‘If he asks me, yes,’ said Tick-Tock. ‘He won’t harass me into the hereafter.’ He looked up slantwise from under his rakishly tilted eyebrows, the thin-lipped, wide mouth stretched in a carefree grin. A vivid, almost aggressive sanity moulded the angular planes of his face, and for a moment he seemed to me more than ever to have been born too soon. He was what I pictured twenty-first century man should be — intensely alive, curiously innocent, with no taint of apathy or anger or greed. He made me feel old. He was nineteen.
We went out together to the parade ring.
‘Paste on a toothy leer,’ he said. ‘The eye of the world has swivelled our way.’
I glanced up. From its draughty platform a television camera swung its square snout towards us as it followed the progress of a grey horse round the ring. It tracked briefly over us and moved on.
‘I’d forgotten we were on the air,’ I said indifferently.
‘Oh yes,’ said Tick-Tock, ‘and the great man himself is here somewhere too, the one and only M. Kemp-Lore, no less. Puff pastry, that man is.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘A quick riser. And full of hot air. But rich, man, and tasty. A good crisp flavour, nice and crunchy.’
I laughed. We joined Corin and he began to give us both our instructions for the race. Tick-Tock’s mount was a good one, but I was as usual riding a horse of whom little was expected, and quite rightly, as it turned out. We trailed in a long way behind, and I saw from the numbers going up in the frame that Corin’s other horse had won.
Corin and Tick-Tock and the horse’s owner were conducting a mutual admiration session in the winner’s enclosure when I walked back to the weighing-room with my saddle, but Corin caught me by the arm as I went past and asked me to come straight out again, when I had dumped my saddle and helmet, to tell him how the horse had run.
When I rejoined him he was talking to a man who had his back towards me. I hovered, not wanting to interrupt, but Corin saw me and beckoned, and I walked across to them. The man turned round. He was in his early thirties, I judged. Of average height and slim build, with good features and light hair. It never ceases to be disconcerting, meeting for the first time in the flesh a man whose face is as familiar to you as a brother’s. It was Maurice Kemp-Lore.
Television is unflattering to everybody. It fattens the body and flattens the personality, so that to sparkle from the small screen an entertainer must be positively incandescent in real life, and Kemp-Lore was no exception. The charm which came over gradually in his programme was instantly compelling when one met him. Intensely blue eyes looked at me from a firm, sun-tanned face; his hand-shake was quick and strong; his smile, infectious and warm, indicated his delight in meeting me. But it was a professional delight, and even as I responded to him I recognised that the effect he had on me was calculated. His stock in trade. All good interviewers know how to give people confidence so that they expand and flower, and Kemp-Lore was a master of his art. Dull men had shone as wits in his programme, taciturn men chattered, bigoted men thought again.
‘I see you were last in the race,’ he said. ‘Bad luck.’
‘Bad horse,’ said Corin, put into smiling good humour by his presence.
‘I’ve been wanting for some time to do a programme on — if you’ll forgive me — an unsuccessful jockey.’ His smile took the sting out of his words. ‘Or at least, a jockey who is not yet successful. Perhaps that would be a fairer way of putting it?’ His blue eyes twinkled. ‘Would you consider coming on my programme and telling viewers what sort of life you lead? I have in mind your financial position, your reliance on chance rides, insecurity... that sort of thing. Just to give the public the reverse side of the coin. They know all about big retainers and fat presents and jockeys who win important races. I want to show them how a jockey who seldom wins even unimportant races manages to live. A jockey on the fringe.’ He smiled his warm smile. ‘Will you do it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘certainly. But I’m not really typical. I...’
He interrupted me. ‘Don’t tell me anything now,’ he said, ‘I know enough about your career to find you suitable for what I have in mind, but I always prefer not to know the answers to my specific questions until we are actually on the air. It makes the whole thing more spontaneous. I have found that if I rehearse with my subject what we are going to say the programme comes over stiffly and unconvincingly. Instead, I will send you a list of the sort of questions I will be asking, and you can think out your replies. O.K.?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All right.’
‘Good. Next Friday then. The programme goes out at nine o’clock. Get to the studios by seven-thirty, will you? That gives time for seeing to lighting, make-up, and so on, and perhaps for a drink beforehand. Here is a card which will tell you how to get there.’ He produced a card which had ‘Universal Telecast’ printed in large capitals on one side and a simplified map of Willesden on the other.
‘Oh, and by the way, there will be a fee, of course, and your expenses.’ He smiled sympathetically, letting me know that he knew that that was good news.
‘Thank you,’ I smiled back. ‘I’ll be there’.
He spoke a word to Corin and strolled away. I turned to Corin and caught on his face as he watched the retreating figure of Kemp-Lore, the same expression that I saw so often on hangers-on round my parents. The smug, fawning smirk which meant ‘I am on speaking terms with a famous person, clever me.’ It would have been more impressive, I thought, if like most other trainers he had taken knowing the illustrious Kemp-Lore entirely for granted.
‘I know Maurice quite well,’ said Corin aloud, in a self-satisfied voice. ‘He asked my advice about whether you’d be any good as his — er — unsuccessful jockey, and I told him to go ahead.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, as he waited for it.
‘Yes, a grand fellow, Maurice. Good family, you know. His father won the National — an amateur of course — and his sister is the best lady point-to-point rider there has been for years. Poor old Maurice, though, he hardly rides at all. Doesn’t even hunt. Horses give him the most ghastly asthma, you know. He’s very cut-up about it. Still, he’d never have taken to broadcasting if he’d been able to race, so perhaps it’s all for the best.’
‘I dare say,’ I said. I was still in lightweight silk colours and breeches and the afternoon was growing cool. I dragged the conversation back to the horse I had just come last on, got the post-mortem over, and eventually went back to the weighing-room to change.
The jockeys had already gone out for the last race, but several others were standing about in various stages of undress, gossiping and putting on their street clothes. As I went down the room I saw Grant Oldfield standing by my peg, holding a paper in his hand, and I was annoyed to find, drawing nearer, that it was the list of horses James Axminster had given me. Grant had been going through my pockets.
My protest was never uttered. Without a word, without any warning, Grant swung his fist and punched me heavily in the nose.
Four
The amount of blood which resulted would have done credit to a clinicful of donors. It splashed in a scarlet stain down the front of my pale green silk shirt and made big uneven blotches on the white breeches. There were large spots of it on the bench and on the floor and it was all over my hands where I had tried to wipe it out of my mouth.
‘For God’s sake, lay him down on his back,’ said one of the valets, hurrying over. His advice was almost unnecessary, since I was already lying down, mostly on the floor but half propped up by the leg of the bench. It was where that one blow, catching me off balance, had felled me.