It was not only to me that he had stopped speaking. He no longer said much at all. The trainers and owners who still employed him could get him neither to discuss a race beforehand nor explain what had happened afterwards. He listened to his orders in silence and left the trainer to draw his own conclusions through his race-glasses about how the horse had run. When he did speak, his remarks were laden with such a burden of obscenity that even the hardened inmates of the changing-room shifted uncomfortably.
Oddly enough Grant’s riding skill had not degenerated with his character. He rode the same rough, tough race as always; but he had, we knew, begun to let out his anger on to his mounts, and twice during November he was called before the stewards for ‘excessive use of the whip.’ The horses in question had each come in from their races with raw red weals on their flanks.
The Oldfield volcano erupted, as far as I was concerned, one cold afternoon in the jockeys’ and trainers’ car park at Warwick. I was late leaving the meeting as I had won the last race and had been taken off to the bar afterwards by the elated owner, one of my farmer friends. Tick-Tock had gone to a different meeting, and I had the car. By the time I got there the park was empty except for the Mini-Cooper and another car which was standing almost next to it, and two or three cars further on down the row.
I went towards the Mini still smiling to myself with the pleasure of this latest win, and I did not see Grant until I was quite close to him. I was approaching the cars from behind, with Grant’s on the right of mine. His near hind wheel lay on the grass, surrounded by a collection of implements spilling out of a holdall tool bag. A jack held up the bare axle of his black saloon and he was kneeling beside it with the spare wheel in his hand.
He saw me coming, and he saw me smiling, and he thought I was laughing at him for having a puncture. I could actually see the uncontrollable fury rise in his face. He got to his feet and stood rigidly, his thickset body hunched with belligerence, the strong shoulders bunching under his coat, his arms hanging down. Then he bent forward and from among the mess of tools picked up a tyre lever. He swished it through the air, his eyes on me.
‘I’ll help you with your puncture, if you like,’ I said mildly.
For answer he took a step sidewards, swung his arm in a sort of backwards chop, and smashed the tyre lever through the back window of the Mini-Cooper. The glass crashed and tinkled into the car, leaving only a fringe of jagged peaks round the frame.
Tick-Tock and I had had the car barely three weeks. My own anger rose quick and hot and I took a step towards Grant to save my most precious possession from further damage. He turned to face me squarely and lifted the tyre lever again.
‘Put it down,’ I said, reasonably, standing still. We were now about four feet apart. He told me to do something which is biologically impossible.
‘Don’t be an ass, Grant,’ I said. ‘Put that thing down and let’s get on with changing your tyre.’
‘You—’ he said, ‘you took my job.’
‘No,’ I said. It was pointless to add more, not least because if he was going to try to hit me I wanted to have all my concentration focused on what he was doing, not on what I was saying.
His eyes were red-rimmed above the high cheek bones. The big nostrils flared open like black pits. With his wild face, his bursting anger, and the upheld quivering tyre lever, he was a pretty frightening sight.
He slashed forward and downward at my head.
I think that at that moment he must have been truly insane, for had the blow connected he would surely have killed me, and he couldn’t have hoped to get away with it with his car standing there with the wheel off. He was beyond thought.
I saw his arm go up a fraction before it came down and it gave me time to duck sideways. The lever whistled past my right ear. His arm returned in a backhand, again aiming at my head. I ducked again underneath it, and this time, as his arm swung wide and his body lay open to me, I stepped close and hit him hard with my fist just below his breast bone. He grunted as the wind rushed out of his lungs, and the arm with the tyre lever dropped, and his head came forward. I took a half pace to the right and hit him on the side of the neck with the edge of my hand.
He went down on his hands and knees, and then weakly sprawled on the grass. I took the tyre lever from his slack fingers and put it with all the other tools into the holdall, and shut the whole thing into the boot of his car.
It was getting very cold and the early dusk was turning colours to black and grey. I squatted beside Grant. He was hovering on the edge of consciousness, breathing heavily and moaning slightly.
I said conversationally, close to his ear, ‘Grant, why did you get the sack from Axminster?’
He mumbled something I could not hear. I repeated my question. He said nothing. I sighed and stood up. It had been only a faint chance, after all.
Then he said distinctly, ‘He said I passed on the message.’
‘What message?’
‘Passed on the message,’ he said, less clearly. I bent down and asked him again, ‘What message?’ But although his lips moved he said nothing more.
I decided that in spite of everything I could not just drive off and leave him lying there in the cold. I took out the tools again, and sorting out the brace, put the spare wheel on and tightened up the nuts. Then I pumped-up the tyre, let the jack down and slung it with the punctured wheel into the boot on top of the tools.
Grant was still not properly conscious. I knew I hadn’t hit him hard enough to account for such a long semi-waking state, and it occurred to me that perhaps his disturbed brain was finding this a helpful way to dodge reality. I bent down and shook his shoulder and called his name. He opened his eyes. For a split second it seemed as though the old Grant smiled out of them, and then the resentment and bitterness flooded back as he remembered what had happened. I helped him sit up, and propped him against his car. He looked desperately tired, utterly worn out.
‘O God,’ he said, ‘O God.’ It sounded like a true prayer, and it came from lips which usually blasphemed without thought.
‘If you went to see a psychiatrist,’ I said gently, ‘you could get some help.’
He didn’t answer; but neither did he resist when I helped him into the passenger seat of the Mini-Cooper. He was in no state to drive his own car, and there was no one else about to look after him. I asked him where he lived, and he told me. His car was safe enough where it was, and I remarked that he could fetch it on the following day. He made no reply.
Luckily he lived only thirty miles away, and I drew up where he told me outside a semi-detached featureless house on the outskirts of a small country town. There were no lights in the windows.
‘Isn’t your wife in?’ I asked.
‘She left me,’ he said absently. Then his jaw tensed and he said, ‘Mind your own — business.’ He jerked the door open, climbed out and slammed it noisily. He shouted, ‘Take your bloody do-gooding off and — it. I don’t want your help, you—.’ He appeared to be back to his usual frame of mind, which was a pity, but there didn’t seem to be any point in staying to hear more so I let in the clutch and drove off: but I had gone only half a mile down the road when I reluctantly came to the conclusion that he shouldn’t be left alone in an empty house.