I was wearing, perhaps as a salute to plain bread, a well-worn leather jacket and a flat cloth cap, the binoculars-camera slung round my neck, a race-card clutched in my hand. I stood around vaguely outside the weighing-room, watching who came and who went, who talked to whom, who looked worried, who happy, who malicious.
A young apprentice with an ascendant reputation came out of the weighing-room in street clothes, not riding gear, and stood looking around as if searching for someone. His eyes stopped moving and focused, and I looked to see what had caught his attention. He was looking at the Jockey Club's paid steward, who was acting at the meeting as the human shape of authority. The steward was standing in social conversation with a pair of people who had a horse running that day, and after a few minutes he raised his hat to the lady and walked out towards the parade ring.
The apprentice calmly watched his departing back, then made another sweep of the people around. Seeing nothing to worry about he set off towards the stand the jockeys watched the races from and joined a youngish man with whom he walked briefly, talking. They parted near the stands, and I, following, transferred my attention from the apprentice and followed the other man instead; he went straight into the bookmakers' enclosure in front of the stands, and along the rows of bookmakers to the domain of Collie Goodboy who was shouting his offered odds from the height of a small platform the size of a beer-crate.
The apprentice's contact didn't place a bet. He picked up a ledger and began to record the bets of others. He spoke to Collie Goodboy (Les Morris to his parents) who presently wiped off the offered odds from his board, and chalked up new ones. The new odds were generous. Collie Goodboy was rewarded by a rush of eager punters keen to accept the invitation. Collie Goodboy methodically took their money.
With a sigh I turned away and wandered off up to the stands to watch the next race, scanning the crowds as usual, watching the world revolve. I ended up standing not far from the rails dividing the bookmakers' section of the stands (called the Tattersalls enclosure) from the club, the more expensive end. I often did that, as from there one could see the people in both enclosures easily. One could see also who came to the dividing rails to put bets on with the row of bookmakers doing business in that privileged position. The 'rails' bookmakers were the princes of their trade, genial, obliging, fair, flint-hearted, brilliant mathematicians.
I watched as always to see who was betting with whom, and when I came to the bookmaker nearest to the stands, nearest to me, I saw that the present customer was Filmer.
I was watching him bet, thinking of the rail journey ahead, when he tilted his head back and looked straight up into my eyes.
Chapter Three
I looked away instantly but smoothly, and presently glanced back.
Filmer was still talking to the bookmaker. I edged upwards through the crowd behind me until I was about five steps higher and surrounded by other racegoers.
Filmer didn't look back to where I'd been standing. He didn't search up or down or sideways to see where I had gone.
My thumping heart quietened down a bit. The meeting of eyes had been accidentaclass="underline" had to have been. Dreadfully unwelcome, all the same, particularly at this point.
I hadn't expected him to have been at Nottingham, and hadn't looked for him. Two of his horses were certainly down to run, but Filmer himself almost never went to the midland courses of Nottingham, Leicester or Wolverhampton. He had definite preferences in racecourses, as in so much else: always a creature of habit.
I made no attempt to shadow him closely, as it wasn't necessary: before the following race he would be down in the parade ring to watch his horse walk round and I could catch him up there. I watched him conclude his bet and walk away to climb the stands for the race about to start, and as far as I could see he was alone, which also was unusual, as either the girlfriend or the male companion was normally in obsequious attendance.
The race began and I watched it with interest. The chatty apprentice wasn't riding in it himself, but the stable that employed him had a runner. The runner started third favourite and finished third last. I switched my gaze to Collie Goodboy, and found him smiling. A common, sad, fraudulent sequence that did racing no good.
Filmer stepped down from the stands and headed in the direction of the saddling boxes, to supervise, as he always did, the final preparation for his horse's race. I drifted along in his wake to make sure, but that was indeed where he went. From there to the parade ring, from there to place a bet with the same bookmaker as before, from there to the stands to watch his horse race. From there to the unsaddling enclosure allotted to the horse that finished second.
Filmer took his defeat graciously, making a point as always of congratulating the winning owner, in this case a large middle-aged lady who looked flushed and flattered.
Filmer left the unsaddling enclosure with a smirk of self-satisfaction and was immediately confronted by a young man who tried to thrust a briefcase into his hand.
Julius Apollo's face turned from smug to fury quicker than Shergar won the Derby, as Paul Shacklebury would have said. Filmer wouldn't take the case and he practically spat at the offerer, his black head going forward like a striking cobra. The young man with the briefcase retreated ultra-nervously and in panic ran away, and Filmer, regaining control of himself, began looking around in the general direction of stewards and pressmen to see if any of them had noticed. He visibly sighed with relief that none of them showed any sign of it-and he hadn't looked my way at all.
I followed the demoralized young man, who still held on to the briefcase. He made straight for the men's cloakroom, stayed there for a fair time and came out looking pale.
Filmer's effect on people's guts, I reflected, would put any laxative to shame.
The shaken youth with the briefcase then made his nervous way to a rendezvous with a thin, older man who was waiting just outside the exit gate, biting his nails. When the thin man saw the briefcase still in the nervous youth's possession he looked almost as furious as Filmer had done, and a strong argument developed in which one could read the dressing-down in the vigorous chopping gestures, even if one couldn't hear the words.
Thin man poked nervous man several times sharply in the chest. Nervous man's shoulders drooped. Thin man turned away and walked off deep into the car park.
Nervous man brought the briefcase with him back through the gate and into the nearest bar, and I had to hang around for a long time in the small crowd there before anything else happened. The scattered clientele was watching the television: nervous man shuffled from foot to foot and sweated, and kept a sharp look-out at the people passing by outside in the open air. Then, some time after Filmer's second runner had tried and (according to the closed-circuit commentary) lost, Filmer himself came past, tearing up betting tickets and not looking pleased.
Nervous man shot out from his waiting position just inside the door of the sheltering bar and offered the briefcase again, and this time Filmer took it, but in fierce irritation and with another sharp set of glances around him. He saw nothing to disturb him. He was leaving after the fifth of the six races and all forms of authority were still engaged to his rear. He gripped the case's handle and strode purposefully out on his way to his car.