Longshot. Part 27

There was surprisingly a gas cooker standing against one wall. 'He heats glue on that,' Gareth said, seeing me looking, 'and other sorts of muck like linseed oil.' He pointed across the room. 'That's his lathe, that's his saw-bench, that's his sanding machine. I haven't seen him working much. He doesn't like people watching him, says it interferes with the feeling for what he's doing.'

Gareth's voice held disbelief, but I thought if I had to write with people watching I'd get nothing worthwhile done either.

'What's he making at the moment?' I asked.

'Don't know.'

He swanned round the room looking at sheets of veneer stacked against a wall and at little orderly piles of square-cut lengths from exotic black to golden walnut. 'He makes legs with those,' Gareth said, pointing.

He stopped by a long solid worktop like a butcher's block and said to me over his shoulder, 'I should think he's just started on this.'

I went across to look and saw a pencil drawing of a display cabinet of sharply spare and unusual lines, a piece designed to draw the eye to its contents, not itself.

The drawing was held down by two blocks of wood, one, I thought, cherry, the other bleached oak, though I was better at living trees than dead.

'He often slats one sort of wood into the other,' Gareth said. 'Makes a sort of stripe. His things don't actually look bad. People buy them all the time.'

'I'm not surprised,' I said.

'Aren't you?' He seemed pleased, as if he'd been afraid I wouldn't be impressed, but I was, considerably.

As we turned to leave I said, 'Was it in their sitting-room that that poor girl died?'

'Gruesome,' Gareth said, nodding. 'I didn't see her. Perkin did, though. He went in just after Mackie and Harry and found it all happening. And, I mean, disgusting- there was a mess on the carpet where she'd been lying and by the time they were allowed to clean it up, they couldn't. So they got a new carpet from insurance but Perkin acts as if the mess is still there and he's moved a sofa to cover the place. Bonkers, I think.'

I thought I might easily have done the same. Whoever would want to walk every day over a deathbed? We went back to the sitting-room and one could see, if one knew, just which of the three chintz-covered sofas wasn't in a logical place.

We stayed only a short while before returning to the family room where Tremayne was safely awake and yawning, getting ready to walk round his yard at evening stables. He invited me to go with him, which I did with pleasure, and afterwards I made cauliflower cheese for supper which Tremayne ate without a tremor.

When he went out at bedtime for a last look round, he came back blowing on his hands cheerfully and smiling broadly.

'It's thawing,' he said. 'Everything's dripping. Thank G.o.d.'

The world indeed turned from white to green during the night, bringing renewed life to Sh.e.l.lerton and racing.

Out in the melting woodlands, Angela Brickell spent her last night in the quiet undergrowth among the small scavenging creatures that had blessedly cleaned her bones. She was without odour and without horror, weather-scrubbed, long gone into everlasting peace.

CHAPTER 8.

Tremayne promoted me from Touchy to a still actively racing steeplechaser that Monday morning, a nine-year-old gelding called Drifter. I was also permitted to do a regular working gallop and by great good fortune didn't fall off. Neither Tremayne nor Mackie made any comment on my competence or lack of it, only on the state of fitness of the horse. They were taking me for granted, I realised, and was flattered and glad of it.

When we returned from the newly greenish-brownish Downs there was a strange car in the yard and a strange man drinking coffee in the kitchen; but strange to me only. Familiar to everyone else.

He was young, short, thin, angular and bold, wearing self-a.s.surance as an outer garment. He was, I soon found, almost as foul-mouthed as Nolan but, unlike him, funny.

'h.e.l.lo, Sam,' Tremayne said. 'Ready for work?'

'Too sodding right. I'm as stiff as a frigging virgin.'

I wondered idly how many virgins he had personally introduced to frigging: there was something about him that suggested it.

Tremayne said to me, 'This is Sam Yaeger, our jockey.' To Sam Yaeger he explained my presence and said I'd been riding out.

Sam Yaeger nodded to me, visibly a.s.sessing what threat or benefit I might represent to him, running a glance over my jodhpurs and measuring my height. I imagined that because of my six feet alone he might put away fears that I could annex any of his racing territory.

He himself wore jodhpurs also, along with a brilliant yellow sweats.h.i.+rt. A multi-coloured anorak, twin of Gareth's, hung over the back of his chair, and he had brought his own helmet, bright turquoise, with YAEGER painted large in red on the front. Nothing shy or retiring about Sam.

Dee-Dee, appearing for her coffee, brightened by fifty watts at the sight of him.

'Morning, Lover-boy,' she said.

Lover-boy made a stab at pinching her bottom as she pa.s.sed behind him, which she seemed not to mind. Well, well, well, I thought, there was a veritable p.u.s.s.ycat lurking somewhere inside that self-contained, touch-me-not secretarial exterior. She made her coffee and sat at the table beside the jockey, not overtly flirting but very aware of him.

I made the toast, which had become my accepted job, and put out the juice, b.u.t.ter, marmalade and so on. Sam Yaeger watched with comically raised eyebrows.

'Didn't Tremayne say you were a writer?' he asked.

'Most of the time. Want some toast?'

'One piece, light brown. You don't look like a sodding writer.'

'So many people aren't.'

'Aren't what?'

'What they look like,' I said. 'Sodding or not.'

'What do I look like?' he demanded, but with, I thought, genuine curiosity.

'Like someone who won the Grand National among eighty-nine other races last year and finished third on the jockeys' list.'

'You've been peeking,' he said, surprised.

'I'll be interviewing you soon for your views on your boss as a trainer.'

Tremayne said with mock severity, 'And they'd better be respectful.'

'They b.l.o.o.d.y well would be, wouldn't they?'

'If you have any sense,' Tremayne agreed, nodding.

I dealt out the toast and made some more. Sam's extremely physical presence dominated breakfast throughout and I wondered briefly how he got on with Nolan, the dark side of the same coin.

I asked Dee-Dee that question after Sam and Tremayne had gone out with the second lot; asked her in the office while I checked some facts in old formbooks.

'Get on?' she repeated ironically. 'No, they do not.' She paused, considered whether to tell me more, shrugged and continued. 'Sam doesn't like Nolan riding so many of the stable's horses. Nolan rides most of Fiona's runners, he accepts that, but Tremayne runs more horses in amateur races than most trainers do. Wins more, too, of course. The owners who bet, they like it, because whatever else you can say about Nolan, no one denies he's a brilliant jockey. He's been top of the amateurs' list for years.'