I knocked on the back door, which stood half open, and called through a small lobby into the house, but there was no reply. A clock ticked with a loud cheap mechanism. A smell of wellington boots richly acquainted with cowpat vigorously assaulted the nose. Someone had dumped a parcel of meat on the edge of the kitchen table from which a thread of watery blood, having by-passed the newspaper wrapping, was making a small pink pool on the floor.
Turning away from the house I wandered across the untidy yard and peered into a couple of outbuildings. One contained a tractor covered with about six years’ mud. In another, a heap of dusty-looking coke rubbed shoulders with a jumbled stack of old broken crates and sawn up branches of trees. A larger shed housed dirt and cobwebs and nothing else.
While I hovered in the centre of the yard wondering how far it was polite to investigate, a large youth in a striped knitted cap with a scarlet pom-pom came round a corner at the far end. He also wore a vast sloppy pale blue sweater, and filthy jeans tucked into heavyweight gum boots. Fair haired, with a round weatherbeaten face, he looked cheerful and uncomplicated.
‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘You want something?’ His voice was light and pleasant, with a touch of local accent.
‘I’m looking for Mr Roncey.’
‘He’s round the roads with the horses. Better call back later.’
‘How long will he be?’
‘An hour, maybe,’ he shrugged.
‘I’ll wait, then, if you don’t mind,’ I said, gesturing towards my van.
‘Suit yourself.’
He took six steps towards the house and then stopped, turned round, and came back.
‘Hey, you wouldn’t be that chap who phoned?’
‘Which chap?’
‘James Tyrone?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well for crying out loud why didn’t you say so? I thought you were a traveller... come on into the house. Do you want some breakfast?’
‘Breakfast?’
He grinned. ‘Yeah. I know it’s nearly eleven. I get up before six. Feel peckish again by now.’
He led the way into the house through the back door, did nothing about the dripping meat, and added to the wellington smell by clumping across the floor to the furthest door, which he opened.
‘Ma?’ he shouted. ‘Ma.’
‘She’s around somewhere,’ he said, shrugging and coming back. ‘Never mind. Want some eggs?’
I said no, but when he reached out a half-acre frying pan and filled it with bacon I changed my mind.
‘Make the coffee,’ he said, pointing.
I found mugs, powdered coffee, sugar, milk, kettle and spoons all standing together on a bench alongside the sink.
‘My Ma,’ he explained grinning, ‘is a great one for the time and motion bit.’
He fried six eggs expertly and gave us three each, with a chunk of new white bread on the side.
We sat at the kitchen table, and I’d rarely tasted anything so good. He ate solidly and drank coffee, then pushed his plate away and lit a cigarette.
‘I’m Peter,’ he said. ‘It isn’t usually so quiet around here, but the kids are at school and Pat’s out with Pa.’
‘Pat?’
‘My brother. The jockey of the family. Point-to-points, mostly, though. I don’t suppose you would know of him?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘I read your column,’ he said. ‘Most weeks.’
‘That’s nice.’
He considered me, smoking, while I finished the eggs. ‘You don’t talk much, for a journalist.’
‘I listen,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘That’s a point.’
‘Tell me about Tiddely Pom, then.’
‘Hell, no. You’ll have to get Pa or Pat for that. They’re crazy on the horses. I just run the farm.’ He watched my face carefully, I guessed for surprise, since in spite of being almost my height he was still very young.
‘You’re sixteen?’ I suggested.
‘Yeah.’ He sniffed, disgusted. ‘Waste of effort, though, really.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Because of the bloody motorway, that’s why. They’ve nearly finished that bloody three lane monster and it passes just over there, the other side of our ten-acre field.’ He gestured towards the window with his cigarette. ‘Pa’s going raving mad wondering if Tiddely Pom’ll have a nervous breakdown when those heavy lorries start thundering past. He’s been trying to sell this place for two years, but no one will have it, and you can’t blame them, can you?’ Gloom settled on him temporarily. ‘Then, see, you never know when they’ll pinch more of our land, they’ve had fifty acres already, and it doesn’t give you much heart to keep the place right, does it?’
‘I guess not,’ I said.
‘They’ve talked about knocking our house down,’ he went on. ‘Something about it being in the perfect position for a service station with restaurants and a vast car park and another slip road to Bishops Stortford. The only person who’s pleased about the road is my brother Tony, and he wants to be a rally driver. He’s eleven. He’s a nut.’
There was a scrunch and clatter of hooves outside, coming nearer. Peter and I got to our feet and went out into the yard, and watched three horses plod up the bumpy gravel drive and rein to a halt in front of us. The rider of the leading horse slid off, handed his reins to the second, and came towards us. A trim wiry man in his forties with thick brown hair and a mustard coloured moustache.
‘Mr Tyrone?’
I nodded. He gave me a brisk hard handshake in harmony with his manner and voice and then stood back to allow me a clear view of the horses.
‘That’s Tiddely Pom, that bay.’ He pointed to the third horse, ridden by a young man very like Peter, though perhaps a size smaller. ‘And Pat, my son.’
‘A fine looking horse,’ I said insincerely. Most owners expected praise: but Tiddely Pom showed as much high quality to the naked eye as an uncut diamond. A common head, slightly U-necked on a weak shoulder, and herring gutted into the bargain. He looked just as uncouth at home as he did on a racecourse.
‘Huh,’ snorted Roncey. ‘He’s not. He’s a doer, not a looker. Don’t try and butter me up, I don’t take to it.’
‘Fair enough,’ I said mildly. ‘Then he’s got a common head and neck, a poor shoulder and doesn’t fill the eye behind the saddle either.’
‘That’s better. So you do know what you’re talking about. Walk him round the yard, Pat.’
Pat obliged. Tiddely Pom stumbled around with the floppy gait that once in a while denotes a champion. This horse, bred from a thoroughbred hunter mare by a premium stallion, was a spectacular jumper endowed with a speed to be found nowhere in his pedigree. When an ace of this sort turned up unexpectedly it took the owner almost as long as the public to realise it. The whole racing industry was unconsciously geared against belief that twenty-two carat stars could come from tiny owner-trained stables. It had taken Tiddely Pom three seasons to become known, where from a big fashionable public stable he would have been newsworthy in his first race.
‘When I bred him I was hoping for a point-to-point horse for the boys,’ Roncey said. ‘So we ran him all one season in point-to-points and apart from one time Pat fell off he didn’t get beat. Then last year we thought we would have a go in hunter chases as well, and he went and won the Foxhunters’ at Cheltenham.’
‘I remember that,’ I said.
‘Yes. So last year we tried him in open handicaps, smallish ones...’
‘And he won four out of six,’ I concluded for him.
‘It’s your job to know, I suppose. Pat,’ he shouted. ‘Put him back in his box.’ He turned to me again. ‘Like to see the others?’