Rat Race (3 page)

‘I suppose he didn’t give you… a parcel… or anything… to give me, did he?’ she said gloomily.

‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

‘He’s an absolute beast then… er, is he a friend of yours?’

‘I’ve met him twice, that’s all.’

‘He’s pinched my hundred quid,’ she said bitterly.

‘He pinched…?’

‘He bloody has. Not to mention my handbag and keys and everything.’ She stopped and compressed her mouth in anger. Then she added, ‘I left my handbag in this aeroplane three weeks ago, when we flew to Doncaster. And Larry has been saying ever since that he’ll bring it on the next trip to the races and give it to Colin to give to me, and for three solid weeks he’s kept on forgetting it. I suppose he knew he was going to Turkey and he thought if he could put it off long enough he would never have to give my bag back.’

‘Colin… Colin Ross?’ I asked. She nodded abstractedly.

‘Is he your husband?’

She looked startled, then laughed. ‘Good Lord, no. He’s my brother. I saw him just now in the paddock and I said, ‘Has he brought my handbag?’ and he shook his head and started to say something, but I belted off over here in a fury without stopping to listen, and I suppose he was going to tell me it wasn’t Larry who had come in the plane.… Oh damn it, I
hate
being robbed. Colin would have lent him a hundred quid if he was that desperate. He didn’t have to pinch it.’

‘It was a lot of money to have in a handbag,’ I suggested.

‘Colin had just given it to me, you see. In the plane. Some owner had handed him a terrific present in readies, and he gave me a hundred of it to pay a bill with, which was really sweet of him, and I can hardly expect him to give me another hundred just because I was silly enough to leave the first one lying about…’ Her voice tailed off in depression.

‘The bill,’ she added wryly, ‘Is for flying lessons.’

I looked at her with interest. ‘How far have you got?’

‘Oh, I’ve got my licence,’ she said. ‘These were instrument flying lessons. And radio navigation, and all that jazz. I’ve done about ninety-five hours, altogether. Spread over about four years, though, sad to say.’

That put her in the experienced-beginner class and the
dangerous time bracket. After eighty hours flying, pilots are inclined to think they know enough. After a hundred hours, they are sure they don’t. Between the two, the accident rate is at its peak.

She asked me several questions about the aeroplane, and I answered them. Then she said, ‘Well, there’s no point in sitting here all afternoon,’ and began to lever herself out on to the wing. ‘Aren’t you coming over to the races?’

‘No,’ I shook my head.

‘Oh come on,’ she said. ‘Do.’

The sun was shining and she was very pretty. I smiled and said ‘O.K.,’ and followed her out on to the grass. It is profitless now to speculate on the different course things would have taken if I’d stayed where I was.

I collected my jacket from the rear baggage compartment and locked all the doors and set off with her across the track. The man on the gate duly let me into the paddock and Colin Ross’s sister showed no sign of abandoning me once we were inside. Instead she diagnosed my almost total ignorance and seemed to be pleased to be able to start dispelling it.

‘You see that brown horse over there,’ she said, steering me towards the parade ring rails, ‘That one walking round the far end, number sixteen, that’s Colin’s mount in this race. It’s come out a bit light but it looks well in its coat.’

‘It does?’

She looked at me in amusement. ‘Definitely.’

‘Shall I back it, then?’

‘It’s all a joke to you.’

‘No,’ I protested.

‘Oh yes indeed,’ she nodded. ‘You’re looking at this race meeting in the way I’d look at a lot of spiritualists. Disbelieving and a bit superior.’

‘Ouch.’

‘But what you’re actually seeing is a large export industry in the process of marketing its wares.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘And if the industry takes place out of doors on a nice fine sunny day with everyone enjoying themselves, well, so much the better. ’

‘Put that way,’ I agreed, ‘It’s a lot more jolly than a car factory,’

‘You will get involved,’ she said with certainty.

‘No.’ I was equally definite.

She shook her head. ‘You will, you know, if you do much racecourse taxi work. It’ll bust through that cool shell of yours and make you feel something, for a change.’

I blinked. ‘Do you always talk like that to total strangers?’

‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t.’

The bright little jockeys flooded into the parade ring and scattered to small earnest owner-trainer groups where there were a lot of serious conversations and much nodding of heads. On the instructions of Colin Ross’s sister I tried moderately hard to take it all seriously. Not with much success.

Colin Ross’s sister…

‘Do you have a name?’ I asked.

‘Often.’

‘Thanks.’

She laughed. ‘It’s Nancy. What’s yours?’

‘Matt Shore.’

‘Hm. A flat matt name. Very suitable.’

The jockeys were thrown up like confetti and landed in their saddles, and their spindly shining long-legged transportation skittered its way out on to the track. Two-year-olds, Nancy said.

She walked me back towards the stands and proposed to smuggle me into the ‘Owners and Trainers’. The large official at the bottom of the flight of steps beamed at her until his eyes disappeared and he failed to inspect me for the right bit of cardboard.

It seemed that nearly everyone on the small rooftop stand knew Nancy, and obvious that they agreed with the beaming official’s assessment. She introduced me to several people
whose interest collapsed like a soufflé in a draught when they found I didn’t understand their opening bids.

‘He’s a pilot,’ Nancy explained apologetically. ‘He flew Colin here today.’

‘Ah,’ they said. ‘Ah.’

Two of my other passengers were there. Annie Villars was watching the horses canter past with an intent eye and a pursed mouth: the field marshall element was showing strongly, the feminine camouflage in abeyance. Major Tyderman, planted firmly with his legs apart and his chin tucked well back into his neck, was scribbling notes into his racecard. When he looked up he saw us, and made his way purposefully across.

‘I say,’ he said to me, having forgotten my name. ‘Did I leave my
Sporting Life
over in the plane, do you know?’

‘Yes, you did, Major.’

‘Blast,’ he said. ‘I made some notes on it.… Must get it, you know. Have to go across after this race.’

‘Would you like me to fetch it?’ I asked.

‘Well, that’s very good of you, my dear chap. But… no… couldn’t ask it. Walk will do me good.’

‘The aircraft’s locked, Major,’ I said. ‘You’ll need the keys.’ I took them out of my pocket and gave them to him.

‘Right.’ He nodded stiffly. ‘Good.’

The race started away off down the track and was all over long before I sorted out the colours of Colin Ross. In the event, it wasn’t difficult. He had won.

‘How’s Midge?’ Annie Villars said to Nancy, restoring her giant raceglasses to their case.

‘Oh, much better, thank you. Getting on splendidly.’

‘I’m so glad. She’s had a bad time, poor girl.’

Nancy nodded and smiled, and everyone trooped down the stairs to the ground.

‘Well now,’ Nancy said. ‘How about some coffee? And something to munch, perhaps?’

‘You must have others you’d prefer to be with… I won’t get into trouble, you know, on my own.’

Her lips twitched. ‘Today I need a bodyguard. I elected you for the job. Desert me if you like, but if you want to please, stick.’

‘Not difficult,’ I said.

‘Great. Coffee, then.’

It was iced coffee, rather good. Half way through the turkey sandwiches the reason why Nancy wanted me with her drifted up to the small table where we sat and slobbered all over her. She fended off what looked to me like a random assembly of long hair, beard, beads, fringes and a garment like a table cloth with a hole in it, and yelled to me through the undergrowth, ‘Buddy, your job starts right now.’

I stood up, reached out two hands, caught hold of an assortment of wool and hair, and pulled firmly backwards. The result resolved itself into a youngish man sitting down with surprise much more suddenly than he’d intended.

‘Nancy,’ he said in an aggrieved voice.

‘This is Chanter,’ she said to me. ‘He’s never grown out of the hippie thing, as you can see.’

‘I’m an artist,’ he said. He had an embroidered band across his forehead and round his head: like the horses’ bridles, I thought fleetingly. All the hair was clean and there were shaven parts on his jaw just to prove that it wasn’t from pure laziness that he let everything grow. On closer inspection I was sure that it was indeed a dark green chenille table cloth, with a central hole for his head. Underneath that he wore low-slung buckskin trousers fringed from hip to ankle, and a creepy crepy dim mauve shirt curved to fit his concave stomach. Various necklaces and pendants on silver chains hung round his neck. Under all the splendour he had dirty bare feet.

‘I went to art school with him,’ Nancy said resignedly. ‘That was in London. Now he’s at Liverpool, just down the road. Any time I come racing up here, he turns up too.’

‘Uh,’ Chanter said profoundly.

‘Do you get grants for ever?’ I asked: not sneeringly; I simply wanted to know.

He was not offended. ‘Look, man, like, up here I’m the fuzz.’

I nearly laughed. Nancy said, ‘You know what he means, then?’

‘He teaches,’ I said.

‘Yeah, man, that’s what I said.’ He took one of the turkey sandwiches. His fingers were greenish with black streaks. Paint.

‘You keep your impure thoughts off this little bird,’ he said to me, spitting out bits of bread. ‘She’s strictly my territory. But strictly, man.’

‘Zat so?’

‘Zat definitely, but definitely… is… so, man.’

‘How come?’

He gave me a look which was as off beat as his appearance.

‘I’ve still got the salt to put on this little bird’s tail,’ he said. ‘Shan’t be satisfied till it’s there…’

Nancy was looking at him with an expression which meant that she didn’t know whether to laugh at him or be afraid of him. She couldn’t decide whether he was Chanter the amorous buffoon or Chanter the frustrated sex maniac. Nor could I. I understood her needing help when he was around.

‘He only wants me because I won’t,’ she said.

‘The challenge bit,’ I nodded. ‘Affront to male pride, and all that.’

‘Practically every other girl has,’ she said.

‘That makes it worse.’

Chanter looked at me broodingly. ‘You’re a drag, man. I mean, cubic’.

‘To each his scene,’ I said ironically.

He took the last of the sandwiches, turned his back studiously towards me and said to Nancy, ‘Let’s you and me lose this dross, huh?’

‘Let’s you and me do nothing of the sort, Chanter. If you want to tag along, Matt comes in the deal.’

He scowled at the floor and then suddenly stood up so that all the fringes and beads danced and jingled.

‘Come on then. Let’s get a look at the horses. Life’s a-wasting.’

‘He really can draw,’ Nancy said as we followed the tablecloth out into the sunshine.

‘I wouldn’t doubt it. I’ll bet half of what he does is caricature, though, with a strong element of cruelty.’

‘How d’ you know?’ she said, startled.

‘He just seems like that.’

He padded along beside us in his bare feet and was a sufficiently unusual sight on a racecourse to attract a barrage of stares ranging from amusement to apoplexy. He didn’t seem to notice. Nancy looked as if she were long used to it.

We came to a halt against the parade ring rails where Chanter rested his elbows and exercised his voice.

‘Horses,’ he said. ‘I’m not for the Stubbs and Munnings thing. When I see a racehorse I see a machine, and that’s what I paint, a horse-shaped machine with pistons thumping away and muscle fibres like connecting rods and a crack in the crank case with the oil dripping away drop by drop into the body cavity…’ He broke off abruptly but with the same breath finished. ‘How’s your sister?’

‘She’s much better,’ Nancy said, not seeming to see any great change of subject. ‘She’s really quite well now.’

‘Good,’ he said, and went straight on with his lecture. ‘And then I draw some distant bulging stands with hats flying off and everyone cheering and all the time the machine is bursting its gut.… I see components, I see what’s happening to the bits… the stresses… I see colours in components too… nothing on earth is a whole… nothing is ever what it seems… everything is components.’ He stopped abruptly, thinking about what he’d said.

After a suitably appreciative pause, I asked, ‘Do you ever sell your paintings?’

‘Sell them?’ He gave me a scornful, superior stare. ‘No, I don’t. Money is disgusting.’

‘It’s more disgusting when you haven’t got it,’ Nancy said.

‘You’re a renegade, girl,’ he said fiercely.

‘Love on a crust,’ she said, ‘Is fine when you’re twenty, but pretty squalid when you’re sixty.’

‘I don’t intend to be sixty. Sixty is strictly for grandfathers. Not my scene at all.’

We turned away from the rails and came face to face with Major Tyderman, who was carrying his
Sporting Life
and holding out the aircraft’s keys. His gaze swept over Chanter and he controlled himself admirably. Not a twitch.

‘I locked up again,’ he said, handing me the bunch.

‘Thanks, Major.’

He nodded, glanced once more at Chanter, and retreated in good order.

Even for Nancy’s sake the official wouldn’t let Chanter up the steps to the Owners and Trainers. We watched at grass level with Chanter muttering ‘stinking bourgeois’ at regular intervals.

Colin Ross finished second. The crowd booed and tore up a lot of tickets. Nancy looked as though she were long used to that, too.

Between the next two races we sat on the grass while Chanter gave us the uninterrupted benefit of his views on the evils of money, racialism, war, religion and marriage. It was regulation stuff, nothing new. I didn’t say I thought so. During the discourse he twice without warning stretched over and put his hand on Nancy’s breast. Each time without surprise she picked it off again by the wrist and threw it back at him. Neither of them seemed to think it needed comment.