The Dark Horse by Rumer Godden

seemingly unending, infinitely remote.
    â€˜God! What ages they take,’ thought John.
    Â 
    Dark Invader and Ted had been shipped with a dozen other racehorses by the
City of London
from Birkenhead. It had been a cold, dark, drizzling day and now, a month later, the ship moored in warmth and sunlight to discharge passengers at a jetty in a broad river where kites swooped for floating offal and fought aerial battles with shrill mewing cries. Leaning over the rail with the other grooms, Ted saw the domes of a great building in dazzling white marble, brooding over a wide expanse of grass and trees.
    â€˜Thought it would be all dry and brown and dirty,’ said Ted. ‘Look, there’s flowers,’ and there were white people, some of them riders among the flotsam of Indians; motor cars drove past and in the distance was an English-looking church with a spire, and Ted saw what made his eyes light up – the familiar white rails of a big racecourse. ‘Doesn’t seem such an outlandish place as I thought,’ Ted had said.
    The horses and grooms were not to get off here, and next day the ship dropped down the river to the docks and the cranes swung the horse-boxes ashore. ‘At long last,’ said John.
    The horses walked out of their boxes, stepping gingerly on overgrown shoeless feet under the hot sun. The light was a bright glare and some of them held back, their lads holding them short on the leading rein, being jerked half off their feet. The Indian grooms ran to help them.
    Seven of the newcomers were for John Quillan. Two were Lady Mehta’s, five for Mr Leventine. With Lady Mehta, John could not guess what he would get; spending every summer in France, she bought as she fancied. ‘It’s no use advising Meena,’ Sir Prakash – Readymoney – Mehta said. ‘She was born wilful.’ Now John saw a mare – light bay, silky mane, lustrous eyes, a lovely appealing thing but, ‘Back at the knees,’ groaned John, ‘narrow-bodied as a board on edge.’ He flipped over the papers to find the vet’s certificate. ‘Sound’, written aggressively in green ink. ‘You might have been then, you may be now, but you won’t be in a year’s time.’ John tried to keep the pity out of his voice as he patted the silken head. The next was better, a solid dark bay with the broad, well-muscled quarters of a sprinter. ‘Thank God we can do something with you,’ but John’s real interest was in Mr Leventine’s five, his first experience of what that enigma would buy.
    Two mares, a gelding and a young colt, sharp little horses good for races of six furlongs to a mile. Sound legs and good feet, bright-coloured coats, even after a long voyage and little or no grooming. The stuff to turn out week after week in the Winter handicaps, to stand the stifling heat and the bashing of the raised course in the Monsoon meetings. No-nonsense types, thought John. His respect for Mr Leventine increased.
    Last out of his box, overtopping the others by a hand, was Dark Invader. John looked at his papers. Leventine couldn’t have bought this one, surely? But there it was: ‘Brown colt, off hind fetlock partly white.’ No mistake about that. Seventeen hands at least, thought John, too big for the Course. John looked at the paper again; unplaced since a win first time out eighteen months ago. John frowned. He wouldn’t have thought Mr Leventine would have thrown money away. Then, ‘Good morning, sir,’ said a hoarse croaking voice, and John found himself looking down at a little man whose blue eyes were appraising him – from head to toe, thought John. The polite ‘Good morning, sir,’ was quite unlike the ‘Hy-ah’, or ‘Hullo there’, of the other travelling grooms who relinquished their charges with a pat, sometimes even without a backward glance, as they went off with the trainers to collect their