by Francis - TO THE HILT

'He's a fool.'

'He's a dangerous fool,' Emily said. 'All that silly-ass front of his has changed to pure poison. So take care, Al. I'm serious. You made him look stupid and he'll never forgive you.'

I said lightly, 'I'm engaging a bodyguard.'

'Al!' She sounded exasperated. 'Look out for Surtees. I mean it.'

'Yes,' I said. 'I want to talk to you, though, about Golden Malt.'

'Where is he?'

'Safe enough, but it will be better if I move him again, and I need your knowledge and advice. I've borrowed Ivan's copy of Horses in Training and sorted out four trainers who look possible, so if I tell you who they are, will you give me your opinion?'

'Fire away.'

I named the four trainers and again asked what she thought.

Two of them would be OK,' she said slowly, 'but look up Jimmy Jennings.'

I looked him up and objected, 'He has too many horses.' I counted. 'Thirty-six.'

'Not any more. He's been ill. He's halved his yard… told some of the owners to take their horses away temporarily, but it looks as if it might be for ever. He and I are good friends. The real advantage of going to him is that he has two yards, and one of them is now standing empty. Tell me his phone number and I'll see what he says.'

I read out the phone number and asked, 'Would the horse be able to race from there in your own name as its trainer?'

'Well, Jimmy's a licensed trainer himself; no problem there. The horse could detour to my yard in Lambourn on the day of the race to pick up the colours and tack and his usual lad. I could inform the Jockey Club in advance, and as the owner, Ivan, is a member, I can't see there being any difficulty.' She thought briefly. 'From the secrecy point of view it's always the lads that are the leaky sieves. It's not deliberate disloyalty, they just talk in the pubs.'

'And one of your lads talks to Surtees.'

She sighed. 'If I knew which one, I would give him disinformation.'

'That's a thought.'

'Give me ten minutes and I'll phone you back.'

I waited quite a while by the phone, loitering and repelling a resentful woman who wanted to use the end instrument of the row, not one of the vacant others. She had fierce words to say. When Emily at last rang, the resentful woman still hovered, black beady eyes full of ill will.

'It's all fixed,' Emily said. 'Sorry I was so long. I told Jimmy the whole situation. He's a hundred per cent trustable if you trust him first. He says he'll put Golden Malt in his empty yard, and to avoid the chatty lad business, the horse will be cared for and exercised by Jimmy's sixteen-year-old daughter, who's already an amateur jockey and knows when to keep quiet. There's no need for his regular lads even to know Golden Malt is there. The yards are at opposite ends of the village. What's more, it's not a busy training area. Jimmy's gallops aren't the best, though it hasn't stopped him training a lot of winners in his time. I said you'd get there sometime this afternoon, and… er… I promised the training fee would be inflated. Jimmy didn't want to hear of it, but I insisted. He could do with a bit extra, though he's too proud to ask.'

'He'll get it,' I said.

'Yes. I knew you would agree.'

She gave me directions to the Hampshire village and said Jimmy had said I should look for a square white house with bronze flaming-torch gateposts, and I should ring the front door bell, not go round to the back.

'OK.'

'I'll phone Jimmy later for news. Don't worry, I won't do it from home. And I told him not to phone me.'

'Brilliant.'

'Do you really think my phone is bugged?'

'Don't take the risk.'

We said goodbye and the baleful old witch shouldered me out of the way to reach her preferred public phone. Everyone to their own obsession, I supposed. Impossible to dislodge fixed ideas. There were six unoccupied instruments she could have used.

I returned to Ivan's house, detouring to a newsagent for a copy of Horse and Hound and an up-to-date road map, and to my mother's and stepfather's bemusement I told them in detail about the shenanigans in Emily's yard and my travels with Golden Malt.

I said, 'Emily has arranged for a trainer friend of hers to look after your horse and keep him fit so he can run in the King Alfred Gold Cup. If you agree with what we've planned, I'll transfer Golden Malt to the trainer this afternoon. The horse will be in very good hands and it would be only by exceptionally bad luck that Surtees would discover where he is.'

Ivan said slowly, 'You've gone to a lot of trouble.'

'Well, the horse is yours. You asked me to look after your affairs, so… er… I try.'

'For your mother's sake.' A statement, not a question.

'Yes, but for yours, also. You don't approve of the way I live, but you have never been ungenerous to me, and you would have taken me into the brewery, and I don't forget that.'

He looked at his hands and I couldn't read his thoughts, but when I asked if I could borrow his car for the afternoon, he agreed without conditions.

Via the classified advertisements in Horse and Hound and the road map and the telephone, I arranged to meet a four-horse travelling horsebox (the smallest of a prestigious firm) in Phil's yard in East Ilsley, and there loaded Golden Malt for the last leg of his journey.

Phil and I shook hands again, mutually pleased and, asking the box driver of the top-class transport firm to follow Ivan's car as arranged, I led him southwards and eastwards along secondary roads until we arrived somewhere near Basingstoke in a village that looked as if it had never seen a racehorse. But there, in the village's main street, stood a square white house with bronze flaming torches on the gateposts.

I stopped the car, the horsebox braking to a halt behind me, and went to ring the front door bell, as instructed.

A thin, smiling middle-aged man opened the door in welcome. His skin had the grey tautness of terminal illness but his handshake was strong. A pace or two behind him stood a short fine-boned girl whom he introduced as his daughter, saying she would drive through the village in the horsebox and settle Golden Malt into his new home. He watched approvingly as she climbed into the high cab beside the driver for the journey, and he invited me into his house, eyeing Ivan's expensive car with reassurance and telling me that Emily had said she was sending her 'special lad' to ensure the safe transit of a special horse.

Jimmy Jennings asked why I was smiling. Was I not Emily's 'special lad'?

'I'm married to her,' I said.

' Really ?' He looked me up and down. 'Are you that painter feller who ran off and left her?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'Good Lord! Come this way. Come this way.'

He hurried down a hallway, beckoning me to follow, and led me into his office, furnished, like most trainers' such rooms, with ranks of framed photographs on the walls. He stood and pointed in silence, but I didn't need his directing finger: among the clutter hung a painting I'd done and sold four or more years earlier.

As always when I saw my own work freshly after an interval, I felt a mixture of excitement and shock. The picture was of a jockey plodding back to the stands after a fall, disappointment in his shoulders, a tear in his grass-stained breeches. I remembered the intensity of feeling in the brushstrokes, the stoicism and the loneliness of that man's defeat.

Teller I trained for couldn't pay his bill,' Jimmy Jennings explained. 'He offered me that picture instead. He swore it would be worth a fortune one day, but I took it because I liked it. Whether you realise it or not, that picture just about sums up a jump jockey's life. Endurance. Courage. Persistence. All those things. Do you see?'

I said lamely, 'I'm glad you like it.' He thrust out his chin, a defiant gesture against an imminent and inevitable fate.