Reflex

by Dick Francis

I was thinking only of bowling along in front out of trouble, and when the tapes went up, off we set. Over the first, leading as ordered; good jump, no trouble. Over the second, just out in front; passable jump, no trouble. Over the third . . .

  In front, as ordered, at the third. Rotten, disastrous jump, all four feet seeming to tangle in the hurdle instead of rising over it: exactly the mess he’d made over the schooling hurdle at home.

  He and I crashed to the turf together, and twenty-two horses came over the hurdle after us.

  Horses do their very best to avoid a man or a horse on the ground, but with so many, so close, going so fast, it would have been a miracle if I hadn’t been touched. One couldn’t ever tell at those times just how many galloping hooves connected: it always happened too fast. It felt like being rolled like a rag doll under a stampede.

  It had happened before. It would happen again. I lay painfully on my side looking at a close bunch of grass, and thought it was a damn silly way to be earning one’s living. I almost laughed. I’ve thought that before, I thought. Every time I’m down here on the mud, I think it.

  A lot of First Aid hands arrived to help me up. Nothing seemed to be broken. Thank God for strong bones. I wrapped my arms around my body, as if hugging would lessen the hurt.

  The horse had got up and decamped, unscathed. I rode back to the stands in an ambulance, demonstrated to the doctor that I was basically in one piece, and winced my slow way into ordinary clothes.

  When I left the weighing room, most people had gone home, but Harold was standing there with Ben, his traveling head lad.

  “Are you all right?” Harold demanded.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll drive you home,” he said. “Ben can take your car.”

  I looked at the generous worry in both of their faces, and didn’t argue. Dug into my pocket, and gave Ben my keys.

  “That was a hell of a fall,” Harold said, driving out of the gates. “A real brute.”

  “Mm.”

  “I was glad to see you stand up.”

  “Is the horse all right?”

  “Yes, clumsy bugger.”

  We drove in companionable silence towards Lambourn. I felt beaten up and shivery, but it would pass. It always passed. Always would, until I got too old for it. I’d be too old in my mind, I thought, before my body gave out.

  “If Victor Briggs comes down here again,” I said, “would you tell me?”

  He glanced at me sideways. “You want to see him? Won’t do any good, you know. Victor just does what he wants.”

  “I want to know . . . what he wants.”

  “Why not leave well enough alone?”

  “Because it isn’t well. I’ve left it alone . . . it doesn’t work. I want to talk to him . . . and don’t worry, I’ll be diplomatic. I don’t want to lose this job. I don’t want you to lose Victor’s horses. Don’t worry. I know all that. I want to talk to him.”

  “All right,” Harold said doubtfully. “When he comes, I’ll tell him.”

  He stopped his car beside my front door.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” he said. “You look pretty shaken. Nasty fall. Horrid.”

  “I’ll have a hot bath . . . get the stiffness out. Thanks for the lift home.”

  “You’ll be fit for next week? Tuesday at Plumpton?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  It was already getting dark. I went around in the cottage drawing the curtains, switching on lights, heating some coffee. Bath, food, television, aspirins, bed, I thought, and pray not to feel too sore in the morning.

  Ben parked my car in the carport, gave me the keys through the back door and said goodnight.

  Mrs. Jackson, the horsebox driver’s wife from next door, came to tell me the tax assessor had called.

  “Oh?” I said.

  “Yes. Yesterday. Hope I did right, letting him in, like. Mind you, Mr. Nore, I didn’t let him out of my sight. I went right around with him, like. He was only in here a matter of five minutes. He didn’t touch a thing. Just counted the rooms. Hope it’s all right. He had papers from the council, and such.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine, Mrs. Jackson.”

  “And your telephone,” she said. “It’s been ringing and ringing. Dozens of times. I can hear it through the wall, you know, when everything’s quiet. I didn’t know if you’d want me to answer it. I will, any time, you know, if you want.”

  “Kind of you,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I do.”

  She gave me a bright nod and departed. She would have mothered me if I’d let her, and I guessed she would have been glad to let the tax man in, as she liked looking around in my house. Nosy, friendly, sharp-eyed neighbor, taker in of parcels and dispenser of gossip and advice. Her two boys had broken my kitchen window once with their football.

  I telephoned to Jeremy Folk. He was out: would I care to leave a message? Tell him I found what we were looking for, I said.

  The instant I put the receiver down, the bell rang. I picked it up again, and heard a child’s breathless voice. “I can tell you where that stable is. Am I the first?”

  I regretfully said not. I also passed on the same bad news to ten more children within the next two hours. Several of them checked disappointedly to make sure I’d been told the right place—Zephyr Farm Stables? And several said did I know it had been owned for years and years by some Jesus freaks? I began asking them if they knew how the Colleagues had chanced to buy the stables, and eventually came across a father who did.

  “Us and the people who kept the riding school,” he said, “we were pretty close friends. They wanted to move to Devon, and were looking for a buyer for their place, and these fanatics just turned up one day with suitcases full of cash, and bought it on the spot.”

  “How did the fanatics hear of it? Was it advertised?”

  “No . . .” He paused, thinking. “Oh, I remember . . . it was because of one of the children who used to ride the ponies. Yes, that’s right. Sweet little girl. Mandy something. Always there. She used to stay with our friends for weeks on end. I saw her often. There was something about her mother being on the point of death, and the religious people looking after her. It was through the mother that they heard the stables were for sale. They were in some ruin of a house at the time, I think, and wanted somewhere better.”

  “You don’t remember the mother’s name, I suppose.”

  “Sorry, no. Don’t think I ever knew it, and after all these years . . .”

  “You’ve been tremendously helpful,” I said. “I’ll send your Peter the ten pounds, even though he wasn’t first.”

  The father’s voice chuckled. “That’ll please him.”

  I took his address, and also the name of the people who had owned the stables, but Peter’s father said he had lost touch with them over the years and no longer knew where they lived.

  Jeremy could find them, I thought, if he needed to. After I’d bathed and eaten I unplugged the telephone from the kitchen and carried it up to the sitting room, where for another hour it interrupted the television. God bless the little children, I thought, and wondered how many thousands were going to ring up. None of them had ever been inside the high wooden walls; it was always their mummies and daddies who had ridden there when they were young.

  By nine o’clock I was thoroughly tired of it. Despite the long hot soak my deeply bruised muscles were beginning to stiffen; and the best place to take them was bed. Get it over with, I thought. It was going to be lousy. It always was, for about twenty-four hours, after so many kicks. If I went to bed I could sleep through the worst.

  I unplugged the telephone and went down to the bathroom in shirtsleeves for a scratch round the teeth; and the front doorbell rang.

  Cursing, I went to see who had called.

  Opened the door.

  Ivor den Relgan stood there, holding a gun.

  I stared at the pistol, not believing it.

  “Back up,” he said. “I’m coming in.”

&n
bsp; It would be untrue to say I wasn’t afraid. I was certain he was going to kill me. I felt bodiless. Floating. Blood racing.

  For the second time that day I saw into the eyes of hatred, and the power behind den Relgan’s paled Elgin Yaxley’s into petulance. He jerked the lethal black weapon towards me, insisting I retreat, and I took two or three steps backward, hardly feeling my feet.

  He stepped through my door and kicked it shut behind him.

  “You’re going to pay,” he said, “for what you’ve done to me.”

  Be careful, Jeremy had said.

  I hadn’t been.

  “George Millace was bad,” he said. “You’re worse.”

  I wasn’t sure I was actually going to be able to speak, but I did. My voice sounded strange: almost squeaky.

  “Did you . . .” I said, “. . . burn his house?”

  His eyes flickered. His naturally arrogant expression, which had survived whatever Lord White had said to him, wasn’t going to be broken up by any futile last minute questions. In adversity his air of superiority had if anything intensified, as if belief in his own importance, were the only thing left.

  “Burgled, ransacked, burned,” he said furiously. “And you had the stuff all the time. You . . . you rattlesnake.”

  I had destroyed his power base. Taken away his authority. Left him metaphorically as naked as on his St. Tropez balcony.

  George, I thought, must have used the threat of those photographs to stop den Relgan angling to be let into the Jockey Club. I’d used them to get him thrown out.

  He’d had some sort of standing, of credibility, before, in racing men’s eyes. Now he had none. Never to be in was one thing. To be in and then out, quite another.

  George hadn’t shown those photographs to anyone but den Relgan himself.

  I had.

  “Get back,” he said. “Back there. Go on.”

  He made a small waving movement with the pistol. An automatic. Stupid thought. What did it matter?

  “My neighbors’ll hear the shot,” I said hopelessly.

  He sneered and didn’t answer. “Back past that door.”

  It was the door to the darkroom, solidly shut. Even if I could jump in there alive . . . no sanctuary. No lock. I stepped past it.

  “Stop,” he said.

  I’d have to run, I thought wildly. Had at least to try. I was already turning on the ball of one foot when the kitchen door was smashed open.

  I thought for a split second that somehow den Relgan had missed me and the bullet had splintered some glass, but then I realized he hadn’t fired. There were people coming into the house from the back. Two people. Two bustling burly young men . . . with nylon stocking masks over their faces.

  “Take him,” den Relgan said, pointing with his gun.

  I thought “Christ . . .”

  A flash of Marie’s battered face lit in my memory, and her voice: “like bulls . . . white . . . young . . . stockings over their faces . . .”

  They were rushing, banging against each other, fast, eager, infinitely destructive.

  I tried to fight them.

  I tried.

  God almighty, I thought. Not three times in one day. How could I explain to them . . . ? Blood vessels were already severed and bleeding under my skin . . . too many muscle fibers already crushed and torn . . . too much damage already done. How could I explain . . . and if I had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Pleased them, if anything.

  Thoughts scattered and flew away. I couldn’t see, couldn’t yell, could hardly breathe. They wore roughened leather gloves, which tore my skin, and the punches to my face knocked me silly. When I fell on the ground, they used their boots. On limbs, back, stomach, head.

  I drifted off altogether.

  When I came back, it was quiet. I was lying on the white-tiled floor with my cheek in a pool of blood. In a dim way I wondered whose blood it was.

  Drifted off again.

  It’s my blood, I thought.

  Tried to open my eyes. Something wrong with the eyelids. Oh well, I thought, I’m alive. Drifted off again.

  He didn’t shoot me, I thought. Did he shoot me? I tried to move, to find out. Bad mistake.

  When I tried to move, my whole body went into a sort of rigid spasm. Locked tight in a monstrous cramp from head to foot, I gasped with the crushing, unexpected agony of it. Worse than fractures, worse than dislocations, worse than anything . . .

  Screaming nerves, I thought. Telling my brain to seize up. Saying too much was injured, too much was smashed, nothing must move. Too much was bleeding inside.

  Christ, I thought. Leave go. Let me go. I won’t move. I’ll just lie here. Let me go.

  After a long time the spasm did pass, and I lay in relief in a flaccid heap. Too weak to do anything but pray that the cramp wouldn’t come back. Too shattered to think much at all.

  The thoughts I did have, I could have done without. Thoughts like people who died of ruptured internal organs . . . kidneys, liver, spleen. Thoughts like, what exactly did I have wrong with me, to cause such a fierce reaction? Thoughts like den Relgan coming back to finish the job.

  Den Relgan’s midworld voice: “You’ll pay for what you’ve done to me . . .”

  Pay in cuts and internal hemorrhage and wretched pain. Pay in fear that I was lying there dying. Bleeding inside. Bleeding to death. The way people beaten to death died.

  Ages passed.

  If any of those things were ruptured, I thought . . . liver, kidneys, spleen . . . and pouring out blood, I would be showing the signs of it. Shallow breathing, fluttering pulse, thirst, restlessness, sweat. None of that seemed to be happening.

  I took heart after a while, knowing that at least I wasn’t getting worse. Maybe if I moved gently, cautiously, it would be all right.

  Far from all right. Back into a rigid locked spasm, as bad as before.

  It had taken only the intention to move. Only the outward message. The response had been not movement, but cramp. I dare say it was the body’s best line of defense, but I could hardly bear it.

  It lasted too long, and went away slowly, tentatively, as if threatening to come back. I won’t move, I promised. I won’t move . . . just let go . . . let me go.

  The lights in the cottage were on, but the heating was off. I grew very cold; literally congealing. Cold stopped things bleeding, I thought. Cold wasn’t all bad. Cold would contract all those leaking internal blood vessels and stop the red stuff trickling out into where it shouldn’t be. Hemorrhage would be finished. Recovery could start.

  I lay quiet for hours, waiting. Sore but alive. Increasingly certain of staying alive. Increasingly certain I’d been lucky.

  If nothing fatal had ruptured, I could deal with the rest. Familiar country. Boring, but known.

  I had no idea of the time. Couldn’t see my watch. Suppose I move my arm, I thought. Just my arm. Might manage that, if I’m careful.

  It sounded simple. The overall spasm stayed away, but the specific message to my arm produced only a twitch. Crazy. Nothing was working. All circuits jammed.

  After another long while I tried again. Tried too hard. The cramp came back, taking my breath away, holding me in a vise, worst now in my stomach, not so bad in my arms, but rigid, fearful, frightening, lasting too long.

  I lay on the floor all night and well on into the morning. The patch of blood under my head got sticky and dried. My face felt like a pillow puffed up with gritty lumps. There were splits in my mouth, which were sore, and I could feel with my tongue the jagged edges of broken teeth.

  Eventually I lifted my head off the floor.

  No spasm.

  I was lying in the back part of the hall, not far from the bottom of the stairs. Pity the bedroom was right up at the top. Also the telephone. I might get some help . . . if I could get up the stairs.

  Gingerly I tried moving, dreading what could happen. Moved my arms, my legs, tried to sit up. Couldn’t do it. My weakness was appalling. My muscles were trembling. I mov
ed a few inches across the floor, still half lying down. Got as far as the stairs. Hip on the hall floor, shoulders on the stairs, head on the stairs, arms failing with weakness . . . the spasms came back.

  Oh Christ, I thought, how much more?

  In another hour I’d got my haunch up three steps and was again rigid with cramp. Far enough, I thought numbly. No farther. It was certainly more comfortable lying on the stairs than on the floor, as long as I stayed still.

  I stayed still. Gratefully, wearily, lazily still. For ages.

  Somebody rang the front doorbell.

  Whoever it was, I didn’t want them. Whoever it was would make me move. I no longer wanted help, but just peace. Peace would mend me, given time.

  The bell rang again. Go away, I thought. I’m better alone.

  For a while I thought I’d got my wish, but then I heard someone at the back of the house, coming in through the back door. The broken back door, open to a touch.

  Not den Relgan, I thought abjectly. Don’t let it be den Relgan . . . not him.

  It wasn’t, of course. It was Jeremy Folk.

  It was Jeremy, coming in tentatively, saying, “Er . . .” and “Are you there?” and “Philip?” and standing still with shock when he reached the hall.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said blankly.

  I said, “Hello.”

  “Philip.” He leaned over me. “Your face . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “What shall I do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Sit down . . . on the stairs.” My mouth and tongue felt stiff. Like Marie’s, I thought. Just like Marie.

  “But what happened? Did you have a fall at the races?”

  He did sit down, on the bottom stair by my feet, folding his own legs into ungainly angles.

  “Yeah.” I said. “A fall.”

  “But . . . the blood. You’ve got blood . . . all over your face. In your hair. Everywhere.”

  “Leave it,” I said. “It’s dry.”

  “Can you see?” he said. “Your eyes are . . .” He stopped, reduced apparently to silence, not wanting to tell me.

  “I can see out of one of them,” I said. “It’s enough.”

  He wanted of course to move me, wash the blood off, make things more regular. I wanted to stay just where I was, without having to argue. Hopeless wish. I persuaded him to leave me alone only by confessing to the cramps.