Hm... F. Harold Field, who liked a flutter, decided to go.
Bill Williams, Dennis Kinser and F. Harold Field collided at Marlborough racecourse.
During the past week the August days had been edged out by the chill of early September dawns.
During that week Bill Williams wrote five opinion and comment pieces and sent them all to the prestigious London broadsheets that had published him pre- Voice. They were enthusiastic on the telephone, but no one needed an editor.
During that week Dennis Kinser finally received from the syndicate fixer one half-paid for but talented hurdler complete with an entry in the Kinser Cup. Dennis the ex-stable lad did know how to train horses and turn them out looking good. When the syndicate horse paraded before the Cup, its coat shone in the sun.
Dennis Kinser spent the rest of his week borrowing money and sucking the restaurant dry.
During that week F. Harold Field visited the Lionheart Group’s managers one by one and left a pro-Williams consensus in his wake. Russell Maudsley nodded. Mrs Robin Dawkins, still believing her colleagues intended a thumbs down, said contrarily, ‘I think you’re wrong to ditch him, Harold.’
Waving his conspicuous invitation, F. Harold made his way from his (chauffeur-driven) Daimler up to the large private box where Dennis Kinser, though now running on an empty gas tank, was trying to buy himself a glittering future by the widespread indiscriminate application of champagne.
Dennis Kinser, not knowing by sight half the free-loaders guzzling his bubbles, gave F. Harold a wide hello and with an extravagant gesture put an arm familiarly round his guest’s shoulders. A hard-headed businessman impervious to soft soap, oil and honey, F. Harold Field intensely disliked the too intimate unwanted pressure of the arm, but without shaking himself free he turned his well-groomed head to look Dennis Kinser in the eye and asked him straightly what Williams, the sometime editor of the Cotswold Voice, could possibly have done to be treated so insufferably by the management and staff of Mainstream Mile.
To F. Harold Field this was no idle question: he needed to know what would stir A. E. de V. Williams to clenched fists, and, beyond that, what would stop him from using them. F. Harold regularly judged people by their rages: sought the cause and watched the performance. When not overruled by Mrs Robin Dawkins (as he had been the last time they’d chosen an editor) F. Harold Field seldom made mistakes.
Dennis Kinser removed his arm from his guest’s shoulders with sick speed. All week he’d been unable to sleep or eat with physical ease. Each day he’d expected to hear the rattlesnake and be pierced by the fangs. But this, he thought in bewilderment, this solid grey-suited taxpayer didn’t match the racing-writer’s verbal identikit. This couldn’t be the lean mean man in the punt.
F. Harold Field flatly said, ‘As Williams’ guest I was treated like dirt, and I don’t know why. Give me a reason why all the papers and periodicals I co-own in the Lionheart Group shouldn’t blow your house down.’
‘But... b-but,’ Dennis Kinser stuttered, aghast at this new abyss, ‘he came in a boat.’
‘He... what?’
Dennis Kinser abruptly left-wheeled and crashed into the gentlemen’s retreat. He had taken days of drugs to control the bacteria in his gut, but nothing it seemed could anaesthetise the cataclysm he saw ahead.
F. Harold Field, still unsatisfied, went down (on the non-reappearance of his host) to watch the horses as they plodded round the parade ring. Dennis Kinser’s extravagant Cup lay two races ahead. F. Harold Field filled in time by winning modest third-place money on the Tote.
Bill (Absalom etc.) Williams drove to Marlborough races having read far too much all week about the Kinser glories. Kinser this and Kinser that... Kinser’s horses, Kinser the trainer, Kinser on the Thames. Every racing page seemed to have paid in advance for a free lunch. The Cotswold Voice published a sunny encouragement, but the racing writer himself lounged at home to tele-watch with a couple of cans.
On the basis of ‘know thine enemy’, Bill Williams went to Marlborough races to learn what Dennis Kinser looked like. He saw the ballyhoo but not the man himself, who remained in pain in the gents. Instead he came unexpectedly face to face with the Lionheart decision maker who had shaken his head as a death-toll over any dreams of Troubadour days.
F. Harold Field had expected more than silence from his Absalom Williams host. He’d seen the clenched fists. He now sought the cause bluntly.
‘Why did you want to hit that restaurant’s head waiter? And why didn’t you?’
Bill Williams explained, ‘He was insulting me on the management’s say so. You don’t shoot the messenger because of the message.’
He dug into a pocket and handed F. Harold a copy of the raging axe he’d taken on paper to Dennis Kinser. F. Harold Field glanced at it and started reading, eyebrows slowly rising towards hairline.
‘Don’t give that paper to anyone but Kinser,’ Bill Williams said. ‘I didn’t write it for publication.’
Dennis Kinser, looking pale, came down to the parade ring before the Kinser Cup and put on a bravado performance as owner, sponsor and general king, all designed to grab media attention. Side by side, Bill Williams and F. Harold Field watched from afar and felt nauseated.
Twenty minutes later their nausea increased geometrically, as the syndicate horse, hooves flying, won the Kinser Cup.
Dennis Kinser’s exultation and expanding arrogance filled the television screens of the nation. He announced he was the top trainer of the future and, inside, he believed it. Winning the race meant the exit of at least half of his money troubles, and surely, now, the rich and famous would flock to his stable.
It was while he preened himself in front of countless camera lenses that F. Harold Field gave him Bill Williams’ lightning bolt.
The applauding crowds faded away towards the next race. Success on racecourses was ephemeral.
Dennis Kinser stood reading the explosive page in his hand and he faced his two ill-treated customers feeling that although he’d won the world he was going to lose it. Lose it over a bloody punt. It wasn’t fair. He’d worked so hard...
In aggressive despair, he said bitterly to Absalom Elvis da Vinci Williams, ‘What will you take not to publish this article?’
‘Blackmail?’ Bill Williams asked, surprised.
Dennis Kinser stuttered. ‘Take the horse? Will that do you?’
‘It’s not yours to give,’ Bill Williams said.
‘What then? Money? Not the restaurant...’ Panic rose in his voice. ‘You can’t... you can’t do that...’
Bill Williams watched the real fear rising and thought it revenge enough.
‘I’ll take,’ he said slowly, ‘I’ll take an apology, and my money back... and a notice in your bar and printed on your menu saying that people on boats are welcome, especially if they have booked a table in advance.’
Dennis Kinser blinked, swallowed, wavered, clenched his teeth and finally nodded. He didn’t like it — he hated to be defeated — but compromise was better than destruction.
F. Harold Field stretched a hand forward, plucked the sheet of paper out of Dennis Kinser’s hands and tore it up.
He said to Bill Williams, ‘Come and see me in my office at the Troubadour on Monday.’
Nightmare
Nightmare was commissioned by The Times in April 1974. (Three thousand words, please.)
Nightmare, set loosely in horse country, USA, explains how to steal a valuable brood mare and her unborn foal.