Proof

Thirteen

He was right. They were late off. Orkney’s fancy finished dead tired and second to last and we were indeed rushed for Breezy Palm.

Orkney was seriously displeased. Orkney became coldly and selfishly unpleasant.

I dutifully walked Flora down to the saddling boxes, though more slowly than our angry host had propelled his lady. (‘You didn’t mind him calling you my walker, did you, dear?’ Flora asked anxiously. ‘Not at all. Delighted to walk you anywhere, any time.’ ‘You’re such a comfort, Tony dear.’) We reached the saddling boxes as the tiny saddle itself went on over the number cloth, elastic girths dangling.

Breezy Palm, a chestnut with three white socks, looked as if he had a certain amount of growing still to do, particularly in front. Horses, like children, grew at intervals with rests in between: Breezy Palm’s forelegs hadn’t yet caught up with the last spurt in the hind.

‘Good strong rump,’ I said, in best Jimmy fashion.

The brisk travelling head lad, busy with girth buckles, glanced at me hopefully but Orkney was in no mood for flattery. ‘He’s coming to hand again at last,’ he said sourly. ‘He won twice back in July, but since then there have been several infuriating disappointments. Not Jack’s fault, of course...’ His voice all the same was loaded with criticism. ‘... jockeys’ mistakes, entered at the wrong courses, frightened in the starting gate, needed the race, always something.’

Neither the head lad nor Flora looked happy, but nor were they surprised. Orkney’s pre-race nerves, I supposed, were part of the job.

‘Couldn’t you have saddled up sooner?’ Orkney said crossly. ‘You must have known the last race was delayed.’

‘You usually like to see your horses saddled, sir.’

‘Yes, yes, but use some commonsense.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Can’t you hurry that up?’ Orkney said with increasing brusqueness as the head lad began sponging the horse’s nose and mouth. ‘We’re damned late already.’

‘Just coming, sir.’ The head lad’s glance fell on the horse’s rug, still to be buckled on over the saddle for warming muscles on the October day. There was a pot of oil also for brushing gloss onto the hooves... and a prize to the lad, it said in the racecard, for the best turned-out horse.

‘It’s too bad,’ Orkney said impatiently. ‘We should be in the parade ring already.’ He turned away sharply and stalked off in that direction, leaving Isabella, Flora and me to follow as we would.

Isabella looked stoically unaffected. Flora began to scurry after Orkney but I caught her abruptly by the arm, knowing he’d think less of her for hurrying, not more.

‘Slow down, slow down, the jockeys aren’t out yet.’

‘Oh. All right, then.’ She looked guilty as much as flustered, and walked with small jerky steps between the long-legged Isabella and myself as we joined Orkney in the parade ring, no later than any other owner-trainer group.

Orkney was still in the grip of his outburst of bad temper, which failed to abate when Breezy Palm finally appeared in the ring looking polished. The jockey, approaching it seemed to me unsmilingly out of past experience, was sarcastically told not to leave his winning run as bloody late as last time and not to go to sleep in the stalls, if he didn’t mind.

The featherweight jockey listened expressionlessly, his gaze on the ground, his body relaxed. He’s heard it all before, I thought, and he simply doesn’t care. I wondered, if I’d been a jockey, whether I would have ridden my heart out for owners who spoke in that way, and concluded that possibly not. Breezy Palm’s uncertain prospects developed a certainty for me at that moment: and I wondered what Orkney would be like in defeat when he was so obnoxious in hope.

The bell rang for the jockeys to mount. Breezy Palm’s jockey nodded to Orkney and went away with Orkney still telling him that if he used his whip too much he’d have him up in front of the stewards.

Flora was standing so close to me she was virtually clinging on. When Orkney turned away and strode out of the parade ring without waiting for Isabella or to see his horse mounted she said to me shakily, ‘Jack manages him, but I can’t. Jack stops him being so rude to the jockeys. One of them refused to ride his horses... can you imagine?’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Do we have to go up to the box to watch the race?’

‘Oh, my goodness, yes,’ she said emphatically. ‘At least... I mean... you don’t have to... I could go alone.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

I looked around for the decorative Isabella, but she too had disappeared.

‘They’ve both gone to bet,’ Flora said, sighing. ‘Jack said the opposition was stiff... I’m so afraid Breezy Palm won’t win.’

We went up in the lift to the empty box. The sandwiches and tartlets were still wrapped, but the gin level had dropped considerably since we had arrived. Gin itself, I reflected, was a notorious inducer, in some people, of catty ill-humour.

Flora and I went onto the balcony to see the runners go down to the start, and Orkney arrived breathlessly, moving in front of us without apology, raising his binoculars to see what sins his jockey might already be committing. Isabella collectedly arrived with her clutched tickets and I glanced at the flickering light of the Tote board to see Breezy Palm’s odds. Seven to one; by no means favourite but fairly well backed.

There were eighteen runners, several of them past winners. Breezy Palm, well drawn, went into the stalls quietly and showed no signs of re-assaulting the assistant starter. Orkney’s slightly frantic agitation stilled suddenly to concentration and in the six-furlong distance the dark green starting gates opened in unison and spilled out their brilliant accelerating rainbow cargo.

Flora raised her own small raceglasses but I doubted if she could see much for trembling. Three-quarter-mile straight races were in any case difficult to read in the early stages as the runners were so far away and coming straight towards one, and it took me a fair time myself to sort out Orkney’s jockey in red and grey. The commentator, rattling off names,hadn’t mentioned Breezy Palm at all by the time they reached half-way but I could see him there, bobbing along in the pack, making no move either forward or backward, proving merely at that stage that he was no better and no worse than his opponents.

Flora gave up the struggle with her raceglasses, lowered them, and watched the last two furlongs simply with anxiety. The bunch of runners which had seemed to be moving slowly was suddenly perceived to be flying, the tiny foreshortened distances from first to last stretching before one’s eyes to gaps of a length, to definite possibles and positive losers. The young colts stuck out their necks and strove to be first as they would have done in a wild herd on an unrailed plain, the primaeval instinct flashing there undiluted on the civilised track. The very essence of racing, I thought. The untamed force that made it all possible. Exciting, moving... beautiful.

Breezy Palm had the ancient instinct in full measure. Whether urged to the full by his jockey or not he was straining ahead with passion, legs angular beneath the immature body, stride hurried and scratchy, the compulsion to be first all there but the technical ability still underdeveloped.

The trick of race-riding, my father had once said, was to awaken a horse’s natural panic fear and then control it. My father, of course, had had no doubt at all that he could do both. It was I, his son, who couldn’t do either. Pity...

Breezy Palm’s natural panic, jockey controlling it to the extent of letting it have its head and keeping it running straight, was still lustily aiming a shade beyond his ability. Orkney watched in concentrated silence. Flora seemed to be holding her breath. Isabella behind me was saying ‘Come on, you bugger, come on, you bugger,’ continuously under her breath, her most human reaction to date. Breezy Palm, oblivious, had his eyes fixed on the three horses still in front of him and over the last hundred yards ran as if the great god Pan were at his very heels.

Horses can only do their best. Breezy Palm’s best on that day couldn’t overhaul the winner, who went ahead by a length, or the second, who left clear space behind him, but he flashed over the line so close to the third of the leaders that from the angle of Orkney’s box it was impossible to tell the exact placings. The judge, announced the tannoy, was calling for a photograph.

Orkney, still silent, lowered his glasses and stared up the track to where his hepped-up colt was being hauled back into the twentieth century. Then still saying nothing he turned and hurried away, again leaving his companions to fare for themselves.

‘Come on, dear,’ Flora said, tugging my sleeve. ‘We must go down too. Jack said to be sure to. Oh, dear...’

The three of us consequently made the downward journey as fast as possible and arrived to find Breezy Palm stamping around in the place allotted to the horse that finished fourth, the jockey unbuckling the girths and Orkney scowling.

‘Oh, dear...’ Flora said again. ‘The jockeys always know... He must have been beaten for third after all.’

The result of the photograph, soon announced, confirmed it: Breezy Palm had finished fourth. Distances: length, two lengths, short head.

Flora, Isabella and I stood beside Orkney, looking at the sweating, tossing, skittering two-year-old and making consoling and congratulatory remarks, none of which seemed to please.

‘Ran extremely well in a strong field,’ I said.

‘The wrong race for him,’ Orkney said brusquely. ‘I’ve no idea why Jack persists in entering him in this class. Perfectly obvious they were too good for him.’

‘Only just,’ Isabella said reasonably.

‘My dear woman, you know nothing about it.’

Isabella merely smiled; fortitude of an exceptional nature.

It struck me that she herself was totally uncowed by Orkney. He treated her rudely: she ignored it, neither embarrassed nor upset. Subtly, somewhere in their relationship, she was his equal... and both of them knew it.

Flora said bravely, ‘I thought the horse ran splendidly,’ and received a pityingly glance from on high.

‘He fought to the end,’ I said admiringly. ‘Definitely not a quitter.’

‘Fourth,’ Orkney said repressively, as if fourth in itself bespoke a lack of character, and I wondered if he cared in the least how graceless he sounded.

The signal was given for the horses to be led away and Orkney made impatient movements which everyone interpreted as his own type of invitation to return to the box. There at last he busied himself with removing the wrappings from the overdue sandwiches, but without much method, finally pushing the plates towards Isabella for her to do it. Orkney himself poured fresh drinks as unstintingly as before and indicated that we might all sit down round one of the tables, if we so wished. All of us sat. All of us ate politely, hiding our hunger.

As a post-race jollification it would have done a funeral proud, but gradually the worst of Orkney’s sulks wore off and he began to make comments that proved he had at least understood what he’d seen, even if he took no joy in it.

‘He’s lost his action,’ he said. ‘Back in July, when he won, he had a better stride. Much more fluent. That’s the only trouble with two-year-olds. You think you’ve got a world beater and then they start developing unevenly.’

‘He might be better next year,’ I suggested. ‘Won’t you keep him? He could be worth it.’

Orkney shook his head. ‘He’s going to the sales next week. I wanted a win today to put his price up. Jack knew that.’ The echo of grudge was still strong. ‘Larry Trent might have leased him. He thought, as you seem to, that his action might come back once he’d finished growing, but I’m not risking it. Sell, and buy yearlings, that’s my preference. Different runners every year... more interesting.’

‘You don’t have time to grow fond of them,’ I said neutrally.

‘Quite right,’ he nodded. ‘Once you get sentimental you throw good money down the drain.’

I remembered the friendships my father had had with his steeplechasers, treating each with camaraderie over many years, getting to interpret their every twitch and particularly loving the one that had killed him. Money down the drain, sure, but a bottomless pleasure in return such as Orkney would never get to feel.

‘That damned jockey left his run too late,’ Orkney said, but without undue viciousness. ‘Breezy Palm was still making up ground at the end. You saw that. If he’d got at him sooner...’

‘Difficult to tell,’ I said, drawling.

‘I told him not to leave it too late. I told him.’

‘You told him not to hit the horse,’ Isabella said calmly. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Orkney.’

Orkney could, however. Throughout the sandwiches, the cheese and the strawberry tartlets he dissected and discussed the race stride by stride, mostly with disapproval. My contention that his colt had shown great racing spirit was accepted. Flora’s defence of the jockey wasn’t. I grew soundly tired of the whole circus and wondered how soon we could leave.

The waitress appeared again in the doorway asking if Orkney needed anything else, and Orkney said yes, another bottle of gin.

‘And make sure it’s Seagram’s,’ he said. The waitress nodded and went away, and he said to me, ‘I order Seagram’s just because the caterers have to get it in specially. They serve their own brand if you don’t ask. They charge disgraceful prices... I’m not going to make life easy for them if I can help it.’

Flora’s and Isabella’s expressions, I saw, were identical in pained resignation. Orkney had mounted his hobby horse and would complain about the caterers for another ten minutes. The arrival of the fresh bottle didn’t check him, but at the end he seemed to remember my own job and said with apparently newly-reached decision, ‘It’s local people like you who should be providing the drinks, not this huge conglomerate. If enough people complain to the Clerk of the Course, I don’t see why we couldn’t get the system put back to the old ways. Do you?’

‘Worth a try,’ I said non-committally.

‘What you want to do,’ he insisted, ‘is propose yourself as an alternative. Give these damn monopolists a jolt.’

‘Something to think about,’ I murmured, not meaning to in the least, and he lectured me at tiresome length on what I ought to do personally for the box-renters of Martineau Park, not to mention for all the other racecourses where the same caterers presided, and what I should do about the other firms of caterers who carved up the whole country’s racecourses between them.

‘Er... Orkney,’ Flora said uncertainly, when the tirade had died down, ‘I do believe, you know, that at a few courses they really have finished with the conglomerates and called in local caterers, so perhaps... you never know.’

Orkney looked at her with an astonishment which seemed to be based less on what she’d said than on the fact of her knowing it. ‘Are you sure, Flora?’

‘Yes... I’m sure.’

‘There you are then,’ he said to me. ‘What are your waiting for?’

‘I wouldn’t mind shuttling the drinks along,’ I said. ‘But what about the food? This food is good, you’d have to admit. That’s where these caterers excel.’

‘Food. Yes, their food’s all right,’ he said grudgingly.

We’d finished every crumb and I could have eaten the whole lot again. Orkney returned to the subject of Breezy Palm and two drinks later had exhausted even Isabella’s long-suffering patience.

‘If you want me to drive you home, Orkney, the time is now,’ she said. ‘You may not have noticed that they ran the last race ten minutes ago.’

‘Really?’ He looked at his watch and surprisingly took immediate action, standing up and collecting his papers. ‘Very well then. Flora, I’ll be talking to Jack on the telephone... and er...’ he made an effort to remember my name as the rest of us stood up also. ‘Good to have met you... er... Tony.’ He nodded twice in lieu of shaking hands. ‘Any time you’re here with Flora... glad to have you.’

‘Thank you, Orkney,’ I said.

Isabella bent to give Flora a kiss in the air an inch off her cheek and looked vaguely at my sling, finding like Orkney that hands unavailable for shaking left goodbyes half unsaid.

‘Er...’ she said, ‘so nice...’

They went away down the hallway and Flora sat down again abruptly.

‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ she said fervently, ‘I’d never have got through it without you. Thank goodness he liked you.’

‘Liked?’ I was sceptical.

‘Oh, yes, dear, he asked you back, that’s practically unheard of.’

‘How did Isabella,’ I asked, ‘get him to go home?’

Flora smiled the first carefree smile of the day, her eyes crinkling with fun. ‘My dear, they will certainly have come in her car, and if he didn’t go when she says she would drive off and leave him. She did it once... there was a terrible fuss and Jack and I had to put him on a train. Because, as you’ve noticed dear, he likes his gin and a few months ago he was breathalised on the way home and lost his licence... but he doesn’t like one to talk about that either.’

After the races, during the evening shift in the shop, I telephoned again to Henri Tavel in Bordeaux and listened without much surprise to his news.

‘Mon cher Tony, there is no Château Caillot in St Estèphe. There is no Château Caillot in Haut Médoc. There is no Château Caillot in the whole region of Bordeaux.’

‘One thought there might not be,’ I said.

‘As for the négotiant Thiery et Fils...’ the heavy gallic shrug travelled almost visibly along the wires,’... there is no person called Thiery who is négotiant in Bordeaux. As you know, some people call themselves négotiants who work only in paper and never see the wine they sell, but even among these there is no Thiery.’

‘You’ve been most thorough, Henri.’

‘To forge wine labels is a serious matter.’

His voice, vibrating deeply, reflected an outrage no less genuine for being unsurprised. To Henri Tavel, as to all the chateau owners and wineshippers of Bordeaux, wine transcended religion. Conscious and proud of producing the best in the world they worked to stiff bureaucratic criteria which had been laid down in Médoc in 1855 and only fractionally changed since.

They still spoke of 1816, a year of undrinkable quality, as if it were fresh in their memory. They knew the day the grape harvest had started every year back beyond 1795 (September 24th). They knew that wine had been made uninterruptedly in their same vineyards for at least two thousand years.

Every single bottle of the five hundred and fifty million sent out from the region each year had to be certified and accounted for; had to be worthy of the name it bore; had to be able to uphold the reputation for the whole of its life. And the life of a Bordeaux red wine could be amazing... With Henri Tavel I had myself tasted one ninety years old which still shone with colour and sang on the palate.

To forge a Bordeaux chateau label and stick it on an amorphous product of the European wine lake was a heresy of burning-at-the-stake proportions. Henri Tavel wanted assurances that the forgers of Caillot would feel the flames. I could offer only weak-sounding promises that everyone would do their best.

‘It is important,’ he insisted.

‘Yes, I know it is. Truly, Henri, I do know.’

‘Give my regards,’ he said, ‘to your dear mother.’

Life continued normally on the next day, Wednesday, if a disgruntledly itching arm could be considered normal. I was due to take it back to the hospital for inspection the following afternoon and meanwhile went on using the sling much of the time, finding it comfortable and a good excuse for not lifting the cases. Brian had become anxiously solicitous at the sight of it and carefully took even single bottles out of my grasp. Mrs Palissey was writing down the telephone orders to save me the wincing. I felt cossetted and amused.

She and Brian left early with the deliveries because there were so many: some postponed and some in advance, including the glasses and champagne for the next day’s coming-of-age. I kept shop, smiling, ever smiling as usual, and thinking, when I could.

Shortly after eight in the evening Gerard walked in looking grey and tired and asking if I could shut the damned place and come out and eat. Somewhere quiet. He wanted to talk.

I looked at the fatigued lines in his face and the droop of his normally erect body. I was twenty years younger than he and I hadn’t had a general anaesthetic, and if in spite of taking things fairly easy I still felt battered and weak, then he must feel worse. And maybe the cause wasn’t simply the profusion of little burning stab wounds but the residue also from the horsebox... the frissons of nearness to death.

‘We could take Sung Li’s food home to my house,’ I suggested diffidently, ‘if you’d like.’

He would like, he said. He would also buy the food while I fiddled with the till and locked up, and how soon would that be?

‘Half an hour,’ I said. ‘Have some wine.’

He sighed with resignation, sat on the chair I brought from the office and ruefully smiled at our two slings.

‘Snap’ he said.

‘Flora’s idea, mine.’

‘Sensible lady.’

‘I’ll get the wine.’

In the office I poured some genuine wine from St Estèphe and some of the Silver Moondance version into two glasses and carried them out to the counter.

‘Taste them both,’ I said. ‘Say what you think.’

‘What are they?’

‘Tell you later.’

‘I’m no expert,’ he protested. He sipped the first, however, rolling it round his gums and grimacing as if he’d sucked a lemon.

‘Very dry,’ he said.

‘Try the other.’

The second seemed at first to please him better, but after a while he eyed it thoughtfully and put the glass down carefully on the counter.

‘Well?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘The first is demanding. The second is pleasant... but light. You’re going to tell me that the first is more expensive.’

‘Pretty good. The second one, the pleasant but light one, came from the Silver Moondance. The first is near enough what it should have tasted like, according to the label.’

He savoured the various significances. ‘Many might prefer the take. People who didn’t know what to expect.’

‘Yes. A good drink. Nothing wrong with it.’

He sipped the genuine article again. ‘But once you know this one, you grow to appreciate it.’

‘If I had any just now I’d give you one of the great St Estèphes... Cos d’Estournel, Montrose, Calon-Ségur... but this is a good cru bourgeois... lots of body and force.’

‘Take your word for it,’ he said amiably. ‘I’ve often wished I knew more about wine.’

‘Stick around.’

I tasted both the wines again myself, meeting them as old friends. The Silver Moondance wine had stood up pretty well to being opened and refastened, but now that I’d poured the second sample out of the bottle what was left would begin to deteriorate. For wine to remain perfect it had to be in contact with the cork. The more air in the bottle the more damage it did.

I fetched and showed him both of the bottles, real and fake, and told him what Henri Tavel had had to say about forgeries.

He listened attentively, thought for a while, and then said, ‘What is it about the fake wine that seems more significant to you than the fake whisky? Because it does, doesn’t it?’

‘Just as much. Equally.’

‘Why, then?’

‘Because...’ I began, and was immediately interrupted by a row of customers wanting to know what to drink inexpensively with Sung Li’s crispy duck and Peking prawn and beef in oyster sauce. Gerard listened with interest and watched them go one by one with their bottles of Bergerac and Soave and Côtes du Ventoux.

He said, ‘You sell knowledge, don’t you, as much as wine?’

‘Yeah. And pleasure. And human contact. Anything you can’t get from a supermarket.’

A large man with eyes awash shouldered his way unsteadily into the shop demanding beer loudly, and I sold him what he wanted without demur. He paid clumsily, belched, went on his weaving way: and Gerard frowned at his departing back.

‘He was drunk,’ he said.

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t you care?’

‘Not as long as they’re not sick in the shop,’

‘That’s immoral.’

I grinned faintly. ‘I sell escape also.’

‘Temporary,’ he objected disapprovingly, sounding austerely Scots.

‘Temporary is better than nothing,’ I said. ‘Have an aspirin.’

He made a noise between a cough and a chuckle. ‘I suppose you’ve lived on them since Sunday.’

‘Yes, quite right.’ I swallowed two more with some St Estèphe, in itself a minor heresy. ‘I’m all for escape.’

He gave me a dry look which I didn’t at first understand, and only belatedly remembered my rush down the yard.

‘Well... as long as I’m not being robbed.’

He nodded sardonically and waited through two more sales and a discussion about whether Sauternes would go with lamb chops, which it wouldn’t; they would each taste dreadful.

‘What goes with Sauternes then? I like Sauternes.’

‘Anything sweet,’ I said. ‘Also perhaps curry. Or ham. Also blue cheese.’

‘Good heavens,’ said Gerard when he’d gone. ‘Blue cheese with sweet wine... how odd.’

‘Wine and cheese parties thrive on it.’

He looked round the shop as if at a new world. ‘Is there anything you can’t drink wine with?’ he said.

‘As far as I’m concerned... grapefruit.’

He made a face.

‘And that’s from one,’ I said, ‘who drinks wine with baked beans... who practically scrubs his teeth in it.’

‘You really love it?’

I nodded. ‘Nature’s magical accident.’

‘What?’

‘That the fungus on grapes turns the sugar in grape juice to alcohol. That the result is delicious.’

‘For heaven’s sake...’

‘No one could have invented it,’ I said. ‘It’s just there. A gift to the planet. Elegant.’

‘But there are all sorts of different wines.’

‘Oh, sure, because there are different sorts of grapes. But a lot of champagne is made from black-skinned grapes... things may not be as they seem, which should please you as a detective.’

‘Hm,’ he said dryly. His glance roved over the racks of bottles. ‘As a detective what pleases me is proof... so what’s proof?’

‘If you mix a liquid with gunpowder and ignite it, and it burns with a steady blue flame, that’s proof.’

He looked faintly bemused. ‘Proof of what?’

‘Proof that the liquid is at least fifty per cent alcohol. That’s how they proved a liquid was alcohol three centuries ago when they first put a tax on distilled spirits. Fifty percent alcohol, one hundred percent proved. They measure the percentage now with hydrometers, not gunpowder and fire. Less risky, I dare say.’

‘Gunpowder,’ he said, ‘is something you and I have had too much of recently.’ He stood up stiffly. ‘Your half-hour is up. I’ll get the food.’