Read Online The Dark Horse by Rumer Godden - Free Book Online

Sadiq and here again were the white rails of a racecourse, well kept lawns and paddocks.
    They passed mounted policemen, Englishmen in white uniforms and Indians in khaki. In the distance Ted saw mounted troops, the glitter of swords and the flutter of pennoned lances; a parade was going on but Sadiq turned away to the right, crossed a wide busy road and led the way up another, quieter, tree-shaded, with broad verges on which the horses’ hooves made only a light sound. As they turned in through two huge open gates, once painted green, Dark Invader went still faster as if he knew he was coming to what Ted had called it – home.
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    â€˜Good Lord,’ said Ted. ‘Good Lord!’ It was the first time he had seen Indian syces grooming.
    He had seen Dark Invader into a roomy stall, open-fronted, fenced in by two wooden rails, seen what a good feed was waiting, not in a manger as in England, but in a heavy galvanised tub, seen the crows, big black and grey birds with strong beaks and darting pirate eyes, fly down to perch on the rails, waiting for droppings of corn. They were, John Quillan told him, every horse’s constant companions. Then Ted had gone with John. ‘I have booked you into the Eden boarding house. It’s supposed to be good. I hope it is.’ After a lunch, when Ted was waited on by two table servants and, out of curiosity, tasted curry for the first time – he hastily ordered roast mutton instead – exhausted by the, to him, heat and strangeness as much as by the long walk, Ted had slept in his spacious room until John had come to fetch him. ‘Thought you might like to see my string.’
    Ted had blinked at Scattergold Hall, blinked more at the sight of the bandar-log; two were fighting over a large pet ram which, in its turn, was fighting them; one, a girl, was swinging like a monkey on a branch of a tree. An older boy was earnestly schooling a pony, while two, almost babies, were making mud pies on the edge of the drive, pouring red dust and water on each other’s heads. Dahlia, in a rocking chair on the verandah and wearing her usual loose wrapper, sat peacefully rocking and fanning herself with a palm-leaf fan. She smiled over the fan at Ted with her dark fringed eyes and called ‘Hullo.’
    â€˜My wife and children,’ John had said absently. Ted took off the topee John had lent him and bowed, but John did not introduce him; instead, ‘Come and see the horses and our evening grooming.’ He had led Ted to the stable square and Ted blinked again; more than blinked. He had never seen anything like it.
    The horses were tethered outside their stalls to rings set in the wall, the syces, two to a horse, ranging themselves one each side. As Dark Invader was so big, Sadiq and the second groom, Ali, stood on upturned food boxes, set far back so that they could throw their weight on their hands, then laid into him with what John told Ted was the classic hand-rubbing – ‘hart molesh’ in Hindi – of Indian horse care. ‘You mean they groom with their
hands
?’ asked Ted.
    â€˜Every part of their hands, fingers, thumb, the ball of the thumb, the heel of the hand and right up to the forearm. Watch.’
    Now and again Sadiq or Ali turned to rinse hands and forearms in a bucket of cold water to wash off the dead hair, then sweating and panting, back again, while Dark Invader grunted with ecstasy and nipped playfully at Sadiq’s plump bottom. ‘Ari! Shaitan!’ Sadiq cursed him happily and Ted saw, with another pang, that already they understood one another perfectly.
    At a call from the Jemadar, the Quillan head man, imposing in his maroon-coloured turban, well-cut coat and small cane, the hand rubbing stopped and each man fitted his hands with leather pads, stuffed like boxing gloves, and began using them in a rhythm that resounded round the square: right pad, left pad hard on the horse, then both pads hit together