The Dark Horse by Rumer Godden Read Free Book Online Page A

quay of King George’s Dock while cranes swung the horses ashore.
    â€˜There’s one mitigating thing about Darkie,’ Michael had told Annette. ‘He’ll be going to John Quillan.’
    â€˜John Quillan?’ Annette was startled.
    â€˜He’s Leventine’s trainer.’
    â€˜
John?
A trainer in Calcutta!
John!
But isn’t he in the Queen’s Own?’
    â€˜Was. Should have had his majority by now.’
    â€˜John has left the regiment?’ Annette, herself a Colonel’s daughter, could not believe it; not the John Quillan she had known in her twenties, danced with, ridden with, watched play polo. And, ‘Why?’ demanded Annette. ‘Why?’
    â€˜There was some blow up. Pity. John was the younger son, but he was sitting pretty. Some exalted uncle or godfather must have been watching over him – expect gave him an allowance. I believe that when it happened John was A.D.C. to the Governor of Bengal.’
    â€˜Calcutta in the winter. Darjeeling in the hot months.’ Annette knew the ritual.
    â€˜Yes. Could have been one of the chosen ones, silly idiot, until… ’
    Â 
    John Quillan could remember that day. The Governor’s Military Secretary, Colonel Maxwell, had sent for him.
    â€˜Sit down, John.’
    â€˜Thank you, Max.’
    â€˜His Excellency,’ – the Colonel did not say H.E., which showed the formality of the occasion – ‘His Excellency has decided that you should go on immediate leave.
Home
leave,’ the Colonel emphasised that point, ‘and on your return you will rejoin your regiment.’
    Silence. Then, ‘I don’t have to tell you why,’ said Colonel Maxwell.
    John had met Dahlia at a party, a ‘B’ party. ‘In this salubrious city,’ Robert Kerr, a fellow A.D.C. had said to John, then a newcomer to Calcutta, ‘there are A and B girls, the latter for the hot weather only – naturally most of ours go Home then.’
    â€˜I see,’ said John. ‘What happens at the party?’
    â€˜Usual thing. They behave very well and we behave very badly and then they behave worse.’
    Dahlia, then eighteen, had been brought by her cousin, cajoled into it – ‘They need more girls’ – and had sat terrified in a corner in her overbright cheap net dress, a little fish out of water; indeed, every now and then she gave a little gasp and her eyes, not confident, nor even interested, were like a sea anemone’s that drop their fringes against the next wave they see coming.
    John had taken pity on her. ‘You’re not enjoying this.’
    â€˜Oh yess. Yess,’ but he knew she meant, ‘No, no.’
    â€˜Let me take you home.’
    A sharper gasp. Dahlia had been warned about those five little words.
    â€˜You mean – my home?’
    â€˜I mean your home,’ and she had trusted him.
    â€˜At least,’ he told Mother Morag, ‘she has trusted me ever since.’
    Even then John had been disgustedly against ‘the hypocrisy and callousness of this hateful city,’ he told Mother Morag. ‘The endless protocol and snobbishness of Government House; come to think of it, of my own regiment,’ and he had defiantly made friends with Dahlia’s father, an Irish Eurasian mechanic on the railway who had married an Indian woman. John had liked Patrick McGinty and his big calm wife and was soon openly calling for Dahlia and protecting her at the parties to which he still went – ‘from monsoon boredom, I suspect.’ Dahlia had also been wonderfully pretty, with a dew of innocence that touched John’s heart and often, in his car, they escaped into the night where, between deluges of rain, the drenched spaces of the Maidan were dense and dark as velvet and there was no-one to see them except, when the clouds parted, stars big as sequins of Indian gold, and, nestling in his arms, Dahlia was sweet and,