by Dick Francis
Tick-Tock dumped his saddle on the bench, tipped back his helmet, and put his hands on his hips.
‘What have we here? A blood bath?’ he said.
‘Nose bleed,’ I said.
‘You don’t say.’
The others began crowding round and I decided I’d been lying down long enough. I lifted the towel off my face and stood up gingerly. All was well. The fountains had dried up.
‘Grant socked him one,’ said one of the jockeys who had been there all the time.
‘Why?’
‘Ask me another,’ I said. ‘Or ask Grant.’
‘You ought to report it to the Stewards.’
‘It’s not worth it,’ I said.
I cleaned myself up and changed, and walked down to the station with Tick-Tock.
‘You must know why he hit you,’ he said. ‘Or was it merely target practice?’
I handed him Axminster’s list. He read it and gave it back.
‘Yes, I see. Hatred, envy and jealousy. You’re stepping into the shoes he couldn’t fill himself. He had his chance there, and he muffed it.’
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Why did Axminster drop him?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ Tick-Tock said, ‘you’d better ask Grant and find out what mistakes not to make.’ He grinned. ‘Your nose looks like a vulgar sea-side postcard.’
‘It’s good enough for the goggle box,’ I said. I told him about Maurice Kemp-Lore’s invitation.
‘My dear sir,’ he said, sweeping off his Tyrolean hat, and making me a mocking bow. ‘I am impressed.’
‘You’re a fool,’ I said, grinning.
‘Thank God.’
We went our ways, Tick-Tock to his digs in Berkshire and I to Kensington. The flat was empty, the usual state of affairs on Saturday evenings, a busy night for concerts. I took half the ice cubes from the refrigerator, wrapped them in a plastic bag and a tea towel and lay down on the bed with the ice bag balanced on my forehead. My nose felt like a jelly. Grant’s fist had had the power of severe mental disturbance behind it.
I shut my eyes and thought about them, Grant and Art; two disintegrated people. One had been driven to violence against himself, and the other had turned violent against the world. Poor things, I thought rather too complacently, they were not stable enough to deal with whatever had undermined them: and I remembered that easy pity, later on.
On the following Wednesday Peter Cloony came to the races bubbling over with happiness. The baby was a boy, his wife was fine, everything was rosy. He slapped us all on the back and told us we didn’t know what we were missing. The horse he rode that afternoon started favourite and ran badly, but it didn’t damp his spirits.
The next day he was due to ride in the first race, and he was late. We knew before he arrived that he had missed his chance, because five minutes before the deadline for declaring jockeys his trainer had sent an official into the changing-room to find out if he was there, and he wasn’t.
I was standing outside the weighing-room when Peter finally came, forty minutes before the first race. He was running over the grass, anxiety clear on his face even from a distance. His trainer detached himself from the group of people he had been talking to and intercepted him. Fragments of angry remarks floated across to me.
‘Is this your idea of an hour before the first? … I’ve had to get another jockey … very stupid of you … second time in a week … irresponsible … not the way to go on if you want to keep your job with me …’ He stalked away.
Peter brushed past me, white, trembling and looking sick, and when I went back into the changing-room a short time later he was sitting on a bench with his head in his hands.
‘What happened this time?’ I asked. ‘Is your wife all right? And the baby?’ I thought he must have been so busy attending to them that he had forgotten to watch the clock.
‘They’re fine,’ he said miserably. ‘My mother-in-law is staying with us to look after them. I wasn’t late setting out … only five minutes or so … but …’ he stood up and gazed at me with his large, moist-looking eyes, ‘… you’ll never believe it but there was something else stuck across the lane, and I had to go miles round again, even further than last time …’ His voice trailed off as I looked at him in disbelief.
‘Not another tank carrier?’ I asked incredulously.
‘No, a car. An old car, one of those heavy old Jaguars. It had its nose in the hedge and one front wheel in the ditch, and it was jammed tight, right across the lane.’
‘You couldn’t have helped its driver push it straight again?’ I asked.
‘There wasn’t any driver. No one at all. And the car doors were locked, and the hand-brake was full on, and he’d left the thing in gear. The stinking bastard.’ Peter seldom used such strong language. ‘Another man had driven up the hill behind me and we both tried to shift the Jag., but it was absolutely hopeless. We had to reverse again for miles, and he had to go first, and he wouldn’t hurry a yard … he had a new car and he was afraid of scratching it.’
‘It’s very bad luck,’ I said inadequately.
‘Bad luck!’ he repeated explosively, apparently near to tears. ‘It’s more than bad luck it’s – it’s awful. I can’t afford … I need the money …’ He stopped talking and swallowed several times, and sniffed. ‘We’ve got a big mortgage to pay off,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t know babies could cost so much. And my wife had to stop working, which we hadn’t reckoned on … we didn’t mean to have a baby so soon.’
I remembered vividly the new little bungalow with its cheap, blue linoleum, its home-made terra-cotta rugs, its bare, bare furnishings. And he had a car to run and now a child to keep. I saw that the loss of a ten guinea riding fee was a calamity.
He had not been booked for any other ride that afternoon, and he spent the whole day mooching about the weighing-room so as to be under the eye of any trainers looking hurriedly for a jockey. He wore a desperate, hunted look all the time, and I knew that that alone would have discouraged me, had I been a trainer. He left, unemployed and disconsolate, just before the fifth race, having done himself no good at all in the eyes of every trainer at the meeting.
I watched him trailing off to the car park as I walked down from the weighing-room to the parade ring for my own one-and-only ride of the day, and I felt a surge of irritation against him. Why couldn’t he pretend a little, make light of his misfortune, shrug if off? And why above all didn’t he leave himself a margin for error on his journeys, when unprompt arrivals cost him so much? A punctured tyre, a windscreen shattered by a flying stone, anything might make him late. It didn’t have to be as unforeseeable as a tank carrier or a locked Jaguar wedged immovably across his path. And what a dismal coincidence, I reflected, that it should have happened twice in a week.
James Axminster smiled his disconcerting, heavy-jawed smile in the parade ring and introduced me to the owner of the horse I was to ride. He shook hands and we made the usual desultory pre-race conversation. The middle-aged handicap hurdler plodding sleepily round the ring was the third Axminster horse I had ridden during the week, and I had already grown to appreciate the sleekness and slickness of his organisation. His horses were well schooled and beautifully turned out, and there was nothing makeshift or second-best in any of his equipment. Success and prosperity spoke from every brightly initialled horse rug, every top quality bridle, every brush, bandage and bucket that came to the meetings.
In the two earlier races that week I had been riding the stable’s second string while Pip Pankhurst took his usual place on the better horses. Thursday’s handicap hurdle, however, was all my own because Pip could not do the weight.
‘Anything under ten stone six, and it’s yours,’ he told me cheerfully, when he found I was riding some of his stable’s horses. ‘Anything under ten six is hardly worth riding, anyway.’
By eating and drinking very little I had managed to keep my riding weight down to ten stone for a whole week. This meant a body weight of nine st
one eight, which was a strain at my height, but with Pip in that ungrudging frame of mind it was well worth it.
James Axminster said, ‘At the fourth hurdle, you want to be somewhere in the middle. About three from home, providing they’re not too strung out, you want to lie about fourth. He takes some time to get into top gear, so start him moving going into the second last. Keep him going, try to come up to the leader at the last and see how much you can gain in the air there. This horse is a great jumper, but has no finishing speed. Very one-paced. See what you can do, anyway.’
He had not given me such detailed instructions before, and it was the first time he had mentioned anything about what to do at the last obstacle. I felt a deep quiver of excitement in my stomach. At last I was about to ride a horse whose trainer would not be thoroughly surprised if he won.
I followed my instructions to the letter, and coming into the last hurdle level with two other horses I kicked my old mount with all the determination I could muster. He responded with a zipping leap which sped him clean past the other horses in mid-air and landed us a good two lengths clear of them. I heard the clatter of the hurdles as the others rapped them, and basely hoped they had made stumbling, time-wasting landings. It was true that the old hurdler could not quicken. I got him balanced and ran him straight to the winning post, using my whip hardly at all and concentrating mainly on sitting still and not disturbing him. He held on gamely, and still had half a length in hand when we passed the post. It was a gorgeous moment.
‘Well done,’ said Axminster matter-of-factly. Winners were nothing out of the ordinary to him. I unbuckled the girths and slid the saddle off over my arm, and patted the hurdler’s sweating neck.
The owner was delighted. ‘Well done, well done,’ he said to the horse, Axminster and me indiscriminately. ‘I never thought he’d pull it off, James, even though I took your advice and backed him.’
I looked quickly at Axminster. His piercingly blue eyes regarded me quizzically.
‘Do you want the job?’ he asked. ‘Second to Pip, regular?’
I nodded and dragged in a deep breath, and said, ‘Yes.’ It sounded like a croak.
The hurdler’s owner laughed. ‘It’s Finn’s lucky week. John Ballerton tells me Maurice is interviewing him on his television programme tomorrow evening.’
‘Really?’ Axminster said. ‘I’ll try and watch it.’
I went to weigh in and change, and when I come out Axminster gave me another list of horses, four of them, which he wanted me to ride the following week.
‘From now on,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you to accept any rides without finding out first if I need you. All right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, trying not to show too much of the idiotic delight I was feeling. But he knew. He was too old a hand not to. His eyes glimmered with understanding and friendliness and promise.
I telephoned to Joanna. ‘How about dinner? I want to celebrate.’
‘What?’ she asked economically.
‘A winner. A new job. All’s right with the world,’ I said.
‘You sound as if you’ve been celebrating already.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Any drunkenness you can hear in my voice is due to being hit on the head by good luck.’
She laughed. ‘All right then. Where?’
‘Hennibert’s,’ I said. It was a small restaurant in St James’s Street with a standard of cooking to match its address, and prices to match both.
‘Oh yes,’ said Joanna. ‘Shall I come in my golden coach?’
‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘I’ve earned forty pounds this week. I want to spend some of it. And besides, I’m hungry.’
‘You won’t get a table,’ she said.
‘It’s booked.’
‘I’m sold,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there at eight.’
She came in a taxi, a compliment to me as she was a girl who liked walking. She wore a dress I had not seen before, a slender straight affair made of a firm, deep-blue material which moved with a faint shimmer when the light fell on it. Her springy dark hair curved neatly down on to the nape of her neck, and the slanting outward tapering lines she had drawn on her eyelids made her black eyes look bigger and deep set and mysterious. Every male head turned to look at her as we walked down the room: yet she was not pretty, not eye-catchingly glamorous, not even notably well dressed. She looked … I surprised myself with the word … intelligent.
We ate avocados with french dressing and boeuf stroganoff with spinach, and late crop strawberries and cream, and a mushroom and bacon and prune savoury. For me, after so many bird-sized meals, it was a feast. We took a long time eating and drank a bottle of wine, and sat over our coffee talking with the ease of a friendship which stretched back to childhood. Most of the time, after so much practice, I could keep my more uncousinly feelings for Joanna well concealed from her; and it was necessary to conceal them because I knew from past experience that if I even approached the subject of love she would begin to fidget and avoid my eyes, and would very soon find a good reason for leaving. If I wanted to enjoy her company, it had to be on her terms.
She seemed genuinely pleased about the James Axminster job. Even though racing didn’t interest her, she saw clearly what it meant to me.
‘It’s like the day the musical director at the Handel Society picked me out of the choir to sing my first recitative. I felt like a pouter pigeon and so full of air that I thought I would need guy-ropes to keep my feet on the ground.’
‘Heady stuff,’ I agreed. My first elation had settled down to a warm cosy glow of satisfaction. I did not remember ever having felt so content.
I told her about the television programme.
‘Tomorrow?’ she said. ‘Good, I think I’ll be free to watch you. You don’t do things by halves, do you?’
I grinned. ‘This is just the start,’ I said. I almost believed it.
We walked all the way back to Joanna’s studio. It was a clear crisp night with the stars blazing coldly in the black sky. Depth upon depth of infinity. We stopped in the dark mews outside Joanna’s door and looked up.
‘They put things into proportion, don’t they?’ she said.
‘Yes.’ I wondered what it was that she needed to see in proportion. I looked at her. It was a mistake. The up-tilted face with starlight reflected in the shadowy eyes, the dark hair tousled again by our walk, the strong line of throat, the jut of breasts close to my arm, they swept me ruthlessly into the turmoil I had been suppressing all evening.
‘Thank you for coming,’ I said abruptly. ‘Good night Joanna.’
She said, surprised, ‘Wouldn’t you like some more coffee … or something?’
Or something. Yes.
I said, ‘I couldn’t eat or drink another thing. Anyway … there’s Brian …’
‘Brian’s in Manchester, on tour,’ she said. But it was a statement of fact, not an invitation.
‘Oh. Well, all the same, I think I’d better get some sleep,’ I said.
‘All right, then.’ She was undisturbed. ‘A lovely dinner, Rob. Thank you.’ She put her hand for a moment on my shoulder in a friendly fashion and smiled good night. She put the key in her door and opened it and waved briefly to me as I turned and started back down the mews. She shut her door. I swore violently, aloud. It wasn’t much relief. I looked up at the sky. The stars went on whizzing round in their courses, uncaring and cold.
Five
They gave me what in the Finn family was known as F.I.P. treatment at the Universal Telecast Studios. Fairly Important Person. It meant being met by someone well enough up in the hierarchy of the organisation for it to be clear that trouble was being taken, but not so high that he needed to be supported by lieutenants.
My mother was a connoisseur of all the shades between V.I.P. and F.I.P. and invariably noticed every detail of the pains or lack of them taken to make her feel comfortable. Her awareness had rubbed off on to me at a very early age and the whole gambit caused me a lot of quiet amusement when I grew u
p. Years of being a U.I.P. (Unimportant Person) had only sharpened my appreciation.
I went through the swinging glass doors into the large echoing entrance hall and asked the girl at the reception desk where I should go. She smiled kindly. Would I sit down, she said, gesturing to a near-by sofa. I sat. She spoke down the telephone, ‘Mr Finn is here, Gordon.’
Within ten seconds a burly young man with freckles and a rising-young-executive, navy-blue, pin-striped suit advanced briskly from one of the corridors.
‘Mr Finn?’ he said expansively, holding out a hand protruding from a snowy, gold-linked shirt cuff.
‘Yes,’ I said, standing up and shaking hands.
‘Glad to have you here. I am Gordon Kildare, Associate Producer. Maurice is up in the studio running over the last minute details, so I suggest we go along and have a drink and a sandwich first.’ He led the way down the corridor he had come from and we turned in through an open door into a small impersonal reception room. On the table stood bottles and glasses and four plates of fat freshly-cut and appetising-looking sandwiches.
‘What will you have?’ he asked hospitably, his hands hovering over the bottles.
‘Nothing, thank you,’ I said.
He was not put out. ‘Perhaps afterwards, then?’ He poured some whisky into a glass, added soda and raised it to me, smiling. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Is this your first time on television?’
I nodded.
‘The great thing is to be natural.’ He picked up a sandwich with a pink filling and took a squelchy bite.
The door opened and two more men came in. Introduced to me as Dan something and Paul something, they were a shade less carefully dressed than Gordon Kildare, to whom they deferred. They too dug into the sandwiches and filled their glasses, and wished me luck and told me to be natural.
Maurice Kemp-Lore strode briskly in with a couple of sports-jacketed assistants in tow.