Spring (16 page)

*

The sound of rain splashing and trickling in the area. It was lovely to lie there in the warmth, still half asleep, holding her small body and listening to the rain. He would have liked to lie there for hours. For years. He listened to it intermittently pinging on the metal steps—­sometimes it pinged several times in quick succession, sometimes there were long intervals—­and whingeing quietly in the drain. She was wearing his pyjamas. He squeezed her and she whispered something. He stroked her instep with his foot.

She said, ‘What time is it?’

He did not want to move but he leaned over and looked at his watch. He had to stare at it for a few seconds in the semi-­darkness. It was surprisingly late. It was nearly ten.

‘Will you make some coffee?’ she said.

He mumbled something and a minute later swung his long white legs out from under the duvet. He was pulling on his shorts when he said, ‘Oh.’

‘What?’ she said.

‘They’re…’ He stopped.

‘… stiff with spunk.’

‘Yeah.’

It was at this point, pulling on the spunk-­stiff shorts, that he remembered the wash he had put on yesterday morning, and that it was still sitting wet in the machine.

The music of the rain was less lovely now that he was no longer in bed. It seemed to lay siege to the flat’s ill-­lit interiors. Hugo greeted him in the hall, in the grey light that leaked through the small pane of glass over the front door. His white tail waved like a shredded flag. When he yawned the sound was like something moving on unoiled hinges. James patted his head, and scratched his ears, and in the windowless vault of the kitchenette put on the kettle. While it was heating up he opened a kilogram tin of offal and fish-­meal and forked the pinkish paste into the St Bernard-­sized feed-­bowl. He washed the fork while Hugo set to without finesse.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ he said to her.

She shook her head.

He told her about the stuff in the washing machine. ‘I think I’ll have to wash it again.’

She didn’t seem terribly interested.

‘I might as well do that now.’

The old washing machine was in the kitchen, the hard plastic hook of the outflow pipe still secured on the edge of the sink. When he had started it, he went back to the bedroom. She was moving about, picking up her things from the floor, putting them on. ‘Are you leaving?’ he said.

‘M-­hm.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘Why don’t you stay?’ he said. ‘For a while.’

‘I want to have a bath,’ she said. His tiny bathroom had only the mouldy shower stall.

‘Stay for a while. It’s pissing down out there.’

‘I know,’ she said, sorting her tights out. ‘Have you got an umbrella?’

For a few seconds he said nothing.

‘Have you got one?’ she said, looking up.

‘Yes.’

‘Is it okay if I borrow it?’

‘Of course.’

He fetched it from the living room, where the rain was thrumming noisily on the skylight.

‘Why don’t you stay?’ he said, even though she was now dressed and looking for her shoes.

‘I want to go home. I want a bath.’

They were standing in the hall. He switched on the overhead light and she put her shoes on. ‘Is everything okay?’

Without hesitation, she shook her head and said, ‘No.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. When he hugged her she just stood there. He handed her the umbrella. Then he opened the front door and she stepped out into the puddled area.

‘I’ll phone you later,’ he said, as she shoved the umbrella open.

‘Okay.’

‘See you.’

Without turning as she started up the metal steps, she kissed her fingers and waggled them in the air.

*

In the early evening he took the Number 19 to Highbury and Islington. From his seat at the front of the top deck as it plied its way through the wet twilight, he tried Freddy again. He needed to pass on what Miller had said. Miller had said, first of all, that the mare had been assigned a mark of eighty by the handicapper, which he thought was a touch on the high side. ‘Shouldn’t stop her, though,’ he said. (And James was worried by that
shouldn’t
—­ he would very much have preferred
won’t.
He was planning to wager every penny he had left on her, and was attached to the fantasy that it was impossible that she would lose.) And then Miller said, ‘Listen, I don’t think you should be at Huntingdon tomorrow. Not your mate either.’

‘Oh?’ James said. ‘Why not?’

‘Looks like you weren’t expecting it to win that way.’

‘I see,’ James said. He wanted to be there when she won, however, so he said, ‘Is that necessary?’

There was a stubborn silence.

Then Miller said, ‘I think it is.’

‘You’re sure?’ James said.

‘I’m sure. So give Huntingdon a miss tomorrow. Okay?’

James needed to pass this on to Freddy. He also wanted to emphasise to him, not for the first time, the importance of putting the money on properly—­meaning in small quantities throughout the London area. Not all in one place. And not on the Internet, that was very important. Freddy said he understood. When he had finished speaking to him, James pocketed his phone and stared at the blue perspective of Theobald’s Road.

He was on his way to a dinner party in Highbury Fields. It was in a small first-­floor flat that had been done up like a large house, so that it felt like a doll’s house, a very expensive one, obsessive in its attention to detail. The hostess—­an ex of his from long ago—­was trying to live, and entertain, like her parents. Thus the ten diners were squeezed into the little living room, in which there was also—­somehow—­a table set for ten. When they sat down to eat, it was extremely hot. Faces shone with sweat in the candlelight, and people kept apologising for elbowing each other. Shoehorned in next to a man who used to be in the army and was now in insurance, and a woman whose face was vaguely familiar from somewhere, he was not properly engaged with the situation. He talked a lot without any interest in what he was saying or in what was being said to him. While the main course was being served, he manoeuvred his way out of his place and withdrew to the minuscule loo. On his own, it struck him that he was quite drunk. He made some excuse and left straight after dessert, and it was like a liberation to walk out into the fresh night air and unurban quiet of Highbury Fields. The old street lamps made pools of pale light in the wide darkness. And now that the day was done, now that all the last preparations for the ‘touch’ were in place, his mind was empty except for one insistent thing—

Is everything okay?

No.

Everything is not okay. Standing in Highbury Fields—­he has stopped walking and is just standing there, listening unsoberly to the wind in the trees—­he feels a terrible need for things to be okay. From where he is, he would be able to walk to her flat in twenty minutes. Less.

‘I’m in Highbury,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been to a dinner party. Is it okay if I come over?’

‘Of course,’ she says.

And now he is walking quickly towards Essex Road. The way she said
Of course
—­that on its own has helped immensely. He is practically jogging towards Essex Road now, through the Islington streets and squares he used to know so well.

He finds her watching television with Summer. They watch television for an hour. Later, when they are in bed, he starts to talk about last night. She says, ‘I was upset because you didn’t say anything. That’s why I was upset.’

He says, ‘I didn’t say anything because I felt so bad.’

‘Well…’ She seems exasperated. ‘
Say
something! Maybe if you said something you wouldn’t feel so bad.’ He just stares at her. She touches his face. ‘I don’t care about what happened. I don’t care about
that!
If you don’t talk to me, though, if you don’t say anything, if you just go to sleep… How do you think that makes me feel?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

‘You’ve been feeling bad about it all day, haven’t you?’ He nods and she strokes his hair. ‘I’m sorry I was mean with you this morning. That wasn’t very nice of me.’

‘It’s okay. We had such a lovely time on Friday,’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘Why was that so lovely and yesterday such a fucking disaster?’

She laughs. ‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘I don’t know either.’

‘You see, I didn’t even know that you thought that!’

‘Thought what?’

‘That yesterday was a fucking disaster.’

‘Of course it was.’

She shoves him playfully. ‘Well, how do I know you think that if you don’t
say
anything? I thought you thought everything was okay.’

‘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.

5

F
our 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?’