Читать книгу Rough Magic - Lara Prior-Palmer - Страница 17

IX

Evening brought hard rain and wide-mouthed puddles. The competitors reconvened at an Indian restaurant in the city’s southeast, where I sat on a stool next to a gray-haired man named Paddy, an amateur race jockey with a family of four. His Irish accent was a lullaby to my rigid English ears. On my other side was a wooden pillar supporting the sloped ceiling, whose lack of conversation I became grateful for as dinner droned on. The thirty competitors spewed out Derby secrets as they slurped Indian cuisine. I learned a great deal about Indian food and about riding 1,000 kilometers.

“That’s dal, a lentil dish. . . .”

“So, always take the tracks around the mountains—it’s the best route. . . . Phwooof, you won’t handle the spice in this curry.”

Paddy and Chloe, a rider from New Zealand, answered all my questions generously. Maybe they had visions of my clumsy frame falling from a pony the very next day.

As food circulated, I tuned into an American voice—that of a blond girl I’d noticed in the briefing room, where she had sat at the front, arching her body back to laugh during the army doctor’s presentation. She’d drawn widespread attention at the afternoon’s end when an Australian competitor fainted and she remarked, “Well, we’re not all going to make it to the start line.”

Here she was at dinner talking about her Derby coach. A coach? Specifically designed for one of the world’s least-known sporting events? Brought to the dinner table in oral form? I shot looks at bright-eyed Kiwi Chloe.

By now I knew the American’s name—Devan Horn—and was fast separating it from my associations with Devon, the gently rolling English county.

“If I don’t finish the race in six days, I’m not going home,” continued Devan, adding that she would “imprison” herself on the steppe if she didn’t meet her goal. Should we hang our heads low, or decree her abominable? It sounded hard enough to finish within the ten-day limit.

No one was sure whether this Devan actually had a chance of winning or if her talents were limited to the oratory game. I diverted my attention to Chloe’s unassuming discussion of jodhpurs.

“Mine are Lycra.”

“Mine are full chaps,” chipped in Paddy.

What to say? “Mine have padding on the inside seams.”

Devan leaned across the table, replanting herself in the conversation. “Wow, padding? Watch out. You’re gonna get a huge welt pretty quick . . .”

I looked across at her, miffed.

“. . . like this size,” she finished.

Perhaps she was looking out for me. But her lips were pursed as she gestured a shape the size of a mango, emphasizing the enormity of my incoming welt. I retired from dinner and bedded down by my books to dream of rotting legs.

Devan’s tactic was admirable and, dare I say, age-old. On the campaign trail, Genghis Khan’s soldiers lit campfires, mounted dummies on spare horses, and trailed branches and bushes—all to create the impression their numbers were far greater than they actually were. I don’t know if Devan’s intimidation was intentional. It certainly lent me some fear. And if fear had propelled me through the July preparations, it might now be my undoing.