‘Of course... but also via the Blaze. Because he won’t know where you are.’
They both protested, but in the end saw the sense of it. What he didn’t know, he couldn’t give away, even by accident.
‘It won’t only be people working the racket who might be looking for them,’ I explained apologetically. ‘But one or two of our rival newspapers will be hunting for them, so as to be able to black the Blaze’s eye. And they are quite skilled at finding people who want to stay hidden.’
I left the Ronceys looking blankly at each other and drove the van back to London. It seemed a very long way, and too many aches redeveloped on the journey. I’d finished Tonio’s mixture just before going into the office in the morning and was back on Elizabeth’s pills, which were not as good. By the time I got home I was tired, thirsty, hurting and apprehensive.
Dealt with the first three: arm-chair and whisky. Contemplated the apprehension, and didn’t know which would be worse, another encounter with the Boston boys or a complete failure with Tiddely Pom. It would likely be one or the other. Could even be both.
‘What’s the matter, Ty?’ Elizabeth looked and sounded worried.
‘Nothing.’ I smiled at her. ‘Nothing at all, honey.’
The anxious lines relaxed in her face as she smiled back. The pump hummed and thudded, pulling air into her lungs. My poor, poor Elizabeth. I stretched my hand over and touched her cheek in affection, and she turned her head and kissed my fingers.
‘You’re a fantastic man, Ty,’ she said. She said something like it at least twice a week. I twitched my nose and made the usual sort of answer, ‘You’re not so bad yourself.’ The disaster that a virus had made of our lives never got any better. Never would. For her it was total and absolute: for me there were exits, like Gail. When I took them, the guilt I felt was not just the ordinary guilt of an unfaithful husband, but that of a deserter. Elizabeth couldn’t leave the battlefield: but when it got too much for me, I just slid out and left her.
At nine o’clock the next morning Derry Clark collected Madge and the three Roncey boys in his own Austin and drove them down to Portsmouth and straight on to the Isle of Wight car ferry.
At noon I arrived at the farm with a car and Rice trailer borrowed from the city editor, whose daughters went in for show jumping. Roncey showed great reluctance at parting with Tiddely Pom, and loaded the second stall of the trailer with sacks of feed and bales of hay, adding to these the horse’s saddle and bridle, and also three dozen eggs and a crate of beer. He had written out the diet and training regime in four page detail scattered with emphatic underlinings. I assured him six times that I would see the new trainer followed the instructions to the last full stop.
Pat helped with the loading with a twisting smile, not unhappy that his father was losing control of the horse. He gave me a quick look full of ironic meaning when he saw me watching him, and said under his breath as he humped past with some hay, ‘Now he knows what it feels like.’
I left Victor Roncey standing disconsolately in the centre of his untidy farmyard watching his one treasure depart, and drove carefully away along the Essex lanes, heading west to Berkshire. About five miles down the road I stopped near a telephone box and rang up the Western School of Art.
Gail said ‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘How about Sunday?’
‘Um.’ She hesitated. ‘How about tomorrow?’
‘Won’t you be teaching?’
‘I meant,’ she explained, ‘tomorrow night.’
‘Tomorrow... all night?’
‘Can you manage it?’
I took so deep a breath that my sore ribs jumped. It depended on whether Mrs Woodward could stay, as she sometimes did.
‘Ty?’ she said. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘What to tell my wife.’
‘You slay me,’ she said. ‘Is it yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Where?’
‘A hotel, I should think.’
‘All right,’ I agreed. I asked her what time she finished work, and arranged a meeting point at King’s Cross railway station.
When I called the flat, Elizabeth answered.
‘Ty! Where are you?’
‘On the road. There’s nothing wrong. It’s just that I forgot to ask Mrs Woodward before I left if she could stay with you tomorrow night... so that I could go up to Newcastle ready for the races on Saturday.’ Louse, I thought. Mean, stinking louse. Lying, deceiving louse. I listened miserably to the sounds of Elizabeth asking Mrs Woodward and found no relief at all in her answer.
‘She says yes, Ty, she could manage that perfectly. You’ll be home again on Saturday?’
‘Yes, honey. Late, though.’
‘Of course.’
‘See you this evening.’
‘Bye, Ty,’ she said with a smile in her voice. ‘See you.’
I drove all the way to Norton Fox’s stable wishing I hadn’t done it. Knowing that I wouldn’t change it. Round and round the mulberry bush and a thumping headache by Berkshire.
Norton Fox looked curiously into the trailer parked in the private front drive of his house.
‘So that’s the great Tiddely Pom. Can’t say I think much of him from this angle.’
‘Nor from any other,’ I agreed. ‘It’s good of you to have him.’
‘Happy to oblige. I’m putting him in the box next to Zig Zag, and Sandy Willis can look after both of them.’
‘You won’t tell her what he is?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Of course not.’ He looked resigned at my stupidity. ‘I’ve recently bought a chaser over in Kent... I’ve just postponed collecting it a while, but Sandy and all the other lads think Tiddely Pom is him.’
‘Great.’
‘I’ll just get my head lad to drive the trailer into the yard and unload. You said on the phone that you wanted to stay out of sight... come inside for a cuppa.’
Too late, after I’d nodded, I remembered the near black tea of my former visit. The same again. Norton remarked that his housekeeper had been economising, he never could get her to make it strong enough.
‘Did the Tally photographer get here all right?’ I asked as he came in from the yard, filled his cup, and sat down opposite me.
He nodded. ‘Took dozens of pics of Sandy Willis and thrilled her to bits.’ He offered me a slice of dry looking fruit cake and when I said no, ate a large chunk himself, undeterred. ‘That article of yours last Sunday,’ he said past the currants, ‘that must have been a bombshell in certain quarters.’
I said, ‘Mm, I hope so.’
‘Brevity... that Champion Hurdler of mine... that was definitely one of the non-starters you were talking about, wasn’t it? Even though you didn’t mention it explicitly by name?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘Ty, did you find out why Dembley struck his horse out, and then sold out of racing altogether?’
‘I can’t tell you why, Norton,’ I said.
He considered this answer with his head on one side and then nodded as if satisfied. ‘Tell me one day, then.’
I smiled briefly. ‘When and if the racket is extinct.’
‘You go on the way you are, and it will be. If you go on exposing it publicly, the ante-post market will be so untrustworthy that we’ll find ourselves doing as the Americans do, only betting on a race on the day of the race, and never before. They don’t have any off-the-course betting at all, over there, do they?’
‘Not legally.’
He drank in big gulps down to the tea leaves. ‘Might shoot our attendances up if punters had to go to the races to have a bet.’
‘Which would shoot up the prize money too... did you see that their champion jockey earned well over three million dollars last year? Enough to make Gordon Richards weep.’