I put my arm round her shaking shoulders. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He’ll be all right. Truly.’
She nodded mutely, sniffing and fumbling in a pocket for a handkerchief, and after a while, through gulps, said, ‘He’s alive, and I should be grateful for that, and they say he’ll be home quite soon. It’s just... everything... everything...’
I nodded. ‘Just too much.’
She nodded also and dried her eyes with a re-emergence of spirit, and I asked whether any of her children might not come to help her through this patch.
‘They’re all so busy... I told them not to. And Jack, you know, he’s jealous of them really, he wouldn’t want them here when he’s away, though I shouldn’t say that, only I do seem to tell you things, Tony dear, and I don’t know why.’
‘Like telling the wallpaper,’ I said.
She smiled very faintly, a considerable advance.
‘How’s Jimmy?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t see him. He’s conscious, they say, and no worse. I don’t know what we’ll do if he isn’t well soon... he runs everything, you know... and without them both... I feel so lost. I can’t help it.’
‘Anything I can do?’ I said.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said instantly. ‘I was so hoping... I mean, when you said you’d come... Have you got time?’
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘Um... Tony dear, I don’t know how much I can ask of you, but would you... could you possibly... walk round the yard with me?”
‘Well, of course,’ I said, surprised. ‘If you want.’
‘It’s evening stables,’ she explained in a rush. ‘Jack was so insistent I walked round. He wants me to tell him how everything is, because we’ve a new head lad, he came only last week, and Jack says he’s not sure of him in spite of his references, and he made me promise I’d walk round. And he knows, he really does, that I don’t know enough about horses, but he wanted me to promise... and he was so depressed, that I did.’
‘No problem at all,’ I said. ‘We’ll walk round together, and we’ll both listen, and afterwards we’ll make notes for you to relay to Jack.’
She sighed with relief and looked at her watch. ‘It’s time now, I should think.’
‘O.K.’ I said, and we walked round the house to the stables and to the sixty or so equine inmates.
In Jack’s yard there were two big old quadrangles, built of wood mostly, with a preponderance of white paint. Some of the many doors stood wide open with lads carrying sacks and buckets in and out, and some were half closed with horses’ heads looking interestedly over the tops.
‘We’d better do the colts’ yard first,’ Flora said, ‘and the fillies’ yard after, like Jack does, don’t you think?’
“Absolutely,’ I agreed.
I knew about horses to the extent that I’d been brought up with them, as much after my father’s death as before. My mother, wholly dedicated, seldom talked of much else. She had in her time ridden in point-to-point races and also adored to go hunting, which filled her life whenever my father was away on duty, and his as well when he was at home and not that minute racing. I had seen day after day the glowing enjoyment in their faces and had tried hard to feel it myself, but whatever enthusiasm I’d shown had been counterfeit, for their sakes. Galloping after hounds across muddy November fields I had thought chiefly of how soon one could decently go home, and the only part of the ritual I had actually enjoyed had been the cleaning and feeding of the horses afterwards. Those great creatures, tired and dirty, were so uncritical. They never told one to keep one’s heels down, one’s elbows in, one’s head up, one’s spine straight. They didn’t expect one to be impossibly brave and leap the largest fences. They didn’t mind if one sneaked through gates instead. Closed into a box with a horse, humming while I brushed off dried mud and sweat, I’d felt a sort of dumb complete communion, and been happy.
After my father died my mother had hunted on with unfaltering zeal and had for the past ten years been joint master of the local hounds, to her everlasting fulfilment. It had been a relief to her, I often thought, when I had finally left home.
Jack Hawthorn’s lads were halfway through the late afternoon programme of mucking out, feeding and watering, a process known throughout the racing world as ‘evening stables’. It was the custom for the trainer to walk round, usually with the head lad, stopping at every box to inspect the racer within, feeling its legs for heat (bad sign) and looking for a bright eye (good).
Jack’s new head lad had greeted Flora’s appearance with an exaggerated obsequiousness which I found distasteful and which seemed also to make Flora even less sure of herself. She introduced him as Howard, and told him Mr Beach would be accompanying her on the rounds.
Howard extending the Uriah Heep manner to myself, we set off on what was clearly the normal pattern, and I listened attentively for Flora’s sake to every Howard opinion.
Very little, it seemed to me, could have been different from the morning before, when Jack himself had been there. One horse had trodden on a stone out at exercise and was slightly footsore. Another had eaten only half of his midday feed. A third had rubbed skin off a hock, which would need watching.
Flora said ‘I see,’ and ‘I’ll tell Mr Hawthorn,’ at regular intervals and Howard ingratiatingly said that Flora could safely leave everything to him, Howard, until Mr Hawthorn’s return.
We came in turn to the Sheik’s horses, still in residence, and also to Larry Trent’s, bursting with health. They had been prolific winners all year, it seemed. Both the Sheik and Larry Trent had been excellent judges of potential, and were lucky as well.
‘We’ll be losing all of these horses, I suppose,’ Flora sighed. ‘Jack says it will be a heavy financial loss for us.’
‘What will happen to them?’ I asked.
‘Oh... I expect the Sheik’s will be sold. I don’t know. I don’t know if he has any family. And Larry Trent’s five, of course, will go back to their owners.’
I raised my eyebrows slightly but because of Howard’s unctuous presence said no more, and it wasn’t until Flora and I were at length walking back towards my van that I asked her what she meant.
‘Larry Trent’s horses?’ she repeated. ‘They weren’t his own property. He leased them.’
‘Paid rent for them?’
‘My dear, no. A lease is only an agreement. Say someone owns a horse but can’t really afford the training fees, and someone else wants to have a horse racing in his name and can afford the training fees but not the cost of the horse itself, then those two people make an agreement, all signed and registered, of course. The usual terms are that when the horse earns any prize-money it’s divided fifty-fifty between the two parties. It’s done quite often, you know.’
‘No, I didn’t know,’ I said numbly.
‘Oh, yes. Larry Trent always did it. He was pretty shrewd at it. He would lease a horse for a year, say, and if it turned out all right he might lease it for another year, but if it won nothing, he’d try another. You can lease a horse for as long as you like, as long as you both agree, for a year or a season or three months... whatever you want.’
I found it interesting and asked, ‘How are the leases fixed up?’
‘Jack has the forms.’
‘No, I meant, how does anyone know who has a horse they will lease but not sell?’
‘Word of mouth,’ she said vaguely. ‘People just say. Sometimes they advertise. And sometimes one of our owners will ask Jack to find someone to lease their horse so they don’t have to pay the training bills. Very often they do it with mares, so that they can have their horse back for breeding afterwards.’