by Dick Francis
Patrick Venables looked at his watch and stood up. “Have to go,” he said. “Come back to the weighing room after the last race.”
My nod of agreement was made to his departing back. I wondered what he would make of it; shrug it off or take a look. Sometime during the afternoon he would decide, but in telling him I’d come to my own conclusion, that I really did need and mean to find out what was going on, with or without his help.
I went outside and spent a good deal of the afternoon in conversation, useful sometimes for business but a far cry from the urgency of race-riding, changing colors, weighing out and in, hurrying, racing, changing colors . . . Oh, well. On the good side I no longer starved to remain artificially thin, no longer broke my bones and hid large bruises, no longer feared losing big races, good owners, my nerve or my job. I was now free in a way I’d never been and reflected that if I still had to please owners and trainers, then to prosper almost everyone had to please someone, performers the paying public, presidents and prime ministers, their population.
On afternoons like that at Sandown I’d found I behaved like all my drivers, that is to say I took special note of those particular runners that I’d brought to the course. A winner lifted the spirits of every driver: a horse killed, as occasionally happened, sent them home in depression. The undoubted if illogical feelings of proprietorship had a noticeable effect on how cheerfully, fast and thoroughly the vans got serviced on their return.
As two of the horses I had ferried that day belonged to a trainer I’d ridden for intermittently in the past, it was natural that I’d end up talking to him and his wife.
Benjy Usher and Dot appeared to be quarreling as usual when he shot out an arm and grabbed my sleeve as I passed.
“Freddie,” he demanded, “tell this woman which year Fred Archer shot himself. She says 1890. I say that’s r ubbish.”
I glanced at Dot’s normal mixed expression of resignation and anxiety. Years of living with an irascible man had carved permanent facial lines that even her infrequent smiles could barely override, yet although they’d been figuratively spitting at each other for as long as I’d known them, the pair were still grimly together.
They were both unusually good-looking, which only made it odder. Both were well dressed, in their forties, socially practiced and intelligent. Fifteen years earlier I wouldn’t have given their union five minutes, which just shows how little an outsider can see of a marriage.
“Well?” Benjy challenged.
“I don’t know,” I said diplomatically, though I did know actually that it had been in 1886, when the brilliant champion jockey was twenty-nine, and had won 2,749 races, traveling everywhere by train.
“You’re useless,” Benjy said, and Dot looked relieved.
Benjy changed the subject, mercurial as always. “Did my horses get here all right?”
“Yes, they did indeed.”
“My groom tells me you drove them yourself.”
I nodded. “Three of my drivers have the flu.”
Many trainers came out into their stable yards to see their runners loaded safely into the transport, but Benjy seldom did. His idea of supervision was to yell out of the window if he saw anything to displease him, which I understood was often. Benjy’s turnover of grooms was higher than most. Benjy’s head traveling groom, who should have accompanied the runners to Sandown, had walked out on the previous day.
Benjy asked if I knew of that awkward fact. Yes, I’d been told, I said.
“Then do me a favor. Saddle my runners and come into the ring with us.”
Most trainers in the circumstances would have saddled their own runners, but not Benjy. He scarcely liked touching them, I’d observed. I guessed the question about Fred Archer had been only a pretext; grabbing me on the wing had been the purpose.
I told him I’d be glad to saddle the horses. Not too far from the truth.
“Good,” he said, satisfied.
Accordingly I did the work while he and Dot chatted to the first runner’s owner, and the same for the second runner later in the afternoon. The first ran respectably without earning medals and the second won his race. As always in the winner’s enclosure on such occasions, Benjy’s handsome face reddened and sweated as if with orgasmic pleasure. The owners patted their horse. Dot told me seriously I would have made a good head groom.
I smiled.
“Oh dear.”
“Well, I would,” I said.
There was always something I didn’t understand about Dot; some deep reserve in her nature. I knew her no better after fifteen years than I had at the beginning.
Benjy’s odd training methods were due, one understood, to his not having to make training pay. Benjy’s inherited multimillions, moreover, had been deployed in acquiring good horses overseas which were trained there by other trainers and which won better events in France and Italy than Benjy’s horses in England. Benjy, like many owners, preferred the higher prize money of mainland Europe, but he chose still to live in Pixhill and to train for other people as a hobby and to use my horse vans for transport, a fact guaranteed to earn my approbation.
He and Dot took me for a drink: double gins for them, tonic for me. The one thing I couldn’t afford to lose was my driving license.
Benjy said, “I’ve a colt in Italy that’s pulled a tendon. I want him back here to heal and rest. Care to fetch him?”
“Very much so.”
“Good. I’ll tell you when.” He patted my shoulder. “You do a good job with those vans. We can trust you, can’t we, Dot?”
Dot nodded.
“Well . . . thanks,” I said.
One way and another the afternoon passed quickly and after the last race I waited for Patrick Venables outside the weighing room. He came eventually at a half-trot, still pressed for time.
“Freddie,” he said, “you told me yesterday you were short of drivers. Is that still the case?”
“Three have flu, and one’s left for good.”
“Er, um. Then I suggest I send you a replacement; one who can look into your problem.”
I wasn’t immediately enthusiastic. “He’d have to know the job,” I said dubiously.
“It’s a she. And you’ll find she does. I’ve arranged for her to go to Pixhill tomorrow morning. Show her your operation and let her take it from there.”
I thanked him unconvincingly. He smiled faintly and told me to give her a try. “Nothing lost if nothing comes of it.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I’d asked his help and could see no way of backing out. He hurried off with a last piece of information. “I gave her your address.”
He’d gone before I thought to ask her name, but it hardly mattered, I supposed. I hoped she would have the decency to arrive before I went to Maudie Watermead’s lunch.
HER NAME WAS Nina Young. She swept up the drive onto my tarmac at nine A.M., catching me unshaven and reading newspapers in a terrycloth robe, coffee and cornflakes in hand.
I went to the door to answer her ring, not realizing at once who she was.
She’d been driving a scarlet Mercedes and, although not young, she wore slender skintight jeans, a white shirt with romantically large sleeves, an embroidered Afghan vest, heavy gold chains and an expensive scent. Her shining dark hair had an expert cut. Her high cheekbones, long neck and calm eyes reminded me of noble ancestor portraits, bone structure three hundred years old. My idea of a working van driver, she was not.
“Patrick Venables said to come early,” she said, offering a nail-varnished hand. The voice was Roedean—Beneden—St. Mary’s, Calne, the social poise learned in the cradle. From my male chauvinist point of view, the only drawback was her age, nearer mid-forties than my own.
“Come in,” I invited, standing back and thinking she was good for the scenery if not for the matter in hand.
“Freddie Croft,” she said, as if seeing a cardboard cutout come to life. “The man himself.”
“Well, yes,” I agreed. “Like some coffee?”
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“No, thank you. Do I detect a faint air of exasperation?”
“Not in the least.” I led the way into the sitting room, and indicated any chair she chose to sit on.
She chose a deep armchair, crossing the long legs to show fine ankles above buckled leather shoes. From a shoulder bag of equal pedigree, she produced a small folder which she waved in my general direction.
“Driving license with Large Goods Vehicle qualification,” she assured me. “The real McCoy.”
“He wouldn’t have sent you without it. How did you get it?”
“Driving my hunters,” she said matter-of-factly. “Also my show horses and eventers. Any questions?”
The sort of horse vans she would have been driving had home-from-home large living quarters in front of the stalls, the nomadic luxury motors for eventing at Badminton and Burleigh. She had to be a familiar figure in that world, widely recognizable to too many people for the present purpose.
“Perhaps I ought to know you?” I suggested.
“I shouldn’t think so. I don’t go racing.”
“Er,” I said mildly, “here you’d need to be able to find the racecourses.”
“Patrick said you were bound to have a map.”
Patrick, I thought, had taken leave of his senses.
She watched my no doubt obvious misgivings with cool amusement.
“My horse vans are basic transport,” I said. “No fridges, no cookers, no bathrooms.”
“They’ve Mercedes engines, haven’t they?”
I nodded, surprised.
“I’m a good driver.”
I believed her. “All right, then,” I said.
I reflected that whatever she might lack as an investigator, I definitely did need an extra pair of hands for my wheels. What Harve and Jogger would make of her I dreaded to think.
“Good,” she said prosaically and after a brief second’s pause asked, “Do you take Horse and Hound?”
I fetched that week’s as yet unread copy of the magazine from a side table and handed it to her, watching as she flicked through towards the end, to the many pages of classified advertisements. She came to the horse-transport section where about once a month I advertised Croft Raceways, and tapped the pages with a rose pink fingernail.
“Patrick wants to know if you’ve seen this.”
I took the magazine from her and read where she’d pointed. In an outlined, single-column-width advertisement were the simple words:TRANSPORT PROBLEMS? WE CAN HELP. ANYTHING CONSIDERED.
A fourth line gave a telephone number.
I frowned. “Yes, I’ve seen that. It’s in the transport ads now and then. Rather pointless, I’ve thought.”
“Patrick wants me to check it out.”
“No one,” I objected, “would advertise a smuggling service. It’s impossible.”
“Why don’t we try?”
I passed her a cordless telephone. “Go ahead.”
She pressed the numbers, listened, wrinkled her nose and switched the phone off.
“Answering machine,” she reported succinctly. “Leave name and number and they’ll get back.”
“Man or woman?”
“Man.”
We looked at each other. I didn’t believe there was anything sinister in the advertisement, but I said, “Perhaps Patrick Venables could use his muscle on Horse and Hound and find out where that ad comes from.”
She nodded. “He’s doing it tomorrow.”
Impressed despite my disbelief, I went over to the desk and consulted the chart.
“I’ve probably got two vans going to Taunton races tomorrow,” I told her. “My woman driver Pat’s got the flu. You can take her van. It can carry four horses but you’re only likely to have three. You can follow my other van to Taunton so that you arrive at the right place at the right time, and for the pickup this end I’ll send a man called Dave with you. He knows the stable the horses are going from. After you’ve collected the horses, drop him back at our base and follow the other box from then on.”
“All right.”
“It would be better if you didn’t report for work in that car out there.”
She gave me a glimmering smile. “You’ll hardly know me in the morning. And what do I call you? Sir?”
“Freddie will do. And you?”
“Nina.”
She stood up, tall and composed, every inch the opposite of what I needed. The trip to Taunton, I thought, would be her first and last, especially when it came to cleaning the van after the return home. She shook my hand—her own was firm and dry—and went unhurriedly out to her car. I followed her to the door and watched the scarlet excitement depart with its expensive distinctive Mercedes purr.
No one, I reflected, had mentioned pay. Rose would want to know what I’d agreed. Not even undercover missions for the Jockey Club could be conducted without ubiquitous paperwork.
Sundays were always comparatively quiet, businesswise, with rarely as many as half the fleet on the road. That particular Sunday, the driver shortage posing no problem, Harve, Jogger and Dave could all take their accustomed day off, along with a bunch of others. Most of the drivers liked Saturday and Sunday work as they were paid more for weekends, but I was lucky in general with all of them as a team, as they hated to see work go to rival firms and would drive on their allotted days off to prevent it. According to the law, their hours and compulsory rest periods were strictly set out: I sometimes had difficulty persuading them that I could be prosecuted if they bent the rules too far.
Like most jobs in racing, driving horse vans was more a way of life than simply a means of earning a living and, as a result, only people who enjoyed it, did it. Stamina was essential, also good humor and adaptability. Brett had been a mistake.
The news of his leaving had spread already through the racing grapevine, and before eleven that morning two applicants had phoned for his job. I turned them both down: one had worked for too many other firms, the other was over sixty, too old already for the intense physical demands and no good as a long-term prospect.
I phoned Harve and told him I’d engaged a temporary woman driver to take Pat’s place until she was well again. She would be doing the Taunton run planned for Pat.
“Good,” Harve said, unsuspecting.
So far the week ahead looked less busy than the one just completed, not a bad thing in the circumstances. I would be able to go to Cheltenham races in spectator comfort, to watch other lucky slobs win the Gold Cup and smash their collarbones.
Jericho Rich on the telephone bounced me out of unprofitable regrets.
“You got my fillies to Newmarket safe and sound, then,” he shouted.
“Yes, Jericho.” I held the receiver an inch from my ear.
“I expect you know I checked everything in your office. A good job well done, I’ll say that for you.”
Good grief, I thought. The heavens would fall.
“I’ve got a daughter,” he said loudly.
“Er, yes, I’ve met her at the races.”
“She’s bought a show jumper, some damned fancy name. Can’t remember it. It’s in France. Send a van for it, will you?”
“Pleasure, Jericho. When and where from?”
“She’ll tell you. Give her a buzz. I said I’d pay for the transport if it was you who fetched it, so she’s doing you the honor.” He laughed, fortissimo but for him almost mellow.
“Don’t send that driver, though. That one that picked up the hitchhiker.”
“He’s left,” I assured him. “Didn’t my girls tell you?”
“Well, yes they did.” He read out his daughter’s phone number. “Give her a buzz now. No time like the present.”
“Thanks, Jericho.”
I buzzed the daughter as directed and began on the details of the show jumper: age, sex, color, value, all for the agents who would arrange the paperwork for the horse, and overnight provision for the driver. She sounded straightforward and less fussy than her father, merely asking me to c
omplete the transfer as soon as I could as she needed to practice before the show-jumping season started. She gave me an address and phone number in France and asked if I could arrange for a groom to travel over with the horse.
“I could provide a good man from here,” I suggested. “One I trust.”
“Yes. Great. Send the bill to my father.”
I said I would and, to do him justice, Jericho Rich was a prompt payer. Mostly I billed the trainers for the transport of all their runners, the trainers then billing the individual owners, but Jericho always wanted his bills sent direct to himself. Jericho believed trainers would charge him more than they’d paid, all of a piece with his general mistrust of anyone working for him.
On the whole people accused others of doing what they would do themselves. Dishonesty began at home.
He’d accused me in his time of taking bribes from a bookmaker to lose on one of his hurdlers. I’d told him very politely that I wouldn’t ride for him anymore, and a week later, as if nothing had happened, he’d offered me an enormous retainer to ride all his jumpers the next season. It had turned out profitably: I put up with his yelling and he gave me lavish presents when I won. A permanent standoff perhaps described our ongoing relations.
I took a quick look at the time and switched the phone through to Isobel, who took bookings on Sundays when I was busy. Then I got on with such small things as dressing and tidying and going out into the garden to pick flowers. This peaceful activity was the result of strong promptings from my absent sister and brother, who considered that flowers should occasionally be put on our parents’ grave. As it was I, the youngest, who had inherited the family home, and as it was I who lived near the cemetery, they felt it only right and proper that it was I who picked the flowers and put them in place. The whole point, for them, was that the flowers should come from the right garden. Bought flowers would not be the same.
There was little but daffodils in the first week of March, though I scavenged also some crocuses and an early hyacinth along with the evergreen sprigs of cupressus, and drove them to the gates of the orderly cemetery on a hill-side where we’d buried the parents within two years of each other some time ago.