by Dick Francis
‘Damn Victor Roncey,’ Derry said. ‘They’re off.’
The line of horses bounded forward, heading for the first jump. Seventeen runners, three and a half miles, and a gold trophy and a fat cheque to the winner.
One of them crumpled up over the first. Not Tiddely Pom, whose scarlet and white chevrons bobbed in a bunch at the rear. Not Zig Zag, already positioned in the fourth place, from where he usually won. Not Egocentric, leading the field up past the stands to give the Huntersons their moment of glory. Not Rockville, with Dermot Finnegan fighting for his career in a battle not to let the horse run away with him.
They jumped the water jump in front of the stands. A gasp from the crowd as one of them splashed his hind legs right into it. The jockey in orange and green was dislodged and rolled.
‘That horse always makes a balls of the water,’ Derry said dispassionately. ‘They should keep it for hurdles.’ No tremor of excitement in his voice or hands. It had cost him nothing to get Tiddely Pom on to the track. It had cost me too much.
They swept round the top bend and started out round the circuit. Twice round the course to go. I watched Tiddely Pom all the way, expecting him to fall, expecting him to drop out at the back and be pulled up, expecting him to be too weak from colic to finish the trip.
They came round the bottom bend and up over the three fences in the straight towards the stands. Egocentric was still in front. Zig Zag still fourth. Dermot Finnegan had Rockville in decent control somewhere in the middle, and Tiddely Pom was still there and not quite last.
Over the water. Zig Zag stumbled, recovered, raced on. Not fourth any more, though. Sixth or seventh. Tiddely Pom scampered over it with none of the grace of Egocentric but twice the speed. Moved up two places.
Out they went again into the country. Derry remarked calmly, ‘Tiddely Pom has dropped his bit.’
‘Damn,’ I said. The jockey was working with his arms, urging the horse on. Hopeless. And half the race still to run.
I shut my eyes. Felt the fatigue and illness come swamping back. Wanted to lie down somewhere soft and sleep for a week and escape from all the problems and torments and disillusionments of weary life. A week alone, to heal in. A week to give a chance for some energy for living to come creeping back. I needed a week at least. If I were lucky, I’d have a day.
‘There’s a faller at that fence.’ The race commentator’s amplified voice jerked my eyes open. ‘A faller among the leaders. I think it was Egocentric … yes, Egocentric is down …’
Poor Huntersons. Poor Harry, poor Sarah.
Gail.
I didn’t want to think about her. Couldn’t bear to, and couldn’t help it.
‘He’s still going,’ Derry said. ‘Tiddely Pom.’
The red and white chevrons were too far away to be clear. ‘He’s made up a bit,’ Derry said. ‘He’s taken a hold again.’
They jumped the last fence on the far side and began the sweeping bend round into the straight, very strung out now, with great gaps between little bunches. One or two staggered fifty yards in the rear. There was a roar from the crowd and the commentator’s voice rose above it … ‘And here is Zig Zag coming to the front … opening up a commanding lead …’
‘Zig Zag’s slipped them,’ Derry said calmly. ‘Caught all the others napping.’
‘Tiddely Pom …?’ I asked.
‘He’s well back. Still plodding on, though. Most we could expect.’
Zig Zag jumped the first fence in the straight five seconds clear of the rest of the field.
‘Nothing will catch him,’ Derry said. I forgave him the satisfaction in his voice. He had tipped Zig Zag in his column. It was nice to be right. ‘Tiddely Pom’s in the second bunch. Can you see him? Even if he hasn’t won, he’s not disgraced.’
Zig Zag jumped the second last fence well ahead, chased after an interval by four horses more or less abreast. After these came Tiddely Pom, and behind him the other half dozen still standing. If we had to settle for that, at least the ante-post punters had had some sort of run for their money.
It was a clear twenty yards from the last fence that Zig Zag was meeting it wrong. The jockey hesitated fatally between pushing him on to lengthen his stride and take off sooner or shortening the reins to get him to put in an extra one before he jumped. In the end he did neither. Simply left it to the horse to sort himself out. Some horses like to do that. Some horses like to be told what to do. Zig Zag went into the fence like a rudderless ship, took off too late and too close, hit the fence hard with his forelegs, slewed round in mid air, crashed down in a tangle of hooves, and treated his rider to a well deserved thump on the turf.
‘Stupid bastard,’ Derry said, infuriatedly lowering his glasses. ‘An apprentice could have done better.’
I was watching Tiddely Pom. The four horses ahead of him jumped the last fence. One of them swerved to avoid Zig Zag and his supine jockey and bumped heavily into the horse next to him. Both of them were thoroughly unbalanced and the jockey of one fell off. When Tiddely Pom came away from the fence to tackle the straight he was lying third.
The crowd roared. ‘He’s got a chance,’ Derry yelled. ‘Even now.’
He couldn’t quicken. The low lolloping stride went on at the same steady pace and all the jockey’s urging was having no constructive effect. But one of the two in front of him was tiring and rolling about under pressure. Tiddely Pom crept up on him yard by yard but the winning post was coming nearer and there was still one more in front …
I looked at the leader, taking him in for the first time. A jockey in pink and white stripes, riding like a demon on a streak of brown, straining, hard-trained muscle. Dermot Finnegan on Rockville, with all his future in his hands.
While I watched he swept conclusively past the post, and even from the stands one could see that Irish grin bursting out like the sun.
Three lengths behind, Tiddely Pom’s racing heart defeated the colic and put him second. A genuine horse, I thought thankfully. Worth all the trouble. Or at least, worth some of it.
‘All we need now,’ said Derry, ‘is an objection.’
He wrapped the strap round his race glasses, put them in their case, and hurriedly made for the stairs. I followed him more slowly down and edged gingerly through the crowd milling round the unsaddling enclosure until I reached the clump of other press men waiting to pick up something to print. There was a cheer as Rockville was led through into the winner’s place. Another cheer for Tiddely Pom. I didn’t join in. Had nothing to contribute but a dead feeling of anti-climax.
All over. Tiddely Pom hadn’t won. What did I expect?
The crowd parted suddenly like the Red Sea and through the gap struggled a large, untidy earth mother surrounded by planets. Madge Roncey and her sons.
She walked purposefully across the comparatively empty unsaddling enclosure and greeted her husband with a gentle pat on the arm. He was astounded to see her and stood stock still with his mouth open and Tiddely Pom’s girth buckles half undone. I went across to join them.
‘Hullo,’ Madge said. ‘Wasn’t that splendid?’ The faraway look in her eyes had come a few kilometres nearer since fact had begun to catch up on fantasy. She wore a scarlet coat a shade too small. Her hair floated in its usual amorphous mass. She had stockings on. Laddered.
‘Splendid,’ I agreed.
Roncey gave me a sharp look. ‘Still fussing?’
I said to Madge, ‘What happened down at the start?’
She laughed. ‘There was a fat little man there going absolutely berserk and screaming that he would stop Tiddely Pom if it was the last thing he did.’
Roncey swung round and stared at her. ‘He started hanging on to Tiddely Pom’s reins,’ she went on, ‘and he wouldn’t let go when the starter told him to. It was absolutely crazy. He was trying to kick Tiddely Pom’s legs. So I just ducked under the rails and walked across and told him it was our horse and would he please stop it, and he was frightfully rude …’ A speculative look came into
her eye. ‘He used some words I didn’t know.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Roncey irritably. ‘Get on with it.’
She went on without resentment, ‘He still wouldn’t let go so I put my arms round him and lifted him up and carried him off and he was so surprised he dropped the reins, and then he struggled to get free and I let him fall down on the ground and rolled him under the rails, and then the boys and I sat on him.’
I said, trying to keep a straight face, ‘Did he say anything after that?’
‘Well, he hadn’t much breath,’ she admitted judiciously. ‘But he did say something about killing you, as a matter of fact. He didn’t seem to like you very much. He said you’d smashed everything and stopped him getting to Tiddely Pom, and as a matter of fact he was so hysterical he was jolly nearly in tears.’
‘Where is he now?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know exactly. When I let him get up, he ran away.’
Roncey gave me a mean look. ‘So it took my wife to save my horse, not the Blaze.’
‘Oh no, dear,’ she said placidly. ‘If Mr Tyrone hadn’t been looking after him, the little man would have been able to reach him sooner, and if I hadn’t come back from the Isle of Wight because I thought it would be quite safe if no one knew, and we all wanted to see the race, if I hadn’t been there at the starting gate, someone else would have taken the little man away. Lots of people were going to. It was just that I got to him first.’ She gave me a sweet smile. ‘I haven’t had so much fun for years.’
The day fragmented after that into a lot of people saying things to me that I didn’t really hear. Pieces still stick out: Dermot Finnegan being presented with a small replica of the Lamplighter Gold Cup and looking as if he’d been handed the Holy Grail. Willie Ondroy telling me that Charlie Boston had been slung off the racecourse, and Eric Youll outlining the Stewards’ plan for warning him off permanently, which would mean the withdrawal of his betting licence and the closing of all his shops.
Derry telling me he had been through to Luke-John, whose bookmaker friend had taken all of Charlie Boston’s fifty thousand and was profoundly thankful Tiddely Pom hadn’t won.
Collie Gibbons asking me to go for a drink. I declined. I was off drink. He had his wife with him, and not an American colonel in sight.
Pat Roncey staring at me sullenly, hands in pockets. I asked if he’d passed on my own telephone number along with the whereabouts of Tiddely Pom. Belligerently he tried to justify himself: the man had been even more keen to know where I lived than where the horse was. What man? The tall yellowish man with some sort of accent. From the New Statesman, he’d said. Didn’t Pat know that the New Statesman was the one paper with no racing page? Pat did not.
Sandy Willis walking past leading Zig Zag, giving me a worried smile. Was the horse all right, I asked. She thought so, poor old boy. She muttered a few unfeminine comments on the jockey who had thrown the race away. She said she’d grown quite fond of Tiddely Pom, she was glad he’d done well. She’d won a bit on him, as he’d come in second. Got to get on, she said, Zig Zag needed sponging down.
The Huntersons standing glumly beside Egocentric while their trainer told them their raffle horse had broken down badly and wouldn’t run again for a year, if ever.
That message got through to me razor sharp and clear. No Egocentric racing, no Huntersons at the races. No Gail at the races. Not even that.
I’d had enough. My body hurt. I understood the full meaning of the phrase sick at heart. I’d been through too many mangles, and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. Vjoersterod was dead, Bert Checkov was dead, the non-starter racket was dead … until someone else tried it, until the next wide boy came along with his threats and his heavies. Someone else could bust it next time. Not me. I’d had far, far more than enough.
I wandered slowly out on to the course and stood beside the water jump, looking down into the water. Couldn’t go home until the race train went, after the last race. Couldn’t go home until I’d phoned in to Luke-John for a final check on what my column would look like the next day. Nothing to go home to, anyway, except an empty flat and the prospect of an empty future.
Footsteps swished towards me through the grass. I didn’t look up. Didn’t want to talk.
‘Ty,’ she said.
I did look then. There was a difference in her face. She was softer; less cool, less poised. Still extraordinarily beautiful. I badly wanted what I couldn’t have.
‘Ty, why didn’t you tell me about your wife?’
I shook my head. Didn’t answer.
She said, ‘I was in the bar with Harry and Sarah, and someone introduced us to a Major Gibbons and his wife, because he had been in your Tally article too, like Harry and Sarah. They were talking about you … Major Gibbons said it was such a tragedy about your wife … I said, what tragedy … and he told us …’
She paused. I took a deep difficult breath: said nothing.
‘I said it must be some help that she was rich, and he said what do you mean rich, as far as I know she hasn’t a bean because Ty is always hard up with looking after her, and he’d be reasonably well off if he put her in a hospital and let the country pay for her keep instead of struggling to do it himself …’
She turned half away from me and looked out across the course. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
I swallowed and loosened my mouth. ‘I don’t like … I didn’t want … consolation prizes.’
After a while she said, ‘I see.’ It sounded as if she actually did.
There was a crack in her cool voice. She said, ‘If it was me you’d married, and I’d got polio … I can see that you must stay with her. I see how much she needs you. If it had been me … and you left me …’ She gave a small laugh which was half a sob. ‘Life sure kicks you in the teeth. I find a man I don’t want to part with … a man I’d live on crumbs with … and I can’t have him … even a little while, now and then.’
18
I spent Sunday alone in the flat, mostly asleep. Part of the time I pottered around tidying things up, trying to put my mind and life into order along with my house. Didn’t have much success.
On Monday morning I went to fetch Elizabeth. She came home in an ambulance, with two fit uniformed men to carry her and the pump upstairs. They laid her on the bed I had made up freshly for her, checked that the pump was working properly, helped replace the Spirashell on her chest, accepted cups of coffee, agreed that the weather was raw and cold but what could you expect in December, and eventually went away.
I unpacked Elizabeth’s case and made some scrambled eggs for lunch, and fed her when her wrist packed up, and fixed another mug of coffee into the holder.
She smiled and thanked me. She looked tired, but very calm. There was a deep difference in her, but for some time I couldn’t work out what it was. When I finally identified it, I was surprised. She wasn’t anxious any more. The long-established, deep-rooted insecurity no longer looked out of her eyes.
‘Leave the dishes, Ty,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
I sat in the armchair. She watched me. ‘It still hurts … what that man did.’
‘A bit,’ I agreed.
‘Tonio told me they were both killed that night … trying to find me again.’
‘He did, did he?’
She nodded. ‘He came to see me yesterday. We had a long talk. A long, long talk. He told me a lot of things …’
‘Honey,’ I said, ‘I …’
‘Shut up, Ty. I want to tell you … what he said.’
‘Don’t tire yourself.’
‘I won’t. I am tired, but it feels different from usual. I feel just ordinarily tired, not … not worried tired. Tonio did that. And you. I mean, he made me understand what I saw on Thursday, that you would let yourself be smashed up … that you would drive when you were drunk and risk going to prison … that you would do anything, however dangerous … to keep me safe … He said, if I’d seen that with my own eyes, why did I doubt … why did I
ever doubt that you would stay with me … It was such a relief … I felt as if the whole world were lighter … I know you’ve always told me … but now I do believe it, through and through.’
‘I’m glad,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’m very glad.’
She said, ‘I talked to Tonio about … that girl.’
‘Honey …’
‘Hush,’ she said. ‘I told him about the blackmail. We talked for ages … He was so understanding. He said of course I would be upset, anyone would, but that I shouldn’t worry too much … He said you were a normal, healthy man and if I had any sense I would see that the time to start worrying would be if you didn’t want to sleep with someone.’ She smiled. ‘He said if I could face it, we would both be happier if I didn’t mind if sometimes … He said you would always come home.’
‘Tonio said a great deal.’
She nodded. ‘It made such sense. I haven’t been fair to you.’
‘Elizabeth,’ I protested.
‘No. I really haven’t. I was so afraid of losing you, I couldn’t see how much I was asking of you. But I understand now that the more I can let you go, the easier you will find it to live with me … and the more you will want to.’
‘Tonio said that?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘He’s very fond of you,’ I said.
She grinned. ‘He said so. He also said some pretty ear-burning things about you, if you want to know.’ She told me some of them, her mouth curving up at the corners and the new security gleaming in her eyes.
‘Exaggeration,’ I said modestly.
She laughed. A breathy giggle. Happy.
I got up and kissed her on the forehead and on the cheek. She was the girl I’d married. I loved her very much.
On Tuesday morning, when Mrs Woodward came back, I went out along the mews, round the corner and into the telephone box, and dialled the number of the Western School of Art.
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