Knock Down

6

Kerry Sanders looked from Nicol to Constantine in carefully camouflaged anxiety while they inspected her gift. One of Brevett’s own men was showing him off, trotting him now and then or making him stand with his legs arranged as for a photograph.

River God could move, I’d give him that. A good strong walk and a straight collected trot. Nothing to be ashamed of in that department.

Constantine was saying comfortingly, ‘My dear girl, I realise you got him at very short notice. I’m sure he’ll make up into a very good performer one of these days. Look at those legs... the bone is there.

‘I hope he’ll win for Nicol,’ she said.

‘Of course he will. He’s a very lucky boy to be given such a generous present.’

The lucky boy himself drew me aside and said abrasively ‘Couldn’t you have found me something better?’

I had ridden against him often enough in races, at the end of my career and the beginning of his, and he knew me as well and as little as any jockey in the changing room.

‘She gave me two days... and its form isn’t bad.’

‘Would you have ridden it?’

‘Definitely. And if it turns out no good, I’ll sell it for you later.’

He sucked his teeth.

‘It did quite well in a bad stable,’ I said. ‘It should improve a mile in yours.’

‘D’you think so?’

‘Give it a try.’

He smiled sourly. ‘And don’t look a gift horse in the teeth?’

‘She wanted to please you,’ I said.

‘Huh. Buy me, more like.’

‘Happy birthday,’ I said.

He turned to watch Kerry Sanders talking to his father, the neat small feminine figure overshadowed by the large protecting paternal male. As before the Sanders wrappings were as uncluttered as gold bricks and the slanting autumn sunlight drew fire from the diamond knuckledusters.

‘At least she’s not after his money,’ Nicol said. ‘I had her checked out. She’s way ahead.’

For an also-ran, Constantine was not doing so badly. Clem’s horsebox stood on a clear quarter acre of front drive with Clem himself fidgeting around for a signal that he could set off home. There were buildings along two sides of the mini parade ground, a modern garage and stable block at one end set at right angles to a much older, slightly austere stone house. Not quite a mansion, but more than enough for two.

The outside surface was being cleaned, with nearly one third showing warm cream instead of forbidding grey. One could see that it would look a good deal more welcoming when it was finished, but the effect meanwhile was undignified piebald. One should not, I reflected, ever make the mistake of thinking one would catch its master at such public disadvantage.

Nicol strode over to the man leading River God and the man nodded and took the horse away to the stables.

Kerry Sanders looked a fraction disappointed until Nicol rejoined her and said, ‘Thought I’d just try it. Can’t wait, you see.’

River God came back with saddle and bridle, and Nicol swung easily onto his back. He trotted him a little round the gravel and then took him through a gate into a railed field alongside and quickened the pace to a working canter. Constantine Brevett watched with heavy good humour, Kerry Sanders with hope, Clem with impatience and I with relief. Whatever I thought of his financial methods, Ronnie North had delivered the goods.

Nicol came back, handed the reins to the stableman, and strode over and kissed Kerry Sanders with enthusiasm on the cheek.

‘He’s great,’ he said. His eyes shone. ‘Absolutely great.’

Her face filled with joy enough to melt the hardest case. Nicol took note of it, and as she and his father turned away to return to the house he gave me a twisted smile and said, ‘See? I’m not always a bastard.’

‘And besides,’ I said, ‘the horse is better than he looks.’

‘Cynical sod. It’s got a mouth like the back end of a rhino.’

‘A ride for a pro, I was told.’

‘The first nice thing you’ve ever said to me.’ He laughed. ‘Come on in and have a drink.’

‘Just a sec...’ I turned away to go over to Clem to give him a fiver and send him off home and found Nicol following me to double the ante. Clem took both notes with cheerfulness, hopped up into the cab and rolled away to the gate.

Champagne stood ready in tulip shaped glasses in the sitting-room to which Nicol led the way, the last rays of sun making the bubbles glisten like silver in liquid gold. Constantine handed us a glass each and we drank rather pompously to Nicol’s health. He gave me a private irreverent grin and greatly to my surprise I began to like him.

We sat in cloud nine armchairs and Constantine fussed over Kerry Sanders. She glowed with happiness, the peach bloom cheeks as fresh as a child’s. It was extraordinary, I thought, how clearly and quickly the mental state of a woman showed in her skin.

‘You almost didn’t get a horse at all,’ she told Nicol. ‘The most infuriating thing happened to the first one Jonah bought.’

They listened to the saga in bewilderment, and I added to it by saying that the same two thugs had tried a repeat with River God.

Constantine took up a heavily authoritarian stance which went well with his smooth silver hair and thick black spectacle frames, and assured Kerry that he would see they got their just deserts. As it was fairly likely I had broken Frizzy Hair’s arm I thought he had probably got his already, but I had no quarrel with any plans Constantine might have for finding out what was going on. He had the weight to lean heavily in places where I had none.

‘What do you think, Jonah?’ Nicol asked.

‘Well... I can’t believe either Hearse Puller or River God would themselves be the cause of so much action. They came from widely different places, so it can’t be anyone close to them resenting them being sold. It seems even crazier when you think that we’ll find out who bought Hearse Puller as soon as he’s entered in a race. Even if he’s changed hands more than once we should be able to trace him back.’

Constantine shook his head heavily and spoke from personal knowledge. ‘Easy enough to cover up a sale if you know how.’

‘Maybe someone simply wanted to stop Kerry giving me a horse,’ Nicol said.

‘But why?’ Kerry asked. ‘Why should they?’

No one knew. ‘Who did you tell about River God?’ I asked her.

‘After last time? You must be crazy. At least when you got another horse I had the sense not to shout it around.’

‘You didn’t tell Lady Roscommon or your hairdresser or Pauli Teksa? None of the same people as last time?’

‘I sure did not. I didn’t see Madge or the hairdresser guy, and Pauli was out of town.’

‘Someone knows,’ Nicol said. ‘So who did you tell, Jonah?’

‘No one. I didn’t tell the man I bought it from who it was for, and I didn’t tell the transport firm where they were taking it.’

‘Someone knew,’ Nicol said again, flatly.

‘Do you have any particularly bad friends?’ I asked him.

‘The professional jockeys all hate my guts.’

‘And the amateurs?’

He grinned. ‘Them too, I dare say.’

Constantine said ‘However jealous the other riders might be of Nicol’s success I cannot see any single one of them going around buying up or stealing horses simply to prevent Nicol riding winners.’

‘They’d have a job,’ Nicol said.

Constantine’s voice was resonant and deep and filled the room to overflowing. Nicol had the same basic equipment but not the obvious appreciation of his own power, so that in him the voice was quieter, more natural, not an announcement of status.

‘What about Wilton Young?’ he said.

Constantine was ready to believe anything of Wilton Young. Constantine saw only one threat to his bid to dominate British racing, and that was a bullet-headed Yorkshireman with no social graces, a huge mail-order business and the luck of the devil with horses. Wilton Young trampled all over people’s finer feelings without noticing them and judged a man solely on his ability to make brass. He and Constantine were notably alike in ruthlessness and it was no doubt immaterial to their flattened victims that one steamroller was smoothly oiled while the other was roughly clanking.

‘Of course,’ Constantine said, his face filling with anger. ‘Wilton Young.’

‘The two men didn’t have Yorkshire accents,’ I said.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Constantine demanded.

‘Wilton Young makes a point of having Yorkshiremen working for him. He looks down on everyone else.’

‘Arrogant little pipsqueak,’ Constantine said.

‘I can’t honestly see him taking such trouble to stop Mrs Sanders giving Nicol a horse for his birthday.’

‘Can’t you?’ Constantine looked down his nose as if he could believe half a dozen more improbable things before breakfast. ‘He’d do anything he could think of to irritate me, however petty.’

‘But how could he have known I was buying the horse for Nicol?’

He took barely three seconds to come up with an answer. ‘He saw you at the sales with Kerry, and he has seen her at the races with me.’

‘He wasn’t at the sales,’ I said.

He shrugged impatiently. ‘All you mean is that you didn’t see him.’

I doubted if it were possible to be in so small a place as Ascot Sales’ paddock and not know whether Wilton Young was there or not. He had a voice as loud as Constantine’s and a good deal more piercing, and he was not a man who liked to be overlooked.

‘Anyway,’ Nicol said, ‘I’ll bet his bloodstock agent was there. That carrot-headed little Yorkshireman who buys his horses.’

I nodded. ‘So was your own chap, Vic Vincent.’

Constantine had nothing but praise for Vic Vincent.

‘He’s bought me some great yearlings this time. Two he bought at Newmarket last week... classic colts, both of them. Wilton Young will have nothing to touch them.’

He went on at some length about the dozen or so youngsters which according to him were about to sweep the two-year-old board, patting himself on the back for having bought them. Vic Vincent was a great judge of a yearling. Vic Vincent was a great fellow altogether.

Vic Vincent was a great fellow to his clients, and that was about where it ended. I listened to Constantine singing his praises and drank my champagne and wondered if Vic Vincent thought me enough of a threat to his Brevett monopoly to whip away any horse I bought for the family. On balance I doubted it. Vic Vincent looked on me as Wilton Young looked on non Yorkshiremen: not worth bothering about.

I finished the champagne and found Kerry Sanders watching me. For signs of alcoholism, I supposed. I smiled at her and she smiled a little primly back.

‘Kerry my dear, you couldn’t do better, another time, than to consult Vic Vincent...’

‘Yes, Constantine,’ she said.

From Gloucester to Esher I thought about Frizzy Hair a little and Sophie Randolph a lot. She opened her door with the composure all in place and greeted me with a duplicate of the Gatwick kiss, cheek to cheek, a deal too chaste.

‘You found me, then,’ she said.

‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Just over a year.’

‘So you weren’t here when I used to race next door.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Come in.’

She looked different. She was wearing another long dress, not white and black and silver this time, but a glowing mixture of greens and blues. The cut on her forehead had crusted over and her system had recovered from the state of shock. Her hair looked a warmer gold, her eyes a deeper brown, and only the inner self reliance hadn’t changed a jot.

‘How’s your arm?’ I asked.

‘Much better. It itches.’

‘Already? You heal fast.’

She shut the door behind me. The small lobby was an offshoot of the sitting-room which opened straight ahead, warm, colourful and full of charming things.

‘It’s pretty,’ I said, and meant it.

‘Don’t sound so surprised.’

‘It’s just... I thought perhaps your room might be more bare. A lot of smooth empty surfaces, and space.’

‘I may be smooth but I’m not empty.’

‘I grovel,’ I said.

‘Quite right.’

There were no aeroplanes on her walls, but she wore a little gold one on a chain round her neck. Her fingers strayed to it over and over again during the evening, an unconscious gesture from which she seemed to gain confidence and strength.

A bottle of white wine and two glasses stood ready on a small silver tray.

She gestured towards them noncommittally and said, ‘Would you like some? Or don’t you ever?’

‘When Crispin is drunk,’ I said, ‘I drink.’

‘Well, hallelujah.’ She seemed relieved. ‘In that case, take your jacket off, sit on the sofa, and tell me how you got on with my aunt.’

She made no mention at all of my invitation to marry. Maybe she had decided to treat it as a joke, and yesterday’s joke at that. Maybe she was right.

‘Your aunt,’ I said, ‘wouldn’t take my advice if I showed her the way to Heaven.’

‘Why not?’ She handed me a glass and sat down comfortably opposite in an armchair.

I explained why not, and she was instantly angry on her aunt’s behalf.

‘She was swindled.’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Something must be done.’

I sipped the wine. Light, dry, unexpectedly flowery, and definitely not supermarket plonk.

‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘That the kick back system is not illegal. Far from it. To many it is a perfectly sensible business method and anyone who doesn’t take advantage of it is a fool.’

‘But to demand half her profit...’

‘The argument goes that an agent promised a large kick back will raise the auction price much higher than it might have gone, so the breeder positively benefits. Some breeders don’t just put up with having to pay the kick backs, they offer to do so. In those cases everyone is happy.’

‘Except the person who buys the horse,’ she said severely. ‘He comes off badly. Why do the buyers stand for it?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘What clients don’t know would sink a battleship.’

She looked disapproving. ‘I don’t like the sound of your profession.’ She added, in the understatement of the year, ‘It isn’t straightforward.’

‘What sort of agent you are depends on how you see things,’ I said. ‘Honesty is your own view from the hill.’

‘That’s immoral.’

I shook my head. ‘Universal.’

‘You’re saying that honesty in the bloodstock business is only a matter of opinion.’

‘And in every business, every country, every era, since the world began.’

‘Jonah, you talk nonsense.’

‘How about marriage?’

‘What are the kickbacks?’

‘Oh God,’ I said. ‘You learn fast.’

She laughed and stood up. ‘I’m a lousy cook but if you stay I’ll give you a delicious dinner.’

I stayed. The dinner came out of frozen packs and would have pleased Lucullus; lobster in sauce on shells and duck with almonds and honey. The freezer was the largest item in the small white kitchen. She stocked it up every six months, she said, and did practically no shopping in between.

Afterwards, over coffee, I told her about Frizzy Hair turning up to take River God. It did nothing much to improve her view of my job. I told her about the flourishing feud between Constantine Brevett and Wilton Young, and also about Vic Vincent, the blue eyed boy who could do no wrong.

‘Constantine thinks the yearlings he’s bought must be good because they were expensive.’

‘It sounds reasonable.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Year after year top prices get paid for the prize flops.’

‘But why?’

‘Because,’ I said, ‘yearlings haven’t been raced yet, and no one knows whether they will actually be any good. They make their price on their breeding.’ And that too could be rigged, though I didn’t think I had better tell her.

‘This Vic Vincent... he’s been paying high prices for good breeding?’

‘High prices for moderate breeding. Vic Vincent is costing Constantine a packet. He’s the biggest kickback merchant of the lot, and getting greedier every minute.’

She looked more disgusted than horrified. ‘My aunt was right about you all being crooks.’

‘Your aunt wouldn’t tell me who demanded half her profits... if you ring her again, ask her if she’s ever heard of Vic Vincent, and see what she says.’

‘Why not right now?’

She dialled her aunt’s number, and asked, and listened. Antonia Huntercombe spoke with such vehemence that I could hear her from the other side of the room, and her words were earthy Anglo-Saxon. Sophie made a face at me and nearly burst out laughing.

‘All right,’ she said, putting down the receiver. ‘It was Vic Vincent. That’s one of life’s little mysteries cleared up. Now what about the rest?’

‘Let’s forget them.’

‘Let’s absolutely not. You can’t just forget two fights in three days.’

‘Not to mention a loose horse.’

She stared. ‘Not the one...’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I might have believed that I hadn’t shut a stable door properly for the first time in eighteen years, but not that a horse could get out of his rug by undoing the buckles.’

‘You said... he was darker without his rug.’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean... someone took off his rug and shooed him out in front of my car... just to cause a crash?’

‘To injure the horse,’ I said. ‘Or even to kill it. I’d have been in very great trouble if you hadn’t reacted so quickly and missed him.’

‘Because you would have been sued for your horse causing an accident?’

‘No. The law is the other way round, if anything. Loose animals are no one’s fault, like fallen trees. No... The way the insurance on that horse was fixed, I could have lost seventy thousand pounds if he’d been damaged but not dead. And that,’ I added fervently, ‘is a position I am never going to be in again.’

‘Have you got seventy thousand pounds?’

‘Along with six castles in Spain.’

‘But...’ She wrinkled her forehead. ‘Letting that horse loose means that whoever it is is attacking you personally. Not Kerry Sanders or the Brevetts... but you.’

‘Mm.’

‘But why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must have some idea.’

I shook my head. ‘As far as I know I’ve done no one any harm. I’ve thought about little else for two days but I can’t think of anyone with a big enough grudge to go to all this trouble.’

‘What about small grudges?’

‘Dozens of them, I dare say. They flourish like weeds.’

She looked disapproving.

‘You get them everywhere,’ I said mildly. ‘In every working community. Schools, offices, convents, horse shows... all seething with little grudges.’

‘Not in control towers.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘You’re a cynic.’

‘A realist; How about marriage?’

She shook her head with a smile that took the suggestion still as a joke, and her hand strayed for the twentieth time to the little gold aeroplane on its slender chain.

‘Tell me about him,’ I said.

Her eyes opened wide with shock. ‘How did you...?’

‘The aeroplane. You wear it for someone else.’

She looked down at her hand and realised how often she held it in just that position, touching the talisman.

‘I... He’s dead.’

She stood up abruptly and carried the coffee pot out to the kitchen. I stood also. She came back immediately with the calm friendly face, no grief showing and no encouragement either. She gestured to me to sit down again and we took our former places, me on the sofa, her in an adjacent armchair. There was a lot of space beside me on the sofa, but no way of getting her to sit there before she was ready.

‘We lived together,’ she said. ‘For nearly four years. We never bothered to marry. It didn’t seem to matter. At the beginning we never expected it to last... and it just grew more and more solid. I suppose we might have taken out a licence in the end...’

Her eyes looked back into the past.

‘He was a pilot. A first officer on Jumbos, always on long trips to Australia... We were used to being apart.’

Still no emotion in her voice. ‘He didn’t die in an aeroplane.’ She paused. ‘Eighteen months ago yesterday he died in a hospital in Karachi. He had a two day rest stop there and developed an acute virus infection... It didn’t respond to antibiotics.’

I looked at her in silence.

‘I was mad to say I would marry you,’ she said. A smile twitched the corners of her eyes. ‘It was just... a rather nice bit of nonsense.’

‘A nonsense a day is good for the digestion.’

‘Then you certainly will never get ulcers.’

We looked at each other. A moment like that in the kitchen, but with this time no Crispin to interrupt.

‘Would you consider,’ I said, ‘coming to sit on the sofa?’

‘Sit on it. Not lie on it.’

Her meaning was plain.

‘All right.’

She moved to the sofa without fuss.

‘I’ll say one thing for you,’ she said. ‘When you make a contract, you keep it.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Too proud not to.’

‘Beast.’

She laughed. She put her head on my shoulder and her mouth eventually on mine, but it was more a matter of warmth than of kindling passions. I could feel the withdrawal lying in wait only a fraction below the surface, a tenseness in the muscles warning me how easily I could go too far.

‘Stop worrying,’ I said. ‘A contract’s a contract, like you said.’

‘Is this enough for you?’

‘Yes.’

She relaxed a good deal. ‘Most men nowadays think dinner leads straight to bed.’

Most men, I reflected, had exactly the right idea. I put my arm round her and shoved the most basic of urges back into its cave. I had won a lot of waiting races in my time. Patience was an old friend.

She lifted her head off my chest and rubbed her cheek.

‘Something’s scratching me.’

I explained about the dislocating shoulder, and the strap I wore to keep it anchored in place. She traced the line of webbing across my chest and rubbed her fingers on the scratching buckle.

‘How does it work?’

‘A small strap round my arm is linked to the one round my chest. It stops me lifting my arm up.’

‘Do you wear it always?’

I nodded. ‘Mm.’

‘Even in bed?’

‘Not this one. A softer one.’

‘Isn’t it a nuisance?’

‘I’m so used to it I never notice.’

She looked up at my face. ‘Couldn’t you get it fixed? Isn’t there an operation?’

‘I’m allergic to scalpels.’

‘Reasonable.’

She stretched for a cigarette and I lit it, and we sat side by side talking about her job, and mine, her childhood and mine, her tastes in books and places and people, and mine.

Exploration, not conflagration.

When the time was right I kissed her again. And went home.