Rat Race Part 3

'Colin thinks he'll win this,' Nancy said. 'I do hope so.'

Bonanza for Bayst, I thought.

It was a seven furlong race, it seemed. The horses accelerated from standing to 30 m.p.h. in times which would have left a Porsche gasping. When they swung away round the far bend Rudiments was as far as I was concerned invisible, and until the last hundred yards I didn't see him once. Then all of a sudden there he was, boxed in in a bunch on the rails and unable to get past Colin Ross directly in front.

Kenny didn't find his opening. He finished the race in third place, still pinned in by Colin in front and a dappled grey alongside. I couldn't begin to tell whether or not he had done it on purpose.

'Wasn't that great great?' Nancy exclaimed to the world in general, and a woman on the far side of her agreed that it was, and asked after the health of her sister Midge.

'Oh, she's fine, thanks,' Nancy said. She turned to me and there was less joy in her eyes than in her voice. 'Come over here,' she said. 'You can see them unsaddling the winner.'

The Owners and Trainers turned out to be on the roof of the weighing room. We leaned over the rails at the front and watched Colin and Kenny unbuckle the saddle girths, loop the saddles over their arms, pat their steaming horses, and disappear into the weighing room. The group in the winner's enclosure were busy slapping backs and unburdening to the Press. The group in the third enclosure wore small tight smiles and faraway eyes. I still couldn't tell if they were ecstatic and biding it, or livid and ditto.

The horses were led away and the groups dispersed. In their place appeared Chanter, staring up and waving his arm.

'Come on down,' he shouted.

'No inhibitions, that's his trouble,' Nancy said. 'If we don't go down, he'll just go on shouting.'

He did. An official strode up manfully to ask him to belt up and buzz off, but it was like ripples trying to push over Ba.s.s Rock.

'Come on down, Nancy.' Fortissimo.

She pushed herself away from the rails and took enough steps to be out of his sight.

'Stay with me,' she said. It was more than half a question.

'If you want it.'

'You've seen what he's like. And he's been mild, today. Mild. Thanks to you.'

'I've done absolutely nothing.'

'You're here.'

'Why do you come to Haydock, if he always bothers you too much?'

'Because I'm b.l.o.o.d.y well not letting him frighten me away.'

'He loves you,' I said.

'No. Can't you tell the difference, for G.o.d's sake?'

'Yes,' I said.

She looked startled, then shook her head. 'He loves Chanter, full stop.'

She took three more steps towards the stairs, then stopped again.

'Why is it that I talk to you as if I'd known you for years?'

To a certain extent I knew, but I smiled and shook my head. No one cares to say straight out that it's because one is as negative as wall paper.

Chanter's plaintive voice floated up the steps. 'Nancy, come on down....'

She took another step, and then stopped again. 'Will you do me another favour? I'm staying up here a few more days with an aunt, but I bought a present for Midge this morning and I've given it to Colin to take home. But he's got a memory like a string vest for everything except horses, so would you check with him that he hasn't left it in the changing room, before you take off?'

'Sure,' I said. 'Your sister... I gather she's been ill.'

She looked away up at the sun-filled sky and down again and straight at me, and in a shattering moment of awareness I saw the pain and the cracks behind the bright public facade.

'Has been. Will be,' she said. 'She's got leukaemia.'

After a pause she swallowed and added the unbearable bit.

'She's my identical twin.'

CHAPTER THREE.

After the fifth race Chanter gloomily announced that about fifty plastic students were waiting for him to pat their egos and that although he despised the system he was likely to find eating a problem if he actually got the sack. His farewell to Nancy consisted in wiping his hands all over her, front and back, and giving her an open mouthed kiss which owing to her split-second evasive action landed on her ear.

He glared at me as if it were my fault. Nancy not relenting, he scowled at her and muttered something about salt, and then twirled around on his bare heel so that the tablecloth and all the hair and fringes and beads swung out with centrifugal force, and strode away at high speed towards the exit.

'The soles of his feet are like leather,' she said. 'Disgusting.' But from the hint of indulgence in her face I gathered that Chanter's cause wasn't entirely lost.

She said she was thirsty again and could do with a c.o.ke, and since she seemed to want me still to tag along, I tagged. This time, without Chanter, we went to the members' bar in the Club enclosure, the small downstairs one that was open to the main entrance hall.

The man in the plaster cast was there again. Different audience. Same story. His big cheerful booming voice filled the little bar and echoed round the whole hall outside.

'You can't hear yourself think,' Nancy said.

In a huddle in a far corner were Major Tyderman and Eric Goldenberg, sitting at a small table with what looked like treble whiskies in front of them. Their heads were bent towards each other, close, almost touching, so that they could each hear what the other was saying amid the din, yet not be overheard. Relations between them didn't seem to be at their most cordial. There was a great deal of rigidity in their downbent faces, and no friendliness in the small flicking glances they occasionally gave each other.

'The Sporting Life Sporting Life man,' Nancy said, following my gaze. man,' Nancy said, following my gaze.

'Yes. The big one is a pa.s.senger too.'

'They don't look madly happy.'

'They weren't madly happy coming up here, either.'

'Owners of chronic losers?'

'No well, I don't think so. They came up because of that horse Rudiments which Kenny Bayst rode for Annie Villars, but they aren't down in the racecard as its owners.'

She flicked back through her card. 'Rudiments. Duke of Wess.e.x. Well, neither of those two is him, poor old b.o.o.by.'

'Who, the Duke?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Actually I suppose he isn't all that old, but he's dreadfully dim. Big important looking man with a big important looking rank, and as sweet as they come, really, but there's nothing but cotton wool upstairs.'

'You know him well?'

'I've met him often.'

'Subtle difference.'

'Yes.'

The two men sc.r.a.ped back their chairs and began to make their way out of the bar. The man in the plaster cast caught sight of them and his big smile grew even bigger.

'Say, if it isn't Eric, Eric Goldenberg, of all people. Come over here, me old sport, come and have a drink.'

Goldenberg looked less than enthusiastic at the invitation and the Major sidled away quickly to avoid being included, giving the Australian a glance full of the dislike of the military for the flamboyant.

The man in the cast put one arm clumsily round Golden-berg's shoulder, the crutch swinging out widely and knocking against Nancy.

'Say,' he said. 'Sorry, lady. I haven't got the hang of these things yet.'

'That's all right,' she said, and Goldenberg said something to him that I couldn't hear, and before we knew where we were we had been encompa.s.sed into the Australian's circle and he was busy ordering drinks all round.

Close to, he was a strange looking man because his face and hair were almost colourless. The skin was whitish, the scalp, half bald, was fringed by silky hair that had been fair and was turning white, the eyelashes and eyebrows made no contrast, and the lips of the smiling mouth were creamy pale. He looked like a man made up to take the part of a large cheerful ghost. His name, it appeared, was Acey Jones.

'Aw, come on,' he said to me in disgust. 'c.o.ke is for milksops, not men.' Even his eyes were pale: a light indeterminate bluey grey.

'Just lay off him, Ace,' Goldenberg said. 'He's flying me home. A drunken pilot I can do without.'

'A pilot, eh?' The big voice broadcast the information to about fifty people who weren't in the least interested. 'One of the fly boys? Most pilots I know are a bunch of proper tearaways. Live hard, love hard, drink hard. Real characters, those guys.' He said it with an expansive smile which hid the implied slight. 'C'm on now, sport, live dangerously. Don't disillusion all these people.'

'Beer, then, please,' I said.

Nancy was equally scornful, but for opposite reasons. 'Why did you climb down?'

'Antagonising people when you don't have to is like casting your garbage on the waters. One day it may come floating back, smelling worse.'

She laughed. 'Chanter would say that was immoral. Stands be made on principles.'

'I won't drink more than half of the beer. Will that do?'

'You're impossible.'

Acey Jones handed me the gla.s.s and watched me take a mouthful and went on a bit about h.e.l.l-raising and beating up the skies and generally living the life of a high-powered gypsy. He made it sound very attractive and his audience smiled and nodded their heads and none of them seemed to know that the picture was fifty years out of date, and that the best thing a pilot can be is careful: sober, meticulous, receptive, and careful. There are old pilots and foolish pilots, but no old foolish pilots. Me, I was old, young, wise, foolish, thirty-four. Also depressed, divorced, and broke.

After aviation, Acey Jones switched back to insurance and told Goldenberg and Nancy and me and the fifty other people about getting a thousand pounds for breaking his ankle, and we had to listen to it all again, reacting with the best we could do in surprised appreciation.

'No, look, no kidding, sport,' he said to Goldenberg with his first sign of seriousness. 'You want to get yourself signed up with this outfit. Best fiver I've ever spent....'

Several of the fifty onlookers edged nearer to listen, and Nancy and I filtered towards the outside of the group. I put down the tasted beer on an inconspicuous table out in the hall while Nancy dispatched the bottom half of her c.o.ke, and from there we drifted out into the air.

The sun was still s.h.i.+ning, but the small round white clouds were expanding into bigger round clouds with dark grey centres. I looked at my watch. Four twenty. Still nearly an hour until the time the Major wanted to leave. The longer we stayed the b.u.mpier the ride was likely to be, because the afternoon forecast for scattered thunderstorms looked accurate.

'Cu-nims forming,' Nancy said, watching them. 'Nasty.'

We went and watched her brother get up on his mount for the last race and then we went up on the Owners and Trainers and watched him win it, and that was about that. She said goodbye to me near the bottom of the steps, outside the weighing room.

'Thanks for the escort duty...'

'Enjoyed it...'

She had smooth gilded skin and greyish brown eyes. Straight dark eyebrows. Not mu6h lipstick. No scent. Very much the opposite of my blonde, painted, and departed wife.

'I expect,' she said, That we'll meet again, because I sometimes fly with Colin, if there's a spare seat.'

'Do you ever take him yourself?'

'Good Lord no.' She laughed. 'He wouldn't trust me to get him there on time. And anyway, there are too many days when the weather is beyond what I can do. Maybe one day, though....'

She held out her hand and I shook it. A grip very like her brother's, and just as brief.

'See you, then,' she said.

'I hope so.'

She nodded with a faint smile and went away. I watched her neat blue and white back view and stifled a sudden unexpected inclination to run after her and give her a Chanter type farewell.

When I walked across the track towards the aeroplane I met Kenny Bayst coming back from it with his raincoat over his arm. His skin was blotched pink again with fury, clas.h.i.+ng with his carroty hair.

'I'm not coming back with you,' he said tightly. 'You tell Miss Annie effing Villars that I'm not coming back with you. There's no b.l.o.o.d.y pleasing her. Last time I nearly got the push for winning and this time I nearly got the push for not winning. You'd think that both times I'd had the slightest choice in the matter. I'll tell you straight, sport, I'm not coming back in your b.l.o.o.d.y little aeroplane having them gripe gripe gripe at me all the way back.'

'All right,' I said. I didn't blame him.

'I've just been over to fetch my raincoat. I'll go home by train... or get a lift.'

'Raincoat... but the aircraft is locked.'

'No it isn't. I just got my raincoat out of the back. Now you tell them I've had enough, right?' I nodded, and while he hurried off I walked on towards the aeroplane puzzled and a bit annoyed. Major Tyderman had said he had locked up again after he had fetched his Sporting Life Sporting Life, but apparently he hadn't.

He hadn't. Both the doors on the port side were unlocked, the pa.s.senger door and the baggage locker. I wasn't too pleased because Derrydowns had told me explicitly never to leave the aircraft open as they'd had damage done by small boys on several occasions: but all looked well and there were no signs of sticky fingers.

I did all the external checks again and glanced over the flight plan for the return. If we had to avoid too many thunderclouds it might take a little longer to reach Newmarket, but unless there was one settled and active over the landing field there should be no problem.

The pa.s.sengers of the two Polyplane aircraft a.s.sembled by ones and twos, shovelled themselves inside, shut the doors, and were trundled down to the far end of the course. One after the other the two aeroplanes raced back over the gra.s.s and lifted away, wheeling like black darts against the blue, grey and white patchwork of the sky.