I clamped his fingers round the window frames and let go of him. He swayed a bit, but his hands held, and after a moment I walked dizzily out of the room and padlocked the door shut behind me.
Buttonhook had found her way into the front room and was placidly eating the hay. I leaned weakly against the wall and watched her for a while, cursing myself for the foolish way I had nearly got myself locked into my own prison. I was badly shaken, not only by the fight itself but by the strength with which Kemp-Lore had fought and by the shocking effect my last blow had had on him. I ought to have had more sense, I knew, than to hit an asthmatic with that particular punch.
There was no sound from the back room. I straightened up and walked round to the window. He was standing there, holding on to the frames where I had put him, and there were tears running down his cheeks.
He was breathing safely enough, the asthma reduced to a more manageable wheeze, and I imagined it would not get any worse from then on, as Buttonhook was no longer in the room with him.
‘Damn you,’ he said. Another tear spilt over. ‘Damn you. Damn you.’
There wasn’t anything to say.
I went back to Buttonhook, and put on her halter. I had meant to deal with her later, after I had let Kemp-Lore go, but in the changed circumstances I decided to do it straight away, while it was still light. Leading her out of the front door and through the gate, I jumped on to her back and rode her away up past the two cars hidden in the bushes and along the ridge of the hill.
A mile further on I struck the lane which led up to the Downs, and turning down that came soon to a gate into a field owned by a farmer I had often ridden for. Slipping off Buttonhook I opened the gate, led her through and turned her loose.
She was so amiable that I was sorry to part with her, but I couldn’t keep her in the cottage, I couldn’t stable an elderly hunter in James’s yard and expect his lads to look after her, I couldn’t find a snap buyer for her at six o’clock in the evening; and I frankly didn’t know what else to do with her. I fondled her muzzle and patted her neck and fed her a handful of sugar. Then I slapped her on the rump and watched my eighty-five quid kick up her heels and canter down the field like a two-year-old. The farmer would no doubt be surprised to find an unclaimed brown mare on his land, but it would not be the first time a horse had been abandoned in that way, and I hadn’t any doubt that he would give her a good home.
I turned away and walked back along the hill to the cottage. It was beginning to get dark, and the little building lay like a shadow in the hollow as I went down to it through the trees and bushes. All was very quiet, and I walked softly through the garden to the back window.
He was still standing there. When he saw me he said quite quietly ‘Let me out.’
I shook my head.
‘Well at least go and telephone the company, and tell them I’m ill. You can’t let them all wait and wait for me to come, right up to the last minute.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Go and telephone,’ he said again.
I shook my head.
He seemed to crumple inside. He stretched his hands through the bars and rested his head against the window frames.
‘Let me out.’
I said nothing.
‘For pity’s sake,’ he said, ‘let me out.’
For pity’s sake.
I said, ‘How long did you intend to leave me in that tack-room?’
His head snapped up as if I’d hit him. He drew his hands back and gripped the bars.
‘I went back to untie you,’ he said, speaking quickly, wanting to convince me. ‘I went back straight after the programme was over, but you’d gone. Someone found you and set you free pretty soon, I suppose, since you were able to ride the next day.’
‘And you went back to find the tack-room empty?’ I said. ‘So you knew I had come to no harm?’
‘Yes,’ he said eagerly. ‘Yes, that’s what happened. I wouldn’t have left you there very long, because of the rope stopping your circulation.’
‘You did think there was some danger of that, then?’ I said innocently.
‘Yes, of course there was, and that’s why I wouldn’t have left you there too long. If someone hadn’t freed you first, I’d have let you go in good time. I only wanted to hurt you enough to stop you riding.’ His voice was disgustingly persuasive, as if what he was saying were not abnormal.
‘You’re a liar,’ I said calmly. ‘You didn’t go back to untie me after your show. You would have found me still there if you had. In fact it took me until midnight to get free, because no one came. Then I found a telephone and rang up for a car to fetch me, but by the time it reached me, which was roughly two o’clock, you had still not returned. When I got to Ascot the following day, everyone was surprised to see me. There was a rumour, they said, that I wouldn’t turn up. You even mentioned on television that my name in the number frames was a mistake. Well... no one but you had any reason to believe that I wouldn’t arrive at the races: so when I heard that rumour I knew that you had not gone back to untie me, even in the morning. You thought I was still swinging from that hook, in God knows what state... and as I understand it, you intended to leave me there indefinitely, until someone found me by accident... or until I was dead.’
‘No,’ he said faintly.
I looked at him without speaking for a moment, and then turned to walk away.
‘All right,’ he screamed suddenly, banging on the bars with his fists. ‘All right. I didn’t care whether you lived or died. Do you like that? Is that what you want to hear? I didn’t care if you died. I thought of you hanging there with your arms swelling and going black... with the agony going on and on... and I didn’t care. I didn’t care enough to stay awake. I went to bed. I went to sleep. I didn’t care. I didn’t care... and I hope you like it.’
His voice cracked, and he sank down inside the room so that all I could see in the gathering dusk was the top of his fair head and the hands gripping the bars with the knuckles showing white through the skin.
‘I hope you like it,’ he said brokenly.
I didn’t like it. Not one little bit. It made me feel distinctly sick.
I went slowly round into the front room and sat down again on the hay. I looked at my watch. It was a quarter-past six. Still three hours to wait: three hours in which the awful truth would slowly dawn on Kemp-Lore’s colleagues in the television studio, three hours of anxious speculation and stop-gap planning, culminating in the digging out of a bit of old film to fill in the empty fifteen minutes and the smooth announcement, ‘We regret that owing to the... er... illness of Maurice Kemp-Lore there will be no Turf Talk tonight.’
Or ever again, mates, I thought, if you did but know it.
As it grew dark the air got colder. It had been frosty all day, but with the disappearance of the sun the evening developed a sub-zero bite, and the walls of the unlived-in cottage seemed to soak it up. Kemp-Lore began kicking the door again.
‘I’m cold,’ he shouted. ‘It’s too cold.’
‘Too bad,’ I said, under my breath.
‘Let me out,’ he yelled.
I sat on the hay without moving. The wrist which he had latched on to while we fought was uncomfortably sore, and blood had seeped through the bandage again. What the Scots doctor would have to say when he saw it I hated to think. The three warts would no doubt quiver with disapproval. I smiled at the picture.
Kemp-Lore kicked the door for a long time, trying to break through it, but he didn’t succeed. At the same time he wasted a good deal of breath yelling that he was cold and hungry and that I was to let him out. I made no reply to him at all, and after about an hour of it the kicking and shouting stopped, and I heard him slither down the door as if exhausted and begin sobbing with frustration.