Knock Down

12

Wilton Young came to the following Doncaster Sales not to buy but to see some of his horses-in-training sold. Cutting his losses, he said. Weeding out all those who’d eaten more during the just ended flat season than they’d earned. He slapped me jovially on the back and told me straight that slow horses ate as much as fast, and he, Wilton Young, was no meal ticket for flops.

‘Profit, lad,’ he boomed. ‘That’s what it’s all about. Brass, lad. Brass.’

I bought one of his cast-offs, a three-year-old colt with little form and a reputation for kicking visitors out of his box. I got him cheap for a Sussex farmer who couldn’t afford more.

His ex-owner said disparagingly, ‘What did you buy that for? It’s no bloody good. If that’s what you buy, what the hell will you buy for me?’

I explained about the poorish farmer. ‘He’ll geld it and hack it about the farm. Teach it to jump. Make it a four-year-old novice hurdler by April.’

‘Huh.’

Second rate jumpers were of less account than marbles to self-made tycoons with cheque books open for Derby prospects. I realised that whatever his fury against Fynedale he was still expecting to pay large sums for his horses. Perhaps he needed to. Perhaps he felt a reflected glory in their expense. Perhaps he wanted to prove to the world how much brass he’d made. Conspicuous consumption, no less.

Which meant that to please him best I would have to buy an obviously good horse at a shade above what I thought it worth. Given a bargain like Singeling he had rid himself of it within an hour, and for all his twinge of regret afterwards he would be likely to do the same again. Accordingly I picked out the pride of the sale, a two-year-old with near-classic expectations, and asked if he would like it.

‘Ay,’ he said. ‘If it’s the best, I would.’

‘It’ll fetch at least twenty thousand,’ I said. ‘How far do you want me to go?’

‘It’s your job. You do it.’

I got it for twenty-six, and he was delighted.

Fynedale was not.

From across the ring his eyes looked like stark black holes in his chalk-white face. The carrot hair on top flamed like a burning bush. The hate vibrated in him so visibly that if I could have seen his aura it would have been bright red.

Constantine had brought Kerry to the Friday sales, although the chief purpose of their journey to Yorkshire was to see Nicol try out River God in Saturday’s novice chase.

Constantine was saying authoritatively to whomever would listen that keeping a large string of horses in training was becoming impossibly expensive these days, and that he thought it a prudent time to retrench. Only fools, he intimated, were still ready to buy at the inflated prices of recent months.

I saw Vic Vincent go across to greet them when they came, Amicable handshakes. Smiles with teeth. A good deal of window dressing to establish that whatever some people might think of their agents, Constantine was satisfied with his.

Nicol came and leaned beside me on the rail of the collecting ring.

‘I told him,’ he said. ‘I said Vic had been rooking him of thousands. Vic and Fynedale, pushing up the prices and splitting the proceeds.’

‘What happened?’

He looked puzzled. ‘Nothing. He didn’t say much at all. I got the impression... I know it’s silly... but I got the impression he already knew.’

‘He’s nobody’s fool,’ I said.

‘No... but if he knew, why did he let Vic get away with it?’

‘Ask him.’

‘I did. He simply didn’t answer. I said I supposed he would ditch him now and he said I supposed wrong. Vic could pick horses better than any other single agent, he said, and he had no intention of cutting himself off from his advice.’

We watched the merchandise walk round the collecting ring. Nothing in the current bunch looked worth the outlay.

Nicol said gloomily, ‘They think I’m a traitor for listening to you at all. You’re absolutely persona non grata with my parent.’

Predictable. If Constantine wasn’t going to admit he’d been swindled, he wouldn’t exactly fall on the neck of the person who’d publicly pointed it out.

‘Is he really cutting down on his string?’ I asked.

‘Heaven knows. He’s not noticeably short of the next quid, though some big deal or other fell through the other day, which irritated him more than somewhat.’ He gave me a quick sideways sardonic glance. ‘My new step-mama will be able to maintain us in the style to which we are accustomed.’

‘Why don’t you turn professional?’ I asked with mild reproof. ‘You’re good enough.’

I had, it seemed, touched him on a jumpy nerve. He said angrily, ‘Are you trying to tell me I should earn my own living?’

‘Not really my business.’

‘Then keep your trap shut.’

He shifted abruptly off the rail and walked away. I didn’t watch him go. A minute later he came back.

‘You sod,’ he said.

‘I try.’

‘You bloody well succeed.’

He hunched his shoulders inside his sheepskin coat. ‘Professional jockeys aren’t allowed to own horses in training,’ he said.

‘Nothing to stop them running in your father’s name.’

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘Just shut up.’

I shut.

I came face to face with Vic by accident, he coming out of the sale building, I going in. He was moderately triumphant.

‘You’ve got nowhere,’ he said.

‘Because you’ll soon find another stooge to replace Fynedale?’

His mouth compressed. ‘I’m admitting nothing.’

‘How wise.’

He gave me a furious look and stalked away. He’d said nothing this time about me toeing the line or else. Perhaps because with Fynedale out of action there was no effective line to toe. Perhaps the or else campaign was temporarily in abeyance. Nothing in his manner persuaded me it was over for ever.

Having Wilton Young for a client positively galvanised my business. During that one Friday I received as many enquiries and definite commissions as in any past whole month, mostly from Northern trainers with bustling would-be owners who like Wilton Young had made their own brass.

As one trainer for whom I’d ridden in the past put it, ‘They know eff-all about horses but the money’s burning their fingers. All they want is to be sure they’re getting the best possible. That they’re not being done. Get me ten good two-year-olds and I’ll see you right.’

Both Vic and Fynedale noticed the constant stream of new clients and the swelling of my order book: they would have to have been blind not to. The effect on them was the reverse of joyful. Vic’s face grew redder and Fynedale’s whiter and as time wore on neither of them was capable of ordinary social conversation.

Finally it worried me. All very well prospering in front of their eyes, but when success could breed envy even in friends, in enemies it could raise spite of Himalayan proportions. Several of my new customers had transferred from Fynedale and one or two from Vic, and if I’d wanted a perfect revenge, I’d got it: but revenge was a tree with sour fruit.

Between Vic and Fynedale themselves things were no better. Under Constantine’s faithful umbrella Vic had disowned his former lieutenant and had been heard to say that if he had realised what Fynedale was up to he would of course have had nothing to do with it. Antonia Huntercombe and the breeder of the Transporter colt would have been interested.

Probably the fact that Fynedale had two directions for hatred exhausted him to immobility. He stood about looking dazed, in a trance, as if Vic’s perfidy had stunned him. He shouldn’t have been so surprised, I thought. Vic always lied easily. Always had. And had always had the gift of the good liar, that people believed him.

On the Saturday afternoon River God won the novice chase by a short head thanks entirely to Nicol’s riding. I watched the triumphant unsaddling party afterwards and noted that Vic was there too, oozing bonhomie in Nicol’s direction and being very man-of-the-world with Constantine. His big boyish face was back to its good-natured-looking normal, the manner easy again, and confident. Kerry Sanders patted his arm and Constantine’s heavy black spectacles turned repeatedly in his direction.

All sweetness and light, I thought uncharitably. Vic would always bounce back like a rubber ball.

From habit I went to watch the next race from the jockeys’ box, and Nicol climbed the steps to my side.

‘Well done,’ I said.

‘Thanks.’

The runners came out into the course and jauntily ambled down in front of the stands. Eight or nine, some of them horses I’d once ridden. I felt the usual tug of regret, of nostalgia. I wouldn’t entirely get over it, I thought, until there was a completely new generation of horses. While my old partners were still running, I wanted to be on them.

Nicol said with surprised discovery, ‘You wish you were still riding!’

I mentally shook myself. It was no good looking back. ‘It’s finished,’ I said.

‘No more crashing falls. No more booing crowds. No more bloody-minded trainers telling you you rode a stinking race and engaging a different jockey next time.’

‘That’s right.’

He smiled his quick smile. ‘Who’d wish it on a dog?’

The runners assembled, the tapes flew up, the race went away. They were experienced hurdlers, crafty and fast, flicking over the low obstacles without altering their stride. Even though I dealt mostly with young stock for the Flat, I still liked watching jumpers best.

‘If I suggested to Father I would be a pro, he’d have a fit.’

‘Particularly,’ I said, ‘If you mentioned me in connection.’

‘God, yes.’

The runners went down the far side and we lifted race-glasses to watch.

‘Vic looks happy today,’ I said.

Nicol snorted. ‘Father told him to go to the States after Christmas and buy Kerry some colt called Phoenix Fledgling.’

‘With her money?’

‘Why?’

‘He was saying yesterday he was cutting down. So today he has a hundred thousand quid lying about loose?’

‘So much?’ He was surprised.

‘It could be even more.’

‘Would Father know?’ Nicol asked doubtfully.

‘Vic would,’ I said.

Nicol shook his head. ‘I don’t know what they’re up to. Thick as thieves again today.’

The runners turned into the straight. Positions changed. The favourite came through and won smoothly, the jockey collected, expert, and totally professional.

Nicol turned to me abruptly.

‘If I could ride like that, I’d take out a licence.’

‘You can.’

He stared. Shook his head.

‘You do,’ I said.

Crispin had been sober since the fire. Sober and depressed.

‘My life’s a mess,’ he said.

As usual during these periods he sat every night in my office while I got through the paperwork and did the inevitable telephoning.

‘I’m going to get a job.’

We both knew that he wouldn’t. Those he wanted, he couldn’t keep. Those he could keep, he despised.

‘You can have one here,’ I said. ‘At this rate, I’ll have to get help with the paperwork. I can’t cope with it all.’

‘I’m not a bloody typist,’ he said scornfully.

‘You can’t type.’

‘We all know I’m absolutely useless. No need to rub it in.’

‘You can keep the accounts, though. You know all about figures.’

He thought it over. Unreliable he might be, but not untrained. If he wanted to he could take over the financial half of the office load and do it well.

‘I’ll see,’ he said.

Outside in the yard the demolition work was nearly finished. Plans for the new stables lay on my desk, drawn up at high speed by a local architect from the scribbled dimensions I’d given him. Depending on the time it took the Council to pass them, I’d be open for business again by the summer.

The rebuilding of the roof of the house was due to be started the following week. Rewiring from stem to stern had to be done after that, and there were several fallen ceilings to be replastered. Despite day and night oil heaters astronomicalising my fuel bills in every room, the damp and the damp smell persisted. Repainting lay a long way ahead. It would take almost a year, I reckoned, to restore in full what had been done to intimidate me.

Vic had not seen the damage he’d caused and maybe he could put it comfortably out of his mind, but I came home to it night after night. He might forget, but he had made sure that I didn’t.

Sophie had had two weeks of night shift, telling departing freight flights where to get off.

‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ she asked on the telephone.

‘Day or night?’

‘Day.’

‘Damn.’

She laughed. ‘What’s wrong with the day?’

‘Apart from anything else... I have to go to Ascot Sales.’

‘Oh.’ A pause. ‘Couldn’t I come with you?’

‘If you don’t mind me working.’

‘I’d love it. See all the little crooks doing the dirty. And Vic Vincent... will I see him?’

‘I’m not taking you,’ I said.

‘I won’t bite him.’

‘Can’t risk it.’

‘I promise.’

When I picked her up at nine she was still yawning from five hours sleep and a system geared to waking at noon. She opened her door in jeans, sweater, toast and honey.

‘Come in.’ She gave me a slightly sticky sweet-tasting kiss. ‘Coffee?’

She poured two cups in her tiny kitchen. Bright sunshine sliced through the window, giving a misleading report of the freezing day outside, where the north-west wind was doing its Arctic damnedest.

‘You’ll need warm boots,’ I said. ‘And sixteen layers of insulation. Also a nose muff or two and some frostbite cream.’

‘Think I’ll stay at home and curl up with a good television programme.’

When wrapped up she looked ready for Outer or even Inner Mongolia and complained that the padding made her fat.

‘Ever seen a thin Eskimo?’

She tucked the silver hair away inside a fur-lined hood. ‘So everyone has problems.’

I drove to the Ascot sale ring. Sophie’s reaction, although forewarned, was very much like Kerry’s.

‘Ascot,’ she said.

‘At least today it isn’t raining.’

She huddled inside the fat-making layers. ‘Thank God you insisted on the igloo bit.’

I took her down to the stables where there were several horses I wanted to look at, the underfoot conditions that day rock hard, not oozing with mud. She dutifully stuck her head inside each box to look at the inmates, though her claim to know less about horses than quantum mechanics was quickly substantiated.

‘Do they see two views at once, with their eyes on opposite sides of their head like that?’

‘Their brains sort it out,’ I said.

‘Very confusing.’

‘Most animals look sideways. And birds. And fish.’

‘And snakes in the grass,’ she said.

Some of the horses had attendants with them. Some didn’t. Some had attendants who had vanished temporarily to the refreshment room. Everywhere lay the general clutter of stables in the morning; buckets, muck sacks, brushes, bandages, haynets and halters, mostly in little clumps either outside or inside each box door. Most of the early lot numbers had stayed overnight.

I asked for three or four horses to be led out of their boxes by their attendants to get an idea of how they moved. They trotted obligingly along and back a wider piece of ground, the attendant running alongside holding them by the head on a short rope. I watched them from behind and from dead ahead.

‘What do you look for?’ Sophie said.

‘Partly whether they dish their feet out sideways.’

‘Is that good?’

I shook my head, smiling, ‘The fastest ones generally don’t do it.’

We went up to the O-shaped sale ring, where the wind whistled through with enthusiasm and the meagre crowd of participants stamped their feet and tucked their hands under their armpits. Ronnie North was there, breathing out clouds of steam and wiping a running nose; and Vic was there, dandified in a belted white shiny jacket with a blue shirt underneath.

While he was deep in conversation with a client I pointed him out to Sophie.

‘But he looks nice,’ she objected.

‘Of course he does. Hundreds of people love him.’

She grinned. ‘Such sarcasm.’

I bought two three-year-old fillies for a client in Italy and Vic watched broodingly from directly opposite.

Sophie said ‘When he looks at you like that... he doesn’t look nice at all.’

I took her to warm up over some coffee. It occurred to me uneasily and belatedly that maybe I had not been clever to bring her to Ascot. It had seemed to me that Vic was as much interested in Sophie herself as in what I was buying, and I wondered if he were already thinking of ways to get at me through her.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sophie said. ‘You’ve gone very quiet.’

‘Have a doughnut?’

‘Yes please.’

We munched and drank, and I checked ahead through the catalogue, making memory-jogging notes about the horses we had seen in their boxes.

‘Does it go on like this all day?’ Sophie asked.

‘A bit boring for you, I’m afraid.’

‘No... Is this what you do, day after day?’

‘On sales days, yes. Other days I fix up deals privately, or go to the races, or see to things like transport and insurance. Since last week I’ve barely had time to cough.’ I told her about Wilton Young and the consequently mushrooming business.

‘Are there a lot of horses for sale?’ she said doubtfully. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there were enough for so many people all to be involved in buying and selling.’

‘Well... In Britain alone there are at present about seventeen thousand thoroughbred broodmares. A mare can theoretically have a foal every year, but some years they’re barren and some foals die. I suppose there must be about nine thousand new foals or yearlings on the market every season. Then there are about twenty thousand horses in training for flat races, and heaven knows how many jumpers, but more than on the Flat. Horses which belong to the same people from birth to death are exceptions. Most of them change hands at least twice.’

‘With a commission for the agent every time?’ Her expression held no approval.

I smiled, ‘Stockbrokers work for commission. Are they more respectable?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Don’t confuse me.’

I said, ‘France, Italy and especially America are all at it in the bloodstock business hammer and tongs. There are about thirteen hundred stud farms in the British Isles and thousands more round the world.’

‘All churning out horses... and only so that people can gamble.’

I smiled at her still disapproving expression. ‘Everyone needs some sort of fantasy on their bread.’

She opened her mouth and shut it, and shook her head. ‘I can never decide whether you are very wise or an absolute fool.’

‘Both.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Dead easy, I’m afraid. Most people are.’

We went back to the ring and watched Vic and Ronnie North beat up the price of a weedy four-year-old hurdler to twice the figure his form suggested. Vic would no doubt be collecting a sizeable kick-back from the seller along with the commission from his client, and Ronnie North looked expansively pleased both with his status as underbidder for this one horse and with life in general.

Fynedale’s successor, it seemed to me, had been elected.

Fynedale himself, I noticed, had arrived in the ring in time to see what was happening. He seemed to be in much the same state as before, white-faced, semi-dazed and radiating unfocused hatred.

Sophie said, ‘He looks like gelignite on the boil.’

‘With luck he’ll explode all over Vic.’

‘You’re pretty heartless... he looks ill.’

‘Buzz off and mother him then,’ I said.

‘No thanks.’

We looked at some more horses and I bought another; we had some more coffee and the wind blew even colder. Sophie however seemed content.

‘Nose needs powdering,’ she said at one point. ‘Where will I meet you?’

I consulted the catalogue. ‘I’d better look at eighty-seven and ninety-two, in their boxes.’

‘O.K. I’ll find you.’

I looked at eighty-seven and decided against it. Not much bone and too much white around the eye. There was no one with him. I left his box, bolted both halves of the door and went along to ninety-two. There I opened the top half of the door and looked inside. No attendant there either, just patient Lot 92 turning an incurious gaze. I opened the bottom half of the door and went in, letting them swing shut behind me. Lot 92 was securely tied by a headcollar to a ring in the wall, but it was too cold for open doors.

The horse was a five-year-old hurdler being sold for a quick profit while he still showed promise of being useful at six. I patted his brown flank, ran my hand down his legs, and took a good close look at his teeth.

When the door opened and closed I paid no especial attention to whatever had come in. It should have been an attendant for the horse or another like me inspecting the goods at close quarters.

It wasn’t.

No instinct made me look up as I let go of the hurdler’s mouth, stroked his nose and stood back for a final appraisal.

I saw only a flash in the air. Felt the thud in my chest. And knew, falling, that the white face of Fynedale was coming forward to finish the job.