Bonecrack - Страница 20

'In what way was he useless?'

'Oh- sprawly. Babyish. Had no action.'

'Nothing sprawly about him today,' I pointed out.

'No,' she admitted slowly. 'You're right. There wasn't.'

The riders walked towards us, leading the horses, and Etty and I both dismounted to hear more easily what they had to say. Tommy Hoylake, built like a twelve-year-old boy with a forty-three-year-old man's face sitting incongruously on top, said in his comfortable Berkshire accent that he had thought that Pease Pudding had run an excellent trial until he saw Lancat pulling up so close behind him. He had ridden Lancat a good deal the previous year, and hadn't thought much of him.

Andy said Archangel went beautifully, considering the Guineas was nearly six weeks away, and Faddy in his high pitched finicky voice said Subito had only been a pound or two behind Pease Pudding last year in his opinion, and he could have been nearer to him if he had really tried. Tommy and Andy shook their heads. If they had really tried, they too could have gone faster.

'Alessandro?' I said.

He hesitated. 'I- I lost ground at the beginning because I didn't realise- I didn't expect them to go so fast. When I asked him, Lancat just shot forward- and I could have kept him nearer to Archangel at the end, only he did seem to tire a bit, and you said-' he stopped with his voice, so to speak, on one foot.

'Good,' I said. 'You did right.' I hadn't expected him to be so honest. For the first time since his arrival he had made an objective self-assessment, but my faint and even slightly patronising praise was enough to bring back the smirk. Etty looked at him with uncontrolled dislike, which didn't disturb Alessandro one little bit.

'I hardly need to remind you,' I said to all of them, ignoring the displayed emotions, 'To keep this afternoon's doings to yourselves. Tommy, you can count on Pease Pudding in the Lincoln and Archangel in the Guineas, and if you'll come back to the office now we'll go through your other probable rides for the next few weeks.'

Alessandro's smirk turned sour, and the look he cast on Tommy was pure Rivera. Actively dangerous: inured to murder. Any appearance he might have given of being even slightly tamed was suddenly as reliable as sunlight on quicksand. I remembered the unequivocal message of Enso's gun pointing at my chest; that if killing seemed desirable, killing would quite casually be done. I had put Tommy Hoylake in jeopardy, and I'd have to get him out.

I sent the others on ahead and told Alessandro to stay for a minute. When the others were too far away to hear, I said, 'You will have to accept that Tommy Hoylake will be riding as first jockey to the stable.'

I got the full stare treatment, black, wide, and ill intentioned. I could almost feel the hate which flowed out of him like hot waves across the cool March air.

'If Tommy Hoylake breaks his leg,' I said clearly, 'I'll break yours.'

It shook him, though he tried not to show it.

'Also it would be pointless to put Tommy Hoylake out of action, as I would then engage someone else. Not you. Is that clear?'

He didn't answer.

'If you want to be a top jockey, you've got to fight your own battles. It's no good thinking your father will destroy everyone who stands in your way. If you are good enough, no one will stand in your way; and if you are not, no amount of ruining others will make you.'

Still no sound. But fury, yes. Signifying all too much.

I said seriously, 'If Tommy Hoylake comes to any harm whatsoever, I will see that you never ride in another race. At whatever consequence to myself.'

He removed the stare from my face and scattered it over the wide windy spread of the Heath.

'I am accustomed-' he began arrogantly, and then stopped.

'I know to what you are accustomed,' I said. 'To having your own way at any expense to others. Your own way, bought in misery, pain and fear. Well- you should have settled for something which could be paid for. No amount of death and destruction will buy you ability.'

'All I wanted was to ride Archangel in the Derby,' he said defensively.

'Just like that? Just a whim?'

He turned his head towards Lancat and gathered together the reins. 'It started like that,' he said indistinctly, and walked away from me in the direction of Newmarket.

He came and rode out as usual the following morning, and all the days after. News that the trial had taken place got around, and I heard that I had chosen the time of the Champion Hurdle so that I could keep the unfit state of Pease Pudding decently concealed. The ante-post price lengthened and I put a hundred pounds on him at twenty to one.

My father shook the Sporting Life at me in a rage and insisted that the horse should be withdrawn.

'Have a bit on him instead,' I said. 'I have.'

'You don't know what you're doing.'

'Yes, I do.'

'It says here-' He was practically stuttering with the frustration of not being able to get out of bed and thwart me. 'It says here that if the trial was unsatisfactory, nothing more could be expected, with me away.'

'I read it,' I agreed. 'That's just a guess. And it wasn't unsatisfactory, if you want to know. It was very encouraging.'

'You're crazy,' he said loudly. 'You're ruining the stable. I won't have it. I won't have it, do you hear?'

He glared at me. A hot amber glare, not a cold black one. It made a change.

'I'll send Tommy Hoylake to see you,' I said. 'You can ask him what he thinks.'

Three days before the racing season started I walked into the office at two-thirty to see if Margaret wanted me to sign any letters before she left to collect her children, and found Alessandro in there with her, sitting on the edge of her desk. He was wearing a navy-black track suit and heavy white running shoes, and his black hair had crisped into curls from the dampness of his own sweat.

She was looking up at him with obvious arousal, her face slightly flushed as if someone had given all her senses a friction rub.

She caught sight of me before he did, as he had his back to the door. She looked away from him in confusion, and he turned to see who had disturbed them.

There was a smile on the thin sallow face. A real smile, warm and uncomplicated, wrinkling the skin round the eyes and lifting the upper lip to show good teeth. For two seconds I saw an Alessandro I wouldn't have guessed existed, and then the light went out inside and the facial muscles gradually reshaped themselves into the familiar lines of wariness and annoyance.

He slid his slight weight to the ground and wiped away with a thumb some of the sweat which stood out on his forehead and trickled down in front of his ears.

'I want to know what horses I am going to ride this week at Doncaster,' he said. 'Now that the season is starting, you can give me horses to race.'

Margaret looked at him in astonishment, for he had sounded very much the boss. I answered him in a manner and tone carefully lacking in both apology and aggression.

'We have only one entry at Doncaster, which is Pease Pudding in the Lincoln on Saturday, and Tommy Hoylake rides it,' I said. 'And the reason we have only one entry,' I went straight on, as I saw the anger stoking up at what he believed to be a blocking movement on my part, 'is that my father was involved in a motor accident the week these entries should have been made, and they were never sent in.'

'Oh,' he said blankly.

'Still,' I said, 'it would be a good idea for you to go every day to the races, to see what goes on, so that you don't make any crashing mistakes next week.'

I didn't add that I intended to do the same myself. It never did to show all your weaknesses to the opposition.

'You can start on Pullitzer on Wednesday at Catterick,' I said. 'And after that, it's up to you.'

There was a flash of menace in the black eyes.

'No,' he said, a bite in his voice. 'It's up to my father.'

He turned abruptly on one toe and without looking back trotted out of the office into the yard, swerved left and set off at a steady jog up the drive towards Bury Road. We watched him through the window, Margaret with a smile tinged with puzzlement and I with more apprehension than I liked.

'He ran all the way to the Boy's Grave and back,' she said. 'He says he weighed six stone twelve before he set off today, and he's lost twenty-two pounds since he came here. That sounds an awful lot, doesn't it? Twenty-two pounds, for someone as small as him.'

'Severe,' I said, nodding.

'He's strong, though. Like wire.'

'You like him,' I said, making it hover on the edge of a question.

She gave me a quick glance. 'He's interesting.'

I slouched into the swivel chair and read through the letters she pushed across to me. All of them in economic, good English, perfectly typed.

'If we win the Lincoln,' I said, 'You can have a raise.'

'Thanks very much.' A touch of irony. 'I hear the Sporting Life doesn't think much of my chances.'

I signed three of the letters and started reading the fourth. 'Does Alessandro often call in?' I asked casually.

'First time he's done it.'

'What did he want?' I asked.

'I don't think he wanted anything, particularly. He said he was going past, and just came in.'

'What did you talk about?'

She looked surprised at the question but answered without comment.

'I asked him if he liked the Forbury Inn and he said he did, it was much more comfortable than a house his father had rented on the outskirts of Cambridge. He said anyway his father had given up that house now and gone back home to do some business.' She paused thinking back, the memory of his company making her eyes smile, and I reflected that the house at Cambridge must have been where the rubber-faces took me, and that there was now no point in speculating more about it.