‘How much do you love him?’ I asked painfully.
‘I don’t know,’ she said unhappily. ‘I don’t know any more what love is.’ She looked straight across the little table. ‘If it means that I want to spend my life attending to his creature comforts, then I don’t love him. If it means being happy in bed, then I do.’
She saw the movement in my face, and said abruptly, ‘Oh hell... Rob, I’m sorry. It’s so long since you said anything... I thought you didn’t still...’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘It can’t be helped.’
‘What... what do you think I should do?’ she said after a pause, still fiddling with the coffee spoon.
‘It’s quite clear,’ I said positively, ‘that you should not marry Brian if you can’t bear the prospect of the life he intends to lead. It wouldn’t work for either of you.’
‘So?’ she said, in a small voice.
But I shook my head. The rest she would have to resolve for herself. No advice I could give her would be unbiased, and she must have known it.
She left presently to go to a rehearsal, and I paid the bill and wandered out into the festive streets. I bought some presents for my family on the way, walking slowly back to the flat. The sort of marriage which Joanna had offered Brian, and which he spurned, was what I most wanted in the world. Why, I wondered disconsolately, was life so ruddy unfair.
On Boxing Day Template won the King Chase, one of the ten top races of the year. It put him conclusively into the star class, and it didn’t do me any harm either.
The race had been televised, and afterwards, as was his custom, Maurice Kemp-Lore interviewed me as the winning jockey before the cameras. Towards the end of the brief talk he invited me to say hullo directly to Pip, who, he explained to viewers, was watching at home. I had seen Pip only a week or two earlier and had discussed big-race tactics with him, but I obligingly greeted him and said I hoped his leg was mending well. Kemp-Lore smilingly added ‘We all wish you a speedy recovery, Pip,’ and the interview was over.
On the following day the sporting press was complimentary about the race, and a number of trainers I had not yet ridden for offered me mounts. I began to feel at last as though I were being accepted as a jockey in my own right, and not principally as a substitute for Pip. It even seemed likely that when Pip returned to his job I would not fade back into the wilderness, for two of the new trainers said they would put me up on their horses as often as I was free.
I had, of course, my share of falls during this period, for however fortunate I was I couldn’t beat the law of averages: but no damage was done except for a few bruises here and there, and none of them was bad enough to stop me riding.
The worst fall from the spectators’ point of view happened one Saturday afternoon in January, when the hurdler I was riding tripped over the flight of hurdles nearest to the grandstand and flung me off on to my head. I woke up dizzily as the first-aid men lifted me into the ambulance on a stretcher, and for a moment or two could not remember where I was.
James’s face, looming over me as they carried me into the first-aid room, brought me back to earth with a click, and I asked him if his horse was all right.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘how about you?’
‘Nothing broken,’ I assured him, having explored my limbs rather drunkenly during the short trip back in the ambulance.
‘He rolled on you,’ he said.
‘I’m not surprised.’ I grinned up at him. ‘I feel a bit squashed, come to think of it.’
I lay for a while on a bed in the first-aid room, but there was nothing wrong with me that a good sleep wouldn’t cure, and at the end of the afternoon I went back to Berkshire with James as expected.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked once, on the way.
‘Yes,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Fine.’ Actually I felt dizzy now and then, and also shivery and unsettled, but concealing one’s true state of health from trainers was an occupational habit, and I knew I would be fit again to ride on Monday.
The only person who was openly annoyed at the run of good luck I had had was John Ballerton, and I had caught him several times in the parade ring staring tight-lipped at me with a patent and most unstewardly animosity.
Since the day of our joint broadcast we had exchanged the fewest possible words, but I had heard from Corin, who repeated it to me with sly relish, the Ballerton had said loudly to him and Maurice Kemp-Lore in the members’ bar at Kempton, ‘Finn isn’t worth all the fuss that’s being made of him. He’ll come down just as quickly as he’s gone up, you’ll see. And I for one won’t weep about it.’
In view of this it was astonishing that on the day after my fall I should be offered a ride on one of his horses. At first I refused to take Corin seriously. His telephone call woke me on the Sunday morning, and I was inclined to think the concussion had returned.
‘If it were a choice between me and a sack of potatoes,’ I said sleepily, ‘he’d choose the potatoes.’
‘No, seriously Rob, he wants you to ride Shantytown at Dunstable tomorrow.’ Corin’s voice held no trace of humour. ‘I must say, I don’t really understand why, as he’s been so set against you before. But he was quite definite on the telephone, not five minutes ago. Perhaps it’s an olive branch.’
And perhaps not, I thought. My first instinct was to refuse to ride the horse, but I couldn’t think of a reasonable excuse, as Corin had found out I was free for the race before he told me whose the horse was. A point-blank excuseless refusal was, while possible, a senseless course. It would give Ballerton a genuine grievance against me, and if he sincerely wanted to smoothe over his hostility, which I doubted, I should only deepen it by spurning his offer.
Shantytown was no Template. Far, far from it. His uncertain temper and unreliable jumping were described to me in unreassuring terms by Tick-Tock on the way to Dunstable the following morning.
‘A right one,’ he said, putting his foot down on the Mini-Cooper’s accelerator. ‘A knacker’s delight. Dog-meat on the hoof.’
‘His form’s not bad,’ I protested mildly, having looked it up the previous day.
‘Hmph. Any time he’s won or been placed it’s because he’s dragged his jockey’s arms out of the sockets by a blast-off start and kept right on going. Hang on and hope, that’s how to ride him when he’s in that mood. His mouth is as hard as Gibraltar. In fact I cannot,’ finished Tick-Tock with satiric formality, ‘I cannot instantly recall any horse who is less receptive of his jockey’s ideas.’
There was no bitterness in his voice, but we were both aware that a few weeks ago riding Shantytown would have been his doubtful pleasure, not mine. Since his parade before the stewards for not pushing his horse all out into third place, he had been ignored by Corin Kellar. It was the sort of injustice typical of Corin, to sack a man who ran into trouble looking after his interests, and it had done nothing to lay the unfair rumour that Tick-Tock was a habitual non-trier.
Apart from abruptly lessening the number of races he rode in, the rumour had had little effect on Tick-Tock himself. He shrugged his shoulders, and with a determined look on his angular young face stated, ‘They’ll change their minds again in time. I’ll mash every horse I ride into a pulp. I’ll do my nut on every hopeless hack. No one henceforth will see me finish eighth when by bashing the beast I could be sixth.’