‘How?’
‘Oh, by insults and...’ I stopped, concentrating back. ‘The first time I went with Billy, there was a very fat man called John. At least, that was what I was told he was called. He was absolutely useless. Didn’t know how to handle horses at all. We did two trips to France that day, and I think he wanted to vanish after the first. I saw him arguing furiously with Billy just before we came back the first time. But Billy made him do the double journey... and when he told me John had gone to Paris instead of coming back with us, he poured beer over my foot, so that I’d think about that, and not about John. And he made sure of it by picking a fight on the plane coming back...’
‘But who was this John?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘And were there others?’
‘Yes... we went to New York next, he and I. There was a groom travelling with a half-bred Norwegian horse. He hardly talked at all, said he didn’t speak English much. I understood he was staying in the States for a fortnight; but who knows if he came back? And on that trip Billy smashed a bar across my fingers so that they hurt all the way across, and I thought about them, not the Norwegian groom.’
‘Are you sure?’ She was frowning.
‘Oh yes, I’m sure. I thought once before that Billy had done it for a purpose. I just got the purpose wrong.’ I pondered. ‘There was a day we took a man with a large bushy moustache to France, and a fortnight later we brought a man with a large bushy moustache back again. I never looked beyond the moustache... I think it could have been two different men.’
‘What did Billy do, those times?’
‘On the way over he poured syrupy coffee on my head, and I spent nearly all the time in the washroom getting it out. And on the way back he hit me with a chain, and I went up into the galley all the way with the engineer to avoid any more.’
She looked at me very gravely. ‘Is that... is that the lot?’
I shook my head. ‘We went to New York last week. I told Yardman if Billy didn’t leave me alone I’d quit. The journey out went quite all right, but coming back... there was a man who was plainly not a horseman. He wasn’t even comfortable in the riding clothes he had on. I thought at the time he was the owner’s nephew or something, cadging a free ride, but again I didn’t talk to him much. I slept all the way back. All ten hours... I don’t usually get tired like that, but I thought it was only because it was my fourth Atlantic crossing in six days...’
‘A sleeping pill?’ she said slowly.
‘It might have been. Alf brought some coffee back for me soon after we left. There was a restive colt in the aft box and I was trying to soothe him... It could have been in that.’
‘Alf?’
‘An old deaf man, who always goes with Billy.’
‘Do you think it was a sleeping pill?’
‘It could... I was still tired long after I got home. I even went to sleep in the bath.’
‘It’s serious,’ she said.
‘Today,’ I said. ‘There’s a stranger with us today. His name is John too. I’ve never met him before, but there’s something about him... I was looking at him on the plane and wondering what it was, and Billy kicked me on the ankle. I kicked him back, but I went away, and stopped thinking about that man.’
‘Can you think now?’
‘Well... his hands are wrong for one thing. Stablemen’s hands are rough and chafed from being wet so often in cold weather, with washing tack and so on, but his are smooth, with well shaped nails.’
She picked up one of my hands and looked at it, running the tips of her fingers over the roughnesses which had developed since I left my desk job.
‘They are not like yours, then.’
‘Not like mine. But it’s his expression really. I watched him wake up. It was what came into his face with consciousness...’ I could remember that moment vividly, in spite of Billy’s kick. I knew that expression very well... so what was it? ‘Oh,’ I exclaimed in enlightenment, half laughing at my own stupidity, ‘I know what it is... he went to the same school as I did.’
‘You do know him then, I mean, you’ve seen him before, if you were at school together.’
‘Not together. He’s older. He must have left about five years before I went. No, I’ve never seen him before, but the look he has is typical of some of the boys there. Not the nicest ones... only the ones who think they are God’s gift to mankind and everyone else is a bit inferior. He’s one of those. Definitely not a groom. He looked as if wearing the grubby riding clothes he’s got on was a kick in the dignity.’
‘But you don’t wear riding clothes,’ she pointed out. ‘It isn’t necessary for him if he doesn’t like them.’
‘It is though. Alf wears jodhpurs, Billy wears jeans. The two grooms who travel turn about with these two, Timmie and Conker, they both wear breeches to work in. It’s a sort of badge of office... No one would think twice about a man arriving on a horse transport dressed in breeches or jodhpurs.’
‘No, I see that.’
‘No one bothers much about our passports,’ I said. ‘Look how simply I came out into Milan today, through the airport staff door. Hardly any airports, especially the very small ones, take much notice of you, if you work on aeroplanes. It’s dead easy just to walk off most airfields round at the loading bays without ever being challenged. The Americans are strictest, but even they are used to our comings and goings.’
‘But people do look at your passports sometimes, surely,’ she protested.
I produced mine, battered and dogeared in the last three months after several years of dark blue stiffness. ‘Look at it. It gets like that from always being in my pocket, but it doesn’t get stamped much.’ I turned through the pages. ‘American visa, certainly. But look, the only stamp from Milan is the time I came on a scheduled flight and went through immigration with the other passengers. Hardly a mark for France, and I’ve been over there several times... of course it gets looked at, but never very thoroughly. It must be easy to fake one in this condition, and even travelling without one wouldn’t be impossible. A pilot told me he’d done it for three weeks once, all over the world.’
‘People who work on aircraft would go mad if everyone started checking their passports thoroughly every time they walked in or out.’
‘Well... normally there’s no need for it. It isn’t all that easy to get on a single one way flight as a worker. Impossible, if you haven’t a strong pull somewhere or other. Just any odd person who fancies a quiet trip to foreign parts wouldn’t have a hope of getting himself into a horse transport. But if the transport agency itself, or someone working for it, is ready to export people illegally along with the horses, then it’s easy.’
‘But... what people?’
‘What indeed! Billy can hardly advertise his service in the daily press. But he has no shortage of customers.’
‘Crooks, do you think?’ Gabriella asked frowning.
I fingered the bank-note and twisted the small pieces of hay.
‘Hay,’ I said. ‘Why hay?’
Gabriella shrugged. ‘Perhaps he found the money in some hay.’
‘Of course!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’re dead right. Haynets. Carried openly on and off the planes and never searched by customs officers. Perhaps they’re transporting currency as well as men.’ I told her about Billy refilling the net for me on the trip over, and how astonished I had been.
‘But Henry darling, what I really do not understand is why you were not astonished all along at the unpleasant things Billy has been doing to you. I would have thought it utterly extraordinary, and I would have made a very big fuss about it.’ She looked solemn and doubtful.
‘Oh, I thought it was simply because I...’ I stopped.