Whip Hand

'Well, thanks, Tom.' I stood up. 'Thanks for your time.'

He shoved himself off his desk. 'Bit of a tame turn-up for you, asking questions, isn't it? I can't square it with the old Sid Halley, all speed and guts over the fences.'

'Times change, Tom.'

'Aye, I suppose so. I'll bet you miss it though, that roar from the stands when you'd come to the last and bloody well lift your horse over it.' His face echoed remembered excitements. 'By God, lad, that was a sight. Not a nerve in your body… don't know how you did it.'

I supposed it was generous of him, but I wished he would stop.

'Bit of bad luck, losing your hand. Still, with steeplechasing it's always something. Broken backs and such.' We began to walk to the door. 'If you go jump-racing you've got to accept the risks.'

'That's right,' I said. We went outside and across to my car.

'You don't do too badly with that contraption, though, do you, lad? Drive a car, and such.'

'It's fine.'

'Aye, lad.' He knew it wasn't. He wanted me to know he was sorry, and he'd done his best. I smiled at him, got into the car, sketched a thank-you salute, and drove away.

At Aynsford they were in the drawing room, drinking sherry before lunch: Charles, Toby and Jenny.

Charles gave me a glass of fino, Toby looked me up and down as if I'd come straight from a pig sty, and Jenny said she had been talking to Louise on the telephone.

'We thought you had run away. You left the flat two hours ago.'

'Sid doesn't run away,' Charles said, as if stating a fact.

'Limps, then,' Jenny said. Toby sneered at me over his glass: the male in possession enjoying his small gloat over the dispossessed. I wondered if he really understood the extent of Jenny's attachment to Nicholas Ashe, or if knowing, he didn't care.

I sipped the sherry: a thin dry taste, suitable to the occasion. Vinegar might have been better.

'Where did you buy all that polish from?' I said. 'I don't remember.' She spoke distinctly, spacing out the syllables, wilfully obstructive.

'Jenny!' Charles protested. I sighed. 'Charles, the police have the invoices, which will have the name and address of the polish firm on them. Can you ask your friend Oliver Quayle to ask the police for the information, and send it to me.'

'Certainly,' he said.

'I cannot see,' Jenny said in the same sort of voice, 'that knowing who supplied the wax will make the slightest difference one way or the other.'

It appeared that Charles privately agreed with her. I didn't explain. There was a good chance, anyway, that they were right.

'Louise said you were prying for ages.'

'I liked her,' I said mildly.

Jenny's nose, as always, gave away her displeasure.

'She's out of your class, Sid,' she said. 'In what way?'

'Brains, darling.'

Charles said smoothly, 'More sherry, anyone?' and, decanter in hand, began refilling glasses. To me, he said, 'I believe Louise took a first at Cambridge in mathematics. I have played her at chess… you would beat her with ease.'

'A Grand Master,' Jenny said, 'can be obsessional and stupid and have a persecution complex.'

Lunch came and went in the same sort of atmosphere, and afterwards I went upstairs to put my few things into my suitcase. While I was doing it Jenny came into the room and stood watching me.

'You don't use that hand much,' she said.

I didn't answer.

'I don't know why you bother with it.'

'Stop it, Jenny.'

'If you'd done as I asked, and given up racing, you wouldn't have lost it.'

'Probably not.'

'You'd have a hand, not half an arm… not a stump.'

I threw my spongebag with too much force into the suitcase.

'Racing first. Always racing. Dedication and winning and glory. And me nowhere. It serves you right. We'd still have been married… you'd still have your hand… if you'd have given up your precious racing when I wanted you to. Being champion jockey meant more to you than I did.'

'We've said all this a dozen times,' I said.

'Now you've got nothing. Nothing at all. I hope you're satisfied.'

The battery charger stood on a chest of drawers, with two batteries in it. She pulled the plug out of the mains socket and threw the whole thing on the bed. The batteries fell out and lay on the bedspread haphazardly with the charger and its flex.

'It's disgusting,' she said, looking at it. 'It revolts me.'

'I've got used to it.' More or less, anyway.

'You don't seem to care.'

I said nothing. I cared, all right. 'Do you enjoy being crippled, Sid?'

Enjoy… Jesus Christ.

She walked to the door and left me looking down at the charger. I felt more than saw her pause there, and wondered numbly what else there was left that she could say.

Her voice reached me quite clearly across the room.

'Nicky has a knife in his sock.' I turned my head fast. She looked both defiant and expectant. 'Is that true?' I asked. 'Sometimes.'

'Adolescent,' I said.

She was annoyed. 'And what's so mature about hurtling around on horses and knowing… knowing… that pain and broken bones are going to happen?'

'You never think they will.'

'And you're always wrong.'

'I don't do it any more.'

'But you would if you could.'

There was no answer to that, because we both knew it was true.

'And look at you,' Jenny said. 'When you have to stop racing, do you look around for a nice quiet job in stockbroking, which you know about, and start to lead a normal life? No, you damned well don't. You go straight into something which lands you up in fights and beatings and hectic scrambles. You can't live without danger, Sid. You're addicted. You may think you aren't, but it's like a drug. If you just imagine yourself working in an office, nine to five, and commuting like any sensible man, you'll see what I mean.'

I thought about it, silently.

'Exactly,' she said. 'In an office, you'd die.'

'And what's so safe about a knife in the sock?' I said. 'I was a jockey when we met. You knew what it entailed.'

'Not from the inside. Not all those terrible bruises, and no food and no drink, and no damned sex half the time.'

'Did he show you the knife, or did you just see it?'

'What does it matter?'

'Is he adolescent… or truly dangerous?'

'There you are,' she said. 'You'd prefer him dangerous.'

'Not for your sake.'

'Well… I saw it. In a little sheath, strapped to his leg. And he made a joke about it.'

'But you told me,' I said. 'So was it a warning?'

She seemed suddenly unsure and disconcerted, and after a moment or two simply frowned and walked away down the passage.

If it marked the first crack in her indulgence towards her precious Nicky, so much the better.

I picked Chico up on Tuesday morning and drove north to Newmarket. A windy day, bright, showery, rather cold. 'How did you get on with the wife, then?' He had met her once and had described her as unforgettable, the overtones in his voice giving the word several meanings.

'She's in trouble,' I said.

'Pregnant?'

'There are other forms of trouble, you know.'

'Really?'

I told him about the fraud, and about Ashe, and his knife.

'Gone and landed herself in a whoopsy,' Chico said.

'Face down.'

'And for dusting her off, do we get a fee?' I looked at him sideways. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I thought so. Working for nothing again, aren't we? Good job you're well-oiled, Sid, mate, when it comes to my wages. What is it this year? You made a fortune in anything since Christmas?'

'Silver, mostly. And cocoa. Bought and sold.'

'Cocoa?' He was incredulous.

'Beans,' I said. 'Chocolate.'

'Nutty bars?'

'No, not the nuts. They're risky.'

'I don't know how you find the time.'

'It takes as long as chatting up barmaids.'

'What do you want with all that money, anyway?'

'It's a habit,' I said. 'Like eating.'