The Dark Horse Read online

  The convent had two conveyances – they could not be called carriages; one was a high shuttered box on four wheels, the same as the tikka gharries – carriages for hire – of every Indian city but, being under Gulab’s charge, better kept than they. It went out every afternoon, sometimes taking the Sisters in pairs to the business houses to gather in subscriptions and donations. For this Mother Morag sent younger nuns, Sister Bridget, plump and jolly, who could always make a joke, or Sister Joanna, the young English nun of strength and distinction but whose brown eyes, even when she did not say anything, could glow with indignation or be tender or laughing. The Sisters usually caught the men at their desks and, ‘It’s hardly fair,’ said Sister Joanna. ‘Particularly the young ones, poor lambs. They don’t know how to say “no” to a nun.’

  ‘They know how to say “no” to their tailor’s and bootmaker’s bills.’ Old Sister Ignatius, the sub-prioress and Mother Morag’s right hand, was as tart as she was faithful.

  On other afternoons Solomon would drive to the Newmarket, Calcutta’s great covered bazaar, where the Sisters would pick up sacks of unsold vegetables from particular stalls; sometimes a few flowers for the chapel would be given them too, and while Solomon stood waiting in the forecourt, boys and girls would come to pet him and he would be given what Sister Bridget called ‘goodies’.

  ‘Yes. He too feeds from alms,’ said Gulab with pride – to Indian thinking it is the receiver who has the merit, not the giver. At the side of the cart was a brass-bound collecting box with a cross carved on it and a slit through which brown hands – and sometimes white ones – put annas, the smallest silver coin, and copper pice – a pice was worth a quarter of an anna. There were even smaller coins: pies – like old-time farthings – four to a pice, and even below these were cowries which still were currency, ‘But from that box you would be amazed how much we get,’ said Sister Emmanuel, the cellarer. ‘I think we often live on poor people’s pennies.’ Solomon’s real work though was the night round and for this he drew a cart not far removed from a bullock cart, heavy, with wooden wheels not properly tyred so that it shook and rattled. Its canvas hood made it seem like a covered wagon and its wooden seats were hard. It was the night round that took the heaviest toll of Solomon, Gulab and the Sisters.

  In most Orders, the Rule is that its sisters must be in the convent by sunset but there have to be exceptions and for the Sisters of Poverty, in Calcutta’s climate, to collect food during the heat of the day would have been a waste of time; kept standing in their canisters in hot kitchens it would have gone bad. ‘No-one else would have taken time to sort and cool it,’ said Mother Morag and so when, almost at first light, she looked down from her cell window to see the horses go by, she was already up and dressed and had been up since one o’clock because, as Superior, she made it her task to meet Solomon and his cart and the two Sisters who went with it on its nightly tour of the city’s restaurants just as they were closing, to collect in the Convent’s big battered containers the left-overs from dishes served to customers. ‘Some hardly touched,’ the Sisters marvelled. ‘To order such expensive food and then not eat it!’ To them it seemed the height of riches.

  ‘The height of gluttony!’ Sister Ignatius was more than usually sharp-tongued. ‘It should be brought home to them.’

  ‘Then we shouldn’t have the food.’ That was Sister Joanna with the remorseless logic of the young.

  ‘Yes, see how out of sin comes good.’ Sister Mary Fanny was given to what Mother Morag called ‘cuckoo-words’ or platitudes. But in this case they were true. ‘How else would we feed our old people?’ asked Sister Joanna.

  ‘We, the Sisters of Poverty, have always had a curious form of book keeping,’ Mother Morag was to tell John Quillan. ‘First we find the needy, the helpless ones, and take them in, then we find the means to keep them.’

  ‘Sounds crack-pot to me,’ said John. ‘How can you help people when you haven’t the means?’

  ‘Because the need is there and so, to fill it, the means come. They always have. Always,’ Mother Morag insisted, ‘if you trust. Almost a hundred years ago our foundress, Thérèse Hubert, who had no idea she was a foundress, used to take her basket and go round the houses of Bruges collecting scraps for the two old people she had taken into her tiny home. She got not only food but clothes, furniture, fuel.’

  ‘There were just two!’ John objected. ‘Now?’

  ‘At the last count, our Order of the Sisters of Poverty cares for more than fifty thousand old people. We have houses all over the world but, of course, in poor countries – or countries overburdened with poor, like India – it is more difficult. They don’t want more beggars,’ Mother Morag smiled, ‘and we are, of course, beggars.’

  ‘Then what happens?’

  ‘It still works. We believe we bring Providence by our very “collecting”, as we call it. It wakes people up, but don’t think it’s easy to beg. I remember Sister Joanna when she started: “What would my father say if he could see me now?”’ and Mother Morag spoke seriously. ‘You need to be very humble and disciplined, Mr Quillan, to hold out your hand, to smile and say, “God bless you”, when doors are slammed in your face, when you are patronised or derided as nuisances – which, of course, we are.’ The smile had come back. ‘I sympathise because we’re a continual reminder of what people don’t want to know. I often wish we had orphans – so much more attractive than the old, but it’s wonderful the way things do come. In her later years Thérèse Hubert told how, in one of the houses, when the old men and women had been fed, there was nothing left for the Sisters, but they still gathered round the empty table as is the Rule, and said Grace. There was a knock at the door; someone unknown had sent round an entire dinner.’

  ‘Just then?’ John’s face was half amused, half full of pity, but, ‘Just then,’ Mother Morag said firmly. ‘It’s usually very prompt. It wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t, would it?’

  The night round was hard, not only on the Sisters but on Solomon and Gulab. Solomon often had to stand for half an hour – some of the restaurants seemed to take pleasure in keeping the Sisters waiting – and in the cold-weather months, Solomon and Gulab shivered. Then it was on to the next place, often retracing the route because the kitchens were not ready.

  The Sisters, too, often met with the contempt Mother Morag had spoken of; they had to wait in the outer kitchens, amongst squalid washing up, shoutings, horseplay. Sometimes waiters or cooks were drunk – the cooks more often. Mother Morag could never send young nuns on the night round. She sent Sister Timothea of the sharp elbows, Eurasian and, from a child, used to fending for herself, or Sister Jane, a truly plain Jane, or the French Sister Ursule who was hideous with warts on her nose, hairs on her chin and who wore spectacles like goggles. ‘No-one is going to pester me,’ she said. Some places, though, were kind; the Italian head waiter at Firpo’s always had a cup of coffee for the Sisters and many of the Indians had an innate respect for the religious; some even gave flowers from the vases on the tables, but seldom was the food properly separated in the canisters the Sisters left carefully labelled ‘meat’, ‘fish’, ‘vegetables’, ‘curry’, ‘rice’. ‘Sometimes the food is thrown in so mixed that even we can’t eat it,’ said Mother Morag, ‘but Sister Claudine, who is our cook, can turn most of it into gourmet food and it’s lovely to see how the old people put on flesh and vigour. The trouble is they get so well that… ’ She stopped. ‘Of course I don’t mean that. It’s just that we’re so overcrowded and there are so many waiting.’ She sighed.

  When at last the cart came in, no matter how late or tired they were, the Sisters always gave Solomon the saved slice of bread and salt Sister Barbara the caterer had left ready; often, too, he had pieces of sugar-cane Gulab bought out of his own money. Then Solomon was walked away to be rubbed down, rugged in his old blanket, and fed; Mother Morag sent the Sisters to bed and the heaviest work of the night began as another two began to carry the canisters in and sort the, by now, greasy foo
d. ‘You cannot imagine what the smell of curry is like at two in the morning,’ Mother Morag told John. It was all carefully stored, either on ice or in the cool larder, and when that was done the canisters had to be scrubbed with disinfectant and hot water, then scalded. Often, seeing the Sisters tottering – they had usually worked all day as well – Mother Morag sent them to bed and finished alone. ‘It’s a good thing I’m strong,’ and when, at last, she took off her big blue apron and the ‘sleeves’ that protected her white habit, she went upstairs to wash her face, neck and hands. Though it was probably only an hour or an hour and a half before the caller came round to wake the Community for the thirty-five minutes’ meditation they had before Mass, it would have been sensible to have at least taken off her shoes and coif and lain down to rest her aching back and legs. ‘I’m not getting any younger,’ she told herself, but it was strangely more refreshing to sit at her window waiting till the string came by.

  She could hear them before she saw them – a light drumming on the track and an occasional clinking of bits, swishing of tails, muttered words. Then they came, each beautiful animal swathed in rugs or horse-coats in the maroon of the stable colours; each was led by its own two syces or grooms, the men’s heads swathed too in their chuddars – small cotton shawls of which one end was usually wound over their mouths and noses. They wore long coats of good cloth, braided with maroon, good shoes in keeping with the high rank of their charges. ‘I wish we could give Gulab a coat like that,’ the nun in Mother Morag could not help wishing. ‘These men don’t have to go out on the night round,’ and then she forgot the nun in the sheer joy of watching the horses. Some moved steadily; some, more finicking and fidgety, curvetting and pulling, trying to shy at bits of paper or at an old woman sweeping up twigs on the road, had a riding boy atop as well, but all were kept in perfection. Where their flanks, shoulders and necks showed, these were glossy; their muscles rippled as they moved on legs slender and strong but, as Mother Morag knew well, vulnerable. All were led by John Quillan on his mare, Matilda, and each side the Great Danes, Gog and Magog. Mother Morag had learnt their names.

  Dark Invader was two years old; far removed from the long-legged foal and the clumsy promising yearling. His coat now was a dark brown with a dapple in it. The proud curve of his neck was not yet showing the crest of his sex but the majestic slope of his shoulder, the great breadth and leverage of his hocks and his feet so well-shaped and firmly placed made him a handsome individual.

  The day was celebrated by some extra carrots and half a pound of lump sugar. Ted would allow no more. ‘Never met such a greedy-guts.’ No-one could have guessed from Ted’s brisk strictness that Dark Invader was the glory of his heart. ‘Never had one quite like this, sir,’ he told Michael and, ‘You always say that,’ teased Michael but, ‘I have a feeling Ted might be right this time,’ said Annette.

  ‘Well, I must admit I have seldom had a youngster that looked better.’ Michael was cautious but Peter Hay was ‘like a peacock with two tails,’ Michael told Annette, ‘and vain as a peacock,’ he could have said.

  ‘We’ll run Darkie at Lingfield,’ said Peter, ‘and get Tom Bacon to ride him.’

  ‘If we can,’ said Michael.

  ‘I can,’ which was true; Peter could buy almost anything and, on his next visit, ‘Bacon will do it,’ said Peter. ‘He’ll probably come down here. Should be quite a formidable combination, Darkie and Streaky.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘What do you think, Ted?’

  Peter always tried to get on with the lads; the young ones admired his clothes and cars, but when it came to horses, ‘Not up to much’ was the verdict and he never got as much as a ghost of a smile from Ted.

  Ted Mullins was truly a gnome of a man, dried, weather-beaten, with a tuft of hair part white, part childishly fair. He looked far older than his forty-nine years but his watery eyes, blue as larkspurs, were continually alert for an order or the well-being of his horse.

  ‘What’s that chap’s history?’ Peter had said. ‘I’ve always meant to ask.’

  ‘Ted? I’ve known him for years, my father had him as a fifteen year old, went on to be a jockey – pre-war. I gather he never quite had the devil to be top class; sort you use to bring a horse on and replace on the big day. Remounts in the war, demobbed to find his wife dead of the ’flu, his racing contacts lost and a lot of up-and-coming youngsters competing for the few available rides. Found a job with a small trainer in the North who got warned off and Ted lost his licence. Then he didn’t seem to care any more, nobody left to fight for and he wasn’t important enough even at his best for anyone to want to fight for him. Whisky didn’t help either,’ said Michael. ‘In fact I think he was killing himself with drink, then he remembered my father and I remembered the old man had thought a lot of him and of his wife, Ella.’

  ‘And so do you,’ said Peter.

  ‘Best stable lad I ever had,’ said Michael warmly, ‘and I think he shouldn’t be doing that, but he’s back where he began through sheer bad luck, yet never grumbles. Still has an occasional bout, but keeps it and himself to himself. Rides work beautifully and has uncommonly good hands. Look what he has done with Darkie.’

  ‘I grant you that,’ and Peter tried the little man again. ‘What d’you think about Lingfield, Ted?’, hoping at least for recognition but, ‘It’s not for me to say, sir.’ Ted’s wizened face was like a mask.

  A few minutes later Peter had gone with a roar and broop-broop of his bright red latest Bugatti, and, ‘What do you think, Ted?’ asked Michael, ‘about Bacon and Darkie?’

  ‘Well, I s’pose it’s a compliment, sir.’ Ted would say no more but after the trial gallop with Bacon he took the uncommon liberty of following Michael into the office and, ‘No, sir. Never,’ said Ted.

  ‘No? I thought it was a success.’

  ‘Have you looked at the hoss?’

  ‘Yes. Seems all right.’

  ‘Wasn’t. Should have seen him when he come in and this was only a gallop. It’s going to be a race, sir.’ Ted usually had few words but now he burst out, ‘Some hosses come on normal like, some too fast for their own good, as you well know, sir, but some is slow. The Invader,’ Ted never called his charge Darkie, ‘the Invader’s one of those; it’s not that he’s green ezackly, he’s too intelligent for that. P’raps it’s because he’s so big, intelligent-like, and he wants time to look and think.’

  ‘Come off it, Ted. Horses don’t think.’

  ‘Most hosses. If ’twas my choice… ’

  ‘Are you being a bit of an old hen, Ted? Bacon’s report was good. Darkie’s in first class condition. Right time. Right age.’

  ‘I said if it was my choice.’

  Michael hesitated. ‘Captain Hay is set on it.’

  ‘Him.’ Ted’s croak, harsh from years of wind, rain and sun – and whisky – was scornful. ‘Hosses, cars, boats, all alike to him.’

  Michael had to agree and sighed but, ‘Ted, horses have to have owners,’ he said, ‘or there wouldn’t be any racing.’

  ‘Owners have to have hosses or there wouldn’t be any racing,’ answered Ted.

  John Quillan came to see Mother Morag again. He brought Gog and Magog but left them at the entrance to the courtyard where they sat each side of the gates like two mammoth ornaments, greatly reinforcing Dil Bahadur’s prestige. John himself went round to the front door and the portress showed him up to Mother Morag’s office on the first floor where she was working with Sister Ignatius.

  ‘I haven’t come to pester you,’ said John.

  ‘For which we’re thankful,’ Mother Morag laughed, but asked, ‘Then why?’ and John came straight to his business.

  ‘You have a horse.’

  ‘Yes. Solomon.’

  ‘Of course I know him, but only one horse so I thought you might have stabling to spare and I have a new client, a Mr Leventine.’

  ‘Leventine!’ Bunny had expostulated. ‘Why to heaven are you taking on an outsider like that?’

  ‘His horses,�
� John said simply.

  No-one could deny that Mr Leventine had an extraordinary flair for horses, but his ebullience, his plump glossiness, his scent and over-dressing, the perpetual pink rose in his buttonhole – ‘Pink is for happiness,’ he often said, beaming – his curly auburn hair that, with his slightly dusky skin, looked strange to Western eyes, and his over-emphatic sibilants, ‘are a bit off-putting,’ admitted John.

  ‘Johnny, how do you keep so lean?’ John had to grit his teeth when anyone called him Johnny. ‘So lean!’ lamented Mr Leventine.

  ‘Sweat,’ said John, ‘and I don’t eat lunch at the Bengal Club.’ The Bengal Club had the best food east of Suez, especially their spiced hump of beef and a certain Greek pudding made of sago, palm sugar and coconut. It was also renowned for its cellar and its custom of a glass of Madeira after luncheon. Mr Leventine did not lunch there either – anyone thinking of inviting him would have been quietly persuaded not to by the secretary, ‘as they would with me,’ John could have said, ‘for a different reason I hope,’ but his voice betrayed no feeling as he said to Mother Morag, ‘A Mr Leventine. He is importing horses from England and France. I am pressed for room and I wondered if you would rent us a few stalls.’