David Szalay - Spring

For a few weeks there was no sign of him.

Slowly she stopped expecting to see him everywhere.

(This was the time of maximum listlessness in the office, of prolonged window-staring through sleepless eyes.)

Then one Sunday morning she was in the bath and thought she heard a noise downstairs. She stayed very still in the water, listening. There was a long, tingling silence. Then there was the sound of something smashing. To the hollow thump of footsteps on the stairs, her wet hands fumbled tremblingly with the lock. There was only one tiny window, which did not even open properly. Terrified, in tears, she was wrapping herself in a towel when someone tried the door. The pathetic flimsy lock had no hope of withstanding his weight. It surrendered at the first meaningful shove.

What was strange was that he did not seem to know what to do—not even what he wanted to do. A shocking male presence in the small pink-tiled space of the bathroom, he had her in his hands and did not seem to know what to do with her. When he started to move his hairy face towards hers—perhaps he was trying to kiss her—without thinking, with a sort of instinct, she sank her teeth into his forearm—he was pinning her shoulders to the wall—and immediately tasted his blood in her mouth like an old iron nail. He yelped and unpinned her, and she pushed past him and locked herself in her bedroom, from where she phoned the police.

She would not leave her room while he was still there—and for some reason he was still there when the police arrived, at speed and with wailing sirens. She threw the keys out the window and they let themselves into the house, where they found him still sitting on the linoleum by the toilet, holding the wound on his arm. (The puncture marks made by her teeth were plainly visible in the meat of his forearm, like a pair of dotted parentheses in a purple bruise.) He did not seem to understand what had happened, or what was happening.

Now, Melissa told James, he was indeed in a cell in Thamesmead Police Station, awaiting trial for a number of quite serious offences. Her parents had been to see him. A solicitor had appeared from somewhere. Michael himself seemed to be in a state of shock—he had not said a word since the police found him sitting next to the toilet, pathetically nursing his hurt arm.

‘He’s got an appointment with the psychiatrist this afternoon,’ Melissa said.

‘The psychiatrist?’ James said, starting to understand that this was probably the end of Professional Equine Investments.

There was however one loose end—Absent Oelemberg. Together, he and Freddy own half the horse. The other half is owned by her trainer, Simon Miller, who Freddy met in a Fenland pub one Saturday last November. Freddy told him he had owned horses in the past (which he hadn’t), and Miller, who was not totally sober, said that one of his owners had just died, an old fellow name of Maurice something. He had owned a half share in an ex-French mare in the stable and, if Freddy was interested, the heirs were looking to sell. When Freddy said he was interested, Miller went further and hinted that he was hoping to land a ‘nice little touch’ with the horse, who had not yet run in the UK.

The next morning, Freddy phoned James. He told him that he, Freddy, had an inexpensive opportunity to own a horse in training with ‘one of the top jumps trainers in the country’.

‘Who’s that then?’ James sounded sceptical.

‘Simon Miller,’ Freddy said. He was using his this-is-serious-now voice. ‘We have to move fast on this, though.’

‘We…?’

‘Miller wants ten grand for a half share.’

‘A half share? Who owns the other half?’

‘Miller does. He says he wants to hold on to half himself. He knows what he’s doing. He’s pretty shrewd,’ Freddy said. ‘And there’s something else. You’ll like this. He’s hoping to land a touch with her early next year.’

Freddy explained what Miller had told him in the pub the night before. Miller had been so drunk that it had taken a long time for Freddy to work out what he was saying. Essentially it was this: Absent Oelemberg was a smart ex-French mare—‘a useful tool’ was the expression Miller had used, slurring it so egregiously— eryoofustoowil —that at first Freddy had not even been able to make out what the words were, let alone what he meant by them. What he seemed to mean was a horse who would win her share of handicaps. Freddy had pretended to know all about the handicapping system, and fortunately Miller was much too drunk to notice that he had had to explain it to him from first principles himself. His plan for Absent Oelemberg was to ensure that she did not show her true ability in her first few races—she would then be assigned a handicap mark which was too low, from which she would therefore be able to win easily. And since she would have performed so poorly until then, the odds available on her in her first handicap would be very long. Thus you would have a horse at very long odds who you knew would win easily.

‘Well?’ Freddy said expectantly.

For some time, James said nothing. Thoroughbred ownership was an interesting prospect. On the other hand, this was Freddy on the phone on a Sunday morning, sounding like he was still drunk, with a proposition put together with a very drunk stranger in a pub the night before. It was not exactly investment grade. Not exactly triple-A. And James would unquestionably have said no, were it not for the embellishment of the touch. What Freddy understood was that James would see the touch as something he would be able to use for Professional Equine Investments.

Still, he slept on it.

Then the next morning he phoned Freddy and said he was prepared to put in his share.

And Freddy said that actually he would have to put in the whole £10,000 because he—Freddy—was skint at the moment. He would pay James back with his winnings, he said, when the touch went in, and since it had been Freddy who found the opportunity in the first place, when he had let him sweat for a few days, James lent him the money.

They went up to Cambridgeshire the following Sunday and stood in the stable yard, trying to look as if they knew what they were doing, Freddy fiddling with a hip flask, while Miller’s ‘head lad’—despite the youthful-sounding moniker, a middle-aged man—led the mare out of the stables and into the middle of the slurry-puddled, straw-strewn yard. She seemed fine—that is, there was nothing obviously wrong with her. She was quite unusual-looking. The visual effect was of a blackish-blue flecked with snow. And she was surprisingly small. She shook her head, tinkling the tack.

It was a frosty morning, and they were tired. Miller had insisted on meeting at eight. He stood there, taciturn, small eyes sly under a tweed peak, watching them while they watched the mare. (Ladylike, she lifted her tail and let fall a small heap of shiny manure.) He had been suspicious of Freddy at first. The morning after their meeting in the pub, up at half five as usual and monstrously hungover, he had sworn at himself for speaking so freely to a stranger—a stranger, what’s more, who had plied him all night with whisky and pints, while finding out more and more about his operation on the pretext of being a potential owner. That was what all the snoopers said. If something seems too good to be true, he told himself, his head throbbing as he watched the lads and lasses take the string out—it was a foul winter morning of horizontal sleet, not properly light yet—it probably is. And that this funny-looking posh fellow from London would just show up and pay £10,000 for a half share in the mare did seem too good to be true. And yet here he was, a week later, with his mate, and the money.