When I’d hung up my boots and bought the transport business, he’d appeared to my surprise on my doorstep.
‘I’m here to see if you’ll give me a job,’ he said for openers, coming straight to the point.
‘But I don’t need a valet any more.’
‘Not that. I don’t want to keep on with that. My old dad’s died and the weighing-room’s not the same as when he was there, and I want a change. I’m sick of the wash-tub. How about it if I drive for you? I drive hundreds of miles every week anyway; have for years.’
‘But,’ I said slowly, ‘you’d need a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence.’
‘I’ll get one.’
‘The boxes aren’t like cars. You’d have to take a course.’
‘If I get the licence, will you give me a job?’
I’d said I would because we’d always got on easily together, and in that casual way I’d acquired the best lieutenant one could imagine.
He was sandy-haired, strong-armed, about my own age, an inch or two taller. Dryly disillusioned, he was quick to denigrate but in a way that made one smile. Brett, he had remarked to me once, shifted the blame before you even realised there was a fault. ‘He carries a bagful of alibis around with him, ready to pull one out.’
I went upstairs, showered, shaved, tweaked the duvet straight on my bed and returned in short time to my desk and the uninterrupted view of the horsebox.
Jogger, the company mechanic, swept up the drive in his van and squeaked to a halt nose to nose with the horsebox. Spry, bow-legged, bald and cockney, he eeled out of the van and stood looking at the horsebox while scratching his head. Then he came over to the house in the peculiar gait that had earned him his nickname, a rolling motion like that of speed walkers, almost running but with one foot on the ground all the time, elbows tucked in.
I went to the door to meet him and we walked back to the box together, he impatiently slowing his scuttling progress to match mine.
‘What’s the boil, then?’ he said.
He spoke his own sort of cockney rhyming slang, and indeed I often thought he made most of it up himself, but I was used to it by that time. For boil, read boil and bubble, trouble.
‘Just check it all over, will you?’ I answered. ‘Take a good look at the engine. Then slide under, make sure we’re not leaking or carrying additions.’
‘Gor,’ he said.
I watched him check the engine, his eyes swift, fingers delicate, head nodding with certainties.
‘All hunky-dory,’ he said.
‘Good. Go over the rest.’
He went along to his truck and brought out the flexible stick, with mirror attached, that could be angled to reveal invisibilities round corners, and also the low platform on castors, on which he lay on his back to slide under the boxes for quick underguts inspections.
‘When you’re done, I’ll be in the house,’ I said.
‘Am I looking for anything particular?’
‘Just for anything you don’t understand.’
He peered at me speculatively. ‘This box went to Italy earlier, dinnit?’
I agreed that it had. ‘Went last Friday, returned by Tuesday evening.’ There had been no problems or hold-ups, though; as far as I knew, of course.
‘That Brett never cleans it proper. Got no Jekyll.’
Jekyll and Hyde, I thought: pride.
‘Brett had Wednesday off,’ I said. ‘Harve drove a load of colts to Newmarket that day in this box. Brett took it to Newmarket and back yesterday. A couple of odd things have happened, so... carry on with the check.’
‘You talking about that stiff?’
‘Partly.’
‘He didn’t have no chance to duff the box up, though, did he?’
‘I don’t know any more than you,’ I said. ‘And get a move on, Jogger, I’ve got to get this thing cleaned and out on the road within an hour.’
He lay down philosophically and shoved himself trustingly out of sight, except for his feet, under ten or so tons of steel. Just the prospect of it gave me a sort of claustrophobia, which Jogger knew about but loftily forgave. My failing increased his self-esteem: it did no harm.
I went back to the house and Harve phoned.
‘Dave’s on his way along to you now,’ he said with agitation. ‘But he says Brett’s packing his bags.’
‘He’s doing what?’
‘Dave says Brett’s not a complete thicko, he knows his trial three months is nearly up and that you won’t keep him on. He’s ducking out first. That way he can go around saying he gave you the chuck, not the other way round. He’ll be whinging all over the place about how hard he worked here, Dave says, and how you never appreciated him.’
‘He can get on with it,’ I said. ‘The thing is, what about today?’
‘The Marigold shuttle,’ Harve said. ‘Brett was doing that.’
‘Exactly. Who else have we got?’ I knew the answer as soon as I asked. We had me.
‘Well...’ He hesitated.
‘Yes, all right. I’ll do it if there’s no one else.’
‘It’s not just the shuttle,’ he went on unhappily. ‘Vic’s wife says he’s got a temperature of a hundred and three and no way is he driving to Sandown.’
One of those days.
‘They’re both here at the farm,’ Harve went on, ‘Vic and his missus. He says he wants to go, she says she’ll divorce him. You can see he’s got a fever, though.’
‘Send him home, he’ll just spread the flu around more.’
‘OK. But...’
‘Give me a minute. Inspiration will strike.’
He laughed. ‘Hurry it up,’ he said, disconnecting.
I sucked my teeth. If racehorse trainers hadn’t been as fussy as they normally were, I could have travelled the two Surrey-bound broodmares in one of the boxes taking ’chasers to Sandown. The box could have dropped off the two racers, taken the mares to their destination and returned to Sandown to bring the ’chasers home. I might have risked it if I hadn’t been sure the trainer in question would get to hear of it from his lads: and the trainer in question would never ever let his own horses travel with any horses from any other stables. Sending his runners in company with broodmares would lose me his custom instantly and evermore.
I went out to the nine-horsebox. Jogger was nowhere to be seen but when I yelled his name a pair of boots slid out into view, followed by grease-clogged trousers, filthy army sweater and a dirt-streaked face.
‘You’re right, we’ve picked up a stranger,’ he reported, and added, grinning with yellow teeth. ‘Did you know? You must have known.’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Nor was I pleased. Very put out, in fact.
‘Have a decko,’ he encouraged me, removing himself from the slider and slyly offering me his place.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said, staying upright. ‘What have you found?’
‘I’d say it’s stuck on with a magnet.’ He gave me his opinion judiciously. ‘It’s a sort of tin box. Like a big cash box, lid downwards.’
‘Shiny?’ I asked.
‘Course not. Want it out?’
‘Yes, but wait... um... we’ve got three drivers now with flu. Would you do a run yourself, just to help out?’
He rubbed his greasy hands down his trousers and looked dubious. Driving meant cleaning up and there was no doubt he felt happier dirty. I seldom asked him to drive more than his regular test runs on all the boxes, when he listened to their resonances as to a language and heard trouble before it happened.
‘Broodmares, not to the races,’ I explained.
‘Well then... when?’