‘Well...’ He hesitated, not relishing such a use of his spare time but realising that another horse for Angela meant more fees for himself. ‘All right, certainly I’ll come, Mrs Hart.’
‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring Clement straight away.’
‘Another horse?’ Clement said, surprised. ‘Yes, if you like, though it’s a bit late in the season. Why not wait—?’
No.’ Angela interrupted. ‘Dear Clement, I want him now.’
Clement Scott heard but couldn’t understand the urgency in her voice. Four days later, however, when she came to see her existing two horses work — having made sure beforehand that Derek would be there to ride them — he understood completely.
Fiftyish, matronly Angela couldn’t keep her eyes off Derek Roberts. She intently watched him come and go on horse and on foot, and scanned his face uninterruptedly while he spoke. She asked him questions to keep him near, and lost a good deal of animation when he went home.
Clement Scott, who had seen that sort of thing often enough before, behaved to her more flirtatiously than ever and kept his sardonic smile to himself. He had luckily heard of a third horse for her, he said, and would take her to see it.
‘Actually,’ Angela said diffidently, ‘I’ve already asked Derek to come with me... and he said he would.’
Clement, that evening, telephoned Derek.
‘Besotted with me?’ said Derek. ‘That’s bloody nonsense. I’ve been riding for her for more than a year. You can’t tell me I wouldn’t have noticed.’
‘Keep your eyes open, lad,’ Clement said. ‘I reckon she wants this other horse just to give her an excuse to see you more often; and that being so, lad, I’ve a little proposition for you.’
He outlined the little proposition at some length, and Derek discovered that his consideration of Mrs Hart’s best interests came a poor second to the prospects of a tax-free instant gain.
He drove to her house at Wentworth a few days later, and they went on together in her car, a Rover, with Derek driving. The horse belonged to a man in Yorkshire, which meant, Angela thought contentedly, that the trip would take all day.
She had rationalised her desire to own another horse as just an increase in her interest in racing, and also she had rationalised her eagerness for the Yorkshire journey as merely impatience to see what Clement had described as ‘an exciting bargain at twenty thousand, one to do you justice, my dear Angela.’
She could just afford it, she thought, if she didn’t go on a cruise this summer, and if she spent less on clothes. She did not at any point admit to herself that what she was buying at such cost was a few scattered hours out of Derek Roberts’ life.
Going north from Watford, he said: ‘Mrs Hart, did Mr Scott tell you much about this horse?’
‘He said you’d tell me. And call me Angela.’
‘Er...’ He cleared his throat. ‘Angela...’ He glanced at her as she sat beside him, plump and relaxed and happy. It couldn’t be true, he thought. People like Mrs Hart didn’t suffer from infatuations. She was far too old: fifty... an unimaginable age to him at twenty-four. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and felt ashamed (but only slightly) of what he was about to do.
‘Mr Scott thinks the horse has terrific potential. Only six years old. Won a hurdle race last year...’ He went on with the sales talk, skilfully weaving in the few actual facts which she could verify from form books if she wanted to, and putting a delicately rosy slant on everything else. ‘Of course, the frost and snow has kept him off the racecourse during the winter, but I’ll tell you, just between ourselves... er, Angela... that Mr Scott thinks he might even enter him for the Whitbread. He might even be in that class.’
Angela listened entranced. The Whitbread Gold Cup, scheduled for six weeks ahead, was the last big race of the jumping season. To have a horse fit to run in it, and to have Derek Roberts ride it, seemed to her a pinnacle in her racing life that she had never envisaged. Her horizons, her joy, expanded like flowers.
‘Oh, how lovely,’ she said ecstatically; and Derek Roberts (almost) winced.
‘Mr Scott wondered if you’d like me to do a bit of bargaining for you,’ he said. ‘To get the price down a bit.’
‘Dear Clement is so thoughtful.’ She gave Derek a slightly anxious smile. ‘Don’t bargain so hard I lose the horse, though, will you?’
He promised not to.
‘What is it called?’ she asked and he told her: ‘Magic’
Magic was stabled in the sort of yard which should have warned Angela to beware, but she’d heard often enough that in Ireland champions had been bought out of pigsties, and caution was nowhere in her mind. Dear Clement would naturally not buy her a bad horse, and with Derek himself with her to advise... She looked trustingly at the nondescript bay gelding produced for her inspection and saw only her dreams — not the mud underfoot, not the rotten wood round the stable doors, not the cracked leather of the horse’s tack.
She saw Magic being walked up and down the weedy stable-yard and she saw him being trotted a bit on a leading rein in a small dock-ridden paddock; and she didn’t see the dismay Derek couldn’t keep out of his face.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, her eyes still shining in spite of all.
‘Good strong shoulder,’ he said judiciously. ‘Needs a bit of feeding to improve his condition, perhaps.’
‘But do you like him?’
He nodded decisively. ‘Just the job.’
‘I’ll have him, then.’ She said it without the slightest hesitation and he stamped on the qualms which pricked like teeth.
She waited in the car while Derek bargained with Magic’s owner, watching the two men as they stood together in the stable-yard, shaking their heads, spreading their arms, shrugging, and starting again. Finally, to her relief, they touched hands on it, and Derek came to tell her that she could have the horse for nineteen thousand if she liked.
‘Think it over,’ he said, making it sound as if she needn’t.
She shook her head. ‘I’ve decided. I really have. Shall I give the man a cheque?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Mr Scott has to get a vet’s report, and fix up transport and insurance and so on. He’ll do all the paperwork and settle for the horse, and you can pay him for everything all at once. Much simpler.’
‘Darling Clement,’ she said warmly. ‘Always so sweet and thoughtful.’
Darling Clement entered Magic for the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown Park, and also for what he called a ‘warm-up’ race three weeks before the big event.
‘That will be at Stratford-upon-Avon,’ he told Angela. ‘In the Pragnell Cup, first week of April.’
‘How marvellous,’ Angela said enthusiastically.
She telephoned several times to Derek for long, cosy consultations about Magic’s prospects, and drank in his easy optimism like the word of God. Derek filled her thoughts from dawn to dusk: dear Derek, who was so brave and charming and kind.
Clement and Derek took Magic out on to the gallops at home and found the ‘exciting bargain’ unwilling to keep up with any other horse in the stable. Magic waved his tail about and kicked up his heels and gave every sign of extreme bad temper. Both Clement and Derek, however, reported to a delighted Angela that Magic was a perfect gentleman and going well.
When Angela turned up by arrangement at ten one morning to watch Magic work, he had been sent out by mistake with the first lot at seven, and was consequently resting. Her disappointment was mild, though, because Derek was there, not riding but accompanying her on foot, full of smiles and gaiety and friendship. She loved it. She trusted him absolutely, and she showed it.
‘Well done, lad,’ Clement said gratefully, as she drove away later. ‘With you around, our Angela wouldn’t notice an earthquake.’