Knock Down

9

Vic said, ‘You’re going to have to be told, Jonah.’

‘Told what?’

There were people within shouting distance, going to their cars. I thought maybe I would shout, but not perhaps just yet.

The seven men took a small step forwards almost as if moved by a signal. I stood with my back against my car and thought I was getting tired of being attacked in car parks. Have to travel more by train.

‘You’re going to do what we tell you, whether you like it or not.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not.’

They took another step and stood in a solid wall, shoulder to shoulder. If I reached out I could touch them.

‘You’ll fall over yourselves in a minute,’ I said.

They didn’t like me trying to make a joke of them. The anger Vic had throttled earlier rose up again in his face and none of his clients would have recognised their friendly neighbourhood bloodsucker. A vein in his forehead swelled and throbbed.

The Yorkshireman Fynedale put his shoulder in front of Vic’s as if to hold him back.

‘You’re more trouble than you’re worth,’ he told me, ‘And you might as well get this straight. You’re not to bid when we say not. Right?’

Vic elbowed him back. Vic didn’t like his lieutenant usurping the role of number one thug.

‘If we get rough, you’ve asked for it,’ he said.

‘Get,’ I said, ‘What do you call that bang on the head at Ascot? A friendly pat?’

He snapped out, ‘That wasn’t us,’ and instantly regretted it. His face closed like a slammed door.

I glanced round the ring of faces. Some of them didn’t know what had happened at Ascot. But Vic did. Fynedale did. Ronnie North and Jiminy Bell did...

‘Who was it?’

‘Never you mind. You just reckon you’ve had a taster. And you bloody will do what you’re told.’

They all looked so furiously intent that I wanted to laugh: but when they suddenly wheeled away and went off to their own cars I found I didn’t want to laugh after all. I stood where they’d left me and breathed in deep lungfuls of winter night. However ludicrous I might think it that some perfectly ordinary citizens should threaten to beat me up if I didn’t join their strong-arm union, their collective menace had been real enough.

All I suddenly wanted was a cigarette.

There were few cars left in the park, but the one next to mine turned out to be Pauli Teksa’s.

‘Jonah?’ he said, peering at me through the dim lighting.

‘Hullo.’

‘You’re just standing there smoking?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Want to come to my place for a bite to eat?’

By tacit consent my dinner date with Eddy and Marji had lapsed, but my hosts for the week were not expecting me back. If I wanted to eat at all it might as well be in company.

‘Couldn’t think of anything better,’ I said.

He was staying in a pub outside Newmarket which put on late dinners especially for people after the sales. The cosy bar and dining-room were full of familiar faces and the general conversation was predictable.

He moved his strong stocky body through the crowd with ease, and there was some quality about him which parted the crush like Moses and the Red Sea. I watched him being served at the bar at once where others had waited longer and saw that the others acknowledged rather than resented his priority. I wondered what it must be like to be Pauli, generating such natural and unconscious power.

We ate smoked salmon and then roast pheasant, and drank Chateau Haut Badon 1970, which was my choice, not his, as he said Americans knew goddam all about French wines and he was no exception. He preferred Bourbon, he said.

‘All these guys here,’ he said over coffee, waving a hand at the other crowded tables. ‘They kinda like you.’

‘You imagine it.’

‘Nope.’ He gave me a cigar from a crocodile case with gold mountings. A Havana. He inhaled the smoke deeply, and sighed, and said the only good thing ever to come out of Cuba was its cigars and life in the States was hardly worth living now they were banned. He had stocked up in England, he said. He was going to smuggle a hundred or so through in his baggage.

‘You looked a bit shook up back there in the car park,’ he said.

‘Did I?’

‘Those guys I saw standing round you when I came out of the gate. They friends of yours?’

‘Business acquaintances.’

He smiled sympathetically. ‘Ganging up on you, eh? Well I sure did warn you.’

‘You sure did,’ I said, smiling back.

He looked at me assessingly. ‘They don’t seem to have made it stick.’

‘No.’

‘You want to take care, fellah,’ he said earnestly. ‘Remember you got bashed at Ascot.’

‘Tonight’s lot said they didn’t do that.’

He was surprised. ‘They said...?’

I nodded. ‘They clammed up as soon as they’d said it. It might be true in a way, because the two men who took Hearse Puller and tried to get River God aren’t regulars on the racing scene. I’d never seen them before. But at a guess... tonight’s crowd supplied the basic information.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Between them they knew everything the two strangers knew.’

‘What sort of things?’

His strong face was intent, receptive, helpful. I told him about the two-year-old getting loose on the main road, and about Crispin’s whiskey.

He was astounded. I said, ‘Of the people there tonight, Jiminy Bell knew about my dicey arm as he’d seen the strap often enough in the changing room, when we were both jockeys. Ronnie North knew I’d bought River God, because he’d sold it to me. Vic Vincent knew I kept horses in transit in my yard. Any of them could have known I have an alcoholic brother, it’s no secret. All of them were at Ascot the day I bought Hearse Puller. It’s quite clear they could have supplied the info if they’d wanted to. The trouble is that I simply don’t see the point.

He carefully edged half an inch of ash off the end of his cigar and took his time over replying.

‘I’ll tell you what they might have been after,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘To soften you up.’

‘What?’ I laughed. ‘You can’t be serious.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s possible. They rough you up a little. Nothing you’d make too much of a fuss of. Kick you around a bit. Then they give out with the threats... Join us or else.’

I shook my head. ‘It can’t be that simple.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not that much of a threat to them. Why should they go to all that trouble?’

He leaned back in his chair, smiling gently through the Cuban smoke. ‘Don’t you know the classic law of the invader, fellah? Single out the strongest guy around and smash him. Then all the weaker crowd come to heel like lambs.’

‘Vic has invaded like the Mongol hordes,’ I agreed, ‘But I’m by no means the strongest guy around.’

‘You sell yourself short, fellah.’

‘Don’t be a nut.’

He shook his head. ‘I back my own judgement. Make my decisions. Buy my horses. Quick. Snap.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘And I don’t get things wrong.’

The circus left Newmarket after the races on Saturday.

By that time relations between Vic and myself were if possible worse. He had instructed me not to bid on five occasions: three of those yearlings I hadn’t wanted anyway, and the other two I bought. The mood of the mob had hardened to the point where I was careful to keep out of lonely car parks.

By Saturday Vic had warned Constantine that I was not a good companion for Nicol. Constantine had warned Nicol, and Nicol, grinning over a sandwich, had warned me.

Wilton Young had become the owner of three more yearlings at near record prices and Fynedale was smirking from ear to ear.

Constantine had pretended not to be mortified, and had cheered up considerably when his horse beat Wilton Young’s in the Cesarewitch.

Eddy Ingram asked to have the On Safari filly after all as he had discovered on his own account that she was undamaged, but I had already passed her on to another client and felt regrettably unsympathetic when I told him so.

On the business side I had had quite a good week in spite of all Vic’s threats, but I drove away down the A. 11 to London with a deep sigh of relief.

The relief lasted until I turned down towards the village at home.

The village was in a turmoil with all the people out of the houses, and the street blocked with cars, bicycles, prams and kids. The time was ten past eight. The cause of the upheaval was a bright glow in the night sky with leaping flames and flying sparks, and I knew at once and without hope that the place on fire was mine.

It was impossible to drive there. I left my car and went forward on foot, competing it seemed to me with every man, woman and wheelchair in the parish. The nearer I got the more I had to push, and it was a six-deep seething mass which was being held back by a portable barrier placed across the gateway. I squeezed round one end of it to get into the yard and was roughly told to get out by a busy fireman.

‘It’s my bloody house,’ I snapped. ‘I’ve just got home.’

‘Oh.’ He paused fractionally. ‘The wind’s against us, I’m afraid. We’re doing our best.’

I looked around me and took stock.

The stables were alight and gone. Bright orange from end to end. Flames shot up high from what had been the roof, roaring and crackling like thunder and lightning shaken together in some demoniacal cocktail. The heat was incredible. Smoke swirled everywhere, stinging the eyes. It was like being on the wrong side of a giant bonfire, and I could see what he had meant by the wind. It was blowing showers of bright splintery sparks like rain onto the still black bulk of the house.

Half the firemen were trying to damp down the stables. The rest, back to back and cramped for room, were focusing on what might still be saved. Silver jets of water swept the tiles and the back face of the house and poured through my bedroom window, which was broken.

There were two fire engines, both of them through the other side of the yard, out in the paddock. I wondered stupidly what they were doing there, and then realised they were pumping water directly from the brook, which ran along one side. Not a very big brook, I thought uneasily.The long narrow yard itself was a sea of puddles and hoses and men in black helmets doing a difficult job efficiently, part time firemen who’d left their Saturday night beer in the local and come out enthusiastically to try to save my house. It was crazy to think of their beer at a time like that, but I did.

The fireman I’d spoken to before said sympathetically that I’d had a hell of a homecoming. He said that there was never much hope for places like stables and farms, once they caught fire, not if there was any hay or straw stored there. Burned like tinder, he said.

‘We sent for another appliance,’ he said. ‘It ought to have been here by now.’ He had almost to shout for me to hear.

‘The road’s blocked right back into the village,’ I said.

He looked resigned, which was not what I felt.

‘Sorry about your car,’ he shouted.

‘What car?’

He swept an arm round to the garage at the end of the stable block and pointed. The remains of Crispin’s car were burning in there like a skeleton.

I caught the fireman by the arm.

‘Where’s my brother?’ I shouted. ‘He’s here... Where is he?’

He shook his head. ‘The place was empty. We checked. The fire hadn’t got such a hold when we came and there was no danger inside the house then.’

‘He might be asleep.’

‘No one could have slept through this lot, mate,’ he shouted, and looking and listening to the disaster, one could see his point.

‘I’ll have to make sure.’

‘Come back,’ he yelled. ‘You can’t go in there now. You’ll suffocate.’

He fielded me forcibly on my way to the kitchen door. I said we must find my brother.

He began to tell me again that he wasn’t there.

‘He might be dead drunk.’ It was no time to save Crispin’s face. ‘Unconscious.’ And he might have walked down to the pub and be sitting there obliviously over his sixth double gin; but I couldn’t waste time finding out.

‘Oh.’ The fireman pulled me through the scrum of men and hoses to the nearest fire engine and thrust a breathing pack into my arms.

‘Put it on,’ he said. “The lights will be shot to hell by now and you can find him quicker than I can, if he’s there.’ He gave me a helmet and gloves and we ran over to the house, with me struggling to fasten everything on.

The house was unbelievably full of smoke, dark, pungent, hot and oily. The only light was from the flames outside, which meant that all the far rooms were filled with black fog. It stung in my eyes worse than ever and made them water. I straightened the breathing mask over them and tried to see where I was going.

‘Where would he be?’ yelled the fireman.

‘Maybe the sitting-room. This way.’

We blundered down the passage and into the pitch black room. Impossible to see. I felt all over the sofa, the armchairs, and the floor around, which was where he usually passed out.

No Crispin.

‘No good.’

We went upstairs. Everything was very hot indeed up there and the smoke was if anything denser. Patches of woodwork round the doors were charred, as if they had already burnt, but there were no actual flames.

I couldn’t find him anywhere in his bedroom, which was dark, or in mine, which glowed vividly orange through the smoke and was as drenching as a tropical rainstorm from the water pouring through the window.

‘He isn’t here,’ shouted the fireman.

‘Bathroom...’ I said.

‘Hurry. The roof’s smouldering.’

The bathroom door was shut but not locked. I opened it, took one step, and tripped over Crispin’s feet.

The air in there was clearer. The fireman pushed past me, threw Crispin over his shoulder as if he were a child, and went out of the house faster than I could with no burden.

He laid Crispin on a patch of wet grass because there was nowhere else to put him. I pulled off the breathing mask and looked down at him anxiously.

‘Is he alive?’

‘Don’t know. Put your mask on him.’

He started at once giving Crispin artificial respiration by the method of pulling his arms backwards over his head, while I clipped on the mask and checked the air flow.

Without pausing the fireman glanced up at the staring crowd at the gate and at the rows of faces looking over the hedge for as far down the road as the flames lit them, and I could read his mind as if he’d spoken. The third appliance, an ambulance, doctor, police... no other vehicle was going to reach us until the village went home.

The roof down the half of the stables nearest us fell in with a roar and a sudden out-gushing of sizzling heat. The fireman raised his eyes from his exertions on Crispin and said encouragingly, ‘Now if the rest of that roof falls in quickly, the house has more of a chance.’

I looked up. The incendiary shower of sparks had diminished, but the house looked more than ever as if it would burst all over into flames in explosive spontaneous combustion. Despite all their efforts the eaves at the far end were blackly burning.

Crispin showed not the slightest sign of life, but when I felt for his pulse, it was there. Faint and slow, but there.

I nodded to the fireman in relief, and he stopped the respiration. He watched Crispin’s chest. There was no perceptible movement. The fireman slid his hand inside Crispin’s clothes, to feel his ribs. Nothing. He shook his head, and went back to pumping.

‘I can do that,’ I said.

‘Right.’

I took his place and he went back to help with the fire, and the hot roaring smoky nightmare seemed to go on and on and on.

Crispin lived and they more or less saved the house.

At some point that I wasn’t quite clear about the police arrived, and soon afterwards an ambulance took my still unconscious brother away to a more thorough decoking.

The first thing the firemen told the police was that it looked like arson, and the first thing the police asked me was had I started it.

‘I wasn’t even here.’

‘Have you got any money troubles?’

I looked at them incredulously. Standing there in all that shambles with thick hot smoke still pouring off the damp and blackening embers they were stolidly conducting enquiries.

‘Is that all the help you can give?’ I said, but their manner said plainly enough that they weren’t there to give help.

It seemed the final unreality on that disjointed night that they should believe I had brought such destruction on myself.

By dawn one of the fire engines had gone but the other was still there, because, the firemen told me, with old houses you never knew. Sometimes a beam would smoulder for hours, then burst into flames and start the whole thing over again.

They yawned and rolled up hoses, and smoked cigarettes which they stubbed out carefully in little flat tins. Relays of tea in thermos flasks came up from the village and a few cautious jokes grew like flowers on the ruins.

At nine I went down to the pub to borrow the telephone and caught sight of myself in a mirror. Face streaked with black, eyes red with smoke and as weary as sin.

I told Sophie not to come, there wouldn’t be any lunch.She would come anyway, she said, and I hadn’t the stamina to argue.

The pub gave me a bath and breakfast. My clothes smelled horrible when I put them on again, but nothing to the house and yard when I got back. Wet burnt wood, wet burnt straw, stale smoke. The smell was acrid and depressing, but the departing firemen said nothing could be done, things always smelled like that after blazes.

Sophie came, and she was not wearing the gold aeroplane.

She wrinkled her nose at the terrible mess and silently put her arm through mine and kissed me. I felt more comforted than I had since childhood.

‘What’s left?’ she said.

‘Some wet furniture and a tin of peanuts.’

‘Let’s start with those.’

We went through the house room by room. Watery ash and stale smoke everywhere. My bedroom had a jagged black corner open to the sky where the roof had burned right through, and everything in there was past tense. I supposed it was lucky I had had some of my clothes with me in Newmarket.

There was an empty gin bottle in Crispin’s room, and another in the bathroom.

In the office the ash covered everything in a thick gritty film. The walls were darkened by smoke and streaked with water and my rows of precious, expensive and practically irreplaceable form books and stud records would never be the same again.

‘What are you going to do?’ Sophie said, standing on the filthy kitchen floor and running one finger through the dust on the table.

‘Emigrate,’ I said.

‘Seriously?’

‘No... Seriously, the pub opens in five minutes and we might as well get drunk.’