I told Allie and the Barbos I would be back in a minute and left them leaning on the rails. A couple of enquiries and one misdirection found me standing in the cramped office of the auctioneers in the sale ring building.
‘A report from the veterinarian? Sure thing. Pay in advance, please. If you don’t want to wait, return for the report in half an hour.’
I paid and went back to the others. Warren was deciding it was time for a drink and we stood for a while in the fine warm night near one of the bars drinking Bacardi and Coke out of throwaway cartons.
Brilliant light poured out of the circular sales building in a dozen places through open doors and slatted windows. Inside, the banks of canvas chairs were beginning to fill up, and down on the rostrum in the centre the auctioneers were shaping up to starting the evening’s business. We finished the drinks, duly threw away the cartons and followed the crowd into the show.
Hip № 1 waltzed in along a ramp and circled the rostrum with all his pompoms nodding. The auctioneer began his sing-song selling, amplified and insistent, and to me, until my ears adjusted, totally unintelligible. Hip № 1 made five thousand dollars and Warren said the prices would all be low because of the economic situation.
Horses came and went. When Hip № 15 in orange pompoms had fetched a figure which had the crowd murmuring in excitement I slipped away to the office and found that the veterinary surgeon himself was there, dishing out his findings to other enquirers.
‘Hip number sixty-two?’ he echoed. ‘Sure, let me find my notes.’ He turned over a page or two in a notebook. ‘Here we are. Dark bay or brown gelding, right?’
‘Black,’ I said.
‘Uh, uh. Never say black.’ He smiled briefly, a busy middle-aged man with an air of a clerk. ‘Five years. Clean bill of health.’ He shut the notebook and turned to the next customer.
‘Is that all?’ I said blankly.
‘Sure,’ he said briskly. ‘No heart murmur, legs cool, teeth consistent with given age, eyes normal, range of movement normal, trots sound. No bowed tendons, no damaged knees.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Is he tranquillised?’
He looked at me sharply, then smiled. ‘I guess so. Acepromazine probably.’
‘Is that usual, or would he be a rogue?’
‘I wouldn’t think he’d had much. He should be okay.’
‘Thanks again.’
I went back to the sale ring in time to see Warren fidgeting badly over the sale of the chestnut colt. When the price rose to fifteen thousand Minty literally clung on to his hands and told him not to be a darned fool.
‘He must be sound,’ Warren protested, ‘to make that money.’
The colt made twenty-five thousand in thirty seconds’ brisk bidding and Warren’s regrets rumbled on all evening. Minty relaxed as if the ship of state had safely negotiated a killing reef and said she would like a breath of air. We went outside and leaned again on the collecting ring rails.
There were several people from England at the sales. Faces I knew, faces which knew me. No close friends, scarcely acquaintances, but people who would certainly notice and remark if I did anything unexpected.
I turned casually to Warren.
‘I’ve money in New York,’ I said. ‘I can get it tomorrow. Would you lend me some tonight?’
‘Sure,’ he said good-naturedly, fishing for his wallet. ‘How much do you need?’
‘Enough to buy that black gelding.’
‘What?’ His hand froze and his eyes widened.
‘Would you buy it for me?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No.’
He looked at Allie for help. ‘Does he mean it?’
‘He’s sure crazy enough for anything,’ she said.
‘That’s just what it is,’ Warren said. ‘Crazy. Crazy to buy some goddamned useless creature, just because he looks like a hurdler you’ve got back home.’
To Allie this statement suddenly made sense. She smiled vividly and said, ‘What are you going to do with him?’
I kissed her forehead. ‘I tend to think in circles,’ I said.
10
Warren, enjoying himself hugely, bought Black Fire for four thousand six hundred dollars. Bid for it, signed for it, and paid for it.
With undiminished good nature he also contracted for its immediate removal from Hialeah and subsequent shipment by air to England.
‘Having himself a ball,’ Minty said.
His good spirits lasted all the way back to Garden Island and through several celebratory nightcaps.
‘You sure bought a stinker,’ he said cheerfully, ‘But boy, I haven’t had so much fun in years. Did you see that guy’s face, the one I bid against? He thought he was getting it for a thousand.’ He chuckled. ‘At four thousand five he sure looked mad and he could see I was going on for ever.’
Minty began telling him to make the most of it, it was the last horse he’d be buying for a long time, and Allie came to the door to see me off. We stood outside for a while in the dark, close together.
‘One day down. Three to go,’ she said.
‘No more horses,’ I promised.
‘Okay.’
‘And fewer people.’
A pause. Then again, ‘Okay.’
I smiled and kissed her good night and pushed her indoors before my best intentions should erupt into good old-fashioned lust. The quickest way to lose her would be to snatch.
She said how about Florida Keys and how about a swim and how about a picnic. We went in the Impala with a cold box of goodies in the boot and the Tropic of Cancer flaming away over the horizon ahead.
The highway to Key West stretched for mile after mile across a linked chain of causeways and small islands. Palm trees, sand dunes, sparkling water and scrubby grass. Few buildings. Sun-bleached wooden huts, wooden landing stages, fishing boats. Huge skies, hot sun, vast seas. Also Greyhound buses on excursions and noisy families in station wagons with Mom in pink plastic curlers.
Allie had brought directions from Warren about one of the tiny islands where he fished, and when we reached it we turned off the highway on to a dusty side road that was little more than a track. It ended abruptly under two leaning palms, narrowing to an Indian file path through sand dunes and tufty grass towards the sea. We took the picnic box and walked, and found ourselves surprisingly in a small sandy hollow from which neither the car nor the road could be seen.
‘That,’ said Allie, pointing at the sea, ‘is Hawk Channel.’
‘Can’t see any hawks.’
‘You’d want cooks in Cook Strait.’
She took off the loose white dress she’d worn on the way down and dropped it on the sand. Underneath she wore a pale blue and white bikini, and underneath that, warm honey coloured skin.
She took the skin without more ado into the sea and I stripped off shirt and trousers and followed her. We swam in the free warm-cool water and it felt the utmost in luxury.
‘Why are these islands so uninhabited?’ I asked.
‘Too small, most of them. No fresh water. Hurricanes, as well. It isn’t always so gentle here. Sizzling hot in the summer and terrible storms.’
The wind in the palm tree tops looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth. We splashed in the shallows and walked up the short beach to regain the warm little hollow, Allie delivering on the way a fairly non-stop lecture about turtles, bonefish, marlin and tarpon. It struck me in the end that she was talking fast to hide that she was feeling self-conscious.
I fished in my jacket pocket and brought out a twenty dollar bill.
‘Bus fare home,’ I said, holding it out to her.
She laughed a little jerkily. ‘I still have the one you sent from England.’