Bonecrack

CHAPTER THREE

Nothing about that day got any better.

I rode out with the second lot on the Heath and found there were tender spots I hadn't even known about. Etty asked if I had toothache. I looked like it, she said. Sort of drawn, she said.

I said my molars were in good crunching order and how about starting the canters. The canters were started, watched, assessed, repeated, discussed. Archangel, Etty said, would be ready for the Guineas.

When I told her I was going to stay on myself as the temporary trainer she looked horrified.

'But you can't.'

'You are unflattering, Etty.'

'Well, I mean- You don't know the horses.' She stopped and tried again. 'You hardly ever go racing. You've never been interested, not since you were a boy. You don't know enough about it.'

'I'll manage,' I said, 'with your help.'

But she was only slightly reassured, because she was not vain, and she never overestimated her own abilities. She knew she was a good head lad. She knew there was a lot to training that she wouldn't do so well. Such self knowledge in the Sport of Kings was rare, and facing it rarer still. There were always thousands of people who knew better, on the stands.

'Who will do the entries?' she asked astringently, her voice saying quite clearly that I couldn't.

'Father can do them himself when he's a bit better. He'll have a lot of time.'

At this she nodded with more satisfaction. The entering of horses in races suited to them was the most important skill in training. All the success and prestige of a stable started with the entry forms, where for each individual horse the aim had to be not too high, not too low, but just right. Most of my father's success had been built on his judgement of where to enter, and when to run, each horse.

One of the two-year-olds pranced around, lashed out, and caught another two-year-old on the knee. The boys' reactions had not been quick enough to keep them apart, and the second colt was walking lame. Etty cursed them coldly and told the second boy to dismount and lead his charge home.

I watched him following on foot behind the string, the horse's head ducking at every tender step. The knee would swell and fill and get hot, but with a bit of luck it would right itself in a few days. If it did not, someone would have to tell the owner. The someone would be me.

That made one horse dead and two damaged in one morning. If things went on at that rate there would soon be no stable left for the fat man to bother about.

When we got back there was a small police car in the drive and a large policeman in the office. He was sitting in my chair and staring at his boots, and rose purposefully to his feet as I came through the door.

'Mr Griffon?'

'Yes.'

He came to the point without preliminaries.

'We've had a complaint, sir, that one of your horses knocked over a cyclist on the Moulton Road this morning. Also a young woman has complained to us that this same horse endangered her life and that of her children.'

He was a uniformed sergeant, about thirty, solidly built, uncompromising. He spoke with the aggressive politeness that in some policemen is close to rudeness, and I gathered that his sympathies were with the complainants.

'Was the cyclist hurt sergeant?'

'I understand he was bruised, sir.'

'And his bicycle?'

'I couldn't say, sir.'

'Do you think that a- er- a settlement out of court, so to speak, would be in order?'

'I couldn't say, sir,' he repeated flatly. His face was full of the negative attitude which erects a barrier against sympathy or understanding. Into my mind floated one of the axioms that Russell Arletti lived by: in business matters with trade unions, the press, or the police, never try to make them like you. It arouses antagonism instead. And never make jokes: they are anti jokes.

I gave the sergeant back a stare of equal indifference and asked if he had the cyclist's name and address. After only the slightest hesitation he flicked over a page or two of notebook and read it out to me. Margaret took it down.

'And the young woman's?'

He provided that too. He then asked if he might take a statement from Miss Craig and I said certainly sergeant, and took him out into the yard. Etty gave him a rapid adding-up inspection and answered his questions in an unemotional manner. I left them together and went back to the office to finish the paper work with Margaret, who preferred to work straight through the lunch hour and leave at three to collect her children from school.

'Some of the account books are missing,' she observed.

'I had them last night,' I said. 'They're in the oak room- I'll go and fetch them.'

The oak room was quiet and empty. I wondered what reaction I would get from the sergeant if I brought him in there and said that last night two faceless men had knocked me out, tied me up, and removed me from my home by force. Also they had threatened to kill me, and had punched me full of anaesthetic to bring me back.

'Oh yes sir? And do you want to make a formal allegation?'

I smiled slightly. It seemed ridiculous. The sergeant would produce a stare of top-grade disbelief, and I could hardly blame him. Only my depressing state of health and the smashed telephone lying on the desk made the night's events seem real at all.

The fat man, I reflected, hardly needed to have warned me away from the police. The sergeant had done the job for him.

Etty came into the office fuming while I was returning the account books to Margaret.

'Of all the pompous clods-'

'Does this sort of thing happen often?' I asked.

'Of course not,' Etty said positively. 'Horses get loose, of course, but things are usually settled without all this fuss. And I told that old man that you would see he didn't suffer. Why he had to go complaining to the police beats me.'

'I'll go and see him this evening,' I said.

'Now, the old sergeant, Sergeant Chubb,' Etty said forcefully, 'he would have sorted it out himself. He wouldn't have come round taking down statements. But this one, this one is new here. They've posted him here from Ipswich and he doesn't seem to like it. Just promoted, I shouldn't wonder. Full of his own importance.'

The stripes were new,' Margaret murmured in agreement.

'We always have good relations with the police here,' Etty said gloomily. 'Can't think what they're doing, sending the town someone who doesn't understand the first thing about horses.'

The steam had all blown off. Etty breathed sharply through her nose, shrugged her shoulders, and produced a small resigned smile.

'Oh well- worse things happen at sea.'

She had very blue eyes, and light brown hair that went frizzy when the weather was damp. Middle age had roughened her skin without wrinkling it, and as with most undersexed women there was much in her face that was male. She had thin dry lips and bushy unkempt eyebrows, and the handsomeness of her youth was only something I remembered. Etty seemed a sad, wasted person to many who observed her, but to herself she was fulfilled, and was busily content.

She stamped away in her jodhpurs and boots and we heard her voice raised at some luckless boy caught in wrong doing.

Rowley Lodge needed Etty Craig. But it needed Alessandro Rivera like a hole in the head.

He came late that afternoon.

I was out in the yard looking round the horses at evening stables. With Etty alongside I had got as far round as bay five, from where we would go round the bottom yard before working up again towards the house.

One of the fifteen-year-old apprentices nervously appeared as we came out of one box and prepared to go into the next.

'Someone to see you, sir.'

'Who?'

'Don't know, sir.'

'An owner?'

'Don't know, sir.'

'Where is he?'

'Up by the drive, sir.'

I looked up, over his head. Beyond the yard, out on the gravel, there was parked a large white Mercedes with a uniformed chauffeur standing by the bonnet.

'Take over, Etty, would you?' I said.

I walked up through the yard and out into the drive. The chauffeur folded his arms and his mouth like barricades against fraternisation. I stopped a few paces away from him and looked towards the inside of the car.

One of the rear doors, the one nearest to me, opened. A small black-shod foot appeared, and then a dark trouser leg, and then, slowly straightening, the whole man.

It was clear at once who he was, although the resemblance to his father began and ended with the autocratic beak of the nose and the steadfast stoniness of the black eyes. The son was a little shorter, and emaciated instead of chubby. He had sallow skin that looked in need of a sun-tan, and strong thick black hair curving in springy curls round his ears. Over all he wore an air of disconcerting maturity, and the determination in the set of his mouth would have done credit to a steel trap. Eighteen he might be, but it was a long time since he had been a boy.

I guessed that his voice would be like his father's; definite, unaccented, and careful.

It was.

'I am Rivera,' he announced. 'Alessandro.'

'Good evening,' I said, and intended it to sound polite, cool, and unimpressed.

He blinked.

'Rivera,' he repeated. 'I am Rivera.'

'Yes,' I agreed. 'Good evening.'

He looked at me with narrowing attention. If he expected from me a lot of grovelling, he was not going to get it. And something of this message must have got across to him from my attitude, because he began to look faintly surprised and a shade more arrogant.

'I understand you wish to become a jockey,' I said.

'Intend.'

I nodded casually, 'No one succeeds as a jockey without determination,' I said, and made it sound patronising.

He detected the flavour immediately. He didn't like it. I was glad. But it was a small pin-pricking resistance that I was showing, and in his place I would have taken it merely as evidence of frustrated surrender.

'I am accustomed to succeed,' he said.

'How very nice,' I replied dryly.

It sealed between us an absolute antagonism. I felt him shift gear into overdrive, and it seemed to me that he was mentally gathering himself to fight on his own account a battle he believed his father had already won.

'I will start at once,' he said.

'I am in the middle of evening stables,' I said matter of-factly. 'If you will wait, we will discuss your position when I have finished.' I gave him the politeness of an inclination of the head which I would have given to anybody, and without waiting around for him to throw any more of his slight weight about, I turned smoothly away and walked without haste back to Etty.

When we had worked our way methodically round the whole stable, discussing briefly how each horse was progressing, and planning the work programme for the following morning, we came finally to the four outside boxes, three only busy now, and the fourth full of Moonrock's absence.

The Mercedes still stood on the gravel, with both Rivera and the chauffeur sitting inside it. Etty gave them a look of regulation curiosity and asked who they were.

'New customer,' I said economically.

She frowned in surprise. 'But surely you shouldn't have kept him waiting!'

'This one,' I reassured her with private, rueful irony, 'will not go away.'

But Etty knew how to treat new clients, and making them wait in their car was not it. She hustled me along the last three boxes and anxiously pushed me to return to the Mercedes. Tomorrow, no doubt, she would not be so keen.

I opened the rear door and said to him, 'Come along in to the office.'

He climbed out of the car and followed me without a word. I switched on the fan heater, sat in Margaret's chair behind the desk, and pointed to the swivel armchair in front of it. He made no issue of it, but merely did as I suggested.

'Now,' I said in my best interviewing voice, 'You want to start tomorrow.'

'Yes.'

'In what capacity?'

He hesitated. 'As a jockey.'

'Well, no,' I said reasonably. 'There are no races yet. The season does not start for about four weeks.'

'I know that,' he said stiffly.

'What I meant was, do you want to work in the stable? Do you want to look after two horses, as the others do?'

'Certainly not.'

Then what?'

'I will ride the horses at exercise two or three times a day. Every day. I will not clean their boxes or carry their food. I wish only to ride.'

Highly popular, that was going to be, with Etty and the other lads. Apart from all else, I was going to have a shop floor management confrontation, or in plain old terms, a mutiny, on my hands in no time at all. None of the other lads was going to muck out and groom a horse for the joy of seeing Rivera ride it.

However, all I said was, 'How much experience, exactly, have you had so far?'

'I can ride,' he said flatly.

'Racehorses?'

'I can ride.'

This was getting nowhere. I tried again. 'Have you ever ridden in any sort of race?'

'I have ridden in amateur races.'

'Where?'

'In Italy, and in Germany.'

'Have you won any?'

He gave me a black stare. 'I have won two.'

I supposed that that was something. At least it suggested that he could stay on. Winning itself, in his case, had no significance. His father was the sort to buy the favourite and nobble the opposition.

'But you want now to become a professional?'

'Yes.'

'Then I'll apply for a licence for you.'

'I can apply myself.'

I shook my head. 'You will have to have an apprentice licence, and I will have to apply for it for you.'

'I do not wish to be an apprentice.'

I said patiently, 'Unless you become an apprentice you will be unable to claim a weight allowance. In England in flat races the only people who can claim weight allowances are apprentices. Without a weight allowance the owners of the horses will all resist to the utmost any suggestion that you should ride. Without a weight allowance, in fact, you might as well give up the whole idea.'

'My father-' he began.

'Your father can threaten until he's blue in the face,' I interrupted. 'I cannot force the owners to employ you, I can only persuade. Without a weight allowance, they will never be persuaded.'

He thought it over, his expression showing nothing.

'My father,' he said, 'told me that anyone could apply for a licence and that there was no need to be apprenticed.'

Technically, that is true.'

'But practically, it is not.' It was a statement more than a question: he had clearly understood what I had said.

I began to speculate about the strength of his intentions. It certainly seemed possible that if he read the Deed of Apprenticeship and saw to what he would be binding himself, he might simply step back into his car and be driven away. I fished in one of Margaret's tidy desk drawers, and drew out a copy of the printed agreement.

'You will need to sign this,' I said casually, and handed it over.

He read it without a flicker of an eyelid, and considering what he was reading, that was remarkable.

The familiar words trotted through my mind '- the Apprentice will faithfully, diligently and honestly serve the Master and obey and perform all his lawful commands- and will not absent himself from the service of the Master, nor divulge any of the secrets of the Master's business- and shall deliver to the Master all such monies and other things that shall come into his hands for work done – and will in all matters and things whatsoever demean and behave himself as a good true and faithful Apprentice ought to do-'

He put the form down on the desk and looked across at me.

'I cannot sign that.'

'Your father will have to sign it as well,' I pointed out.

'He will not.'

'Then that's an end to it,' I said, relaxing back in my chair.

He looked down at the form. 'My father's lawyers will draw up a different agreement,' he said.

I shrugged. 'Without a recognisable apprenticeship deed you won't get an apprentice's licence. That form there is based on the articles of apprenticeship common to all trades since the Middle Ages. If you alter its intentions, it won't meet the licensing requirements.'

After a packed pause he said, 'That part about delivering all monies to the Master- does that mean I would have to give to you all the money I might earn in races?' He sounded incredulous, as well he might.

'It does say that,' I agreed, 'but it is normal nowadays for the Master to return half of race earnings to the apprentice. In addition, of course, to giving him a weekly allowance.'

'If I win the Derby on Archangel, you would take half. Half of the fee and half of the present?'

'That's right.'

'It's wicked!'

'You've got to win it before you start worrying,' I said flippantly, and watched the arrogance flare up like a bonfire.

'If the horse is good enough, I will.'

You kid yourself, mate, I thought; and didn't answer.

He stood up abruptly, picked up the form, and without another word walked out of the office, and out of the house, out of the yard, and into his car. The Mercedes purred away with him down the drive, and I stayed sitting back in Margaret's chair, hoping I had seen the last of him, wincing at the energy of my persisting headache, and wondering whether a treble brandy would restore me to instant health.

I tried it.

It didn't.

There was no sign of him in the morning, and on all counts the day was better. The kicked two-year-old's knee had gone up like a football but he was walking pretty sound on it, and the cut on Lucky Lindsay was as superficial as Etty had hoped. The elderly cyclist, the evening before, had accepted my apologies and ten pounds for his bruises and had left me with the impression that we could knock him down again, any time, for a similar supplement to his income. Archangel worked a half speed six furlongs on the Sidehill gallop, and in me a night's sleep had ironed out some creases.

But Alessandro Rivera did come back.

He rolled up in the drive in the chauffeur-driven Mercedes just as Etty and I finished the last three boxes at evening stables, timing it so accurately that I wondered if he had been waiting and watching from out on Bury Road.

I jerked my head towards the office, and he followed me in. I switched on the heater, and sat down, as before; and so did he.

He produced from an inner pocket the apprenticeship form and passed it towards me across the desk. I took it and unfolded it, and turned it over.

There were no alterations. It was the deed in the exact form he had taken it. There were, however, four additions.

The signatures of Alessandro Rivera and Enso Rivera, with an appropriate witness in each case, sat squarely in the spaces designed for them.

I looked at the bold heavy strokes of both the Riveras' signatures and the nervous elaborations of the witnesses. They had signed the agreement without filling in any of the blanks: without even discussing the time the apprenticeship was to run for, or the weekly allowance to be paid.

He was watching me. I met his cold black eyes.

'You and your father signed it like this,' I said slowly, 'because you have not the slightest intention of being bound by it.'

His face didn't change. 'Think what you like,' he said.

And so I would. And what I thought was that the son was not as criminal as his father. The son had taken the legal obligations of the apprenticeship form seriously. But his father had not.