Knock Down

4

She slept in my bed and I slept in Crispin’s, and Crispin slept on, unknowing, on the sofa.

She had been stitched up neatly by the doctor but had been more concerned that he should take care of her dress. She had insisted that he unpick the seam of her sleeve rather than rip the material to get to her wound, and I had smiled at the meticulous way he had snipped through the tiny threads to please her.

‘My arm will mend itself,’ she explained. ‘But the dress won’t, and it was expensive.’

The cut, once revealed, had been jagged and deep, with fragments of glass embedded. She watched with interest while he anaesthetized it locally and worked on the repairs, and by the end I was wondering just what it would take to smash up such practised self-command.

The morning found her pale and shaky but still basically unruffled. I had been going to tell her to stay in bed but when I came in at eight thirty after feeding and mucking out the lodgers she was already down in the kitchen. Sitting at the table, wearing my dressing-gown and slippers, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. There were dark smudges round her eyes and most of the thirty-two years were showing in her skin. I thought that very probably her bandaged arm was hurting.

She looked up calmly when I came in.

‘Hullo,’ I said. ‘Like some coffee?’

‘Very much.’

I made it in the filter pot. ‘I was going to bring it to you upstairs,’ I said.

‘I didn’t sleep too well.’

‘Not madly surprising.’

‘I heard you out in the yard. Saw you from the window, and thought I might as well come down.’

‘How about some toast?’ I asked.

She said yes to the toast and yes also to three strips of crispy bacon to go with it. While I cooked she looked round the workmanlike kitchen and finally asked the hovering question. ‘Are you married?’

‘Divorced.’

‘Some years ago, I would guess.’

I grinned. ‘Quite right.’ Married, repented, divorced, and in no hurry to make another mistake.

‘Can you lend me any clothes I won’t look ridiculous in?’

‘Oh... a jersey. Jeans. Would that do?’

‘Lovely with silver shoes,’ she said.

I sat down beside her to drink my coffee. She had a face more pleasant than positively beautiful, a matter of colouring and expression more than bone structure. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were brownish blonde, eyes hazel, mouth softly pink without lipstick.

Her composure, I began to understand, was not aggressive. It was just that she gave no one any chance to patronise or diminish her because she was female. Understandable if some men didn’t like it. But her colleagues, I thought, must find it restful.

‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, ‘about my horse.’

‘So you damn well ought to be.’ But there was none of the rancour she would have been entitled to.

‘What can I do to make amends?’

‘Are you offering a chauffeur service?’

‘By all means,’ I said.

She munched the toast and bacon. ‘Well... I’ll need to see about getting my car towed away. What’s left of it. Then I’d be grateful if you could drive me to Gatwick Airport.’

‘Do you work there, then?’ I asked, surprised.

‘No. At Heathrow. But I can hire a car at Gatwick. Special discount... goes with the job.’

She was using her right hand to cut the toast with, and I saw her wince.

‘Do you have to work today?’ I asked.

‘Nothing wrong with my voice,’ she said. ‘But probably not. I’m on stand-by from four this afternoon for twelve hours. That means I just have to be home in my fiat, ready to take over at an hour’s notice in case anyone is ill or doesn’t turn up.’

‘And what are the chances?’

‘Of working? Not high. Most stand-bys are just a bore.’

She drank her coffee left handed.

‘And you?’ she asked. ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a bloodstock agent.’

She wrinkled her forehead. ‘I have an aunt who says all bloodstock agents are crooks.’

I smiled. ‘The big firms wouldn’t thank her for that.’

‘Do you work for a firm?’

I shook my head. ‘On my own.’

She finished the toast and fished a packet of cigarettes out of my dressing-gown pocket.

‘At least you smoke,’ she said, flicking my lighter. ‘I found these in your bedroom... I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Take what you like,’ I said.

She looked at me levelly and with a glint of amusement.

‘I’ll give you something instead. That man in the Rover, do you remember him?’

‘Who could fail to!’

‘He was doing about forty until I tried to pass him. When I was level with him he speeded up.’

‘One of those.’

She nodded. ‘One of those. So I put my foot down and passed him and he didn’t like it. He kept weaving around close behind me and flashing his headlights and generally behaving like an idiot. If he hadn’t been distracting me I might have seen your horse a fraction sooner. The crash was just as much his fault as your horse’s.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Thank you too.’

We smiled at each other, and all the possibilities suddenly rose up like question marks, there in the kitchen over the crumbs of toast.

Into this subtle moment Crispin barged with the sensitivity of a tank. The kitchen door crashed open and in he came, crumpled, unshaven, ill and swearing.

‘Where the bloody hell have you hidden the whiskey?’

Sophie looked at him with predictable calm. Crispin didn’t seem to notice she was there.

‘Jonah, you vicious sod, I’ll cut your bloody throat if you don’t give it back at bloody once.’ It was his tragedy that he was more than half serious.

‘You finished it last night,’ I said. ‘The empty bottle’s in the dustbin.’

‘I did no such bloody thing. If you’ve poured it down the drain I’ll bloody strangle you.’

‘You poured it down your throat,’ I said. ‘And you’d better have some coffee.’

‘Stuff your effing coffee.’ He strode furiously round the kitchen, wrenching open cupboards and peering inside. ‘Where is it?’ he said. ‘Where have you put it, you stinking little stable boy?’

He picked up a bag of sugar and threw it on the floor. The paper burst and the crystals scattered in a frosty swathe. He pulled several tins out to look behind them, dropping them instead of putting them back.

‘Jonah, I’ll kill you,’ he said.

I heated him some coffee and put the mug on the table. A packet of rice and another of cornflakes joined the mess on the floor.

He gave up the search with a furious slam of a cupboard door, sat down at the table and stretched for his coffee. His hand was shaking as if he were ninety.

He seemed to see Sophie for the first time. His gaze started at her waist and slowly travelled up to her face.

‘Who the bloody hell are you?’

‘Sophie Randolph,’ she said politely.

He squinted at her. ‘Jonah’s bloody popsy.’

He swung round to me, a movement which upset his semi-circular canals and brought on an obvious wave of nausea. I hoped urgently he was not going to vomit, as on other vile occasions in the past.

‘You lecherous bastard,’ he said. ‘All you had to do was ask me to go out. I’d have gone out. You didn’t have to get me drunk.’

The easy tears began to roll down his cheeks. And after the self pity, the promises, I thought. Always the same pattern.

‘You got yourself drunk,’ I said.

‘You shouldn’t have given me the Scotch,’ he said. ‘It was your bloody fault.’

‘You know damn well I never gave you any Scotch.’

‘You just put it here on the table and left it here for me to find. If that’s not giving it to me, then what is?’

‘You’d convince yourself it grew on a tree in the garden. You went out and bought it.’

‘I tell you I didn’t,’ he said indignantly. ‘I just found it on the table.’

He managed to get the mug to his mouth without spilling the contents.

I considered him. If by some extraordinary chance he was telling the truth, someone wished him very ill. But as far as I knew he had no active enemies, just bored acquaintances who tended to cross the road at his approach and disappear into convenient doorways. On balance I thought it more likely he had bought the bottle somewhere and was trying to shift the blame. The days when I could effortlessly believe what he said were ten years back.

‘As God’s my judge, Jonah, it was here on the table.’ A couple more tears oozed out. ‘You never believe a bloody word I say.’

He drank half the coffee.

‘I’d never buy whiskey,’ he said. ‘Sour bloody stuff.’

Once the craving took him he would drink whatever he could get hold of. I’d known him pass out on creme de menthe.

He worked on the grudge that I didn’t believe him until he was back to full-scale anger. With a sudden half-coordinated swing he hurled his mug of coffee across the room where it shattered against the wall. Brown rivulets trickled downwards on the floor.

He stood up, upsetting his chair, his head lowered aggressively.

‘Give me some bloody money.’

‘Look... Go to bed and sleep it off.’

‘You stupid sod. I need it. You and your goody goody airs. You’ve no bloody idea. You don’t begin to understand. You’ve pinched my whiskey. Just give me some bloody money and go stuff yourself.’

Sophie Randolph cleared her throat.

Crispin swung violently around to her to forestall any adverse suggestion she might make, and that time the sudden movement took his nausea out of control. At least he had enough self-respect left not to sick up in her face: he bolted for the back door and we could hear his troubles out in the yard, which was quite bad enough.

‘He’s my brother,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

She seemed to need no further explanation. She looked around at the debris. ‘Will he clear that up?’

‘No chance,’ I said, smiling. ‘I’ll do it later, when he’s asleep. If I do it too soon it enrages him... he would just make a worse mess.’

She shook her head in disapproval.

‘He isn’t like this all the time,’ I said. ‘He goes weeks sometimes without a drink.’

Crispin came back looking greener than ever.

‘Money,’ he said aggressively.

I stood up, went along to the office, and returned with five pounds. Crispin snatched it out of my hands.

‘The pub isn’t open yet,’ I observed.

‘Bugger you.’ Crispin’s gaze swung round to include Sophie. ‘Bugger you both.’

He lurched out of the door and through the window we watched him walk a slightly pompous path to the gate, trying to behave like a country gent and forgetting that he still wore yesterday’s clothes and yesterday’s beard.

‘Why did you give him the money?’

‘To save him stealing it.’

‘But...’ She stopped doubtfully.

I explained. ‘When the craving’s on him, he’ll do literally anything to get alcohol. It’s kinder to let him have it with some shred of dignity. He’ll be drunk all today and tonight but maybe by tomorrow it will be over.’

‘But the pub...’

‘They’ll let him in,’ I said. ‘They understand. They’ll sell him a bottle and send him home again when he shows signs of passing out.’

Although to my mind she would have been better off in bed, Sophie insisted that she should be out seeing to her car. She compromised finally to the extent of letting me ring the local garage, where I was known, and arranging the salvage. Then, dressed in jeans and sweater two sizes too big, she spent most of the morning sitting in the squashy leather armchair in the office, listening to me doing business on the telephone.

Kerry Sanders was pleased about River God and didn’t quibble about the price.

‘That’s more like it,’ she said. ‘I never did go for that goddam name Hearse Puller.’

‘Well... I can have him fetched from Devon any time, so where and when would you like him delivered?’

‘I’m visiting with the family this week-end.’ Even now, I noticed, she avoided using their names. ‘I’ll be going down there for lunch and I’d like the horse van to arrive at around four thirty.’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘What address?’

‘Don’t you have it?’

I said I could find it, no doubt.

She came across with the information reluctantly, as if imparting a secret. A village in Gloucestershire, as open as the day.

‘O.K. Four thirty, on the dot,’ I said.

‘Will you be there yourself?’

‘No. I don’t usually.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘Well... could you make it?’

‘You wouldn’t need me.’

‘I’d sure like it,’ she said, her voice hovering uncertainly between cajolery and demand, and I realised that for all her assurance she was still unsure about this gift.

‘You mean,’ I said, ‘To perform introductions?’

‘Well. I guess so.’

Nicol Brevett, this is River God. River God, meet Nicol Brevett. Howdy partner, shake a hoof.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll arrive with the horse.’

‘Thanks.’ Again the mixture in her voice. Partly she definitely thought I ought to jump to it when asked, and partly she was genuinely relieved I had agreed. I thought she was crazy to marry into a family which made her nervous, and I wondered why they had that effect on her.

‘Have you heard any more about those two men?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Apart from a sore spot when I brushed my hair, I had forgotten them. Too much seemed to have happened since.

‘I’d like you to find out why they took that horse.’

‘I’d like to know, sure,’ I said. ‘But as to finding out... If you care enough, how about hiring the Radnor Halley Agency? They’d do it.’

‘Private detectives?’

‘Specialists in racing,’ I said.

‘Yes, Well. But... I don’t know...’

It came back every time to the way she reacted to the Brevetts.

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said, and she was pleased, but I had no confidence at all.

I spoke next to a transport firm in Devon, arranging that they should pick up River God early the following morning, and meet me at three o’clock beyond Stroud. What was the ultimate destination, they asked, and with sudden caution I didn’t give it. Ten miles beyond our rendezvous, I said, and I would show them the way. I put the receiver down feeling slightly foolish, but the loss of Hearse Puller had been no joke.

I telephoned to the Devon farmer and asked him to send a man with River God to look after him, and also to produce him well groomed with his feet and shoes in good condition. The farmer said he hadn’t the time to be bothered, and I said that if the horse looked too rough he’d get him straight back. He grunted, groused, agreed, and hung up.

‘You sounded very tough on him,’ Sophie said with a smile.

‘Horses straight from small farms sometimes look as if they’ve been pulling a plough...’

She lit a cigarette, the bandaged arm moving stiffly.

‘I’ve got some codeine,’ I said.

She twisted her mouth. ‘Then I’d like some.’

I fetched the pain killers and a glass of water.

‘Are you everyone’s nurse?’ she said.

‘Mostly my own.’

While I had been telephoning, she had taken note of the racing photographs on the walls.

‘These are of you, aren’t they?’ she asked.

‘Most of them.’

‘I’ve heard of you,’ she said. ‘I don’t go racing myself, but my aunt has a stud farm, and I suppose I see your name in newspapers and on television.’

‘Not any more. It’s nearly three years since I stopped.’

‘Do you regret it?’

‘Stopping?’ I shrugged. ‘Everyone has to, sometime.’ Especially when on the receiving end of six months in a spinal brace and severe warnings from gents in white coats.

She asked if I would drive her along to where she had crashed so that she could see the place in daylight.

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘And I want to look for the rug my horse got rid of on his travels, though it’s bound to be torn. Pity he lost it, really, as it’s a light fawn... much easier to see in the dark than his own bay coat.’

She stubbed out her cigarette but before we could move the telephone rang.

‘Hi, Jonah,’ said a cheerful American voice. ‘How did the sale go?’

‘Which one?’ I asked.

‘Well... I guess the one for Kerry. You know. Kerry Sanders.’

‘Oh sure,’ I agreed. ‘Only I’ve bought two for her. Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Uh uh. Only that you were off to Ascot for some nag with a God awful name.’

Pauli Teksa. I pictured him at the other end of the line, a short solidly built man in his early forties, bursting with physical and mental energy and unashamedly out to make money. I had met him only a few times and thought his most outstanding quality was the speed with which he reached decisions. After a session with him one felt as if one had been carried along irresistibly by a strong tide, and it was only afterwards that one wondered if any of his instant assessments ever turned out to be wrong.

He was over in England for the Newmarket Yearling Sales, a bloodstock agent on a large scale in the States keeping tabs on the worldwide scene.

We had had a drink together in a group of others at Newmarket the previous week, and it was because of that and other equally casual meetings that he had, I supposed, given my name to Kerry Sanders.

I told him what had become of Hearse Puller. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sophie listening with her mouth open in incredulity. Pauli Teksa’s astonishment was tempered by greater cynicism about the world we both moved in, but even he was outraged at the use of force.

‘Pressure,’ he said vigorously. ‘Even unfair pressure. Sure But violence...’

‘I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.’

‘I’ve been out of town since Tuesday. Just got back from Ireland. Guess she couldn’t reach me.’

‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘No great harm done. She made a profit on Hearse Puller and I bought her another horse instead.’

‘Yeah, but you sure ought to raise a hell of a ruckus over what went on back there at Ascot.’

‘I’ll leave it to Mrs Sanders.’

‘It sure makes me feel bad that it was I who got you into this mess.’

‘Never mind,’ I said.

‘But I’m glad you managed to do a deal for her in the end.’ He paused, his voice heavy with meaning.

I smiled wryly at the telephone. ‘You’re saying you want a cut of the commission?’

‘Jonah, fella,’ his voice sounded hurt, ‘did I ask?’

‘I learn,’ I said. ‘I learn.’

‘Two per cent,’ he said. ‘A gesture. Nothing more. Two per cent, Jonah. O.K.?’

‘O.K.,’ I said, sighing. The two percent, which sounded so little, was in fact two fifths of my fee. I should have charged Kerry Sanders more than five per cent, I thought. Silly me. Except that five per cent was fair.

It was no good refusing Pauli. The remaining three per cent was better than nothing, even with a bang on the head thrown in, and there was goodwill involved. Pauli on my side was a good future prospect. Pauli against, a lousy one.

By the time I put the receiver down Sophie had shut her mouth and regained her calm. She raised her eyebrows.

‘Hey ho for a quiet life in the country.’

‘Quiet is internal,’ I said.

Up on the main road the orange MG dangled like a crumpled toy at the rear of the breakdown truck. Sophie watched with regret as it was towed away, and picked up a bent silver hub cap which fell off in the first few feet.

‘I liked that car,’ she said.

The Rover had already gone. All that remained after distance swallowed the breakdown truck were some black brake marks on the road and a pathetic heap of swept up glass.

Sophie threw the hub cap into the ditch, shrugged off her regrets, and said we would now look for my rug.

We found it not very far away and across on the far side of the road, a damp haphazard heap half hidden by bushes. I picked it up expecting a complete ruin, as horses mostly rid themselves of their rugs by standing on one edge and becoming so frightened by the unexpected restraint that they tear the cloth apart in a frenzy to get free. Horses standing quietly in stables almost never shed their rugs, but horses loose among bushes could do it easily.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said.

I looked up, ‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’

‘Well, good.’

‘Yes,’ I said doubtfully. Because I didn’t see how any horse could get out of his rug by undoing the three fastening buckles, one across the chest, the others under the stomach; and on this rug, which was totally undamaged, the buckles were quite definitely undone.