Дик Фрэнсис: High Stakes

‘Among other things.’

Jody nodded ruefully. ‘I guess I did pile it on a bit, charging you for him twice a week when some weeks he only came once.’

‘And some weeks not at all.’

‘Oh well...’ said Jody deprecatingly. ‘I suppose so, once or twice.’

Raymond Child rode all my jumpers in races and drove fifty miles some mornings to school them over fences on Jody’s gallops. Jody gave him a fee and expenses for the service and added them to my account. The twice a week schooling session fees had turned up regularly for the whole of July, when in fact, as I had very recently and casually discovered, no horses had been schooled at all and Raymond himself had been holidaying in Spain.

‘A tenner here or there,’ Jody said persuasively. ‘It’s nothing to you.’

‘A tenner plus expenses twice a week for July came to over a hundred quid.’

‘Oh.’ He tried a twisted smile. ‘So you really have been checking up.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘You’re so easy going. You’ve always paid up without question.’

‘Not any more.’

‘No... Look, Steven, I’m sorry about all this. If I give you my word there’ll be no more fiddling on your account... If I promise every item will be strictly accurate... why don’t we go on as before? I’ve won a lot of races for you, after all.’

He looked earnest, sincere and repentant. Also totally confident that I would give him a second chance. A quick canter from confession to penitence, and a promise to reform, and all could proceed as before.

‘It’s too late,’ I said.

He was not discouraged; just piled on a bit more of the ingratiating manner which announced ‘I know I’ve been a bad bad boy but now I’ve been found out I’ll be angelic.’

‘I suppose having so much extra expense made me behave stupidly,’ he said. ‘The mortgage repayments on the new stables are absolutely bloody, and as you know I only moved there because I needed more room for all your horses.’

My fault, now, that he had had to steal.

I said, ‘I offered to build more boxes at the old place.’

‘Wouldn’t have done,’ he interrupted hastily: but the truth of it was that the old place had been on a plain and modest scale where the new one was frankly opulent. At the time of the move I had vaguely wondered how he could afford it. Now, all too well, I knew.

‘So let’s call this just a warning, eh?’ Jody said cajolingly. ‘I don’t want to lose your horses, Steven. I’ll say so frankly. I don’t want to lose them. We’ve been good friends all this time, haven’t we? If you’d just said ... I mean, if you’d just said, “Jody, you bugger, you’ve been careless about a bill or two...” Well, I mean, we could have straightened it out in no time. But... well... When you blew off without warning, just said you were taking the horses away, straight after Energise won like that... well, I lost my temper real and proper. I’ll admit I did. Said things I didn’t mean. Like one does. Like everyone does when they lose their temper.’

He was smiling in a counterfeit of the old way, as if nothing at all had happened. As if Energise were not standing beside us sweating in a crashed horsebox. As if my overcoat were not torn and muddy from a too close brush with death.

‘Steven, you know me,’ he said. ‘Got a temper like a bloody rocket.’

When I didn’t answer at once he took my silence as acceptance of his explanations and apologies, and briskly turned to practical matters.

‘Well now, we’ll have to get this lad out of here.’ He slapped Energise on the rump. ‘And we can’t get the ramp down until we get this box moved away from that other one.’ He made a sucking sound through his teeth. ‘Look, I’ll try to back straight out again. Don’t see why it shouldn’t work.’

He jumped out of the back door and went round to the front of the cab. Looking forward through the stalls I could see him climb into the driver’s seat, check the gear lever, and press the starter: an intent, active, capable figure dealing with an awkward situation.

The diesel starter whirred and the engine roared to life. Jody settled himself, found reverse gear, and carefully let out the clutch. The horsebox shuddered and stood still. Jody put his foot down on the accelerator.

Through the windscreen I could see two or three men approaching, faces a mixture of surprise and anger. One of them began running and waving his arms about in the classic reaction of the chap who comes back to his parked car to find it dented.

Jody ignored him. The horsebox rocked, the crushed side of the cab screeched against its mangled neighbour, and Energise began to panic.

‘Jody, stop,’ I yelled.

He took no notice. He raced the engine harder, then took his foot off the accelerator, then jammed it on again. Off, on, repeatedly.

Inside the box it sounded as if the whole vehicle were being ripped in two. Energise began whinnying and straining backwards on his tethering rope and stamping about with sharp hooves. I didn’t know how to begin to soothe him and could hardly get close enough for a pat, even if that would have made the slightest difference. My relationship with horses was along the lines of admiring them from a distance and giving them carrots while they were safely tied up. No one had briefed me about dealing with a hysterical animal at close quarters in a bucketing biscuit tin.

With a final horrendous crunch the two entwined cabs tore apart and Jody’s box, released from friction, shot backwards. Energise slithered and went down for a moment on his hindquarters and I too wound up on the floor. Jody slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the cab and was promptly clutched by the three newcomers, one now in a full state of apoplectic rage.

I stood up and picked bits of hay off my clothes and regarded my steaming, foam-flaked, terrified, four-footed property.

‘All over, old fellow,’ I said.

It sounded ridiculous. I smiled, cleared my throat, tried again.

‘You can cool off, old lad. The worst is over.’

Energise showed no immediate signs of getting the message. I told him he was a great horse, he’d won a great race, he’d be king of the castle in no time and that I admired him very much. I told him he would soon be rugged up nice and quiet in a stable somewhere though I hadn’t actually yet worked out exactly which one, and that doubtless someone would give him some excessively expensive hay and a bucket of nice cheap water and I dared say some oats and stuff like that. I told him I was sorry I hadn’t a carrot in my pocket at that moment but I’d bring him one next time I saw him.

After a time this drivel seemed to calm him. I put out a hand and gave his neck a small pat. His skin was wet and fiery hot. He shook his head fiercely and blew out vigorously through black moist nostrils, but the staring white no longer showed round his eye and he had stopped trembling. I began to grow interested in him in a way which had not before occurred to me: as a person who happened also to be a horse.

I realised I had never before been alone with a horse. Extraordinary, really, when Energise was the twelfth I’d owned. But racehorse owners mostly patted their horses in stables with lads and trainers in attendance, and in parade rings with all the world looking on, and in unsaddling enclosures with friends pressing round to congratulate. Owners who like me were not riders themselves and had nowhere of their own to turn horses out to grass seldom ever spent more than five consecutive minutes in a horse’s company.

I spent longer with Energise in that box than in all the past five months since I’d bought him.

Outside, Jody was having troubles. One of the men had fetched a policeman who was writing purposefully in a notebook. I wondered with amusement just how Jody would lay the blame on my carelessness in walking in front of the box and giving the driver no choice but to swerve. If he thought he was keeping my horses, he would play it down. If he thought he was losing them, he’d be vitriolic. Smiling to myself I talked it over with Energise.