I nodded my thanks, and he clomped away down the stairs. He hadn’t mentioned his horses, their races, or the other jockeys he would have to engage. He hadn’t said that my staying in the flat would be an embarrassment to him.
I didn’t know what to do about that. The flat was my home. My only home. Designed, converted, furnished by me. I liked it, and I didn’t want to leave.
I wandered into the bedroom.
A double bed, but pillows for one.
On the dressing chest, in a silver frame, a photograph of Rosalind. We had been married for two years when she went to spend a routine week-end with her parents. I’d been busy riding five races at Market Rasen on the Saturday, and a policeman had come into the weighing-room at the end of the afternoon and told me unemotionally that my father-in-law had set off with his wife and mine to visit friends and had misjudged his overtaking distance in heavy rain and had driven head on into a lorry and killed all three of them instantly.
It was four years since it had happened. Quite often I could no longer remember her voice. Other times she seemed to be in the next room. I had loved her passionately, but she no longer hurt. Four years was a long time.
I wished she had been there, with her tempestuous nature and fierce loyalty, so that I could have told her about the Enquiry, and shared the wretchedness, and been comforted.
That Enquiry...
Gowery’s first witness had been the jockey who had finished third in the Lemonfizz, two or three lengths behind Squelch. About twenty, round faced and immature, Master Charlie West was a boy with a lot of natural talent but too little self-discipline. He had a great opinion of himself, and was in danger of throwing away his future through an apparent belief that rules only applied to everyone else.
The grandeur of Portman Square and the trappings of the Enquiry seemed to have subdued him. He came into the room nervously and stood where he was told, at one end of the Stewards’ table: on their left, and to our right. He looked down at the table and raised his eyes only once or twice during his whole testimony. He didn’t look across to Cranfield and me at all.
Gowery asked him if he remembered the race.
‘Yes, sir.’ It was a low mumble, barely audible.
‘Speak up,’ said Gowery irritably.
The shorthand writer came across from his table and moved the microphone so that it was nearer Charlie West. Charlie West cleared his throat.
‘What happened during the race?’
‘Well sir... Shall I start from the beginning, sir?’
‘There’s no need for unnecessary detail, West,’ Gowery said impatiently. ‘Just tell us what happened on the far side of the course on the second circuit.’
‘I see, sir. Well... Kelly, that is, I mean, Hughes, sir... Hughes... Well... Like...’
‘West, come to the point.’ Gowery’s voice would have left a lazer standing. A heavy flush showed in patches on Charlie West’s neck. He swallowed.
‘Round the far side, sir, where the stands go out of sight, like, for a few seconds, well, there, sir... Hughes gives this hefty pull back on the reins, sir...’
‘And what did he say. West?’
‘He said, sir, “O.K. Brakes on, chaps.” Sir.’
Gowery said meaningfully, though everyone had heard the first time and a pin would have crashed on the Wilton, ‘Repeat that, please, West.’
‘Hughes, sir, said “O.K. Brakes on, chaps”.’
‘And what did you take him to mean by that, West?’
‘Well sir, that he wasn’t trying, like. He always says that when he’s pulling one back and not trying.’
‘Always?’
‘Well, something like that, sir.’
There was a considerable silence.
Gowery said formally, ‘Mr Cranfield... Hughes... You may ask this witness questions, if you wish.’
I got slowly to my feet.
‘Are you seriously saying,’ I asked bitterly, ‘That at any time during the Lernonfizz Cup I pulled Squelch back and said “O.K., brakes on, chaps?” ’
He nodded. He had begun to sweat.
‘Please answer aloud,’ I said.
‘Yes. You said it.’
‘I did not.’
‘I heard you’
‘You couldn’t have done.’
‘I heard you.’
I was silent. I simply had no idea what to say next. It was too like a playground exchange: you did, I didn’t, you did, I didn’t...
I sat down. All the Stewards and all the officials ranked behind them were looking at me. I could see that all, to a man, believed West.
‘Hughes, are you in the habit of using this phrase?’ Gowery’s voice was dry acid.
‘No, sir.’
‘Have you ever used it?’
‘Not in the Lemonfizz Cup, sir.’
‘I said, Hughes, have you ever used it?’
To lie or not to lie...‘Yes, sir, I have used it, once or twice. But not on Squelch in the Lemonfizz Cup.’
‘It is sufficient that you said it at all, Hughes. We will draw our own conclusions as to when you said it.’
He shuffled one paper to the bottom of his pack and picked up another. Consulting it with the unseeing token glance of those who know their subject by heart, he continued, ‘And now, West, tell us what Hughes did after he had said these words.’
‘Sir, he pulled his horse back, sir.’
‘How do you know this?’ The question was a formality. He asked with the tone of one already aware of the answer.
‘I was just beside Hughes, sir, when he said that about brakes. Then he sort of hunched his shoulders, sir, and give a pull, sir, and, well, then he was behind me, having dropped out, like.’
Cranfield said angrily, ‘But he finished in front of you.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Charlie West flicked his eyes upwards to Lord Gowery, and spoke only to him. ‘My old horse couldn’t act on the going, sir, and Hughes came past me again going into the second last, like.’
‘And how did Squelch jump that fence?’
‘Easy, sir. Met it just right. Stood back proper, sir.’
‘Hughes maintains that Squelch was extremely tired at that point.’
Charlie West left a small pause. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know about that, sir. I thought as how Squelch would win, myself, sir. I still think as how he ought to have won, sir, being the horse he is, sir.’
Gowery glanced left and right, to make sure that his colleagues had taken the point. ‘From your position during the last stages of the race, West, could you see whether or not Hughes was making every effort to win?’
‘Well he didn’t look like it, sir, which was surprising, like.’
‘Surprising?’
‘Yes sir. See, Hughes is such an artist at it, sir.’
‘An artist at what?’
‘Well, at riding what looks from the stands one hell of a finish, sir, while all the time he’s smothering it like mad.’
‘Hughes is in the habit of not riding to win?’
Charlie West worked it out. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Thank you, West,’ Lord Gowery said with insincere politeness. ‘You may go and sit over there at the back of the room.’
Charlie West made a rabbit’s scurry towards the row of chairs reserved for those who had finished giving evidence. Cranfield turned fiercely to me and said, ‘Why didn’t you deny it more vehemently, for God’s sake? Why the Hell didn’t you insist he was making the whole thing up?’
‘Do you think they’d believe me?’
He looked uneasily at the accusing ranks opposite, and found his answer in their implacable stares. All the same, he stood up and did his best.
‘Lord Gowery, the film of the Lemonfizz Cup does not bear out West’s accusation. At no point does Hughes pull back his horse.’