On afternoons like that at Sandown I’d found I behaved like all my drivers, that is to say I took especial note of those particular runners that I’d brought to the course. A winner lifted the spirits of every driver: a horse killed, as occasionally happened, sent them home in depression. The undoubted if illogical feelings of proprietorship had a noticeable effect on how cheerfully, fast and thoroughly the boxes got serviced on their return.
As two of the horses I had ferried that day belonged to a trainer I’d ridden for intermittently in the past, it was natural that I’d end up talking to him and his wife.
Benjy Usher and Dot appeared to be quarrelling as usual when he shot out an arm and grabbed my sleeve as I passed.
‘Freddie,’ he demanded, ‘tell this woman which year Fred Archer shot himself. She says 1890. I say that’s rubbish.’
I glanced at Dot’s normal mixed expression of resignation and anxiety. Years of living with an irascible man had carved permanent facial lines that even her infrequent smiles could barely override, yet although they’d been figuratively spitting at each other for as long as I’d known them, the pair were still grimly together.
They were both unusually good looking, which only made it odder. Both were well dressed, in their forties, socially practised and intelligent. Fifteen years earlier I wouldn’t have given their union five minutes, which just shows how little an outsider can see of a marriage.
‘Well?’ Benjy challenged.
‘I don’t know,’ I said diplomatically, though I did know actually that it had been in 1886, when the brilliant champion jockey was twenty-nine, and had won 2,749 races, travelling everywhere by train.
‘You’re useless,’ Benjy said, and Dot looked relieved.
Benjy changed the subject, mercurial always. ‘Did my horses get here all right?’
‘Yes, they did indeed.’
‘My lad tells me you drove them yourself.’
I nodded. ‘Three of my drivers have flu.’
Many trainers came out into their stable yards to see their runners load safely into the transport, but Benjy seldom did. His idea of supervision was to yell out of the window if he saw anything to displease him, which I understood was often. Benjy’s turnover of stable-lads was higher than most. Benjy’s head travelling lad, who should have accompanied the runners to Sandown, had walked out on the previous day.
Benjy asked if I knew of that awkward fact. Yes, I’d been told, I said.
‘Then do me a favour. Saddle my runners and come into the ring with us.’
Most trainers in the circumstances would have saddled their own runners, but not Benjy. He scarcely liked touching them, I’d observed. I guessed the question about Fred Archer had been only a pretext; grabbing me on the wing had been the purpose.
I told him I’d be glad to saddle the horses. Not too far from the truth.
‘Good,’ he said, satisfied.
Accordingly I did the work while he and Dot chatted to the first runner’s owner, and the same for the second runner later in the afternoon. The first ran respectably without earning medals and the second won his race. As always in the winner’s unsaddling enclosure on such occasions, Benjy’s handsome face reddened and sweated as if with orgasmic pleasure. The owners petted their horse. Dot told me seriously I would have made a good head lad.
I smiled.
‘Oh dear.’
‘Well, I would,’ I said.
There was always something I didn’t understand about Dot; some deep reserve in her nature. I knew her no better after fifteen years than I had at the beginning.
Benjy’s odd training methods were due, one understood, to his not having to make training pay. Benjy’s inherited multi-millions, moreover, had been deployed in acquiring good horses overseas which were trained there by other trainers and which won better events in France and Italy than Benjy’s horses in England. Benjy, like many owners, preferred the higher prize-money of mainland Europe, but he chose still to live in Pixhill and to train for other people as a hobby and to use my horseboxes for his transport, a fact guaranteed to earn my approbation.
He and Dot took me for a drink: double gins for them, tonic for me. The one thing I couldn’t afford to lose was my driving licence.
Benjy said, ‘I’ve a colt in Italy that’s pulled a tendon. I want him back here to heal and rest. Care to fetch him?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Good. I’ll tell you when.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘You do a good job with those boxes. We can trust you, can’t we, Dot?’
Dot nodded.
‘Well... thanks,’ I said.
One way and another the afternoon passed quickly and after the last race I waited for Patrick Venables outside the weighing-room. He came eventually at a half-trot, still pressed for time.
‘Freddie,’ he said, ‘you told me yesterday you were short of drivers. Is that still the case?’
‘Three have flu, and one’s left for good.’
‘Er, um. Then I suggest I send you a replacement; one who can look into your problem.’
I wasn’t immediately enthusiastic. ‘He’d have to know the job,’ I said dubiously.
‘It’s a she. And you’ll find she does. I’ve arranged for her to go to Pixhill tomorrow morning. Show her your operation and let her take it from there.’
I thanked him unconvincingly. He smiled faintly and told me to give her a try. ‘Nothing lost if nothing comes of it.’
I wasn’t so sure, but I’d asked his help and could see no way of backing out. He hurried off with a last piece of information. ‘I gave her your address.’
He’d gone before I thought to ask her name, but it hardly mattered, I supposed. I hoped she would have the decency to arrive before I went to Maudie Watermead’s lunch.
Her name was Nina Young. She swept up the drive onto my tarmac at nine a.m., catching me unshaven and reading newspapers in a towelling robe, coffee and cornflakes to hand.
I went to the door to answer her ring, not realising at once who she was.
She’d been driving a scarlet Mercedes and, although not young, she wore slender skin-tight jeans, a white shirt with romantically large sleeves, an embroidered Afghan waistcoat, heavy gold chains and an expensive scent. Her shining dark hair had an expert cut. Her high cheekbones, long neck and calm eyes reminded me of noble ancestor portraits, bone structure three hundred years old. My idea of a working box-driver, she was not.
‘Patrick Venables said to come early,’ she said, offering a nail-varnished hand. The voice was Roedean — Benenden — St Mary’s, Calne, the social poise learned in the cradle. From my male chauvinist point of view, the only drawback was her age, near mid-forties at a guess.
‘Come in,’ I invited, standing back and thinking she was good for the scenery if not for the matter in hand.
‘Freddie Croft,’ she said, as if seeing a cardboard cut-out come to life. ‘The man himself.’
‘Well, yes,’ I agreed. ‘Like some coffee?’
‘No, thank you. Do I detect a faint air of exasperation?’
‘Not in the least.’ I led the way into the sitting room, and indicated any chair she chose to sit on.
She chose a deep armchair, crossing the long legs to show fine ankles above buckled leather shoes. From a shoulder bag of equal pedigree, she produced a small folder which she waved in my general direction.
‘Driving licence with Large Goods Vehicle qualification,’ she assured me. ‘The real McCoy.’
‘He wouldn’t have sent you without it. How did you get it?’
‘Driving my hunters,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Also my show horses and eventers. Any questions?’
The sort of horseboxes she would have been driving had home-from-home large living quarters in front of the stalls, the nomadic luxury motors for eventing at Badminton and Burleigh. She had to be a familiar figure in that world, widely recognisable to too many people for the present purpose.