Nerve

Sixteen

On Tuesday morning I bought a copy of the Horse and Hound and spent a good while telephoning to a few of the people who had advertised their hunters for sale. With three of them I made appointments to view the animal in question in two days’ time.

Next I rang up one of the farmers I rode for and persuaded him to lend me his Land-Rover and trailer on Thursday afternoon.

Then, having borrowed a tape measure out of Joanna’s work-box — she was out at a rehearsal — I drove the hired car down to James’s stables. I found him sitting in his office dealing with his paper work. The fire, newly lit in the grate, was making little headway against the raw chill in the air, and outside in the yard the lads looked frozen as they scurried about doing up their horses after the second morning exercise.

‘No racing again today,’ James remarked. ‘Still, we’ve been extraordinarily lucky this winter up to now.’

He stood up and rubbed his hands, and held them out to the inadequate fire. ‘Some of the owners have telephoned,’ he said. ‘They’re willing to have you back. I told them...,’ and his lower teeth gleamed as he looked at me from under his eyebrows, ‘... that I was satisfied with your riding, and that you would be on Template in the Gold Cup.’

‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you mean it?’

‘Yes.’ The glimmer deepened in his eyes.

‘But... Pip...’ I said.

‘I’ve explained to Pip,’ he said, ‘that I can’t take you off the horse when you’ve won both the King Chase and the Midwinter on him. And Pip agrees. I have arranged with him that he starts again the week after Cheltenham, which will give him time to get a few races in before the Grand National. He’ll be riding my runner in that — the horse he rode last year.’

‘It finished sixth,’ I said, remembering.

‘Yes, that’s right. Now, I’ve enough horses to keep both Pip and you fairly busy, and no doubt you’ll get outside rides as well. It should work out all right for both of you.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ I said.

‘Thank yourself,’ he said sardonically. ‘You earned it.’ He bent down and put another lump of coal on the fire.

‘James,’ I said, ‘will you write something down for me?’

‘Write? Oh, you’ll get a contract for next season, the same as Pip.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said awkwardly. ‘It’s quite different... would you just write down that it was Maurice Kemp-Lore who told you that Oldfield was selling information about your horses, and that he said he had learned it from Lubbock?’

‘Write it down?’

‘Yes. Please,’ I said.

‘I don’t see...’ He gave me an intent look and shrugged. ‘Oh, very well then.’ He sat down at his desk, took a sheet of paper headed with his name and address, and wrote what I had asked.

‘Signature and date?’ he said.

‘Yes, please.’

He blotted the page. ‘What good will that do?’ he said, handing it to me.

I took Mr. Lubbock’s paper out of my wallet and showed it to him. He read it through three times.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘It’s incredible. Suppose I had checked carefully with Lubbock? What a risk Maurice took.’

‘It wasn’t so big a risk,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have thought of questioning what he put forward as a friendly warning. Anyway, it worked. Grant got the sack.’

‘I’m sorry for that,’ James said slowly. ‘I wish there was something I could do about it.’

‘Write to Grant and explain,’ I suggested. ‘He would appreciate it more than anything in the world.’

‘I’ll do that,’ he agreed, making a note.

‘On Saturday morning,’ I said, taking back Lubbock’s statement and putting it with his in my wallet, ‘these little documents will arrive with a plop on the Senior Steward’s doormat. Of course they aren’t conclusive enough to base any legal proceedings on, but they should be enough to kick friend Kemp-Lore off his pedestal.’

‘I should say you were right.’ He looked at me gravely, and then said, ‘Why wait until Saturday?’

‘I... er... I won’t be ready until then,’ I said evasively.

He didn’t pursue it. We walked out into the yard together and looked in on some of the horses, James giving instructions, criticism and praise — in that order — to the hurrying lads. I realised how used I had grown to the efficiency and prosperity of his organisation, and how much it meant to me to be a part of it.

We walked slowly along one row of boxes, and James went into the tack-room at the end to talk to Sid about the cancellation of the following day’s racing. Unexpectedly I stopped dead on the threshold. I didn’t want to go in. I knew it was stupid, but it made no difference. Parts of me were still too sore.

The harness hook hung quietly from the centre of the ceiling, with a couple of dirty bridles swinging harmlessly on two of its curving arms. I turned my back on it and looked out across the tidy yard, and wondered if I would ever again see one without remembering.

Up in the rolling, grassy hills a mile or so away from his stable, James owned an old deserted keeper’s cottage. In the past it had been the home allotted to the man who looked after the gallops, James had told me once on a journey to the races, but as it had no electricity, no piped water and no sanitation, the new groundsman preferred, not unnaturally, to live in comfort in the village below and go up the hill to work on a motor-bike.

The old cottage lay down an overgrown lane leading off a public but little used secondary road which led nowhere except up and along the side of the hill and down again to join the main road four miles further on. It served only two farms and one private house, and because of its quietness it was a regular route for the Axminster horses on roadwork days.

After leaving James I drove up to the cottage. I had not seen it at close quarters before, only a glimpse of its blank end wall from the end of the lane as I rode by. I now found it was a four-roomed bungalow, set in a small fenced garden with a narrow path leading from the gate to the front door. The neglected grass had been cropped short by sheep. There was one window to each room, two facing the front and two the back.

Getting in without a key presented no difficulty as most of the glass in the windows was broken; and opening one, I climbed in. The whole place smelt of fungus and rot, though faintly, as if the decay were only warming up for future onslaught. The walls and floorboards were still in good condition, and only one of the rooms was damp. I found that all four rooms opened on to a small central hall inside the front entrance; and as I made my tour I reflected that it could not have been more convenient if I had designed it myself.

I let myself out of the front door, and walking round to the back I took out Joanna’s inch tape and measured the window frame; three feet high, four feet wide. Then I returned to the front, counted the number of broken panes of glass, and measured one of them. That done, I returned to James and asked him to lend me the cottage for a few days to store some things in for which there was no room at my digs.

‘As long as you like,’ he agreed absently, busy with paper work.

‘May I mend some of the windows, and put on a new lock, to make it more secure?’ I asked.

‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Do what you like.’

I thanked him, and drove into Newbury, and at a builders’ merchants waited while they made me up an order of ten panes of glass, enough putty to put them in with, several pieces of water pipe cut to a specified length, a bucket, some screws, a stout padlock, a bag of cement, a pot of green paint, a putty knife, a screw driver, a cement trowel and a paint brush. Loaded to the axles with that lot I returned to the cottage.

I painted the weather-beaten front door and left it open to dry, reflecting that no one could blame a keeper, or his wife for that matter, for not wanting to live in that lonely, inconvenient cul-de-sac.

I went into one of the back rooms and knocked out all the panes of glass which still remained in their little oblong frames. Then, outside in the garden, I mixed a good quantity of cement, using water from the rain butt, and fixed six three-foot lengths of water pipe upright in a row across the window. That done, I went round into the hall, and on the doorpost and door of the same room screwed firmly home the fittings for the padlock. On the inside of the door I unscrewed the handle and removed it.

The final job was replacing the glass in the front windows, and it took me longest to do, chipping out all the old putty and squeezing on the new; but at last it was done, and with its whole windows and fresh green door the cottage already looked more cheerful and welcoming.

I smiled to myself. I retrieved the car from where I had parked it inconspicuously behind some bushes, and drove back to London.

The Scots doctor was drinking gin with Joanna when I let myself in.

‘Oh no,’ I said unceremoniously.

‘Oh yes, laddie,’ he said. ‘You were supposed to come and see me yesterday, remember.’

‘I was busy,’ I said.

‘I’ll just take a look at those wrists, if you don’t mind,’ he said, putting down the gin and standing up purposefully.

I sighed and sat down at the table, and he unwrapped the bandages. There was blood on them again.

‘I thought I told you to take it easy,’ he said sternly. ‘How do you expect them to heal? What have you been doing?’

I could have said ‘Screwing in screws, chipping out putty and mixing cement,’ but instead I rather unco-operatively muttered, ‘Nothing.’

Irritated, he slapped a new dressing on with unnecessary force and I winced. He snorted; but he was gentler with the second one.

‘All right,’ he said, finishing them off. ‘Now, rest them a bit this time. And come and see me on Friday.’

‘Saturday,’ I said. ‘I won’t be in London on Friday.’

‘Saturday morning, then. And mind you come.’ He picked up his glass, tossed off the gin, and said a friendly good night exclusively to Joanna.

She came back laughing from seeing him out. ‘He isn’t usually so unsympathetic,’ she said. ‘But I think he suspects you were engaged in some sort of sadistic, disgusting orgy last week, as you wouldn’t tell him how you got like that.’

‘And he’s dead right,’ I said morosely. He had stirred up my wrists properly, and they hadn’t been too good to start with, after my labours at the cottage.

For the third night I went to bed on the sofa and lay awake in the darkness, listening to Joanna’s soft sleeping breath. Every day she hesitantly asked me if I would like to stay another night in her flat, and as I had no intention of leaving while there was any chance of thawing her resistance, I accepted promptly each time, even though I was progressively finding that no bread would have been more restful. Half a loaf, in the shape of Joanna padding familiarly in and out of the bathroom in a pretty dressing-gown and going to bed five yards away, was decidedly unsatisfying. But I could easily have escaped and gone to a non-tantalising sleep in my own bed in my family’s flat half a mile away; if I didn’t, it was my own fault, and I pointed this out to her when every morning she remorsefully apologised for being unfair.

On Wednesday morning I went to a large photographic agency and asked to see a picture of Maurice Kemp-Lore’s sister Alice. I was given a bundle of photographs to choose from, varying from Alice front-view in spotted organza at a Hunt Ball to Alice back-view winning over the last fence in a point to point. Alice was a striking girl, with dark hair, high cheek-bones, small fierce eyes, and a tight aggressive mouth. A girl to avoid, as far as I was concerned. I bought a copy of a waist-length photograph which showed her watching some hunter trials, dressed in a hacking jacket and head-scarf.

Leaving the agency, I went to the city offices of my parents’ accountants, and talked ‘our Mr. Stuart’ in the records department into letting me use first a typewriter and then his photocopying machine.

On plain typing paper I wrote a bald account of Kemp-Lore’s actions against Grant Oldfield, remarking that as a result of Axminster’s relying on the apparent disinterestedness of Kemp-Lore’s accusation, Oldfield had lost his job, had subsequently suffered great distress of mind, and had undergone three months’ treatment in a mental hospital.

I made ten copies of this statement and then on the photocopier printed ten copies each of the statements from Lubbock and James. I thanked ‘our Mr. Stuart’ profusely and returned to Joanna’s mews.

When I got back I showed her the photograph of Alice Kemp-Lore, and explained who she was.

‘But,’ said Joanna, ‘she isn’t a bit like her brother. It can’t have been her that the ticket-collector saw at Cheltenham.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was Kemp-Lore himself. Could you draw me a picture of him wearing a head-scarf?’

She found a piece of cartridge paper and with concentration made a recognisable likeness in charcoal of the face I now unwillingly saw in dreams.

‘I’ve only seen him on television,’ she said. ‘It isn’t very good.’ She began to sketch in a head-scarf, adding with a few strokes an impression of a curl of hair over the forehead. Then, putting her head on one side and considering her work, she emphasized the lips so that they looked dark and full.

‘Lipstick,’ she murmured, explaining. ‘How about clothes?’ Her charcoal hovered over the neck.

‘Jodhpurs and hacking jacket,’ I said. ‘The only clothes which look equally right on men and women.’

‘Crumbs,’ she said, staring at me. ‘It was easy, wasn’t it? On with head-scarf and lipstick, and exit the immediately recognisable Kemp-Lore.’

I nodded. ‘Except that he still reminded people of himself.’

She drew a collar and tie and the shoulders of a jacket with revers. The portrait grew into a likeness of a pretty girl dressed for riding. It made my skin crawl.

I found Joanna’s eyes regarding me sympathetically.

‘You can hardly bear to look at him, can you?’ she said. ‘And you talk in your sleep.’

I rolled up the picture, bounced it on the top of her head, and said lightly, ‘Then I’ll buy you some ear plugs.’

‘He was taking a big risk, all the same, pretending to be a girl,’ she said, smiling.

‘I don’t suppose he did it a minute longer than he had to,’ I agreed. ‘Just long enough to get from Timberley to Cheltenham without being recognised.’

I filled ten long envelopes with the various statements, and stuck them down. I addressed one to the senior steward and four others to influential people in the National Hunt Committee. One to the Chairman of Universal Telecast, one to John Ballerton, and one to Corin Kellar, to show them their idol’s clay feet. One to James. And one to Maurice Kemp-Lore.

‘Can’t he get you for libel?’ asked Joanna looking over my shoulder.

‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘There’s a defence in libel actions called justification, which roughly means that if a man has done something dishonest you are justified in disclosing it. You have to prove it is true, that’s all.’

‘I hope you are right,’ she said dubiously, sticking on some stamps.

‘Don’t worry. He won’t sue me,’ I said positively.

I stacked nine of the envelopes into a neat pile on the bookshelf and propped the tenth, the unstamped one for Kemp-Lore, up on end behind them.

‘We’ll post that lot on Friday,’ I said. ‘And I’ll deliver the other one myself.’

At eight-thirty on Thursday morning Joanna made the telephone call upon which so much depended.

I dialled the number of Kemp-Lore’s London flat. There was a click as soon as the bell started ringing, and an automatic answering device invited us to leave a recorded message. Joanna raised her eyebrows; I shook my head, and she put down the receiver without saying anything.

‘Out,’ I said unnecessarily. ‘Damn.’

I gave her the number of Kemp-Lore’s father’s house in Essex and she was soon connected and talking to someone there. She nodded to me and put her hand over the mouthpiece, and said, ‘He’s there. They’ve gone to fetch him. I... I hope I don’t mess it up.’

I shook my head encouragingly. We had rehearsed pretty thoroughly what she was going to say. She licked her lips, and looked at me with anxious eyes.

‘Oh? Mr. Kemp-Lore?’ She could do a beautiful cockney-suburban accent, not exaggerated and very convincing. ‘You don’t know me, but I wondered if I could tell you something that you could use on your programme in the newsy bits at the end? I do admire your programme, I do really. It’s ever so good, I always think...’

His voice clacked, interrupting the flow.

‘What information?’ repeated Joanna. ‘Oh, well, you know all the talk there’s been about athletes using them pep pills and injections and things, well I wondered if you wanted to know about jockeys doing it too... one jockey, actually that I know of, but I expect they all do it if the truth were known... Which jockey? Oh... er... Robbie Finn, you know, the one you talked to on the telly on Saturday after he won that race. Pepped to the eyebrows as usual he was, didn’t you guess? You was that close to him I thought you must have... How do I know? Well I do know... you want to know how I know... well... it’s a bit dodgy, like, but it was me got some stuff for him once. I work in a doctor’s dispensary... cleaning you see... and he told me what to take and I got it for him. But now look here, I don’t want to get into no trouble, I didn’t mean to let on about that... I think I’d better ring off... Don’t ring off? You won’t say nothing about it then, you know, me pinching the stuff?

‘Why am I telling you?... Well, he don’t come to see me no more, that’s why.’ Her voice was superbly loaded with jealous spite. ‘After all I’ve done for him... I did think of telling one of the newspapers, but I thought I’d see if you were interested first. I can tell them if you’d rather... Check, what do you mean check?... You can’t take my word for it on the telephone? Well, yes, you can come and see me if you want to... no, not today, I’m at work all day... yes, all right, tomorrow morning then.

‘How do you get there?... Well, you go to Newbury and then out towards Hungerford...’ She went on with the directions slowly while he wrote them down. ‘And it’s the only cottage along there, you can’t miss it. Yes, I’ll wait in for you, about eleven o’clock, all right then. What’s my name?... Doris Jones. Yes, that’s right. Mrs. Doris Jones... Well ta-ta then.’ The telephone clicked and buzzed as he disconnected.

She put the receiver down slowly, looking at me with a serious face.

‘Hook, line and sinker,’ she said.

When the banks opened I went along and drew out one hundred and fifty pounds. As Joanna had said, what I was doing was complicated and expensive; but complication and expense had achieved top-grade results for Kemp-Lore, and at least I was paying him the compliment of copying his methods. I grudged the money not at all: what is money for, if not to get what you want? What I wanted, admirable or not, was to pay him in his own coin.

I drove off to the Bedfordshire farmer who promised to lend me his Land-Rover and trailer. It was standing ready in the yard when I arrived at noon, and before I left I bought from the farmer two bales of straw and one of hay, which we stowed in the back of the Land-Rover. Then, promising to return that evening, I started away to the first of my appointments with the Horse and Hound advertisers.

The first hunter, an old grey gelding in Northamptonshire, was so lame that he could hardly walk out of his box and he was no bargain even at the sixty pounds they were asking for him. I shook my head, and pressed on into Leicestershire.

The second appointment proved to be with a brown mare, sound in limb but noisy in wind, as I discovered when I cantered her across a field. She was big, about twelve years old and gawky, but quiet to handle and not too bad to look at, and she was for sale only because she could not go as fast as her ambitious owner liked. I haggled, bringing him from the hundred he had advertised her for down to eighty-five pounds, and clinched the deal. Then I loaded the mare, whose name, her ex-owner said, was Buttonhook, into the trailer and turned my face South again to Berkshire.

Three hours later, at half-past five in the afternoon, I turned the Land-Rover into the lane at the cottage, and bumped Buttonhook to a standstill on the rough ground behind the bushes beyond the building. She had to wait in the trailer while I got the straw and spread it thickly over the floorboards in the room with the water pipes cemented over the window, and again while I filled her a bucket of water out of the rain butt and carried an armful of hay into the room and put it in the corner behind the door.

She was an affectionate old thing, I found. She came docilely out of the trailer and made no fuss when I led her up the little garden path and in through the front door of the cottage and across the little hall into the room prepared for her. I gave her some sugar and rubbed her ears, and she butted her head playfully against my chest. After a while, as she seemed quite content in her unusual and not very spacious loose box, I went out into the hall, shut the door, and padlocked her in. Then I walked round the outside of the cottage and shook the water-pipe bars to see if they were secure, as the frosty air might have prevented the cement from setting properly. But they were all immovably fixed.

The mare came to the window and tried to poke her muzzle through the glassless squares of the window frame and through the bars outside them, but the maze defeated her. I put my hand through and fondled her muzzle, and she blew contentedly down her nostrils. Then she turned and went over to the corner where her hay was, and quietly and trustfully put her head down to eat.

I dumped the rest of the hay and straw in one of the front rooms of the cottage, shut the front door, manoeuvred the trailer round with some difficulty into the lane again, and set off back to Bedfordshire. In due course I delivered the Land-Rover and trailer to their owner, thanked him, and drove the hired car back to Joanna’s mews.

When I went in, she kissed me. She sprang up from the sofa where she had been sitting reading, and kissed me lightly on the mouth. It was utterly spontaneous; without thought: and it was a great surprise to both of us. I put my hands on her arms and smiled incredulously down into her black eyes, and watched the surprise there turn to confusion and the confusion to panic. I took my hands away and turned my back on her to give her time, taking off the anorak and saying casually over my shoulder, ‘The lodger is installed in the cottage. A big brown mare with a nice nature.’

I hung up the anorak in the cupboard.

‘I was just... glad to see you back,’ she said in a high voice.

‘That’s fine,’ I said lightly. ‘Can I rustle up an egg, do you think?’

‘There are some mushrooms for an omelette,’ she said, more normally.

‘Terrific,’ I said, going into the kitchen. ‘Not peeled, by any chance?’

‘Damn it, no,’ she said, following me and beginning to smile. She made the omelette for me and I told her about Buttonhook, and the difficult moment passed.

Later on she announced that she was coming down to the cottage with me when I went in the morning.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘He is expecting Mrs. Doris Jones to open the door to him. It will be much better if she does.’

I couldn’t budge her.

‘And,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought of putting curtains in the windows? If you want him to walk into your parlour, you’ll have to make it look normal. He probably has a keen nose for smelling rats.’ She fished some printed cotton material out of the drawer and held it up. ‘I’ve never used this... we can pin it up to look like curtains.’ She busily collected some drawing pins and scissors, and then rolled up the big rag rug which the easel stood on and took a flower picture off the wall.

‘What are those for?’ I said.

‘To furnish the hall, of course. It’s got to look right.’

‘Okay, genius,’ I said, giving in. ‘You can come.’

We put all the things she had gathered into a tidy pile by the door, and I added two boxes of cubed sugar from her store cupboard, the big electric torch she kept in case of power cuts, and a broom.

After that springing kiss, the sofa was more of a wasteland than ever.