Дик Фрэнсис - High Stakes

He got cheerfully to his feet and stubbed out the cigarette. A good deal more friendliness seeped into his manner.

‘Right then, Let’s go out and look at your horses.’

We went out into his yard, which showed prosperity at every turn. The thin cold December sun shone on fresh paint, wall-to-wall tarmac, tidy flower tubs and well-kept stable lads. There was none of the clutter I was accustomed to at Jody’s; no brooms leaning against walls, no rugs, rollers, brushes and bandages lying in ready heaps, no straggles of hay across the swept ground. Jody liked to give owners the impression that work was being done, that care for the horses was non-stop. Rupert, it seemed, preferred to tuck the sweat and toil out of sight. At Jody’s, the muck heap was always with you. At Rupert’s it was invisible.

‘Dial is here.’

We stopped at a box along a row outside the main quadrangle, and with an unobtrusive flick of his fingers Rupert summoned a lad hovering twenty feet away.

‘This is Donny,’ he said. ‘Looks after Dial.’

I shook hands with Donny, a young tough-looking boy of about twenty with unsmiling eyes and a you-can’t-con-me expression. From the look he directed first at Rupert and then later at the horse I gathered that this was his overall attitude to life, not an announcement of no confidence in me personally. When we’d looked at and admired the robust little chestnut I tried Donny with a fiver. It raised a nod of thanks, but no smile.

Further along the same row stood Ferryboat, looking out on the world with a lack-lustre eye and scarcely shifting from one leg to the other when we went into his box. His lad, in contrast to Donny, gave him an indulgent smile, and accepted his gift from me with a beam.

‘Energise is in the main yard,’ Rupert said, leading the way. ‘Across in the corner.’

When we were halfway there two other cars rolled up the drive and disgorged a collection of men in sheepskin coats and ladies in furs and jangly bracelets. They saw Rupert and waved and began to stream into the yard.

Rupert said, ‘I’ll show you Energise in just a moment.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You tell me which box he’s in. I’ll look at him myself. You see to your other owners.’

‘Number fourteen, then. I’ll be with you again shortly.’

I nodded and walked on to number fourteen. Unbolted the door. Went in. The near-black horse was tied up inside. Ready, I supposed, for my visit.

Horse and I looked at each other. My old friend, I thought. The only one of them all with whom I’d ever had any real contact. I talked to him, as in the horsebox, looking guiltily over my shoulder at the open door, for fear someone should hear me and think me nuts.

I could see at once why Rupert had been unhappy about him. He looked thinner. All that crashing about in the horsebox could have done him no good.

Across the yard I could see Rupert talking to the newcomers and shepherding them to their horses. Owners came en masse on Sunday mornings.

I was content to stay where I was. I spent probably twenty minutes with my black horse, and he instilled in me some very strange ideas.

Rupert came back hurrying and apologising. ‘You’re still here... I’m so sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ I assured him.

‘Come into the house for a drink.’

‘I’d like to.’

We joined the other owners and returned to his office for lavish issues of gin and scotch. Drinks for visiting owners weren’t allowable as a business expense for tax purposes unless the visiting owners were foreign. Jody had constantly complained of it to all and sundry while accepting cases of the stuff from me with casual nods. Rupert poured generously and dropped no hints, and I found it a refreshing change.

The other owners were excitedly making plans for the Christmas meeting at Kempton Park. Rupert made introductions, explaining that Energise, too, was due to run there in the Christmas Hurdle.

‘After the way he won at Sandown,’ remarked one of the sheepskin coats, ‘he must be a cast-iron certainty.’

I glanced at Rupert for an opinion but he was busy with bottles and glasses.

‘I hope so,’ I said.

The sheepskin coat nodded sagely.

His wife, a cosy-looking lady who had shed her ocelot and now stood five-feet-nothing in bright green wool, looked from him to me in puzzlement.

‘But George honey, Energise is trained by that nice young man with the pretty little wife. You know, the one who introduced us to Ganser Mays.’

She smiled happily and appeared not to notice the pole-axed state of her audience. I must have stood immobile for almost a minute while the implications fizzed around my brain, and during that time the conversation between George-honey and the bright green wool had flowed on into the chances of their own chaser in a later race. I dragged them back.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t catch your names.’

‘George Vine,’ said the sheepskin coat, holding out a chunky hand, ‘and my wife, Poppet.’

‘Steven Scott,’ I said.

‘Glad to know you.’ He gave his empty glass to Rupert, who amiably refilled it with gin and tonic. ‘Poppet doesn’t read the racing news much, so she wouldn’t know you’ve left Jody Leeds.’

‘Did you say,’ I asked carefully, ‘that Jody Leeds introduced you to Ganser Mays?’

‘Oh no’ Poppet said, smiling. ‘His wife did.’

‘That’s right,’ George nodded. ‘Bit of luck.’

‘You see,’ Poppet explained conversationally, ‘the prices on the Tote are sometimes so awfully small and it’s all such a lottery isn’t it? I mean, you never know really what you’re going to get for your money, like you do with the bookies.’

‘Is that what she said?’ I asked.

‘Who? Oh... Jody Leeds’ wife. Yes, that’s right, she did. I’d just been picking up my winnings on one of our horses from the Tote, you see, and she was doing the same at the next window, the Late-Pay window that was, and she said what a shame it was that the Tote was only paying three to one when the bookies’ starting price was five to one, and I absolutely agreed with her, and we just sort of stood there chatting. I told her that only last week we had bought the steeplechaser which had just won and it was our first ever racehorse, and she was so interested and explained that she was a trainer’s wife and that sometimes when she got tired of the Tote paying out so little she bet with a bookie. I said I didn’t like pushing along the rows with all those men shoving and shouting and she laughed and said she meant one on the rails, so you could just walk up to them and not go through to the bookies’ enclosure at all. But of course you have to know them, I mean, they have to know you , if you see what I mean. And neither George nor I knew any of them, as I explained to Mrs Leeds.’

She stopped to take a sip of gin. I listened in fascination.

‘Well,’ she went on, ‘Mrs Leeds sort of hesitated and then I got this great idea of asking her if she could possibly introduce us to her bookie on the rails.’

‘And she did?’

‘She thought it was a great idea.’

She would.

‘So we collected George and she introduced us to dear Ganser Mays. And,’ she finished triumphantly, ‘he gives us much better odds than the Tote.’

George Vine nodded several times in agreement.

‘Trouble is,’ he said, ‘you know what wives are, she bets more than ever.’

‘George honey.’ A token protest only.

‘You know you do, love.’

‘It isn’t worth doing in sixpences,’ she said smiling. ‘You never win enough that way.’

He patted her fondly on the shoulder and said man-to-man to me, ‘When Ganser Mays’ account comes, if she’s won, she takes the winnings, and if she’s lost, I pay.’