Every early morning of each racing season Mother Morag, Reverend Mother of the Sisters of Poverty, saw the string go by, a long line of horses, brown, dark bay, bay: chestnuts – worst of all colours in the heat: now and again a roan, or a blue roan: a grey, dappled or flea-bitten. Mother Morag not only saw them, she deliberately came up to her cell to watch them – her window overlooked the road – but this was not Dilbury or England, not the mists and freshness of the Downs where, in the wooded valley down below, the village stood among trees, an uneven tumble of roofs and chimneys round the grey church tower; there, the first sound was the bird chorus, especially larks; here, the first sound was the cawing of crows. In the cold weather there was mist, but it swirled above arid dust, because this was Calcutta in India and the ‘string’ was not Michael Traherne’s – Michael, friend of royalty and other famous owners – it was John Quillan’s, he who had defiantly chosen to drop out. When Mother Morag had first seen them in 1923 there were just seven horses; now, ten years later, there were nearer forty. Yes, John Quillan has made his way, thought Mother Morag, simply because he’s so good.
Racing news was relayed to her by the Convent’s Gurkha gatekeeper, Dil Bahadur – Valiant Heart. ‘He has earned that name,’ Mother Morag often said. ‘Dil Bahadur has been through the War, fought in France and on the Frontier. Have you seen his scars and medals?’ and she may have added, ‘Have you seen his kukri?’, the wicked, curved, flat-bladed cutlass of the Gurkhas. Dil Bahadur shared Mother Morag’s passion for horses. It was he who told her John Quillan’s name. ‘John Quillan Sahib – was Captain Sahib, but not now,’ said Dil Bahadur.
Mother Morag had picked John Quillan out long before that. He always led his cavalcade down to the racecourse riding the stable ‘steady’, a bay mare that she guessed was his own. Mother Morag had noticed the grace with which his long leanness sat in the saddle, the quietness of his hands and voice – she never heard him shout at horse or groom or riding boy. She knew the old felt hat he wore where everyone else had topees; the, she discovered afterwards, deliberate shabbiness of his clothes; she even noted the signet ring on his little finger. A splendid pair of Great Danes, amber-coloured, loped each side of him. They struck terror into people but looked neither to right nor left and always sat by the side of the road until he gave the whistle to cross. ‘I wish I had your authority,’ Mother Morag was eventually to tell him.
‘I wish I had yours.’ That had been open, friendly, and she told him how she watched his string and repeated, ‘You’re so good.’
‘Good? Perhaps a little less disastrous than the other shockers.’ Then the ‘shutter’, as she was to call it, came down over his face. ‘Most of them though are ex-jockeys. I’m not and in this town that counts against me.’
‘Why?’ Mother Morag’s ‘Why?’s were always direct.
‘People know where they are with them; with me they don’t, which is awkward for them.’
‘And for you?’
‘For me?’ He shrugged. ‘I’m as thick-skinned as a rhinoceros and I have ceased to care.’
‘I don’t believe you. In fact, I think you care about your work as much as we care about ours.’
‘Touché,’ and, for a moment, he smiled. Then, with sudden seriousness, he had said, ‘We can’t compare. I just play with rich men’s toys unfortunately – or fortunately’ – the mocking tone had come back – ‘Nabobs don’t mind what they spend on their toys. The only rub is they want a sure return – of course. They’re box-wallahs.’ A box-wallah is a businessman and Mother Morag felt sure that if she had not been there he would have said, ‘Bloody box-wallahs.’ ‘Horses can’t be made to fit a ledger,’ said John Quillan.
Mother Morag had first met John when he, like others, had come to see her about the Convent’s site.
Not all John’s owners were box-wallahs; he had the Nawab of Barasol’s horses and three of Lady Mehta’s, that capricious owner and wife of the Parsi millionaire from Bombay who was always called Sir Readymoney Mehta because he let his exquisite Meena buy where and what she liked, ‘Unhappily,’ said John. She had given him many a headache. He also had two Australians who, like many Australians, shipped horses every autumn to Calcutta’s Remount Depot from their own stations in New South Wales; they also shipped their polo ponies and stayed for the polo season, selling the best afterwards, and John’s two friends brought in four or five racehorses as well – or potential racehorses – which they left at the Quillan stables, but it was true that most of John’s owners were businessmen of whom the British were the élite, ‘Or think they are,’ said John.
Calcutta has been a city of traders since the first small trading posts were set up on the swampy banks of the Hooghly, that great river up which, from the Bay of Bengal, first sailing clippers, then liners, paddle-steamers from inland tributaries, barges, and the age-old native country boats, unwieldy, wooden, with their tattered and patched sail or sails, and huge steering paddle would come, day in, day out, night in, night out – Calcutta never went to sleep – to deliver and load the cargoes that made those merchants so fabulously rich.
It was for those ‘nabobs’ – the men who so astutely dealt in jute – or tea – once upon a time in opium, or in hides, shellac, coal, jewels – that Indian landlords built mansions in ornate Palladian styles with porticos, vast rooms, deep verandahs, floors and stairways of imported marble. Each had lines of stables, coach houses, servants’ quarters and courts, gardens like parks, and ignored the teeming slums which had grown up round them. A row of these great houses edged the L made by the Esplanade and Chowringhee, Calcutta’s widest street; they fronted the Maidan, the central space of open green, as the houses of London’s Park Lane – once, too, belonging to magnates – front Hyde Park. Some spread into the streets that ran back from Chowringhee; others were built along the shaded roads that led to the rich suburbs of Alipore and Ballygunj and it was in one of these roads that, left to them by a long-ago plutocratic patron, the Sisters of Our Lady of Poverty had their convent and old people’s home.
‘What a waste,’ most people said. ‘What a waste!’ ‘Which is why they so often came to see me,’ said Mother Morag.
It was certainly a favoured site, among the most pleasant of that unpleasant city. The Maidan was wide; it held the old British Fort, built isolated so that, if attacked, its cannon balls could rake the enemy on every side. Now, more peaceably, the Maidan held, not enemies, but the Football Club, hockey fields, two polo grounds and, divided from them by a road, the Victoria Memorial with its white marble domes and marble paved gardens where Calcutta’s more prosperous citizens liked to walk in the cool of the evening. The Maidan had great tanks or pools, refreshing to sit by; several roads, yet there was still room to hold enormous political or religious meetings, and room for goats and the lean sinewy cattle to graze, for children to play, for beggars or pilgrims to camp; at night their insignificant twinkling fires shone far across its darkness. It had room still for riders and, most importantly, there was the racecourse with its stands, two courses and an inner circuit for work. Most important of all in that arid crowded city, there were trees, grass, above all space. On its far side the Maidan was bounded by the river, so that if there were any breeze, it was fresh.
‘Such an expensive site,’ said the lawyers who were continually sent by their clients, most of them racehorse trainers, to see Reverend Mother Morag. ‘You’re not four hundred yards up Lower Circular Road.’ Lower Circular Road, which led up to Ballygunj, abutted on Circular Road proper which ran past the racecourse. ‘The horses would only have to cross the road!’ and it was not only the position; the Convent had many outbuildings which could be converted to stables. ‘Surely you don’t need all those,’ and, too, there was the garden. ‘You can’t need so much ground,’ and, ‘Think what you could sell it for!’ they told her. ‘Think what you could do with the money!’ Mother Morag was unmoved but they persisted in ‘pestering’, she said.
John Quillan had only asked her once, though for him it would have been even more ideal than for the others; his own stables were just up the road and he badly needed to expand. The plan seemed sensible on both sides. ‘You could move further out,’ he told her – John had come himself and not sent a lawyer. ‘Move where land is cheaper so you could build just what you want,’ and he had asked, ‘Does it really matter where your Sisters live?’
‘Of course it matters. Think.’ That took him back. ‘You’ll have to mind your ps and qs,’ Bhijai, the young Maharajah of Malwa, had told John – oddly enough that unreliable but charming playboy was a friend of Mother Morag’s, as he was of John’s, one of his few friends. ‘My father, the late Maharajah, knew her father,’ Bunny told him – Bhijai, like other young Indian fashionables, had adopted an English nickname. ‘When she came out here, her father asked my father to look after her. He died and so it fell to me, but as a matter of fact, Mother Morag looks after me. I often ask her advice,’ said Bunny. ‘I love her but she awes me.’
‘Which takes a bit of doing,’ John had teased him but, face to face with her, he understood the awe. He found that Mother Morag, though she seemed young to be a Reverend Mother, had surprising dignity. She was tall, almost as tall as he, though far too thin. He liked her poise, the clear bones of her face and the hazel eyes set off by the close white coif she wore. Her habit was white too and immaculately clean, though it was patched. There was another surprise; her eyes had lit almost with mischief when he mentioned Bunny and John saw why the two of them were cronies, but now she looked directly, almost sternly, at him and, ‘Not matter where we live? Think,’ said Mother Morag.
John knew, in part, what she meant. For most foreigners, whether they came from the West or Japan, Calcutta was a city of sojourn, where they made their pile, or did their service, government or military, then went ‘Home’. ‘But not for us,’ Mother Morag said. ‘We are usually here for life.’ She could have added, ‘And I can guess, not for you.’ ‘Of course, it’s by our own choice,’ she said aloud, ‘but remember nuns have no holidays, no “leaves” and so, to keep ourselves healthy – and sane,’ she gave him a quick smile, ‘we need our haven.’ She did not tell him that they shared the haven with some two hundred others; it was reward enough to know that these old men and women, after their hard-working or starved neglected lives, could end their days in what seemed to them incomparable comfort and beauty, and Mother Morag smiled again as her eyes rested on the sight of the convent trees, gol-mohrs – peacock trees – and acacias, mangoes, jacarandas, that in spring and summer brought a wealth of flowers and fruit and where bright green red-beaked parakeets flew and played. ‘Also, has it occurred to you,’ she asked John, ‘that here we are near our work?’
That was true. The Sisters did not stay in their haven – they were to be found in the narrow lanes, alleys and gullies of the slums that made an intricate congested and evil web, inconveniently close behind Calcutta’s elegant façade. If any flowering or fruit trees had been planted in those gutter streets, goats and bulls would immediately have eaten them; the bulls wilfully – plump, with hides like velvet, their humps capped with beaded coverings, lovingly embroidered, they ate what they chose, because to the Hindus they were sacred and must not be forbidden, ‘One of the endless taboos which make our work so difficult,’ said the Sisters. The goats ate because they were hungry, but not as hungry as the swarm of men, women and children.
In an Indian village, though people go hungry, they seldom starve; it is a virtue to feed the poor but in a city that virtue is quickly lost. ‘There are just too many of them,’ said Mother Morag. ‘We feed perhaps a thousand a day but it’s a drop in the ocean. Still, it’s a drop.’
‘I don’t know how you manage it,’ said John.
‘Nor do we, but we have our life-lines,’ said Mother Morag.
A necessary life-line of the Sisters of Poverty was Solomon, their horse. ‘If you can call him a horse,’ said Mother Morag. Sister Mary Fanny, the pretty little Eurasian, did not understand. ‘Is Reverend Mother trying to provoke us? I thought we all loved Solomon.’ Mother Morag relented. ‘Of course we do. I was only joking. He’s so sturdy and reliable and more than that,’ she added.
Everyone knew Solomon; he was a cob – bright bay with white points, solid as if he were stuffed, ‘which he is,’ said Mother Morag. ‘All those tidbits.’
Gulab, his old Hindu syce, groomed him until the coarse coat almost shone and polished the brass and leather of his harness so that no-one could have guessed how old it was; but it was not only his looks or that Solomon worked so hard in the cause of charity which made everyone love him; it was his expression, gentle and benign; the way he would let even the dirtiest gutter child pat him, the manners with which he accepted any kind of offering and, though he was slow, his dignified gait; he still moved with the arched neck and high-flung fore feet that showed he had been well trained to a carriage, ‘though I could never have believed a pair of hooves could have stayed in the air so long without being brought down by the law of gravity,’ said Mother Morag.
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 food. ‘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.’
There was an embarrassed silence. Then Mother Morag said, ‘We have to put people in ours.’
‘And they don’t have electric fans nor are fed five times a day,’ Sister Ignatius could not restrain herself. ‘They are only people, not racehorses.’
‘Sister, please,’ but John said, ‘I see, and I beg your pardon.’ He had turned to go and was almost at the door when Mother Morag called him back. ‘Mr Quillan.’
‘Yes?’
‘I understand your wife is a Catholic.’
‘Yes.’ He was ready to be defensive but, ‘We were wondering,’ said Mother Morag, ‘as St Thomas’s is quite far, wondering whether she would care to come here, to our chapel, for Mass. We are so close.’
The silence was so long she thought she had offended him, then, ‘This is the first time in this city of upstarts that anyone has called Dahlia my wife, or asked her to come anywhere,’ and John said, ‘Thank you.’
‘The children too, of course.’
The ‘shutter’ came down at once. ‘That wouldn’t do.’ John had a tribe of children who were a by-word in Calcutta. Dahlia, sweet and warm, loved babies but had no control over children, ‘and babies grow into children, unfortunately,’ said John. His were as good looking as he, or as pretty and peach-skinned as their mother with her great dark eyes and silky lashes, but they were untamed, went barefoot, wore what they liked, and did what they liked. They could talk good English when they wanted – oddly enough they followed John’s unconscious perfection, not Dahlia’s chi-chi – but preferred to chatter in Hindu or Bengali. They ran away from every school they were sent to, ‘Sensible children,’ was all John said – he seemed curiously helpless over them. ‘Well, remember they are tainted with the Eurasian,’ said Sister Ignatius – in the thirties that was a real taint – ‘Even here,’ she said – the Sisters of Poverty had Eurasian as well as Indian Sisters – ‘amongst ourselves of course it makes no difference, but among our old people!’ The most indigent Indian, the poorest white, kept himself apart and Mother Morag thought that John’s habitual bitterness, his mordant humour and defensiveness was not for himself, nor for Dahlia – he had too much tenderness for her – but for his children whom he called the ‘bandar-log’ – the monkey people.
‘Why wouldn’t it do?’
‘Dahlia tried to take them to Mass but they wouldn’t dress properly.’
Mother Morag could guess how shamed Dahlia would have been – many of her own people went to St Thomas’s. It was a church parade but, ‘We don’t mind how people are dressed,’ said Mother Morag, ‘as long as they come. Bring them.’
He looked so startled – and was it softened? – that she wondered if what she had said had somehow offended him and then wondered again if, perhaps, this was the first time he had thought of his ‘bandars’ as people. She did not know but, after that conversation, every month, without a word or a note, John Quillan sent his own farrier to shoe Solomon – without charge.
‘I really must go and thank Mr Quillan,’ said Mother Morag. ‘These are the third set of shoes.’
‘Well, take the umbrella,’ said Sister Ignatius. ‘It’s still hot in the sun.’ It was not a true umbrella, but a sun-umbrella, too big to be called a parasol, of holland, lined with green, that the Convent had once been given, and Mother Morag was grateful for its shade as she walked up the road.
John lived in what had once been the country home of some eighteenth-century nabob, a graciously built house, which had been named Scattergold Hall because seldom had so much money been spent on a house and so quickly wasted. The town had caught up with it and it was surrounded, as was the Convent, by slums. Most of its once vast garden was now taken up by the stables, but there was still a tumble of flowers and tangled creepers, bougainvillaeas, tacomas, roses, jasmine; still massed flowery shrubs, lofty trees; still fountains, though broken, and empty pools. The house was of stucco with shuttered windows, some of the shutters now hanging askew. Pillars adorned and supported its wide verandahs and the porch had the height and width to take an elephant and howdah; broken brick had replaced the smooth gravel on the paths and carriage sweep, and geese, muscovy ducks and disreputable cocks and hens scratched and dusted themselves in a sea of red powder. There were rabbit hutches, pens for bantams and for guinea-pigs. ‘Papa gave us five and we have forty-two now,’ one of the bandars told Mother Morag. ‘We pretend we are shepherds driving our flocks.’ They drove them on what had once been the lawn.
The house smelled of cooking, particularly curry, and of a strange mixture of horses and flowers. Dahlia was no housekeeper; toys, saucers of food for animals, bowls of sweets and nuts, fans, her favourite magazines, snaffle-bits – polished and silver, that John was trying out – long whips and short whips, children’s kicked-off shoes, discarded topees, littered the rooms which Dahlia had furnished with comfortable chairs and sofas covered in a medley of brilliant chintzes, brass-topped tables, dhurries or Indian cotton carpets, ‘that can come to no harm,’ she said which, at least, was sensible – babies and animals relieved themselves anywhere. There were lamps with shades, fringed and tasselled; vases of paper flowers which she obviously prized far more than the pots of violets, lilies, carnations or chrysanthemums the gardeners set along the verandah; but for all the chaos Scattergold Hall was a happy place and many more people would have been glad to come if John had let them.
Mother Morag found him on the drive; Gog and Magog had let her in without demur, the Sikh gateman saluted her, and she was able to thank John in the name of the Sisters and of Solomon for the shoeing.
‘Oh, that!’ said John.
‘Yes, that. Not only generous but imaginative,’ and Mother Morag said, ‘As I am here, may I call on Mrs Quillan?’
‘Mrs Quillan?’ The name seemed to give him almost a shock. Then, ‘Of course,’ he had said. ‘Dahlia will be delighted,’ and took her into the house. ‘I don’t suppose,’ Captain Mack, the veterinary surgeon, told Mother Morag afterwards, ‘that an English lady had ever been in that house before.’
‘I’m not exactly an English lady,’ said Mother Morag. ‘I’m a Sister,’ and that was how Dahlia, in her simplicity, welcomed her except, ‘If I had known you were coming I should have dressed, m’n?’ but the ‘m’n’ was said laughingly.
‘I’m glad you didn’t. I feel more at home.’ Dahlia wore heel-less embroidered slippers and a loose wrapper that gave a plentiful view of her warm peach and brown skin; her hair was loose on her shoulders. Mother Morag guessed that Dahlia dressed for an occasion could be a disaster but fortunately Dahlia had no ambitions except to make every creature, two-legged or four-legged, who came into her orbit, happy and comfortable, from the John she adored, through babies, children, horses, pet lambs, cats, mynah birds, Gog and Magog of course but, just as much, the pariah bitch who at that moment was having puppies under the verandah table, and she said to Mother Morag, ‘This iss verree nice,’ – a chi-chi accent is usually shrill, Dahlia’s was soft. ‘And here, too, just in time, is our good friend, dear Captain Mack.’
The bitch under the verandah table was being helped, or hindered, by four of the bandar-log squatting down beside her. They were worried. ‘Mumma, it’s hurting her. It’s hurting her terribly.’
‘She’ll soon be better. See, Sandy has come, m’n.’ Dahlia soothed them and, to Mother Morag, ‘Captain Mack is a verree good friend to us.’
‘And to us,’ said Mother Morag.
The big red-haired freckled Scotsman was the official veterinary surgeon to the Turf Club, but he would turn out for a suffering pariah bitch as he would have to one of the Quillan, or any owner’s, valuable blood horses, ‘and as he does often for us,’ said Mother Morag. For the Sisters it was the heartbreaking problem of dogs and cats. Not many of the old men and women, Indian, Eurasian, European, who came to the Sisters had pets, the struggle for their own survival had been too hard to allow that, but there were a few and, ‘I’m sorry we can’t have your Moti,’ – ‘Moti’ meant a pearl – ‘or Toby or Dinkie,’ Mother Morag had to tell them. ‘We once had a poor bedraggled peacock,’ she said. ‘Bunny took him, and we have mynah birds. Fortunately we can take birds.’
‘But we’re not an animal shelter.’ Sister Ignatius believed that if there had to be something painful, it was better if it were dealt with quickly, which often meant brusquely.
‘But, Sister, I have had him for ten years. Couldn’t you? For me? Mother, Sister, please. He would be just one.’
‘He wouldn’t. He would soon be one of twenty.’
Mother Morag would try and explain. ‘You see, if we have one, we have to have all. I’m sorry,’ – but it was Captain Mack who tactfully took Moti or Toby or Dinkie away and usually did not send in a bill. Now he hid his surprise at seeing Mother Morag and only said, ‘Out of the way, scamps, and let me have a look,’ as he knelt down beside the table.
John showed Mother Morag round the stables, ‘which is a real treat,’ and her face glowed. Gog and Magog dutifully rose to attend them, but first the children tugged at her habit, caught her hand, propelled her by the elbows to come and see their ponies, their own and others. The bandar-log were useful in schooling ponies, ‘belonging to other and better children,’ John said severely.
‘Who can’t ride and ruin their lovely little animals.’ The eldest bandar boy spoke so exactly like his father that Mother Morag could not help laughing, but she could see that this was serious; Quillans were always serious about horses and the children all rode, ‘like angels – or devils,’ said John.
It was the first time she had heard pride in his voice.
In contrast with the untidy ill-kempt house the stables were impeccable; the stalls, shaded by a verandah, ran round three sides of a square. Mr Leventine had lent John the money to build the concrete block that filled the fourth side, a range of twenty up-to-date loose boxes, with water laid on, fans and ventilators, but still with verandahs and, John had insisted, roofed with old tiles – there were plenty from old outbuildings that had fallen down. ‘Must have cost near half a lakh of rupees,’ said Bunny.
‘At six per cent.’ The bank rate was three or four. ‘But they wouldn’t have given it to me without collateral, so six.’
‘Six! Leventine charged you six per cent! I told you he was a bounder.’
‘Not at all,’ said John. ‘He knew I had to have the money and he’s nobody’s fool. That, if you want to know, is me, but at least there’s no hurry about paying it back.’
The old stalls and verandahs were floored with brick; each, too, had an electric fan and, over the open fronts, guarded by wooden rails, hung rolled up khus-khus, thick grass matting blinds which were let down in hot weather and sprayed with water for added coolness. Each horse had its head collar hung beside the stall, its name above it. Mother Morag read them as she walked along: Ace of Spades: Rigoletto: Flaming Star: Flashlight – ‘Those two are Lady Mehta’s,’ said John – Ontario Queen: Belisarius: The Gangster – ‘He’s the Nawab’s newest buy.’ The bedding had been put down for the night and across the front of each stall the grooms had made a thick plait of straw to prevent wisps coming out. The horses were tied outside ready for the evening grooming.
A track of tan ran round the square’s central lawn which was green and smooth; Mother Morag could guess it was watered every day. There were white-painted benches and chairs under its trees because it was here the owners gathered to watch the evening parade when the horses, groomed to perfection, were exercised round and round. ‘Exercised and scrutinised,’ said John. Now his foreman, the Jemadar, attended him and Mother Morag as they went from horse to horse and handed her, as the guest, appropriate tidbits for each, and heads came round and necks strained to catch them. One or two horses laid back their ears, showing the whites of their eyes, but John saw Mother Morag was not afraid. ‘There are always one or two bad seeds,’ she said; besides, the groom was always standing by to give a sharp slap of reproof. ‘Ari bap! Shaitan!’ John’s Matilda did not wait for them to come close, but started whickering at the sound of his footsteps. ‘Give her a banana,’ said John. ‘She’ll peel it herself.’
‘What a beauty!’ Mother Morag patted the satin neck. ‘Mr Quillan, she’s outstanding.’
‘Was. I had her in the regiment.’ Warmed by her delight, he unguardedly gave that fact away. ‘Not for racing, of course, for polo, but she’s fourteen now.’ He ran his hand across her neck in a caress and again she saw the signet ring on his little finger, its worn crest. ‘Yes, we could do with some of your quality, couldn’t we, old girl?’ John said to Matilda. ‘Makes the rest look work-a-day squibs.’
‘Squibs! You have some splendid horses here, but I’m intrigued,’ said Mother Morag. ‘Polo, then training racehorses. There’s such a difference. How did you come to know… ?’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. One shouldn’t be curious, but horses run away with you in more senses than one.’
John Quillan was one of the few men she had met who could look down on her and now he looked almost with fellowship and, ‘How did I come to know?’ he said. ‘I can’t remember a time when I didn’t. My grandfather, when he retired from the Army, did a little breeding and training at Mulcahy, our home in Ireland.’
Mulcahy! He is one of those Quillans. Of course! I ought to have guessed, thought Mother Morag, and wondered if John had meant to tell her that. ‘My father did the same, only more so, and my brother decided to do it in a big way. Then… ’ The easiness went and he said abruptly, ‘Came a time when I had to do something – rather quickly; couldn’t – didn’t,’ he corrected himself, ‘go home. There was a trainer here, an old Englishman called Findlay with a small stable. He was good. As a matter of fact I had a horse with him, just for fun. When it wasn’t fun – the old man was past it and needed a manager. He took me on, for a pittance, but I was fond of him. He died the following year and, well, I inherited and built it up more or less.’
‘More or less! Bunny says you have win after win.’
‘Not the big ones.’
‘Why not?’
‘They still won’t give me the cream.’
‘Why?’ The hazel eyes were so direct that he had to answer.
‘Me, I suppose. So – no golden pots.’ He shrugged, but Mother Morag knew how much they meant: the Wellesley Plate: King Emperor’s Cup: the Cooch Behar Cup and, crown of the season, the Viceroy’s Cup, run on Boxing Day, and she laid her hand on John Quillan’s sleeve; it was her left hand and, on its third finger, was her own ring, the plain golden band without crest or insignia, the sign of her wedding to Christ and the Church. ‘No golden pots.’
‘There will be, one day,’ said Mother Morag.
That evening Mother Morag had seldom felt as tired, perhaps because the visit to the Quillan stables had stirred up old memories, but the containers that night had seemed unusually heavy, greasier than ever, more smelly; also she could not get John Quillan out of her mind. ‘There will be, one day,’ she had prophesied.
‘Dear Mother,’ he had smiled at her – for a hard sardonic man, John Quillan’s smile was extraordinarily sweet. ‘Dear Mother. Always hopeful.’
‘Isn’t that the purpose of my calling?’ she had asked, and now, at her window, resting her tired arms on the sill, she wondered what was the quality that made someone, human or animal, one in ten thousand, or in a hundred thousand, stand out, not only because they were extraordinarily gifted, others are that, but because they seemed born with something extra, a magnetism that holds the public eye – and the public love. Suddenly she seemed to smell broom in flower, golden broom, wet grass and horses sweating, to hear larks shrilling. Mother Morag was far from Calcutta; she had fallen asleep and what she had said was not, ‘There will be, one day,’ but, ‘One day there will be One.’