‘Your father’s in his eighties, isn’t he?’ Simon said thoughtfully.
I nodded.
‘And do you think that when he dies you will be allowed to go on carting horses round the world? And for how long could you do it without becoming an eccentric nut? Like it or not, Henry, it’s easy enough to go up the social scale, but damn difficult to go down. And still be respected, that is.’
‘And I could be respected sitting behind a desk at Anglia, transferring horses from owner to owner on paper, but not if I move about and do it on aeroplanes?’
He laughed. ‘Exactly.’
‘The world is mad,’ I said.
‘You’re a romantic. But time will cure that.’ He looked at me in a large tolerant friendship, finished his beer, and flowed down from the stool like a green corduroy amoeba.
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘there’s time for another along the road at the Saracen’s Head.’
At Newbury Races the following afternoon I watched five races from the stands and rode in one.
This inactivity was not mine by choice, but thrust upon me by the Stewards. They had, by the time I was twenty, presented me with their usual ultimatum to regular amateur riders: either turn professional, or ride in only fifty open races each season. In other words, don’t undercut the trade: stop taking the bread and butter out of the professionals’ mouths. (As if jockeys ate much bread and butter, to start with.)
I hadn’t turned professional when I was twenty because I had been both too conventional and not really good enough. I was still not good enough to be a top rank professional, but I had long been a fully employed amateur. A big fish in a small pond. In the new-found freedom of my Yardman’s job I regretted that I hadn’t been bolder at twenty. I liked steeplechasing enormously, and with full-time professional application I might just have made a decent success. Earth-bound on the stands at Newbury I painfully accepted that my sister had brought me to my senses a lot too late.
The one horse I did ride was in the ‘amateurs only’ race. As there were no restrictions on the number of amateur events I could ride in, few were run without me. I rode regularly for many owners who grudged paying professional jockeys’ fees, for some who reckoned their horses stood more chance in amateur races, and for a few who genuinely liked my work.
All of them knew very well that if I won either amateur or open races I expected ten per cent of the prize. The word had got around. Henry Grey rode for money, not love. Henry Grey was the shamateur to end all shamateurs. Because I was silent and discreet and they could trust my tongue, I had even been given cash presents by stewards: and solely because my father was the Earl of Creggan, my amateur permit survived.
In the changing room that afternoon I found that however different I might feel, I could not alter my long set pattern. The easy bantering chat flowed round me and as usual it was impossible to join in. No one expected me to. They were used to me. Half of them took my aloofness to be arrogant snobbery, and the rest shrugged it off as ‘just Henry’s way.’ No one was actively hostile, and it was I, I, who had failed to belong. I changed slowly into my racing clothes and listened to the jokes and the warm earthy language, and I could think of nothing, not one single thing, to say.
I won the race. The well pleased owner gave me a public clap on the shoulder and a drink in the members’ bar, and surreptitiously, round a private corner, forty pounds.
On the following day, Sunday, I spent the lot.
I started my little Herald in the garage in the pre-dawn dark, and as quietly as possible opened the doors and drifted away down the drive. Mother had invited yet another well-heeled presumptive virgin for the week-end, together with her slightly forbidding. Parents, and having dutifully escorted them all to Newbury Races the day before and tipped them a winner — my own — I felt I had done quite enough. They would be gone, I thought coolly, before I got back late that evening, and with a bit of luck my bad manners in disappearing would have discouraged them for ever.
A steady two and a half hours driving northwards found me at shortly before ten o’clock turning in through some inconspicuously signposted gates in Lincolnshire. I parked the car at the end of the row of others, climbed out, stretched, and looked up into the sky. It was a cold clear morning with maximum visibility. Not a cloud in sight. Smiling contentedly I strolled over to the row of white painted buildings and pushed open the glass door into the main hall of the Fenland Flying Club.
The hall was a big room with several passages leading off it and a double door on the far side opening to the airfield itself. Round the walls hung framed charts, Air Ministry regulations, a large map of the surrounding area, do’s and don’ts for visiting pilots, a thumb-tacked weather report and a list of people wanting to enter for a ping-pong tournament. There were several small wooden tables and hard chairs at one end, half occupied, and across the whole width of the other end stretched the reception-cum-operations-cum-everything else desk. Yawning behind it and scratching between his shoulder blades stood a plump sleepy man of about my own age, sporting a thick sloppy sweater and a fair sized hangover. He held a cup of strong coffee and a cigarette in his free hand, and he was talking lethargically to a gay young spark who had turned up with a girl-friend he wanted to impress.
‘I’ve told you, old chap, you should have given us a ring. All the planes are booked today. I’m sorry, no can do. You can hang about if you like, in case someone doesn’t turn up...’
He turned towards me, casually.
‘Morning, Harry,’ he said. ‘How’s things?’
‘Very O.K.,’ I said. ‘And you?’
‘Ouch,’ he grinned, ‘don’t cut me. The gin would run out.’ He turned round and consulted the vast timetable charts covering most of the wall behind him. ‘You’ve got Kilo November today, it’s out by the petrol pumps, I think. Cross country again; is that right?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I nodded.
‘Nice day for it.’ He put a tick on his chart where it said H. Grey, solo cross.
‘Couldn’t be better.’
The girl said moodily, ‘How about this afternoon, then?’
‘No dice. All booked. And it gets dark so early... there’ll be plenty of planes tomorrow.’
I strolled away, out of the door to the airfield and round to the petrol pumps.
There were six single engined aircraft lined up there in two rows of three, with a tall man in white overalls filling one up through the opening on the upper surface of the port wing. He waved when he saw me coming, and grinned.
‘Just doing yours next, Harry. The boys have tuned her up special. They say you couldn’t have done it better yourself.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ I said smiling.
He screwed on the cap and jumped down.
‘Lovely day,’ he said, looking up. There were already two little planes in the air, and four more stood ready in front of the control tower. ‘Going far?’ he asked.
‘Scotland,’ I said.
‘That’s cheating.’ He swung the hose away and began to drag it along to the next aircraft. ‘The navigation’s too easy. You only have to go west till you hit the A.1 and then fly up it.’
‘I’m going to Islay,’ I smiled. ‘No roads, I promise.’
‘Islay. That’s different.’
‘I’ll land there for lunch and bring you back a bit of heather.’