Bonecrack

Mentally shrugging off the evil until the day thereof, I tried to make some assessment of the two-year-olds' relative abilities. Scoff as people might about me taking over my father's licence, I had found that childhood skills came back after nineteen years as naturally as riding a bicycle; and few lonely children could grow up in a racing stable without learning the trade from the muck-heap up. I'd had the horses out of doors for company, and the furniture indoors, and I reckoned if I could build one business out of the dead wood I could also try to keep things rolling with the live muscles. But for only as long, I reminded myself, as it took me to get rid of Alessandro.

Etty came back after the canters and changed horses again.

'Give me a leg-up,' she said briskly to Alessandro; for Lucky Lindsay like most young thoroughbreds did not like riders climbing up to mount them.

For a moment I thought the whole pantomime was over. Alessandro drew himself up to his full weight, which topped Etty's by at least two inches, and dispatched at her a glare which should have cremated her. Etty genuinely didn't notice.

'Come on,' she said impatiently, and held out her leg backwards, bent at the knee.

Alessandro threw a glance of desperation in my direction, then took a visibly deep breath, looped Indigo's reins over his arm, and put his two hands under Etty's shin. He gave her quite a respectable leg-up, though I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been the first time in his life that he had done it.

I carefully didn't laugh, didn't sneer, didn't show that I thought there was anything to notice. Alessandro swallowed his capitulation in private. But there was nothing to indicate that it would be permanent.

We rode back through the town and into the yard, where I gave Cloud Cuckoo-land back to Jock and walked into the office to see Margaret. She had the mushroom heater blowing full blast, but I doubted that I would have properly dried through by the time we pulled out again for second lot.

'Morning,' she said economically.

I nodded, half smiled, slouched into the swivel chair. 'I've opened the letters again- was that right?' she said.

'Absolutely. And answer them yourself, if you can.'

She looked surprised. 'Mr Griffon always dictates everything.'

'Anything you have to ask about, ask. Anything I need to know, tell me. Anything else, deal with it yourself.'

'All right,' she said, and sounded pleased.

I sat in my father's chair, and stared down at his boots, which I had usurped, and thought seriously about what I had seen in his account books. Alessandro wasn't the only trouble the stable was running into.

There was a sudden crash as the door from the yard was forcibly opened, and Etty burst into the office like a stampeding ballistic missile.

'That bloody boy you've taken on- He'll have to go. I'm not standing for it. I'm not.'

She looked extremely annoyed, with eyes blinking fiercely and her mouth pinched into a slit.

'What has he done?' I asked resignedly.

'He's gone off in that stupid white car and left Indigo in his box still with his saddle and bridle on. George says he just got down off Indigo, led him into the box, and came out and shut the door, and got into the car and the chauffeur drove him away. Just like that!' She paused for breath. 'And who does he think is going to take the saddle off and dry the rain off Indigo and wash out his feet and rug him up and fetch his hay and water and make his bed?'

'I'll go out and see George,' I said. 'And ask him to do it.'

'I've asked him already,' Etty said furiously. 'But that's not the point. We're not keeping that wretched little Alex. Not one more minute.'

She glanced at me with her chin up, making an issue of it. Like all head lads she had a major say in the hiring and firing of the help. I had not consulted her over the hiring of Alessandro, and clear as a bell she was telegraphing that I was to acknowledge her authority and get rid of him.

'I'm afraid that we'll have to put up with him, Etty,' I said sympathetically. 'And hope to teach him better ways.'

'He must go,' she insisted vehemently.

'Alessandro's father,' I lied sincerely, 'is paying through the nose to have his son taken on here as an apprentice. It is very much worth the stable's while financially to put up with him. I'll have a talk with him when he comes back for second lot and see if I can get him to be more reasonable.'

'I don't like the way he stares at me,' Etty said, unmollified.

'I'll ask him not to.'

'Ask!' Etty said exasperatedly. 'Whoever heard of asking an apprentice to behave with respect to the head lad.'

'I'll tell him,' I said.

'And tell him to stop being so snooty with the other lads, they are already complaining. And tell him he is to put his horse straight after he has ridden it, the same as all the others.'

I'm sorry, Etty. I don't think he'll put his horse straight. We'll have to get George to do it regularly. For a bonus, of course.'

Etty said angrily, 'It's not a yard man's job to act as a- a- servant- to an apprentice. It just isn't right.'

'I know, Etty,' I agreed. 'I know it isn't right. But Alessandro is not an ordinary apprentice, and it might be easier all round if you could let all the other lads know that his father is paying for him to be here, and that he has some romantic notion of wanting to be a jockey, which he'll get out of his system soon enough, and when he has gone, we can all get back to normal.'

She looked at me uncertainly. 'It isn't a proper apprenticeship if he doesn't look after his horses.'

'The details of an apprenticeship are a matter for agreement between the contracting parties,' I said regretfully. 'If I agree that he doesn't have to do his two, then he doesn't have to. And I don't really approve of him not doing them, but there you are, the stable will be richer if he doesn't.'

Etty had calmed down but she was not pleased. 'I think you might have consulted me before agreeing to all this.'

'Yes, Etty. I'm very sorry.'

'And does your father know about it?'

'Of course,' I said.

'Oh well, then.' She shrugged. 'If your father wants it, I suppose we must make the best of it. But it won't be at all good for discipline.'

The lads will be used to him within a week.'

'They won't like it if he looks like getting any chance in races which they think should be theirs.'

'The season doesn't start for a month,' I said soothingly. 'Let's see how he makes out, shall we?'

And put off the day when he got the chances however bad he was, and however much they should have gone to someone else.

Etty put him on a quiet four-year-old mare which didn't please him but was a decided step up from old Indigo. He had received with unyielding scorn my request that he should stop staring so disquietingly at Etty, and sneered at my suggestion that he should let it be understood that his father was paying for him to be there.

'It is not true,' he said superciliously.

'Believe me,' I said with feeling, 'if it were true, you wouldn't be here tomorrow. Not if he paid a pound a minute.'

'Why not?'

'Because you are upsetting Miss Craig and upsetting the other lads, and a stable seething with resentment is not going to do its best by its horses. In fact, if you want the horses here to win races for you, you'll do your best to get along without arousing ill-feeling in the staff.'

He had given me the black stare and hadn't answered, but I noticed that he looked steadfastly at the ground when Etty detailed him to the mare. He rode her quietly along towards the back of the string and completed his allotted half-speed four-furlong canter without incident. On our return to the yard George met him and took the mare away to the box, and Alessandro without a backward glance walked into his Mercedes and was driven away.

The truce lasted for two more mornings. On each of them Alessandro arrived punctually for the first exercise, disappeared presumably for breakfast, came back for the second lot, and departed for the rest of the day. Etty gave him middling horses to ride, all of which he did adequately enough to wring from her the grudging comment: 'If he doesn't give us any more trouble, I suppose it could be worse.'