Дик Фрэнсис - Rat Race

‘He’s a pilot,’ Nancy explained apologetically. ‘He flew Colin here today.’

‘Ah,’ they said. ‘Ah.’

Two of my other passengers were there. Annie Villars was watching the horses canter past with an intent eye and a pursed mouth: the field-marshall element was showing strongly, the feminine camouflage in abeyance. Major Tyderman, planted firmly with his legs apart and his chin tucked well back into his neck, was scribbling notes into his racecard. When he looked up he saw us, and made his way purposefully across.

‘I say,’ he said to me, having forgotten my name. ‘Did I leave my Sporting Life over in the plane, do you know?’

‘Yes, you did, Major.’

‘Blast,’ he said. ‘I made some notes on it... Must get it, you know. Have to go across after this race.’

‘Would you like me to fetch it?’ I asked.

‘Well, that’s very good of you, my dear chap. But... no... couldn’t ask it. Walk will do me good.’

‘The aircraft’s locked, Major,’ I said. ‘You’ll need the keys.’ I took them out of my pocket and gave them to him.

‘Right.’ He nodded stiffly. ‘Good.’

The race started away off down the track and was all over long before I sorted out the colours of Colin Ross. In the event, it wasn’t difficult. He had won.

‘How’s Midge?’ Annie Villars said to Nancy, restoring her giant race glasses to their case.

‘Oh, much better, thank you. Getting on splendidly.’

‘I’m so glad. She’s had a bad time, poor girl.’

Nancy nodded and smiled, and everyone trooped down the stairs to the ground.

‘Well now,’ Nancy said. ‘How about some coffee? And something to munch, perhaps?’

‘You must have others you’d prefer to be with... I won’t get into trouble, you know, on my own.’

Her lips twitched. ‘Today I need a bodyguard. I elected you for the job. Desert me if you like, but if you want to please, stick.’

‘Not difficult,’ I said.

‘Great. Coffee, then.’

It was iced coffee, rather good. Half way through the turkey sandwiches the reason why Nancy wanted me with her drifted up to the small table where we sat and slobbered all over her. She fended off what looked to me like a random assembly of long hair, beard, beads, fringes and a garment like a table cloth with a hole in it, and yelled to me through the undergrowth, ‘Buddy, your job starts right now.’

I stood up, reached out two hands, caught hold of an assortment of wool and hair, and pulled firmly backwards. The result resolved itself into a youngish man sitting down with surprise much more suddenly than he’d intended.

‘Nancy,’ he said in an aggrieved voice.

‘This is Chanter,’ she said to me. ‘He’s never grown out of the hippie thing, as you can see.’

‘I’m an artist,’ he said. He had an embroidered band across his forehead and round his head: like the horses’ bridles, I thought fleetingly. All the hair was clean and there were shaven parts on his jaw just to prove that it wasn’t from pure laziness that he let everything grow. On closer inspection I was sure that it was indeed a dark green chenille table cloth, with a central hole for his head. Underneath that he wore low-slung buckskin trousers fringed from hip to ankle, and a creepy crepy dim mauve shirt curved to fit his concave stomach. Various necklaces and pendants on silver chains hung round his neck. Under all the splendour he had dirty bare feet.

‘I went to art school with him,’ Nancy said resignedly. ‘That was in London. Now he’s at Liverpool, just down the road. Any time I come racing up here, he turns up too.’

‘Uh,’ Chanter said profoundly.

‘Do you get grants for ever?’ I asked: not sneeringly; I simply wanted to know.

He was not offended. ‘Look, man, like, up here I’m the fuzz.’

I nearly laughed. Nancy said, ‘You know what he means, then?’

‘He teaches,’ I said.

‘Yeah, man, that’s what I said.’ He took one of the turkey sandwiches. His fingers were greenish with black streaks. Paint.

‘You keep your impure thoughts off this little bird,’ he said to me, spitting out bits of bread. ‘She’s strictly my territory. But strictly, man.’

‘Zat so?’

‘Zat definitely, but definitely... is... so, man.’

‘How come?’

He gave me a look which was as off beat as his appearance.

‘I’ve still got the salt to put on this little bird’s tail,’ he said. ‘Shan’t be satisfied till it’s there...’

Nancy was looking at him with an expression which meant that she didn’t know whether to laugh at him or be afraid of him. She couldn’t decide whether he was Chanter the amorous buffoon or Chanter the frustrated sex maniac. Nor could I. I understood her needing help when he was around.

‘He only wants me because I won’t,’ she said.

‘The challenge bit,’ I nodded. ‘Affront to male pride, and all that.’

‘Practically every other girl has,’ she said.

‘That makes it worse.’

Chanter looked at me broodingly. ‘You’re a drag, man. I mean, cubic’.

‘To each his scene,’ I said ironically.

He took the last of the sandwiches, turned his back studiously towards me and said to Nancy, ‘Let’s you and me lose this dross, huh?’

‘Let’s you and me do nothing of the sort, Chanter. If you want to tag along, Matt comes in the deal.’

He scowled at the floor and then suddenly stood up so that all the fringes and beads danced and jingled.

‘Come on then. Let’s get a look at the horses. Life’s a-wasting.’

‘He really can draw,’ Nancy said as we followed the tablecloth out into the sunshine.

‘I wouldn’t doubt it. I’ll bet half of what he does is caricature, though, with a strong element of cruelty.’

‘How d’you know?’ she said, startled.

‘He just seems like that.’

He padded along beside us in his bare feet and was a sufficiently unusual sight on a racecourse to attract a barrage of stares ranging from amusement to apoplexy. He didn’t seem to notice. Nancy looked as if she were long used to it.

We came to a halt against the parade ring rails where Chanter rested his elbows and exercised his voice.

‘Horses,’ he said. ‘I’m not for the Stubbs and Munnings thing. When I see a racehorse I see a machine, and that’s what I paint, a horse-shaped machine with pistons thumping away and muscle fibres like connecting rods and a crack in the crank case with the oil dripping away drop by drop into the body cavity...’ He broke off abruptly but with the same breath finished. ‘How’s your sister?’

‘She’s much better,’ Nancy said, not seeming to see any great change of subject. ‘She’s really quite well now.’

‘Good,’ he said, and went straight on with his lecture. ‘And then I draw some distant bulging stands with hats flying off and everyone cheering and all the time the machine is bursting its gut... I see components, I see what’s happening to the bits... the stresses... I see colours in components too... nothing on earth is a whole... nothing is ever what it seems... everything is components.’ He stopped abruptly, thinking about what he’d said.

After a suitably appreciative pause, I asked, ‘Do you ever sell your paintings?’

‘Sell them?’ He gave me a scornful, superior stare. ‘No, I don’t. Money is disgusting.’

‘It’s more disgusting when you haven’t got it,’ Nancy said.

‘You’re a renegade, girl,’ he said fiercely.

‘Love on a crust,’ she said, ‘Is fine when you’re twenty, but pretty squalid when you’re sixty.’

‘I don’t intend to be sixty. Sixty is strictly for grandfathers. Not my scene at all.’

We turned away from the rails and came face to face with Major Tyderman, who was carrying his Sporting Life and holding out the aircraft’s keys. His gaze swept over Chanter and he controlled himself admirably. Not a twitch.