The brown hand jumped slightly on his knee. He turned his head and looked at me while I drove.
'Yes, indeed it is.' He spoke slowly. 'I had been hoping he would ride a horse for me at Cheltenham.'
'A great horseman,' I said.
'Yes indeed.'
'I was just behind him when he fell,' I said, and on an impulse added, 'There are a great many questions to be asked about it.'
I felt Tudor's huge body shift beside me. I knew he was still looking at me, and I found his presence overpowering. 'I suppose so,' he said. He hesitated, but added nothing more. He looked at his watch.
'Take me to the Pavilion Plaza Hotel, if you please. I have to attend a business meeting there,' he said.
'Is it near the Pavilion?' I asked.
'Fairly. I will direct you when we get there.' His tone relegated me to the status of chauffeur.
We drove for some miles in silence. My passenger sat apparently in deep thought. When we reached Brighton he told me the way to the hotel.
'Thank you,' he said, without warmth, as he lifted his bulk clumsily out of the low-slung car. He had an air of accepting considerable favours as merely his due, even when done him by complete strangers. He took two steps away from the car, then turned back and said, 'What is your name?'
'Alan York,' I said. 'Good afternoon.' I drove off without waiting for an answer. I could be brusque too. Glancing in the mirror I saw him standing on the pavement looking after me.
I went back to the racecourse.
Joe was waiting for me, sitting on the bank at the side of the road. He had some difficulty opening the car door, and he stumbled into his seat, muttering. He lurched over against me, and I discovered that Joe Nantwich was drunk.
The daylight was almost gone. I turned on the lights. I could think of pleasanter things to do than drive the twisty roads to Dorking with Joe breathing alcohol all over me. I sighed, and let in the clutch.
Joe was nursing a grievance. He would be. Everything which went wrong for Joe was someone else's fault, according to him. Barely twenty, he was a chronic grumbler. It was hard to know which was worse to put up with, his grousing or his bragging, and that he was treated with tolerance by the other jockeys said much for their good nature. Joe's saving grace was his undoubted ability as a jockey, but he had put that to bad use already by his'stopping' activities, and now he was threatening it altogether by getting drunk in the middle of the afternoon.
'I would have won that race,' he whined.
'You're a fool, Joe,' I said.
'No, honestly, Alan, I would have won that race. I had him placed just right. I had the others beat, I had 'em stone cold. Just right.' He made sawing motions with his hands.
'You're a fool to drink so much at the races,' I said.
'Eh?' He couldn't focus.
'Drink,' I said. 'You've had too much to drink.'
'No, no, no, no-' The words came dribbling out, as if once he had started to speak it was too much effort to stop.
'Owners won't put you on their horses if they see you getting drunk,' I said, feeling it was no business of mine, after all.
'I can win any race, drunk or not,' said Joe.
'Not many owners would believe it.'
'They know I'm good.'
'So you are, but you won't be if you go on like this,' I said.
'I can drink and I can ride and I can ride and I can drink. If I want to.' He belched.
I let it pass. What Joe needed was a firm hand applied ten years ago. He looked all set now on the road to ruin and he wasn't going to thank anyone for directions off it.
He was whining again. That bloody Mason-'
I didn't say anything. He tried again.
'That bloody Sandy, he tipped me off. He bloody well tipped me off over the bloody rails. I'd have won that race as easy as kiss your hand and he knew it and tipped me off over the bloody rails.'
'Don't be silly, Joe.'
'You can't say I wouldn't have won the race,' said Joe argumentatively.
'And I can't say you would have won it,' I said. 'You fell at least a mile from home.'
'I didn't fall. I'm telling you, aren't I? Sandy bloody Mason tipped me off over the rails.'
'How?' I asked idly, concentrating on the road.
'He squeezed me against the rails. I shouted at him to give me more room. And do you know what he did? Do you know? He laughed. He bloody well laughed. Then he tipped me over. He stuck his knee into me and gave a heave and off I went over the bloody rails.' His whining voice finished on a definite sob.
I looked at him. Two tears were rolling down his round cheeks. They glistened in the light from the dashboard, and fell with a tiny flash on to the furry collar of his sheepskin coat.
' Sandy wouldn't do a thing like that,' I said mildly.
'Oh yes he would. He told me he'd get even with me. He said I'd be sorry. But I couldn't help it, Alan, I really couldn't.' Two more tears rolled down.
I was out of my depth. I had no idea what he was talking about; but it began to look as though Sandy, if he had unseated him, had had his reasons.
Joe went on talking. 'You're always decent to me, Alan, you're not like the others. You're my friend-' He put his hand heavily on my arm, pawing, leaning over towards me and giving me the benefit of the full force of his alcoholic breath. The delicate steering of the Lotus reacted to his sudden weight on my arm with a violent swerve towards the curb.
I shook him off. 'For God's sake sit up, Joe, or you'll have us in the ditch,' I said.
But he was too immersed in his own troubles to hear me. He pulled my arm again. There was a lay-by just ahead. I slowed, turned into it, and stopped the car.
'If you don't sit up and leave me alone you can get out and walk,' I said, trying to get through to him with a rough tone.
But he was still on his own track, and weeping noisily now.
'You don't know what it's like to be in trouble,' he sobbed. I resigned myself to listen. The quicker he got his resentments off his chest, I thought, the quicker he would relax and go to sleep.
'What trouble?' I said. I was not in the least interested.
'Alan, I'll tell you because you're a pal, a decent pal.' He put his hand on my knee. I pushed it off.
Amid a fresh burst of tears Joe blurted, 'I was supposed to stop a horse and I didn't, and Sandy lost a lot of money and said he'd get even with me and he's been following me around saying that for days and days and I knew he'd do something awful and he has.' He paused for breath. 'Lucky for me I hit a soft patch or I might have broken my neck. It wasn't funny. And that bloody Sandy,' he choked on the name, 'was laughing. I'll make him laugh on the other side of his bloody face.'
That last sentence made me smile. Joe with his baby face, strong of body perhaps, but weak of character, was no match for the tough, forceful Sandy, more than ten years older and incalculably more self-assured. Joe's bragging, like his whining, sprang from feelings of insecurity. But the beginning of his outburst was something different.
'What horse did you not stop?' I asked. 'And how did Sandy know you were supposed to be going to stop one?'
For a second I thought action would silence him, but after the smallest hesitation he babbled on. The drink was still at the flood. So were the tears.
From the self-pitying, hiccuping, half incoherent voice I learned a sorry enough story. Shorn of blasphemy and reduced to essentials, it was this. Joe had been paid well for stopping horses on several occasions, two of which I had seen myself. But when David Stampe had told his father the Senior Steward about the last one, and Joe had nearly lost his licence, it gave him a steadying shock. The next time he was asked to stop a horse he said he would, but in the event, from understandable nerves, he had not done it thoroughly enough early in the race, and at the finish was faced with the plain knowledge that if he lost the race he would lose his licence as well. He won. This had happened ten days ago.
I was puzzled. 'Is Sandy the only person who has harmed you?'