I moved my head in appreciation. ‘What’s best to do?’
‘I’ll stick something over it, if you like.’
‘Thanks, Jogger.’
He heard the real gratitude in my voice and nodded briefly. ‘What’ve we been carrying, eh?’ he asked. ‘Carpets?’
I was mystified. ‘Carpets?’
‘And rugs. Drugs.’
‘Oh.’ I understood belatedly. ‘I hope not.’ I pondered briefly. ‘Keep it to yourself for now, Jogger, will you? Until I get it sorted out.’
He said he would, a promise easily given that might last into the third pint that evening in the pub, but no further.
At close quarters he smelled of oil and dust, those constant companions, and also of stale smoke and a general earthiness. I found it less objectionable than the overpoweringly sweet aftershave and clashing medicinal mouthwash of one of the other drivers, whose odour pervaded his whole horsebox even overriding the scent of horses.
As far as possible, each driver drove one particular horsebox all the time, making it his own. I’d found they all preferred it like that, and they also looked after the vehicles better that way, kept them cleaner, understood their idiosyncrasies and generally treated them with pride as their personal property. Each driver kept the keys of his own box in his possession and could personalise his own cab if he cared to. Several of them who liked to sleep on board had rigged curtains for the windows. Pat, now sick with flu, carried fresh flowers and an ingenious folding changing room in hers. I could almost infallibly have told which box I was in simply by the cab.
Brett’s cab was consistent with how little of himself he’d committed to the job; devoid of anything personal. I would be glad to see the back of him even though it compounded the driver shortage.
Saying he’d fetch something for the magnet and that he’d better get on with things if he was going to Surrey with the broodmares, Jogger joggled his way back to his van, loaded the slider and drove off. Dave hosed down the outside of the horsebox and cleaned the windows with a squeegee. Brett swept internal debris carelessly out through the grooms’ doors onto the tarmac.
The inside plan of the 35-foot long horsebox made provision for three sets of three stalls, with spaces between the sets. The horses’ heads protruded forwards into these spaces, where often sat an attendant travelling near them.
The width of the box allowed for three stalls only if the horses travelling were of average build. Heavily muscled horses, like older steeplechasers, needed more room and could travel only two side by side. The same for broodmares. When we took mares with foals, the three stalls across converted to one single large one. So nine two-year-olds or three mares with foals could be accommodated.
These versatile arrangements were easily achieved by many cleverly-designed swinging partitions, all of them of wood, covered with soft padding, to avoid injuries and bruising. We loaded the horses and bolted the stalls as needed around them.
The floors of the stalls were of thick black rubber to stop the horses sliding about, and sometimes we sprinkled the surface with shavings to catch the droppings, especially on long journeys. At each destination, the attendants or the driver would sweep the stalls clean of the muck: the nine-horsebox had therefore arrived home reasonably clean already, having come back empty from Newmarket.
A narrow cupboard at the rear of each box contained brooms, a shovel, hose, squeegees and mop. We took also a bucket or two, feed sometimes for the horses, and several plastic containers of drinking water. The locker under the attendants’ bench seat — where Ogden had died — housed spare tack in the form of head collars, ropes, straps, a horse blanket or two and a first aid kit. Behind the driver’s seat lay an efficient fire-extinguisher; and that was about all we carried except for the attendants’ own belongings up on the shelf with the mattress. The lads mostly took with them clean tidy clothes to change into for leading their charges round the parade ring, changing back into working things for the return home.
Day after day, all over the country, fleets of horseboxes like mine ferried all the runners to the races, most days about a hundred runners to each meeting, on bad days, down to, perhaps, thirty. Most of the runners that were trained in Pixhill travelled, luckily, in my boxes and as at least twenty-five trainers were in business in the district, I was making money, if not a fortune.
For all steeplechase jockeys in their early thirties the urgent question arose, what next? One life lay behind, unfilled time lay ahead. I’d been driving horseboxes by the age of eighteen for my father, who had owned his own transport; driving some of his horses to the races, looking after them, riding them in amateur races, driving home. By twenty, turning professional, I’d been retained by a top stable, and for twelve years after that I’d finished each season around second to sixth in the jockeys’ list, riding upwards of 400 jump races a year. Few jump jockeys lasted longer than that near the top owing to the physical battering of falls, and at thirty-two time and injuries had caught up with me, as they’d been bound to do in the end.
From jockey to full-time horse transporter had been a jolting change of outlook in some ways, but familiar territory in others. Three years into the new life, it seemed as if it had been inevitable all along.
I made up Brett’s pay packet with cash from my safe as promised and typed the information into the computer, so that along in the office Rose could incorporate it into the P45. One way and another she hadn’t had much practice at P45s, as the turnover in drivers had proved small.
Brett’s envelope in hand, I went out to the horsebox where he and Dave were now standing on the tarmac glaring at each other. Having removed the hose from the outside tap beyond the wood pile, Dave stood with its green flabby plastic loops over his arm, apparently childishly arguing that it was Brett’s job to put it away in its cupboard.
Give me strength, I thought, and asked Dave nicely to put it away himself. With bad grace he climbed with it into the box and Brett watched him spitefully.
‘That’s not the only time Dave’s picked up a hitchhiker,’ he said.
I listened but didn’t reply.
Brett said, ‘It’s him you ought to sack, not me.’
‘I didn’t sack you.’
‘As good as.’
His sharp young face lacked any sort of humour and I felt sorry for him that he should go through life making himself disliked. There seemed to be no way of changing him; he would go whining to the grave.
‘You’ll have to leave a forwarding address with Isobel,’ I said conversationally. ‘You might be called on for the inquest on yesterday’s passenger.’
‘It’s Dave they’ll want.’
‘All the same, leave an address.’
He grunted, accepted his pay packet without thanks and drove off, Dave coming to earth again by my side and looking after him balefully.
‘What did he say?’ he asked.
‘That you’d picked up other hitchhikers.’
Dave looked furious. ‘He would.’
‘Don’t do it, Dave.’
He listened to the weight I put into the words and, unsuccessfully trying to joke, said, ‘Is that some sort of threat?’
‘A warning.’
‘It don’t seem fair to leave people standing by the roadside.’
‘It may not seem fair to you,’ I said, ‘but just grit your teeth and do it.’
‘Well... OK.’ He gave me a half-hearted grin and promised not to give any lifts on his way back from leaving the broodmares in Gloucestershire that afternoon.
‘I’m serious, Dave.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah. I know it.’