The colt smashed the first of the lynch pins and lunged forwards, bursting out of the remains of the box like flood water from a dam. I snatched the knife from the co-pilot and as the horse surged towards me stuck the blade into the only place available, the angle where the head joined the neck.
I hit by some miracle the carotid artery.[140] But I couldnt get out of his way afterwards. The colt came down solidly on top of me, pouring blood, flailing his legs and rolling desperately in his attempts to stand up again.
His mane fell in my mouth and across my eyes, and his heaving weight crushed the breath in and out of my lungs like some nightmare form of artificial respiration. He couldnt right himself over my body, and as his struggles weakened he eventually got himself firmly wedged between the remains of his own box and the one directly aft of it. The co-pilot bent down and put his hands under my armpits and in jerks dragged me out from underneath.
The blood went on pouring out, hot sticky gallons of it, spreading down the gangways in scarlet streams. Alf cut open one of the hay bales and began covering it up, and it soaked the hay into a sodden crimson brown mess. I dont know how many pints of blood there should be in a horse: the colt bled to death and his heart pumped out nearly every drop.
My clothes were soaked in it, and the sweet smell made me feel sick. I stumbled down the plane into the lavatory compartment and stripped to the skin, and washed myself with hands I found to be helplessly trembling. The door opened without ceremony, and the co-pilot thrust a pair of trousers and a sweater into my arms. His overnight civvies.
Here, he said. Compliments of the house.[141]
I nodded my thanks, put them on, and went back up the plane, soothing the restive frightened cargo on the way.
The co-pilot was arguing with Billy about whether Billy would really have pulled the trigger and Billy was saying a bullet from a revolver wouldnt make a hole in a metal aircraft. The co-pilot cursed, said you couldnt risk it, and mentioned ricochets and glass windows. But what I wanted to know, though I didnt ask, was what was Billy doing carrying a loaded pistol round with him in an underarm holster as casually as a wallet.
Chapter Five
I slept like the dead when I finally got home, and woke with scant time the next morning to reach Kempton for the amateurs chase. After such a mangling week I thought it highly probable I would crown the lot by falling off the rickety animal I had in a weak moment promised to ride. But though I misjudged where it was intending to take off at the last open ditch and practically went over the fence before it while it put in an unexpected short one, I did in fact cling sideways like a limpet to the saddle[142], through sheer disinclination to hit the ground.
Though I scrambled back on top, my mount, who wouldnt have won anyway, had lost all interest, and I trotted him back and apologised to his cantankerous owner, who considered I had spoilt his day and was churlish enough to say so. As he outranked my father by several strawberry leaves[143] he clearly felt he had the right to be as caustic as he chose. I listened to him saying I couldnt ride in a cart with a pig-net over it and wondered how he treated the professionals.
Julian Thackerys father caught the tail end of these remarks as he was passing, and looked amused: and when I came out of the weighing room after changing he was leaning against the rails waiting for me. He had brought the list of entries of his horses, and at his suggestion we adjourned to the bar to discuss them. He bought me some lemon squash without a quiver, and we sat down at a small table on which he spread out several sheets of paper. I realised, hearing him discussing his plans and prospects, that the year by year success of his horses was no accident: he was a very able man.
Why dont you take out a public licence? I said finally.
Too much worry, he smiled. This way its a hobby. If I make mistakes, I have no one on my conscience. No one to apologise to or smooth down. No need to worry about owners whisking their horses away at an hours notice. No risk of them not paying my fees for months on end.
You know the snags[144], I agreed dryly.
Theres no profit in training, he said. I break even most years[145], maybe finish a little ahead. But I work the stable in with the farm, you see. A lot of the overheads come into the farm accounts. I dont see how half these public trainers stay in business, do you? They either have to be rich to start with, or farmers like me, or else they have to bet, if they want a profit.
But they dont give it up, I pointed out mildly. And they all drive large cars. They cant do too badly.
He shook his head and finished his whisky. Theyre good actors, some of them. They put on a smiling not-a-care-in-the-world expression at the races when theyve got the bank manager camping on their door-step back home. Well, now, he shufled the papers together, folded them, and tucked them into a pocket. You think you can get next Thursday off to go to Stratford?
Im pretty sure of it, yes.
Right. Ill see you there, then.
I nodded and we stood up to go. Someone had left an Evening Standard on the next table, and I glanced at it casually as we passed. Then I stopped and went back for a closer look. A paragraph on the bottom of the front page started Derby Hope Dead, and told in a few bald words that Okinawa, entered for the Derby, had died on the flight from the United States, and was consequently scratched from all engagements.
I smiled inwardly. From the lack of detail or excitement, it was clear the report had come from someone like the trainer to whom Okinawa had been travelling, not from airport reporters sniffing a sensational story. No journalist who had seen or even been told of the shambles on that plane could have written so starkly. But the horse had been disposed of now, and I had helped wash out the plane myself, and there was nothing to see any more. Okinawa had been well insured, a vet had certified that destroying him was essential, and I had noticed that my name on the crew list was spelled wrongly; H. Gray. With a bit of luck, and if Yardman himself had his way, that was the end of it.
My dear boy, hed said in agitation when hurriedly summoned to the airport, it does business no good to have horses go crazy on our flights. We will not broadcast it, will we?
We will not, I agreed firmly, more for my sake than for his.
It was unfortunate. he sighed and shrugged, obviously relieved.
We should have a humane killer, I said, striking the hot iron[146].
Yes. Certainly. All right. Ill get one.
I would hold him to that[147], I thought. Standing peacefully in the bar at Kempton I could almost feel the weight of Okinawa and the wetness of his blood, the twenty-four hour old memory of lying under a dying horse still much too vivid for comfort. I shook myself firmly back into the present and went out with Julians father to watch a disliked rival ride a brilliant finish.
Saturday night I did my level best to be civil to Mothers youngest female week-end guest, while avoiding all determined manoeuvres to leave me alone with her, and Sunday morning I slid away before dawn northwards to Lincolnshire.
Tom Wells was out on the apron when I arrived, giving his planes a personal check. He had assigned me, as I had learned on the telephone the previous morning, to fly three men to Glasgow for a round of golf. I was to take them in an Aztec and do exactly what they wanted. They were good customers. Tom didnt want to lose them.
Good-morning, Harry, he said as I reached him. Ive given you Quebec Bravo. You planned your route?
I nodded.
Ive put scotch and champagne on board, in case they forget to bring any, he said. Youre fetching them from Coventry you know that and taking them back there. They may keep you late at Gleneagles until after dinner.
Im sorry about that.
Expensive game of golf, I commented.
Hm, he said shortly. Thats an alibi. They are three tycoons who like to compare notes in private[148]. They stipulate a pilot who wont repeat what he hears, and I reckon you fit that bill, Harry my lad because youve been coming here for four years and if a word of gossip has passed your lips in that time Im a second class gas fitters mate[149].
Which you arent.
Which Im not. He smiled, a pleasant solid sturdy man of forty plus, a pilot himself who knew chartering backwards and ran his own little firm with the minimum of fuss. Ex-R.A.F., of course, as most flyers of his age were: trained on bombers, given a love for the air, and let down with a bang when the service chucked them out as redundant[150]. There were too many pilots chasing too few jobs in the post-war years, but Tom Wells had been good, persistent and lucky, and had converted a toe-hole copilots job in a minor private airline into a seat on the board, and finally, backed by a firm of light aircraft manufacturers, had started his present company on his own.
Give me a ring when youre leaving Gleneagles, he said, Ill be up in the Tower myself when you come back.
Ill try not to keep you too late.
You wont be the last. He shook his head. Joe Wilkins is fetching three couples from a weekend in Le Touquet. A dawn job[151], thatll be, I shouldnt wonder
I picked up the three impressive business men as scheduled and conveyed them to Scotland. On the way up they drank Tom Wells Black and White and talked about dividend equalisation reserves, unappropriated profits, and contingent liabilities: none of which I found in the least bit interesting. They moved on to exports and the opportunities available in the European market. There was some discussion about whether the one and threequarters was any positive inducement, which was the only point of their conversation I really understood.
The one and three quarters, as I had learned at Anglia Bloodstock, was a percentage one could claim from the Government on anything one sold for export. The three tycoons were talking about machine tools and soft drinks, as far as I could gather, but the mechanism worked for bloodstock also. If a stud sold a horse abroad for say twenty thousand pounds, it received not only that sum from the buyer, but also one and three quarters per cent of it three hundred and fifty pounds from the Government. A carrot before the export donkey. A bonus. A pat on the head for helping the countrys economy. In effect, it did influence some studs to prefer foreign buyers. But racehorses were simple to export: they needed no after sales service, follow-up campaign or multi-lingual advertising, which the tycoons variously argued were or were not worth the trouble. Then they moved on to taxation and I lost them again[152], the more so as there were some lowish clouds ahead over the Cheviots and at their request I was flying them below three thousand feet so that they could see the countryside.
I went up above the cloud into the quadrantal system operating above three thousand feet, where to avoid collision one had to fly on a steady regulated level according to the direction one was heading: in our case, going northwest, four thousand five hundred or six thousand five hundred or eight thousand five hundred, and so on up.
One of the passengers commented on the climb and asked the reason for it, and wanted to know my name.
Grey.
Well, Grey, where are we off to? Mars?
I smiled. High hills, low clouds.
My God, said the weightiest and oldest tycoon, patting me heavily on the shoulder. What wouldnt I give for such succinctness in my boardroom.
They were in good form, enjoying their day as well as making serious use of it. The smell of whisky in the warm luxurious little cabin overcame even that of hot oil, and the expensive cigar smoke swirled huskily in my throat. I enjoyed the journey, and for Toms sake as well as my own pride, knowing my passengers were connoisseurs of private air travel, put them down on the Gleneagles strip like a whisper on a lake[153].
They played golf and drank and ate; and repeated the programme in the afternoon. I walked on the hills in the morning, had lunch, and in the late afternoon booked a room in the hotel, and went to sleep. I guess it was a satisfactory day all round.
It was half past ten when the reception desk woke me by telephone and said my passengers were ready to leave, and eleven before we got away. I flew back on a double dogleg[154], making for the St. Abbs radio beacon on the Northumberland coast and setting a course of one sixty degrees south-south-east from there on a one five two nautical mile straight course to Ottringham, and then south-west across country to Coventry, coming in finally on their 122.70 homer signal.
The tycoons, replete, talked in mellow, rumbling, satisfied voices, no longer about business but about their own lives. The heaviest was having trouble over currency regulations with regard to a villa he had bought on the Costa del Sol: the government had slapped a two thousand pound ceiling on pleasure spending abroad[155], and two thousand would hardly buy the bath taps.
The man sitting directly behind me asked about decent yachts available for charter in the Aegean, and the other two told him. The third said it was really time his wife came back from Gstaad, she had been there for two months, and they were due to go to Nassau for Easter. They made me feel poverty-stricken[156], listening to them.
We landed safely at Coventry, where they shook my hand, yawning, thanked me for a smooth trip, and ambled off to a waiting Rolls, shivering in the chilly air. I made the last small hop back to Fenland and found Tom, as good as his word, on duty in the control tower to help me down. He yelled out of the window to join him, and we drank coffee out of a thermos jug while he waited for his Le Touquet plane to come back. It was due in an hour: earlier than expected. Apparently the client had struck a losing streak[157] and the party had fizzled out.
Everything go all right with your lot? Tom said.
They seemed happy, I nodded, filling in the flight details on his record chart and copying them into my own log book.
I suppose you want your fee in flying hours, as usual?
I grinned. How did you guess?
I wish youd change your mind and work for me permanently.
I put down the pen and stretched, lolling back on the wooden chair with my hands laced behind my head. Not yet. Give it three or four years; perhaps then.