Bonecrack

She was in a box in bay three helping a very small lad to saddle a seventeen hand filly, and with Alessandro at my heels I walked across to talk to her. She came out of the box and gave Alessandro a widening look of speculation.

'Etty,' I said matter-of-factly, 'This is Alessandro Rivera. He has signed his indentures. He starts today. Er, right now, in fact. What can we give him to ride?'

Etty cleared her throat. 'Did you say apprenticed?'

'That's right.'

'But we don't need any more lads,' she protested.

'He won't be doing his two. Just riding exercise.'

She gave me a bewildered look. 'All apprentices do their two.'

'Not this one,' I said briskly. 'How about a horse for him?'

She brought her scattered attention to bear on the immediate problem.

'There's Indigo,' she said doubtfully. 'I had him saddled for myself.'

'Indigo will do beautifully,' I nodded. Indigo was a quiet ten-year-old gelding which Etty often rode as lead horse to the two-year-olds, and upon which she liked to give completely untrained apprentices their first riding lessons. I stifled the urge to show Alessandro up by putting him on something really difficult: couldn't risk damaging expensive property.

'Miss Craig is the head lad,' I told Alessandro. 'And you will take your orders from her.'

He gave her a black unfathomable stare which she returned with uncertainty.

I'll show him where Indigo is,' I reassured her. 'Also the tackroom, and so on.'

'I've given you Cloud Cuckoo-land this morning, Mr Neil,' she said hesitantly. 'Jock will have got him ready.'

I pointed out the tackroom, feedroom, and the general lay-out of the stable to Alessandro and led him back towards the drive.

'I do not take orders from a woman,' he said.

'You'll have to,' I said without emphasis.

'No.'

'Goodbye, then.'

He walked one pace behind me in fuming silence, but he followed me round to the outside boxes and did not peel off towards his car. Indigo's box was the one next to Moonrock's, and he stood there patiently in his saddle and bridle, resting his weight on one leg and looking round lazily when I unbolted his door.

Alessandro's gaze swept him from stem to stem and he turned to me with unrepressed anger.

'I do not ride nags. I wish to ride Archangel.'

'No one lets an apprentice diamond cutter start on the Kohinoor,' I said.

'I can ride any racehorse on earth. I can ride exceptionally well.'

'Prove it on Indigo, then, and I'll give you something better for second lot.'

He compressed his mouth. I looked at him with the complete lack of feeling that always seemed to calm tempers in industrial negotiations; and after a moment or two it worked on him as well. His gaze dropped away from my face; he shrugged, untied Indigo's headcollar, and led him out of his box. He jumped with ease up into the saddle, slipped his feet into the stirrups, and gathered up the reins. His movements were precise and unfussy, and he settled on to old Indigo's back with an appearance of being at home. Without another word he started walking away down the yard, shortening the stirrup leathers as he went, for Etty rode long.

Watching his backview I followed him on foot, while from all the bays the lads led out the horses for the first lot. Down in the collecting paddock they circled round the outer cinder track while Etty on the grass in the centre began the ten minute task of swapping some of the riders. The lads who did the horses did not necessarily ride their own charges out at exercise: each horse had to be ridden by a rider who could at the least control him and at the most improve him. The lowliest riders usually got the task of walking any unfit horses round the paddock at home: Etty seldom let them loose in canters on the Heath.

I joined her in the centre as she referred to her list. She was wearing a bright yellow sou'wester down which the drizzle trickled steadily, and she looked like a diminutive American fireman. The scrawled list in her hand was slowly degenerating into pulp.

'Ginge, get up on Pullitzer,' she said.

Ginge did as he was told in a sulk. Pullitzer was a far cry from Lucky Lindsay, and he considered that he had lost face.

Etty briefly watched Alessandro plod round on Indigo, taking in with a flick of a glance that he could at least manage him with no problems. She looked at me in a baffled questioning way but I merely steered her away from him by asking who she was putting up on our problem colt Traffic.

She shook her head in frustration. 'It'll still have to be Andy- He's a right little devil, that Traffic.

All that breed, you can't trust one of them.' She turned and called to him 'Andy- Get up on Traffic.'

Andy, middle-aged, tiny, wrinkled, could ride the sweetest of training gallops: but when years ago he had been given his chance in races his wits had flown out of the window, and his grasp of tactics was nil. He was given a leg-up on to the dark irritable two-year-old, which jigged and fidgeted and buck-jumped under him without remission.

Etty had switched herself to Lucky Lindsay, who wore a shield over the cut knee and although sound would not be cantering, and in Cloud Cuckoo-land had given me the next best to a hack, a strong five-year-old handicapper up to a man's weight. With everyone mounted, the gates to the Heath were opened, and the whole string wound out on to the walking ground- colts as always in front, fillies behind.

Bound for the Southfield gallops beside the racecourse we turned right out of the gate and walked down behind the other stables which were strung out along the Bury Road. Passed the Jockey Club notice board announcing which training areas could be used that day. Crossed the All, holding up heavy lorries with their windscreen wipers twitching impatiently. Wound across the Severals, along the Watercourse, through St Mary's Square, along The Rows, and so finally to Southfields. No other town in England provided a special series of roads upon which the only traffic allowed was horses; but one could go from one end of Newmarket to the other, only yards behind its bustling High Street, and spend only a fraction of the journey on the public highway.

We were the only string on Southfields that morning, and Etty wasted no time in starting the canters. Up on the road to the racecourse stood the two usual cars, with two men standing out in the damp in the unmistakable position which meant they were watching us through binoculars.

'They never miss a day,' Etty said sourly. 'And if they think we've brought Archangel down here they're in for a disappointment.'

The touts watched steadfastly, though what they could see from half a mile away through unrelenting drizzle was anyone's guess. They were employed not by bookmakers but by racing columnists, who relied on their reports for the wherewithal to fill their pages. I thought it might be a very good thing if I could keep Alessandro out of their attention for as long as possible.

He could handle Indigo right enough, though the gelding was an undemanding old thing within the powers of the Pony Club. All the same, he sat well on him and had quiet hands. 'Here, you,' Etty said, beckoning to him with her whip. 'Come over here.'

To me she said, as she slid to the ground from Lucky Lindsay, 'What is his name?'

'Alessandro.'

'Aless-? Far too long.'

Indigo was reined to a halt beside her. 'You, Alex,' she said. 'Jump down and hold this horse.'

I thought he would explode. His furious face said plainly that no one had any right to call him Alex, and that no one, but no one, was going to order him about. Especially not a woman.

He saw me watching him and suddenly wiped all expression from his own face as if with a sponge. He shook his feet out of the irons, swung his leg agilely forward over Indigo's withers, and slid to the ground facing us. He took the reins of Lucky Lindsay, which Etty held out to him, and gave her those of Indigo. She lengthened the stirrup leathers, climbed up into the saddle, and rode away without comment to give a lead to the six two-year-olds we had brought with us.