Mystery Horse Possesses Danish Blood …
Harry Bailey of Poor Petitioners, Cock & Crown, East End, how right you were! Fly up to Aldington, Mr. Bailey, fly to Aldington with your poor lame sister, for Sidney Slyter says he needs you now! Five pounds? Not half enough, I’d say! Sidney — God’s silent servant — Sidney Slyter has his brimming glass, his fags, lighter embossed with crop and stirrup, his hotel beds, and ladies to converse with in the bars; has his hard sporting eyes red-rimmed or not and under his titfor leaves of information about the horses ever growing bone from bone and blood into blood. And Sidney Slyter’s got God’s own careless multitude to shelter in enjoyment and the luck of sport. But Mr. Bailey, my friend, it took you puzzling over the problem while rubbing your dog’s worn ear and hearing the dreams of your ever-innocent lame partner to perceive directly the horror at the end of our journey, you to phrase the spoils of our fate! The horse will win … the horse will win. … Amazing, Mr. Bailey, just amazing. … Because Eddie Reeves came ringing through my wires at 4 A.M. and what he read me was an accolade proper for the obituary of the King of the Turf: He’s run the Golden before, Sidney. Hear me Sidney? Entered in The Golden Bowl three times and three times the winner. Hear me Sidney? Then the dates; then Eddie coughing through the dawn; then the minutes of each winning race. Then reading on: Draftsman by Emperor’s Hand out of Shallow Draft by Amulet; Castle Churl by Draftsman out of Likely Castle by Cold Masonry; Rock Castle by Castle Churl out of Words on Rock by Plebeian — Bred by the Prince of Denmark, Sidney, bred by the Prince and commanded to win by the Prince and ordained to win by the Prince and forebears of that line, too. And by his order — just to get the royal stamp on him, Sidney — the King’s own surgeon transplanted a bone fragment from the skull of Emperor’s Hand into Rock Castle’s skull. Then presented by the Prince of Denmark to Lady Harvey-Harrow on her sixteenth birthday. The horse will win, Sidney, the horse will win. … Rigid; fixed; a prison of heritage in the victorious form; the gray shape that forever rages out round the ring of painted horses with the band music piping and clacking; indomitable. And somebody knew all this already, and it wasn’t Mr. Banks. But who? Sidney Slyter wants to know: and Sidney Slyter wants to know what’s the matter with Mr. Michael Banks. …
It was 4 A.M. in the darkness that had begun with bees and warbling and the fading of bells, and Thick had used the ropes. Now she was bound, her wrists were tied together to the bedpost of brass, and Thick was snoring. He had somehow got her back into the white gown but had left the ties unfastened. It hardly covered her and despite the pain she could feel the gauzy touch of the old hat against one bare leg. Despite the darkness of the night she could faintly see the shreds of the long tasseled gown which he had ripped with his knife, muttering, “… Try to get big Thick in trouble, eh, try to make Thick look a fool. …” and had strewed viciously about the room, across the floor. A torn piece of the bodice was hanging over the closet door. And the little steamer trunk — how desperately she had found it, rummaged through the clothes of the long-dead woman. Cursing her, he had locked the little steamer in the cellar. Locked all escape away, then beaten her. And she had gone unconscious for an hour, for several hours, but there was no sleep for her. A bed she could not know— upon it violence that seemed not meant for her — this hour in which she could not sleep, arms drawn back and flesh captured with Thick’s rope, so tightly that her hands were cold: she knew now the hunger of the abducted, knew how the poor girls felt when they were seized.
Four A.M. and she was one of the abducted. She wanted to stand at the window, hear a voice through the wall, find a flower pressed between the pages of a book, eat from a plate she recognized. But there was only the darkness smelling so unfamiliar and the ropes that cut and burned. She knew there was enormous penalty for what they had done to her — but she could not conceive of that, did not require that: she only wanted a little comfort, a bit of charity; with the awfulness, the unknowable, removed. Once when a girl — and she had been a girl — they had sent her away somewhere, and now the soreness, the sleeplessness, the sensation of invisible bruises reminded her of the hearth with an uneasy fire on it and an old woman threading buttons, an endless number of buttons — blue and white and violet — on a string. She was a child anything could be done to — and now, now a docile captive. And when Monica, the little girl, awoke about this hour with her nightmares, Margaret took them to be her own bad dreams, as if in soothing the child she could soothe herself.
But it wasn’t soothing she wanted, it was a task or other to do. She hadn’t believed Thick’s beating, really, though it put her out for an hour or more. Later, lying strapped to the bed, she told herself it was what she might have expected: it was something done to abducted girls, that’s all. She thought she had read a piece about a beating. And yet when it came it surprised her. Though thinking now, listening, looking back through the dark, she realized — this despite the article she had read — it was something they couldn’t even show in films.
Because his sweat smelled raw when he tied her. And because after that, after he had grunted making the knots and cursed carrying the trunk down, he had become silent and watched her for a while, his precious radio telling them the time and starting a symphony, and then he had told her he might have to tape her mouth and she hardly heard it, listening to the low music and still feeling the hurt in her wrists and to herself considering that never before had her hands been tied.
And he remarked: “You don’t look half bad. Like that. …”
But he hadn’t forgiven her, because it was then that he stepped nearly out of sight across the room and she, hurting in the armpits as well as wrists, decided to try just how much freedom she really had — with only her arms drawn back to the post — and flexed a knee, the other knee, moved one foot far on the mattress and rolled her hips as much as she could. Until something told her she was being watched by Thick.
Then he came at her with the truncheon in his hand— it made her think of a bean bag, an amusement for a child — and wearing only his undervest and the trousers with the top two buttons open. He was in his stockinged feet and cigarette smoke was still coming out of his nose. She could see the dial of the little dry-cell radio in his glasses.
“I’ve beat girls before,” whispering, holding the truncheon in the dark, bracing himself with one fat hand against the wall, “and I don’t leave bruises. When it’s done you won’t be able to tell, you see. Plenty of girls— maids, the nude down in Robin’s Egg Blue, the tarts who run the stitching machines, a kid named Sally. Used to operate in Violet Lane, I did. Gaslight scenes is my attraction. And if I happened to be without my weapon,” raising a little the whiteness, the rubber, “the next best thing is a newspaper rolled and soaking wet. But here, get the feel of it, Miss.” He reached down for her and she felt the truncheon nudging against her thigh, gently, like a man’s cane in a crowd.
“It ain’t so bad,” he whispered.
She was lying face up and hardly trembling, not offering to pull her leg away. The position she was tied in made her think of exercises she had heard were good for the figure. She smelled gun oil — the men who visited the room had guns — and a sour odor inside the mattress. Perhaps the little one called Sparrow had left it there. Or even Thick, now standing beside her in the dark, because Thick liked to sleep on it in the afternoons. She remembered how earlier he had slept and how, after she and the child returned to the table, Monica had found a jack, as she thought she might, and won the game. And now, hearing the music, the symphony that old men were listening to in clubs, now she no longer would be able to play with Monica. She cared for nothing that Thick could do, but she would miss the games. There was a shadow on the wall like a rocking chair; her fingers were going to sleep; she thought that a wet newspaper would be unbearable.