Airs Above the Ground Read Online Free PDF

recently. He was Colonel Podhajsky’s favourite. I don’t know which is the top stallion now, I think it’s Maestoso Mercurio. There, that’s him, and that one’s Maestoso Alea – you can see their heads are similar, coming from the same strain . . . That’s Conversano Bonavista – he was a favourite of the last Director’s. Look, isn’t this a marvellous photograph? That’s Neapolitano Petra doing the
courbette
; I believe it’s the most difficult leap of the lot. There was some story, I think it was about him; they were going to present him to some Eastern potentate or something, for a compliment, but his rider killed him, and then shot himself so they shouldn’t be parted.’
    ‘Good heavens. Is it true?’
    ‘I don’t know. They don’t put that sort of thing in any of the books about the stallions, but I heard quite a lot about them from an Austrian trainer who was in England for years, and used to visit my grandfather. I’ve probably got the story wrong, but actually, I wouldn’t be surprised. You know how you can get to feel about horses . . . and when you’ve worked asthese men do, every day with a horse for – oh, lord, for twenty years, perhaps . . .’
    ‘I believe you. There’s a dark one, Tim. I thought they were all white?’
    ‘He’s a bay, actually, Neapolitano Ancona. They used to be all colours, but they’ve gradually bred the colours out, all except the bay, and now there’s always one bay in the show by tradition.’
    ‘Where do they get their names? That’s two Neapolitanos and two Maestosos.’
    ‘They all come from six original stallions. They take their first name from the stallion, and the second from their dam.’
    I said with genuine respect: ‘You seem to know an awful lot about them.’
    He hesitated, flushed, and then said flatly: ‘I’m going to get a job there if they’ll have me. That’s why I came.’
    ‘Are there really six sorts of cancer?’ asked Tim.
    ‘Are there what?’ After his last bombshell, I had not felt called upon to make, or even capable of offering, any comment, and a pause had ensued, during which the flight hostess announced in German and English that we were approaching Vienna, and would we kindly fasten our seat belts and extinguish our cigarettes . . .
    We dropped out of cloud, and, it seemed close below us now, flat, cropped stubble fields of Austria unrolled and tilted. Somewhere ahead in a hazy summer’s evening was Vienna, with her woods and her grey, girdling river.
    And now Timothy appeared to be distracting me with cheerful small talk from the approaching terrors of landing.
    ‘I meant the six sorts of cancer you can get from smoking.’
    ‘Oh, I remember,’ I said. ‘Well, I expect there are, but don’t take it to heart, if you’re worrying about your father. I dare say he can take care of himself.’
    ‘I wasn’t worrying about him. At least, not in the sense you mean.’
    There was something in his voice which told me that this was not, after all, merely a bit of distracting small talk. On the contrary, the carefully casual remark dangled in front of me like bait.
    I rose to it. ‘Then what are you worrying about?’
    ‘Is your husband meeting you at the airport?’
    ‘No. He – I’m to get in touch with him after I get there. I’ve booked a room at a hotel. So if I may, I’ll beg a lift into town with your father and you. Unless, of course, you want to shake off your nursemaid before you meet him?’
    But he didn’t smile. ‘Actually, he’s not meeting me.’
    ‘But your mother said—’
    ‘I know she did. But he’s not. I – I told her he was, it made it easier. It was a lie.’
    ‘I see. Well, then—’ Something in his expression stopped me. ‘Does it matter all that much?’ I asked.
    ‘That’s not all.’ He cleared his throat. ‘It’s – I thought it would be all right, but now it’s come to the point, I’m beginning to wonder. I dare say,’ he added with a sudden, fierce bitterness