Dr Parnell at least had the decency to release me at an early hour, arriving with a middle-aged male nurse at 7.30 in the freezing dawn. He had also brought a basket packed by his wife, containing eggs, bacon, bread, milk and coffee, and from his medical bag he produced a powerful battery razor.
‘All mod. cons,’ he said cheerfully, his round face beaming.
So I went back to the races washed, shaved and fed. But, thinking of the husk of a man I left behind me, not in a happy frame of mind.
Seven
‘The trouble is, there’s such a shortage of jockeys just now,’ said James Axminster.
We were on our way to Sandown, discussing whom he should engage to ride for him the following week when he would be sending horses to two different places on the same day.
‘You’d almost think there was a hoodoo on the whole tribe,’ he said, expertly swinging his large car between a wobbly girl cyclist and an oncoming pantechnicon. ‘Art shot himself, Pip’s broken his leg, Grant’s had a breakdown. Two or three others are out with more ordinary things like busted collar bones, and at least four quite useful chaps took that wretched Ballerton’s misguided advice and are now churning out car bodies on assembly lines. There’s Peter Cloony... but I’ve heard he’s very unreliable and might not turn up in time; and Danny Higgs bets too much, they say, and Ingersoll doesn’t always try, so I’ve been told...’
He slowed down while a mother pushed a perambulator and three small children untidily across the road in front of us, and went on talking. ‘Every time I think I’ve found a good up-and-coming jockey I seem to hear something to his disadvantage. With you, it was that film, the one they showed on that television programme. It was shocking, wasn’t it? I watched it and thought, my God, what have I done, asking this clod to ride for me, however will I explain it away to the owners.’ He grinned. ‘I was on the point of ringing them all up and assuring them you’d not be on their horses after all. Luckily for you I remembered the way you had already ridden for me and I watched the rest of the programme first, and when it had finished I had changed my mind. I had even begun to think I had perhaps struck oil in annexing you. Nothing that has happened since,’ he glanced at me sideways, smiling, ‘has led me to alter that opinion.’
I smiled back. In the weeks since Pip broke his leg I had come to know him well, and liked him better with every day that passed. Not only was he a superb craftsman at his job and a tireless worker, but he was reliable in other ways. He was never moody: one did not have to approach him circumspectly every time to see if he were in a good or bad humour because he was always the same, neither boisterous or irritable, just reasonable and receptive. He said directly what he thought, so that one never had to search for innuendoes or suspect hidden sarcasm and it made any relationship with him stable and free from worry. He was, on the other hand, in many ways thoroughly selfish. Unless it were a strictly business matter, his own comfort and convenience came first, second and third, and he would do a favour for someone else only if it caused him absolutely no personal sacrifice of time or effort. Even this was often a blessing to his stable lads since it was typical of him, if the occasion arose, to give them a generous travelling allowance out of his own pocket to visit their homes, rather than go five miles out of his way to drop them on their doorsteps.
He had seemed from the first to be as satisfied with my company as I was with his, and had quite soon told me to drop the ‘sir’ and stick to ‘James.’ Later the same week as he drove us back from Birmingham races, we passed some brightly lit posters advertising a concert which was to be held there that evening.
‘Conductor, Sir Trelawny Finn,’ he read aloud, the enormous lettering catching his eye. ‘No relation, I suppose,’ he said jokingly.
‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, he’s my uncle,’ I said.
There was a dead silence. Then he said, ‘And Caspar Finn?’
‘My father.’ A pause.
‘Anyone else?’
‘Dame Olivia Cottin is my mother,’ I said, matter-of-factly.
‘Good God,’ he said explosively.
I grinned.
‘You keep it very quiet,’ he said.
‘It’s really the other way round,’ I said cheerfully. ‘They like to keep me quiet. A jockey in the family is a disgrace to them, you see. It embarrasses them. They don’t like the connection to be noticed.’
‘All the same,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it explains quite a lot about you that I had begun to wonder about. Where you got that air of confidence from... and why you’ve said so little about yourself.’
I said, smiling, ‘I’d be very glad... James... if you’d not let my parentage loose in the weighing-room, as a favour to them.’
He had said he would not, and he had kept his word, but he had accepted me more firmly as a friend from then on. So when he ran through the reported shortcomings of Peter Cloony, Danny Higgs and Tick-Tock, it was with some confidence that I said, ‘You seem to have heard a great many rumours. Do you know all these things for a fact?’
‘For a fact?’ he repeated, surprised. ‘Well, Peter Cloony definitely missed two races a few weeks back because he was late. That’s a fact.’
I told him about Peter’s atrocious luck in twice finding a vehicle stuck across the mouth of the narrow lane from his village to the main road. ‘As far as I know,’ I said, ‘he hasn’t been late since then. His reputation for lateness seems to be built mainly on those two days.’
‘I’ve heard several times that he can’t be trusted to turn up,’ said James obstinately.
‘Who from?’ I asked curiously.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Corin Kellar for one. And of course Johnson who employs him. Ballerton too, though it’s against my better judgment to pay too much attention to what he says. It’s common knowledge though.’
‘How about Danny Higgs, then?’ I said. Danny was an irrepressible cockney, tiny in size, but ferociously brave.
‘He bets too heavily,’ James said positively.
‘Who says so?’ I asked. I knew Danny broke the regulations by backing horses, but from what he said in the changing-room, it was only in amounts of five or ten pounds, which would cause few trainers to look askance at him.
‘Who says? I... er... Corin,’ he finished lamely. ‘Corin, come to think of it, has told me so several times. He says he never puts him up because of it.’
‘And Tick-Tock?’ I said. ‘Who says Ingersoll doesn’t always try?’
He didn’t answer at once. Then he said, ‘Why shouldn’t I believe what Corin says? He has no axe to grind. He’s an excellent trainer, but he depends as we all do on securing good jockeys. He certainly wouldn’t deny himself the use of people like Cloony or Higgs if he didn’t have a good reason.’
I thought for a few moments, and then said, ‘I know it’s really none of my business, but would you mind very much telling me why you dropped Grant Oldfield? He told me himself that it was something to do with a message, but he wouldn’t explain what.’ I refrained from mentioning that he had been semiconscious at the time.
‘A message? Oh yes, he passed on the message, I couldn’t have that.’
I still looked mystified. Axminster squeezed through the traffic lights on the amber and glanced sideways at me.
‘The message,’ he said impatiently, ‘you know, the news. He was passing on the news. If we had a fancied runner he would tip off a professional backer. The owner of the horse didn’t get good odds to his money because the professional was there before him and spoiled the market. Three of my owners were very angry about it — no fun for them having to take two or three to one when they had expected sixes or sevens. So Grant had to go. It was a pity; he was a strong jockey, just what I needed.’