I put down the half-finished tea and stood up. ‘Must be getting back, Norton. Thank you again for your help.’
‘Anything to prevent another Brevity.’
‘Send the accounts to the Blaze.’
He nodded. ‘And ring the sports desk every day to give a report, and don’t speak to anyone except you or Derry Clark or a man called Luke-John Morton. Right?’
‘Absolutely right,’ I agreed. ‘Oh... and here are Victor Roncey’s notes. Eggs and beer in Tiddely Pom’s food every night.’
‘I’ve one owner,’ Norton said, ‘who sends his horse champagne.’
I drove the trailer back to the city editor’s house, swapped it for my van, and went home. Ten to seven on the clock. Mrs. Woodward was having a grand week for overtime and had cooked chicken à la king for our supper, leaving it ready and hot. I thanked her. ‘Not at all, Mr. Tyrone, a pleasure I’m sure. Ta ta, luv, see you tomorrow, I’ll bring my things for stopping the night.’
I kissed Elizabeth, poured the drinks, ate the chicken, watched a TV programme, and let a little of the day’s tension trickle away. After supper there was my Sunday article to write. Enthusiasm for the project: way below zero. I went into the writing room determined to put together a calm played-down sequel to the previous week, with a sober let’s-not-rush-our-fences approach. Somewhere along the line most of these good intentions vanished. Neither Charlie Boston nor the foreign gent in the Rolls was going to like the result.
Before setting off to the office in the morning I packed an overnight bag, with Elizabeth reminding me to take my alarm clock and a clean shirt.
‘I hate it when you go away,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t go often, probably not nearly as much as you ought to. I know you try not to get the far away meetings... Derry nearly always does them, and I feel so guilty because his wife has those tiny children to look after all alone...’
‘Stop worrying,’ I said, smiling. ‘Derry likes to go.’ I had almost convinced myself that I really was taking the afternoon train to Newcastle. Gail was hours away, unreal. I kissed Elizabeth’s cheek three times and dearly regretted leaving her. Yet I left.
Luke-John and Derry were both out of the office when I arrived. Luke-John’s secretary handed me a large envelope which she said had come for me by hand just after I left on Wednesday. I opened it. The galley-proofs of my Tally article: please would I read and O.K. immediately.
‘Tally telephoned for you twice yesterday,’ Luke-John’s secretary said. ‘They go to press today. They wanted you urgently.’
I read the article. Arnold Shankerton had changed it about here and there and had stamped his own slightly pedantic views of grammar all over it. I sighed. I didn’t like the changes, but a hundred and fifty guineas plus expenses softened the impact.
Arnold Shankerton said in his perfectly modulated tenor, with a mixture of annoyance and apology, ‘I’m afraid we’ve had to go ahead and print, as we hadn’t heard from you.’
‘My fault. I’ve only just picked up your letter.’
‘I see. Well, after I’d worked on it a little I think it reads very well, don’t you? We’re quite pleased with it. We think it will be a success with our readers. They like that sort of intimate human touch.’
‘I’m glad,’ I said politely. ‘Will you send me a copy?’
‘I’ll make a note of it,’ he said suavely. I thought I would probably have to buy one on a bookstall. ‘Let me have your expenses. Small, I hope?’
‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Tiny.’
Luke-John and Derry came back as I disconnected and Luke-John, without bothering to say good morning, stretched out a hand for my Sunday offering. I took it out of my pocket and he unfolded it and read it.
‘Hmph,’ he said. ‘I expected a bit more bite.’
Derry took one of the carbon copies from me and read it.
‘Any more bite and he’d have chewed up the whole page,’ he said, disagreeing.
‘Couldn’t you emphasize a bit more that only the Blaze knows where Tiddely Pom is?’ Luke-John said. ‘You’ve only implied it.’
‘If you think so.’
‘Yes, I do think so. As the Blaze is footing the bills we want all the credit we can get.’
‘Suppose someone finds him... Tiddely Pom?’ I asked mildly. ‘Then we’d look right nanas, hiding him, boasting about it, and then having him found.’
‘No one will find him. The only people who know where he is are us three and Norton Fox. To be more precise, only you and Fox know exactly where he is. Only you and Fox know which in that yard full of sixty horses is Tiddely Pom. Neither of you is going to tell anyone else. So how is anyone going to find him? No, no, Ty. You make that article absolutely definite. The Blaze is keeping the horse safe, and only the Blaze knows where he is.’
‘Charlie Boston may not like it,’ Derry observed to no one in particular.
‘Charlie Boston can stuff it,’ Luke-John said impatiently.
‘I meant,’ Derry explained, ‘that he might just send his thug-uglies to take Ty apart for so obviously ignoring their keep-off-the-grass.’
My pal. Luke-John considered the possibility for two full seconds before shaking his head. ‘They wouldn’t dare.’
‘And even if they did,’ I said, ‘it would make a good story and you could sell more papers.’
‘Exactly.’ Luke-John started nodding and then looked at me suspiciously. ‘That was a joke?’
‘A feeble one.’ I sighed, past smiling.
‘Change the intro, then, Ty. Make it one hundred per cent specific. He picked up a pencil and put a line through the first paragraph. Read the next, rubbed his larynx thoughtfully, let that one stand. Axed the next. Turned the page.
Derry watched sympathetically as the pencil marks grew. It happened to him, too, often enough. Luke-John scribbled his way through to the end and then returned to the beginning, pointing out each alteration that he wanted made. He was turning my moderately hard hitting original into a bulldozing battering ram.
‘You’ll get me slaughtered,’ I said, and I meant it.
I worked on the rewrite most of the morning, fighting a rearguard action all the way. What Luke-John finally passed was a compromise between his view and mine, but still left me so far out on a limb as to be balancing on twigs. Luke-John took it in to the Editor, stayed there while he read it, and brought it triumphantly back.
‘He liked it. Thinks it’s great stuff. He liked Derry’s piece yesterday too, summing up the handicap. He told me the sports desk is a big asset to the paper.’
‘Good,’ Derry said cheerfully. ‘When do we get our next raise?’
‘Time for a jar at the Devereux,’ Luke-John suggested, looking at his watch. ‘Coming today, Ty?’
‘Norton Fox hasn’t rung through yet.’
‘Call him then.’
I telephoned to Fox. Tiddely Pom was fine, ate his feed the previous evening, had settled in well, had done a mile at a working canter that morning, and no one had looked at him twice. I thanked him and relayed the news to Roncey, who sounded both agitated and depressed.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said several times.
‘Do you want to risk having him at home?’
He hesitated, then said, ‘I suppose not. No. But I don’t like it. Don’t forget to ring tomorrow evening, I’ll be at Kempton races all afternoon.’
‘The Sports Editor will ring,’ I assured him. ‘And don’t worry.’
He put the receiver down saying an explosive ‘Huh.’ Luke-John and Derry were already on the way to the door and I joined them to go to lunch.