by Rumer Godden
The gate went up. The Timekeeper pressed the button on the watch before the sharp bang of the rising barrier had time to reach him. The next moment the field surged past with thunder of hooves, shouts, a half-frightened curse as they raced for position on the first bend. In a matter of seconds the mass of manes, nostrils, faces half-glimpsed, resolved itself into a procession of strong quarters with the little taut white bottoms of the jockeys atop bobbing away into the distance.
‘They’re all there,’ said the Assistant Judge who had checked that nothing had been left at the post.
The Senior Judge began to read the race to the other judges. ‘Volteface leads, followed by Quarterback. Racing Demon and Dark Invader moving up on the rails.’
The field strung out along the back stretch, coloured beads sliding along above the whiteness of the distant rail, the white domes of the Victoria Memorial behind them. The Senior Judge’s voice, measured and calm, went on: ‘Racing Demon, Postillion, Quarterback, Backgammon, Volteface, Dark Invader, Bezique, Flashlight, Tetrazone, Moonlighter and Greensleeves.’ Then, ‘Same order. Moonlighter and Greensleeves tailing off.’
They were racing now three furlongs out, going faster, fighting for position, and then it happened. John, watching through his binoculars, drew a quick breath. On the Calcutta racecourse, the final bend is sharp before the short run in. ‘But I had seen,’ Ted told him afterwards. ‘Seen what them bunch had cooked up. All of them got together to look after me. Streaky, Joe, Syd Johnson, Tim, the lot – ’cept Willie. They knew it, that bend, and what they done was, they draws together to block it. All five of them. Strewth! For a flash I thought I’d have to pull him but he… as if I’d told him, he followed our pattern.’
‘Our pattern?’
‘What you told me first time, sir – go for the outer rail, only he did it hisself!’ John saw something dark swing clear of the mass of horses to take a line of its own, exactly on that outer rail. ‘Yes, went round the outside and, s’help me God, if he wasn’t so damn good they couldn’t catch us,’ said Ted.
The main body of the race came thundering down the straight as the Judge’s voice rose in excitement. ‘Backgammon, Volteface, Racing Demon,’ and, to the Timekeeper, ‘Get Backgammon’s number ready,’ but the dark horse on the outside was gaining ground and growing larger with every stride, bright colours, pink and green, pink and green, and the cries of ‘Darkie!’ ‘Darkie!’ grew to a roar. The calm voice never faltered. ‘Now it’s Dark Invader, Backgammon, Volteface – get Dark Invader’s number ready and hold it – Dark Invader, Backgammon, Racing Demon, Volteface.’ Then, in ringing tones of command, ‘One, Dark Invader, Two, Racing Demon, Three, Backgammon. Four and Five, Volteface and Postillion. Two lengths, half length, short head, short head. Right. Time?’ he asked the Timekeeper. ‘Three minutes, four and three-quarter seconds. Agreed? Right. Dark Invader.’
‘Dark Invader,’ and, with a rattle and squeak of unoiled pulleys, an attendant hoisted aloft the numbers of the first, second, third and fourth horses in the Viceroy’s Cup.
Mr Leventine gave a dinner at Firpo’s for forty people. His guests included Sir Readymoney and Lady Mehta, the Commissioner of Police, Bunny and Captain Mack who both left early ‘for another engagement’. John Quillan and Dahlia were asked but did not go. Sir Humphrey proposed the toast.
It was a banquet of eight courses in the Edwardian style, with hors d’oeuvres followed by turtle soup: then the local crayfish doing duty for lobsters and echoing Mr Leventine’s racing colours on a bed of green salad. Then quails, stuffed, on saddle-shaped pieces of toast and a guinea-fowl with almond sauce.
There was a needed pause for a sorbet, coloured appropriately pink and green, accompanied by brown Russian cigarettes before, with new energy, the diners attacked a saddle of lamb. Then came a gateau with a portrait of Dark Invader in chocolate icing and an enormous replica of the Viceroy’s Cup in golden foil which, cut open, revealed an ice pudding.
They finished with devils on horseback – bacon wrapped around a prune. ‘Don’t you think they’ll have had enough without that?’ asked John.
‘But it’s so suitable,’ wailed Mr Leventine and included it. The wines, beginning with dry sherry for the hors d’oeuvres, ran through Chablis, a Rudesheimer 1929, claret, Château Cheval Blanc, to champagne, Veuve Clicquot, ending with Madeira and brandy.
There was a band and a cabaret.
Ted gave a supper party on his verandah for the bandar-log. John and Dahlia were invited and came. The menu was sausages and ice-cream; for John and Dahlia there was whisky and champagne but, when Dark Invader was led round by Sadiq and Ali for the toast, it was drunk in sherbet by the children, Sadiq, Ali and Ted. The entertainment was fireworks which Bunny and Captain Mack were in time to help let off.
No-one seeing Mr Leventine rise in all the glory of his evening tails, white tie, diamond dress studs, his florid yet innocent happiness, could have suspected he had spent the evening in a battle – a battle with himself.
He had led in his winner to tumultuous applause and an uproar from the crowd. Ted’s face was screwed into a hundred delighted wrinkles. Dark Invader lopped his ears, inclined his head and looked calm and unembarrassed.
Later in the afternoon Mr Leventine was graciously given the golden Cup by the Viceroy and made an almost equally gracious speech, impeccably modest, paying tribute to John Quillan and Ted and Dark Invader himself.
Then he had made his announcement. Dark Invader, he said, would probably race again next winter, so ‘look out’, but he would then be retired and sent to stud, but not in England; here Mr Leventine gathered himself to his full size and extended his hand to Lady Mehta who was standing by him. The Stud would be here in India for the encouragement of Indian breeding and racing. A Stud newly built and run on model lines, a venture made possible by the co-operation of his, Mr Leventine’s, dear friends, Sir Prakash and Lady Mehta and – he extended the other hand to Bunny – His Highness the Maharajah of Malwa. The applause was tremendous, but Mr Leventine held up his hand for silence. ‘You will be glad to hear that with Dark Invader goes his inseparable other half, his jockey Ted Mullins, who will be our head stud-groom. No-one,’ said Mr Leventine, ‘can think of one without the other.’
No speech could have been more welcome, none more heartily endorsed. Mr Leventine would be in the company now of people, ‘People,’ he said reverently, and it was sure that he would be a Steward now.
When he left the racecourse, he had gone straight to the stables to see Dark Invader comfortably bedded down and warmly rugged; the Cup meant nothing to him except that he was tired. He only raised his head hoping for a tidbit – he still had a hankering for bread and salt – but Mr Leventine gave him the Kulu apples that had shocked Sister Ignatius, and large pieces of sugar-cane. There was a bonus of a hundred rupees for Sadiq, fifty for Ali – then Mr Leventine went to the annex to confirm his present to Ted.
‘I hope you are pleased. I should have asked you before I made that announcement,’ but Ted had heard no announcement; he had been too overcome and too full of pride in Dark Invader to listen to any speech, ‘except they all went on and on, it seemed to me, and I never heard such clapping.’ Now, ‘A stud!’ he said when Mr Leventine had explained and John endorsed it. Both John and Bunny were with Ted. ‘You… you, sir, are going to have a stud farm?’
‘Indeed yes.’ Mr Leventine waved his – now, to Ted, magic – hand. ‘Land has been bought, building commenced. It will be a model, financed by me, Sir Prakash and Lady Mehta and… and,’ he was not quite sure what title to give Bunny – Highness or just Maharajah. ‘And… ’
‘And me,’ said Bunny. ‘Yes, the P.P. are letting me put money in. They actually believe one of my ideas is sound – even my old Eminence does.’
‘And if we succeed,’ said Mr Leventine, ‘Mr Quillan may join us. It will not be a paltry stud.’
‘And you want me… as head groom?’ Ted could hardly say it.
‘Who else?’ Mr L
eventine had reverted to his ‘who’. ‘Don’t forget who will be the first to stand at stud – Dark Invader.’
Ted had a sudden vision. Green grass and white-railed paddocks. Dark Invader, a portly, heavy-crested patriarch, and he, Ted, his companion to the end of his days. The whole, in the true tradition of visions and memories of childhood, suffused with golden sunlight. ‘Gor blimey!’ and, for once, Ted said aloud, ‘If only Ella could know.’
When Mr Leventine left to go home and dress for his banquet, the brief Calcutta twilight had come and gone; lights were twinkling across the Maidan with smaller pinpricks from the beggar camp-fires. This time of dusk always made him feel a little sad and lonely, as if something were lacking in his busy successful life, but not tonight, thought Mr Leventine. Surely not tonight, but, even half an hour later, dressed and standing as he liked to do in front of his library mantelpiece, it persisted. Dark Invader’s cups were safely rearranged, there had been no need for that moment of panic; three cups were on the left, the goblet, quaich and rosebowl on the right and, in the centre, the golden Cup on its slender graceful stem – the Viceroy had been generous. Tomorrow it would be taken to be engraved, but now the library lamps caught the gold, sending soft rays into Mr Leventine’s eyes. The Cup would go with him to the banquet where it would be put on a stand; he had thought of filling it with champagne and passing it round, ‘like a loving cup’, he had told John – ‘loving cup’ had sounded beautiful to Mr Leventine – but John had said he thought it might be ostentatious, another new word.
In all Mr Leventine’s life there had never been a more happy and successful day; then why should this annoying thought come up that something more was needed to complete it? That something was lacking? ‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ Mr Leventine told himself. ‘This is needless,’ and again as when, like his mother, he was being severe, he said aloud, ‘Casimir Alaric Bruce, this is non-sense,’ but, though he repeated that here, in his own opulent library, the feeling persisted. Worse, he knew what it was as surely as if another voice had told him! ‘The Stake money.’ ‘But it’s mine – I earned it!’ argued Mr Leventine. ‘Wasn’t it I who had the acumen, the courage?’ Undoubtedly, ‘and I need it’, but that truly was nonsense. That very morning Mr Leventine had rounded off an extremely cosy deal with Valparaiso – cosy was his word for the swelling of his already swollen bank account.
How the thought about the Stake money had come to him he did not know; perhaps it was those mean little beggar fires; perhaps because, passing the Convent, he had thought of Mother Morag and the Sisters, and had wondered if they were warm enough. He was almost sure not. ‘But what is that to do with me?’ he asked himself. ‘Look what they have extorted from me already.’
‘Not exactly extorted,’ said this other inexorable voice, and he could hear again what Mother Morag had told him: ‘Of course we would have given you Dark Invader back in the end. We just wanted to see if you were generous.’
‘And wasn’t it generous? That horse cost a thousand rupees, a thousand for a country-bred! – and I would have given the buggy as well. Is it my fault they refused it?’ But the refusal had stayed in his mind. ‘We couldn’t have that expensive buggy. We are Sisters of Poverty, poverty, Mr Leventine. The poor don’t have buggies, though they might have a cart for work.’ He winced as he remembered his drive in the cart. ‘Well, I have given a new cart. Enough – enough!’ said Mr Leventine and he clapped his hands – there were no bells in Mr Leventine’s flat; a servant, immaculate in white clothes with a golden cummerbund and gold band in his turban was always at hand to answer that clap, and, ‘Bring me a large whisky and soda,’ said Mr Leventine and lit a cigar.
The whisky made him more comfortable. The Stake money had certainly been earned. ‘Look what I have spent on that horse,’ but, ‘Not very much,’ the voice might now have been John Quillan’s. ‘You got him as a bargain. You said that yourself and, as it turned out, you got Ted Mullins too.’
‘Well, I have not been mean. I have given lavish presents.’
‘Were you trying to buy goodwill?’ That was a hard thought and Mr Leventine blinked almost as if tears had come into his eyes, and it was not entirely true. He had enjoyed choosing those presents, particularly the air-guns – he was sad about the air-guns – and in thinking about the people the presents were for, particularly Ted’s saddle, he had felt enormous pleasure; still more in telling Ted about the Stud, in seeing a gleam of real hope and enthusiasm in John Quillan’s eyes and in hearing Dahlia’s ecstatic, ‘Oh John! It would be so wonderful for the children.’ It made him, Mr Leventine, feel like a magician, the sort of feeling he had had when the old Sister had said, ‘Bless you,’ but, ‘It’s an infernal nuisance being a blessing,’ said Mr Leventine, ‘and so expensive.’
‘Sahib – it is almost eight o’clock. Car is waiting. Time to go.’ Relief filled Mr Leventine and he threw his cigar in the mock grate. His head bearer was holding his coat and white silk scarf, and the butler went to lift down reverently the golden Cup and its stand which he would take to the banquet. The Viceroy’s Cup, but the Stake money…
Mr Leventine saw the menu which had been propped beside the Cup, a gold embellished card with pictures of little horses:
VINS
MENU
Fino San Patricio
Hors d’oeuvres Variés
POTAGE
Chablis
Tortue Clair
POISSON
Rudesheimer 1929
Langoustines Mayonnaise
Salade Verte
ENTREES
Château Cheval Blanc 1928
Cailles farcies à cheval
His eyes strayed from the menu back to the golden Cup. ‘Have you ever been hungry, Mr Leventine?’ It was the voice of the Chief Commissioner whom he would meet in a few minutes.
‘Hell fire and damnation,’ cried Mr Leventine and, to the servants, ‘Wait,’ and he went to his huge writing desk and took out a cheque book.
‘Do you see what I see?’ asked Mother Morag.
She passed her hand over her eyes, then looked again, ‘Do you read what I read?’ she asked Sister Ignatius.
Sister Ignatius read and had to sit down suddenly.
After a stunned silence Mother Morag whispered, ‘Fifty thousand rupees!’ and, presently, ‘We can pay off the mortgage on the new infirmary,’ she said.
‘Perhaps we could install fans.’
‘Open that new kitchen.’
Next day, Sister Ignatius, who was not given to such things, cut out a newspaper photograph of Dark Invader and framed it in passe-partout. Mother Morag allowed her to hang it in the Chapel.
Epilogue
It was two years later. A telegram came to Mr Leventine, a duplicate to John Quillan, from Bangalore. It read, ‘Fairytale’s colt born just after midnight. All well,’ and Ted, in his enthusiasm, had added, ‘Strikingly handsome. Dead ringer for Dark Invader,’ ‘Which means,’ Captain Mack explained to Mr Leventine, ‘that it’s Dark Invader all over again.’
‘How does Ted know?’ asked John. ‘He wasn’t there when Dark Invader was born.’
‘Here’s hoping,’ said Mr Leventine. ‘Our first foal.’
‘By Dark Invader out of Fairytale,’ Captain Mack said thoughtfully. ‘I think you should call him Dark Legend.’
Author’s Note
This story is taken from an event that happened in Calcutta some fifty years ago and has become a legend in Calcutta’s racing circles. It has been published several times in different versions with a variety of characters, but always as an anecdote among other anecdotes. It is documented in the official history of The Royal Calcutta Turf Club, but I have called the Sisters concerned The Sisters of Poverty, because the real Order in the story prefers to remain hidden.
BREAKFAST WITH THE NIKOLIDES
Rumer Godden
For Emily Pool, India is a magical place where she has the freedom to escape her mother’s suffocating influence. She spends her days exploring the c
anals and gardens of East Bengal, and admiringly observing her glamorous, dignified neighbours, the Nikolides. But just as the cracks in Emily’s family home are papered over, so do the Pools strive to maintain an outward impression of respectability, and it is through the Nikolides that Emily is exposed to a world of adult deceit and attrition. And when her beloved dog dies, the event forces a confrontation and reveals to Emily that nothing in the town is quite as it seems.
‘Rumer Godden has distilled in simple, luminous prose the experiences of expatriate India, of childhood and its innocence’ Sunday Times
