Reflex (25 page)

He was lying in a high bed in a room of his own, with a mass of breathing equipment to one side. He was, though, breathing for himself. Precariously, I guessed, since a nurse came in to check on him every ten minutes while we were there, making sure that a bell-push remained under his fingers the whole time.

He looked thinner than ever and grayly pale, but there had been no near-execution in his brain. The eyes were as intelligent as ever, and the silly-ass manner appeared strongly as a defense against the indignities of his position.

I tried to apologize for what he'd suffered. He wouldn't have it.

“Don't forget,” he said. “I was there because I wanted to be. No one exactly twisted my arm.” He gave me a traveling inspection. “Your face looks OK. How do you heal so fast?”

“Always do.”

“Always . . .” He gave a weak laugh. “Funny life you lead. Always healing.”

“How long will you be in here?”

“Three or four days.”

“Is that all?” Clare said, surprised. “You look . . . er . . .”

He looked whiter than the pillow his head lay on. He nodded, however, and said, “I'm breathing much better. Once there's no danger the nerves will pack up again, I can go. There's nothing else wrong.”

“I'll take you home if you need transport,” I said.

“Might hold you to that.”

We didn't stay very long because talking clearly tired him, but just before we went he said, “You know, that gas was so quick. Not slow, like gas at the dentist. I'd no time to do anything. It was like breathing a brick wall.”

Into a short reflective silence Clare said, “No one would have lived if they'd been there alone.”

“Makes you think, what?” said Jeremy cheerfully.

As we drove back towards the pub Clare said, “You didn't tell him about Amanda.”

“Plenty of time.”

“He came down last Sunday because he'd got your message that you'd found her. He told me while we were in the kitchen. He said your phone was out of order, so he came.”

“I'd unplugged it.”

“Odd how things happen.”

“Mm.”

Our second night was a confirmation of the first. Much the same, but new and different. A tingling, fierce, gentle, intense, turbulent time. A matter, it seemed, as much to her liking as mine.

“Where's this depression one's supposed to get?” she said, very late. “Post what's-it.”

“Comes in the morning, when you go.”

“That's hours off yet.”

“So it is.”

 

The morning came, as they do. I drove her to a station to catch a train, and went on myself to Lambourn.

When I got there, before going to Harold's, I called at my cottage. All seemed strangely unfamiliar, as if home was no longer the natural embracing refuge it should be. I saw for the first time the bareness, the emotional chill which had been so apparent to Jeremy on his first visit. It no longer seemed to fit with myself. The person who had made that home was going away, receding in time. I felt oddly nostalgic, but there was no calling him back. The maturing change had gone too far.

Shivering a little I spread out on the kitchen table a variety of photographs of different people, and then I asked my neighbor Mrs. Jackson to come in and look at them.

“What am I looking for, Mr. Nore?”

“Anyone you've seen before.”

Obliging she studied them carefully one by one, and stopped without hesitation at a certain face.

“How extraordinary!” she exclaimed. “That's the council man who came about the taxes. The one I let in here. Ever so sarcastic, the police were about that, but as I told them, you don't
expect
people to say they're tax assessors if they aren't.”

“You're sure he's the one?”

“Positive,” she said, nodding. “He had that same hat on, and all.”

“Then would you write on the back of the photo, for me, Mrs. Jackson?” I gave her a felt pen that would write boldly and blackly on the photographic paper, and dictated the words for her, saying that this man had called at the house of Philip Nore posing as a tax assessor on Friday, November 27th.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“Sign your name, Mrs. Jackson. And would you mind repeating the whole message on the back of this other photograph?”

With concentration she did so. “Are you giving these to the police?” she said. “I don't want them bothering me again really. Will they come back again with their questions?”

“I shouldn't think so,” I said.

V
ictor Briggs had come in his Mercedes, but he went up to the Downs with Harold in the Land Rover. I rode up on a horse. The morning's work got done to everyone's reasonable satisfaction, and we all returned variously to the stable.

When I rode into the yard, Victor Briggs was standing by his car, waiting. I slid off the horse and gave it to one of the lads to see to.

“Get in the car,” Victor said.

No waster of words, ever. He stood there in his usual clothes, gloved as always against the chilly wind, darkening the day. If I could see auras, I thought, his would be black.

I sat in the front passenger seat, where he pointed, and he slid himself in beside me, behind the steering wheel. He started the engine, released the brake, put the automatic gear into drive. The quiet hunk of metal eased out of Lambourn, going back to the Downs.

He stopped on a wide piece of grass verge from where one could see half of Berkshire. He switched off the engine, leaned back in his seat, and said, “Well?”

“Do you know what I'm going to say?” I asked.

“I hear things,” he said. “I hear a lot of things.”

“I know that.”

“I heard that den Relgan set his goons on you.”

“Did you?” I looked at him with interest. “Where did you hear that?”

He made a small tight movement of his mouth, but he did answer. “Gambling club.”

“What did you hear?”

“True, isn't it?” he said. “You still had the marks on Saturday.”

“Did you hear any reasons?”

He produced the twitch that went for a smothered smile.

“I heard,” he said, “that you got den Relgan chucked out of the Jockey Club a great deal faster than he got in.”

He watched my alarmed surprise with another twitch, a less successful effort this time at hiding amusement.

“Did you hear how?” I said.

He said with faint regret. “No. Just that you'd done it. The goons are talking. Stupid bone-headed bull-muscle. Den Relgan's heading for trouble, using them. They never keep their mouths shut.”

“Are they . . . um . . . out for general hire?”

“Chuckers out at a gaming club. Muscle for hire. As you say.”

“They beat up George Millace's wife. Did you hear that too?”

After a pause he nodded, but offered no comment.

I looked at the closed expression, the dense whitish skin, the black shadow of beard. A secretive, solid, slow-moving man with a tap into a world I knew little of. Gaming clubs, hired bully-boys, underworld gossip.

“The goons said they left you for dead,” he said. “A week later, you're winning a race.”

“They exaggerated,” I said dryly.

I got a twitch but also a shake of the head. “One of
them was scared. Rattled. Said they'd gone too far with the boots.”

“You know them well?” I said.

“They talk.”

There was another pause, then I said without emphasis, “George Millace sent you a letter.”

He moved in his seat, seeming almost to relax, breathing out in a long sigh. He'd been waiting to know, I thought. Patiently waiting. Answering questions. Being obliging.

“How long have you had it?” he said.

“Three weeks.”

“You can't use it.” There was a faint tremor of triumph in the statement. “You'd be in trouble yourself.”

“How did you know I'd got it?” I said.

He blinked. The mouth tightened. He said slowly, “I heard you had George Millace's . . .”

“George Millace's what?”

“Files.”

“Ah,” I said. “Nice anonymous word, files. How did you hear I had them? Who from?”

“Ivor,” he said. “And Dana. Separately.”

“Will you tell me?”

He thought it over, giving me a blank inspection, and then said grudgingly. “Ivor was too angry to be discreet. He said too much about you—such as poisonous creep. He said you were fifty times worse than George Millace. And Dana, another night, she said did I know you had copies of some blackmailing letters George Millace had sent, and were using them. She asked if I could help her to get hers back.”

I smiled in my turn. “What did you say?”

“I said I couldn't help her.”

“When you talked to them,” I said, “was it in gaming clubs?”

“It was.”

“Are they your gaming clubs?”

“None of your business,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “why not tell me?”

He said after a pause, “I have two partners. Four gaming clubs. The clientele in general don't know I'm a proprietor. I move around. I play. I listen. Does that answer your question?”

I nodded. “Yes, thank you. Are those goons your goons?”

“I employ them,” he said austerely, “as chuckers out. Not to smash up women and jockeys.”

“A little moonlighting, was it? On the side?”

He didn't answer directly. “I have been expecting,” he said, “that you would demand something from me if you had that letter. Something more than answers.”

I thought of the letter, which I knew word for word:

 

Dear Victor Briggs,

I am sure you will be interested to know that I have the following information. You did on five separate occasions during the past six months conspire with a bookmaker to defraud the betting public by arranging that your odds-on favorites should not win their races.

 

There followed a list of the five races, complete with the sums Victor had received from his bookmaker friend. The letter continued:

 

I hold a signed affidavit from the bookmaker in question.

As you see, all five of these horses were ridden by Philip Nore, who certainly knew what he was doing.

I could send this affidavit to the Jockey Club, in which case you would both be warned off. I will telephone you soon, however, with an alternative suggestion.

 

The letter had been sent more than three years earlier. For three years Victor Briggs had run his horses straight. When George Millace died, a week to the day, Victor Briggs had gone back to the old game. Had gone back to find that his vulnerable jockey was no longer reliable.

“I didn't want to do anything about the letter,” I said. “I didn't mean to tell you I had it. Not until now.”

“Why not? You wanted to ride to win. You could have used it to make me agree. You'd been told you'd lose your job anyway if you wouldn't ride as I wanted. You knew I couldn't face being warned off. Yet you didn't use the letter for that. Why not?”

“I wanted to make you run the horses straight for their own sakes.”

He gave me another of the long uninformative stares.

“I'll tell you,” he said at last. “Yesterday I added up all the prize money I'd won since Daylight's race at Sandown. All those seconds and thirds, as well as Sharpener's wins. I added up my winnings from betting, win and place. I made more money in the past month with you riding straight than I did with you stepping off Daylight.” He paused, waiting for a reaction, but, catching it from him, I simply stared back. “I've seen,” he went on, “that you weren't going to ride any more crooked races. I've understood that. I know you've changed. You're a different person. Older. Stronger. If you go on riding for me, I won't ask you again to lose a race.” He paused once more. “Is that enough? Is that what you want to hear?”

I looked away from him, out across the windy landscape.

“Yes.”

After a bit he said, “George Millace didn't demand money, you know. At least . . .”

“A donation to the Injured Jockeys?”

“You know the lot, don't you?”

“I've learned,” I said. “George wasn't interested in
extorting money for himself. He extorted—” I searched for the word “—frustration.”

“From how many?”

“Seven, that I know of. Probably eight, if you ask your bookmaker.”

He was astonished.

“George Millace,” I said, “enjoyed making people cringe. He did it to everybody in a mild way. To people he could catch out doing wrong, he did it with gusto. He had alternative suggestions for everyone—disclosure, or do what George wanted. And what George wanted, in general, was to frustrate. To stop Ivor den Relgan's power play. To stop Dana taking drugs. To stop other people doing other things.”

“To stop me,” Victor said with a hint of dry humor, “from being warned off.” He nodded. “You're right, of course. When George Millace telephoned, I was expecting a straight blackmail. Then he said all I had to do was behave myself. Those were his words. As long as you behave, Victor, he said, nothing will happen. He called me Victor. I'd never met him. Knew who he was, of course, but that was all. Victor, he said, as if I were a little pet dog, as long as we're a good boy, nothing will happen. But if I suspect anything, Victor, he said, I'll follow Philip Nore around with my motorized telephotos until I have him bang to rights, and then Victor, you'll both be for the chop.”

“Do you remember word for word what he said, after all this time?” I asked, surprised.

“I recorded him. I was expecting his calls. I wanted evidence of blackmail. All I got was a moral lecture and a suggestion that I give a thousand pounds to the Injured Jockeys' Fund.”

“And was that all? Forever?”

“He used to wink at me at the races,” Victor said.

I laughed.

“Yes, very funny,” he said. “Is that the lot?”

“Not really. There's something you could do for me, if you would. Something you know, and could tell me. Something you could tell me in future.”

“What is it?”

“About Dana's drugs.”

“Stupid girl. She won't listen.”

“She will soon. She's still saveable. And besides her . . .”

I told him what I wanted. He listened acutely. When I'd finished I got the twitch of a throttled smile.

“Beside you,” he said, “George Millace was a beginner.”

 

Victor drove off in his car and I walked back to Lambourn over the Downs.

An odd man, I thought. I'd learned more about him in half an hour than I had in seven years, and still knew next to nothing. He had given me what I'd wanted, though. Given it freely. Given me my job without strings for as long as I liked, and help in another matter just as important. It hadn't all been, I thought, because of my having that letter.

Going home in the wind, out on the bare hills, I thought of the way things had happened during the past few weeks. Not about George and his bombshells, but of Jeremy and Amanda.

Because of Jeremy's persistence, I'd looked for Amanda, and because of looking for Amanda I had now met a grandmother, an uncle, a sister. I knew something at least of my father. I had a feeling of origin that I hadn't had before.

I had people. I had people like everyone else had. Not necessarily loving or praiseworthy or successful, but
there
. I hadn't wanted them, but now that I had them they sat quietly in the mind like foundation stones.

Because of looking for Amanda I had found Samantha, and with her a feeling of continuity, of belonging. I saw
the pattern of my childhood in a different perspective, not as a chopped up kaleidoscope, but as a curve. I knew a place where I'd been, and a woman who'd known me, and they seemed to lead smoothly now towards Charlie.

I no longer floated on the tide.

I had roots.

I reached the point on the hill from where I could see down to the cottage, the brow that I looked up to from the sitting room windows. I stopped there. I could see most of Lambourn, stretched out. Could see Harold's house and the yard. Could see the whole row of cottages, with mine in the center.

I'd belonged in that village, been part of it, breathed its intrigues for seven years. Been happy, miserable, normal. It was what I'd called home. But now in mind and spirit I was leaving that place, and soon would in body as well. I would live somewhere else, with Clare. I would be a photographer.

The future lay inside me; waiting, accepted. One day fairly soon I'd walk into it.

I would race, I thought, until the end of the season. Five or six more months. Then in May or June, when summer came, I'd hang up my boots: retire, as every jockey had to, some time or other. I would tell Harold soon, to give him time to find someone else for the autumn. I'd enjoy what was left, and maybe have a last chance at the Grand National. Anything might happen. One never knew.

I still had the appetite, still the physique. Better to go, I supposed, before both of them crumbled.

I went on down the hill without any regrets.