‘How can you ride?’ Danielle said intensely.
‘Sit in the saddle, put the feet in the stirrups, pick up the reins.’
‘Don’t be damn stupid. How can you joke... and don’t answer that. I know both the answers. Easily or with difficulty, whichever is funnier.’
She suddenly couldn’t help laughing, but it was partly hysterical, and it was against Litsi’s big shoulder she smothered her face.
‘I’ll come up to the box,’ I said to him, and he nodded, but before they could leave, the first-aid room door opened and Joe’s wife came out.
‘Kit,’ she said with relief, seeing me still there. ‘I’ve got to go to the ladies... my stomach’s all churning up... they say I can go to the hospital with Joe but if they come for him while I’m not here, they may take him without me... Will you wait here and tell them? Don’t let him go without me.’
‘I’ll see to it,’ I said.
She said ‘thanks’ faintly and half ran in the direction of relief, and Danielle, her eyes stretched wide said, ‘But that’s... just like me. Is her husband... hurt badly?’
‘It’s too soon to tell, I think.’
‘How can she stand it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know. It’s much simpler from Joe’s side... and mine.’
‘I’ll go and see if she needs help,’ Danielle said abruptly, and, leaving Litsi’s shelter, set off after Joe’s wife.
‘Seriously,’ Litsi said, watching her go, ‘how can you joke?’
‘Seriously? Seriously not about Joe, nor about his wife, but about myself, why not?’
‘But... is it worth it?’
I said, ‘If you could paint as you’d like to, would you put up with a bit of discomfort?’
He smiled, his eyebrows rising. ‘Yes, I would.’
‘Much the same thing,’ I said. ‘Fulfilment.’
We stood in a backwater of the racecourse, with the stands and bustle out in the mainstream, gradually moving towards the next race. Dusty arrived at a rush, his eyes searching, suspicious.
‘I’ve wrenched my ankle,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to get Jamie for the fifth race, I know he’s free. But I’m cleared for Monday. Is Helikon all right?’
He nodded briskly a couple of times and departed, wasting no words.
Litsi said, ‘It’s a wonder you’re not worse. It looked atrocious. Aunt Casilia was watching through binoculars, and she was very concerned until she saw you stand up. She said then that you accepted the risks and one had to expect these things from time to time.’
‘She’s right,’ I said.
He, in the sober suiting of civilisation, looked at the marks of the earth on the princess’s colours, looked at my torn green-stained breeches, and at the leg I was putting no weight on.
‘How do you face it, over and over again?’ he said. He saw my lips twitch and added, ‘Easily or with difficulty, whichever is funnier.’
I laughed. ‘I never expect it, for a start. It’s always an unpleasant surprise.’
‘And now that it’s happened, how do you deal with it?’
‘Think about something else,’ I said. Take a lot of aspirins and concentrate on getting back as soon as possible. I don’t like other jockeys loose on my horses, like now. I want to be on them. When I’ve taught them and know them, they’re mine.’
‘And you like winning.’
‘Yes, I like winning.’
The hospital ambulance arrived only moments before Danielle and Joe’s wife returned, and Litsi, Danielle and I stood with Joe’s wife while Joe was transferred. He was still half-conscious, still groaning, looking grey. The ambulance men helped his wife into the interior in his wake, and we had a final view of her face, young and frightened, looking back at us, before they closed the doors and drove slowly away.
Litsi and Danielle looked at me, and I looked at them; and there was nothing to say, really.
Litsi put his arm again round Danielle’s shoulders, and they turned and walked away; and I hobbled off and showered and changed my clothes after just another fall, in just a day in a working life.
When I went out of the weighing room to go to the princess’s box, Maynard Allardeck stepped into my way. He was looking, as always, splendidly tailored, the total English gentleman from Lock’s hat to hand-sewn shoes. He wore a silk striped tie and pigskin gloves, and his eyes were as near madness as I’d ever seen them.
I stopped, my spirits sinking.
Outside the weighing room, where we stood, there was a covered verandah with three wide steps leading down to the area used for unsaddling the first four in every race. There was a tarmac path across the grass there, giving access to the rest of the paddock.
The horses from the fifth race had been unsaddled and led away, and there was a scatter of people about, but not a crowd.
Maynard stood between me and the steps, and to avoid him I would have to edge sideways and round him.
‘Fielding,’ he said with intensity; and he wasn’t simply addressing me by name, he was using the word as a curse, in the way the Allardecks had used it for vengeful generations. He was cursing my ancestry and my existence, the feudal spite like bile in his mouth, the irrational side of his hatred for me well in command.
He overtopped me by about four inches and outweighed me by fifty pounds, but he was twenty years older and unfit. Without the complication of a sprained ankle, I could have dodged him easily, but as it was, when I took a step sideways, so did he.
‘Mr Allardeck,’ I said neutrally, ‘Princess Casilia’s expecting me.’
He gave no sign of hearing, but when I took another sideways step he didn’t move. Nor did he move when I went past him, but two steps further on, at the top of the steps, I received a violent shove between the shoulders.
Unbalanced, I fell stumbling down the three steps, landing in a sprawl on the tarmac path. I rolled, half expecting Maynard to jump down on me, but he was standing on the top step, staring, and as I watched, he turned away, took three paces and attached himself to a small group of similar-looking men.
A trainer I sometimes rode for, who happened to be near, put a hand under my elbow and helped me to my feet.
‘He pushed you,’ he said incredulously. ‘I saw it. I can’t believe it. That man stepped right behind you and pushed.’
I stood on one leg and brushed off some of the debris from the path. ‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘But he pushed you! Aren’t you going to complain?’
‘Who to?’
‘But Kit...’ He slowly took stock of the situation. That’s Maynard Allardeck.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But he can’t go around attacking you. And you’ve hurt your leg.’
‘He didn’t do that,’ I said. ‘That’s from a fall in the third race.’
‘That was some mess...’ He looked at me doubtfully. ‘If you want to complain, I’ll say what I saw.’
I thanked him again and said I wouldn’t bother, which he still found inexplicable. I glanced briefly at Maynard who by then had his back to me as if unaware of my presence, and with perturbation set off again towards the princess’s box.
The push itself had been a relatively small matter, but as Maynard was basically murderous, it had to be taken as a substitute killing, a relief explosion, a jet of steam to stop the top blowing off the volcano.
The film, I thought uneasily, would keep that volcano in check; and I supposed I could put up with the jets of steam if I thought of them as safety valves reducing his boiling pressure. I didn’t want him uncontrollably erupting. I’d rather fall down more steps; but I would also be more careful where I walked.
The princess was out on the balcony when I reached her box, huddled into her furs, and alone.