uniformed chauffeur standing by the bonnet.
'Take over, Etty, would you?' I said.
I walked up through the yard and out into the drive. The chauffeur folded his arms and his mouth like barricades against fraternisation. I stopped a few paces away from him and looked towards the inside of the car.
One of the rear doors, the one nearest to me, opened. A small black-shod foot appeared, and then a dark trouser leg, and then, slowly straightening, the whole man.
It was clear at once who he was, although the resemblance to his father began and ended with the autocratic beak of the nose and the steadfast stoniness of the black eyes. The son was a little shorter, and emaciated instead of chubby. He had sallow skin that looked in need of a sun-tan, and strong thick black hair curving in springy curls round his ears. Over all he wore an air of disconcerting maturity, and the determination in the set of his mouth would have done credit to a steel trap. Eighteen he might be, but it was a long time since he had been a boy.
I guessed that his voice would be like his father's; definite, unaccented, and careful.
It was.
'I am Rivera,' he announced. 'Alessandro.'
'Good evening,' I said, and intended it to sound polite, cool, and unimpressed.
He blinked.
'Rivera,' he repeated. 'I am Rivera.'
'Yes,' I agreed. 'Good evening.'
He looked at me with narrowing attention. If he expected from me a lot of grovelling, he was not going to get it. And something of this message must have got across to him from my attitude, because he began to look faintly surprised and a shade more arrogant.
'I understand you wish to become a jockey,' I said.
'Intend.'
I nodded casually, 'No one succeeds as a jockey without determination,' I said, and made it sound patronising.
He detected the flavour immediately. He didn't like it. I was glad. But it was a small pin-pricking resistance that I was showing, and in his place I would have taken it merely as evidence of frustrated surrender.
'I am accustomed to succeed,' he said.
'How very nice,' I replied dryly.
It sealed between us an absolute antagonism. I felt him shift gear into overdrive, and it seemed to me that he was mentally gathering himself to fight on his own account a battle he believed his father had already won.
'I will start at once,' he said.
'I am in the middle of evening stables,' I said matter of-factly. 'If you will wait, we will discuss your position when I have finished.' I gave him the politeness of an inclination of the head which I would have given to anybody, and without waiting around for him to throw any more of his slight weight about, I turned smoothly away and walked without haste back to Etty.
When we had worked our way methodically round the whole stable, discussing briefly how each horse was progressing, and planning the work programme for the following morning, we came finally to the four outside boxes, three only busy now, and the fourth full of Moonrock's absence.
The Mercedes still stood on the gravel, with both Rivera and the chauffeur sitting inside it. Etty gave them a look of regulation curiosity and asked who they were.
'New customer,' I said economically.
She frowned in surprise. 'But surely you shouldn't have kept him waiting!'
'This one,' I reassured her with private, rueful irony, 'will not go away.'
But Etty knew how to treat new clients, and making them wait in their car was not it. She hustled me along the last three boxes and anxiously pushed me to return to the Mercedes. Tomorrow, no doubt, she would not be so keen.
I opened the rear door and said to him, 'Come along in to the office.'
He climbed out of the car and followed me without a word. I switched on the fan heater, sat in Margaret's chair behind the desk, and pointed to the swivel armchair in front of it. He made no issue of it, but merely did as I suggested.
'Now,' I said in my best interviewing voice, 'You want to start tomorrow.'
'Yes.'
'In what capacity?'
He hesitated. 'As a jockey.'
'Well, no,' I said reasonably. 'There are no races yet. The season does not start for about four weeks.'
'I know that,' he said stiffly.
'What I meant was, do you want to work in the stable? Do you want to look after two horses, as the others do?'
'Certainly not.'
Then what?'
'I will ride the horses at exercise two or three times a day. Every day. I will not clean their boxes or carry their food. I wish only to ride.'
Highly popular, that was going to be, with Etty and the other lads. Apart from all else, I was going to have a shop floor management confrontation, or in plain old terms, a mutiny, on my hands in no time at all. None of the other lads was going to muck out and groom a horse for the joy of seeing Rivera ride it.
However, all I said was, 'How much experience, exactly, have you had so far?'
'I can ride,' he said flatly.
'Racehorses?'
'I can ride.'
This was getting nowhere. I tried again. 'Have you ever ridden in any sort of race?'
'I have ridden in amateur races.'
'Where?'
'In Italy, and in Germany.'
'Have you won any?'
He gave me a black stare. 'I have won two.'
I supposed that that was something. At least it suggested that he could stay on. Winning itself, in his case, had no significance. His father was the sort to buy the favourite and nobble the opposition.
'But you want now to become a professional?'
'Yes.'
'Then I'll apply for a licence for you.'
'I can apply myself.'
I shook my head. 'You will have to have an apprentice licence, and I will have to apply for it for you.'
'I do not wish to be an apprentice.'
I said patiently, 'Unless you become an apprentice you will be unable to claim a weight allowance. In England in flat races the only people who can claim weight allowances are apprentices. Without a weight allowance the owners of the horses will all resist to the utmost any suggestion that you should ride. Without a weight allowance, in fact, you might as well give up the whole idea.'
'My father-' he began.
'Your father can threaten until he's blue in the face,' I interrupted. 'I cannot force the owners to employ you, I can only persuade. Without a weight allowance, they will never be persuaded.'
He thought it over, his expression showing nothing.
'My father,' he said, 'told me that anyone could apply for a licence and that there was no need to be apprenticed.'
Technically, that is true.'
'But practically, it is not.' It was a statement more than a question: he had clearly understood what I had said.
I began to speculate about the strength of his intentions. It certainly seemed possible that if he read the Deed
