work, carefully regulated by John to the demands of the Invader’s big frame with long periods of walking or trotting under Ted’s expert hands. After that the slow walk back, when Ted had, perforce, to watch Sadiq and Ali do the rubbing down, grooming and the morning feed. ‘As Mr Leventine’s paying me, couldn’t I, sir?’

  ‘These are my stables and my syces,’ John reminded him.

  ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Besides, it’s not the custom,’ John said more gently, ‘and in India we don’t go against that.’

  After breakfast, an English breakfast, came the cleaning of the tack, saddles, bridles, reins, stirrup-leathers; stirrups, bits and whips had to be laid out for inspection. This was the time, too, when Captain Mack came; he was called for the slightest cause. ‘We don’t take chances with other people’s horses,’ said John.

  At two o’clock, when the midday feed was done and the men themselves had gone by turn to cook and eat, for horses and syces alike came peace – the syces asleep on their charpoys, the beasts in their stalls. Then, the only sound in the stables was a human snore or the stamp of a hoof or swish of a tail to keep the flies away – the horses wore light nets that even covered neck and heads. A crow might give a lazy caw, a goose or duck quack, hens scratch, but the cats were curled in the verandah chairs, the Great Danes stretched prone on the floor. John slept too, as did Dahlia and the babies, even the children, though not as long as the servants, and the gateman retired into his little cell by the gate, ‘for a whole two hours!’ said Ted.

  At first he had tried to keep awake. ‘Sleep in the afternoon!’ but the general laziness caught him too, or perhaps it was the after effect of the curry and rice he was beginning to like, and that Dahlia ordered every day; it was only the rattle of china that woke him when Ahmed again brought tea and Ted heard the Jemadar’s call in the stables, the horses’ answering neighs, and it was time for more work; sometimes back to the racecourse for an hour, sometimes schooling in the school yard, then the evening ritual.

  Dark Invader had taken to the country as though in some previous incarnation he had been an inhabitant. He made no objection to the villainous crows that sidled along the bars of the open stall and robbed his food tub. He blew appreciatively on the huge ram that lived in the yard, and formed a grave and kindly friendship with the bandar-log and accepted their offerings of stolen sugar and sweetmeats out of the bazaar: jilipis, sticky sugar rings dripping with sweetness, coconut ice or sandesh – thick white toffee. Above all he liked the attention. ‘He must have been a Maharajah,’ said John. ‘A pasha with slaves.’ His muscles began to harden, his coat to glow. His appetite was prodigious.

  The fact that Dark Invader’s food cost three times Sadiq’s total pay, four times Ali’s, did not worry them at all. By the standard of their trade they were well off and had prestigious and steady work at Quillan’s where each was given a blanket, a thick coat of serge, a brown woollen jersey for the winter and two cotton shirts for summer, and was allowed to wear a conical
skull-cap with a soft cloth turban wound round it in the Quillan maroon. Sadiq lived and slept on the verandah in front of his horse’s box. Twice a day he handed over for an hour to Ali while he went to cook and eat his food, and five times a day he turned his face towards Mecca and, as a good Muslim, made his prayers, standing, bowing, kneeling, touching his forehead to the ground as he muttered them. Ali, when Sadiq came back, did the same.

  Sadiq was a happy man but, ‘Eighteen rupees a month!’ Ted exploded. ‘That’s less than seven shillings a week!’ It was enough for Sadiq; food for the month cost six rupees, twelve annas, so that ten, sometimes eleven rupees would be sent by money order each month to his family; once a year he took a month’s leave and travelled to Bihar to see them. ‘That’s a rum go,’ said Ted, trying to think of himself parted from Ella for eleven months of the year and, what was more, ‘I think this year I no go,’ said Sadiq.

  ‘But you must. You wife, children… ’ but, ‘Not go,’ said Sadiq and smoothed Dark Invader’s mane. ‘I stay him.’

  The co-operation between the two – necessary, Ted had to admit – was complete; the horse’s great handsome head would come down to be groomed, to have the head-collar put on, to accept the bridle. He had never been as confident and tractable. With Ted to ride him, Sadiq always near, and the wonderful ‘hart molesh’ that was beginning to disperse that spot of tenderness, pain and fear seemed to have vanished. ‘Come on a marvel,’ Ted wrote to Michael Traherne.

  ‘But he hasn’t raced yet,’ said John.

  IV

  For four months of the year Bengal’s cold weather, or winter, is halcyon, ‘for those with warm clothes,’ said Sister Ignatius. As November turned to December, when the string went down in the morning, mists swirled round the horses’ legs and lay so thick over the Maidan that John had difficulty tracking the course through his binoculars. By the time the horses had finished the evening parade, it was dusk, the brief Indian twilight called by the Bengalis ‘cow-dust time’, because it was then that the cattle were driven home; almost at once the light faded, it was night and all along the stalls hand lanterns were lit; though there was electricity, the syces needed the lanterns to look at hooves, and deep into the food tubs to see how much of the feed had been eaten or left. The horses were warmly rugged, then bedded down for the night. John issued extra blankets for the men.

  He also sent a warm achkan, a long coat, to the Convent for Gulab. ‘We are issuing new ones for the men and I thought you could use this.’ He sent too a horse rug for Solomon. ‘You needn’t thank me. It’s patched.’ ‘Patched or not, it is a Godsend,’ wrote Mother Morag. The Sisters wore their long black cloaks and hoods made of sturdy French frieze when they went ‘collecting’, and for early prayer and Mass. ‘But I hardly like to wear mine,’ said Sister Mary Fanny, ‘when I think of the thousands… ’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to do them any good if you get bronchitis,’ said Sister Ignatius, and Mother Morag intervened, ‘To help people, Sister, you must keep reasonably well yourself,’ but she knew only too well what little defence a cotton shirt or a thin muslin sari or a toddler’s tiny jacket that only came just past the navel was against the chill and, for the ‘poorest of the poor’, she wondered which was worst – the heat or the deluges and dankness of the monsoon or the cold? But at least, for most, the sun was no longer an enemy; humans and beasts alike could bask in it at midday and in the afternoons; its light had a soft golden quality that enhanced the colours in everything from the scarlet and gold of the Viceroy’s Bodyguard to the delicate shades of the imported English annuals that flowered in the gardens of the – by Convent and Indian standards – rich. ‘Never thought to see sweet peas in In’ja,’ Ted said, as he had said of the violets.

  It was a time of mixed flowers: in Calcutta’s Chinatown narcissi were sold in Chinese porcelain bowls filled with gravel and chippings; in the gardens, with roses, petunias and pinks, the tropical flowers Ted had marvelled at still bloomed and there were new ones: the pink and white sandwich creeper that festooned walls and gateways and on the stable’s lawn frangipani trees blossomed into their strange temple flowers that looked almost chiselled in the thickness of their petals, growing without leaves directly on bare thickened branches. Ted had never smelled anything like the headiness of their fragrance.

  Unknown to him, Calcutta’s ‘season’ was in full swing. Though no longer the capital of India, it was still a city of importance with its own Governor, the Governor of Bengal, but in December and early January the Viceroy came from Delhi and the old Palace of Belvedere, with all the splendour of its marble terraces, sweeps of steps, its state rooms and park, was opened. On state occasions both sets of Excellencies drove out in four-horse landaus with postillions and an escort of Bodyguards. The roads were spread with sand to make the tarmac less slippery for the horses, so the gorgeous equipages whirled along almost soundlessly, leaving a memory of brilliant uniforms and glittering metal and a cloud of dust which, every year, brought an epidemic of ‘Calcutta’ sore throats.

  It was now that the most important races were run, including the Viceroy’s Cup on Boxing Day. The All India Polo Tournament and the Golf Championships were held, and there were Balls, both at Belvedere and Government House; invitations were vied for. There were private Balls too: the Vingt-et-Un given by twenty-one of Calcutta’s promising young bachelors and the even more exclusive Unceremonials, the Senior or Burra-Sahib’s Ball. Invitations to these could not be vied for; guests were asked – or not asked.

  It was a lively time – for a few. Wives and daughters arrived from England, Scotland, Europe or the hills. The men’s English suits and dress clothes were brought out from the airtight tin boxes where they had been stored to be safe from white ants and the mildew of the monsoon; though hung out in the sun, the lounge and morning suits, dinner jackets and ‘tails’ still gave out the scent of mothballs.

  There were dinners, brunches on Sunday mornings after riding; often four or five cocktail parties had to be attended on the same night.

  All this concerned John only over the racing. He could not bring himself to watch the polo. ‘Watch! You should be playing,’ protested Bunny. ‘You’re a six handicap man, for heaven’s sake!’ John did not answer and, ‘You would be welcome, John.’ Bunny was watching his friend’s face. ‘No, thank you, Bunny,’ and Bunny sighed.

  Mother Morag was concerned because the canisters were filled to overflowing; in fact, they had to take extra ones because restaurants and hotels were crowded. ‘It’s welcome, of course, our people need it in colder weather,’ but she worried in case the extra load were too much for Solomon.

  It concerned Ted and Dark Invader not at all. They stayed in their own world of the stables, racecourse and the track on the verge of Lower Circular Road that lay between them; among the natives they mixed only with the Sadiqs, Alis, Ahmeds and Khokhils who attended to their wants – Ted still persisted with Mr Saddick, Mr Ally, Mr Ar-med, Mr Cockle. He was invariably kind to Mr Ching and Sir Jemadar and the riding boys. Only once did Dahlia tempt him into the city, and that was to buy a gauzy Indian scarf, patterned in gold for Annette Traherne, and a length of tussore silk to make Michael a summer coat, Christmas presents sent home by one of the travelling lads on the boat he should have caught. ‘Ted never forgets anyone,’ said John.

  ‘What has happened to the children?’ Mother Morag asked John when, as had become a habit, on Sunday mornings, he fetched them and Dahlia from Mass. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘A little Englishman called Ted Mullins,’ said John.

  Mother Morag had picked out Dark Invader at once from her window and noticed he was ridden by a small white man; noted, too, his stillness in the saddle compared to the riding boys, and his quiet authority when the big horse cocked his ears in curiosity or tried to swerve or break out of his walk and, thinking of that, she said, ‘What works with animals, works with children too.’

  Ted had been scandalised by the bandar-log. ‘I never did,’ he could n
ot help saying to John.

  ‘I know.’ John sounded helpless – and sad, thought Ted. ‘Nobody seems to be able to do anything with them. Mrs Quillan’s wonderful with babies, but… ’

  Ted cleared his throat. ‘Seeing how with Mr Saddick and Mr Ally I’ve so little to do for the hoss… ’

  ‘You would like to try your hand on my monkeys?’

  ‘Well, sir, my wife was a school-teacher – miles above me, she was. She taught me – lots. So… if you and Mrs Quillan wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Mind! We would be infinitely obliged but I doubt if you can even catch them.’

  Ted did not say he had caught them already.

  They had been attracted first by Dark Invader. ‘We have never had a horse like that’ – Ted noticed the ‘we’. Now and again he swung one of them up on the Invader’s back, but that was a privilege and Ted knew how to bestow his privileges. Then came a mutual respect for each other’s riding; they had come to echo their father’s reverence for Ted, and Ted had watched them schooling. Certainly know their business, he thought, but off the ponies! ‘Turned nine and ten and don’t know your tables! Seven and you don’t know your alphabet! Disgraceful!’ he told them and, as with Dark Invader and countless other horses, the stricter he was with them, the more they adored him. ‘Now stand up and begin: twice five are ten: three fives are fifteen.’ ‘CAT: RAT: BAT… Go on. You can read that easy.’