Эротические рассказы

Frankel. Simon CooperЧитать онлайн книгу.

Frankel - Simon  Cooper


Скачать книгу
and Kind become inseparable, even as they move to ever-larger paddocks; trusted to cope with ever-widening freedom, they stay by each other’s side day and night. If one is led away for any reason, the other stands by the gate until her partner returns. It is, in truth, a relationship deliberately nurtured by the stud as two mares of similar ages, background and breeding evolve from competition to the brink of motherhood. For we sometimes assume that animals know it all. All habits and instinct passed down through the generations by some invisible hand. But that really isn’t so. Horses, like people, learn from each other. They observe. They replicate. They take comfort from each other. As herd animals, they need each other.

      But it cannot forever be summer, even in the idyll of Banstead Manor. Gradually, the chill of the late September mornings are upon us. As people don their coats for the morning commute so do Quiff and Kind of the horse kind, with light blankets that cover their backs and sides. As autumn morphs into winter, the pair are brought in at night, housed in adjacent stables still connected by way of a grilled partition between the two stalls.

      But the changes to Quiff and Kind are not just confined to the daily routine. They are reverting to their natural state. The shorter days and longer nights trigger a change in their reproductive cycle which goes into abeyance. This time, the anoestrus, is a period of sexual inactivity when, in a throwback to their time in the wild, mares are not receptive to mating. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The gestation period for a horse is roughly eleven months, so conceiving in winter would result in a winter birth, greatly reducing the likely survival of both foal and mare. Evolution is nothing if not ingenious.

      Ahead of the Dublin rush-hour traffic the run to Coolmore, 115 miles to the southwest, is quick. The high windows of the horse box wouldn’t have afforded our pair the view that intrigued me so much as they drew close to their destination. In fact, they would have seen nothing until the side ramp was lowered, the internal panels swung back and they were led to their new, albeit temporary, home. Kind was back on Irish soil for the second time in a year.

      Even though Lakeview Yard is reserved for the best broodmares visiting the best of the Coolmore stallions, it lacks the grandiosity of Kind’s regular home. It is functional rather than fancy. On three sides of a square are ranged twenty-five stables built of breeze blocks painted white with a low-pitched slate roof that surround a plain courtyard with a square of grass and a tree at the centre. The fourth side is half filled by a squat bungalow of similar construction in which the Lakeview Yard manager lives.

      However, for all the wondrousness of this lifestyle, Kind is not here to raise her foal. She is here to create her next. Who will be the greatest of all time.

      * In bloodstock terms the two horses are actually three-part brothers: in addition to sharing their mother, Kind, Frankel’s grandfather, Sadler’s Wells, was Bullet Train’s father.

       Creation day

      I am no bioethicist. I can’t cogently argue when life – human, equine or any other for that matter – truly begins. The last time I visited Tipperary, it was a question exercising and dividing a nation. The lampposts of Fethard were the placard poles for the abortion referendum posters. The images were not always good to look at, the words designed to compel an opinion. But there did seem to be a certain democracy about the debate, alternate lampposts pro and anti, while the conversation, apparently more heated elsewhere, seemed to have largely passed by the regulars of McCarthy’s bar.

      I think we’ll take our lead from them and not worry too much about a higher debate. Let’s simply assume that the Frankel story truly begins in a covering barn, somewhere in rural Ireland, with the union of Kind and Galileo on a first Saturday in March. Reproduction doesn’t take the weekend off.

      One will be brought out for the final affirmation that all is well. It will be. Away in the corner is the veterinary bay where Kind is washed, prepared and most importantly checked to prove she is who she’s supposed to be. Horses, like people, have passports. Satisfied, a handler clips a leather fob, with a brass tab engraved with the name GALILEO, to Kind’s head collar. All that remains now is for her to await her suitor, which she does with Bullet Train, under the only concession to prettiness, a rose-covered arbour.

      Coolmore is a busy place at the height of the breeding


Скачать книгу
Яндекс.Метрика