Derek, watching her go, felt remorse and regret. It was hardly fair, he thought. She was a nice old duck really. She’d done no one any harm. He belatedly began not to like himself.
They went to Stratford races all hoping for different things: Derek that Magic would at least get round, Angela that her horse would win, and Clement that he wouldn’t stop dead in the first furlong.
Three miles. Fast track. Firm ground. Eighteen fences.
Angela’s heart was beating with a throb she could feel as Magic, to the relief of both men, deigned to set off in the normal way from the start, and consented thereafter to gallop along steadily among the rear half of the field. After nearly two miles of this mediocrity both men relaxed and knew that when Magic ran out of puff and pulled up, as he was bound to do soon, they could explain to Angela that ‘he had needed the race’, and ‘he’ll be tuned up nicely for the Whitbread’, and she would believe it.
A mile from home, from unconscious habit, Derek gave Magic the speeding-up signs of squeezing with his legs and clicking his tongue and flicking the reins. Magic unexpectedly plunged towards the next fence, misjudged his distance, took off too soon, hit the birch hard, and landed in a heap on the ground.
The horse got to his feet and nonchalantly cantered away. The jockey lay still and flat.
‘Derek!’ cried Angela, agonised.
‘Bloody fool,’ Clement said furiously, bustling down from the stands. ‘Got him unbalanced.’
In a turmoil of anxiety, Angela watched through her binoculars as the motionless Derek was loaded slowly onto a stretcher and carried to an ambulance; and then she walked jerkily round to the first-aid room to await his return.
I should never have bought the horse, she thought in anguish. If I hadn’t bought the horse, Derek wouldn’t be... might not be...
He was alive. She saw his hands move as soon as the blue-uniformed men opened the ambulance doors. Her relief was almost as shattering as her fear. She felt faint.
Derek Roberts had broken his leg and was in no mood to worry about Angela’s feelings. He knew she was there because she made little fluttery efforts to reach his side — efforts constantly thwarted by the stretcher-bearers easing him out — saying to him over and over, ‘Derek, oh, Derek are you all right?’
Derek didn’t answer. His attention was on his leg, which hurt, and on getting into the first-aid-room without being bumped. There was always a ghoulish crowd round the door pressing forward to look. He stared up at the faces peering down and hated their probing interest. It was a relief to him, as always on those occasions, when they carried him through the door and shut out the ranks of eyes.
Inside, waiting for the doctor and lying on a bed, he reflected gloomily that his present spot of trouble served him right.
Outside, Angela wandered aimlessly about. She thought that she ought to worry about the horse, but she couldn’t; she had room in her mind only for Derek.
‘Never mind, missus,’ a voice said cheerfully. ‘Yon Magic is all right. Cantering round the middle there and giving them the devil’s own job of catching him. Don’t you fret none.’
Startled, she looked at the sturdy man with the broad Yorkshire accent who stood confidently in her way.
‘Came from my brother, did that horse,’ he said. ‘I’m down here special, like, to see him run.’
‘Oh,’ said Angela vaguely.
‘Is the lad all right? The one who rode him?’
‘I think he’s broken his leg.’
‘Dear, oh dear. Bit of hard luck, that. He drove a hard bargain with my brother, did that lad.’
‘Did he?’
‘Aye. My brother said Magic was a flier, but your lad, he wouldn’t have it, said the horse hadn’t any form to speak of, anc looked proper useless to him. My brother was asking seven thousand for it, but your lad beat him down to five. I came here, see. to learn which was right.’ He beamed with goodwill. ‘Tell you the truth, the horse didn’t run up to much, did it? Reckon your lad was right. But don’t you fret, missus, there’ll be another day.’
He gave her a nod and a final beam, and moved away. Angela felt breathless, as if he had punched her.
Already near the exit gate, she turned blindly and walked out through it, her legs taking her automatically towards her car. Shaking, she sat in the driving seat, and with a feeling of unreality drove all of the hundred miles home. ‘The man must have got it wrong,’ she thought. ‘Not seven and five thousand, but twenty and nineteen.’ When she reached her house she looked up the address of Magic’s previous owner and telephoned.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Five thousand, that’s right.’ The broad Yorkshire voice floated cheerfully across the counties. ‘Charged you a bit more, did they?’ He chuckled. ‘Couple of hundred, maybe? You can’t grudge them that, missus. Got to have their commission, like. It’s the way of the world.’
She put down the receiver, and sat on her lonely sofa, and stared into space. She understood for the first time that what she had felt for Derek was love. She understood that Clement and Derek must have seen it in her weeks ago, and because of it had exploited and manipulated her in a way that was almost as callous as rape.
All the affection she had poured out towards them, all the joy and fond thoughts and happiness... they had taken them and used them and hadn’t cared for her a bit. ‘They don’t even like me,’ she thought. ‘Derek doesn’t even like me.’
The pain of his rejection filled her with a depth of misery she had never felt before. How could she, she wondered wretchedly, have been so stupid, so blind, so pathetically immature.
She walked after a while through the big house, which was so quiet now that Edward wasn’t there to fuss, and went into the kitchen. She started to make herself a cup of tea, and wept.
Within a week she visited Derek in hospital. He lay halfway down a long ward with his leg in traction, and for an instant he looked like a stranger: a thin young man with his head back on the pillows and his eyes closed. A strong young man no longer, she thought. More like a sick child.
That, too, was an illusion.
He heard her arrive at his bedside and opened his eyes, and because he was totally unprepared to find her there she saw quite clearly the embarrassment which flooded through him. He swallowed, and bit his lip; and then he smiled. It was the same smile as before, the outward face of treason. Angela felt slightly sick.
She drew up a chair and sat by his bed. ‘Derek,’ she said, ‘I’ve come to congratulate you.’
He was bewildered. ‘Whatever for?’
‘On your capital gain: the difference between five thousand and nineteen.’
His smile vanished and he looked away from her. He felt trapped and angry and ashamed, and he wished above all things that she would go away.
‘How much of it,’ Angela said slowly, ‘was your share, and how much was Clement’s?’
There was a stretching silence of more than a minute. Then he said, ‘Half and half.’
‘Thank you,’ Angela said. She got to her feet, pushing back the chair. ‘That’s all, then. I just wanted to hear you admit it.’
And to find out for sure, she thought, that she was cured; that the fever no longer ran in her blood; that she could look at him and not care any more — and she could.
‘All?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘What you did wasn’t illegal, just... well, horrid. I should have been more businesslike.’ She took a step away. ‘Goodbye, Derek.’
She’d gone several more steps before he called after her, suddenly, ‘Angela... Mrs Hart.’
She paused and came halfway back.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Please listen. Just for a moment.’