‘Why, for God’s sake?’ he said, looking me up and down. A more thorough contrast than me in my charcoal worsted to him in his baggy green corduroys would have been hard to find.
‘I need a change.’
‘For the worse?’ He was sardonic.
‘Of course not. And I’d like the chance of a bit of globe-trotting now and then.’
‘You can afford to do that in comfort. You don’t have to do it on a horse transport.’
Like so many other people, he took it for granted that I had money. I hadn’t. I had only my salary from Anglia, and what I could earn by being frankly, almost notoriously, a shamateur jockey. Every penny I got was earmarked. From my father I took only my food and the beetle-infested roof over my head, and neither expected nor asked for anything else.
‘I imagine I would like a horse transport,’ I said equably. ‘What are the chances?’
‘Oh,’ Simon laughed. ‘You’ve only to ask. I can’t see him turning you down.’
But Yardman very nearly did turn me down, because he couldn’t believe I really meant it.
‘My dear boy, now think carefully, I do beg you. Anglia Bloodstock is surely a better place for you? However well you might do here, there isn’t any power or any prestige... We must face facts, we must indeed.’
‘I don’t particularly care for power and prestige.’
He sighed deeply. ‘There speaks one to whom they come by birth. Others of us are not so fortunate as to be able to despise them.’
‘I don’t despise them. Also I don’t want them. Or not yet.’
He lit a dark cigar with slow care. I watched him, taking him in. I hadn’t met him before, and as he came from a different mould from the top men at Anglia I found that I didn’t instinctively know how his mind worked. After years of being employed by people of my own sort of background, where much that was understood never needed to be stated, Yardman was a foreign country.
He was being heavily paternal, which somehow came oddly from a thin man. He wore black-rimmed spectacles on a strong beaky nose. His cheeks were hollowed, and his mouth in consequence seemed to have to stretch to cover his teeth and gums. His lips curved downwards strongly at the corners, giving him at times a disagreeable and at times a sad expression. He was bald on the crown of his head, which was not noticeable at first sight, and his skin looked unhealthy. But his voice and his fingers were strong, and as I grew to acknowledge, his will and character also.
He puffed slowly at the cigar, a slim fierce looking thing with an aroma to match. From behind the glasses his eyes considered me without haste. I hadn’t a clue as to what he was thinking.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll take you on as an assistant to Searle, and we’ll see how it goes.’
‘Well... thank you,’ I answered. ‘But what I really came to ask for was Peters’s job.’
‘Peters’s...’ His mouth literally fell open, revealing a bottom row of regular false teeth. He shut it with a snap. ‘Don’t be silly, my boy. You can’t have Peters’s job.’
‘Searle says he has left.’
‘I dare say, but that’s not the point, is it?’
I said calmly, ‘I’ve been in the Transport Section of Anglia for more than five years, so I know all the technical side of it, and I’ve ridden horses all my life, so I know how to look after them. I agree that I haven’t any practical experience, but I could learn very quickly.’
‘Lord Grey,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t think you realise just what Peters’s job was.’
‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘He travelled on the planes with the horses and saw they arrived safely and well. He saw that they passed the Customs all right at both ends and that the correct people collected them, and where necessary saw that another load of horses was brought safely back again. It is a responsible job and it entails a lot of travelling and I am seriously applying for it.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said with some impatience. ‘Peters was a travelling head groom.’
‘I know.’
He smoked, inscrutable. Three puffs. I waited, quiet and still.
‘You’re not... er... in any trouble, at Anglia?’
‘No. I’ve grown tired of a desk job, that’s all.’ I had been tired of it from the day I started, to be exact.
‘How about racing?’
‘I have Saturdays off at Anglia, and I take my three weeks annual holiday in separate days during the winter and spring. And they have been very considerate about extra half-days.’
‘Worth it to them in terms of trade, I dare say.’ He tapped off the ash absentmindedly into the inkwell. ‘Are you thinking of giving it up?’
‘No.’
‘Mm... if you work for me, would I get any increase in business from your racing connections?’
‘I’d see you did,’ I said.
He turned his head away and looked out of the window. The river tide was sluggishly at the ebb, and away over on the other side a row of cranes stood like red meccano toys in the beginnings of dusk. I couldn’t even guess then at the calculations clicking away at high speed in Yardman’s nimble brain, though I’ve often thought about those few minutes since.
‘I think you are being unwise, my dear boy. Youth... youth...’ He sighed, straightened his shoulders and turned the beaky nose back in my direction. His shadowed greenish eyes regarded me steadily from deep sockets, and he told me what Peters had been earning; fifteen pounds a trip plus three pounds expenses for each overnight stop. He clearly thought that that would deter me; and it nearly did.
‘How many trips a week?’ I asked, frowning.
‘It depends on the time of year. You know that, of course. After the yearling sales, and when the brood mares come over, it might be three trips. To France, perhaps even four. Usually two, sometimes none.’
There was a pause. We looked at each other. I learned nothing.
‘All right,’ I said abruptly. ‘Can I have the job?’
His lips twisted in a curious expression which I later came to recognise as an ironic smile.
‘You can try it,’ he said. ‘If you like.’
Chapter Two
A job is what you make it. Three weeks later, after Christmas, I flew to Buenos Aires with twelve yearlings, the four from Anglia and eight more from different bloodstock agencies, all mustered together at five o’clock on a cold Tuesday morning at Gatwick. Simon Searle had organised their arrival and booked their passage with a charter company; I took charge of them when they unloaded from their various horseboxes, installed them in the plane, checked their papers through the Customs, and presently flew away.
With me went two of Yardman’s travelling grooms, both of them fiercely resenting that I had been given Peters’s job over their heads. Each of them had coveted the promotion, and in terms of human relationships the trip was a frost-bitten failure. Otherwise, it went well enough. We arrived in Argentina four hours late, but the new owners’ horseboxes had all turned up to collect the cargo. Again I cleared the horses and papers through the Customs, and made sure that each of the five new owners had got the right horses and the certificates to go with them. The following day the plane picked up a load of crated furs for the return journey, and we flew back to Gatwick, arriving on Friday.
On Saturday I had a fall and a winner at Sandown Races, Sunday I spent in my usual way, and Monday I flew with some circus ponies to Germany. After a fortnight of it I was dying from exhaustion; after a month I was acclimatised. My body got used to long hours, irregular food, non-stop coffee, and sleeping sitting upright on bales of hay ten thousand feet up in the sky. The two grooms, Timmie and Conker, gradually got over the worst of their anger, and we developed into a quick, efficient, laconic team.