‘Well, yes, I did,’ I said, surprised.
‘Relax then, and tell me all.’ He grinned, a big bear of a man, fifty years old and formidably wise.
‘I’m sorry I look so untidy and unshaven,’ I began.
‘And sunken-eyed and hollow-cheeked,’ he murmured, smiling.
‘But I don’t feel as bad as I suppose I look. Not any more. I won’t keep you away from your golf if you’ll just tell me...’
‘Yes?’ he waited for me calmly.
‘Suppose I had a sister,’ I said, ‘who was as good a musician as Mother and Father, and I was the only one in the entire family to lack their talent — as you know I am — and I felt they despised me for lacking it, how would you expect me to act?’
‘They don’t despise you,’ he protested.
‘No... but if they did, would there be any way in which I could persuade them — and myself — that I had a very good excuse for not being a musician?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said instantly, ‘I’d expect you to do exactly what you have done. Find something you can do, and pursue it fanatically until in your own sphere you reach the standard of your family in theirs.’
I felt as if I’d been hit in the solar plexus. So simple an explanation of my compulsion to race had never occurred to me.
‘That... that isn’t what I meant,’ I said helplessly. ‘But when I come to think of it, I see it is true.’ I paused. ‘What I really meant to ask was, could I, when I was growing up, have developed a physical infirmity to explain away my failure? Paralysis, for instance, so that I simply couldn’t play a violin or a piano or any musical instrument? An apparently honourable way out?’
He looked at me for a few moments, unsmiling and intent.
‘If you were a certain type of person, yes, it’s possible. But not in your case. You had better stop waltzing round it and ask me your question straight out. The real question. I am very well accustomed to hypothetical questions... I meet them every day... but if you want a trustable answer you’ll have to ask the real question.’
‘There are two,’ I said. I still hesitated. So very much, my whole life, depended on his answers. He waited patiently.
I said at last, ‘Could a boy whose family were all terrific cross-country riders develop asthma to hide the fact that he was afraid of horses?’ My mouth was dry.
He didn’t answer at once. He said, ‘What is the other question?’
‘Could that boy, as a man, develop such a loathing for steeplechase jockeys that he would try to smash their careers? Even if, as you said, he had found something else which he could do extremely well?’
‘I suppose this man has that sister you mentioned?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She is getting to be the best girl point-to-point rider for a generation.’
He slouched back in his chair.
‘It obviously matters so desperately to you, Robert, that I can’t give you an answer without knowing more about it. I’m not giving you a couple of casual yeses and find afterwards I’ve let you stir up disastrous trouble for all sorts of people. You must tell me why you ask these questions.’
‘But your golf,’ I said.
‘I’ll go later,’ he said calmly. ‘Talk.’
So I talked. I told him what had happened to Art, and to Grant, and to Peter Cloony, and Tick-Tock, and myself.
I told him about Maurice Kemp-Lore. ‘He comes from a family who ride as soon as walk, and he’s the right build for steeplechasing. But horses give him asthma, and that, everyone knows, is why he doesn’t race himself. Well... it’s a good reason, isn’t it? Of course there are asthmatics who do ride — asthma doesn’t stop people who think that racing is worth the wheezing — but no one would dream of blaming a man who didn’t.’
I paused, but as he made no comment, I went on, ‘You can’t help being drawn to him. You can’t imagine the spell of his personality unless you’ve felt it. You can see people wake up and sparkle when he speaks to them. He has the ear of everyone from the Stewards down... and I think he uses his influence to sow seeds of doubt about jockeys’ characters.’
‘Go on,’ Claudius said, his face showing nothing.
‘The men who seem to be especially under his spell are Corin Kellar, a trainer, and John Ballerton, a member of the ruling body. Neither of them ever has a good word to say for jockeys. I think Kemp-Lore picked them out as friends solely because they had the right sort of mean-mindedness for broadcasting every damaging opinion he insinuated into their heads. I think all the ruinous rumours start with Kemp-Lore, and that even the substance behind the rumours is mostly his work. Why isn’t he content with having so much? The jockeys he is hurting like him and are pleased when he talks to them. Why does he need to destroy them?’
He said, ‘If this were a hypothetical case I would tell you that such a man could both hate and envy his father and his sister — and have felt both these emotions from early childhood. But because he knows these feelings are wrong he represses them, and the aggression is unfortunately transferred on to people who show the same qualities and abilities that he hates in his father. Such individuals can be helped. They can be understood, and treated, and forgiven.’
‘I can’t forgive him,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to stop him.’
He considered me. ‘You must make sure of your facts,’ he said, stroking his thumbnail down his upper lip. ‘At present you are just guessing. And as I’ve had no opportunity to talk to him you’ll get no more from me than an admission that your suspicions of Kemp-Lore are possibly correct. Not even probably correct. He is a public figure of some standing. You are making a very serious accusation. You need cast-iron facts. Until you have them, there is always the chance that you have interpreted what has happened to you as malice from outside in order to explain away your own inner failure. Asthma of the mind, in fact.’
‘Don’t psychologists ever take a simple view?’ I said, sighing.
He shook his head. ‘Few things are simple.’
‘I’ll get the facts. Starting today,’ I said. I stood up. ‘Thank you for seeing me, and being so patient, and I’m sincerely sorry about your golf.’
‘I won’t be very late,’ he reassured me, ambling down the stairs and opening his front door. On the doorstep, shaking hands, he said as if making up his mind. ‘Be careful, Robert. Go gently. If you are right about Kemp-Lore, and it is just possible that you are, you must deal with him thoughtfully. Persuade him to ask for treatment. Don’t drive him too hard. His sanity may be in your hands.’
I said flatly, ‘I can’t look at it from your point of view. I don’t think of Kemp-Lore as ill, but as wicked.’
‘Where illness ends and crime begins...’ he shrugged. ‘It has been debated for centuries, and no two people agree. But take care, take care.’ He turned to go in. ‘Remember me to your parents.’ He smiled, and shut the door.
Round a couple of corners, first during a luxurious shave in a fresh-smelling barber’s and second over a triple order of eggs and bacon in the café next door, I bent my mind to the problem of how the cast-iron facts were to be dug up. On reflection, there seemed to be precious few of them to work on, and in the digging, to start with at least, I was going to come up against the barrier of pity and contempt which my recent performances had raised. Nasty medicine; but if I wanted a cure, I’d have to take it.
Using the café’s telephone, I rang up Tick-Tock.
‘Are you riding this afternoon?’ I asked.
He said, ‘Do me a favour, pal. No unkind questions so early in the day. In a word — negative.’ A pause. ‘And you?’ Innocently, too innocently.
‘You’re a bastard,’ I said.
‘So my best friends tell me.’
‘I want the car,’ I said.