Bonecrack

Alessandro said like a throttled volcano, 'I am not going to take any more orders from that woman.'

'Don't be so bloody silly,' I said.

He looked up at me. The fine rain had drenched his black hair so that the curls had tightened and clung close to his head. With the arrogant nose, the back tilted skull, the close curling hair, he looked like a Roman statue come to life.

'Don't talk to me like that. No one talks to me like that.'

Cloud Cuckoo-land stood patiently, pricking his ears to watch some seagulls fly across the Heath.

I said, 'You are here because you want to be. No one asked you to come, no one will stop you going. But just so long as you do stay here, you will do what Miss Craig says, and you will do what I say, and you will do it without arguing. Is that clear?'

'My father will not let you treat me like this.' He was rigid with the strength of his outrage.

'Your father,' I said coldly, 'must be overjoyed to have a son who needs to shelter behind his skirts.'

'You will be sorry,' he threatened furiously.

I shrugged. 'Your father said I was to give you good horses to ride in races. Nothing was mentioned about bowing down to a spoiled little tin god.'

'I will tell him-'

'Tell him what you like. But the more you run to him the less I'll think of you.'

'I don't care what you think of me,' he said vehemently.

'You're a liar,' I said flatly, and he gave me a long tight-lipped stare until he turned abruptly away. He led Lucky Lindsay ten paces off, and stopped and watched the canters that Etty was directing. Every line of the slender shape spoke of injured pride and flaming resentment, and I wondered whether his father would indeed think that I had gone too far. And if I had, what was he going to do about it?

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.'