‘No guts, you mean?’ said Corin flatly. ‘I’d say that that would be as obvious to a handicapper as to everyone else, and that he’d take it into account. There’s a case in point now...’ he hesitated, but Maurice did not try to stop him, so he went on more boldly, ‘a case now where everything a certain jockey rides goes round at the back of the field. He is afraid of falling, you see. Well, you can’t tell me any handicapper thinks those particular horses are not as good as they were. Of course they are. It’s just the rider who’s going downhill.’
I could feel the blood rush to my head and begin to pulse there. I leaned my elbows on the table and bit my knuckle. Hard.
The voices went on inexorably.
Maurice said, ‘What are your views on that, Mr. Jenkinson?’
And the handicapper, looking embarrassed, murmured that ‘Of course... er... in certain circumstances, one would... er... overlook the occasional result.’
‘Occasional!’ said Corin. ‘I wouldn’t call nearly thirty races in a row occasional. Are you going to overlook them all?’
‘I can’t answer that,’ protested Jenkinson.
‘What do you usually do in these cases?’ Maurice asked.
‘I... that is... they aren’t usually as blatant as this. I may have to consult... er, others, before coming to a decision. But it really isn’t a thing I can discuss here.’
‘Where better?’ said Maurice persuasively. ‘We all know that this poor chap took a toss three weeks ago and has ridden... er... ineffectively... ever since. Surely you’d have to take that into account when you are handicapping those horses?’
While the camera focused on Jenkinson hesitating over his answer Corin’s voice said, ‘I’ll be interested to know what you decide. One of those horses was mine, you know. It was a shocking exhibition. Finn won’t be riding for me again, or for anyone else either, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Jenkinson said uneasily, ‘I don’t think we should mention names,’ and Maurice cut in quickly, saying, ‘No, no. I agree. Better not.’ But the damage was done.
‘Well, thank you both very much for giving us your time this evening. I am sorry to say we have come nearly to the end once again...’ He slid expertly into his minute of chit-chat and his closing sentences, but I was no longer listening. Between them he and Corin had hammered in the nails on the ruins of my brief career, and watching them at it on the glaring little screen had given me a blinding headache.
I stood up stiffly as the chatter broke out again in the crowded pub and threaded my way a little unsteadily to the door. The bunch of racing enthusiasts were downing their pints and I caught a scrap of their conversation as I squeezed round them.
‘Laid it on a bit thick, I thought,’ one of them said.
‘Not thick enough,’ contradicted another. ‘I lost a quid on Finn on Tuesday. He deserves all he gets, if you ask me, the windy b—.’
I stumbled out into the street, breathing in great gulps of cold air and making a conscious effort to stand up straight. It was no use sitting down and weeping in the gutter, which would have been easy enough to do. I walked slowly back to the dark, empty flat, and without switching on any lights lay down fully dressed on my bed.
The glow from the street below dimly lit the small room, the window frame throwing an angular distorted shadow on the ceiling. My head throbbed. I remembered lying there like that before, the day Grant’s fist pulped my nose. I remembered pitying him, and pitying Art. It had been so easy. I groaned aloud, and the sound shocked me.
It was a long way down from my window to the street. Five storeys. A long, quick way down. I thought about it.
There was a chiming clock in the flat below ours, counting away the quarter-hours, and in the quiet house I could hear it clearly. It struck ten, eleven, twelve, one, two.
The window threw its shadow steadily on the ceiling. I stared up at it. Five storeys down. But however bad things were I couldn’t take that way, either. It wasn’t for me. I shut my eyes and lay still, and finally after the long despairing hours drifted into an exhausted, uneasy, dream-filled sleep.
I woke less than two hours later, and heard the clock strike four. My headache had gone, and my mind felt as clear and sharp as the starry sky outside: washed and shining. It was like coming out of a thick fog into sunshine. Like coolness after fever. Like being re-born.
Somewhere between sleeping and waking I found I had regained myself, come back to the life-saving certainty that I was the person I thought I was, and not the cracked-up mess that everyone else believed.
And that being so, I thought in puzzlement, there must be some other explanation of my troubles. All... all I had to do was find it. Looking back unsympathetically on the appalling desolation in which I had so recently allowed myself to flounder, I began at last, at long last, to use my brain.
Half an hour later it was clear that my stomach was awake too, and it was so insistent to be filled that I couldn’t concentrate. I got up and fetched the tins of cheese straws and marrons glacés from the kitchen, but not the snails. How hungry would one have to be, I wondered idly, to face those molluscs cold and butterless at five o’clock in the morning?
I opened the tins and lay down again, and crunched up all the cheese straws while I thought, and peeled and chewed half of the syrupy weight-producing chestnuts. My stomach quietened like a dragon fed its daily maiden, and outside the stars faded into the wan London dawn.
In the morning I took the advice I had given to Grant, and went to see a psychiatrist.
Nine
I had known the psychiatrist all my life as he was a friend of my father, and, I hoped, I knew him well enough to ring him up for help on a morning which he always reserved for golf. At eight o’clock I telephoned to his house in Wimpole Street where he lived in a flat above his consulting rooms.
He asked after my father. He sounded in a hurry.
‘Can I come and see you, sir?’ I said.
‘Now? No. Saturday. Golf,’ he said economically.
‘Please... it won’t take long.’
There was a brief pause.
‘Urgent?’ A professional note to his question.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Come at once, then. I’m due at Wentworth at ten.’
‘I haven’t shaved...’ I said, catching sight of myself in the looking-glass and realising what a wreck I looked.
‘Do you want to shave, or do you want to talk?’ he said, exasperated.
‘Talk,’ I said.
‘Then arrive,’ he said, and put down his receiver.
I took a taxi, and he opened the door to me with a corner of toast and marmalade in his hand. The eminent Mr. Claudius Mellit, whose patients usually saw him in striped trousers and black jacket, was sensibly attired for winter golf in waterproof trousers and a comfortably sloppy Norwegian sweater. He gave me a piercing preliminary glance and gestured, ‘Upstairs.’
I followed him up. He finished his breakfast on the way. We went into his dining-room, where he gave me a seat at the oval mahogany table and some lukewarm coffee in a gold-rimmed cup.
‘Now,’ he said, sitting down opposite me.
‘Suppose...’ I began, and stopped. It didn’t seem so easy, now that I was there. What had seemed obvious and manifest at five in the morning was now tinged with doubt. The dawn hours had shown me a pattern I believed in, but in the full light of day I felt sure it was going to sound preposterous.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you really need help my golf can go hang. When I said on the telephone that I was in a hurry I hadn’t seen the state you are in... and if you will excuse my saying so, your suit looks as if you had slept in it.’