Nerve

Thirteen

I don’t know whether she slept or not during the next four hours. The room was quiet. The time passed slowly.

The pulse in my hands went on throbbing violently for a while, but who cared? It was comforting, even if it hurt. I thought about all the fat red corpuscles forcing their way through the shunken capillaries like water gushing along dry irrigation ditches after a drought. Very nice. Very life-giving. By tomorrow afternoon, I thought — correction, this afternoon — they might be fit for work. They’d got to be, that was all there was about it.

Some time after it was light I heard Joanna go into her narrow bathroom-kitchen where she brushed her teeth and made some fresh coffee. The warm roasted smell floated across to me. Saturday morning, I thought. Midwinter Cup day. I didn’t leap out of bed eagerly to greet it; I turned over slowly from my stomach on to one side, shutting my eyes against the stiffness which afflicted every muscle from neck to waist, and the sharp soreness of my back and wrists. I really didn’t feel very well.

She came across the room with a mug of steaming coffee and put it on the bedside table. Her face was pale and expressionless.

‘Coffee,’ she said unnecessarily.

‘Thank you.’

‘How do you feel?’ she asked, a little too clinically.

‘Alive,’ I said.

There was a pause.

‘Oh, go on,’ I said. ‘Either slosh me one or smile... one or the other. But don’t stand there looking tragic, as if the Albert Hall had burned down on the first night of the Proms.’

‘Damn it, Rob,’ she said, her face crinkling into a laugh.

‘Truce?’ I asked.

‘Truce,’ she agreed, still smiling. She even sat down again on the edge of the bed. I shoved myself up into a sitting position, wincing somewhat from various aches, and brought a hand out from under the bedclothes to reach for the coffee.

As a hand it closely resembled a bunch of beef sausages. I produced the other one. It also was swollen. The skin on both felt very tender, and they were still unnaturally red.

‘Blast,’ I said. ‘What’s the time?’

‘About eight o’clock,’ she said. ‘Why?’

Eight o’clock. The race was at two-thirty. I began counting backwards. I would have to be at Ascot by at the latest one-thirty, preferably earlier, and the journey down, going by taxi, would take about fifty minutes. Allow an hour for hold-ups. That left me precisely four and a half hours in which to get fit enough to ride, and the way I felt, it was a tall order.

I began to consider ways and means. There were the Turkish baths, with heat and massage; but I had lost too much skin for that to be an attractive idea. There was a work-out in a gym; a possibility, but rough. There was a canter in the park — a good solution on any day except Saturday, when the Row would be packed with little girls on leading-reins — or better still a gallop on a racehorse at Epsom, but there was neither time to arrange it nor a good excuse to be found for needing it.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Joanna.

I told her.

‘You don’t mean it?’ she said. ‘You aren’t seriously thinking of racing today?’

‘I seriously am.’

‘You’re not fit to,’ she said.

‘That’s the point. That’s what we are discussing, how best to get fit,’ I said.

‘That isn’t what I mean,’ she protested. ‘You look ill. You need a long, quiet day in bed.’

‘I’ll have it tomorrow,’ I said, ‘today I am riding Template in the Midwinter Cup.’ She began more forcibly to try to dissuade me, so I told her why I was going to ride. I told her everything, all about Kemp-Lore’s anti-jockey obsession and all that had happened on the previous evening before she found me in the telephone box. It took quite a time. I didn’t look at her while I told her about the tack-room episode, because for some reason it embarrassed me to describe it, even to her, and I knew then quite certainly that I was not going to repeat it to anyone else.

When I had finished she looked at me without speaking for half a minute — thirty solid seconds — and then she cleared her throat and said, ‘Yes, I see. We’d better get you fit, then.’

I smiled at her.

‘What first?’ she said.

‘Hot bath and breakfast,’ I said. ‘And can we have the weather forecast on?’ I listened to it every morning, as a matter of routine.

She switched on the radio, which was busy with some sickening matinee music, and started tidying up the room, folding the blanket she had slept in and shaking the sofa cushions. Before she had finished the music stopped, and we heard the eight-thirty news headlines, followed by the forecast.

‘There was a slight frost in many parts of the country last night,’ said the announcer smoothly, ‘and more is expected tonight, especially in exposed areas. Temperatures today will reach five degrees centigrade, forty-one Fahrenheit, in most places, and the north-easterly wind will moderate slightly. It will be bright and sunny in the south. Further outlook: colder weather is expected in the next few days. And here is an announcement. The stewards at Ascot inspected the course at eight o’clock this morning and have issued the following statement. “Two or three degrees of frost were recorded on the racecourse last night, but the ground on both sides of the fences was protected by straw, and unless there is a sudden severe frost during the morning, racing is certain.” ’

Joanna switched off. She said, ‘Are you absolutely determined to go?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said.

‘Well... I’d better tell you... I watched that programme last night on television. Turf Talk.’

‘Did you now!’ I said, surprised.

‘I sometimes do, since you were on it. If I’m in. Anyway I watched last night.’

‘And?’ I prompted.

‘He,’ she said, neither of us needing help to know who she meant, ‘he talked about the Midwinter Cup nearly all the time; potted biographies of the horses and trainers, and so on. I was waiting to hear him mention you, but he didn’t. He just went on and on about how superb Template is; not a word about you. But what I thought you’d like to know is that he said that as it was such an important race he personally would be commentating the finish today, and that he personally would also interview the winning jockey afterwards. If only you can win, he’ll have to describe you doing it, which would be a bitter enough pill, and then congratulate you publicly in full view of several million people.’

I gazed at her, awestruck.

‘That’s a great thought,’ I said.

‘Like he interviewed you after that race on Boxing Day,’ she added.

‘That was the race that sealed my fate with him, I imagine.’ I said. ‘And you seem to have done some fairly extensive viewing, if I may say so.’

She looked taken aback. ‘Well... didn’t I see you sitting unobtrusively at the back of a concert I gave in Birmingham one night last summer?’

‘I thought those lights were supposed to dazzle you,’ I said.

‘You’d be surprised,’ she said.

I pushed back the bedclothes. The black trews looked even more incongruous in the daylight.

‘I’d better get going,’ I said. ‘What do you have in the way of disinfectant and bandages, and a razor?’

‘Only a few minute bits of Elastoplast,’ she said apologetically, ‘and the razor I de-fuzz my legs with. There’s a chemist two roads away though, who will be open by now. I’ll make a list.’ She wrote it on an old envelope.

‘And A.P.C. tablets,’ I said. ‘They are better than just aspirins.’

‘Right,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’

When she had gone I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. It’s easy enough to say, but it wasn’t all that easy to do, since I felt as if some over-zealous laundress had fed me several times through a mangle. It was exasperating, I thought bitterly, how much havoc Kemp-Lore had worked on my body by such simple means. I turned on the taps, took off the trews and socks, and stepped into the bath. The blue cardigan had stuck to my back and the shirt bandages to my wrists, so I lay down in the hot water without tugging at them and waited for them to soak off.

Gradually the heat did its customary work of unlocking the worst of the cramps, until I could rotate my shoulders and turn my head from side to side without feeling that I was tearing something adrift. Every few minutes I added more hot water, so that by the time Joanna came back I was up to my throat in it and steaming nicely, warm to the backbone and beyond.

She had dried my trousers and pants overnight, and she pressed them for me while I eased myself out of the blue cardigan and reluctantly got out of the bath. I put on the trousers and watched her setting out her purchases on the kitchen table, a dark lock of hair falling forward into her eyes and a look of concentration firming her mouth. Quite a girl.

I sat down at the table and she bathed the grazes with disinfectant, dried them, and covered them with large pieces of lint spread with zinc-and-castor-oil ointment which she stuck on with adhesive tape. She was neat and quick, and her touch was light.

‘Most of the dirt came out in the bath luckily,’ she observed, busy with the scissors. ‘You’ve got quite an impressive set of muscles, haven’t you? You must be strong... I didn’t realise.’

‘At the moment I’ve got an impressive set of jellies,’ I sighed. ‘Very wobbly, very weak.’ And aching steadily, though there wasn’t any point in saying so.

She went into the other room, rummaged in a drawer, and came back with another cardigan. Pale green, this time; the colour suited my state of health rather well, I thought.

‘I’ll buy you some new ones,’ I said, stretching it across my chest to do up the fancy buttons.

‘Don’t bother,’ she said, ‘I loathe both of them.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and she laughed.

I put the anorak on again on top of the jersey and pushed the knitted cuffs up my forearms. Joanna slowly unwound the blood-stained bandages on my wrists. They still stuck a bit in spite of the soaking, and what lay underneath was a pretty disturbing sight, even to me, now that we could see it in daylight.

‘I can’t deal with this,’ she said positively. ‘You must go to a doctor.’

‘This evening,’ I said. ‘Put some more bandages on, for now.’

‘It’s too deep,’ she said. ‘It’s too easy to get it infected. You can’t ride like this, Rob, really you can’t.’

‘I can,’ I said. ‘I’ll dunk them in a bowl of Dettol for a while, and then you wrap them up again. Nice and flat, so they won’t show.’

‘Don’t they hurt?’ she said.

I didn’t answer.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Silly question.’ She sighed, and fetched a bowl full of warm water, pouring in Dettol so that it turned a milky white, and I soaked my wrists in it for ten minutes.

‘That’s fixed the infection,’ I said. ‘Now... nice and flat.’

She did as I asked, fastening the ends of the bandages down with little gold safety pins. When she had finished the white cuffs looked tidy and narrow, and I knew they would be unnoticeable under racing colours.

‘Perfect,’ I said appreciatively, pulling down the anorak sleeves to cover them. ‘Thank you, Florence.’

‘And Nightingale to you, too,’ she said, making a face at me. ‘When are you going to the police?’

‘I’m not. I told you,’ I said. ‘I’m not going at all. I meant what I said last night.’

‘But why not; why not?’ She didn’t understand. ‘You could get him prosecuted for assault or for causing grievous bodily harm, or whatever the technical term is.’

I said, ‘I’d rather fight my own battles... and anyway, I can’t face the thought of telling the police what happened last night, or being examined by their doctors, and photographed; or standing up in court, if it came to that, and answering questions about it in public, and having the whole rotten lot printed in gory detail in the papers. I just can’t face it, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ she said slowly. ‘I suppose it would be a bit of an ordeal, if you look at it like that. Perhaps you feel humiliated... is that it?’

‘You may be rather bruisingly right,’ I admitted grudgingly, thinking about it. ‘And I’ll keep my humiliation to myself, if you don’t mind.’

She laughed. ‘You don’t need to feel any,’ she said. ‘Men are funny creatures.’

The pity about hot baths is that although they loosen one up beautifully for the time being, the effect does not last; one has to consolidate the position by exercise. And exercise, my battered muscles protested, was just what they would least enjoy; all the same I did a few rather half-hearted bend-stretch arm movements while Joanna scrambled us some eggs, and after we had eaten and I had shaved I went back to it with more resolution, knowing that if I didn’t get on to Template’s back in a reasonably supple condition he had no chance of winning. It wouldn’t help anyone if I fell off at the first fence.

After an hour’s work, though I couldn’t screw myself up to swinging my arms round in complete circles, I did get to the stage where I could lift them above shoulder height without wanting to cry out.

Joanna washed up and tidied the flat, and soon after ten o’clock, while I was taking a breather, she said, ‘Are you going on with this health and beauty kick until you leave for Ascot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s only a suggestion, but why don’t we go skating instead?’

‘All that ice,’ I said, shuddering.

She smiled. ‘I thought you had to remount at once, after a fall?’

I saw the point.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s good, warming exercise, and far more interesting than what you’ve been doing.’

‘You’re a blooming genius, my darling Joanna,’ I said fervently.

‘Er.... maybe,’ she said. ‘I still think you ought to be in bed’.

When she was ready we went along to my family’s flat where I borrowed one of my father’s shirts and a tie and also his skates, which represented his only interest outside music. Then we called at the bank, since the taxi ride the night before had taken nearly all Joanna’s cash, and apart from needing money myself I wanted to repay her. Lastly, we stopped at a shop to buy me a pair of brown, silk-lined leather gloves, which I put on, and finally we reached the ice rink in Queensway where we had both been members from the days when we were taken there as toddlers on afternoons too rainy for playing in the Park.

We had not skated together since we were sixteen, and it was fascinating to see how quickly we fell back into the same dancing techniques that we had practised as children.

She was right about the exercise. After an hour of it I had loosened up from head to foot, with hardly a muscle that wasn’t moving reasonably freely. She herself, sliding over the ice beside me, had colour in her cheeks and a dazzling sparkle in her eyes. She looked young and vivid.

At twelve o’clock, Cinderella-like, we slid off the rink.

‘All right?’ she asked, smiling.

‘Gorgeous,’ I said, admiring the clear, intelligent face turned up to mine.

She didn’t know whether I meant her or the skating, which was perhaps just as well.

‘I mean... how are the aches and pains?’

‘Gone,’ I said.

‘You’re a liar,’ she said, ‘but at least you don’t look as grey as you did.’

We went to change, which for me simply meant substituting my father’s shirt and tie for the pale green cardigan, and putting back the anorak on top, and the gloves. Necessary, the gloves. Although my fingers were less swollen, less red, and no longer throbbed, the skin in places was beginning to split in short thread-thin cracks.

In the foyer Joanna put the cardigan and my father’s skates into her bag and zipped it up, and we went out into the street. She had already told me that she would not come to Ascot with me, but would watch on television. ‘And mind you win,’ she said, ‘after all this.’

‘Can I come back to your place, afterwards?’ I said.

‘Why, yes... yes,’ she said, as if surprised that I had asked.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Well... good-bye.’

‘Good luck, Rob,’ she said seriously.