Whip Hand

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I lay with my face in the wood shavings and listened to them panting as they stood over me, both of them taking great gulps of breath after their exertions.

Peter Rammileese apparently came across to them, because I heard his voice from quite close, loaded with spite, mumbling and indistinct.

'Kill him,' he said. 'Don't stop there. Kill him.'

'Kill him? said the man who'd been with Chico. 'Are you crazy?' He coughed, dragging in air. 'Yon laddie…'

'He's broken my jaw.'

'Kill him yourself then. We're not doing it.'

'Why not? He's cut your ear half off.'

'Grow up, mon.' He coughed again. 'We'd be grassed inside five minutes. We've been down here too long. Too many people've seen us. And this laddie, he's won money for every punter in Scotland. We'd be inside in a week.'

'I want you to kill him,' Peter Rammileese said, insisting.

'You're not paying,' said the Scot, flatly, still breathing heavily. 'We've done what was ordered, and that's that. We'll go into your house now for a beer, and after dark we'll dump these two, as arranged, and then we're finished. And we'll go straight up north tonight, we've been down here too long.'

They went away, and rolled the door open, and stepped out. I heard their feet on the gritty yard, and the door closing, and the metal grate of the outside bolt, which was to keep horses in, and would do for men.

I moved my head a bit to get my nose clear of the shavings, and looked idly at the colour of them so close to my eyes, and simply lay where I was, feeling shapeless, feeling pulped, and stupid, and defeated.

Jelly. A living jelly. Red. On fire. Burning, in a furnace.

There was a lot of romantic rubbish written about fainting from pain, I thought. One absolutely tended not to, because there was no provision for it in nature. The mechanics were missing. There were no fail-safe cut-offs on sensory nerves: they went right on passing the message for as long as the message was there to pass. No other system had evolved, because through millennia it had been unnecessary. It was only man, the most savage of animals, who inflicted pain for its own sake on his fellows.

I thought: I did manage it once, for a short time, after very much too long. I thought: this isn't as bad as that, so I'm going to stay here awake, so I may as well find something to think about. If one couldn't stop the message passing, one could distract the receptors from paying much attention, as in acupuncture; and over the years I'd had a lot of practice.

I thought about a night I'd spent once where I could see a hospital clock. To distract myself from a high state of awfulness I'd spent the time counting. If I shut my eyes and counted for five minutes, five minutes would be gone: and every time I opened my eyes to check, it was only four minutes; and it had been a very long night. I could do better than that, nowadays.

I thought about John Viking in his balloon, and imagined him scudding across the sky, his blue eyes blazing with the glee of breaking safety regulations like bubbles. I thought about Flotilla on the gallops at Newmarket, and winning the Dante Stakes at York. I thought about races I'd ridden in, and won, and lost; and I thought about Louise, a good deal about Louise and fourposter beds.

Afterwards I reckoned that Chico and I had lain there without moving for over an hour, though I hadn't any clear idea of it at the time. The first sharp intrusion of the uncomfortable present was the noise of the bolt clicking open on the outside of the door, and the grinding noise as the door itself rolled partially open. They were going to dump us, they'd said, after dark; but it wasn't yet dark.

Footsteps made no sound on that soft surface, so that the first thing I heard was a voice.

'Are you asleep?'

'No,' I said.

I shifted my head back a bit and saw little Mark squatting there on his heels, in his pyjamas, studying me with six-year-old concern. Beyond him, the door, open enough to let his small body through. On the other side of the door, out in the yard, the Land Rover.

'Go and see if my friend's awake,' I said.

'O. K.'

He straightened his legs and went over to Chico, and I'd got myself up from flat to kneeling by the time he returned with his report.

'He's asleep,' he said, looking at me anxiously. 'Your face is all wet. Are you hot?'

'Does your Dad know you're down here?' I said. 'No he doesn't. I had to go to bed early, but I heard a lot of shouting. I was frightened, I think.'

'Where's your Dad now?' I said. 'He's in the sitting room with those friends. He's hurt his face and he's bloody angry.'

I practically smiled. 'Anything else?'

'Mum was saying what did he expect, and they were all having drinks.'

He thought a bit. 'One of the friends said his ear-drum was burst.' 'If I were you,' I said, 'I'd go straight back to bed and not let them catch you out here. Otherwise your Dad might be bloody angry with you too, and that wouldn't be much fun, I shouldn't think.'

He shook his head.

'Goodnight, then,' I said.

'Goodnight.'

'And leave the door open,' I said. I'll shut it.'

'All right.' He gave me a trusting and slightly conspiratorial smile, and crept out of the doorway to sneak back to bed. I got to my feet and staggered around a bit, and made it to the door. The Land Rover stood there about ten feet away. If the keys were in it, I thought, why wait to be dumped? Ten steps. Leant against the grey-green bodywork, and looked through the glass.

Keys. In the ignition.

I went back into the riding school and over to Chico, and knelt beside him because it was a lot less demanding than bending.

'Come on,' I said. 'Wake up. Time to go.'

He groaned.

'Chico, you've got to walk. I can't carry you.'

He opened his eyes. Still confused, I thought, but a great deal better.

'Get up,' I said urgently. 'We can get out, if you'll try.'

'Sid…'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Come on.'

'Go away. I can't.'

'Yes, you damned well can. You just say "Sod the buggers," and it comes easy.'

It came harder than I'd thought, but I half lugged him to his feet, and put my arm round his waist, and we meandered waveringly to the door like a pair of drunken lovers.

Through the door, and across to the Land Rover. No furious yells of discovery from the house: and as the sitting room was at the far end of it, with a bit of luck they wouldn't even hear the engine start.

I shovelled Chico onto the front seat and shut the door quietly, and went round to the driving side. Land Rovers, I thought disgustedly, were made for left-handed people. All the controls, except the indicators, were on that side: and whether it was because I myself was weak, or the battery was flat, or I'd damaged the machinery by using it as a club, the fingers of my left hand would scarcely move.

I swore to myself and did everything with my right hand, which meant twisting, which would have hurt if I hadn't been in such a hurry.

Started the engine. Released the brake. Shoved the gear lever into first. Did the rest thankfully with my feet, and set off. Not the smoothest start ever, but enough. The Land Rover rolled to the gate, and I turned out in the opposite direction from London, thinking instinctively that if they found we'd gone and chased after us, it would be towards London that they would go in pursuit. The 'sod the buggers' mentality lasted me well for two or three miles and through some dicey one-handed gear changing, but suffered a severe set-back when I looked at the petrol gauge and found it pointing to nearly empty.

The question of where we were going had to be sorted out, and immediately: and before I'd decided, we came round a bend and found in front of us a large garage, still open, with attendants by the pumps. Hardly believing it, I swerved untidily into the forecourt, and came to a jerking halt by the two-star.

Money in right hand pocket, along with car keys and handkerchief. I pulled all of them out in a handful and separated the crumpled notes. Opened the window beside me. Gave the attendant who appeared the money and said I'd have that much petrol.

He was young, a school kid, and he looked at me curiously. 'You all right?'

'It's hot,' I said, and wiped my face with the handkerchief. Some wood shavings fell out of my hair. I must indeed have looked odd. The boy merely nodded however, and stuck the petrol nozzle into the Land Rover's filling place, which was right beside the driver's door. He looked across me to Chico, who was half lying on the front seats with his eyes open.

'What's wrong with him, then?'

'Drunk,' I said.

He looked as if he thought we both were, but he simply finished the filling, and replaced the cap, and turned away to attend to the next customer. I went again through the tedious business of starting right-handedly, and pulled out onto the road. After a mile I turned off the main road into a side road, and went round a bend or two, and stopped.

'What's happening?' Chico said. I looked at his still wuzzy eyes. Decide where to go, I thought. Decide for Chico. For myself, I already knew. I'd decided when I found I could drive without hitting things, and at the garage which had turned up so luckily, and when I'd had enough money for the petrol, and when I hadn't asked the boy to get us help in the shape of policemen and doctors.

Hospitals and bureaucracy and questions and being prodded about; all the things I most hated. I wasn't going near any of them, unless I had to for Chico.

'Where did we go, today?' I said.

After a while he said, 'Newmarket.'

'What's twice eight?'

Pause. 'Sixteen.'

I sat in a weak sort of gratitude for his returning wits, waiting for strength to go on. The impetus which had got me into the Land Rover and as far as that spot had ebbed away and left room for a return of fire and jelly. Power would come back, I thought, if I waited. Stamina and energy always came in cycles, so that what one couldn't do one minute, one could the next.

'I'm burning,' Chico said.

'Mm.'

'That was too much.'

I didn't answer. He moved on the seat and tried to sit upright, and I saw the full awareness flood into his face. He shut his eyes tight and said 'Jesus', and after a while he looked at me through slits, and said, 'You too?'

'Mm.'

The long hot day was drawing to dusk. If I didn't get started, I thought vaguely, I wouldn't get anywhere.

The chief practical difficulty was that driving a Land Rover with one hand was risky, if not downright dangerous, as I had to leave go of the steering wheel and lean to the left every time I changed gear: and the answer to that was to get the left hand fingers to grip the knob just once, and tightly, so that I could switch off the current, and the hand would stay there on the gear lever, unmoving, until further notice.

I did that. Then I switched on the side-lights, and the headlights, dipped. Then the engine. I'd give anything for a drink, I thought, and set off on the long drive home.

'Where are we going?' Chico said.

'To the Admiral's.'

I had taken the southern route round Sevenoaks and Kingston and Colnbrook, and there was the M4 motorway stretch to do, and the cross at Maidenhead to the M40 motorway just north of Marlow, and then round the north Oxford ring road and the last leg to Aynsford.

Land Rovers weren't built for comfort and jolted the passengers at the best of times. Chico groaned now and then, and cursed, and said he wasn't getting into a mess like that again, ever. I stopped twice briefly on the way from weakness and general misery, but there wasn't much traffic, and we rolled into Charles's drive in three and a half hours, not too bad for the course.

I switched the Land Rover off and my left hand on, and couldn't get the fingers to move. That was all it needed, I thought despairingly, the final humiliation of that bloody evening, if I had to detach myself from the socket end and leave the electric part of me stuck to the gears. Why, why, couldn't I have two hands, like everyone else.

'Don't struggle,' Chico said, 'and you'll do it easy.'

I gave a cough that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and the fingers opened a fraction, and the hand fell off the knob.

'Told you,' he said.

I laid my right arm across the steering wheel and put my head down on that, and felt spent and depressed… and punished. And someone, somehow, had got to raise the strength to go in to tell Charles we were there.

He solved that himself by coming out to us in his dressing gown, the light streaming out behind him from his open front door. The first I knew, he was standing by the window of the Land Rover, looking in.

'Sid?' he said incredulously. 'Is it you?'

I dragged my head off the steering wheel and opened my eyes, and said, 'Yeah.'

'It's after midnight,' he said.

I got a smile at least into my voice. 'You said I could come any time.'

An hour later, Chico was upstairs in bed and I sat sideways on the gold sofa, shoes off, feet up, as I often did.

Charles came into the drawing room and said the doctor had finished with Chico and was ready for me, and I said no thanks very much and tell him to go home.

'He'll give you some knock-out stuff, like Chico.'

'Yes, and that's exactly what I don't want, and I hope he was careful about Chico's concussion, with those drugs.'

'You told him yourself about six times, when he came.' He paused. 'He's waiting for you.'

'I mean it, Charles,' I said. 'I want to think. I want just to sit here and think, so would you please say goodbye to the doctor and go to bed.'

'No,' he said. 'You can't.'

'I certainly can. In fact, I have to, while I still feel…' I stopped. While I still feel flayed, I thought: but one couldn't say that.

'It's not sensible.'

'No. The whole thing isn't sensible. That's the point. So go away and let me work it out.'

I had noticed before that sometimes when the body was injured the mind cleared sharply and worked for a while with acute perception. It was a time to use, if one wanted to; not to waste.

'Have you seen Chico's skin?' he said.

'Often,' I said flippantly.

'Is yours in the same state?'

'I haven't looked.'

'You're exasperating.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'Go to bed.'

When he'd gone I sat there deliberately and vividly remembering in mind and body the biting horror I'd worked so hard to blank out.

It had been too much, as Chico said.

Too much.

Why?

Charles came downstairs again at six o'clock, in his dressing gown, and with his most impassive expression.

'You're still there, then,' he said.

'Yuh.'

'Coffee?'

'Tea,' I said.

He went and made it, and brought two big steaming mugs, naval fashion. He put mine on the table which stood along the back of the sofa, and sat with his in an armchair. The empty-looking eyes were switched steadily my way.

'Well?' he said. I rubbed my forehead.

'When you look at me,' I said, hesitatingly. 'Usually, I mean. Not now. When you look at me, what do you see?'

'You know what I see.'

'Do you see a lot of fears and self doubts, and feelings of shame and uselessness and inadequacy?'

'Of course not.' He seemed to find the question amusing, and then sipped the scalding tea, and said more seriously, 'You never show feelings like that.'

'No one does,' I said. 'Everyone has an outside and an inside, and the two can be quite different.'

'Is that just a general observation?'

'No.' I picked up the mug of tea, and blew across the steaming surface.

'To myself, I'm a jumble of uncertainty and fear and stupidity. And to others… well, what happened to Chico and me last evening was because of the way others see us.' I took a tentative taste. As always when Charles made it, the tea was strong enough to rasp the fur off your tongue. I quite liked it, sometimes. I said, 'We've been lucky, since we started this investigating thing. In other words, the jobs we've done have been comparatively easy, and we've been getting a reputation for being successful, and the reputation has been getting bigger than the reality.'

'Which is, of course,' Charles said dryly, 'that you're a pair of dim-witted layabouts.'

'You know what I mean.'

'Yes, I do. Tom Ullaston rang me here yesterday morning, to arrange about stewards for Epsom, he said, but I gathered it was mostly to tell me what he thought about you, which was, roughly speaking, that if you had still been a jockey it would be a pity.'

'It would be great,' I said, sighing.

'So someone lammed into you and Chico yesterday to stop you chalking up another success?'

'Not exactly,' I said.

I told him what I had spent the night sorting out; and his tea got cold. When I'd finished he sat for quite a while in silence, simply staring at me in best give-away-nothing manner.

Then he said, 'It sounds as if yesterday evening was… terrible.'

'Well, yes, it was.'

More silence. Then, 'So what next?'

'I was wondering,' I said diffidently, 'if you'd do one or two jobs for me today, because I… er…'

'Of course,' he said. 'What?'

'It's your day for London. Thursday. So could you bear to drive the Land Rover up instead of the Rolls, and swap it for my car?'

'If you like,' he said, not looking enchanted.

'The battery charger's in it, in my suitcase,' I said.

'Of course I'll go.'

'Before that, in Oxford, could you pick up some photographs? They're of Nicholas Ashe.'

'Sid!'

I nodded. 'We found him. There's a letter in my car, too, with his new address on. A begging letter, same as before.'

He shook his head at the foolishness of Nicholas Ashe. 'Any more jobs?'

'Two. I'm afraid. The first's in London, and easy. But as for the other… Would you go to Tunbridge Wells?'

When I told him why, he said he would, even though it meant cancelling his afternoon's board-meeting.

'And would you lend me your camera, because mine's in the car… and a clean shirt?'

'In that order?'

'Yes, please.'

Wishing I didn't have to move for a couple of thousand years I slowly unstuck myself from the sofa some time later and went upstairs, with Charles's camera, to see Chico.

He was lying on his side, his eyes dull and staring vaguely into space, the effect of the drugs wearing off. Sore enough to protest wearily when I told him what I wanted to photograph.

Sod off.'

'Think about barmaids.'

I peeled back the blanket and sheet covering him and took pictures of the visible damage, front and back. Of the invisible damage there was no measure. I put the covers back again.

'Sorry,' I said.

He didn't answer, and I wondered whether I was really apologising for disturbing him at that moment or more basically for having tangled his life in mine, with such dire results. A hiding to nothing was what he'd said we were on with those syndicates, and he'd been right.

I took the camera out onto the landing and gave it to Charles. 'Ask for blown-up prints by tomorrow morning,' I said. 'Tell him it's for a police case.'

'But you said no police…' Charles said.

'Yes, but if he thinks it's already for the police, he won't go trotting round to them when he sees what he's printing.'

'I suppose it's never occurred to you,' Charles said, handing over a clean shirt, 'that it's your view of you that's wrong, and Thomas Ullaston's that's right?'

I telephoned to Louise and told her I couldn't make it, that day, after all. Something's come up, I said, in the classic evasive excuse, and she answered with the disillusion it merited.

'Never mind, then.'

'I do mind, actually,' I said. 'So how about a week tomorrow? What are you doing after that for a few days?'

'Days?'

'And nights.'

Her voice cheered up considerably. 'Research for a thesis.'

'What subject?'

'Clouds and roses and stars, their variations and frequency in the life of your average liberated female.'

'Oh Louise,' I said, 'I'll… er… help you all I can.'

She laughed and hung up, and I went along to my room and took off my dusty, stained, sweaty shirt. Looked at my reflection briefly in the mirror and got no joy from it. Put on Charles's smooth sea island cotton and lay on the bed. I lay on one side, like Chico, and felt what Chico felt; and at one point or other, went to sleep.

In the evening I went down and sat on the sofa, as before, to wait for Charles, but the first person who came was Jenny.

She walked in, saw me, and was immediately annoyed. Then she took a second look, and said, 'Oh no, not again.'

I said merely, 'Hullo.'

'What is it this time? Ribs, again?'

'Nothing.'

'I know you too well.'

She sat at the other end of the sofa, beyond my feet.

'What are you doing here?'

'Waiting for your father.'

She looked at me moodily. 'I'm going to sell that flat in Oxford,' she said.

'Are you?'

'I don't like it any more. Louise Mclnnes has left, and it reminds me too much of Nicky…'

After a pause I said, 'Do I remind you of Nicky?' With a flash of surprise she said, 'Of course not.' And then, more slowly, 'But he…' she stopped. 'I saw him,' I said. 'Three days ago, in Bristol. And he looks like me, a bit.'

She was stunned, and speechless.

'Didn't you realise?' I said.

She shook her head.

'You were trying to go back,' I said.

'To what we had, at the beginning.'

'It's not true.'

But her voice said that she saw it was. She had even told me so, more or less, the evening I'd come to Aynsford to start finding Ashe.

'Where will you live?' I said.

'What do you care?'

I supposed I would always care, to some extent, which was my problem, not hers.

'How did you find him?' she said.

'He's a fool.'

She didn't like that. The look of enmity showed where her instinctive preference still lay.

'He's living with another girl,' I said.

She stood up furiously, and I remembered a bit late that I really didn't want her to touch me.

'Are you telling me that to be beastly?' she demanded.

'I'm telling you so you'll get him out of your system before he goes on trial and to jail. You're going to be damned unhappy if you don't.'

'I hate you,' she said.

'That's not hate, that's injured pride.'

'How dare you!'

'Jenny,' I said. 'I'll tell you plainly, I'd do a lot for you. I've loved you a long time, and I do care what happens to you. It's no good finding Ashe and getting him convicted of fraud instead of you, if you don't wake up and see him for what he is. I want to make you angry with him. For your own sake.'

'You won't manage it,' she said fiercely.

'Go away,' I said.

'What?'

'Go away. I'm tired.'

She stood there looking as much bewildered as annoyed, and at that moment Charles came back.

'Hallo,' he said, taking a disapproving look at the general atmosphere. 'Hallo, Jenny.' She went over and kissed his cheek, from long habit. 'Has Sid told you he's found your friend Ashe?' he said.

'He couldn't wait.'

Charles was carrying a large brown envelope. He opened it, pulled out the contents, and handed them to me: the three photographs of Ashe, which had come out well, and the new begging letter.

Jenny took two jerky strides and looked down at the uppermost photograph. 'Her name is Elizabeth More,' I said slowly.

'His real name is Norris Abbott. She calls him Ned.'

The picture, the third one I'd taken, showed them laughing and entwined, looking into each other's eyes, the happiness in their faces sharply in focus. Silently, I gave Jenny the letter. She opened it and looked at the signature at the bottom, and went very pale. I felt sorry for her, but she wouldn't have wanted me to say so.

She swallowed, and handed the letter to her father.

'All right,' she said after a pause. 'All right. Give it to the police.'

She sat down again on the sofa with a sort of emotional exhaustion slackening her limbs and curving her spine. Her eyes turned my way.

'Do you want me to thank you?' she said.

I shook my head.

'I suppose one day I will.'

'There's no need.'

With a flash of anger she said,

'You're doing it again.'

'Doing what?'

'Making me feel guilty. I know I'm pretty beastly to you sometimes. Because you make me feel guilty, and I want to get back at you for that.'

'Guilty for what?' I said.

'For leaving you. For our marriage going wrong.'

'But it wasn't your fault,' I protested.

'No, it was yours. Your selfishness, your pigheadedness. Your bloody determination to win. You'll do anything to win. You always have to win. You're so hard. Hard on yourself. Ruthless to yourself. I couldn't live with it. No one could live with it. Girls want men who'll come to them for comfort. Who say, I need you, help me, comfort me, kiss away my troubles. But you… you can't do that. You always build a wall and deal with your own troubles in silence, like you're doing now. And don't tell me you aren't hurt because I've seen it in you too often, and you can't disguise the way you hold your head, and this time it's very bad, I can see it. But you'd never say, would you, Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry?'

She stopped, and in the following silence made a sad little gesture with her hand.

'You see?' she said. 'You can't say it, can you?'

After another long pause I said, 'No.'

'Well,' she said, 'I need a husband who's not so rigidly in control of himself. I want someone who's not afraid of emotion, someone uninhibited, someone weaker. I can't live in the sort of purgatory you make of life for yourself. I want someone who can break down. I want… an ordinary man.'

She got up from the sofa and bent over and kissed my forehead.

'It's taken me a long time to see all that,' she said. 'And to say it. But I'm glad I have.' She turned to her father. 'Tell Mr Quayle I'm cured of Nicky, and I won't be obstructive from now on. I think I'll go back to the flat now. I feel a lot better.'

She went with Charles towards the door, and then paused and looked back, and said, 'Goodbye, Sid.' 'Goodbye,' I said: and I wanted to say Jenny, hold me, help me, I want to cry: but I couldn't.