Knock Down

3

He wasn’t comprehensively insured, because his new owner had jibbed at the high premium. He wasn’t finally paid for, because of a complicated currency transfer. I had had to guarantee the money to the vendor when I didn’t actually have it, and if I didn’t get that two-year-old back fast and unscratched the financial hot waters would close over my head. The foreign buyer was a ruthless man who would stop his cheque if the horse were damaged and my own insurers wouldn’t pay up for anything less than death, and reluctantly at that.

Sweater, jeans, boots went on at high speed and I ran downstairs fumbling to do up the buckles of the strap which anchored my shoulder. In the sitting-room Crispin still snored. I shook him, calling his name. No response. The stupor persisted.

I stopped in the office to telephone the local police.

‘If anyone reports a horse in their back garden, it’s mine.’

‘Very good,’ said a voice. ‘Saves time to know.’

Out in the yard there was no sound. The two-year-old had been already on the road when I woke, because it was metal on tarmac I’d heard, not the soft familiar scrunch on weedy gravel.

No sound on the road. It lay empty in the moonlight for as far as I could see.

He could be peacefully grazing the verge a few yards beyond my sight.

He could be halfway to the express line of the electric railway or on the dual carriageway to Brighton or on the main runway at the airport.

He could be crashing down rabbit holes in the local scrubby woodland.

I sweated in the cold night air. Seventy thousand bloody pounds I didn’t have and couldn’t raise.

Looking for a loose horse at night by car had high built-in failure factors. One couldn’t hear his movements and with his dark coat one could hit him as soon as see him. One could startle him into panic, into crashing through a fence, tearing himself on barbed wire, skidding to his knees, damaging beyond repair the slender bones and tendons of his legs.

I hurried back through the yard, picked up a bridle and a halter from the tackroom, and ran on out to the nearest paddock. There somewhere in the dim dappled light was the pensioned-off steeplechaser I used as a hack. Dozing on his feet and dreaming of long past Gold Cups.

Climbing the rails I whistled to him in a trill through my teeth, the sound he responded to when he felt like it.

‘Come on, boy,’ I called. ‘Come here you bugger, for God’s sweet sake.’ Come. Just come. But the field looked empty.

I whistled again, despairing.

He ambled over with all the urgency of a museum. Sniffed at my fingers. Resignedly allowed me to put on his bridle. Even stood moderately still when I led him to the gate and used it as usual as a mounting block. Jogging on his bare back, I trotted him through the yard, and at the gate let him choose his own direction.

Left lay the main roads and right the woods. He chose the right, but as I urged him on I wondered if he had gone that way because I subconsciously wanted it. Horses, highly telepathic, needed little steering.

If the two-year-old were in the woods he wasn’t under the wheels of a twenty ton lorry. If he were in the woods he could be calmly eating leaves from the branches and not sticking his feet down rabbit holes...

After half a mile, where the narrow road began to wind upward and the tangle of beech and bramble and evergreen grew thicker, I reined in my ‘chaser, stood him still, and listened.

Nothing. Only the faint sound of moving air, hardly as much as a rustle. My mount waited, uninterested and unexcited. He would have known if the two-year-old had been near. He was telling me indirectly that he wasn’t.

I went back, trotting him fast on the softer verge. Past the stable gate, where he wanted to turn in. Down the road to the village and across the moonlit green.

I tried to comfort myself with the thought that horses didn’t usually go far when they got loose from their stable. Only as far as the nearest succulent grass. They wandered and stopped, wandered and stopped, and only if something frightened them would they decamp at a gallop. The trouble was they were so easily frightened.

There was grass enough on the village green, but no two-year-old. I stopped again on the far side, listening.

Nothing.

Worried and dry mouthed I went on towards the junction with the main road, where the village swept abruptly out into the three-lane double highway of the A23.

How could I, I thought, how could I have been so stupid as not to bolt the stable door. I couldn’t remember not doing it, but then I couldn’t remember doing it either. It was one of those routine actions one did automatically. I couldn’t imagine not flicking the bolt when I left the box. I’d been doing it all my working life. I was not insured against my own negligence. How could I possibly... how could I ever... have been stupid enough not to bolt that door?

Even after midnight there was too much traffic on the Brighton road. Definitely not a place for horses.

I reined in again, and almost immediately my ‘chaser lifted his head, pricked his ears, and whinnied. He twisted to the right, towards the oncoming headlights, and whinnied again. Somewhere out of sight he could hear or sense another horse, and not for the first time I envied that extra-human perception.

Hurrying, I set off southwards along the green edge, hoping against hope that it was the right horse ahead and not a lay-by full of gypsy ponies.

In the distance there was suddenly a horrific screech of tyres, some wildly scything headlights, a sickening bang and a crash of breaking glass.

My mount let out a whinny that was more a shriek. His rider felt sick.

Oh God, I thought. Oh dear God.

I slowed to a walk and found I was trembling. There were shouts ahead and cars pulling up, and I rubbed my hand over my face and wished I didn’t have to face the next bit. Not the next hour, the next day or the next year.

Then, unbelievably, a shape detached itself from the jumble of light and dark ahead. A shape moving very fast, straight towards me, and clattering.

Hooves drummed on the hard surface with the abandon of hysteria. The two-year-old raced past at a forty-mile-an-hour full-stretched gallop, going as if the Triple Crown depended on it.

Swamped with relief that at least he was still undamaged, and blotting out fears for the car which had crashed, I swung my ‘chaser round and set off in pursuit.

It was an unequal contest: an ageing jumper against a hot-blooded sprinter. But my anxiety was spur enough for my mount. He was infected by it and aroused, and achieved a pace that was madness on that sort of surface.

The two-year-old, sensing us behind him, could have taken up the challenge and raced harder, but in fact he seemed to be reassured, not galvanised by the approach of another horse, and although he showed no sign of stopping he allowed me gradually to move alongside.

I came up on his outside, with him on my left. He had worn no headcollar in the stable and although I had brought a halter it would have taken a circus stunt man to put it on at such a gallop, let alone an unfit ex-jockey with three fused vertebrae and a shoulder which came apart with one good tug.

We were nearly back to the fork in the village. Straight ahead lay a major roundabout with crossing traffic, and the thought of causing a second accident was too appalling. Whatever the risk to the two-year-old, he had simply got to be directed into the village.

I squeezed my ‘chaser to the left until my leg was brushing the younger horse’s straining side, and I kicked my toe gently into his ribs. I did it three or four times to give him the message, and then when we came to the fork kicked him most insistently and pulled my own mount quite sharply onto him, leaning to the left.

The two-year-old veered into the fork without losing his balance and as positively as if he had been ridden. He fled ahead again into the village, no doubt because once off the main road I had instinctively slowed down. One couldn’t take the narrow bends flat out.

The two-year-old discovered it the hard way. He skidded round the corner to the green, fought to keep his feet under him, struck sparks from his scrabbling shoes, tripped over the six inch high edge of the turf, and fell sprawling in a flurry of legs. Dismounting and grabbing the ‘chaser’s reins I ran towards the prostrate heap. My knees felt wobbly. He couldn’t, I prayed, have torn a tendon here on the soft green grass, with so much agonising danger all behind him.

He couldn’t.

He hadn’t. He was winded. He lay for a while with his sides heaving, and then he stood up.

I had put the halter on him while he was down, and now led him and the chaser, one in each hand, along the lane to the yard. Both of them steamed with sweat and blew down their nostrils; and the hack having been bridled dropped foamy saliva from his mouth; but neither of them walked lame.

The moonlight was calming, quiet and cool. In the yard I hitched the ‘chaser to a railing and led the two-year-old back to his box, and realised there for the first time that he was no longer wearing his rug. Somewhere on his escapade he had rid himself of it. I fetched another and buckled it on. By rights I should have walked him round for another half hour to cool him down, but I hadn’t time. I went out, shut his door, and slammed home the bolt, and simply could not understand how I could have left it undone.

I backed the car out of the garage and drove through the village and down the main road. There was a fair crowd now at the scene of the crash, and people waving torches to direct the traffic. When I pulled on to the grass and stopped one of the self-elected traffic directors told me to drive on, there were enough onlookers already. I told him I lived nearby and perhaps could help, and left him to move along the next fellow.

Across in the north-bound lane also the traffic was on the move, as the wreckage was all on the near side. With something like dread I crossed over and joined the group at the heart of things. Car headlights threw them into sharp relief, bright on one side, dark on the other. All men, all on their feet. And one girl.

It was her car that was most smashed. One side of it seemed to have hit the metal post of the advance signpost to the village and the backside of it had been rammed by a dark green Rover which stood askew across the roadway spilling water from its dented radiator and frosty fragments from its windscreen.

The owner of the Rover was stamping about in loquacious fury, shouting about women drivers and that it was not his fault.

The girl stood looking at the orange remains of an MGB GT which had buried itself nose first into the ditch. She wore a long dress of a soft floaty material, white with a delicate black pattern and silver threads glittering in the lights. She had silver shoes and silver-blonde hair which hung straight to her shoulders, and she was bleeding.

At first I was surprised that she was standing there alone, that the masculine onlookers were not wrapping her in rugs, binding up her wounds and generally behaving protectively, but when I spoke to her I saw why. She was in icy command of herself, as cool and silver as the moonlight. Despite the oozing cut on her forehead and the smears she had made trying to wipe it, despite the much heavier stain on her right arm and the scarlet splashes down the front of the pretty dress, she somehow repelled help. And she was not as young as she looked at first sight.

‘She cut right across me,’ the Rover driver was shouting. ‘Swerved right across me. I didn’t have a chance. She went to sleep. That’s what she did. And now she gives us all this crap about a horse. I ask you. A horse! Swerved to avoid a horse. She went to sleep. She dreamed the horse. The silly bitch.’

Shock took people like that sometimes, and to be fair he had had a bad fright.

I said to the girl, ‘There was a horse.’

She looked at me without eagerness.

‘Of course there was,’ she said.

‘Yes... He got loose from my stable and strayed up here on to the road.’

I was immediately the focus of a hedge of accusing eyes and also the new target for the Rover driver’s ire. He had really been quite restrained with the girl. He knew a lot of words one seldom heard even on a racecourse.

In a gap in the tirade the girl spoke. She had one hand pressed against her abdomen and a strained look on her face.

‘I need,’ she said distinctly, ‘to go to the bathroom.’

‘I’ll take you to my house,’ I said. ‘It’s not far.’

The Rover driver was against it. She should stay until the police arrived, which would be at any second, he said.But some of the men showed that they understood what such an occasion could do to the viscera and silently parted to let her go with me across to my car.

‘If the police want her,’ I said, ‘Tell them she’s at Jonah Dereham’s house. First turn left, through the village, a house and stable yard out on the far side, on the right.’

They nodded. When I looked back I could see most of them returning to their own cars and driving away, and only one or two staying to support the Rover man.

She said nothing on the short journey. There was sweat on her face as well as blood. I drew up outside the kitchen and led her inside without delay.

‘The cloakroom is there,’ I said, showing her the door.

She nodded and went inside. White walls, bright unshaded light bulb, gumboots, waterproofs, two framed racing photographs and an ancient shotgun. I left her to this uncosy decor and went outside again to where my ‘chaser still patiently stood hitched to the railing.

I patted him and told him he was a great fellow. Fetched him a couple of apples from the tackroom and led him back to his paddock. He hadn’t galloped so fast or felt such excitement since the day they cheered him home up the hill at Cheltenham. He snorted with what was easy to read as pride when I released him and trotted away on springy ankles like a yearling.

She was coming out of the cloakroom when I returned. She had washed the streaked blood off her face and was dabbing the still unclotted cut on her forehead with a towel. I invited her with a gesture back to the kitchen and she came with the same marked and unusual composure.

‘What you can give me now,’ she said, ‘is a large drink.’

‘Er... How about some hot strong tea?’

She stared. ‘No. Brandy.’

‘I haven’t any.’

She gestured impatiently. ‘Whiskey, then. Gin. Anything will do.’

‘I’m afraid,’ I said apologetically, ‘that I haven’t anything at all.’

‘Do you mean,’ she said in disbelief, ‘that you have no alcohol of any sort in this house?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Oh my God,’ she said blankly. She sat down suddenly on the kitchen chair as if her knees had given way.

I said, ‘Tea is honestly better when you’re injured. I’ll make you some.’

I went over to the kettle and picked it up to fill it.

‘You bloody fool,’ she said. Her voice was a mixture of scorn, anger, and, surprisingly, despair.

‘But...’

‘But nothing,’ she said. ‘You let your stupid horse out and it nearly kills me and now you can’t even save me with a bloody drink.’

‘Save you?’ I echoed.

She gave me a cutting glance. Same mix; scorn, anger, despair. She explained the despair.

‘Look... I’ve been to a party. I was driving myself home. Now thanks to you and your stupid horse there’s been an accident and even though it wasn’t my fault the police will be along with their little breath tests.’

I looked at her.

‘I’m not drunk,’ she said unnecessarily. ‘Nowhere near it. But I’d be over the eighty milligrammes. Even eight-one is enough. And I can’t afford to lose my driving licence.’

My horse had got her into the mess. I suppose I should do my best to get her out.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll fix it.’

‘Wake a neighbour,’ she said. ‘But do it quick, or the police will be here.’

I shook my head. I went out to the dustbin and retrieved the empty Scotch bottle.

‘No time for neighbours,’ I said. ‘And it would look too deliberate.’ I fetched a glass and gave it to her. Then I held the empty bottle under the tap, splashed in a thimbleful of water, swilled the water around and finally dripped it into the glass.

‘Do you think,’ she said ominously, ‘that this is going to fool anybody?’

‘Don’t see why not.’

I put the empty bottle on the kitchen table and returned to the kettle. ‘And we’d better get your cuts seen to.’

She blotted her forehead again and looked indifferently at the crimson state of her right forearm. ‘I suppose so,’ she said.

While the kettle boiled I telephoned my own doctor and explained the situation.

‘Take her to the Casualty Department at the Hospital,’ he said. ‘That’s what they’re there for.’

‘She’s pretty,’ I said. ‘And you’d make a better job of it.’

‘Dammit, Jonah, it’s half past one,’ he said, but he agreed to come.

The tea was made and brewing by the time the police arrived with their little breath tests. They accepted mugs with sugar and milk and sniffed sourly into the whiskey bottle and the glass in the girl’s hand. Didn’t she know she shouldn’t have a drink before she had blown into the breathalyser? She shook her head tiredly and indicated that she hadn’t given it a thought.

Tests within fifteen minutes of alcohol intake were not acceptable as evidence. They filled in the time by taking down her view of the facts.

‘Name, miss?’

‘Sophie Randolph.’

‘Married?’

‘No.’

‘Age?’

‘Thirty-two.’ No feminine hesitation. Just a fact.

‘Address?’

‘Primrose Court, Scilly Isles Drive, Esher, Surrey.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Air traffic controller.’

The policeman’s pen remained stationary in the air for five seconds before he wrote it down. I looked at the girl; at Sophie Randolph, unmarried, thirty-two, air traffic controller, a woman accustomed to working on equal terms among males, and I remembered her instinctive reaction to the men at the scene of the crash: even in a crisis she repelled protective cosseting because in everyday life she could not afford it.

She gave them a straightforward statement. She had been to dinner with friends near Brighton. She left at twelve fifteen. At about twelve fifty she was driving in good visibility at forty-five miles an hour, listening to all-night radio. A horse suddenly emerged into the road from the central area of bushes. She braked hard but had no chance to stop. She steered sharply to the left to avoid the horse. She had passed the Rover a mile or so back and did not realise he was still so close behind her. The Rover struck the back of her car, slewing it round. Her car then bounced off a signpost at the side of the road, and slid to a stop in the ditch. She had been shaken. She had been wearing a seat belt. She had been slightly cut by broken glass.

One of the policemen asked what she had had to drink during the evening. In the same calm factual voice she itemised sherry before dinner, wine with.

Eventually they got her to blow into the bag. She did so without anxiety.

The policeman who took the bag from her gave the crystals a sharp scrutiny and raised his eyebrows.

‘Well, miss,’ he said. ‘Unofficially I can tell you that if you hadn’t drunk that whiskey you’d have been on the right side. It isn’t much over, even now.’

‘I’m not really surprised,’ she said, and that at least was true.

‘You’d be amazed the number of people who try to drink before we test them.’

‘Do they really?’ She sounded tired, and as if evasive tactics had never come into her orbit. The police packed up their notes and their bottle kit, gave me a lecture about letting animals get loose, and in their own good time went away.

Sophie Randolph gave me the beginnings of a smile.

‘Thanks,’ she said.