Дик Фрэнсис - Rat Race

‘If you want it.’

‘You’ve seen what he’s like. And he’s been mild, today. Mild. Thanks to you.’

‘I’ve done absolutely nothing.’

‘You’re here.’

‘Why do you come to Haydock, if he always bothers you too much?’

‘Because I’m bloody well not letting him frighten me away.’

‘He loves you,’ I said.

‘No. Can’t you tell the difference, for God’s sake?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She looked startled, then shook her head. ‘He loves Chanter, full stop.’

She took three more steps towards the stairs, then stopped again.

‘Why is it that I talk to you as if I’d known you for years?’

To a certain extent I knew, but I smiled and shook my head. No one cares to say straight out that it’s because one is as negative as wall paper.

Chanter’s plaintive voice floated up the steps. ‘Nancy, come on down...’

She took another step, and then stopped again. ‘Will you do me another favour? I’m staying up here a few more days with an aunt, but I bought a present for Midge this morning and I’ve given it to Colin to take home. But he’s got a memory like a string vest for everything except horses, so would you check with him that he hasn’t left it in the changing room, before you take off?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Your sister... I gather she’s been ill.’

She looked away up at the sun-filled sky and down again and straight at me, and in a shattering moment of awareness I saw the pain and the cracks behind the bright public facade.

‘Has been. Will be,’ she said. ‘She’s got leukaemia.’

After a pause she swallowed and added the unbearable bit.

‘She’s my identical twin.’

After the fifth race Chanter gloomily announced that about fifty plastic students were waiting for him to pat their egos and that although he despised the system he was likely to find eating a problem if he actually got the sack. His farewell to Nancy consisted in wiping his hands all over her, front and back, and giving her an open mouthed kiss which owing to her split-second evasive action landed on her ear.

He glared at me as if it were my fault. Nancy not relenting, he scowled at her and muttered something about salt, and then twirled around on his bare heel so that the tablecloth and all the hair and fringes and beads swung out with centrifugal force, and strode away at high speed towards the exit.

‘The soles of his feet are like leather,’ she said. ‘Disgusting.’ But from the hint of indulgence in her face I gathered that Chanter’s cause wasn’t entirely lost.

She said she was thirsty again and could do with a Coke, and since she seemed to want me still to tag along, I tagged. This time, without Chanter, we went to the members’ bar in the Club enclosure, the small downstairs one that was open to the main entrance hall.

The man in the plaster cast was there again. Different audience. Same story. His big cheerful booming voice filled the little bar and echoed round the whole hall outside.

‘You can’t hear yourself think,’ Nancy said.

In a huddle in a far corner were Major Tyderman and Eric Goldenberg, sitting at a small table with what looked like treble whiskies in front of them. Their heads were bent towards each other, close, almost touching, so that they could each hear what the other was saying amid the din, yet not be overheard. Relations between them didn’t seem to be at their most cordial. There was a great deal of rigidity in their down-bent faces, and no friendliness in the small flicking glances they occasionally gave each other.

‘The Sporting Life man,’ Nancy said, following my gaze.

‘Yes. The big one is a passenger too.’

‘They don’t look madly happy.’

‘They weren’t madly happy coming up here, either.’

‘Owners of chronic losers?’

‘No... well, I don’t think so. They came up because of that horse Rudiments which Kenny Bayst rode for Annie Villars, but they aren’t down in the racecard as its owners.’

She flicked back through her card. ‘Rudiments. Duke of Wessex. Well, neither of those two is him, poor old booby.’

‘Who, the Duke?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Actually I suppose he isn’t all that old, but he’s dreadfully dim. Big important looking man with a big important looking rank, and as sweet as they come, really, but there’s nothing but cotton wool upstairs.’

‘You know him well?’

‘I’ve met him often.’

‘Subtle difference.’

‘Yes.’

The two men scraped back their chairs and began to make their way out of the bar. The man in the plaster cast caught sight of them and his big smile grew even bigger.

‘Say, if it isn’t Eric, Eric Goldenberg, of all people. Come over here, me old sport, come and have a drink.’

Goldenberg looked less than enthusiastic at the invitation and the Major sidled away quickly to avoid being included, giving the Australian a glance full of the dislike of the military for the flamboyant.

The man in the cast put one arm clumsily round Golden-berg’s shoulder, the crutch swinging out widely and knocking against Nancy.

‘Say,’ he said. ‘Sorry, lady. I haven’t got the hang of these things yet.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said, and Goldenberg said something to him that I couldn’t hear, and before we knew where we were we had been encompassed into the Australian’s circle and he was busy ordering drinks all round.

Close to, he was a strange looking man because his face and hair were almost colourless. The skin was whitish, the scalp, half bald, was fringed by silky hair that had been fair and was turning white, the eyelashes and eyebrows made no contrast, and the lips of the smiling mouth were creamy pale. He looked like a man made up to take the part of a large cheerful ghost. His name, it appeared, was Acey Jones.

‘Aw, come on,’ he said to me in disgust. ‘Coke is for milksops, not men.’ Even his eyes were pale: a light indeterminate bluey grey.

‘Just lay off him, Ace,’ Goldenberg said. ‘He’s flying me home. A drunken pilot I can do without.’

‘A pilot, eh?’ The big voice broadcast the information to about fifty people who weren’t in the least interested. ‘One of the fly boys? Most pilots I know are a bunch of proper tearaways. Live hard, love hard, drink hard. Real characters, those guys.’ He said it with an expansive smile which hid the implied slight. ‘C‘m on now, sport, live dangerously. Don’t disillusion all these people.’

‘Beer, then, please,’ I said.

Nancy was equally scornful, but for opposite reasons. ‘Why did you climb down?’

‘Antagonising people when you don’t have to is like casting your garbage on the waters. One day it may come floating back, smelling worse.’

She laughed. ‘Chanter would say that was immoral. Stands be made on principles.’

‘I won’t drink more than half of the beer. Will that do?’

‘You’re impossible.’

Acey Jones handed me the glass and watched me take a mouthful and went on a bit about hell-raising and beating up the skies and generally living the life of a high-powered gypsy. He made it sound very attractive and his audience smiled and nodded their heads and none of them seemed to know that the picture was fifty years out of date, and that the best thing a pilot can be is careful: sober, meticulous, receptive, and careful. There are old pilots and foolish pilots, but no old foolish pilots. Me, I was old, young, wise, foolish, thirty-four. Also depressed, divorced, and broke.

After aviation, Acey Jones switched back to insurance and told Goldenberg and Nancy and me and the fifty other people about getting a thousand pounds for breaking his ankle, and we had to listen to it all again, reacting with the best we could do in surprised appreciation.