The freckle-faced lad who looked after the horse deliberately did not glance at me when he took hold of the reins in the paddock. He usually greeted me with a beaming smile. I slid off the horse. The owner and James stood there, their faces blank. No one said anything. There was nothing to say. Finally, without a word, the owner shrugged his shoulders and turned on his heel, and walked off.
I took my saddle off the horse and the lad led him away.
James said, ‘It can’t go on, Rob.’
I knew it.
He said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I’ll have to get someone else to ride my horses tomorrow.’
I nodded.
He gave me a searching look in which puzzlement and doubt were tinged for the first time with pity. I found it unbearable.
‘I think I’ll go to Kensington tonight after the races,’ I said, trying to speak evenly. ‘Instead of coming back with you.’
‘Very well,’ he said, obviously relieved at not having to face an embarrassing return journey. ‘I really am sorry, Rob.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’
I took my saddle back to the weighing-room, acutely aware of the glances which followed me. The conversation in the changing-room died into an embarrassed silence when I walked in. I went over to my peg and put the saddle on the bench, and began to take off my colours. I looked at the circle of faces turned towards me, reading on some curiosity, on some hostility, on some sympathy, and on one or two, pleasure. No contempt: they would leave that to people who didn’t ride, to the people who didn’t know at first hand how formidable a big fence can look to a jockey on a bad horse. In the changing-room there was too much consciousness in their minds of ‘there but for the grace of God go I,’ for them to feel contempt.
They began to talk again, but not much to me. I guessed they didn’t know what to say. Nor did I.
I felt neither more nor less courageous than I had done all my life. It was surely impossible, I thought confusedly, to be subconsciously afraid, to keep out of trouble and yet think one was as willing as ever to accept risks. Three weeks earlier, I would have laughed at the idea. But the shattering fact remained that none of the twenty-eight horses I had ridden since I had been knocked out in that fall had made any show at all. They were trained by several different trainers and owned by different owners: all they had had in common was me. There were too many of them for it to be a coincidence, especially as those I had been removed from had done well.
Round and round in a jumble went the profitless thoughts, the hopeless statistics, the feeling that the sky had fallen. I put on my street clothes and brushed my hair, and was surprised to see in the mirror that I looked the same as usual.
I went outside on to the steps outside the weighing-room and heard the normal chatter which my presence had muffled in the changing-room break out cheerfully again as soon as I was gone. No one outside either seemed very anxious to talk to me: no one, that is, except a weedy little ferret of a man, who worked, I knew, for one of the minor sporting papers.
He was standing with John Ballerton, but when he caught sight of me he came directly over.
‘Oh, Finn,’ he said, taking a notebook and pencil out of his pocket and looking at me with a sly, malicious smile. ‘May I have a list of the horses you are riding tomorrow? And next week?’
I looked across at Ballerton. There was a smirk of triumph on his heavy face. I took a great grip on my rising temper and spoke mildly to the Pressman.
‘Ask Mr. Axminster,’ I said. He looked disappointed, but he didn’t know how close he had come to feeling my fist in his face. I had just enough sense to know that letting fly at him would be the worst thing I could do.
I strode away from him, seething with rage; but the day had not done with me, even yet. Corin, crossing my path purposefully, stopped me and said, ‘I suppose you’ve seen this?’ He held out a copy of the paper for which the ferrety little man wrote.
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t want to.’
Corin smiled thinly, enjoying himself. ‘I think you ought to sue them. Every one thinks so. You’ll have to sue them when you’ve read it. You can’t ignore it, or everyone will think...’
‘Every one can think what they damn well please,’ I said roughly, trying to walk on.
‘Read it,’ insisted Corin, thrusting the paper in front of my eyes. ‘Everyone else has.’
It needed only half a glance to see the headline. There was no missing it. In bold type it said, ‘Nerve Lost.’
Against my will I began to read.
‘Nerve, depending on how it takes you, is either fear overcome by an effort of will, or a total lack of imagination. If you ride steeplechasing it doesn’t matter which sort you have, as long as you have one of them.
‘Does anyone understand why one man is brave and another is not? Or why a person can be brave at one time and cowardly at another?
‘Maybe it is all a matter of hormones! Maybe a bang on the head can destroy the chemical make-up which produces courage. Who knows? Who knows?
‘The crumbling of a jumping jockey’s nerve is a pathetic sight, as every recent racegoer will realise. But while one may extend sympathy to a man for a state which he cannot help, one must at the same time ask whether he is doing the right thing if he continues to seek and accept rides in races.
‘The public deserves a fair run for its money. If a jockey can’t give it to them because he is afraid of hurting himself, he is taking fees under false pretences.
‘But it is only a matter of time, of course, before owners and trainers withdraw their custom from such a man and, by forcing him into retirement, protect the betting public from wasting any more of its money.
‘And a good thing too!’
I gave the paper back to Corin and tried to loosen the clamped tension of my jaw muscles.
‘I can’t sue them,’ I said. ‘They don’t mention my name.’
He didn’t look surprised, and I realised sharply that he had known it all along. He had wanted only the pleasure of watching me read, and there was still about his eyes a remnant of a very nasty smile.
‘What did I ever do to you, Corin,’ I asked, ‘to make you feel the way you do?’
He looked taken aback, and said weakly, ‘Er... nothing...’
‘Then I’m sorry for you,’ I said stonily. ‘I’m sorry for your spiteful, mean, cowardly little soul...’
‘Cowardly!’ he exclaimed, stung and flushing. ‘Who are you to call anyone else cowardly? That’s a laugh, that really is. Just wait till they hear this. Just wait till I tell...’
But I didn’t wait. I had had far, far more than enough. I went back to Kensington in as deep and terrible a mood of despair as I ever hope to have to live through.
There was no one in the flat, and for once it was spotlessly tidy. The family, I concluded, were away. The kitchen confirmed it. There was no food or milk in the refrigerator, no bread in the bin, no fruit in the basket.
Back in the silent sitting-room I took a nearly full whisky bottle out of the cupboard and lay down full length on the sofa. I uncorked the bottle and took two large gulps. The neat spirit bit into my gums and scorched down to my empty stomach. I put the cork in the bottle and the bottle on the floor beside me. What is the point of getting drunk, I thought: I’d only feel worse in the morning. I could stay drunk for several days perhaps, but it wouldn’t do any good in the end. Nothing would do any good. Everything was finished. Everything was busted and gone.
I spent a long time looking at my hands. Hands. The touch they had for horses had earned me my living all my adult life. They looked the same as always. They were the same, I thought desperately. Nerves and muscles, strength and sensitivity, nothing was changed. But the memory of the last twenty-eight horses I had ridden denied it: heavy, cumbersome and unresponsive.