Straight. Part 19

'You won't get much return,' I warned them. 'It's favourite.'

'We know that, dear,' Martha said happily, looking around. 'WhEre is he? Which one?'

'He's inside that box,' I pointed, 'being saddled.'

'Harley and I have had a marvellous idea,' she said sweetly, her eyes sparkling.

'Now, Martha,' Harley said. He sounded faintly alaRMed as if Martha's marvellous ideas weren't always the best possible news.

'We wAnt you to dine with us when we get back to London,' she finished.

Harley relaxed, relieved. 'Yes Hope you can.' He clearly meant that this particular marvellous idea was pa.s.sable, even welcome. 'London at weekends is a graveyard.'

With a twitching of an inward grin I accepted my role as graveyard alleviator and, in the general good cause of cementing Ostermeyer-Shandy-Franklin relations, said I would be very pleased to stay to dinner. Martha and Harley expressed such gratification as to make me wonder whether when they were alone they bored each other to silence.

Dozen Roses emerged from his box with his saddle on and was led along towards the parade ring. He walked well, I thought, his good straight hocks encouraging lengthy strides, and he also seemed to have woken up a good deal, now that the excitement was at hand.

In the horse's wake hurried Nicholas Loder and his friend Rollo, and it was because they were crowding him, I thought, that Dozen Roses swung round on his leading rein and pulled backwards from his lad, and in straightening up again hit the Rollo man a hefty buffet with his rump and knocked him to his knees.

Martha with instinctive kindness rushed forward to help him, but he floundered to his feet with a curse that made her blink. All the same she bent and picked up a thing like a blue rubber ball which had fallen out of his jacket and held it towards him, saying, 'You dropped this I think.'

He ungraciously s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her, gave her an unnecessarily fierce stare as if she'd frightened the horse into knocking him over, which she certainly hadn't, and hurried into the parade ring after Nicholas Loder. He, looKing back and seeing me still there. reacted with another show of fury.

'What perfectly horrid people,' Martha said, making a face. 'Did you hear what that man said? Disgusting!

Fancy saying it aloud!'

Dear Martha. I thought, that word was everyday coinage on racecourses. The nicest people used it: it made no one a villain. She was brus.h.i.+ng dust off her gloves fastidiously as if getting rid of contamination and I half expected her to go up to Rollo and in the tradition of the indomitable American female to tell him to wash his mouth out with soap.

Harley had meanwhile picked something else up off the gra.s.s and was looking at it helplessly. 'He dropped this too,' he said. 'I think.'

Martha peered at his hands and took the object out of them.

'Oh, yes,'she said with recognition, 'that's the other half of the baster. You'd better have it, Derek, then you can give it back to that obnoxious friend of your trainer, if you want to.'

I frowned at what she'd given me, which was a rigid plastic tube, semi-transparent, about an inch in diameter, nine inches long, open at one end and narrowing to half the width at the other.

'A baster,' Martha said again. 'For basting meat when it's roasting. You know them, don't you? You press the bulb thing and release it to suck up the juices which you then squirt over the meat.'

I nodded. I knew what a baster was.

'What an extraordinary thing to take to the races,'

Martha said wonderingly.

'Mm,' I agreed. 'He seems an odd sort of man altogether.'

I tucked the plastic tube into an inside jacket pocket, from which its nozzle end protruded a couple of inches, and we went first to see Dozen Roses joined with his jockey in the parade ring and then up onto the stands to watch him race.

The jockey was Loder's chief stable jockey, as able as any, as honest as most. The stable money was definitely on the horse, I thought, watching the forecast odds on the information board change from 2/1 on to Sl2 on.

When a gambling stable didn't put its money up front, the whisper went round and the price eased dramatically.

The whisper where it mattered that day had to be saying that Loder was in earnest about the 'trot-up', and Alfie's base imputation would have to wait for another occasion.

Perhaps as a result of his year-by-year successes, Loder's stable always, it was well-known in the racing world, attracted as owners serious gamblers whose satisfaction was more in winning money than in winning races: and that wasn't the truism it seemed, because in steeplechasing the owners tended to want to win the races more than the money. Steeplechasing owners only occasionally made a profit overall and realistically expected to have to pay for their pleasure.

Wondering if the Rollo man was one of the big Loder gamblers, I flicked back the pages of the racecard and looked up his name beside the horse of his that had won the sprint. Owner, Mr T. Rollway, the card read. Rollo for short to his friends. Never heard of him, I thought, and wondered if Greville had.

Dozen Roses cantered down to the start with at least as much energy and enthusiasm as any of the seven other runners and was fed into the stalls without fuss.

He'd been striding out well, I thought, and taking a good hold of the bit. An old hand at the game by now, of course, as I was also, I thought dryly.

I'd ridden in several Flat races in my teens as an amateur, learning that the hardest and most surprising thing about the unrelenting Flat race crouch over the withers was the way it cramped one's lungs and affected one's breathing. The first few times I'd almost fallen off at the finish from lack of oxygen. A long time ago, I thought, watching the gates fly open in the distance and the colours spill out, long ago when I was young and it all lay ahead.

If I could find Greville's diamonds, I thought, I would in due course be able to buy a good big yard in Lambourn and start training free of a mortgage and on a decent scale, providing of course I could get owners to send me horses, and I had no longer any doubt that one of these years, when my body packed up mending fast, as everyone's did in the end, I would be content with the new life, even though the consuming pa.s.sion I still felt for race-riding couldn't be replaced by anything tamer.

- Dozen Roses was running with the pack. all seven bunched after the first three furlongs, flying along the far side of the track at more than cruising speed but with acceleration still in reserve.

If I didn't find Greville's diamonds, I thought, I would just sc.r.a.pe together whatever I could and borrow the rest, and still buy a place and set my hand to the future. But not yet, not yet.

Dozen Roses and the others swung left-handed into the long bend round the far end of the track, the bunch coming apart as the curve element hit them. llurning into the straight five furlongs from the winning post Dozen Roses was in fourth place and making not much progress. I wanted him quite suddenly to win and was surprised by the strength of the feeling; I wanted him to win for Greville, who wouldn't care anyway, and perhaps also for Clarissa, who would. Sentimental fool, I told myselL Anyway, when the crowd started yelling home their fancy I yelled for mine also, and I'd never done that before as far as I could remember.

There was not going to be a trot-up, whatever Nicholas Loder might have thought. Dozen Roses was visibly struggling as he took second place at a searing speed a furlong from home and he wouldn't have got the race at all if the horse half a length in front, equally extended and equally exhausted, hadn't veered from a straight line at the last moment and b.u.mped into him.

'Oh dear,' Martha exclaimed sadly, as the two horses pa.s.sed the winning post. 'Second. Oh well, never mind.'

'He'll get the race on an objection,' I said. 'Which I suppose is better than nothing. Your winnings are safe.'

'Are you sure?'

'Certain,' I said, and almost immediately the loudspeakers were announcing 'Stewards' enquiry'.

More slowly than I would have liked to be able to manage, the three of us descended to the area outside the weighing room where the horse that was not my horse stood in the place for the unsaddling of the second, a net rug over his back and steam flowing from his sweating skin. He was moving about restlessly, as horses often do after an all-out effort, and his lad was holding tight to the reins, trying to calm him.

'He ran a great race,' I said to Martha, and she said, 'Did he, dear?'

'He didn't give up. That's really what matters.'

Of Nicholas Loder there was no sign: probably inside the Stewards' room putting forward his complaint. The Stewards would show themselves the views from the side camera and the head-on camera, and at any moment now . . .

'Result of Stewards' enquiry,' said the loudspeakers.

'Placing of first and second reversed.' Hardly justice, but inevitable: the faster horse had lost. Nicholas Loder came out of the weighing room and saw me standing with the Ostermeyers, but before I could utter even the first conciliatory words like, 'Well done,' he'd given me a sick look and hurried off in the opposite direction. No Rollo in his shadow, I noticed.

Martha, Harley and I returned to the luncheon room for the University's tea where the Knightwoods were being gracious hosts and Clarissa, at the sight of me, developed renewed trouble with the tear glands. I left the Ostermeyers taking cups and saucers from a waitress and drifted across to her side.

'So silly,' she said crossly, blinking hard as she offered me a sandwich. 'But wasn't he great?'

'He was.'

'I wish. . .' She stopped. I wished it too. No need at all to put it into words. But Greville never went to the races.

'I go to London fairly often,' she said. 'May I phone you when I'm there?'

'Yes, if you like.' I wrote my home number on my racecard and handed it to her. 'I live in Berks.h.i.+re,' I said,'not in Greville's house.'

She met my eyes, hers full of confusion.

'I'm not Greville,'I said.

'My dear chap,' said her husband boomingly, coming to a halt beside us, 'delighted your horse finally won.

Though, of course, not technically your horse, what?'

'No, sir.'

He was shrewd enough, I thought, lookiNg at the intelligent eyes amid the bonhomie. Not easy to fool. I wondered fleetingly if he'd ever suspected his wife had a lover, even if he hadn't known who. I thought that if he had known who, he wouldn't have asked me to lunch.

He chuckled. 'The professor says you tipped him three winners.'

'A miracle.'

'He's very impressed.' He looked at me benignly.

'Join us at any time, my dear chap.' It was the sort of vague invitation, not meant to be accepted, that was a mild seal of approval, in its way.

'Thank you,' I said, and he nodded, knowing he'd been understood.

Martha Ostermeyer gushed up to say how marvellous the whole day had been, and gradually from then on, as such things always do, the University party evaporated.

I shook Clarissa's outstretched hand- in farewell, and also her husband's who stood beside her. They looked good togethER and settled, a fine couple on the surface.

'We'll see you again,' she said to me, and I wondered if it were only I who could hear her smothered desperation.

Yes,' I said positively. 'Of course.'

'My dear chap,' her husband said. 'Any time.'

Harley, Martha and I left the racecourse and climbed into the Daimler, Simms following Brad's routine of stowing the crutches.

Martha said reproachfully, 'Your ankle's broken, not twisted. One of the guests told us. I said you'd ridden a gallop for us on Wednesday and they couldn't believe it.'

'It's practically mended,' I said weakly.

'But you won't be able to ride Datepalm in that race next Sat.u.r.day, will you?'

'Not really. No.'

She sighed. 'You're very naughty. We'll simply have to wait until you're ready.'

I gave her a fast smile of intense grat.i.tude. There weren't many owners who would have dreamed of waiting.

No trainer would; they couldn't afford to. Milo was currently putting up one of my arch-rivals on the horses I usually rode, and I just hoped I would get all of them back once I was fit. That was the main trouble with injuries, not the injury itself but losing one's mounts to other jockeys. Permanently, sometimes, if they won.

'And now,' Martha said as we set off south towards London, 'I have had another simply marvellous idea, and Harley agrees with me.'

I glanced back to Harley who was sitting behind Simms. He was nodding indulgently. No aNxiety this time.

'We think,' she said happily, 'that we'll buy Dozen Roses and send him to Milo to train for jumping. That is,' she laughed, 'if your brother's executor will sell him to us.'

'Martha!' I was dumbstruck and used her first name without thinking, though I'd called her Mrs Ostermeyer before, when I'd called her anything.

'There,' she said, gratified at my reaction, 'I told you it was a marvellous idea. What do you say?'

'My brother's executor is speechless.'

'But you will sell him?'

'I certainly will.'

'Then let's use the car phone to call Milo and tell him.' She was full of high good spirits and in no mood for waiting, but when she reached Milo he apparently didn't immediately catch fire. She handed the phone to me with a frown, saying, 'He wants to talk to you.'

'Milo,' I said, 'what's the trouble?'

'That horse is an entire. They don't jump well.'

'He's a gelding,' I a.s.sured him.

'You told me your brother wouldn't ever have it done.'

'Nicholas Loder did it without permission.'

'You're kidding!'

'No,' I said. 'Anyway the horse got the race today on a Stewards' enquiry but he ran gamely, and he's fit.'

'Has he ever jumped?'

'I shouldt't think so. But I'll teach him.'

'All right then. Put me back to Martha.'

'Don't go away when she's finished. I want another word.'

I handed the phone to Martha who listened and spoke with a return to enthusiasm, and eventually I talked to Milo again.