‘And what are Template’s plans for the future?’ He strove to be conversational, normal. The television interview was progressing along well-trodden ways.
‘There’s the Gold Cup at Cheltenham,’ I said. I was past telling whether I sounded equally unruffled, but there was still no leap of triumph in his face, so I went on, ‘I expect he will run there, in three weeks’ time. All being well, of course.’
‘And do you hope to ride him again in that?’ he asked. There was an edge to his voice which just stopped short of offensiveness. He was finding it as nearly impossible to put on an appearance of affection for me as I for him.
‘It depends,’ I said, ‘on whether or not Pip is fit in time... and on whether Lord Tirrold and Mr. Axminster want me to, if he isn’t. But of course I’d like to, if I get the chance.’
‘You’ve never yet managed to ride in the Gold Cup, I believe?’ He made it sound as if I had been trying unsuccessfully for years to beg a mount.
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But it has only been run twice since I came into racing, so if I get a ride in it so soon in my career I’ll count myself very lucky.’
His nostrils flared and I thought in satisfaction, ‘That got you squarely in the guts, my friend. You’d forgotten how short a time I’ve been a jockey.’
He turned his head away from me towards the camera and I saw the rigidity in his neck and jaw and the pulse which beat visibly in his temple. I imagined he would willingly have seen me dead; yet he was enough in command of himself to realise that if he pressed my shoulder any harder I would be likely to guess it was not accidental.
Perhaps if he had been less controlled at that moment I would have been more merciful to him later. If his professionally pleasant expression had exploded into the rage he was feeling, or if he had openly dug his nails with ungovernable vindictiveness into my back, I could perhaps have believed him more mad than wicked, after all. But he knew too well where to stop; and since I could not equate madness with such self-discipline, by my standards he was sane; sane and controlled, and therefore unlikely to destroy himself from within. I threw Claudius Mellit’s plea for kid gloves finally overboard.
Kemp-Lore was speaking calmly towards the camera, finishing off his broadcast. He gave me a last, natural-looking little squeezing shake, and let his arm drop away from my shoulders. Slowly and methodically I silently repeated to myself the ten most obscene words I knew, and after that Ascot racecourse stopped attempting to whirl round and settled down again into bricks and mortar and grass and people, all sharp and perpendicular.
The man behind the camera on the tower held up his thumb and the red eye blinked out.
Kemp-Lore turned directly to me again and said, ‘Well, that’s it. We’re off the air now.’
‘Thank you, Maurice,’ I said, carefully constructing one last warm smile. ‘That was just what I needed to set me back on top of the world. A big race win and a television interview with you to clinch it. Thank you very much.’ I could rub my fingers in his wounds, too.
He gave me a look in which the cultivated habit of charm struggled for supremacy over spite, and still won. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, pulling his black microphone lead along the ground after him.
It is impossible to say which of us loathed the other more.
Fifteen
I spent most of the next day in Joanna’s bed. Alone, unfortunately.
She gave me a cup of coffee for breakfast, a cosy grin, and instructions to sleep. So I lazily went on snoozing in the pyjamas she had bought me, dreaming about her on her own pillow, doing nothing more energetic than occasionally raise my blood pressure by thinking about Kemp-Lore.
I had arrived in a shaky condition on her doorstep the evening before, having first taken Tick-Tock and his space-age girlfriend by taxi to the boring White Bear at Uxbridge where, as I had imagined, the Mini-Cooper stood abandoned in the car park. It had seemed to me certain that Kemp-Lore had driven to the White Bear in his own car, had used the Mini-Cooper for his excursion to the abandoned stables, and had changed back again to his own car on the return journey. His route, checked on the map, was simple: direct almost. All the same I was relieved to find the little Mini safe and sound.
Tick-Tock’s remarks about my carelessness with communal property trickled to a stop when he found my wrist-watch and wallet and the other things out of my pockets on the glove shelf, and my jacket and overcoat and a length of white nylon rope on the back seat.
‘Why the blazes,’ he said slowly, ‘did you leave your watch and your money and your coats here? It’s a wonder they weren’t pinched. And the car.’
‘It’s the north-east wind,’ I said solemnly. ‘Like the moon, you know. I always do mad things when there’s a north-east wind.’
‘North-east my aunt fanny.’ He grinned, picked up the coats, and transferred them to the waiting taxi. Then he surprisingly shovelled all my small belongings back into my trouser pockets, and put my watch into my gloved hand.
‘You may have fooled everyone else, mate,’ he said lightly, ‘but to me you have looked like death inefficiently warmed up all day, and it’s something to do with your maulers... the gloves are new... you don’t usually wear any. What happened?’
‘You work on it,’ I said amiably, getting back into the taxi. ‘If you haven’t anything better to do.’ I glanced across at his little hep-cat, and he laughed and flipped his hand, and went to help her into the Mini-Cooper.
The taxi-driver, in a good mood because he had backed three winners, drove me back to Joanna’s mews without a single complaint about the roundabout journey. When I paid him and added a fat tip on top he said, ‘Were you on a winner, too, then?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Template.’
‘Funny thing that,’ he said. ‘I backed him myself, after what you said about not believing all you hear. You were quite right, weren’t you? That fellow Finn’s not washed up at all, not by a long chalk. He rode a hell of a race. I reckon he can carry my money again, any day.’ He shifted his gears gently, and drove off.
Watching his tail-light bump away down the cobbled mews, I felt ridiculously happy and very much at peace. Winning the race had already been infinitely worth the cost, and the taxi-driver, not knowing who he was speaking to, had presented me with the bonus of learning that as far as the British racing public was concerned, I was back in business.
Dead beat but contented, I leaned against Joanna’s doorpost and rang her bell.
That wasn’t quite the end of the most exhausting twenty four hours of my life, however. My thoughtful cousin, anticipating correctly that I would refuse to turn out again to see a doctor, had imported one of her own. He was waiting there when I arrived, a blunt no-bedside-manner Scot with bushy eyebrows and three warts on his chin.
To my urgent protests that I was in no state to withstand his ministrations, both he and Joanna turned deaf ears. They sat me in a chair, and off came my clothes again, the leather gloves and the silk racing ones I had not removed after riding, then the anorak, my father’s shirt and the racing under-jersey, also not returned to Mike, then the bits of lint Joanna had stuck on in the morning, and finally the blood-soaked bandages round my wrists. Towards the end of all this rather ruthless undressing, the room began spinning as Ascot had done, and I regrettably rolled off the chair on to the floor, closer to fainting than I had been the whole time.