by Dick Francis
They both protested, but in the end saw the sense of it. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t give away, even by accident.
‘It won’t only be people working the racket who might be looking for them,’ I explained apologetically. ‘But one or two of our rival newspapers will be hunting for them, so as to be able to black the Blaze’s eye. And they are quite skilled at finding people who want to stay hidden.’
I left the Ronceys looking blankly at each other and drove the van back to London. It seemed a very long way, and too many aches redeveloped on the journey. I’d finished Tonio’s mixture just before going into the office in the morning and was back on Elizabeth’s pills, which were not as good. By the time I got home I was tired, thirsty, hurting and apprehensive.
Dealt with the first three: arm-chair and whisky. Contemplated the apprehension, and didn’t know which would be worse, another encounter with the Boston boys or a complete failure with Tiddely Pom. It would likely be one or the other. Could even be both.
‘What’s the matter, Ty?’ Elizabeth looked and sounded worried.
‘Nothing.’ I smiled at her. ‘Nothing at all, honey.’
The anxious lines relaxed in her face as she smiled back. The pump hummed and thudded, pulling air into her lungs. My poor, poor Elizabeth. I stretched my hand over and touched her cheek in affection, and she turned her head and kissed my fingers.
‘You’re a fantastic man, Ty,’ she said. She said something like it at least twice a week. I twitched my nose and made the usual sort of answer, ‘You’re not so bad yourself.’ The disaster that a virus had made of our lives never got any better. Never would. For her it was total and absolute: for me there were exits, like Gail. When I took them, the guilt I felt was not just the ordinary guilt of an unfaithful husband, but that of a deserter. Elizabeth couldn’t leave the battlefield: but when it got too much for me, I just slid out and left her.
At nine o’clock the next morning Derry Clark collected Madge and the three Roncey boys in his own Austin and drove them down to Portsmouth and straight on to the Isle of Wight car ferry.
At noon I arrived at the farm with a car and Rice trailer borrowed from the city editor, whose daughters went in for show jumping. Roncey showed great reluctance at parting with Tiddely Pom, and loaded the second stall of the trailer with sacks of feed and bales of hay, adding to these the horse’s saddle and bridle, and also three dozen eggs and a crate of beer. He had written out the diet and training regime in four page detail scattered with emphatic underlinings. I assured him six times that I would see the new trainer followed the instructions to the last full stop.
Pat helped with the loading with a twisting smile, not unhappy that his father was losing control of the horse. He gave me a quick look full of ironic meaning when he saw me watching him, and said under his breath as he humped past with some hay, ‘Now he knows what it feels like.’
I left Victor Roncey standing disconsolately in the centre of his untidy farmyard watching his one treasure depart, and drove carefully away along the Essex lanes, heading west to Berkshire. About five miles down the road I stopped near a telephone box and rang up the Western School of Art.
Gail said ‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘How about Sunday?’
‘Um.’ She hesitated. ‘How about tomorrow?’
‘Won’t you be teaching?’
‘I meant,’ she explained, ‘tomorrow night.’
‘Tomorrow … all night?’
‘Can you manage it?’
I took so deep a breath that my sore ribs jumped. It depended on whether Mrs Woodward could stay, as she sometimes did.
‘Ty?’ she said. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘What to tell my wife.’
‘You slay me,’ she said. ‘Is it yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Where?’
‘A hotel, I should think.’
‘All right,’ I agreed. I asked her what time she finished work, and arranged a meeting point at King’s Cross railway station.
When I called the flat, Elizabeth answered.
‘Ty! Where are you?’
‘On the road. There’s nothing wrong. It’s just that I forgot to ask Mrs Woodward before I left if she could stay with you tomorrow night … so that I could go up to Newcastle ready for the races on Saturday.’ Louse, I thought. Mean, stinking louse. Lying, deceiving louse. I listened miserably to the sounds of Elizabeth asking Mrs Woodward and found no relief at all in her answer.
‘She says yes, Ty, she could manage that perfectly. You’ll be home again on Saturday?’
‘Yes, honey. Late, though.’
‘Of course.’
‘See you this evening.’
‘Bye, Ty,’ she said with a smile in her voice. ‘See you.’
I drove all the way to Norton Fox’s stable wishing I hadn’t done it. Knowing that I wouldn’t change it. Round and round the mulberry bush and a thumping headache by Berkshire.
Norton Fox looked curiously into the trailer parked in the private front drive of his house.
‘So that’s the great Tiddely Pom. Can’t say I think much of him from this angle.’
‘Nor from any other,’ I agreed. ‘It’s good of you to have him.’
‘Happy to oblige. I’m putting him in the box next to Zig Zag, and Sandy Willis can look after both of them.’
‘You won’t tell her what he is?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Of course not.’ He looked resigned at my stupidity. ‘I’ve recently bought a chaser over in Kent … I’ve just postponed collecting it a while, but Sandy and all the other lads think Tiddely Pom is him.’
‘Great.’
‘I’ll just get my head lad to drive the trailer into the yard and unload. You said on the phone that you wanted to stay out of sight … come inside for a cuppa.’
Too late, after I’d nodded, I remembered the near black tea of my former visit. The same again. Norton remarked that his housekeeper had been economising, he never could get her to make it strong enough.
‘Did the Tally photographer get here all right?’ I asked as he came in from the yard, filled his cup, and sat down opposite me.
He nodded. ‘Took dozens of pics of Sandy Willis and thrilled her to bits.’ He offered me a slice of dry looking fruit cake and when I said no, ate a large chunk himself, undeterred. ‘That article of yours last Sunday,’ he said past the currants, ‘that must have been a bombshell in certain quarters.’
I said, ‘Mm, I hope so.’
‘Brevity … that Champion Hurdler of mine … that was definitely one of the non-starters you were talking about, wasn’t it? Even though you didn’t mention it explicitly by name?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Ty, did you find out why Dembley struck his horse out, and then sold out of racing altogether?’
‘I can’t tell you why, Norton,’ I said.
He considered this answer with his head on one side and then nodded as if satisfied. ‘Tell me one day, then.’
I smiled briefly. ‘When and if the racket is extinct.’
‘You go on the way you are, and it will be. If you go on exposing it publicly, the ante-post market will be so untrustworthy that we’ll find ourselves doing as the Americans do, only betting on a race on the day of the race, and never before. They don’t have any off-the-course betting at all, over there, do they?’
‘Not legally.’
He drank in big gulps down to the tea leaves. ‘Might shoot our attendances up if punters had to go to the races to have a bet.’
‘Which would shoot up the prize money too … did you see that their champion jockey earned well over three million dollars last year? Enough to make Gordon Richards weep.’
I put down the half-finished tea and stood up. ‘Must be getting back, Norton. Thank you again for your help.’
‘Anything to prevent another Brevity.’
‘S
end the accounts to the Blaze.’
He nodded. ‘And ring the sports desk every day to give a report, and don’t speak to anyone except you or Derry Clark or a man called Luke-John Morton. Right?’
‘Absolutely right,’ I agreed. ‘Oh … and here are Victor Roncey’s notes. Eggs and beer in Tiddely Pom’s food every night.’
‘I’ve one owner,’ Norton said, ‘who sends his horse champagne.’
I drove the trailer back to the city editor’s house, swapped it for my van, and went home. Ten to seven on the clock. Mrs. Woodward was having a grand week for overtime and had cooked chicken à la king for our supper, leaving it ready and hot. I thanked her. ‘Not at all, Mr. Tyrone, a pleasure I’m sure. Ta ta, luv, see you tomorrow, I’ll bring my things for stopping the night.’
I kissed Elizabeth, poured the drinks, ate the chicken, watched a TV programme, and let a little of the day’s tension trickle away. After supper there was my Sunday article to write. Enthusiasm for the project: way below zero. I went into the writing room determined to put together a calm played-down sequel to the previous week, with a sober let’s-not-rush-our-fences approach. Somewhere along the line most of these good intentions vanished. Neither Charlie Boston nor the foreign gent in the Rolls was going to like the result.
Before setting off to the office in the morning I packed an overnight bag, with Elizabeth reminding me to take my alarm clock and a clean shirt.
‘I hate it when you go away,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t go often, probably not nearly as much as you ought to. I know you try not to get the far away meetings … Derry nearly always does them, and I feel so guilty because his wife has those tiny children to look after all alone …’
‘Stop worrying,’ I said, smiling. ‘Derry likes to go.’ I had almost convinced myself that I really was taking the afternoon train to Newcastle. Gail was hours away, unreal. I kissed Elizabeth’s cheek three times and dearly regretted leaving her. Yet I left.
Luke-John and Derry were both out of the office when I arrived. Luke-John’s secretary handed me a large envelope which she said had come for me by hand just after I left on Wednesday. I opened it. The galley-proofs of my Tally article: please would I read and O.K. immediately.
‘Tally telephoned for you twice yesterday,’ Luke-John’s secretary said. ‘They go to press today. They wanted you urgently.’
I read the article. Arnold Shankerton had changed it about here and there and had stamped his own slightly pedantic views of grammar all over it. I sighed. I didn’t like the changes, but a hundred and fifty guineas plus expenses softened the impact.
Arnold Shankerton said in his perfectly modulated tenor, with a mixture of annoyance and apology, ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to go ahead and print, as we hadn’t heard from you.’
‘My fault. I’ve only just picked up your letter.’
‘I see. Well, after I’d worked on it a little I think it reads very well, don’t you? We’re quite pleased with it. We think it will be a success with our readers. They like that sort of intimate human touch.’
‘I’m glad,’ I said politely. ‘Will you send me a copy?’
‘I’ll make a note of it,’ he said suavely. I thought I would probably have to buy one on a bookstall. ‘Let me have your expenses. Small, I hope?’
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Tiny.’
Luke-John and Derry came back as I disconnected and Luke-John, without bothering to say good morning, stretched out a hand for my Sunday offering. I took it out of my pocket and he unfolded it and read it.
‘Hmph,’ he said. ‘I expected a bit more bite.’
Derry took one of the carbon copies from me and read it.
‘Any more bite and he’d have chewed up the whole page,’ he said, disagreeing.
‘Couldn’t you emphasize a bit more that only the Blaze knows where Tiddely Pom is?’ Luke-John said. ‘You’ve only implied it.’
‘If you think so.’
‘Yes, I do think so. As the Blaze is footing the bills we want all the credit we can get.’
‘Suppose someone finds him … Tiddely Pom?’ I asked mildly. ‘Then we’d look right nanas, hiding him, boasting about it, and then having him found.’
‘No one will find him. The only people who know where he is are us three and Norton Fox. To be more precise, only you and Fox know exactly where he is. Only you and Fox know which in that yard full of sixty horses is Tiddely Pom. Neither of you is going to tell anyone else. So how is anyone going to find him? No, no, Ty. You make that article absolutely definite. The Blaze is keeping the horse safe, and only the Blaze knows where he is.’
‘Charlie Boston may not like it,’ Derry observed to no one in particular.
‘Charlie Boston can stuff it,’ Luke-John said impatiently.
‘I meant,’ Derry explained, ‘that he might just send his thug-uglies to take Ty apart for so obviously ignoring their keep-off-the-grass.’
My pal. Luke-John considered the possibility for two full seconds before shaking his head. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’
‘And even if they did,’ I said, ‘it would make a good story and you could sell more papers.’
‘Exactly.’ Luke-John started nodding and then looked at me suspiciously. ‘That was a joke?’
‘A feeble one.’ I sighed, past smiling.
‘Change the intro, then, Ty. Make it one hundred per cent specific. He picked up a pencil and put a line through the first paragraph. Read the next, rubbed his larynx thoughtfully, let that one stand. Axed the next. Turned the page.
Derry watched sympathetically as the pencil marks grew. It happened to him, too, often enough. Luke-John scribbled his way through to the end and then returned to the beginning, pointing out each alteration that he wanted made. He was turning my moderately hard hitting original into a bulldozing battering ram.
‘You’ll get me slaughtered,’ I said, and I meant it.
I worked on the rewrite most of the morning, fighting a rearguard action all the way. What Luke-John finally passed was a compromise between his view and mine, but still left me so far out on a limb as to be balancing on twigs. Luke-John took it in to the Editor, stayed there while he read it, and brought it triumphantly back.
‘He liked it. Thinks it’s great stuff. He liked Derry’s piece yesterday too, summing up the handicap. He told me the sports desk is a big asset to the paper.’
‘Good,’ Derry said cheerfully. ‘When do we get our next raise?’
‘Time for a jar at the Devereux,’ Luke-John suggested, looking at his watch. ‘Coming today, Ty?’
‘Norton Fox hasn’t rung through yet.’
‘Call him then.’
I telephoned to Fox. Tiddely Pom was fine, ate his feed the previous evening, had settled in well, had done a mile at a working canter that morning, and no one had looked at him twice. I thanked him and relayed the news to Roncey, who sounded both agitated and depressed.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said several times.
‘Do you want to risk having him at home?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘I suppose not. No. But I don’t like it. Don’t forget to ring tomorrow evening, I’ll be at Kempton races all afternoon.’
‘The Sports Editor will ring,’ I assured him. ‘And don’t worry.’
He put the receiver down saying an explosive ‘Huh.’ Luke-John and Derry were already on the way to the door and I joined them to go to lunch.
‘Only a fortnight since Bert Checkov died,’ observed Derry, sitting on a bar stool. ‘Only ten days since we spotted the non-starters. Funny.’
Hilarious. And eight more days to go to the Lamplighter. This Monday, I decided, I would stay safely tucked away at home.
‘Don’t forget,’ I said to Derry. ‘Don’t tell any one my phone number.’
‘What brought that on all of a sudden?’
‘I was thinking about Charlie Boston. My address isn’t in the phone book …’
‘Neither Derry nor I will give your address to any one,’ Lu
ke-John said impatiently. ‘Come off it Ty, any one would think you were frightened.’
‘Any one would be so right,’ I agreed, and they both laughed heartily into their pints.
Derry was predictably pleased that I wanted to go to Newcastle instead of Kempton, leaving the London meeting for once for him.
‘Is it all right,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘With your wife, I mean?’
I told him what Elizabeth had said, but as usual anything to do with her made him uncomfortable. Luke-John said dutifully, ‘How is she?’ and I said ‘Fine.’
I kicked around the office all the afternoon, arranging a travel warrant to Newcastle, putting in a chit for expenses for Heathbury Park, Leicester and Plumpton, and collecting the cash from Accounts. Luke-John was busy with a football columnist and the golfing correspondent, and Derry took time off from working out his tips for every meeting in the following week to tell me about taking the Roncey kids to the Isle of Wight.
‘Noisy little devils,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Their mother has no control over them at all. She seemed to be in a dream most of the time. Anyway, none of them actually fell off the ferry, which was a miracle considering Tony, that was the eldest one, was trying to lean over far enough to see the paddles go round. I told him they were under the water. Made no difference.’
I made sympathetic noises, trying not to laugh out of pity for my ribs. ‘They were happy enough, then?’
‘Are you kidding? No school and a holiday at the sea? Tony said he was going to bathe, November or no November. His mother showed no signs of stopping him. Anyway, they settled into the boarding house all right though I should think we shall get a whacking bill for damage, and they thought it tremendous fun to change their names to Robinson, no trouble there. They thought Robinson was a smashing choice, they would all pretend they were cast away on a desert island … Well, I tell you, Ty, by the time I left them I was utterly exhausted.’
‘Never mind. You can look forward to bringing them back.’
‘Not me,’ he said fervently. ‘Your turn for that.’
At four I picked up my suitcase and departed for King’s Cross. The Newcastle train left at five. I watched it go.