In some ways I knew Trevor no better than on that first day. Our real relationship began and ended at the office door, social contact outside being confined to one formal dinner party each year, to which I was invited by letter by his wife. His house was opulent: building and contents circa nineteen twenties, with heavy plate glass cut to fit the top surfaces of polished furniture, and an elaborate bar built into the room he called his ‘snug’. Friends tended to be top management types or county councillors, worthy substantial citizens like Trevor himself.
On the professional level, I knew him well. Orthodox establishment outlook, sober and traditional. Patriarchal, but not pompous. Giving the sort of gilt-edged advice that still appeared sound even if in hindsight it turned out not to be.
Something punitive about him, perhaps. He seemed to me sometimes to get a positive pleasure from detailing the extent of a client’s tax liabilities, and watching the client droop.
Precise in mind and method, discreetly ambitious, pleased to be a noted local personage, and at his charming best with rich old ladies. His favourite clients were prosperous companies; his least favourite, incompetent individuals with their affairs in a mess.
I finally got rid of the incompetent Mr Wells and took my tensions down to the office car park. It was sixty miles from Newbury to Cheltenham and on the way I chewed my fingernails through two lots of roadworks and an army convoy, knowing also that near the course the crawling racegoing jams would mean half an hour for the last mile. There had been enough said already about the risks of putting up an amateur (‘however good’ some kind columnist had written) against the top brass of the professionals on the country’s best horses in the most important race of the season’s most prestigious meeting. ‘The best thing Roland Britten can do is to keep Tapestry out of everyone else’s way’ was the offering of a less kind writer, and although I more or less agreed with him I hadn’t meant to do it by not arriving in time. Of all possible unprofessional behaviour, that would be the worst.
Lateness was the last and currently the most acute of a whole list of pressures. I had been riding as an amateur in jump races since my sixteenth birthday, but was now, with thirty-two in sight, finding it increasingly difficult to keep fit. Age and desk work were nibbling away at a stamina I’d always taken for granted: it now needed a lot of effort to do what I’d once done without thought. The hour and a half I spent early every morning riding exercise for a local trainer were no longer enough. Recently, in a couple of tight finishes, I’d felt the strength draining like bathwater from my creaking muscles, and had lost at least one race because of it. I couldn’t swear to myself that I was tuned up tight for the Gold Cup.
Work in the office had multiplied to the point where doing it properly was a problem in itself. Half-days off for racing had begun to feel like treachery. Saturdays were fine, but impatient clients viewed Wednesdays at Ascot or Thursday at Stratford-upon-Avon with irritation. That I worked at home in the evenings to make up for it satisfied Trevor, but no one else. And my case load, as jargon would put it, was swamping me.
Apart from Mr Wells, there had been other jobs I should have done that morning. I should have sent an appeal against a top jockey’s tax assessment; I should have signed a certificate for a solicitor; and there had been two summonses for clients to appear before the Tax Commissioners, which needed instant action, even if only evasive.
‘I’ll apply for postponements,’ I told Peter, one of our two assistants. ‘Ring both of those clients, and tell them not to worry, I’ll start on their cases at once. And check that we’ve all the papers we need. Ask them to send any that are missing.’
Peter nodded sullenly, unwillingly, implying that I was always giving him too much work. And maybe I was.
Trevor’s plans to take on another assistant had been so far halted by an offer which was currently giving both of us headaches. A big London firm wanted to move in on us, merge, amalgamate, and establish a large branch of itself on our patch, with us inside. Materially, we would benefit, as at present the steeply rising cost of overheads like office rent, electricity and secretarial wages was coming straight out of our own pockets. We would also be under less stress, as at present when one of us was ill or on holiday, the burden on the other was heavy. But Trevor agonised over the prospect of demotion from absolute boss, and I over the threat of loss of liberty. We had postponed a decision until Trevor’s return from Spain in two weeks’ time, but at that point bleak realities would have to be faced.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel of my Dolomite and waited impatiently for the roadworks’ traffic lights to turn green. Looked at my watch for the hundredth time. ‘Come on,’ I said aloud. ‘Come on.’ Binny Tomkins would be absolutely furious.
Binny, Tapestry’s trainer, didn’t want me on the horse. ‘Not in the Gold Cup,’ he’d said positively, when the owner had proposed it. They’d faced each other belligerently outside the weighing room of Newbury racecourse, where Tapestry had just obliged in the three mile ’chase: Mrs Moira Longerman, small, blonde and bird-like, versus sixteen stone of frustrated male.
‘...just because he’s your accountant,’ Binny was saying in exasperation when I rejoined them after weighing-in. ‘It’s bloody ridiculous.’
‘Well, he won today, didn’t he?’ she said.
Binny threw his arms wide, breathing heavily. Mrs Longerman had offered me the Newbury ride on the spur of the moment when the stable jockey had broken his ankle in a fall in the previous race. Binny had accepted me as a temporary arrangement with fair grace, but Tapestry was the best horse in his yard, and for a middle-ranker like him a runner in the Gold Cup was an event. He wanted the best professional jockey he could get. He did not want Mrs Longerman’s accountant, who rode in thirty races in a year, if he was lucky. Mrs Longerman, however, had murmured something about removing Tapestry to a more accommodating trainer, and I had not been unselfish enough to decline the offer, and Binny had fumed in vain.
Mrs Longerman’s previous accountant had for years let her pay to the Inland Revenue a lot more tax than she’d needed, and I’d got her a refund of thousands. It wasn’t the best grounds for choosing a jockey to ride for you in the Gold Cup, but I understood she was thanking me by giving me something beyond price. I quite passionately did not want to let her down; and that, too, was a pressure.
I was worried about making a reasonable show, but not about falling. When one worried about falling, it was time to stop racing: it would happen to me one day, I supposed, but it hadn’t yet. I worried about being unfit, unwanted, and late. Enough to be going on with.
Binny was spluttering like a lit fuse when I finally arrived, panting, in the weighing room.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he demanded. ‘Do you realise the first race is over already and in another five minutes you’d be fined for not turning up?’
‘Sorry.’
I carried my saddle, helmet, and bag of gear through into the changing room, sat down thankfully on the bench, and tried to stop sweating. The usual bustle went on around me; jockeys dressing, undressing, swearing, laughing, accepting me from long acquaintance as a part of the scenery. I did the accounts for thirty-two jockeys and had unofficially filled in tax assessment forms for a dozen more. I was also to date employed as accountant by thirty-one trainers, fifteen stud farms, two Stewards of the Jockey Club, one racecourse, thirteen bookmakers, two horse-transport firms, one blacksmith, five forage merchants, and upwards of forty people who owned racehorses. I probably knew more about the private financial affairs of the racing world than any other single person on the racecourse.