I knew all too well that success depended on my being able to persuade this strange four-footed creature to go with me gently and without fuss, and wished passionately for more expertise. All I had were nimble hands and sympathy, and they would have to be enough.
I unbuckled his rug at high speed and thanked the gods that the leg-guards Jody habitually used for travelling his horses were not laboriously wound-on bandages but lengths of plastic-backed foam rubber fastened by strips of velcro.
I had all four off before Bert had finished the soundproofing. Put the new head collar over his neck; unbuckled and removed his own and left it swinging, still tied to the stall. Fitted and fastened the new one, and gave the rope a tentative tug. Energise took one step, then another, then with more assurance followed me sweetly down the ramp. It felt miraculous, but nothing like fast enough.
Hurry. Get the other horses, and hurry.
They didn’t seem to mind walking on the soft spongy surface, but they wouldn’t go fast. I tried to take them calmly, to keep my urgency to myself, to stop them taking fright and skittering away and crashing those metal-capped feet on to the car park.
Hurry. Hurry.
I had to get Energise’s substitute into his place, wearing the right rug, the right bandages, and the right head collar, before the box driver and the lad came out of the caravan.
Also his hooves... Racing plates were sometimes put on by the blacksmith at home, who then rubbed on oil to obliterate the rasp marks of the file and give the feet a well-groomed appearance. I had brought hoof oil in my bag in case Energise had already had his shoes changed and he had.
‘Hurry for gawd’s sake,’ said Bert, seeing me fetch the oil. He was running back to the van with relays of re-rolled latex and grinning like a Pools winner.
I painted the hooves a glossy dark. Buckled on the swinging head collar without disturbing the tethering knot, as the lad would notice if it were tied differently. Buckled the rug round the chest and under the belly. Fastened the velcro strips on all four leg-guards. Shut the folding gates to his stall exactly as they had been before, and briefly looked back before closing the ramp. The black head was turned incuriously towards me, the liquid eye patient and unmoved. I smiled at him involuntarily, jumped out of the box, and with Bert’s help eased shut the clips on the ramp.
Owen came out of the caravan, ran across, and fastened the ramp on the trailer. I jumped in with the horse in Pete’s box. Bert lifted the ramp and did another silent job on the clips.
Through the windscreen of Pete’s box the car park looked quiet and tidy.
Owen returned to the driving seat of his van and Bert walked back towards the road.
At the same instant Jody’s driver and lad hurried out of the caravan and tramped across to their horsebox. I ducked out of sight, but I could hear one of them say, as he re-embarked, ‘Right lot of time-wasting cobblers, that was.’
Then the engine throbbed to life, the box moved off, and Bert considerately held up a car or two so that it should have a clear passage back to its interrupted journey. If I hadn’t had so much still to do I would have laughed.
I fastened the rug. Tied the head collar rope. Clipped on the leg guards. I’d never worked so fast in my life.
What else? I glanced over my beautiful black horse, seeking things undone. He looked steadfastly back. I smiled at him, too, and told him he was a great fellow. Then Pete came out of the caravan and I scrambled through to the cab, and tried to sit in the passenger seat as if bored with waiting instead of sweating with effort and with a heart racing like tappets.
Pete climbed into his side of the cab and threw his log book and licence disgustedly on to the glove shelf.
‘They’re always stopping us nowadays. Spot check on log books. Spot check on vehicles. Half an hour a time, those. And now a census.’
‘Irritating,’ I agreed, making my voice a lot slower than my pulse.
His usual good nature returned in a smile. ‘Actually the checks are a good thing. Some lorries, in the old days, were death on wheels. And some drivers, I dare say.’ He stretched his hand towards the ignition. ‘Where to?’ he said.
‘Might as well go back. As you say, the horse is quiet. If you could take me back to my car?’
‘Sure thing,’ he said. ‘You’re the boss.’
Bert shepherded us solicitously on to the southbound lane, holding up the traffic with a straight face and obvious enjoyment. Pete drove steadfastly back to the lay-by and pulled in behind the Cortina.
‘I expect you think it a wasted day,’ I said. ‘But I assure you from my point of view it’s been worth it.’
‘That’s all that matters,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Take good care of this fellow going home,’ I said, looking back at the horse. ‘And would you remind the lads in Mr Ramsey’s yard that I’ve arranged for a security guard to patrol the stable at night for a while? He should be arriving there later this afternoon.’
‘Sure,’ he said, nodding.
‘That’s all then, I guess.’ I took my bag and jumped down from the cab. He gave me a final wave through the window and set off again southwards along the A34.
I leaned against the Cortina, watching him go down the hill, across the valley, and up over the horizon on the far side.
I wondered how Energise would like his new home.
13
Charlie, Allie, Bert and Owen were all in the caravan when I drove back there, drinking coffee and laughing like kids.
‘Here,’ Bert said, wheezing with joy. ‘A bleeding police car came along a second after I’d picked up the census notices and all those cones. Just a bleeding second.’
‘It didn’t stop, I hope.’
‘Not a bleeding chance. Mind you, I’d taken off the fancy clobber. First thing. The fuzz don’t love you for impersonating them, even if your hatband is only a bit of bleeding ribbon painted in checks.’
Charlie said more soberly. ‘It was the only police car we’ve seen.’
‘The cones were only in the road for about ten minutes,’ Allie said. ‘It sure would have been unlucky if the police had driven by in that time.’
She was sitting by one of the desks looking neat but unremarkable in a plain skirt and jersey. On the desk stood my typewriter, uncovered, with piles of stationery alongside. Charlie, at the other desk, wore an elderly suit, faintly shabby and a size too small. He had parted his hair in the centre and brushed it flat with water, and had somehow contrived a look of middling beaurocracy instead of world finance. Before him, too, lay an impressive array of official forms and other literature and the walls of the caravan were drawing-pinned with exhortative Ministry posters.
‘How did you get all this bleeding junk?’ said Bert, waving his hand at it.
‘Applied for it,’ I said. ‘It’s not difficult to get government forms or information posters. All you do is ask.’
‘Blimey.’
‘They’re not census forms, of course. Most of them are application forms for driving licences and passports and things like that. Owen and I just made up the census questions and typed them out for Charlie, and he pretended to put the answers on the forms.’
Owen drank his coffee with a happy smile and Charlie said, chuckling, ‘You should have seen your man here putting on his obstructive act. Standing there in front of me like an idiot and either answering the questions wrong or arguing about answering them at all. The two men from the horsebox thought him quite funny and made practically no fuss about being kept waiting. It was the other man, Pete Duveen, who was getting tired of it, but as he was at the back of the queue he couldn’t do much.’
‘Four minutes,’ Owen said. ‘You said you needed a minimum of four. So we did our best.’
‘You must have given me nearer five,’ I said gratefully. ‘Did you hear anything?’
Allie laughed. ‘There was so much darned racket going on in here. Owen arguing, me banging away on the typewriter, the traffic outside, pop radio inside, and that heater... How did you fix that heater?’
We all looked at the calor gas heater which warmed the caravan. It clattered continually like a broken fan.
‘Screwed a small swinging flap up at the top here, inside. The rising hot air makes it bang against the casing.’
‘Switch it off,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s driving me mad’.
I produced instead a screwdriver and undid the necessary screws. Peace returned to the gas and Charlie said he could see the value of a college education.
‘Pete Duveen knew the other box driver,’ Allie said conversationally. ‘Seems they’re all one big club.’
‘See each other every bleeding day at the races,’ Bert confirmed. ‘Here, that box driver made a bit of a fuss when I said the lad had to go into the caravan too. Like you said, they aren’t supposed to leave a racehorse unguarded. So I said I’d bleeding guard it for him. How’s that for a laugh? He said he supposed it was okay, as I was the police. I said I’d got instructions that everyone had to go into the census, no exceptions.’
‘People will do anything if it looks official enough,’ Charlie said, happily nodding.
‘Well...’ I put down my much needed cup of coffee and stretched my spine. ‘Time to be off, don’t you think?’
‘Right,’ Charlie said. ‘All this paper and stuff goes in Owen’s van.’
They began moving slowly, the reminiscent smiles still in place, packing the phoney census into carrier bags. Allie came out with me when I left.
‘We’ve had more fun...’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine.’
I supposed that I felt the same way, now that the flurry was over. I gave her a hug and a kiss and told her to take care of herself, and she said you, too.
‘I’ll call you this evening,’ I promised.
‘I wish I was coming with you.’
‘We can’t leave that here all day,’ I said, pointing to the Land-Rover and the trailer.
She smiled. ‘I guess not. Charlie says we’d all best be gone before anyone starts asking what we’re doing.’
‘Charlie is a hundred per cent right.’