David Szalay - Spring

‘No…’

‘That was the worst thing for me.’

‘I didn’t think that…’

‘ Say something!’ She sits up and has a drink of water. Then she says, ‘Do you want some water?’

The way she says words like ‘water’. The way she meticulously enunciates the Ts in the middle of those words—it makes him want to kiss her. Why that? he wonders, shaking his head—he does not want any water. Why does that make me want to kiss her? Why does it matter why? Whatever. It just does. He pulls her towards him and kisses her.

Four o’clock on Monday morning and Simon Miller is up in the washed-out light of the laptop monitor. His face looks puffier in that light—his eyes peer out from over a whole series of seamed, sleepless pouches. Two-fingeredly he types in a password, thinking of last Wednesday night in the horse transport, pulled over in a shuttered Sussex lane with the hazards flashing. Then he had little Kelly Nicholls out of them poncey jodhpurs at last, though it weren’t easy, they were that tight… Logged in, he mouses his way towards the two o’clock at Huntingdon. And horses kept fartin of course. That’s one problem, having it off in a horse transport… The market for the two o’clock is now on the screen and still sleepily savouring the memory of Wednesday—precious memories! — he scrolls down looking for his horse.

She is hardly a proper outsider at all. The top price on offer is less than twenty to one. He scratches his head and wonders who has been forcing the price in. Officially only five people know about the touch. Himself. The owners. Piers. And Tom. Word will be out though. Owners always talk, or take young Tom. He were shaggin that scrawny thing, the vet’s assistant. He woulder told her. Probably fockin desperate to impress her, what with her being taller and intelligenter and posher than him. (None of which is that hard, mind.) He lights his second Marlboro of the day. He knows the markets. There is pressure on the price already. He’d be surprised if she was more than twelves with the firms in the morning.

As soon as it is light, leaving Piers to supervise the work session, he takes the Range Rover and drives to Trumpington. The sky is overcast except for in the east where it seems to have been torn open and a flame-blue pallor is sinking through like pigment into water, flooding the landscape with soft cold light. The wet meadows. The ploughed fields. He pulls up outside the Londis in Trumpington and switches off the engine. Kelly is not there yet, and he stands in the nippy morning air, smoking. There is no-one else in the street. Still, it is not quiet, exactly. The mumble of the M11 is faintly audible, and then a substantial plane passes quite low overhead, moaning, on its way in to land at Cambridge airport. Maybe a load of Sheikh Mo’s horses, Simon thinks, watching it from his hunched shoulders, home from their winter in Dubai… Lucky for some. When Kelly turns up in her little Fiat—she only got her licence last year—he is back in the Range Rover with the heating on.

She sits on the toasty leather of the passenger seat and when he has finished feeling and kissing her—he has not shaved, his stubble is sharp—he produces an envelope. ‘Thousand quid,’ he says. His voice smells of smoke. ‘I’m trusting you with it.’ He tells her to drive to Northampton and then Milton Keynes and Luton and visit twenty betting shops putting some of the money on in each, not the same amount in all of them, and never more than £100 in one place. She takes the envelope and looks inside it. Then she zips it into the pocket of her fleece. He says, ‘Our little secret, okay?’ She nods. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘And one other thing. You’re not to phone me or send me any messages today—not about this or anything else. Understood?’

‘I understand,’ she says, looking at herself in the wing mirror.

He stares at her with undisguised hunger. He was once handsome. Now his strong chin, halved like an arse, is submerged in a wall of wanton obesity. Years as an unusually tall jockey, starving himself to do the weight, the fingers down the throat, the tears, the fockin eating disorders—since all that ended (1990, a horrendous fall at Uttoxeter) he hasn’t had the heart to deny himself much. His jawline went long ago.

His eyes are still fixed on her.

When he starts the deep-voiced engine, she says, ‘Where are we going?’

And he says, ‘Somewhere we’ll not be seen.’

On the way home he meets another vehicle in the lane near the yard. The lane is only just wide enough for them to pass each other, and in fact they stop, and electric windows hum down. The driver of the other vehicle is Jeremy Nicholls, Simon’s landlord. Nicholls sticks his blonde, wide-jawed head out the window and in his posh voice says, ‘Morning, Simon. Not on the gallops this morning?’

‘No, not this morning,’ Simon says.

‘Had other things to do, eh?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How’s Kelly doing?’ Nicholls says. ‘Pleasing you, I hope.’

‘Very much so.’

‘That’s excellent. Excellent. So she knows what she’s doing?’

‘She does. And if there’s anything she doesn’t know, she picks it up soon enough. She’s a quick learner.’

Nicholls is smiling proudly. ‘She is,’ he says. ‘She is. Wonderful. I’ll see you later, Simon.’

‘See you, Jeremy.’

The windows have started to hum up when Nicholls shouts, ‘Oh, Simon!’

‘Yeh?’

He is still smiling. ‘You don’t have a tip for me, do you?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t, Jeremy.’

‘You must have something at Huntingdon today?’

‘None of em’s got much of a chance.’

‘No? Okay then. See you.’

Simon tilts his head for a moment in a sort of mock-salute, then powers his window up and drives on. He parks the Range Rover in the yard. There is nothing picturesque about the place. Even the old house is a morose-looking thing—small-windowed, white-washed, with its inevitable satellite-dish. Next to it is a warehouse-like structure with mossy fibreglass walls where the haylage and Vixen nuts are stored and the tractor and various other pieces of sourly oily machinery live.

He finds Mrs Miller in the overheated kitchen looking through a surgical enhancement prospectus. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she says. He puts two packs of Marlboro Reds on the table and pats her terrycloth haunch. ‘Just fillin up the Range Rover.’

‘Oh?’ It hardly explains why he has been away for an hour and a half.

‘Yeah,’ he says, taking a seat with a tiny smirk on his face, ‘just fillin her up…’

‘Please don’t pat me like I’m a horse, Simon.’

‘Alright, alright…’ he mutters, and starts to read the UKIP Members’ Newsletter while she serves him his breakfast. He is quite involved politically.

He is still eating—trying to pick up a slick of yolk with a mushy triangle of fried bread—when his phone starts to sing ‘You’re Just Too Good To Be True.’

You’re just too good to be true

Can’t take my eyes off of you

You’d be like heaven to touch

I wanna hold you so much…

Shoving his plate away, he answers it. It is Francis Moss, a well-known horseracing journalist, media personality, fellow UKIP member, and friend.

‘Alright, Mossy,’ Simon says. ‘How are you? Alright?’

Mossy says something.

‘Yeah alright,’ Simon says.

Then he says, ‘Oh, did you?’ He frowns and using only his free hand unwraps one of the packs of Marlboro Reds. Then he says, ‘Well as it happens, yes.’

Mossy speaks again.

‘No, Huntingdon.’