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

in the air to free dust and sweat; thump, thump – thrump: thump, thump – thrump, over and over again for at least fifteen minutes while Ted stood as if mesmerised, watching. At last the rhythm ended, pads were put away, then came the final polishing with soft brushes and cloths; manes and tails were brushed out, tails bandaged into shape, hooves lifted and cleaned inside and out, then oiled. Finally the men stood by their horses as the Jemadar walked round. Sometimes he stopped, pointed with his cane, criticising sharply; sometimes he gave a nod of satisfaction. When he had made his inspection, he came up to John.
    As John approved them, one by one, the horses were led out to walk round and round the track of tan for an hour’s gentle exercise. This was the time when, in the cool of the evening, the owners, and sometimes jockeys and riding boys, gathered to watch, discuss, saunter on the grass or sit under the trees. Meanwhile the undergrooms prepared the feeds, each inspected by the Jemadar, cleaned and filled buckets of water, hung rugs and surcingles ready and made the bedding for the night, carefully edging it with the plait of straw Mother Morag had seen. Then they laid out the bed roll of their particular senior syce on his charpoy – a wooden-framed string bed – set on the verandah: ‘They
sleep
with their horses?’ asked Ted.
    â€˜They pull their charpoys right across the stall,’ said John. ‘A good groom like Sadiq hardly lets his horse out of his sight all day.’
    To Ted it was as if, in more ways than one, he had stepped into a different world. It was not only the, to him, torrid air, the pale glare of the sky – the glare was dimming now as it fell towards evening; not only the strange smells and sounds, the brilliant colours in the garden of the boarding house. He had seen a whole hedge of poinsettias; their garish scarlet and upstanding stamens had startled him – they hardly seemed like flowers; nor did the crimson hibiscus bells, the beds of flaming cannas, and here, in the Quillan garden, the tumbled masses of bougainvillaeas, the gorgeous blue of morning glory, paler blue of plumbago. Ted could not then put a name to any of these flowers, but he could to the parakeets, flying wild in the trees. It was not the shock of Scattergold Hall either, nor of Dahlia and the children, nor the surprise of the stables. Ted felt as though barriers that had penned him all his life had fallen down. After that sleep, when he had come out on the boarding-house verandah, a travelling bearer had been waiting for him – ‘bearer’, he gathered, meant ‘valet’. ‘I look after you, sahib. Save you much trouble. I, Anthony, have many good “chits”’ – which seemed to be references. ‘I look after you.’
    The fellow, with his smooth English, was almost in Ted’s room and, ‘I look after meself,’ Ted had said gruffly, but the man had called him ‘sahib’, him, Ted, who, except for a few short seasons and the three years of the war, had always been a ‘lad’. ‘Sahib!’ Though they had only exchanged a few words, Ted felt free and more equal with John Quillan than he had ever done with Michael Traherne, for all their mutual affection and respect. When Michael had been a little boy, Ted had called him Master Michael and he had never sat down in the presence of Annette. Now, feeling happier than he had done since Michael had told him Dark Invader was sold, happier than he had thought he would ever be again, happier and somehow taller – ‘Such a little squirt of a man,’ people usually said of him – Ted stood with John Quillan, watching Sadiq and Ali at work.
    Then he watched even more closely. It seemed to his experienced eye that now and again, especially when the strapping approached the Invader’s neck, a muscle twitched and he flinched. At once Sadiq’s hand discarded