Bonecrack - Страница 15

Alessandro was stirring when I went into the owners' room. George and Ginge stood looking down at him, one elderly and resigned, one young and pugnacious, neither of them feeling any sympathy with the patient.

'O. K.,' I said to them. That's the lot. The doctor's coming for him.'

Both of them looked as if they would like to say a lot, but they ambled out tight-lipped and aired their opinions in the yard.

Alessandro opened his eyes, and for the first time looked a little vulnerable. He didn't know what had happened, didn't know where he was or how he had got there. The puzzlement formed new lines on his face; made it look younger and softer. Then his eyes focused on my face and in one bound a lot of memory came back. The dove dissolved into the hawk. It was like watching the awakening of a spastic, from loose-limbed peace up to tightness and jangle.

'What happened?' he asked.

'Traffic threw you.'

'Oh,' he said more weakly than he liked. He shut his eyes and through his teeth emitted one heartfelt word. 'Sod.'

There was a sudden commotion at the door and the chauffeur plunged into the room with Margaret trying to cling to one arm. He threw her effortlessly out of his way and shaped up to do the same to me.

'What has happened?' he demanded threateningly. 'What are you doing to the son?' His, voice set up a shiver in my spine. If he wasn't one of the rubber-faces, he sounded exactly like it.

Alessandro spoke from the sofa with tiredness in his voice: and he spoke in Italian, which thanks to a one-time girl friend I more or less understood.

'Stop, Carlo. Go back to the car. Wait for me. The horse threw me. Neil Griffon will not harm me. Go back to the car, and wait for me.'

Carlo moved his head to and fro like a baffled bull, but finally subsided and did as he was told. Three sotto voce cheers for the discipline of the Rivera household.

'A doctor is coming to see you,' I said.

'I do not want a doctor.'

'You're not leaving that sofa until I'm certain there is nothing wrong with you.'

He sneered, 'Afraid of my father?'

'Think what you like,' I said; and he obviously did.

The doctor, when he came, turned out to be the same one who had once diagnosed my mumps, measles and chicken-pox. Old now, with overactive lacrymal glands and hesitant speech, he did not in the least appeal to his present patient. Alessandro treated him rudely, and got back courtesy where he deserved a smart kick.

'Nothing much wrong with the lad,' was the verdict. 'But he'd better stay in bed today, and rest tomorrow. That'll put you right, young man, eh?'

The young man glared back ungratefully and didn't answer. The old doctor turned to me, gave me a tolerant smile and said to let him know if the lad had any after effects, like dizziness or headaches.

'Old fool,' said the lad audibly, as I showed the doctor out; and when I went back he was already on his feet.

'Can I go now?' he asked sarcastically.

'As far and for as long as you like,' I agreed.

His eyes narrowed. 'You are not getting rid of me.'

'Pity,' I said.

After a short furious silence he walked a little unsteadily past me and out of the door. I went into the office and with Margaret watched through the window while the chauffeur bustled around, settling him comfortably into the back seat of the Mercedes; and presently, without looking back, he drove'the son' away.

'Is he all right?' Margaret asked.

'Shaken, not stirred,' I said flippantly, and she laughed. But she followed the car with her eyes until it turned left down Bury Road.

He stayed away the following day but came back on the Thursday morning in time for the first lot. I was up in the top part of the yard talking to Etty when the car arrived. Her pleasant expression changed to the one of tight-lipped dislike which she always wore when Alessandro was near her, and when she saw him erupting athletically from the back seat and striding purposefully towards us she discovered something that urgently needed seeing to in one of the bays further down.

Alessandro noted her flight with a twist of scorn on his lips, and widened it into an irritating smirk as a greeting to me. He held out a small flat tin box, identical with the one he had presented before.

'Message for you,' he said. All the cockiness was back fortissimo, and I would have known even without the tin that he had again been to see his father. He had recharged his malice like a battery plugged into the mains.

'Do you know what is in it, this time?'

He hesitated. 'No,' he said. And this time I believed him, because his ignorance seemed to annoy him. The tin was fastened round the edge with adhesive tape. Alessandro with the superior smirk still in place watched me pull it off. I rolled the tape into a small sticky ball and put it in my pocket: then carefully I opened the tin.

There was another little wooden horse between two thin layers of cotton wool.

It had a label round its neck.

It had a broken leg.

I didn't know what exactly was in my face when I looked up at Alessandro, but the smirk deteriorated into a half-anxious bravado.

'He said you wouldn't like it,' he remarked defiantly.

'Come with me, then,' I said abruptly. 'And see if you do.' I set off up the yard towards the drive, but he didn't follow: and before I reached my destination I was met by George hurrying towards me with a distressed face and worried eyes.

'Mr Neil- Indigo's got cast and broken a leg in his box- same as Moonrock- you wouldn't think it could happen, not to two old'uns like them, not ten days apart.'

'No, you wouldn't,' I said grimly, and walked back with him into Indigo's box, stuffing the vicious message in its tin into my jacket pocket.

The nice-natured gelding was lying in the straw trying feebly to stand up. He kept lifting his head and pushing at the floor with one of his forefeet, but all strength seemed to have left him. The other forefoot lay uselessly bent at an unnatural angle, snapped through just above the pastern.

I squatted down beside the poor old horse and patted his neck. He lifted his head again and thrashed to get back on to his feet, then flopped limply back into the straw. His eyes looked glazed, and he was dribbling.

'Nothing to be done, George,' I said. 'I'll go and telephone the vet.' I put only regret into my voice and kept my boiling fury to myself. George nodded resignedly but without much emotion: like every older stableman he had seen a lot of horses die.

The young chubby Dainsee got out of his bath to answer the telephone.

'Not another one!' he exclaimed, when I explained.

'I'm afraid so. And would you bring with you any gear you need for doing a blood test?'

'Whatever for?'

'I'll tell you when you get here-'

'Oh,' he sounded surprised, but willing to go along. 'All right then. Half a jiffy while I swop the bath towel for my natty suiting.'

He came in jeans, his dirty Land-Rover, and twenty minutes. Bounced out on to the gravel, nodded cheerfully, and turned at once towards Indigo's box. George was alone there with the horse, but the rest of the yard stood quiet and empty. Etty, showing distress at the imminent loss of her lead horse, had taken the string down to Southfields on the race-course side, and Alessandro presumably had gone with her, as he was nowhere about, and his chauffeur was waiting as usual in the car.

Indigo was up on his feet. George, holding him by the headcollar, said that the old boy just suddenly seemed to get his strength back and stood up, and he'd been eating some hay since then, and it was a right shame he'd got cast, that it was. I nodded and took the headcollar from him, and told him I'd see to Indigo, and he could go and get on with putting the oats through the crushing machine ready for the morning feeds.

'He makes a good yard man,' Dainsee said. 'Old George, he was deputy head gardener once at the Viceroy's palace in India. It accounts for all those tidy flower beds and tubs of pretty shrubs which charm the owners when they visit the yard.'

I was surprised. 'I didn't know that-'

'Odd world.' He soothed Indigo with a touch, and peered closely at the broken leg. 'What's all this about a blood test?' he asked, straightening up and eyeing me with speculation.

'Do vets have a keep-mum tradition?'

His gaze sharpened into active curiosity. 'Professional secrets, like doctors and lawyers? Yes, sure we do. As long as it's not a matter of keeping quiet about a spot of foot and mouth.'

'Nothing like that.' I hesitated. 'I'd like you to run a private blood test- could that be done?'

'How private? It'll have to go to the Equine Research Labs. I can't do it myself, haven't got the equipment.'

'Just a blood sample with no horse's name attached.'

'Oh sure. That happens all the time. But you can't really think anyone doped the poor old horse!'

'I think he was given an anaesthetic,' I said. 'And that his leg was broken on purpose.'

'Oh glory.' His mouth was rounded into an O of astonishment, but the eyes flickered with the rapidity of his thoughts. 'You seem sane enough,' he said finally, 'So let's have a look see.'

He squatted down beside the affected limb and ran his fingers very lightly down over the skin. Indigo shifted under his touch and ducked and raised his head violently.

'All right, old fellow,' Dainsee said, standing up again and patting his neck. He raised his eyebrows at me, 'Can't say you're wrong, can't say you're right.' He paused, thinking it over. The eyebrows rose and fell several times, like punctuations. 'Tell you what,' he said at length. 'I've got a portable X-ray machine back home. I'll bring it along, and we'll take a picture. How's that?'