Reflex (24 page)

“How do I make hot ammonia fumes, to find out?”

“Simple,” he said, as if everyone would know items like that. “Put some ammonia in a saucepan and heat it. Hold the paper over the top. Don't get it wet. Just steam it.”

“Would you,” I said carefully, “like some champagne for lunch?”

 

I returned to Samantha's house at about six o'clock with a cheap saucepan, two bottles of Ajax, an anesthetized top lip, and a set of muscles that had been jerked, pressed and exercised into some sort of resurrection. I also felt dead tired, which wasn't a good omen for fitness the next day, when, Harold had informed me on the telephone, two 'chasers would be awaiting my services at Sandown Park.

Samantha had gone out. Clare, with work scattered all
over the kitchen table, gave me a fast assessing scrutiny and suggested a large brandy.

“It's in the cupboard with the salt and flour and herbs. Cooking brandy. Pour me some, too, would you?”

I sat at the table with her for a while, sipping the repulsive stuff neat and feeling a lot better for it. Her dark head was bent over the book she was working on, the capable hand stretching out now and again for the glass, the mind engrossed in her task.

“Would you live with me?” I said.

She looked up; abstracted, faintly frowning, questioning.

“Did you say . . . ?”

“Yes. I did,” I said. “Would you live with me?”

Her work at last lost her attention. With a smile in her eyes, she said, “Is that an academic question or a positive invitation?”

“Invitation.”

“I couldn't live in Lambourn,” she said. “Too far to commute. You couldn't live here. Too far from the horses.”

“Somewhere in between.”

She looked at me wonderingly. “Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“But we haven't . . .” She stopped, leaving a clear meaning.

“Been to bed.”

“Well . . .”

“In general,” I said, “what do you think?”

She took refuge and time with sips from her glass. I waited for what seemed a small age.

“I think,” she said finally, “why not give it a try?”

I smiled from intense satisfaction.

“Don't look so smug,” she said. “Drink your brandy while I finish this book.”

She bent her head down again but didn't read far.

“It's no good,” she said. “How can I work? Let's get the supper.”

Cooking frozen fish fillets took ages because of her trying to do it with my arms around her waist and my chin on her hair. I didn't taste the stuff when we ate it. I felt extraordinarily light-headed. I hadn't deeply hoped she would say yes, and still less had I expected the incredible sense of adventure since she had. To have someone to care about seemed no longer a burden to be avoided, but a positive privilege.

Amazing, I thought dimly; the whole thing's amazing. Was this what Lord White had felt for Dana den Relgan?

“What time does Samantha get back?” I said.

Clare shook her head. “Too soon.”

“Will you come with me tomorrow?” I said. “To the races . . . and then stay somewhere together afterwards?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Samantha won't mind?”

She gave me an amused look. “No, I don't think so.”

“Why do you laugh?”

“She's gone to the pictures. I asked her why she had to go on your last night here. She said she wanted to see the film. I thought it odd, but I believed her. She saw more than I did.”

“My God,” I said.
“Women.”

 

While she tried again to finish her work, I fetched the rubbish box and took out the black light-proof envelope.

I borrowed a flat glass dish from a cupboard. Took the piece of plastic film from the envelope. Put it in the dish. At once poured liquid Ajax over it. Held my breath.

Almost instantly dark brownish-red lines became visible. I rocked the dish, sloshing the liquid across the plastic surface, conscious that all of the remaining dye had to be covered with ammonia before the light bleached it away.

It was no engineering drawing, but handwriting.

It looked odd.

As more and more developed, I realized that from the reading point of view the plastic was wrong side up.

Turned it over. Sloshed more Ajax over it, tilting it back and forth until I could read the revealed words, as clear as when they'd been written.

They were, they had to be, what Dana den Relgan had written on the cigarette packet.

Heroin, cocaine, marijuana. Quantities, dates, prices paid, suppliers. No wonder she had wanted it back.

Clare looked up from her work.

“What have you found?”

“What the Dana girl who came last Sunday was wanting.”

“Let's see.” She came across and looked into the dish, reading. “That's pretty damning, isn't it?”

“Mm.”

“But how did it turn up like this?”

I said appreciatively, “Crafty George Millace. He got her to write on cellophane wrapping with a red-felt tip pen. She felt safer that way, because cigarette packet wrapping is so fragile, so destructible . . . and I expect the words themselves looked indistinct, over the printed packet. But from George's point of view all he wanted was solid lines on transparent material, to make a diazo print.”

I explained to her all that I'd learned in Basildon. “He must have cut the wrapping off carefully, pressed it flat under glass on top of this piece of diazo film, and exposed it to light. Then with the drugs list safely recorded, it wouldn't matter if the wrapping came to pieces. And the list was hidden, like everything else.”

“He was an extraordinary man.”

I nodded. “Extraordinary. Though mind you he didn't mean anyone else to have to solve his puzzles. He made them only to please himself and to save the records from angry burglars.”

“In which he succeeded.”

“He sure did.”

“What about all your photographs?” she said in sudden alarm. “All the ones in the filing cabinet. Suppose—”

“Calm down,” I said. “Even if anyone stole them or burned them, they'd miss all the negatives. The butcher has those down the road in his freezer room.”

“Maybe all photographers,” she said, “are obsessed.”

It wasn't until much later that I realized that I hadn't disputed her classification. I hadn't even
thought
, “I'm a jockey.”

I asked her if she'd mind if I filled the kitchen with the smell of boiling ammonia.

“I'll go and wash my hair,” she said.

When she'd gone, I drained the Ajax out of the dish into the saucepan and added to it what was left in the first bottle, and while it heated opened the french windows so as not to asphyxiate. Then I held the first of the sheets of what looked like typing paper over the simmering cleaner, and watched George's words come alive as if they'd been written in secret ink. The ammonia content clearly evaporated quickly, because it took the whole second bottle to get results with the second sheet, but it too grew words like the first.

Together they constituted one handwritten letter in what I had no doubt was George's own writing. He must himself have written on some sort of transparent material. It could have been anything: a plastic bag, tracing paper, a piece of glass, film with all the emulsion bleached off, anything. When he'd written, he had put his letter over diazo paper and exposed it to light, and immediately stored the exposed paper in the light-proof envelope.

And then what? Had he sent his transparent original? Had he written it again on ordinary paper? Had he typed it? No way of knowing. But one thing was certain: in some form or other he had dispatched his letter.

I had heard of the results of its arrival.

I could guess, I thought, who wanted me dead.

H
arold met me with some relief on the verandah outside the weighing room at Sandown.

“You at least look better . . . have you passed the doctor?”

I nodded. “He signed my card.” He'd no reason not to. By his standards a jockey who took a week off because he'd been kicked was acting more self-indulgently than usual. He'd asked me to a bendstretch, and nodded me through.

“Victor's here,” Harold said.

“Did you tell him?”

“Yes, I did. He says he doesn't want to talk to you on a racecourse. He says he wants to see his horses work on the Downs. He's coming on Monday. He'll talk to you then. And, Philip, you bloody well be careful what you say.”

“Mm,” I said noncommittally “How about Coral Key?”

“What about him? He's fit.”

“No funny business?”

“Victor knows how you feel,” Harold said.

“Victor doesn't care a losing tote ticket how I feel. Is the horse running straight?”

“He hasn't said anything.”

“Because I am,” I said. “If I'm riding it, I'm riding it straight. Whatever he says in the parade ring.”

“You've got bloody aggressive all of a sudden.”

“No, just saving you money. You personally. Don't back me to lose, like you did on Daylight. That's all.”

He said he wouldn't. He also said there was no point in holding the Sunday briefing if I was talking to Victor on Monday, and that we would discuss next week's plans after that. Neither of us said what was in both our minds. After Monday, would there be any plans?

Steve Millace in the changing room was complaining about a starter letting a race off when he, Steve, hadn't been ready, with the consequence that he was left so flat-footed that the other runners had gone half a furlong before he'd begun. The owner was angry and said he wanted another jockey next time, and, as Steve asked everyone ad infinitum, was it fair?

“No,” I said. “Life isn't.”

“It should be.”

“Better face it,” I said smiling. “The best you can expect is a kick in the teeth.”

“Your teeth are all right,” someone said.

“They've got caps on.”

“Pick up the pieces, huh? Is that what you're saying?”

I nodded.

Steve said, not following this exchange, “Starters should be fined for letting a race off when the horses aren't pointing the right way.”

“Give it a rest,” someone said. But Steve as usual was still going on about it a couple of hours later.

His mother, he said when I inquired, had gone to friends in Devon for a rest.

Outside the weighing room Bart Underfield was lecturing one of the more gullible of the reporters on the subject of unusual nutrients.

“It's rubbish giving horses beer and eggs and ridiculous things like that. I never do it.”

The reporter refrained from saying—or perhaps he didn't know—that the trainers addicted to eggs and beer were on the whole more successful than Bart. Bart's face when he saw me changed from bossy know-all to tight-lipped spite. He jettisoned the reporter and took two decisive steps to stand in my path, but when he'd stopped me he didn't speak.

“Do you want something, Bart?” I said.

He still didn't say anything. I thought that quite likely he couldn't find words intense enough to convey what he felt. I was growing accustomed, I thought, to being hated.

He found his voice. “You wait,” he said with bitter quiet. “I'll get you.”

If he'd had a dagger and privacy, I wouldn't have turned my back on him, as I did, to walk away.

Lord White was there, deep in earnest conversation with fellow stewards, his gaze flicking over me quickly as if wincing. He would never, I supposed, feel comfortable when I was around. Never be absolutely sure that I wouldn't tell. Never like my knowing what I knew.

He would have to put up with it for a long time, I thought. One way or another the racing world would always be my world, as it was his. He would see me, and I him, week by week, until one of us died.

Victor Briggs was waiting in the parade ring when I went out to ride Coral Key. A heavy brooding figure in his broad-brimmed hat and long navy overcoat: unsmiling, untalkative, gloomy. When I touched my cap to him politely, there was no response of any sort, only the maintenance of an expressionless stare.

Coral Key was an oddity among Victor Briggs' horses, a six-year-old novice 'chaser bought out of the hunting field when he had begun to show promise in point-to-points. Great horses in the past had started that way, like Oxo and Ben Nevis, which had both won the Grand
National, and although Coral Key was unlikely to be of that class, it seemed to me that he, too, had the feel of good things to come. There was no way that I was going to mess up his early career, whatever my instructions. In my mind and very likely in my attitude I dared his owner to say he didn't want him to try to win.

He didn't say it. He said nothing at all about anything. He simply watched me unblinkingly, and kept his mouth shut.

Harold bustled about as if movement itself could dispel the atmosphere existing between his owner and his jockey; and I mounted and rode out to the course feeling as if I'd been in a strong field of undischarged electricity.

A spark . . . an explosion . . . might lie ahead. Harold sensed it. Harold was worried to the depths of his own explosive soul.

It might be the last race I ever rode for Victor Briggs. I lined up at the start thinking that it was no good speculating about that; that all I should be concentrating on was the matter in hand.

A cold windy cloudy day. Good ground underfoot. Seven other runners, none of them brilliant. If Coral Key jumped as he had when I'd schooled him at home, he should have a good chance.

I settled my goggles over my eyes and gathered the reins.

“Come in, now, jockeys,” the starter said. The horses advanced towards the tapes in a slow line and as the gate flew up accelerated away from bunched haunches. Thirteen fences; two miles. I would find out pretty soon, I thought ruefully, if I wasn't yet fit.

Important, I thought, to get him to jump well. It was what I was best at. What I most enjoyed doing. There were seven fences close together down the far side of the course. If one met the first of them just right, they all fitted, but a brakes-on approach to the first often meant seven blunders by the end, and countless lengths lost.

From the start there were two fences, then the uphill stretch past the stands, then the top bend, then the downhill fence where I'd stepped off Daylight. No problems on Coral Key: he cleared the lot. Then the sweep around to the seven trappy fences, and if I lost one length getting Coral Key set right for the first, by the end of the seventh I'd stolen ten.

Still it was too soon for satisfaction. Around the long bottom curve Coral Key lay second, taking a breather. Three fences to go and the long hill to home. Between the last two fences I caught up with the leader. We jumped the last fence alongside, nothing between us. Raced up the hill, stretching, flying, doing everything I could.

The other horse won by two lengths.

Harold said, “He ran well,” a shade apprehensively, patting Coral Key in the unsaddling enclosure; and Victor Briggs said nothing.

I pulled the saddle off and went in to weigh. There wasn't any way that I could think of that I could have won the race. The other horse had had enough in hand to beat off my challenge. He'd been stronger than Coral Key, and faster. I hadn't felt weak. I hadn't thrown anything away in jumping mistakes. I just hadn't won.

I had needed a strong hand for talking to Victor Briggs; and I hadn't got it.

When life kicks you in the teeth, get caps.

I won the other 'chase, the one that didn't matter so much except to the owners, a junketing quartet of businessmen.

“Bloody good show,” they said, beaming. “Bloody well ridden.”

I saw Victor Briggs watching from ten paces away, balefully staring. I wondered if he knew how much I'd have given to have those two results reversed.

 

Clare said, “I suppose the wrong one won?”

“Yeah.”

“How much does it matter?”

“I'll find out on Monday.”

“Well . . . let's forget it.”

“Shouldn't be difficult,” I said. I looked at the trim dark coat, the long polished boots. Looked at the large gray eyes and the friendly mouth. Incredible, I thought, to have someone like that waiting for me outside the weighing room. Quite extraordinarily different from going home alone. Like a fire in a cold house. Like sugar on strawberries.

“Would you mind very much,” I said, “if we made a detour for me to call on my grandmother?”

 

The old woman was markedly worse.

No longer propped more or less upright, she sagged back without strength on the pillows; and even her eyes seemed to be losing the struggle, with none of the beady aggression glittering out.

“Did you bring her?” she said.

Still no salutation, no preliminaries. Perhaps it was a mistake to expect changes in the mind to accompany changes in the body. Perhaps my feelings for her were different and all that remained immutable was her hatred for me.

“No,” I said. “I didn't bring her. She's lost.”

“You said you would find her.”

“She's lost.”

She gave me a feeble cough, the thin chest jerking. Her eyelids closed for a few seconds and opened again. A weak hand twitched at the sheet.

“Leave your money to James,” I said.

With a faint outer echo of persistent inner stubbornness, she shook her head.

“Leave some to charity, then,” I said. “Leave it to a dog's home.”

“I hate dogs.” Her voice was weak. Not her opinions.

“How about lifeboats?”

“Hate the sea. Makes me sick.”

“Medical research?”

“Hasn't done me much good, has it?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “how about leaving it to a religious order of some sort.”

“You must be mad. I hate religion. Cause of trouble. Cause of wars. Wouldn't give them a penny.”

I sat down unbidden in the armchair.

Amanda was lost within her religion. Indoctrinated, cared for, perhaps loved: and fourteen formative years couldn't be undone. Wrenching her out forcibly (even if one were able to) would inflict incalculable psychological damage. For her own sake one would have to leave her in peace, however stunted and alien that peace might seem. If one day she sought change of her own accord, so much the better. Meanwhile, it remained only to see that she was provided for.

“Can I do anything for you?” I asked. “Besides, of course, finding Amanda. Can I fetch anything? Is there anything you want?”

My grandmother raised a faint sneer. “Don't think you can soft soap me into leaving any money to you, because I'm not going to.”

“I'd give water to a dying cat,” I said. “Even if it spat in my face.”

Her mouth opened and stiffened with affront.

“How dare you?”

“How dare you still think I'd shift a speck of dust for your money?”

The mouth closed into a thin line.

“Can I fetch you anything?” I said again, levelly. “Is there anything you want?”

She didn't answer for several seconds. Then she said, “Go away.”

“Well, I will, in a minute,” I said. “But I want just to suggest something else.” I waited a fraction, but as she didn't immediately argue I continued. “In case Amanda
is ever found, why don't you set up a trust for her? Tie up the capital tight with masses of excellent trustees. Make it so that she couldn't ever get her hands on the money herself, nor could anyone who was perhaps after her fortune. Make it impossible for anyone but Amanda herself to benefit, with an income paid out only at the direction of the trustees.”

She watched me with half-lowered eyelids.

“Wherever she is,” I said, “Amanda is still only seventeen or eighteen. Too young to inherit a lot of money without strings. Leave it to her with strings like steel hawsers.”

“Is that all?”

“Mm.”

She lay quiet, immobile.

I waited. I had waited all my life for something other than malevolence from my grandmother. I could wait forever.

“Go away,” she said.

I stood up and said, “Very well.”

Walked to the door. Put my hand on the knob.

“Send me some roses,” my grandmother said.

 

We found a flower shop still open in the town, though they were sweeping out, ready to close.

“Doesn't she realize it's December?” Clare said. “Roses will cost a fortune.”

“If you were dying, and you wanted roses, do you think you'd care?”

“Maybe not.”

All they had in the flower shop were fifteen very small pink buds on very long thin stems. Not much call for roses. These were left over from a wedding.

We drove back to the nursing home and gave them to a nurse to deliver at once, with a card enclosed saying I'd get some better ones next week.

“She doesn't deserve it,” Clare said.

“Poor old woman.”

 

We stayed in a pub by the Thames which had old beams and good food and bedroom windows looking out to bare willows and sluggish brown water.

No one knew us. We signed in as Mr. and Mrs. and ate a slow dinner, and went unobtrusively to bed. Not the first time she'd done it, she said: did I mind? Preferred it, I said. No fetishes about virgins? No kinks at all, that I knew of. Good, she said.

It began in friendship and progressed to passion. Ended in breathlessness and laughter, sank to murmurs and sleep. The best it had ever been for me. I couldn't tell about her, but she showed no hesitation about a repeat program in the morning.

In the afternoon, in peaceful accord, we went to see Jeremy.