‘I see,’ I said.
‘Here it is. This is Greville’s place, right in here.’ He pointed, then turned in between some severe-looking brick pillars and drove up a gravel drive into a stable which looked as if it had been transplanted straight from England.
Arknold himself was already out in the yard talking to a black African whom he introduced as his head boy, Barty. Arknold’s head lad looked as tough as himself: a solid strong-looking man of about thirty, with a short thick neck and unsmiling cold eyes. He was the first black African I had seen, I thought in mild surprise, whose natural expression had not been good-natured.
There was nothing in his manner, however, but civility, and he nodded to Danilo’s greeting with the ordinary acknowledgment of people who meet each other fairly often.
Arknold said that everything was ready, and we started looking round the boxes without more ado. The horses were all like those I had seen on the track; up on their toes, with slightly less bone all round than those at home.
There was nothing at all to distinguish Nerissa’s horses from their stable-mates. They looked as well, had legs as firm, eyes as bright; and they were not all stabled in one block, but were scattered among the rest. Colts in one quadrangle, fillies in another. Everything as it should be, as it normally would be in England.
The lads — the boys — were all young and all black. Like lads the world over they were possessively proud of the horses they cared for, though alongside this pride there emerged a second, quite definite, pattern of behaviour.
They responded to me with smiles, to Arknold with respect, and to Barty with unmistakable fear.
I had no knowledge of what sort of tribal hold he had over them, and I never did find out, but in their wary eyes and their shrinking away at his approach, one could see he held them in a bondage far severer than any British head lad could have imposed.
I thought back to the iron hand my father had once wielded. The lads had jumped to what he said, the apprentices had scurried, and indeed I had wasted no time, but I could not remember that anyone had held him in actual physical fear.
I looked at Barty and faintly shivered. I wouldn’t have liked to work under him, any more than Arknold’s lads did.
‘This is Tables Turned,’ Arknold was saying, approaching the box door of a dark chestnut colt. ‘One of Mrs Cavesey’s. Running at Germiston on Saturday.’
‘I thought I might go to Germiston,’ I said.
‘Great,’ Danilo said with enthusiasm.
Arknold nodded more moderately, and said he would arrange for me to pick up free entrance tickets at the gate.
We went into the box and stood in the usual sort of appreciative pause, looking Tables Turned over from head to foot while Arknold noted how he was looking compared with the day before and I thought of something not too uncomplimentary to say about him.
‘Good neck,’ I said. ‘Good strong shoulders.’ And a bit rat-like about the head, I thought to myself.
Arknold shrugged heavily. ‘I took him down to Natal for the winter season, along with all the others. Had nearly the whole string down there for getting on for three months, like we do every year. We keep them at Summerveld, do you see?’
‘Where is Summerveld?’ I asked.
‘More like what is Summerveld,’ he said. ‘It’s a large area with stabling for about eight hundred horses, at Shongweni, near Durban. We book a block of stables there for the season. They have everything in the area one could need — practice track, restaurants, hostels for the boys, everything. And the school for jockeys and apprentices is there, as well.’
‘But you didn’t do much good, this year?’ I said sympathetically.
‘We won a few races with the others, but Mrs Cavesey’s string... Well, to be frank, there are so many of hers that I can’t afford to have them all go wrong. Does my reputation no good, do you see?’
I did see. I also thought he spoke with less passion than he might have done.
‘This Tables Turned,’ he said, slapping the horse’s rump, ‘on his breeding and his early form he looked a pretty good prospect for the Hollis Memorial Plate in June... that’s one of the top two-year-old races... and he ran just like you saw Chink do at Newmarket. Blew up five hundred metres from home and finished exhausted, though I’d have sworn he was as fit as any of them.’
He nodded to the boy holding the horse’s head, turned on his heel, and strode out of the box. Further down the line we reached another of Nerissa’s, who evoked an even deeper display of disgust.
‘Now this colt, Medic, he should have been a proper world-beater. I thought once that he’d win the Natal Free Handicap in July, but in the end I never sent him to Clairwood at all. His four races before that were too shameful.’
I had a strong feeling that his anger was half genuine. It puzzled me. He certainly did seem to care that the horses had all failed, yet I was still sure that he not only knew why they had but had engineered it himself.
With Barty in attendance, pointing out omissions with a stabbing black forefinger to every intimidated stable-boy, we finished inspecting every one of the string, and afterwards went across to the house for a drink.
‘All of Mrs Cavesey’s lot are now counted as three-year-olds, of course,’ Arknold said. ‘The date for the age-change out here is August 1st, not January 1st as with you.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘There isn’t much good racing here on the Rand tracks during August. Nothing much to interest you, I dare say.’
‘I find it all extremely interesting,’ I said truthfully. ‘Will you go on running Mrs Cavesey’s string as three-year-olds?’
‘As long as she cares to go on paying their training fees,’ he said gloomily.
‘And if she decides to sell?’
‘She’d get very little for them now.’
‘If she sold them, would you buy any of them?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer immediately as he was showing us the way into his office, a square room full of papers, form books, filing cabinets and hard upright chairs. Arknold’s guests were not, it seemed, to be made so comfortable that they outstayed their limited welcome.
I repeated my question unwisely, and received the full glare of the Arknold displeasure.
‘Look, Mister,’ he said fiercely. ‘I don’t like what you’re suggesting. You are saying that maybe I lose races so I can buy the horses cheap, then win races when I have them myself, and then sell them well for stud. That’s what you’re saying, Mister.’
‘I didn’t say anything of the sort,’ I protested mildly.
‘It’s what you were thinking.’
‘Well,’ I agreed. ‘It was a possibility. Looking at it from outside, objectively, wouldn’t that have occurred to you, too?’
He still glowered, but the antagonism slowly subsided. I wished I could decide whether he had been angry because I had insulted him, or because I had come too near the truth.
Danilo, who had been tagging along all the way making sunny comments to no one in particular, tried to smooth his ruffled friend.
‘Aw, c’mon Greville, he meant no harm.’
Arknold gave me a sour look.
‘Hey, c’mon. Aunt Nerissa probably told him to poke around for reasons, if he got the chance. You can’t blame her, when she’s pouring all that good money into bad horses, now can you, Greville?’
Arknold made a fair pretence at being pacified and offered us a drink. Danilo smiled hugely in relief and said it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all, for us to quarrel.
I sipped my drink and looked at the two of them. Glossy young golden boy. Square surly middle-aged man. They both drank, and watched me over the rims of the glasses.
I couldn’t see an inch into either of their souls.
Back at the Iguana Rock there was a hand-delivered letter waiting for me. I read it upstairs in my room, standing by the window which looked out over the gardens, the tennis courts, and the great African outdoors. The light had begun fading and would soon go quickly, but the positive handwriting was still easy to see.