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“Turned on me for no reason,” I say, or venture rather than say, to test if what I’m telling him is being accepted as fact. I put plenty of puzzlement in my voice. Plenty of frowning on my face. I shrug, offer up my palms during the telling.
    Churchill wants The Duke to know that the crux of the issue is respect. Respect for him, his skills and services as a horseman. But he has said his piece and awaits The Duke’s response which he hopes will be firm action against this mad son he spawned.
    The Duke asks me in a whisper, “Does he have a snitcher on you, do you think?”
    “That must be it,” I reply.
    Churchill pulls his bottom lip down to show a bleeding wound. He mumbles, “Respect. Not a punch in the face.” He spits blood-spittle to the ground. “Not deliberately throwing a hard-working man over a horse when all he wants to do is mount it and earn his living.”
    The Duke turns his back to Churchill, and whispers, “Did you do what he says you did?”
    “No,” I say, as if offended.
    “No?”
    “No,” I assure him. “ He’s the mad one.”
    “The blood in his mouth came from where?”
    “He fell off Sensible. He was probably drunk.”
    Churchill snaps his arms to his sides. “I heard that. That’s a lie.” He quick-steps up to The Duke. “Smell my breath. Not a whiff of alcohol, I can promise you.”
    The Duke turns his face away, grimacing.
    Churchill speaks now in his toffiest style, a straight-backed stance, a proud pucker of the mouth: “Call your good lady out here, if you please. Let her smell my breath. Let her discover her son’s mad, mad, mad.”
    The Duke says he will do no such thing. “Just calm down and drive away home for the day. Let the dust settle.”
    Churchill bows his head and spits onto the concrete. “So that’s it. Blood’s thicker than water. Believe him over me. Fair enough. If that’s the way it is. Goodbye. To hell with the lot of you.”
    He swivels on his toes and stoops toward his car, muttering that I’m a mad, useless good-for-nothing, and he doesn’t know why he bothers lending his services to people without an ounce of respect for his talents or a brain in their fucking heads.
    The Duke takes a long, sighing breath and lets it out and says, quietly, slowly, “You should have hit him one.”
    “Should I?”
    “Serve him right with all his to-do.”
    This could be a trap. Is he trying to trick me into confessing? He has just lost the man who breaks his horses. What a fuss in a small town to find a new one. I best say I kept my temper no matter how much Churchill provoked me.
    Or would The Duke prefer to hear I held my own? If so, now’s the time to say so. And to say it I will need an ashamed look to me for having lied. Innocence in the eyes, a bowed head and a soft pleading in my voice: “It all happened so fast. I hope I didn’t hit him.”
    The Duke stares at me. His jaw bones grind in his face. Then he raises an eyebrow, amused.
    I don’t remember the details, I tell him, and rub my forehead in a sham-confused state.
    Churchill’s car wheezes without starting. Does it again. When the engine catches, it belches like a mock animal. It has to be let moan and fart to get going.
    Feet has come from the house to see what the commotion is. She’s been disturbed reddening her toenails with the mini brush that smells like sweet petrol. Her hair is bound in a checked scarf that is tied at the front because of a one-woman experiment she has undertaken. She wants to find out if there’s a way to turn those old plain scarves that dairy farmer’s wives turban themselves with to milk their cows into a fashion item of some un-peasant description. One she can transport to Sydney. A silk scarf would be easy—it’s a given that it’s snazzy. But what a challenge this check cotton is. And yet, with dangly pearl earrings it goes from peasant to pleasant.
    Churchill’s car-animal groans into a sudden, angry slide. The back wheels skid and kick up a spray