There we stopped, and, as the great bags of mail were tossed down, I myself descended to the cobblestones and helped down two of the passengers-an elderly man and his much younger wife. The couple had grumbled all the way from London at the roughness of the road and the speed of the horses. I was glad to be rid of them. I walked about then in the early morning cold, glad to have the chance to stretch my legs a bit. In the distance, I could see what I took to be the university buildings, yet I was not to get much closer to them than the coachyard, on that trip. Then came a call from the driver, and I hopped up into the coach and closed the door after me.
Through it all, Constable Patley had slept. I, on the other hand, had dozed only fitfully, and that during those brief periods wherein the horses were walked that they might rest a bit. Yet we were not long beyond the outskirts of London when the constable had fallen into a dreamless sleep-no mumbling, no tossing nor turning; he was simply dead to the world for the duration of the journey. Later, I asked him how he had accustomed himself to sleeping so soundly under such conditions. He told me that it was a skill (if that be the word) he had developed whilst serving in the army. “Oftentimes,” said he, “’tis necessary to take your sleep whenever you have the opportunity-and such times come more often in the army than you might suppose.” Mr. Perkins, who had the same sort of ability, told me much the same thing: he developed it in the army.
Not far out of town, we came upon the river Cam and followed it alongside until Newmarket was visible in the distance. It is no match for the Thames, as you may suppose; by comparison, it is hardly more than a stream. Nevertheless, the river and the bankside greenery are as pretty as any could wish. Indeed, some of the scenes I saw along the way were quite beautiful in the quiet way of the English countryside.
As it grew brighter, Mr. Patley began to stir. He stretched, flailing round him slowly in ever-widening circles. He blinked his eyes open, saw that we were alone there in the coach, and let out a moan.
“Ohhh, Jeremy, I’ve a terrible piss must be taken.”
I banged upon the ceiling of the coach and felt the conveyance grinding to a halt most immediately. Yet Patley did not wait for a complete stop. He jumped out the door as soon as it was safe and ran to the side of the road.
“Why didn’t your friend do his business back in Cambridge like the rest of us?” the driver called down to me.
“He was asleep,” was my reply.
“Asleep, was he? Well, I’ve half a notion to leave him where he’s now standin’.”
“You do that,” said I, “and you’ll have Sir John Fielding to answer to back in London.”
“What’s he to do with you two?”
“You’d find out soon enough.”
I would go no further with my threat. Truth to tell, I thought perhaps I’d gone too far already. We were headed into territory in which Sir John’s name had not quite the weight that it carried round Covent Garden. From this point on, I promised myself that I would use his name much more sparingly. But now was Constable Patley returned, and there was no need to wrangle further with the driver. He hopped inside and closed the door after him.
“Ah, I’m a new man,” said he.
“I hope not,” said I, “for I liked the old one pretty well.”
“Let me tell you something, Jeremy, old lad. There’s few in this world who I owe anything to-but you’re one of them.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
“I can write as well as any of the constables now, which ain’t to say I can write perfect. And I can even read a bit now. It’s a great time-passer, it is.”
I, who had no difficulty passing the time, had never thought of reading in quite that way before. What he had said struck me as funny-and so I did what may have struck him as rude: I laughed. Yet he took no offense.
“No, it’s true,” said he. “You take a fellow like me, he gets out of the army, and all he knows to do when he ain’t workin’ is go out and drink as he used to do in the army. And y’see that ain’t right, for it’s too easy to fall in with the same element you’re keepin’ an eye on whilst you’re on the job-the whores and the robbers and such-if you get my meaning, and that ain’t right.”
“Oh, I understand,” said I-and indeed I did. ’Twas the first time I had considered the matters he spoke of.
“Now I know for fact that readin’ ain’t just to pass the time. You got all your learning, which is considerable, out of books, didn’t you?”
“Well, not quite all. A lot that isn’t facts and some that is I got from Sir John.”
“And him,” he laughed. “He was just born with it, I reckon.”
“Indeed,” said I, “he must have been.”
“But whenever I come to a word I don’t know, I just take a look into that Johnson dictionary you gave me-and there it is. I know what it means, and I know how to spell it proper. I want you to know, Jeremy, that giving me that dictionary is about the most considerate thing anybody ever did for me. And I’ve read that Robinson Crusoe book twice through, I have!”
“Well, it’s about time then that you got another, don’t you think so?”
“You just tell me what to get, and I’ll get it.”
“Well,” said I, “let me give some thought to that.”
“You do that.”
Then did Constable Patley sit back, blushing with excitement at having said his piece. He nodded a good, firm, manly nod.
“I just wanted you to know.”
“Thank you, Mr. Patley.”
We finished the rest of the trip to Newmarket in complete silence-or near it.
Yet, as we entered the town of Newmarket, Mr. Patley pointed off to the left and called my attention to the heath just beyond us.
“It’s there they run the race,” said he. “It’s the longest and the fastest, and the only one that’s run on a permanent course.”
Of the events that followed-our arrival and search for the Good Queen Bess, and our disappointment at learning Mr. Deuteronomy and his party had not yet arrived-I shall have nothing to say. Such mundane details have little place in such a report as this, for they seem only to clutter the narrative. Let me begin this section, rather, with our first survey of the race site. We were, I suppose, searching for Alice Plummer, yet neither Mr. Patley nor I expected to find her quite so immediate. And, truth be known, I do believe that both of us would have been disappointed if we had found her quite so soon, for we must then have turned round and taken her back to London without ever having viewed the great race for the King’s Plate. I had told Patley of Mr. Deuteronomy’s bold boast that he would win, riding Pegasus, and we were both greatly impressed by that. We would see him win-sister or no.
In my case, after we had rested ourselves a bit in the room provided us, we went out to get a proper view of the race course and a sense of the town. Newmarket itself was not much-nor is it today, if what I have heard of it still pertains. The surrounding countryside is pretty enough, but the buildings in the town have to them a rather decrepit air, as if a good, strong wind might blow them all down. The main street in town is the same road we took from Cambridge. It is withal, as its name implies, a market town- and probably has been such for near a thousand years. There is a central square, and in it, foodstuffs-fruit and vegetable-are sold. Though not so grand as Covent Garden, I do believe a greater variety of growing things are sold there. Yet what the town of Newmarket may or may not be matters little, for it is known not so much as a town (there must be half a hundred or more like it) as it is a location for the greatest horse-racing to be found in all of England. Without its race course, it would be simply another market town.