Field of 13

Spring Fever

Women’s Own magazine unexpectedly asked me for a suitable story. (Five thousand words, please.)

They would leave the actual content to me, they said, but they would prefer a story geared to their women readers.

Spring Fever, which I very much enjoyed writing, was the result.

Looking back, Mrs Angela Hart could identify the exact instant in which she fell irrationally in love with her jockey.

Angela Hart, plump, motherly, and fifty-two, watched the twenty-four-year-old man walk into the parade ring at Cheltenham races in her gleaming pink and white colours, and she thought: ‘How young he is, how fit, how lean... how brave.’

He crossed the bright turf to join her for the usual few minutes of chit-chat before taking her horse away to its two-mile scurry over hurdles, and she looked at the way the weather-tanned flesh lay taut over the cheekbones and agreed automatically that yes, the spring sunshine was lovely, and that yes, the drier going should suit her Billyboy better than the rain of the past few weeks.

It was a day like many another. Two racehorses having satisfactorily replaced the late and moderately lamented Edward Hart in Angela’s affections, she contentedly spent her time in going to jump meetings to see her darlings run, in clipping out mentions of them from the racing pages of newspapers and in telephoning her trainer, Clement Scott, to enquire after their health.

She was a woman of kindness and good humour, but suffered from a dangerous belief that everyone was basically as well-intentioned as herself. Like children who pat tigers, she expected a purr of appreciation in return for her offered friendship, not to have her arm bitten off.

Derek Roberts, jockey, saw Mrs Angela Hart prosaically as the middle-aged owner of Billyboy and Hamlet, a woman to whom he spoke habitually with a politeness born from needing the fees he was paid for riding her horses. His job, he reckoned, involved pleasing the customers before and after each race as much as doing his best for them in the event, and as he had long years ago discovered that most owners were pathetically pleased when a jockey praised their horses, he had slid almost without cynicism into a way of conveying optimism even when not believing a word of it.

When he walked into the parade ring at Cheltenham, looking for Mrs Hart and spotting her across the grass in her green tweed coat and brown fur hat, he was thinking that as Billyboy hadn’t much chance in today’s company he’d better prepare the old duck for the coming disappointment and at the same time insure himself against being blamed for it.

‘Lovely day,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘Real spring sunshine.’

‘Lovely.’ After a short silence, when she said nothing more, he tried again.

‘Much better for Billyboy, now all that rain’s drying out.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’

She wasn’t as talkative as usual, he thought. Not the normal excited chatter. He watched Billyboy plod round the ring and said encouragingly, ‘He should run well today... though the opposition’s pretty hot, of course.’

Mrs Hart, looking slightly vague, merely nodded. Derek Roberts, shrugging his mental shoulders, gave her a practised, half-genuine smile and reckoned (mistakenly) that if she had something on her mind, and didn’t want to talk, it was nothing to do with him.

A step away from them, also with his eyes on the horse, stood Billyboy’s trainer, Clement Scott. Strong, approaching sixty, a charmer all his life, he had achieved success more through personality than any deep skill with horses. He wore good clothes. He could talk.

Underneath the attractive skin there was a coldness which was apparent to his self-effacing wife, and to his grown and married children, and eventually to anyone who knew him well. He was good company, but lacked compassion. All bonhomie on top: ruthlessly self-seeking below.

Clement Scott was old in the ways of jockeys and owners, and professionally he thought highly of the pair before him: of Derek, because he kept the owners happy and rode well enough besides, and of Angela because her first interest was in the horses themselves and not in the prize money they might fail to win.

Motherly sentimental ladies, in his opinion, were the least critical and most forgiving of owners, and he put up gladly with their gushing telephone calls because they also tended to pay his bills on receipt. Towards Angela, nicely endowed with a house on the edge of Wentworth golf course, he behaved with the avuncular roguishness that had kept many a widow faithful to his stable in spite of persistent rumours that he would probably cheat them if given half a chance.

Angela, like many another lady, didn’t believe the rumours. Clement, dear naughty Clement, who made owning a racehorse such satisfying fun, would never in any case cheat her.

Angela stood beside Clement on the stands to watch the race, and felt an extra dimension of anxiety; not simply, as always, for the safe return of darling Billyboy, but also, acutely, for the man on his back. Such risks he takes, she thought, watching him through her binoculars. Before that day she had thought only of whether he’d judged the pace right, or taken an available opening, or ridden a vigorous finish. During that race her response to him crossed conclusively from objectivity to emotion, a change which at the time she only dimly perceived.

Derek Roberts, by dint of not resting the horse when it was beaten, urged Billyboy forwards into fourth place close to the winning post, knowing that Angela would like fourth better than fifth or sixth or seventh. Clement Scott smiled to himself as he watched. Fourth or seventh, the horse had won no prize money, but that lad Derek, with his good looks and his crafty ways, he certainly knew how to keep the owners sweet.

Her race glasses clutched tightly to her chest, Angela Hart breathed from the relief of pulse-raising tensions. She thought gratefully that fourth place wasn’t bad in view of the hot opposition, and Billyboy had been running on at the end, which was a good sign... and Derek Roberts had come back safely.

With her trainer she hastened down to meet the returning pair, and watched Billyboy blow through his nostrils in his usual post-race sweating state, and listened to Derek talking over his shoulder to her while he undid the girth buckles on the saddle.

‘...Made a bit of a mistake landing over the third last, but it didn’t stop him... He should win a race pretty soon, I’d say.’

He gave her the special smile and a sketchy salute and hurried away to weigh-in and change for the next race, looping the girths round the saddle as he went. Angela watched until he was out of sight and asked Clement when her horses were running next.

‘Hamlet had a bit of heat in one leg this morning,’ he said, ‘and Billyboy needs two weeks at least between races.’ He screwed up his eyes at her, teasing. ‘If you can’t wait that long to see them again, why don’t you come over one morning and watch their training gallops?’

She was pleased. ‘Does Derek ride the gallops?’

‘Sometimes,’ he said.

It was on the following day that Angela, dreamily drifting around her house, thought of buying another horse.

She looked up Derek Robert’s number, and telephoned. Find you another horse?’ he said. ‘Yeah... sure... I think another horse is a grand idea, but you should ask Mr Scott...’

‘If Clement finds me a horse,’ Angela said, ‘will you come with me to see it? I’d really like your opinion before I buy.’

‘Well...’ He hesitated, not relishing such a use of his spare time but realising that another horse for Angela meant more fees for himself. ‘All right, certainly I’ll come, Mrs Hart.’

‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring Clement straight away.’

‘Another horse?’ Clement said, surprised. ‘Yes, if you like, though it’s a bit late in the season. Why not wait—?’

No.’ Angela interrupted. ‘Dear Clement, I want him now.’

Clement Scott heard but couldn’t understand the urgency in her voice. Four days later, however, when she came to see her existing two horses work — having made sure beforehand that Derek would be there to ride them — he understood completely.

Fiftyish, matronly Angela couldn’t keep her eyes off Derek Roberts. She intently watched him come and go on horse and on foot, and scanned his face uninterruptedly while he spoke. She asked him questions to keep him near, and lost a good deal of animation when he went home.

Clement Scott, who had seen that sort of thing often enough before, behaved to her more flirtatiously than ever and kept his sardonic smile to himself. He had luckily heard of a third horse for her, he said, and would take her to see it.

‘Actually,’ Angela said diffidently, ‘I’ve already asked Derek to come with me... and he said he would.’

Clement, that evening, telephoned Derek.

‘Besotted with me?’ said Derek. ‘That’s bloody nonsense. I’ve been riding for her for more than a year. You can’t tell me I wouldn’t have noticed.’

‘Keep your eyes open, lad,’ Clement said. ‘I reckon she wants this other horse just to give her an excuse to see you more often; and that being so, lad, I’ve a little proposition for you.’

He outlined the little proposition at some length, and Derek discovered that his consideration of Mrs Hart’s best interests came a poor second to the prospects of a tax-free instant gain.

He drove to her house at Wentworth a few days later, and they went on together in her car, a Rover, with Derek driving. The horse belonged to a man in Yorkshire, which meant, Angela thought contentedly, that the trip would take all day.

She had rationalised her desire to own another horse as just an increase in her interest in racing, and also she had rationalised her eagerness for the Yorkshire journey as merely impatience to see what Clement had described as ‘an exciting bargain at twenty thousand, one to do you justice, my dear Angela.’

She could just afford it, she thought, if she didn’t go on a cruise this summer, and if she spent less on clothes. She did not at any point admit to herself that what she was buying at such cost was a few scattered hours out of Derek Roberts’ life.

Going north from Watford, he said: ‘Mrs Hart, did Mr Scott tell you much about this horse?’

‘He said you’d tell me. And call me Angela.’

‘Er...’ He cleared his throat. ‘Angela...’ He glanced at her as she sat beside him, plump and relaxed and happy. It couldn’t be true, he thought. People like Mrs Hart didn’t suffer from infatuations. She was far too old: fifty... an unimaginable age to him at twenty-four. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and felt ashamed (but only slightly) of what he was about to do.

‘Mr Scott thinks the horse has terrific potential. Only six years old. Won a hurdle race last year...’ He went on with the sales talk, skilfully weaving in the few actual facts which she could verify from form books if she wanted to, and putting a delicately rosy slant on everything else. ‘Of course, the frost and snow has kept him off the racecourse during the winter, but I’ll tell you, just between ourselves... er, Angela... that Mr Scott thinks he might even enter him for the Whitbread. He might even be in that class.’

Angela listened entranced. The Whitbread Gold Cup, scheduled for six weeks ahead, was the last big race of the jumping season. To have a horse fit to run in it, and to have Derek Roberts ride it, seemed to her a pinnacle in her racing life that she had never envisaged. Her horizons, her joy, expanded like flowers.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said ecstatically; and Derek Roberts (almost) winced.

‘Mr Scott wondered if you’d like me to do a bit of bargaining for you,’ he said. ‘To get the price down a bit.’

‘Dear Clement is so thoughtful.’ She gave Derek a slightly anxious smile. ‘Don’t bargain so hard I lose the horse, though, will you?’

He promised not to.

‘What is it called?’ she asked and he told her: ‘Magic’

Magic was stabled in the sort of yard which should have warned Angela to beware, but she’d heard often enough that in Ireland champions had been bought out of pigsties, and caution was nowhere in her mind. Dear Clement would naturally not buy her a bad horse, and with Derek himself with her to advise... She looked trustingly at the nondescript bay gelding produced for her inspection and saw only her dreams — not the mud underfoot, not the rotten wood round the stable doors, not the cracked leather of the horse’s tack.

She saw Magic being walked up and down the weedy stable-yard and she saw him being trotted a bit on a leading rein in a small dock-ridden paddock; and she didn’t see the dismay Derek couldn’t keep out of his face.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, her eyes still shining in spite of all.

‘Good strong shoulder,’ he said judiciously. ‘Needs a bit of feeding to improve his condition, perhaps.’

‘But do you like him?’

He nodded decisively. ‘Just the job.’

‘I’ll have him, then.’ She said it without the slightest hesitation and he stamped on the qualms which pricked like teeth.

She waited in the car while Derek bargained with Magic’s owner, watching the two men as they stood together in the stable-yard, shaking their heads, spreading their arms, shrugging, and starting again. Finally, to her relief, they touched hands on it, and Derek came to tell her that she could have the horse for nineteen thousand if she liked.

‘Think it over,’ he said, making it sound as if she needn’t.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve decided. I really have. Shall I give the man a cheque?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Mr Scott has to get a vet’s report, and fix up transport and insurance and so on. He’ll do all the paperwork and settle for the horse, and you can pay him for everything all at once. Much simpler.’

‘Darling Clement,’ she said warmly. ‘Always so sweet and thoughtful.’

Darling Clement entered Magic for the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown Park, and also for what he called a ‘warm-up’ race three weeks before the big event.

‘That will be at Stratford-upon-Avon,’ he told Angela. ‘In the Pragnell Cup, first week of April.’

‘How marvellous,’ Angela said enthusiastically.

She telephoned several times to Derek for long, cosy consultations about Magic’s prospects, and drank in his easy optimism like the word of God. Derek filled her thoughts from dawn to dusk: dear Derek, who was so brave and charming and kind.

Clement and Derek took Magic out on to the gallops at home and found the ‘exciting bargain’ unwilling to keep up with any other horse in the stable. Magic waved his tail about and kicked up his heels and gave every sign of extreme bad temper. Both Clement and Derek, however, reported to a delighted Angela that Magic was a perfect gentleman and going well.

When Angela turned up by arrangement at ten one morning to watch Magic work, he had been sent out by mistake with the first lot at seven, and was consequently resting. Her disappointment was mild, though, because Derek was there, not riding but accompanying her on foot, full of smiles and gaiety and friendship. She loved it. She trusted him absolutely, and she showed it.

‘Well done, lad,’ Clement said gratefully, as she drove away later. ‘With you around, our Angela wouldn’t notice an earthquake.’

Derek, watching her go, felt remorse and regret. It was hardly fair, he thought. She was a nice old duck really. She’d done no one any harm. He belatedly began not to like himself.

They went to Stratford races all hoping for different things: Derek that Magic would at least get round, Angela that her horse would win, and Clement that he wouldn’t stop dead in the first furlong.

Three miles. Fast track. Firm ground. Eighteen fences.

Angela’s heart was beating with a throb she could feel as Magic, to the relief of both men, deigned to set off in the normal way from the start, and consented thereafter to gallop along steadily among the rear half of the field. After nearly two miles of this mediocrity both men relaxed and knew that when Magic ran out of puff and pulled up, as he was bound to do soon, they could explain to Angela that ‘he had needed the race’, and ‘he’ll be tuned up nicely for the Whitbread’, and she would believe it.

A mile from home, from unconscious habit, Derek gave Magic the speeding-up signs of squeezing with his legs and clicking his tongue and flicking the reins. Magic unexpectedly plunged towards the next fence, misjudged his distance, took off too soon, hit the birch hard, and landed in a heap on the ground.

The horse got to his feet and nonchalantly cantered away. The jockey lay still and flat.

‘Derek!’ cried Angela, agonised.

‘Bloody fool,’ Clement said furiously, bustling down from the stands. ‘Got him unbalanced.’

In a turmoil of anxiety, Angela watched through her binoculars as the motionless Derek was loaded slowly onto a stretcher and carried to an ambulance; and then she walked jerkily round to the first-aid room to await his return.

I should never have bought the horse, she thought in anguish. If I hadn’t bought the horse, Derek wouldn’t be... might not be...

He was alive. She saw his hands move as soon as the blue-uniformed men opened the ambulance doors. Her relief was almost as shattering as her fear. She felt faint.

Derek Roberts had broken his leg and was in no mood to worry about Angela’s feelings. He knew she was there because she made little fluttery efforts to reach his side — efforts constantly thwarted by the stretcher-bearers easing him out — saying to him over and over, ‘Derek, oh, Derek are you all right?’

Derek didn’t answer. His attention was on his leg, which hurt, and on getting into the first-aid-room without being bumped. There was always a ghoulish crowd round the door pressing forward to look. He stared up at the faces peering down and hated their probing interest. It was a relief to him, as always on those occasions, when they carried him through the door and shut out the ranks of eyes.

Inside, waiting for the doctor and lying on a bed, he reflected gloomily that his present spot of trouble served him right.

Outside, Angela wandered aimlessly about. She thought that she ought to worry about the horse, but she couldn’t; she had room in her mind only for Derek.

‘Never mind, missus,’ a voice said cheerfully. ‘Yon Magic is all right. Cantering round the middle there and giving them the devil’s own job of catching him. Don’t you fret none.’

Startled, she looked at the sturdy man with the broad Yorkshire accent who stood confidently in her way.

‘Came from my brother, did that horse,’ he said. ‘I’m down here special, like, to see him run.’

‘Oh,’ said Angela vaguely.

‘Is the lad all right? The one who rode him?’

‘I think he’s broken his leg.’

‘Dear, oh dear. Bit of hard luck, that. He drove a hard bargain with my brother, did that lad.’

‘Did he?’

‘Aye. My brother said Magic was a flier, but your lad, he wouldn’t have it, said the horse hadn’t any form to speak of, anc looked proper useless to him. My brother was asking seven thousand for it, but your lad beat him down to five. I came here, see. to learn which was right.’ He beamed with goodwill. ‘Tell you the truth, the horse didn’t run up to much, did it? Reckon your lad was right. But don’t you fret, missus, there’ll be another day.’

He gave her a nod and a final beam, and moved away. Angela felt breathless, as if he had punched her.

Already near the exit gate, she turned blindly and walked out through it, her legs taking her automatically towards her car. Shaking, she sat in the driving seat, and with a feeling of unreality drove all of the hundred miles home. ‘The man must have got it wrong,’ she thought. ‘Not seven and five thousand, but twenty and nineteen.’ When she reached her house she looked up the address of Magic’s previous owner and telephoned.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Five thousand, that’s right.’ The broad Yorkshire voice floated cheerfully across the counties. ‘Charged you a bit more, did they?’ He chuckled. ‘Couple of hundred, maybe? You can’t grudge them that, missus. Got to have their commission, like. It’s the way of the world.’

She put down the receiver, and sat on her lonely sofa, and stared into space. She understood for the first time that what she had felt for Derek was love. She understood that Clement and Derek must have seen it in her weeks ago, and because of it had exploited and manipulated her in a way that was almost as callous as rape.

All the affection she had poured out towards them, all the joy and fond thoughts and happiness... they had taken them and used them and hadn’t cared for her a bit. ‘They don’t even like me,’ she thought. ‘Derek doesn’t even like me.’

The pain of his rejection filled her with a depth of misery she had never felt before. How could she, she wondered wretchedly, have been so stupid, so blind, so pathetically immature.

She walked after a while through the big house, which was so quiet now that Edward wasn’t there to fuss, and went into the kitchen. She started to make herself a cup of tea, and wept.

Within a week she visited Derek in hospital. He lay halfway down a long ward with his leg in traction, and for an instant he looked like a stranger: a thin young man with his head back on the pillows and his eyes closed. A strong young man no longer, she thought. More like a sick child.

That, too, was an illusion.

He heard her arrive at his bedside and opened his eyes, and because he was totally unprepared to find her there she saw quite clearly the embarrassment which flooded through him. He swallowed, and bit his lip; and then he smiled. It was the same smile as before, the outward face of treason. Angela felt slightly sick.

She drew up a chair and sat by his bed. ‘Derek,’ she said, ‘I’ve come to congratulate you.’

He was bewildered. ‘Whatever for?’

‘On your capital gain: the difference between five thousand and nineteen.’

His smile vanished and he looked away from her. He felt trapped and angry and ashamed, and he wished above all things that she would go away.

‘How much of it,’ Angela said slowly, ‘was your share, and how much was Clement’s?’

There was a stretching silence of more than a minute. Then he said, ‘Half and half.’

‘Thank you,’ Angela said. She got to her feet, pushing back the chair. ‘That’s all, then. I just wanted to hear you admit it.’

And to find out for sure, she thought, that she was cured; that the fever no longer ran in her blood; that she could look at him and not care any more — and she could.

‘All?’ he said.

She nodded. ‘What you did wasn’t illegal, just... well, horrid. I should have been more businesslike.’ She took a step away. ‘Goodbye, Derek.’

She’d gone several more steps before he called after her, suddenly, ‘Angela... Mrs Hart.’

She paused and came halfway back.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please listen. Just for a moment.’

Angela returned slowly to his bedside.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll believe me,’ he said, ‘but I’ve been thinking about that race at Stratford... and I’ve a feeling Magic may not be so useless after all.’

‘No,’ Angela said. ‘No more lies. I’ve had enough.’

‘I’m not... This isn’t a lie. Not this.’

She shook her head.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Magic made no show at Stratford because nobody asked him to — except right at the end, when I shook him up. And then he fell because I’d done it so close to the fence, and because when I gave him the signal he just shot forward as if he’d been galvanised.’

Angela listened, disbelieving.

‘Some horses,’ he said, ‘won’t gallop at home. Magic won’t and so we thought... I thought... that he couldn’t race either. But I’m not so sure now.’

Angela shrugged. ‘It doesn’t change anything. But I’ll find out when he runs in the Whitbread.’

‘No.’ He squirmed. ‘We never meant to run him in the Whitbread.’

‘But he’s entered,’ she said.

‘Yes, but... well, Mr Scott will tell you, a day or two before the race, that Magic has a temperature, or has bruised his foot, or something, and can’t run. He... we... planned it. We reckoned you wouldn’t quibble about the price if you thought Magic was Whitbread class...’

Angela let out an ‘Oh’ like a deep sigh. She looked down at the young man who was pleating his sheets aimlessly in his fingers and not meeting her eyes. She saw the shame and the tiredness and the echo of pain from his leg, and she thought that what she had felt for him had been as destructive to him as to herself.

At home, Angela phoned Clement. ‘Dear Clement, how is Magic?’

‘None the worse, Angela, I’m glad to say.’

‘How splendid,’ she said warmly. ‘And now there’s the Whitbread to look forward to, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ He chuckled. ‘Better buy a new hat, my dear.’

‘Clement,’ Angela said sweetly, ‘I am counting on you to keep Magic fit and well-fed and uninjured in every way. I’m counting on his turning up to start in the Whitbread, and on his showing us just exactly how bad he is.’

‘What?’

‘Because if he doesn’t, Clement dear, I might just find myself chattering to one or two people... you know, press men and even the tax man, and people like that... about your buying Magic for five thousand one day and selling him to me for nineteen thousand the next.’

Angela listened to the silence travelling thunderously down the wire, and she smiled with healthy mischief. ‘And Clement dear, we’ll both give his new jockey instructions to win if he can, won’t we? Because it’s got to be a fair test, don’t you think? And just to encourage you, I’ll promise you that if I’m satisfied that Magic has done his very best, win or lose, I won’t mention to anyone what I paid for him. And that’s a bargain, Clement dear, that you can trust.’

Clement put the receiver down with a crash and swore aloud. ‘Bloody old bag. She must have checked up.’ He telephoned to Yorkshire and found that indeed she had. Damn and blast her, he thought. He was going to look a proper fool in the eyes of the racing world, running rubbish like Magic in one of the top races. It would do his reputation no damn good at all.

Clement Scott felt not the slightest twinge of guilt. He had, after all, cheated a whole succession of foolish ladies in the same way. But if Angela talked — and she could talk for hours when she liked — he would find that the gullible widowed darlings were all suddenly suspicious and buying their horses from someone else. Magic, he saw furiously, would have to be trained as thoroughly as possible, and ridden by the best jockey free.

In the parade ring before the Whitbread, Angela was entirely her old self again: kind and gushing and bright-eyed.

She spoke to her new jockey, who was unlike Derek Roberts to a comfortable degree. ‘I expect you’ve talked it over with darling Clement,’ she said gaily, ‘but I think it would be best, don’t you, if you keep Magic back a bit among all the other runners for most of the way, and then about a mile from the winning post tell him to start winning, if you see what I mean, and, of course, after that it’s up to both of you just to do what you can. I have my money on you, you know.’

The jockey glanced uncertainly at the stony face of Clement Scott. ‘Do what the lady wants,’ Clement said.

The jockey, who knew his business, carried out the instructions to the letter. A mile from home he dug Magic sharply in the ribs and was astonished at the response. Magic — young, lightly raced, and carrying bottom weight — surged past several older, tireder contenders, and came towards the last fence lying fifth.

Clement could hardly believe his eyes. Angela could hardly breathe. Magic floated over the last fence and charged up the straight and finished third.

‘There,’ she said, ‘isn’t that lovely.’

Since almost no one else had backed her horse, Angela collected a fortune in place money from the Tote; and a few days later, for exactly what she’d paid, she sold Magic to a scrap-metal merchant from Kent.

Angela sent Derek Roberts a get-well card. A week later she sent him an impersonal case of champagne and a simple message: ‘Thanks’.

‘I’ve learnt a lot,’ she thought, ‘because of him. A lot about greed and gullibility, about facades and consequences and the transience of love. And about racing... too much.’

She sold Billyboy and Hamlet and went on her cruise.