Reflex Read online

  Back at the beginning Victor Briggs had offered me a fair-sized cash present for losing. I’d said I didn’t want it: I would lose if I had to, but I wouldn’t be paid. He said I was a pompous young fool, but after I’d refused his offer a second time he’d kept his bribes in his pocket and his opinion of me to himself.

  “Why don’t you take it?” Harold Osborne had said. “Don’t forget you’re passing up the ten per cent you’d get for winning. Mr. Briggs is making it up to you, that’s all.”

  I’d shaken my head, and he hadn’t persevered. I thought that probably I was indeed a fool, but somewhere along the line it seemed that Samantha or Chloe or the others had given me this unwelcome, uncomfortable conviction that one should pay for one’s sins. And since I’d been free of the dilemma for three years, it was all the more infuriating to be faced with it again.

  “I can’t lose,” I protested. “Daylight’s the best of the bunch. Far and away. You know he is.”

  “Just do it,” Victor Briggs said. “And lower your voice, unless you want the stewards to hear you.”

  I looked at Harold Osborne. He was busy watching the horses plod around the ring and pretending not to listen to what Victor Briggs was saying.

  “Harold,” I said.

  He gave me a brief unemotional glance. “Victor’s right. The money’s on the other way. You’ll cost us a packet if you win, so don’t.”

  “Us?”

  He nodded. “Us. That’s right. Fall off, if you have to. Come in second, if you like. But not first. Understood?”

  I nodded. I understood. Back in the old pincers.

  I cantered Daylight down to the start with reality winning out over rebellion, as before. If I hadn’t been able to afford to lose the job at twenty-three, still less could I at thirty. I was known as Osborne’s jockey. I’d been with him seven years. If he chucked me out, all I’d get would be other stables’ odds and ends; ride second string to other jockeys; be on a oneway track to oblivion. He wouldn’t say to the press that he’d got rid of me because I wouldn’t any longer lose to order. He would tell them (regretfully, of course) that he was looking for someone younger . . . had to do what was best for the owners . . . terribly sad, but an end came to every jockey’s career . . . naturally sorry, and all that, but time marches on, don’t you know?

  God damn it, I thought. I didn’t want to lose that race. I hated to be dishonest . . . and the ten per cent I would lose this time was big enough to make me even angrier. Why the bloody hell had Briggs gone back to this caper, after such a long time? I’d thought that he’d stopped because I’d got just far enough as a jockey for him to think it likely I would refuse. A jockey who got high enough on the winners list was safe from that sort of pressure, because if his own stable was silly enough to give him the kick, another would welcome him in. Well, maybe he thought I’d gone past that stage now that I was older, and was back again in the danger area: and he was right.

  We circled around while the starter called the roll, and I looked apprehensively at the four horses ranged against Daylight. There wasn’t a good one among them. Nothing that on paper could defeat my own powerful gelding, which was why people were at that moment staking four pounds on Daylight to win one.

  Four to one on . . .

  Far from risking his own money at those odds, Victor Briggs in some subterranean way had taken bets from other people, and would have to pay out if his horse won. And so, it seemed, would Harold also; and however I might feel, I did owe Harold some allegiance.

  After seven years of a working relationship that had a firmer base than many a trainer-jockey alliance, I had come to regard him if not with close personal warmth at least with active friendship. He was a man of rages and charms, of black moods and boisterous highs, of tyrannical decisions and generous gifts. His voice could outshout and outcurse any other on the Berkshire Downs, and stable lads with delicate sensibilities left his employ in droves. On the first day that I rode work for him his blistering opinion of my riding could be heard fortissimo from Wantage to Swindon, and, in his house immediately afterwards, at ten in the morning, he had opened a bottle of champagne, and we had drunk to our forthcoming collaboration.

  He had trusted me always and entirely, and had defended me against criticism where many a trainer would not. Every jockey, he had said robustly, had bad patches; and he had employed me steadily through mine. He assumed that I would be, for my part, totally committed to himself and his stable, and for the past three years that had been easy.

  The starter called the horses into line, and I wheeled Daylight around to point his nose in the right direction.

  No starting stalls. They were never used for jump racing. A gate of elastic tapes instead.

  In cold angry misery I decided that the race, from Daylight’s point of view, would have to be over as near the start as possible. With thousands of pairs of binoculars trained my way, with television eyes and patrol cameras and perceptive reporters acutely focused, losing would be hard enough anyway, and practically suicidal if I left it until it was clear that Daylight would win. Then, if I just fell off in the last half mile for not much reason, there would be an enquiry and I might lose my license; and it would be no comfort to know that I deserved to.

  The starter put his hand on the lever and the tapes flew up, and I kicked Daylight forward into his business. None of the other jockeys wanted to make the running, and we set off in consequence at a slow pace, which compounded my troubles. Daylight, with all the time in the world, wouldn’t stumble at any fence. A fluent jumper always, he hardly ever fell. Some horses couldn’t be put right on the approach to a fence: Daylight couldn’t be put wrong. All he accepted were the smallest indications from his jockey, and he would do the rest himself. I had ridden him many times. Won six races on him. Knew him well.

  Cheat the horse. Cheat the public.

  Cheat.

  Damn it, I thought. Damn and damn and damn.

  I did it at the third fence, on the decline from the top of the hill, round the sharpish bend, going away from the stands. It was the best from the credibility angle as it was the least visible to the massed watchers, and it had a sharp downhill slope on the approach side: a fence that claimed many a victim during the year.

  Daylight, confused by getting the wrong signals from me, and perhaps feeling some of my turmoil and fury in the telepathic way that horses do, began to waver in the stride before take-off, putting in a small jerky extra stride where none was needed.

  God, boy, I thought, I’m bloody sorry, but down you go, if I can make you: and I kicked him at the wrong moment and twitched hard on the bit in his mouth while he was in midair, and shifted my weight forward in front of his shoulder.

  He landed awkwardly and stumbled slightly, dipping his head down to recover his balance. It wasn’t really enough . . . but it would have to do. I whisked my right foot out of the stirrup and over his back, so that I was entirely on his left side, out of the saddle, clinging onto his neck.

  It’s almost impossible to stay on, from that position. I clung to him for about three bucking strides and then slid down his chest, irrevocably losing my grip and bouncing onto the grass under his feet. A flurry of thuds from his hooves, and a roll or two, and the noise and the galloping horses were gone.

  I sat on the quiet ground and unbuckled my helmet, and felt absolutely wretched.

  “Bad luck,” they said briefly in the weighing room. “Rotten luck”: and got on with the rest of the day. I wondered if any of them guessed, but maybe they didn’t. No one nudged or winked or looked sardonic. It was my own embarrassed sense of shame which kept me staring mostly at the floor.

  “Cheer up,” Steve Millace said, buttoning some orange and blue colors. “It’s not the end of the world.” He picked up his whip and his helmet. “Always another day.”

  “Yeah.”

  He went off to ride, and I changed gloomily back into street clothes. So much, I thought, for the sense of excitement in which I’d arrived. So m
uch for winning, for half a dozen mythical trainers climbing over themselves to secure my services for the Gold Cup. So much for a nice boost to the finances, which were wilting a bit after buying a new car. On all fronts, depression.

  I went out to watch the race.

  Steve Millace, with more courage than sense, drove his horse at leg-tangling pace into the second last fence and crashed on landing. It was the sort of hard fast fall which cracked bones, and one could see straight away that Steve was in trouble. He struggled up as far as his knees, and then sat on his heels with his head bent forward and his arms wrapped round his body, as if he was hugging himself. Arm, shoulder, ribs . . . something had gone.

  His horse, unhurt, got up and galloped away, and I stood watching while two first aid men gingerly helped Steve into an ambulance. A bad day for him, too, I thought, on top of all his family troubles. What on earth made us do it? What ever drove us to persist, disregarding injury and risk and disappointment? What lured us continually to speed, when we could earn as much sitting in an office?

  I walked back to the weighing room feeling the bits of me that Daylight had trodden on beginning to stiffen with bruises. I’d be crimson and black the next day, which was nothing but usual. The biffs and bangs of the trade had never bothered me much, and nothing I’d so far broken had made me frightened about the next fall. I normally had, in fact, a great feeling of physical well-being, of living in a strong and supple body, of existing as an efficient coordinated athletic whole. Nothing obtrusive. It was there. It was health.

  Disillusion, I thought, would be the killer. If the job no longer seemed worth it, if people like Victor Briggs soured it beyond acceptance, at that point one would give up. But not yet. It was still the life I wanted; still the life I was far from ready to leave.

  Steve came into the changing room in boots, breeches, undervest, clavicle rings, bandage and sling, with his head inclined stiffly to one side.

  “Collarbone,” he said crossly. “Bloody nuisance.” Discomfort was making his thin face gaunt, digging hollows in his cheeks and around his eyes, but what he clearly felt most was annoyance.

  His valet helped him to change and dress, touching him with the gentleness of long practice and pulling off his boots smoothly so as not to jar the shoulder. A crowd of other jockeys around us jostled and sang and made jokes, drank tea and ate fruitcake, slid out of colors and pulled on trousers, laughed and cursed and hurried. Knocking-off time, the end of the working week, back again Monday.

  “I suppose,” Steve said to me, “you couldn’t possibly drive me home?” He sounded tentative, as if not sure our friendship stretched that far.

  “Yes, I should think so,” I said.

  “To my mother’s house? Near Ascot.”

  “OK.”

  “I’ll get someone to fetch my car tomorrow,” he said. “Goddamn nuisance.”

  I took a photograph of him and his valet, who was pulling off the second boot.

  “What do you ever do with all them snaps?” the valet said.

  “Put them in a drawer.”

  He gave a heaven-help-us jerk of the head. “Waste of time.”

  Steve glanced at the Nikon. “Dad said once he’d seen some of your pics. You would put him out of business one of these days, he said.”

  “He was laughing at me.”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” He inched one arm into his shirt and let the valet fasten the buttons over the other. “Ouch,” he said, wincing.

  George Millace had seen some pictures I’d had in my car, catching me looking through them as I sat in the parking lot at the end of a sunny spring day, waiting for the friend I’d given a lift to to come out of the racecourse.

  “Proper little Cartier Bresson,” George had said, faintly smiling. “Let’s have a look.” He’d put his arm through the open window and grasped the stack, and short of a tug-o’-war I couldn’t have prevented him. “Well, well,” he said, going through them methodically. “Horses on the Downs, coming out of a mist. Romantic muck.” He handed them back. “Keep it up, kid. One of these days you might take a photograph.”

  He’d gone off across the parking lot with the heavy camera bag hanging from his shoulder, hitching it from time to time to ease its weight: the only photographer I knew with whom I didn’t feel at home.

  Duncan and Charlie, in the three years I’d lived with them, had patiently taught me all I could learn. No matter that when I was first dumped on them I was only twelve: Charlie had said from the start that as I was there I could sweep the floors and clean up in the darkroom, and I’d been glad to. The rest had come gradually and thoroughly, and I’d finished by regularly doing all of Duncan’s printing, and the routine half of Charlie’s. “Our lab assistant” Charlie called me. “He mixes our chemicals,” he would say. “A wizard, with a hypodermic. Mind now, Philip, only one point four milliliters of benzol alcohol.” And I’d suck the tiny amounts accurately into the syringe and add them to the developer, and feel as if I were perhaps of some use in the world after all.

  The valet helped Steve into his jacket and gave him his watch and wallet, and we went at Steve’s tender pace out to my car.

  “I promised to give Mum a hand with clearing up that mess, when I got back. What a bloody hope.”

  “She’s probably got neighbors.” I eased him into the modern Ford and went round to the driving seat. Started up in the closing dusk, switched on the lights and drove off in the direction of Ascot.

  “I can’t get used to the idea of Dad not being there,” Steve said.

  “What happened?” I asked. “I mean, you said he drove into a tree . . .”

  “Yes.” He sighed. “He went to sleep. At least, that’s what everyone reckons. There weren’t any other cars, nothing like that. There was a bend, or something, and he didn’t go around it. Just drove straight ahead. He must have had his foot on the accelerator . . . The front of the car was smashed right in.” He shivered. “He was on his way home from Doncaster. Mum’s always warned him about driving on the highway at night when he’s had a long day, but this wasn’t the highway. He was much nearer home.”

  He sounded tired and depressed, which no doubt he was, and in brief sideways glances I could see that for all my care the car’s motion was hurting his shoulder.

  “He’d stopped for half an hour at a friend’s house,” Steve said. “And they’d had a couple of whiskies. It was all so stupid. Just going to sleep . . .”

  We drove for a long way in silence, he with his problems, and I with mine.

  “Only last Saturday,” Steve said. “Only a week ago.”

  Alive one minute, dead the next . . . the same as everybody.

  “Turn left here,” Steve said.

  We turned left and right and left a few times and came finally to a road bordered on one side by a hedge and on the other by neat detached houses in shadowy gardens.

  In the middle distance along there things were happening. There were lights and people. An ambulance with its doors open, its blue light flashing on top. A police car. Policemen. People coming and going from one of the houses, hurrying. Every window uncurtained, spilling out light.

  “My God,” Steve said. “That’s their house. Mum’s and Dad’s.”

  I pulled up outside, and he sat unmoving, staring, stricken.

  “It’s Mum,” he said. “It must be. It’s Mum.”

  There was something near the cracking point in his voice. His face was twisted with terrible anxiety, and his eyes in the reflected light looked wide and very young.

  “Stay here,” I said practically. “I’ll go and see.”

  3

  His mum lay on the sofa in the sitting room, quivering and coughing and bleeding. Someone had attacked her pretty nastily, splitting her nose and mouth and eyelid and leaving her with bright raw patches on cheek and jaw. Her clothes were torn here and there, her shoes were off, and her hair stuck out in straggly wisps.

  I had seen Steve’s mother at the races from time to time
: a pleasant well-dressed woman nearing fifty, secure and happy in her life, plainly proud of her husband and son. As the grief-stricken, burgled, beaten-up person on the sofa, she was unrecognizable.

  There was a policeman sitting on a stool beside her, and a policewoman, standing, holding a bloodstained cloth. Two ambulance men hovered in the background, with a stretcher propped upright against one wall. A neighborly looking woman stood around looking grave and worried. The room itself was a shambles, with papers and smashed furniture littering the floor. On the wall, the signs of jam and cakes, as Steve had said.

  When I walked in, the policeman turned his head. “Are you the doctor?”

  “No . . .” I explained who I was.

  “Steve.” His mother said. Her mouth trembled, and her hands. “Steve’s hurt.” She could hardly speak, yet the fear for her son came across like a fresh torment, overshadowing anything she’d yet suffered.

  “It’s not bad, I promise you,” I said hastily. “He’s here, outside. It’s just his collarbone. I’ll get him straight away.”

  I went outside and told him, and helped him out of the car. He was hunched and stiff, but seemed not to feel it.

  “Why?” he said, uselessly, going up the path. “Why did it happen? What for?”

  The policeman indoors was asking the same question.

  “You were just saying, when your son came home, that there were two of them, with stockings over their faces. Is that right?”

  She nodded slightly. “Young,” she said. The word came out distorted through her cut, swollen lips. She saw Steve and held her hand out to him, to hold his own hand tight. He himself, at the sight of her, grew still paler and even more gaunt.

  “White youths or black?” the policeman said.