to tell you.'
'Oh, yes?' I said.
'He was asking for you on Saturday at Liverpool, but I told him you'd probably be coming here, as Mr Gregory mentioned last week that you'd be riding Admiral tomorrow,' said Clem, absent-mindedly picking up a saddle and smoothing his hand over the leather.
'Did Joe say what it was he wanted to tell me?' I asked.
'Yes, he wants to show you a bit of brown wrapping paper with something written on it. He said you'd be interested to see it, though I can't think why – the word I saw looked like something to do with chickens. He had the paper out in the changing-room at Liverpool, and folded it up flat on the bench into a neat shape, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Giggling over it, he was. He'd had a drink or two I reckon, but then most people had, it was after the National. He said what was written on the paper was double Dutch to him, but it might be a clue, you never knew. I asked him a clue to what? But he wouldn't say, and anyway, I was too busy to bother with him much.'
'I'll see him, and find out what it's all about,' I said. 'Has he still got the paper with him, do you know?'
'Yes, he has. He patted his pocket just now when he asked me if you were here, and I heard the paper crackle.'
'Thanks, Clem,' I said.
I went outside. The race was over, the winner was being led towards the unsaddling enclosure in front of the weighing-room, and down from the stands streamed the hundreds of chattering racegoers. I stood near the weighing-room door, waiting for Joe and catching up with the latest gossip. Liverpool, I learned, had been disappointing, fabulous, bloody, a dead loss, and the tops, according to who told it. I had not been there. I had been too busy getting intensive treatment on my shoulder muscles to help my strength back.
Sandy clapped me soundly on the back as he passed, remarking that it was 'Bloody good to see your old physog on the horizon again, even if you do look like an understudy for Scarface.' He went on, 'Have you seen Joe? The little drip's been squealing for you.'
'So I hear,' I said. 'I'm waiting for him now.'
A couple of press men asked me my riding plans, and made notes about Admiral for their morning edition. Sir Creswell Stampe noticed my existence with a nod of his distinguished head and the characteristic puffing up of his top lip which passed with him for a smile.
My content at being back in my favourite environment was somewhat marred by the sight of Dane strolling across the grass, talking intently to a slender, heart-catchingly beautiful girl at his side. Her face was turned intimately towards his, and she was laughing. It was Kate.
When they saw me they quickened their steps and approached me smiling, a striking pair evenly matched in grace and dark good looks.
Kate, who had got used to my battered face over lunch some days earlier, greeted me with a brisk 'Hi, there,' from which all undertones of love and longing were regrettably absent. She put her hand on my arm and asked me to walk down the course with her and Dane to watch the next race from beside the water jump.
I glanced at Dane. His smile was faint, and his dark eyes looked at me inscrutably, without welcome. My own muscles had tensed uncontrollably when I saw him and Kate together; so now I knew exactly how he felt about me.
It was as much unease over the low ebb of our friendship as desire to chase Claud Thiveridge which made me say, 'I can't come at this instant. I must find Joe Nantwich first. How about later on- if you'd like to walk down again?'
'All right, Alan,' she said. 'Or maybe we could have tea together?' She turned away with Dane and said, 'See you later,' over her shoulder with a mischievous grin, in which I read her mockery of the jealousy she could arouse in me.
Watching them go, I forgot to look out for Joe, and went in to search for him through the weighing- and changing-rooms again. He wasn't there.
Pete towered over me as I returned to my post outside the door and greeted me like a long-lost friend. His hat tipped back on his big head, his broad shoulders spreading apart the lapels of his coat, he gazed with good humour at my face, and said, 'They've made a good job of sewing you up, you know. You were a very gory sight indeed last time I saw you. I suppose you still can't remember what happened?'
'No,' I said, regretfully. 'Sometimes I think- but I can't get hold of it-'
'Perhaps it's just as well,' he said comfortingly, hitching the strap of his race glasses higher on to his shoulder and preparing to go into the weighing-room.
'Pete,' I said, 'have you seen Joe anywhere? I think he's been asking for me.'
'Yes, he said. 'He was looking for you at Liverpool, too. He was very keen to show you something, an address I think, written on some brown paper.'
'Did you see it?' I asked.
'Yes, as a matter of fact I did, but he annoys me and I didn't pay much attention. Chichester, I think the place was.'
'Do you know where Joe is now?' I asked. 'I've been waiting for him for some time, but there isn't a sign of him.'
Pete's thin lips showed contempt. 'Yes, I saw the little brute going into the bar, about ten minutes ago.'
'Already!' I exclaimed.
'Drunken little sod,' he said dispassionately. 'I wouldn't put him up on one of my horses if he was the last jockey on earth.'
'Which bar?' I pressed.
'Eh? Oh, the one at the back of Tattersall's, next to the Tote. He and another man went in with that dark fellow he rides for- Tudor, isn't that his name?'
I gaped at him. 'But Tudor finished with Joe at Cheltenham- and very emphatically, too.'
Pete shrugged. 'Tudor went into the bar with Joe and the other chap a few steps behind him. Maybe it was only coincidence.'
'Thanks, anyway,' I said.
It was only a hundred yards round one corner to the bar where Joe had gone. It was a long wooden hut backing on to the high fence which divided the racecourse from the road. I wasted no time, but nonetheless when I stepped into the building and threaded my way through the overcoated, beer-drinking customers, I found that Joe was no longer there. Nor was Clifford Tudor.
I went outside again. The time for the second race was drawing near, and long impatient queues waited at the Tote next door to the bar, eyes nickering between racecards and wrist watches, money clutched ready in hopeful hands. The customers from the bar poured out, hurrying past me. Men were running across the grass towards the stands, coat-tails flapping. Bells rang loudly in the Tote building, and the queues squirmed with the compulsion to push their money through the little windows before the shutters came down.
I hovered indecisively. There was no sign of Joe in all this activity, and I decided to go up to the jockeys' box in the stands and look for him there. I put my head into the bar for a final check, but it was now empty except for three ageing young ladies mopping up the beer-slopped counter.
It was only because I was moving so slowly that I found Joe at all.
Owing to the curve of the road behind them, the Tote and bar buildings did not stand in a perfectly straight line. The gap between the two was narrow at the front, barely eighteen inches across; but it widened farther back until, by the high fence itself, the Tote and bar walls were four or five feet apart.
I glanced into this narrow area as I passed. And there was Joe. Only I did not know it was Joe until I got close to him.
At first I saw only a man lying on the ground in the corner made by the boundary fence and the end wall of the Tote, and thinking he might be ill, or faint, or even plain drunk, went in to see if he needed help.
He lay in shadow, but something about his shape and rag-doll relaxedness struck me with shocking recognition as I took the five or six strides across to him.
He was alive, but only just. Bright red frothy blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth, and a pool of it lay under his cheek on the weedy gravel. His round young face still wore, incredibly, a look of sulky petulance, as if he did not realize that what had happened to him was more than a temporary inconvenience.
