Gowery gave him an icelance of a look which would have slaughtered thinner skinned men, but against Ferth’s inner furnace it melted impotently.
‘You agreed to say nothing,’ Gowery said in the same piercing undertone. ‘I would be obliged if you would keep to that.’
Cranfield had stirred beside me in astonishment, and now, thinking about it on the following day, the venomous little exchange seemed even more incredible. What, I now wondered, had Ferth been doing there, where he didn’t really belong and was clearly not appreciated.
The telephone bell broke up my thoughts. I went into the sitting-room to answer it and found it was a jockey colleague ringing up to commiserate. He himself, he reminded me, had had his licence suspended for a while three or four years back, and he knew how I must be feeling.
‘It’s good of you, Jim, to take the trouble.’
‘No trouble, mate. Stick together, and all that. How did it go?’
‘Lousy,’ I said. ‘They didn’t listen to a word either Cranfield or I said. They’d made up their minds we were guilty before we ever went there.’
Jim Enders laughed. ‘I’m not surprised. You know what happened to me?’
‘No. What?’
‘Well, when they gave me my licence back, they’d called the Enquiry for the Tuesday, see, and then for some reason they had to postpone it until the Thursday afternoon. So along I went on Thursday afternoon and they hummed and hahed and warned me as to my future conduct and kept me in suspense for a bit before they said I could have my licence back. Well, I thought I might as well collect a Racing Calendar and take it home with me, to keep abreast of the times and all that, so, anyway, I collected my Racing Calendar which is published at twelve o’clock on Thursdays, twelve o’clock mind you, and I opened it, and what is the first thing I see but the notice saying my licence has been restored. So how about that? They’d published the result of that meeting two hours before it had even begun.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.
‘Quite true,’ he said. ‘Mind you, that time they were giving my licence back, not taking it away. But even so, it shows they’d made up their minds. I’ve always wondered why they bothered to hold that second enquiry at all. Waste of everyone’s time, mate.’
‘It’s incredible,’ I said. But I did believe him: which before my own Enquiry I would not have done.
‘When are they giving you your licence back?’ Jim asked.
‘They didn’t say.’
‘Didn’t they tell you when you could apply?’
‘No.’
Jim shoved one very rude word down the wires. ‘And that’s another thing, mate, you want to pick your moment right when you do apply.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘When I applied for mine, on the dot of when they told me I could, they said the only Steward who had authority to give it back had gone on a cruise to Madeira and I would have to wait until he turned up again.’
Chapter Two
When the horses came back from second exercise at midday my cousin Tony stomped up the stairs and trod muck and straw into my carpet. It was his stable, not Cranfield’s, that I lived in. He had thirty boxes, thirty-two horses, one house, one wife, four children and an overdraft. Ten more boxes were being built, the fifth child was four months off and the overdraft was turning puce. I lived alone in the flat over the yard and rode everything which came along.
All very normal. And, in the three years since we had moved in, increasingly successful. My suspension meant that Tony and the owners were going to have to find another jockey.
He flopped down gloomily in a green velvet armchair.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Give me a drink, for God’s sake.’
I poured half a cupful of J and B into a chunky tumbler.
‘Ice?’
‘As it is.’
I handed him the glass and he made inroads. Restoration began to take place.
Our mothers had been Welsh girls, sisters. Mine had married a local boy, so that I had come out wholly Celt, shortish, dark, compact. My aunt had hightailed off with a six foot four languid blond giant from Wyoming who had endowed Tony with most of his physique and double his brain. Out of U.S.A.A.F. uniform, Tony’s father had reverted to ranch-hand, not ranch owner, as he had led his in-laws to believe, and he’d considered it more important for his only child to get to ride well than to acquire any of that there fancy book learning.
Tony therefore played truant for years with enthusiasm, and had never regretted it. I met him for the first time when he was twenty-five, when his Pa’s heart had packed up and he had escorted his sincerely weeping Mum back to Wales. In the seven years since then he had acquired with some speed an English wife, a semi-English accent, an unimpassioned knowledge of English racing, a job as assistant trainer, and a stable of his own. And also, somewhere along the way, an unquenchable English thirst. For Scotch.
He said, looking down at the diminished drink, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know, exactly.’
‘Will you go back home?’
‘Not to live,’ I said. ‘I’ve come too far.’
He raised his head a little and looked round the room, smiling. Plain white walls, thick brown carpet, velvet chairs in two or three greens, antique furniture, pink and orange striped curtains, heavy and rich. ‘I’ll say you have,’ he agreed. ‘A big long way from Coedlant Farm, boyo.’
‘No further than your prairie.’
He shook his head. ‘I still have grass roots. You’ve pulled yours up.’
Penetrating fellow, Tony. An extraordinary mixture of raw intelligence and straws in the hair. He was right; I’d shaken the straws out of mine. We got on very well.
‘I want to talk to someone who has been to a recent Enquiry,’ I said, abruptly.
‘You want to just put it behind you and forget it,’ he advised. ‘No percentage in comparing hysterectomies.’
I laughed, which was truly something in the circumstances. ‘Not on a pain for pain basis,’ I explained. ‘It’s just that I want to know if what happened yesterday was... well, unusual. The procedure, that is. The form of the thing. Quite apart from the fact that most of the evidence was rigged.’
‘Is that what you were mumbling about on the way home? Those few words you uttered in a wilderness of silence?’
‘Those,’ I said, ‘Were mostly “they didn’t believe a word we said”.’
‘So who rigged what?’
‘That’s the question.’
He held out his empty glass and I poured some more into it.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes. Starting from point A, which is that I rode Squelch to win, we arrive at point B, which is that the Stewards are convinced I didn’t. Along the way were three or four little birdies all twittering their heads off and lying in their bloody teeth.’
‘I detect,’ he said, ‘That something is stirring in yesterday’s ruins.’
‘What ruins?’
‘You.’
‘Oh.’
‘You should drink more,’ he said. ‘Make an effort. Start now.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Do that.’ He wallowed to his feet. ‘Time for lunch. Time to go back to the little nestlings with their mouths wide open for worms.’
‘Is it worms, today?’
‘God knows. Poppy said to come, if you want.’
I shook my head.
‘You must eat,’ he protested.
‘Yes.’
He looked at me consideringly. ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘That you’ll manage.’ He put down his empty glass. ‘We’re here, you know, if you want anything. Company. Food. Dancing girls. Trifles like that.’