I meet her in the lobby and we wind our way through the pillared splendour of the grand saloon, and downstairs to the Sunny.
‘I hope you like Peruvian food,’ I say.
‘I’ve never tried it,’ she replies. ‘But I hope we’re not eating guinea pig.’
I agree, laughing. They’d be far too fiddly to eat with only one usable hand anyway.
Susi is completely taken by the Sunny Bar and its eccentric decor.
‘I never realised that the Cresta Run had such a history,’ she says, as she spends ages looking at the hundreds of framed photographs of famous Cresta riders, both past and present, which adorn every available square inch of wall space.
‘There’s probably one up there somewhere of Errol Flynn,’ I say. ‘He holds the record for the slowest ever completed run – over three minutes, which allegedly included a stop at Shuttlecock to have a cuddle with a blonde and to drink a glass of champagne handed to him on a silver platter by his waiting butler. Now that’s what I call real class.’
She searches for him but without success, so we sit down at our table and I study the menu.
‘What are those?’ Susi asks, pointing up at a row of seven gymnastic rings hanging on leather straps from the ceiling way above us.
‘Ah, the dreaded rings. After Club dinners here, when the members are well oiled, they compete against each other to see who can swing like a monkey back and forth along the line the most times.’
‘Have you ever tried it?’
‘Once, years ago. During my very first year here.’
‘How did you do?’
‘Not well. Not well at all. I managed just six rings before coming off. The record is a hundred and fifty – that’s nearly twenty times back and forth. So I decided, right there and then, to retire gracefully from that particular activity.’
She laughs. ‘That’s very unlike you. I thought you would have set up your own set of rings at home, trained hard all summer, then come back to beat them all.’
I look at her. Does she really think that?
Am I truly that competitive?
I shake my head. ‘I think you’re describing somebody else.’
‘I’m not,’ she insists. ‘As a young jockey riding my horses, you were so determined to win it was frightening.’
‘I’m different now.’
A waiter arrives to take our order so, thankfully, our conversation is paused while Susi chooses raw sea bass ceviche as a starter and marinated chicken with a green herb chilli sauce as a main.
‘And for you, sir?’ asks the waiter.
‘What on the menu is easy to eat with only one hand?’
‘We can cut up anything into small pieces,’ he assures me.
Nevertheless, I choose the crispy pork bites to start and the seafood a lo macho soup as a main course.
‘And to drink?’
‘Just sparkling water for me,’ I say. ‘But I’m sure my guest would like some wine.’
‘Thank you, I would,’ she says. ‘The Raveneau Chablis Grand Cru I had the other night in The K was delicious. I’d love some more of that if you have it.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ says the waiter, who hurries away to fetch it.
I try not to reveal in my facial expression that I know that the Raveneau is hugely expensive, way beyond my pay scale.
‘But I’ll pay for it,’ Susi says, putting her hand on my good arm. ‘In fact, I’ll pay for the whole meal.’
‘No, you won’t. This is me returning your kind hospitality of Sunday.’
‘You don’t need to.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘How about we go Dutch on the food then? Would that make it easier for you?’
How does she know that I’m strapped for cash? Was that why she had offered me her suite in the hotel?
‘What has Jerry been telling you?’
‘He said that you demanded a fee from me for saddling my horse because you’re broke.’ She pauses. ‘Is it true?’
‘Is what true?’
‘That you’re broke?’
‘No. It’s not. A little short, maybe, but certainly not broke.’
‘But you did demand a fee?’
‘Not exactly. I didn’t ask for anything at all, but Jerry offered me twenty pounds. I thought that was rather insulting, so I said I wanted a hundred. We settled on fifty.’
She chuckles. ‘Typical Jerry. He told me at breakfast yesterday that it was a hundred and that he would be charging it to my training-fee account.’
I don’t know whether to laugh, or be angry on her behalf.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I would expect to pay you for doing it. Mind you, I’ll only pay Jerry the fifty, not a hundred.’
‘He only had twenties on him,’ I said. ‘So he had to give me sixty, but he wants ten of it back. I haven’t given it to him yet.’
We laugh in shared amusement, as the waiter arrives to serve her wine.
‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ I ask, when he’s gone.
‘You can ask,’ Susi replied. ‘But I might not answer.’
‘Do you ever bet on your own horses?’
She laughs. ‘That’s not what I thought you were going to ask.’
‘Which was what?’
She laughs again. ‘Never you mind.’
In the ensuing pause, Susi takes a sip of her Chablis and I partake of my sparkling water.
‘So do you bet on your horses?’ I ask her again.
‘I have the occasional flutter. Maybe a few pounds each way.’
‘Not big bets? Hundreds or even thousands?’
‘Good God, no. I think the biggest bet I’ve ever placed was fifty quid to win and it made me feel quite sick. I only did it because Jerry told me the horse was a sure thing.’
Now it’s my turn to laugh. ‘But Jerry is always telling his owners that their horses are sure things, even when they’re not.’
‘I know, but that time he was really insistent I should back it. He told me he had. Even showed me his betting slip.’
‘And did it win?’
She nodded. ‘By three lengths, easing up.’
‘How much did you collect?’
‘About six hundred pounds, I think.’
‘How about Jerry?’
‘I don’t know. But I’m sure it was a lot more than that.’
The waiter brings our starters and we eat for a while in silence.
‘How honest do you think Jerry is?’ I ask.
‘I wouldn’t call charging me over the odds by fifty quid as being dishonest, if that’s what you mean. Cheeky, maybe, but not properly dishonest. It’s just business. An additional mark-up to maximise his profit. All trainers would do it.’
Perhaps she’s right, but I am quite irritated that Jerry had told her that I’d had a hundred pounds from him when it wasn’t true.
And it wasn’t what I meant, anyway.
* * *
Sabrina brought Jerry with her to Baydon Road, but it still took them nearly an hour to find me in the ditch, not helped by the fact that my phone battery had suddenly died from me using the flashlight feature for too long.
I saw the approaching beams from their torches first and shouted out but, with the windows shut, they couldn’t hear me. Eventually, a torch was shone through the windscreen straight into my eyes, and I put a thumb up in response. But they couldn’t get the doors open from the outside either.
I could see in their torchlight that the Golf had well and truly settled down such that both the driver and the passenger doors were jammed tightly shut by the sides of the ditch. Only the windows and the roof showed above ground level.
‘Try the boot,’ I shouted.
But that wouldn’t open either – it had automatically locked shut when the car was on the move and couldn’t be unlocked without the power being on. Oh, for old-fashioned, wind-down windows and mechanical catches.
‘Lean away and cover your face and hands,’ Je
rry shouted. ‘I’m going to break the driver’s door window.’
Now why hadn’t I thought of that?
But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
First he tried to kick it, but that simply made him fall over. Next he bashed it with his torch, but that didn’t have much effect either, other than to stop the bulb from working. Finally, after he must have gone back to his own car, he appeared wielding a hardened-steel wheel wrench and that did the trick with a single blow, shattering the window into many thousands of tiny pieces. Shards showered all over me as he then used the wrench to knock out all the remaining glass, leaving the opening with no sharp edges.
‘Can you crawl out now, or have you hurt something?’
Only my self-respect.
I knelt on the driver’s seat and went out, head-first, through the gap. Jerry helped me to my feet.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go home. We’ll sort this fucking mess out in the morning.’ He waved a dismissive hand at the car in the ditch.
I sat in the back of their Mercedes as Jerry drove the three of us home. We travelled the couple of miles in total silence – no accusations, no blame, no criticism, nothing.
That all came when we arrived back at the Dickinson house.
‘What on earth do you think you were doing?’ Jerry said, almost shouting at me as we sat around their kitchen table.
I didn’t reply. I just sat there with my head down. I felt quite bad enough already, what with the combined effects of excessive alcohol and huge self-loathing, without him having a go at me too. But I suppose I should be grateful that I wasn’t down the local nick getting the third degree from the police about why I had driven a car with far too much alcohol in my system. And I would have deserved it too, and to lose my licence.
‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’ Jerry said scornfully.
‘Can I have a drink?’
‘I think you’ve had quite enough to drink already,’ Jerry said.
‘You can have some tea or coffee,’ Sabrina said, standing up. ‘Or would you prefer just water?’
Vodka would be better, I thought, but decided not to ask for that.
‘Coffee would be nice,’ I said.
‘Make it black and strong,’ Jerry said, loudly and sarcastically.
‘Please don’t shout at me,’ I said. ‘I’m not well.’
‘Got a headache, have you?’ Jerry went on shouting. ‘I’m not fucking surprised.’
I put my hands up over my ears, and burst into tears.
‘Oh, my God!’ Jerry shouted again at full volume. ‘That’s all we bloody need.’
‘Shut up!’ I shouted back at him, half-choking on my tears. ‘Shut up! I tell you, I’m ill. I have something called PTSD and I can’t take any more of this.’
I stood up and ran out of the kitchen, up the stairs and into my room. I slammed the door shut.
I scrabbled around in my sock drawer and found a bottle, but it was empty. I whipped the top off and tried to drain any final dregs of vodka into my mouth, but there were none. I searched everywhere in case there was another bottle I’d forgotten about, but I knew there wasn’t.
I lay on the bed, face up, crying, the tears streaming down the sides of my face, past my ears, and into the pillow.
There was a gentle knock on the door.
‘Miles, it’s Sabrina. Can I come in?’
I didn’t answer but she came in anyway. She was carrying a cup of coffee that she put down on my bedside table, right next to the empty vodka bottle.
‘What is all this about you being ill?’ she asked.
I sat up, took the letter from Charlotte Le Grand out of the bedside drawer and gave it to her. She read it through several times.
‘My dear boy,’ she said at length. ‘Why didn’t you show this to me when it first arrived?’
I cried harder. ‘Because I feel so ashamed.’
29
After the night of my encounter with the ditch, Sabrina Dickinson took on the responsibility of organising everything in my life, as well as keeping a tight lid on her husband’s temper.
But it came at a cost – my privacy, and my freedom.
First, she removed the empty vodka bottle from my bedside table and then conducted a thorough search of my room, going through my clothes in the wardrobe and those in the chest of drawers, looking both under and in the bed, everywhere, even taking the lid off the lavatory cistern in the en-suite shower room to check that the only liquid it contained was water.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I kept saying over and over as she searched.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said with a smile, finally satisfied that there was no alcohol in the room. ‘We’ll get you sorted out. You go to sleep now and we’ll start the ball rolling in the morning.’
She went out and closed the door.
I took my phone from my pocket and put it on charge. Then I undressed and went to bed.
I felt dreadful and it was some considerable time before I nodded off.
And then I was awake again, seemingly after just a few seconds, but the readout on my phone showed it was ten past three.
My heart was racing and I felt very sweaty.
It was not a new feeling. I had woken at a similar hour on most nights for the past couple of months, and in much the same circumstances. A quick swig or two of vodka would usually calm things down.
But I had no vodka.
When the mind is at war with itself, as mine was, sound reasoning and rational logic are the first casualties. Hence, I decided that, in order to sleep properly, and to be better able to cope with the difficulties that the morning would undoubtedly bring, I had to get myself a drink right now.
My plan was fiendishly simple. I would sneak downstairs to the dining room where several bottles of spirits stood on the Dickinsons’ drinks trolley in the corner. I would consume a few mouthfuls of vodka there before replacing the bottle on the trolley and sneaking back to bed for a restful sleep. Jerry and Sabrina would be none the wiser and I would be so much better for it. It surely had to be a great plan.
I got up. I was wearing just a pair of boxers. That would do.
I tiptoed over to my bedroom door, and this is where the plan came terminally unstuck. The door wouldn’t open. It was locked. I reached for the key that was always on the inside, but it was gone.
I used my phone to illuminate the lock and there was no doubt, the key was there, but on the outside of the door.
Sabrina had locked me in.
It seemed to me that there were two courses of action I could take. One was to simply go back to bed and try to sleep, and the second was to create merry hell about having had my liberty removed in this way, banging on the door such that I woke the whole house, and not to stop until I was released from this prison.
Neither course seemed very attractive, and neither would result in me getting a drink. Of that I was certain.
I mulled over the two options and the tiny slither of reasoning that remained in my brain eventually concluded that the merry-hell alternative would only alienate the only friend I seemed to have left in the world.
So I went back to bed and lay in the dark for a long time with sweaty hands and face, before tiredness eventually took over and I dozed off.
I slept soundly for the rest of the night, waking only when Sabrina unlocked the door and brought me in a cup of tea at seven o’clock.
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, not mentioning having locked me in. Perhaps she didn’t realise I knew.
‘Much better than last night, thank you.’ I threw back the covers. ‘I’d better get up and go to work.’
The horses may not do much in the way of exercise on a Sunday, but they all had to be mucked out and fed, and I was on duty on the Sunday shift.
‘Jerry says you are to stay here today.’
‘Is that all he said?’
She gave me a sideways look as if to say, Don’t go there.
‘Come down when you’re ready. I
’ll get you some breakfast.’
I showered, dressed and then went downstairs.
Sabrina was in the kitchen, looking out the window above the sink as she spoke on the phone.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask him and get back to you.’
She hung up and turned round.
‘Oh, there you are, Miles. Would you like a coffee?’
‘Lovely. Thank you.’
She put the kettle on the AGA and spooned instant granules into two cups.
‘I’ve just spoken to a farmer friend who’s agreed to go and pull your car out of the ditch with his tractor before any nosey policemen come a-calling. He says he’ll keep it at his place and ask his man who services all his farm vehicles to have a quick look at it to see if it’s worth saving. Is it insured?’
‘Only third-party. It’s all I could afford.’
‘Right, I’ll tell him.’
‘Thank you,’ I said again. I was suddenly close to tears once more. ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you being so nice when everything I touch is a disaster? Why have I not simply been sacked and thrown out on my ear?’
‘Is that what you want?’ Sabrina asked.
‘No, of course not. I just don’t understand.’ The tears were flowing freely now. ‘You see. I’m so useless I can’t even stop crying.’
‘You’re not useless and, as you said last night, you’re not well. I am only doing what any reasonable person would do to help a fellow human being in need. As soon as the doctors’ surgery opens tomorrow morning, we will go and sort out your referral to the psychiatrist.’
‘But that frightens me,’ I said, keeping my eyes firmly on the table.
‘There really is no need to be frightened.’ She paused for a long while before continuing. ‘I had to go and see a psychiatrist once, and it is nothing to be afraid of.’ She paused again for almost as long. ‘I had obsessive-compulsive disorder when I was a teenager. It completely took over my life for several years.’
I looked up at her in surprise. ‘But you did get better?’
‘Pretty much. Mostly I was taught how to cope, so that it didn’t control me, rather I controlled it. But I still have to be careful. Even now, I sometimes catch myself doing something that I know is due to the OCD.’
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