Bonecrack

by Dick Francis

  ‘He won’t be doing his two. Just riding exercise.’

  She gave me a bewildered look. ‘All apprentices do their two.’

  ‘Not this one,’ I said briskly. ‘How about a horse for him?’

  She brought her scattered attention to bear on the immediate problem.

  ‘There’s Indigo,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I had him saddled for myself.’

  ‘Indigo will do beautifully,’ I nodded. Indigo was a quiet ten-year-old gelding which Etty often rode as lead horse to the two-year-olds, and upon which she liked to give completely untrained apprentices their first riding lessons. I stifled the urge to show Alessandro up by putting him on something really difficult: couldn’t risk damaging expensive property.

  ‘Miss Craig is the head lad,’ I told Alessandro. ‘And you will take your orders from her.’

  He gave her a black unfathomable stare which she returned with uncertainty.

  ‘I’ll show him where Indigo is,’ I reassured her. ‘Also the tackroom, and so on.’

  ‘I’ve given you Cloud Cuckoo-land this morning, Mr Neil,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Jock will have got him ready.’

  I pointed out the tackroom, feedroom and the general layout of the stable to Alessandro and led him back towards the drive.

  ‘I do not take orders from a woman,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to,’ I said without emphasis.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Goodbye, then.’

  He walked one pace behind me in fuming silence, but he followed me round to the outside boxes and did not peel off towards his car. Indigo’s box was the one next to Moonrock’s, and he stood there patiently in his saddle and bridle, resting his weight on one leg and looking round lazily when I unbolted his door.

  Alessandro’s gaze swept him from stem to stern and he turned to me with unrepressed anger.

  ‘I do not ride nags. I wish to ride Archangel.’

  ‘No one lets an apprentice diamond cutter start on the Kohinoor,’ I said.

  ‘I can ride any racehorse on earth. I can ride exceptionally well.’

  ‘Prove it on Indigo, then, and I’ll give you something better for second lot.

  He compressed his mouth. I looked at him with the complete lack of feeling that always seemed to calm tempers in industrial negotiations; and after a moment or two it worked on him as well. His gaze dropped away from my face; he shrugged, untied Indigo’s head-collar, and led him out of his box. He jumped with ease up into the saddle, slipped his feet into the stirrups, and gathered up the reins. His movements were precise and unfussy, and he settled on to old Indigo’s back with an appearance of being at home. Without another word he started walking away down the yard, shortening the stirrup leathers as he went, for Etty rode long.

  Watching his back view I followed him on foot, while from all the bays the lads led out the horses for the first lot. Down in the collecting paddock they circled round the outer cinder track while Etty on the grass in the centre began the ten-minute task of swapping some of the riders. The lads who did the horses did not necessarily ride their own charges out at exercise: each horse had to be ridden by a rider who could at the least control him and at the most improve him. The lowliest riders usually got the task of walking any unfit horses round the paddock at home: Etty seldom let them loose in canters on the Heath.

  I joined her in the centre as she referred to her list. She was wearing a bright yellow sou’wester down which the drizzle trickled steadily, and she looked like a diminutive American fireman. The scrawled list in her hand was slowly degenerating into pulp.

  ‘Ginge, get up on Pullitzer,’ she said.

  Ginge did as he was told in a sulk. Pullitzer was a far cry from Lucky Lindsay, and he considered that he had lost face.

  Etty briefly watched Alessandro plod round on Indigo, taking in with a flick of a glance that he could at least manage him with no problems. She looked at me in a baffled questioning way but I merely steered her away from him by asking who she was putting up on our problem colt Traffic.

  She shook her head in frustration. ‘It’ll still have to be Andy … He’s a right little devil, that Traffic. All that breed, you can’t trust one of them.’ She turned and called to him, ‘Andy … Get up on Traffic.’

  Andy, middle-aged, tiny, wrinkled, could ride the sweetest of training gallops: but when years ago he had been given his chances in races his wits had flown out of the window, and his grasp of tactics was nil. He was given a leg-up on to the dark irritable two-year-old, which jigged and fidgeted and buck-jumped under him without remission.

  Etty had switched herself to Lucky Lindsay, who wore a shield over the cut knee and, although sound, would not be cantering; and in Cloud Cuckoo-land she had given me the next best to a hack, a strong five-year-old handicapper up to a man’s weight. With everyone mounted, the gates to the Heath were opened, and the whole string wound out on to the walking ground … colts as always in front, fillies behind.

  Bound for the Southfield gallops beside the racecourse, we turned right out of the gate and walked down behind the other stables which were strung out along the Bury Road. Passed the Jockey Club notice board announcing which training areas could be used that day. Crossed the All, holding up heavy lorries with their windscreen wipers twitching impatiently. Wound across the Severals, along the Watercourse, through St Mary’s Square, along The Rows, and so finally to Southfields. No other town in England provided a special series of roads upon which the only traffic allowed was horses; but one could go from one end of Newmarket to the other, only yards behind its bustling High Street, and spend only a fraction of the journey on the public highway.

  We were the only string on Southfields that morning, and Etty wasted no time in starting the canters. Up on the road to the racecourse stood the two usual cars, with two men standing out in the damp in the unmistakable position which meant they were watching us through binoculars.

  ‘They never miss a day,’ Etty said sourly. ‘And if they think we’ve brought Archangel down here they’re in for a disappointment.’

  The touts watched steadfastly, though what they could see from half a mile away through unrelenting drizzle was anyone’s guess. They were employed not by bookmakers but by racing columnists, who relied on their reports for the wherewithal to fill their pages. I thought it might be a very good thing if I could keep Alessandro out of their attention for as long as possible.

  He could handle Indigo right enough, though the gelding was an undemanding old thing within the powers of the Pony Club. All the same, he sat well on him and had quiet hands. ‘Here, you,’ Etty said, beckoning to him with her whip. ‘Come over here.’

  To me she said, as she slid to the ground from Lucky Lindsay, ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Alessandro.’

  ‘Aless …? Far too long.’

  Indigo was reined to a halt beside her. ‘You, Alex,’ she said. ‘Jump down and hold this horse.’

  I thought he would explode. His furious face said plainly that no one had any right to call him Alex, and that no one, but no one, was going to order him about. Especially not a woman.

  He saw me watching him and suddenly wiped all expression from his own face as if with a sponge. He shook his feet out of the irons, swung his leg agilely forward over Indigo’s withers, and slid to the ground facing us. He took the reins of Lucky Lindsay, which Etty held out to him, and gave her those of Indigo. She lengthened the stirrup leathers, climbed up into the saddle, and rode away without comment to give a lead to the six two-year-olds we had brought with us.

  Alessandro said like a throttled volcano, ‘I am not going to take any more orders from that woman.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody silly,’ I said.

  He looked up at me. The fine rain had drenched his black hair so that the curls had tightened and clung close to his head. With the arrogant nose, the back-tilted skull, the close curling hair, he looked like a Roman statue come to life.

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that. No
one talks to me like that.’

  Cloud Cuckoo-land stood patiently, pricking his ears to watch some seagulls fly across the Heath.

  I said, ‘You are here because you want to be. No one asked you to come, no one will stop you going. But just so long as you do stay here, you will do what Miss Craig says, and you will do what I say, and you will do it without arguing. Is that clear?’

  ‘My father will not let you treat me like this.’ He was rigid with the strength of his outrage.

  ‘Your father’, I said coldly, ‘must be overjoyed to have a son who needs to shelter behind his skirts.’

  ‘You will be sorry,’ he threatened furiously.

  I shrugged. ‘Your father said I was to give you good horses to ride in races. Nothing was mentioned about bowing down to a spoiled little tin god.’

  ‘I will tell him …’

  ‘Tell him what you like. But the more you run to him the less I’ll think of you.’

  ‘I don’t care what you think of me,’ he said vehemently.

  ‘You’re a liar,’ I said flatly, and he gave me a long tight-lipped stare until he turned abruptly away. He led Lucky Lindsay ten paces off, and stopped and watched the canters that Etty was directing. Every line of the slender shape spoke of injured pride and flaming resentment, and I wondered whether his father would indeed think that I had gone too far. And if I had, what was he going to do about it?

  Mentally shrugging off the evil until the day thereof, I tried to make some assessment of the two-year-olds’ relative abilities. Scoff as people might about me taking over my father’s licence, I had found that childhood skills came back after nineteen years as naturally as riding a bicycle; and few lonely children could grow up in a racing stable without learning the trade from the muck-heap up. I’d had the horses out of doors for company, and the furniture indoors, and I reckoned if I could build one business out of the dead wood I could also try to keep things rolling with the live muscles. But for only as long, I reminded myself, as it took me to get rid of Alessandro.

  Etty came back after the canters and changed horses again.

  ‘Give me a leg-up,’ she said briskly to Alessandro; for Lucky Lindsay like most young thoroughbreds did not like riders climbing up to mount them.

  For a moment I thought the whole pantomime was over. Alessandro drew himself up to his full height, which topped Etty’s by at least two inches, and dispatched at her a glare which should have cremated her. Etty genuinely didn’t notice.

  ‘Come on,’ she said impatiently, and held out her leg backwards, bent at the knee.

  Alessandro threw a glance of desperation in my direction, then took a visibly deep breath, looped Indigo’s reins over his arm, and put his two hands under Etty’s shin. He gave her quite a respectable leg-up, though I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been the first time in his life that he had done it.

  I carefully didn’t laugh, didn’t sneer, didn’t show that I thought there was anything to notice. Alessandro swallowed his capitulation in private. But there was nothing to indicate that it would be permanent.

  We rode back through the town and into the yard, where I gave Cloud Cuckoo-land back to Jock and walked into the office to see Margaret. She had the mushroom heater blowing full blast, but I doubted that I would have properly dried through by the time we pulled out again for second lot.

  ‘Morning,’ she said economically.

  I nodded, half smiled, slouched into the swivel chair. ‘I’ve opened the letters again … was that right?’ she said.

  ‘Absolutely. And answer them yourself, if you can.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Mr Griffon always dictates everything.’

  ‘Anything you have to ask about, ask. Anything I need to know, tell me. Anything else, deal with it yourself.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, and sounded pleased.

  I sat in my father’s chair, and stared down at his boots, which I had usurped, and thought seriously about what I had seen in his account books. Alessandro wasn’t the only trouble the stable was running into.

  There was a sudden crash as the door from the yard was forcibly opened, and Etty burst into the office like a stampeding ballistic missile.

  ‘That bloody boy you’ve taken on … He’ll have to go. I’m not standing for it. I’m not.’

  She looked extremely annoyed, with eyes blinking fiercely and her mouth pinched into a slit.

  ‘What has he done?’ I asked resignedly.

  ‘He’s gone off in that stupid white car and left Indigo in his box still with his saddle and bridle on. George says he just got down off Indigo, led him into the box, and came out and shut the door, and got into the car and the chauffeur drove him away. Just like that!’ She paused for breath. ‘And who does he think is going to take the saddle off and dry the rain off Indigo and wash out his feet and rug him up and fetch his hay and water and make his bed?’

  ‘I’ll go out and see George,’ I said. ‘And ask him to do it.’

  ‘I’ve asked him already,’ Etty said furiously. ‘But that’s not the point. We’re not keeping that wretched little Alex. Not one more minute.’

  She glanced at me with her chin up, making an issue of it. Like all head lads she had a major say in the hiring and firing of the help. I had not consulted her over the hiring of Alessandro, and clear as a bell she was telegraphing that I was to acknowledge her authority and get rid of him.

  ‘I’m afraid that we’ll have to put up with him, Etty,’ I said sympathetically. ‘And hope to teach him better ways.’

  ‘He must go,’ she insisted vehemently.

  ‘Alessandro’s father’, I lied sincerely, ‘is paying through the nose to have his son taken on here as an apprentice. It is very much worth the stable’s while financially to put up with him. I’ll have a talk with him when he comes back for second lot and see if I can get him to be more reasonable.’

  ‘I don’t like the way he stares at me,’ Etty said, unmollified.

  ‘I’ll ask him not to.’

  ‘Ask!’ Etty said exasperatedly. ‘Whoever heard of asking an apprentice to behave with respect to the head lad?’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ I said.

  ‘And tell him to stop being so snooty with the other lads, they are already complaining. And tell him he is to put his horse straight after he has ridden it, the same as all the others.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Etty. I don’t think he’ll put his horse straight. We’ll have to get George to do it regularly. For a bonus, of course.’

  Etty said angrily, ‘It’s not a yard man’s job to act as a … a … servant … to an apprentice. It just isn’t right.’

  ‘I know, Etty,’ I agreed. ‘I know it isn’t right. But Alessandro is not an ordinary apprentice, and it might be easier all round if you could let all the other lads know that his father is paying for him to be here, and that he has some romantic notion of wanting to be a jockey, which he’ll get out of his system soon enough, and when he has gone, we can all get back to normal.’

  She looked at me uncertainly. ‘It isn’t a proper apprenticeship if he doesn’t look after his horses.’

  ‘The details of an apprenticeship are a matter of agreement between the contracting parties,’ I said regretfully. ‘If I agree that he doesn’t have to do his two, then he doesn’t have to. And I don’t really approve of him not doing them, but there you are, the stable will be richer if he doesn’t.’

  Etty had calmed down but she was not pleased. ‘I think you might have consulted me before agreeing to all this.’

  ‘Yes, Etty. I’m very sorry.’

  ‘And does your father know about it?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well, then.’ She shrugged. ‘If your father wants it, I suppose we must make the best of it. But it won’t be at all good for discipline.’

  ‘The lads will be used to him within a week.’

  ‘They won’t like it if he looks like getting any chance in races which they think should be the
irs.’

  ‘The season doesn’t start for a month,’ I said soothingly. ‘Let’s see how he makes out, shall we?’

  And put off the day when he got the chances however bad he was, and however much they should have gone to someone else.

  Etty put him on a quiet four-year-old mare which didn’t please him but was a decided step up from old Indigo. He had received with unyielding scorn my request that he should stop staring so disquietingly at Etty, and sneered at my suggestion that he should let it be understood that his father was paying for him to be there.

  ‘It is not true,’ he said superciliously.

  ‘Believe me,’ I said with feeling, ‘if it were true, you wouldn’t be here tomorrow. Not if he paid a pound a minute.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you are upsetting Miss Craig and upsetting the other lads, and a stable seething with resentment is not going to do its best by its horses. In fact, if you want the horses here to win races for you, you’ll do your best to get along without arousing ill-feeling in the staff.’

  He had given me the black stare and hadn’t answered, but I noticed that he looked steadfastly at the ground when Etty detailed him to the mare. He rode her quietly along towards the back of the string and completed his allotted half-speed four-furlong canter without incident. On our return to the yard George met him and took the mare away to the box, and Alessandro, without a backward glance, walked to his Mercedes and was driven away.

  The truce lasted for two more mornings. On each of them Alessandro arrived punctually for the first exercise, disappeared presumably for breakfast, came back for the second lot, and departed for the rest of the day. Etty gave him middling horses to ride, all of which he did adequately enough to wring from her the grudging comment: ‘If he doesn’t give us any more trouble, I suppose it could be worse.’

  But on his fourth morning, which was Saturday, the defiant attitude was not only back but reinforced. We survived through both lots without a direct confrontation between him and Etty only because I purposely kept parting them. For the second lot, in fact, I insisted on taking him with me and a party of two-year-olds along to the special two-year-old training ground while Etty led the bulk of the string over to Warren Hill.