The Dark Horse by Rumer Godden

that lived in the yard, and formed a grave and kindly friendship with the bandar-log and accepted their offerings of stolen sugar and sweetmeats out of the bazaar: jilipis, sticky sugar rings dripping with sweetness, coconut ice or sandesh – thick white toffee. Above all he liked the attention. ‘He must have been a Maharajah,’ said John. ‘A pasha with slaves.’ His muscles began to harden, his coat to glow. His appetite was prodigious.
    The fact that Dark Invader’s food cost three times Sadiq’s total pay, four times Ali’s, did not worry them at all. By the standard of their trade they were well off and had prestigious and steady work at Quillan’s where each was given a blanket, a thick coat of serge, a brown woollen jersey for the winter and two cotton shirts for summer, and was allowed to wear a conical skull-cap with a soft cloth turban wound round it in the Quillan maroon. Sadiq lived and slept on the verandah in front of his horse’s box. Twice a day he handed over for an hour to Ali while he went to cook and eat his food, and five times a day he turned his face towards Mecca and, as a good Muslim, made his prayers, standing, bowing, kneeling, touching his forehead to the ground as he muttered them. Ali, when Sadiq came back, did the same.
    Sadiq was a happy man but, ‘Eighteen rupees a month!’ Ted exploded. ‘That’s less than seven shillings a week!’ It was enough for Sadiq; food for the month cost six rupees, twelve annas, so that ten, sometimes eleven rupees would be sent by money order each month to his family; once a year he took a month’s leave and travelled to Bihar to see them. ‘That’s a rum go,’ said Ted, trying to think of himself parted from Ella for eleven months of the year and, what was more, ‘I think this year I no go,’ said Sadiq.
    â€˜But you
must
.
You wife, children… ’ but, ‘Not go,’ said Sadiq and smoothed Dark Invader’s mane. ‘I stay him.’
    The co-operation between the two – necessary, Ted had to admit – was complete; the horse’s great handsome head would come down to be groomed, to have the head-collar put on, to accept the bridle. He had never been as confident and tractable. With Ted to ride him, Sadiq always near, and the wonderful ‘hart molesh’ that was beginning to disperse that spot of tenderness, pain and fear seemed to have vanished. ‘Come on a marvel,’ Ted wrote to Michael Traherne.
    â€˜But he hasn’t raced yet,’ said John.

IV
    For four months of the year Bengal’s cold weather, or winter, is halcyon, ‘for those with warm clothes,’ said Sister Ignatius. As November turned to December, when the string went down in the morning, mists swirled round the horses’ legs and lay so thick over the Maidan that John had difficulty tracking the course through his binoculars. By the time the horses had finished the evening parade, it was dusk, the brief Indian twilight called by the Bengalis ‘cow-dust time’, because it was then that the cattle were driven home; almost at once the light faded, it was night and all along the stalls hand lanterns were lit; though there was electricity, the syces needed the lanterns to look at hooves, and deep into the food tubs to see how much of the feed had been eaten or left. The horses were warmly rugged, then bedded down for the night. John issued extra blankets for the men.
    He also sent a warm achkan, a long coat, to the Convent for Gulab. ‘We are issuing new ones for the men and I thought you could use this.’ He sent too a horse rug for Solomon. ‘You needn’t thank me. It’s patched.’ ‘Patched or not, it is a Godsend,’ wrote Mother Morag. The Sisters wore their long black cloaks and hoods made of sturdy French frieze when they went ‘collecting’, and for early prayer and Mass. ‘But I hardly like to wear