TWELVE
‘You hadn’t thought, I suppose,’ I said gently, ‘to ask to see the vet’s report? Or even to check with Allardeck?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘We took Maynard’s word.’
The Major nodded heavily. ‘Trusted him. Allardeck’s son, do you see.’
Lucy said, ‘We protested vigorously, of course, that May-nard had told us a deliberate lie, and Maynard said he hadn’t. He just denied he’d ever told us Metavane wouldn’t run before spring. Took our breath away. Clement complained to the Jockey Club, and got nowhere. Maynard charmed them too. Told them we had misunderstood. The Stewards were very cool to Clement. And do you know what I think? I think Maynard told them we were trying to screw yet more money out of him, when he’d been so generous as to help us out of a dreadful hole.’
They were both beginning to look distressed and I had a few twinges of conscience of my own. But I said, ‘Please tell me the state of your debt now, and how much Maynard shared with you out of his winnings and the syndication of Metavane as a stallion.’
They both stared.
The Major said as if surprised, ‘Nothing.’
‘How do you mean, nothing?’
‘He didn’t give us a farthing.’
‘He syndicated the horse for several millions,’ I said.
The Major nodded. ‘We read about it.’
‘I wrote to him,’ Lucy said, her cheeks slightly pink. ‘I asked him to at least release us from what we owed him.’
‘And?’
‘He didn’t answer.’
‘Lucy wrote twice,’ the Major said uncomfortably. ‘The second time, she sent it special delivery, to be handed to him personally, so we know he must have received it.’
‘He didn’t reply,’ Lucy said.
‘We borrowed the money and that’s that,’ the Major said with resignation. ‘Repayments and interest take most of our income, and I don’t think we will ever finish.’
Lucy stroked his hand openly. ‘We are both eighty-two, you see,’ she said.
‘And no children?’ I asked.
‘No children,’ Lucy said regretfully, it wasn’t to be.’
I packed away the camera, thanking them and giving them the cash I’d collected for paying Bobby’s lads, proceeds of cashing one of Bobby’s cheques with my valet at Newbury. My valet, a walking bank, had found the service routine and had agreed to bring cash for the other cheques to Towcester.
The Major and Lucy accepted the money with some embarrassment but more relief, and I wondered if they had feared I might not actually pay them once I’d got what I wanted. They’d learned in a hard school.
I looked at my watch and asked if I could make a quick credit card call on their telephone. They nodded in unison, and I got through to the manager where I banked.
‘John,’ I said.
‘Kit.’
‘Look, I’m in a hurry, on my way to ride at Towcester, but I ve been thinking… It’s true, isn’t it, that money can be paid into my account without my knowing?’
‘Yes, by direct transfer from another bank, like your riding fees. But you’d see it on your next statement.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘except for my riding fees, could you see to it that nothing gets paid in? If anything else arrives, can you refuse to put it into my account?’
‘Yes, I can,’ he said doubtfully, ‘but why?’
‘Someone offered me a bribe last night,’ I said, it felt too much like a set-up. I don’t want to find I’ve been sneakily paid by a back door for something I don’t intend to do. I don’t want to find myself trying to tell the Stewards I didn’t take the money.’
He said after a short pause, is this one of your intuitions?’
‘I just thought I’d take precautions.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All right. If anything comes, I’ll check with you before crediting your account.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Until further notice.’
‘And perhaps you would drop me a line putting your instructions in writing? Then you would be wholly safe, if it came to the Stewards.’
‘I do not know,’ I said, ‘what I would do without you.’
I said goodbye to the Perrysides and drove away, reflecting that it was their own total lack of sensible precautions which had crystallised in me the thought that I should prudently take my own.
They should have insured in the first place against a catastrophic loss at Lloyd’s and they should have brought in an independent vet to examine Metavane. It was easy to see these things after the event. The trick for survival was to imagine them before.
Towcester was a deep-country course, all rolling green hills sixty miles to the north-west of London. I drove there with my mind on anything except the horses ahead.
Mostly I thought about precautions.
With me in the car, besides my overnight bag, I had the tapes of Maynard, the tape of the Perrysides, the video camera and a small hold-all of Holly’s containing the jackets and other belongings of Jay Erskine and Owen Watts. Without all those things I would not be able to get any sort of compensation or future for Bobby and Holly, and it occurred to me that I should make sure that no one stole them.
Sam Leggatt or anyone else at the Flag would see that repossessing the journalists’ belongings would be a lot cheaper and less painful than coughing up cash and printing and distributing humble apologies.
Owen Watts and Jay Erskine were bound to be revengeful after the damage they had suffered, and they could be literally anywhere, plotting heaven knew what.
I was driving to a time and place printed in more than half the daily newspapers: my name plain to see on the racing pages, declared overnight for the one-thirty, two o’clock, three o’clock and three-thirty races.
If I were Jay Erskine, I thought, I would be jemmying open Kit Fielding’s Mercedes at one-thirty, two o’clock, three o’clock or three-thirty.
If I were Owen Watts, perhaps at those times, I would be breaking into Kit Fielding’s cottage in Lambourn.
They might.
They might not.
I didn’t think a little active breaking and entering would disturb their consciences in the least, especially as the current penalties for a conviction for wire-tapping ran to a two thousand pound fine or up to two years in prison, or both.
I didn’t know that I would recognise them from the mêlée in the dark. They could however make it their business to know me. To watch for my arrival in the jockeys’ car park. To note my car.
It took forty-five minutes to drive from the Perrysides’ village to Towcester racecourse and for half the journey I thought I was being unnecessarily fanciful.
Then abruptly I drove into the centre of the town of Bletchley and booked myself into an old and prosperous looking hotel, the Golden Lion. They took an impression of my credit card and I was shown to a pleasant room, where I hung Watts’s and Erskine’s jackets in the closet, draped my night things around the bathroom and stowed everything else in a drawer. The receptionist nodded pleasantly and impersonally when I left the key at the desk on my way out, and no one else took any notice; and with a wince at my watch but feeling decidedly safer I broke the speed limit to Towcester.
The princess’s novices were the first and last of my booked rides, with another for Wykeham and one for the Lambourn trainer in between.
The princess was waiting with her usual lambent patina in the parade ring when I went out there, and so was Danielle, dressed on that damp day in a blazing red shiny coat over the black trousers. I suppose my pleasure showed. Certainly both of them smiled down their noses in the way women do when they know they’re admired, and Danielle, instead of shaking my hand, gave me a brief peck of a kiss on the cheek, a half touch of skin to skin, unpremeditated, the sensation lingering surprisingly in my nerve endings.
She laughed. ‘How’re you doing?’ she said.
‘Fine. And you?’
‘Great.’
The princess said mildly, ‘What do we expect from Kinley, Kit?’
I had a blank second of non-comprehension before remembering that Kinley was her horse. The one I was about to ride: three years old, still entire, a dappled grey going to the starting gate as second favourite for the first race of his life. High time, I thought, that I concentrated on my job.
‘Dusty says he’s travelled well; he’s excited but not sweating,’ I said.
‘And that’s good?’ Danielle asked.
‘That’s good,’ said the princess, nodding.
‘He’s mature for three, he jumps super at home and I think he’s fast,’ I said.
‘And it all depends, I suppose, on whether he enjoys it today.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Enjoys it?’ Danielle asked, surprised.
‘Most horses enjoy it,’ I said. ‘If they don’t, they won’t race.’
‘Do you remember Snowline?’ the princess said. I nodded, and she said to Danielle, ‘Snowline was a mare I had a long time ago. She was beautiful to look at and had won two or three times on the Flat, and I bought her to be a hurdler, partly, I must confess, because of her name, but she didn’t like jumping. I kept her in training for two years because I had a soft spot for her, but it was a waste of money and hope.’ She smiled. ‘Wykeham tried other jockeys, do you remember, Kit? For the second of those she wouldn’t even start. I learned a great lesson. If a horse doesn’t like racing, cut your losses.’
‘What became of Snowline?’ Danielle said.
‘I sold her as a brood mare. Two of her foals have been winners on the Flat.’
Danielle looked from her aunt to me and hack again. ‘You both totally love it, don’t you?’
‘Totally,’ said the princess.
‘Totally,’ I agreed.
I got up on Kinley and walked him slowly up past the stands to let him take in the sounds and smells, and then down towards the start, giving him a long close look at a flight of hurdles, letting him stand chest-high, almost touching, looking out over the top. He pricked his ears and extended his nostrils, and I felt the instinct stir in him most satisfactorily, the in-bred compulsion that ran in the blood like a song, the surging will to race and win.
You, Kinley, I thought, know all I’ve been able to teach you about jumping, and if you mess it up today you’ll be wasting all those mornings I’ve spent with you on the schooling grounds this autumn.
Kinley tossed his head. I smoothed a hand down his neck and took him on to the start, mingling there with two or three other complete novices and about ten who had run at least once before but never won. The youngest a horse was allowed to go jump racing in Britain was in the August of its three-year-old year, and Kinley’s was a two-mile event for three-year-olds who hadn’t yet won.
Some jockeys avoided doing schooling sessions, but I’d never minded, on the basis that if I’d taught the horse myself I’d know what it could and wouldn’t do. Some trainers sent green horses to crash around racecourses with only the haziest idea of how to meet a jump right, but Wykeham and I were in accord: it was no good expecting virtuoso jumping in public without arpeggios at home.
Wykeham was in the habit of referring to Kinley as Kettering, a horse he’d trained in the distant past. It was amazing, I sometimes thought, that the right horses turned up at the meetings: Dusty’s doing, no doubt.
Kinley circled and lined up with only an appropriate amount of nervousness and when the tapes went up, set off with a fierce plunge of speed. Everything was new to him, everything unknown; nothing on the home gallops ever prepared a horse for the first rocketing reality. I settled him gradually with hands and mind, careful not to do it too much, not to teach him that what he was really feeling was wrong but just to control it, to keep it simmering, to wait.
He met the first hurdle perfectly and jumped it cleanly and I clearly felt his reaction of recognition, his increase in confidence. He let me shorten his stride a little approaching the second hurdle so as to meet it right and avoid slowing to jump, and at the third flight he landed so far out on the other side that my spirits rose like a bird. Kinley was going to be good. One could tell sometimes right from the beginning, like watching a great actor in his first decent role.
I let him see every obstacle clearly, mostly by keeping him to the outside. Technically the inside was the shortest way, but also the more difficult. Time for squeezing through openings when he could reliably run straight.
Just keep it going, Kinley old son, I told him; you’re doing all right. Just take a pull here, that’s right, to get set for the next jump, and now go for it, go for it… dear bloody hell, Kinley, you’ll leave me behind, jumping like that, just wait while I get up here over your shoulders, I don’t see why we can’t kick for home, first time out, why not, it’s been done, get on there, Kinley, you keep jumping like that and we’ll damned near win.
I gave him a breather on the last uphill section and he was most aggrieved at my lack of urging, but once round the last bend, with one jump left before the run-in, I shook him up and told him aloud to get on with it, squeezing him with the calves of my legs, sending him rhythmic messages through my hands, telling him OK, my son, now fly, now run, now stretch out your bloody neck, this is what it’s all about, this is your future, take it, embrace it, it’s all yours.
He was bursting with pride when I pulled him up, learning at once that he’d done right, that the many pats I gave him were approval, that the applause greeting his arrival in the winners’ enclosure was the curtain call for a smash hit. Heady stuff for a novice; and I reckoned that because of that day he would run his guts out to win all his life.
‘He enjoyed it,’ the princess said, glowing with pleasure.
‘He sure did.’
‘Those jumps…’
I unbuckled my saddle and drew it off on to my arm.
‘He’s very good,’ I said. ‘You have seriously got a good horse.’
She looked at me with speculation, and I nodded. ‘You never know. Too soon to be sure.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Danielle demanded.
‘The Triumph Hurdle,’ said her aunt.
I went to weigh in, change and weigh out and go through the whole rigmarole again with Wykeham’s second runner, which didn’t belong to the princess but to a couple in their seventies who cared just as much.
They owned only the one horse, an ageing ‘chaser who’d been retired once and had pined until he’d been sent back into training, and I was truly pleased for them when, because of his experience, he stood up throughout the three miles as others fell, and against all the odds thundered along insouciantly into first place.
Wykeham might not go to the meetings, I thought, gratefully pulling up, he might have his mental grooves stuck in the past, but he sure as hell could still train winners.
I watched the next race after that from the jockeys’ stand, and won the one after for the Lambourn trainer. One of those days, I thought contentedly. A treble. It happened once or twice a season, not much more.
It occurred to me as I was unbuckling my saddle in the winners’ enclosure that Eric Older John, the owner of the horse, who was present and quietly incandescent with delight, was something to do with the Civil Service on a high level, a fact I knew only because he occasionally lamented that government business would keep him away from seeing his pride and joy run.
I asked him on an impulse if I could talk to him for a few minutes after I’d weighed in and changed for the next race, and rather in the Vaughnley mould he said ‘Anything’ expansively, and was waiting there as promised when I went out.
We talked for a bit about his win, which was uppermost in his mind, and then he asked what I wanted. I wanted, I said, the answers to a couple of questions, and I wondered if he could – or would – get them for me.
‘Fire away,’ he said. ‘I’m listening.’
I explained about the newspaper attacks on Bobby and Maynard, and to my surprise he nodded.
‘I’ve heard about this, yes. What are your questions?’
‘Well, first, whether Maynard was in fact being considered for a knighthood, and second, if he was, who would have known?’
He half laughed. ‘You don’t want much, do you?’ He shook his head. ‘Patronage is not my department.’ He looked up at the sky and down at the colours I wore, which were by then the princess’s. ‘What good would it do you to find out?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said frankly. ‘But someone ought to make reparation to Bobby and my sister.’
‘Hm. Why don’t they ask these questions themselves?’
I said blankly, ‘But they wouldn’t.’
‘They wouldn’t, but you would.’ His eyes were half assessing, half amused.
‘Those newspaper articles were maliciously unfair,’ I said positively. ‘Bobby and my sister Holly are gentle well-intentioned people trying to make a success of training and doing no harm to anyone.’
‘And the newspaper attack on them makes you angry?’
‘Yes, it does. Wouldn’t it you?’
He considered it. ‘An attack on my daughter would, yes.’ He nodded briefly. ‘I don’t promise, but I’ll ask.’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
He smiled, turned to go and said, ‘Win for me again next time out.’
I said I hoped to, and wondered why I’d described Bobby as gentle when the marks of his fists lay scattered on my body among the dark red attentions of the hurdlers. Bobby was brother to the wind, the seed of the tornado dormant in the calm.
I went back into the changing room for my helmet and stick and then out to the parade ring again for the sixth and last race of the day, the two-mile novice ’chase.
‘Totally awesome,’ Danielle said, standing there.
‘What is?’ I asked.
‘We went down in the medic’s car to one of the fences. We stood right by there watching you jump. That speed… so fast… you don’t realise, from the stands.’
‘In the three-mile ’chase,’ the princess said, nodding.
‘The medic said you were all going over there at better than thirty miles an hour. He says you’re all crazy. He’s right.’
The princess asked me if I thought I’d be making it four for the day, but I thought it unlikely: this one, Dhaulagiri, hadn’t as much talent as Kinley.
‘There’s a woman riding in this race,’ Danielle observed, watching the other jockeys standing in groups with the owners. She looked at me without archness. ‘What do you think if you’re beaten in a race by a woman?’
‘That she had a faster horse,’ I said.
‘Ouch.’
The princess smiled but made no comment. She knew I didn’t like racing against the very few women who rode professionally over jumps, not for fear of a male ego-battering, but because I couldn’t rid myself of protectiveness. A male opponent could take his bumps, but I’d never learned to ride ruthlessly against a female; and moreover I didn’t like the idea of what falls and horses’ hooves could do to their faces and bodies. The women jockeys despised my concern for them, and took advantage of it if they could.
Dhaulagiri was looking well, I thought, watching him walk round. Better than when I’d schooled him the previous week. Tauter. A new lean line of muscle on the haunch. Something in the carriage of the head.
‘What is it, Kit?’ the princess asked.
I looked from the horse to her enquiring face. ‘He’s improved since last week,’ I said.
‘Wykeham said he seemed to like jumping fences better than hurdles.’
‘Yes, he did.’
Her eyes smiled. ‘Do you think, then…?’
‘It would be nice, wouldn’t it?’
‘Exquisite,’ she said.
I nodded and went away on Dhaulagiri to the start, and in some odd way it seemed a jaunt to the horse as much as to me. Three winners raised my spirits euphorically. Dhaulagiri could jump. So why not, why bloody not make it four. Dhaulagiri took the mood from his jockey, as all horses do. I reckon Dhaulagiri on that afternoon would have light-heartedly jumped off a cliff if I’d asked him.
It wasn’t the most advisable tactic for a horse running for the first time over the bigger fences and I dared say Wykeham would have deplored it, but Dhaulagiri and I went round the whole two miles in friendly fully stretched recklessness, and at the winning post I thought for nearly the thousandth time in my life that there was nothing in existence comparable to the shared intense joy of victory. Better perhaps, but comparable, no. I was laughing aloud when we pulled up.
The exhilaration lasted all the way back to the changing room and in and out of the shower, and only marginally began to abate when my valet handed me a zipped webbing belt stuffed full of Bobby’s money. Jockeys’ valets washed one’s breeches and took one’s saddles and other belongings from racecourse to racecourse, turning up with everything clean every day. Besides that they were the grapevine, the machine oil, the comforters and the bank. My valet said he was lending me the money-belt he used himself on holidays, as he didn’t like the idea of me walking around with all those thousands in my pockets.
Bobby, I thought, sighing. I would drive to Bletchley and collect my stuff from the Golden Lion, and then go on to Newmarket to give the money to Bobby so he could pay his lads at the normal time the next day and stack the rest away in his safe. I would sleep there and go direct to Ascot in the morning.
I strapped the belt against my skin and buttoned my shirt over it, the valet nodding approval. It didn’t show, he said.
I thanked him for his thoughtfulness, finished dressing, and went out for a briefer than usual talk with the princess, whose eyes were still sparkling behind the sheltering lashes.
Vague thoughts I’d had of asking Danielle to help celebrate my four winners over dinner disintegrated when she said she was again due at her bureau at six-thirty, and they would be leaving for London at any moment.
‘Do you work at week-ends?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Could… er, could I ask you out on Saturday evening?’
She glanced at her aunt, and so did I, but as usual one could tell nothing from the princess’s face that she didn’t want one to see. I felt no withdrawal, though, coming from her mind, and nor, it seemed, did her niece.
‘Yes,’ Danielle said, ‘you could. I’ll be coming to Ascot. After the races, we might make plans.’
Extraordinary, I thought. She understood. She had of course come close to seeing her ride from Devon to London evaporate a: the third hurdle two days ago. Two days. That too was extraordinary. I seemed to have known her for longer.
‘Tomorrow at Ascot,’ the princess said to me, shaking my hand in goodbye. ‘How long can we go on winning?’
‘Until Christmas.’
She smiled. ‘Christmas Fielding.’
‘Yes.’
Danielle said, ‘What do you mean, Christmas Fielding?’
‘It’s my name,’ I said.
‘What? I mean, I know it says C. Fielding on the number boards, but I took it for granted that Kit was for Christopher.’
I shook my head. ‘We were born on Christmas morning. Christmas and Holly. No accounting for parents.’
There was warmth in her eyes as well as in the princess’s. I left them saying their thanks to their hosts for the day before smarting home, and with swelling contentment walked out to my own car.
At the sight of it most of the contentment vanished into anger. All four tyres were flat, the window on the driver’s s de was broken, and the lid of the boot hovered halfway open.
I said aloud and precisely about four obscene words and then shrugged and turned to go back into the racecourse to telephone. The AA could deal with it. I could hire another car. The things I’d feared losing were safe in the Golden Lion and if that was what the vandals had been looking for, they were out of luck.
Most people had already left, but there were still a few cars in the park, still a person or two moving about. I was thinking chiefly of inconvenience and paying little attention to anything else, and very suddenly there was a voice at my left ear saying, ‘Stand still, Fielding’, and another man crowding against my right elbow with the same message.
I did stand still, too taken by surprise to think of doing anything else.
From each side the message reached me clearly.
Reached throught my jacket, through my shirt and into my skin, somewhere above the money-belt.
‘That’s right,’ said the one who’d spoken before. ‘We’ve come to repossess some property. You don’t want to get cut, do you?’