Rat Race.

by d.i.c.k FRANCIS.

CHAPTER ONE.

I picked four of them up at White Waltham in the new Cherokee Six 300 that never got a chance to grow old. The pale blue upholstery still had a new leather smell and there wasn't a scratch on the glossy white fuselage. A nice little aeroplane, while it lasted.

They had ordered me for noon but they were already in the bar when I landed at eleven forty. Three double whiskies and a lemonade.

Identification was easy: several chairs round a small table were draped with four lightweight raincoats, three binocular cases, two copies of the Sporting Life Sporting Life and one very small racing saddle. The four pa.s.sengers were standing nearby in the sort of spread-about group indicative of people thrown together by business rather than natural friendship. They were not talking to each other, though it looked as though they had been. One, a large man, had a face full of anger. The smallest, evidently a jockey, was flushed and rigid. The two others, an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, were steadfastly staring at nothing in particular in the way that meant a lot of furious activity was going on inside their heads. and one very small racing saddle. The four pa.s.sengers were standing nearby in the sort of spread-about group indicative of people thrown together by business rather than natural friendship. They were not talking to each other, though it looked as though they had been. One, a large man, had a face full of anger. The smallest, evidently a jockey, was flushed and rigid. The two others, an elderly man and a middle-aged woman, were steadfastly staring at nothing in particular in the way that meant a lot of furious activity was going on inside their heads.

I walked towards the four of them across the large lounge reception room and spoke to an indeterminate spot in mid air.

'Major Tyderman?'

The elderly man, who said 'Yes?', had been made a Major a good long time ago. Nearer seventy than sixty; but still with a tough little body, wiry little moustache, sharp little eyes. He had thin salt-and-pepper hair brushed sideways across a balding crown and he carried his head stiffly, with his chin tucked back into his neck. Tense: very tense. And wary, looking at the world with suspicion.

He wore a lightweight speckled fawn suit vaguely reminiscent in cut of his military origins, and unlike the others had not parked his binoculars but wore them with the strap diagonally across his chest and the case facing forwards on his stomach, like a sporran. Club badges of metal and coloured cardboard hung in thick cl.u.s.ters at each side.

'Your aeroplane is here, Major,' I said. 'I'm Matt Sh.o.r.e... I'm flying you.'

He glanced over my shoulder, looking for someone else.

'Where's Larry?' he asked abruptly.

'He left,' I said. 'He got a job in Turkey.'

The Major's gaze came back from the search with a click. 'You're new,' he said accusingly.

'Yes,' I agreed.

'I hope you know the way.'

He meant it seriously. I said politely, 'I'll do my best.'

The second of the pa.s.sengers, the woman on the major's left said flatly, 'The last time I flew to the races, the pilot got lost.'

I looked at her, giving her my best approximation to a confidence-boosting smile. 'The weather's good enough today not to have any fear of it.'

It wasn't true. There were cu-nims forecast for the June afternoon. And anyone can get lost any time if enough goes wrong. The woman gave me a disillusioned stare and I stopped wasting my confidence builder. She didn't need it. She had all the confidence in the world. She was fifty and fragile looking, with greying hair cut in a straight-across fringe and a jaw-length bob. There were two mild brown eyes under heavy dark eyebrows and a mouth that looked gentle; yet she held herself and behaved with the easy authority of a much higher command than the Major's. She was the only one of the group not outwardly ruffled.

The Major had been looking at his watch. 'You're early,' he said. 'We've got time for the other half.' He turned to the barman and ordered refills, and as an afterthought said to me, 'Something for you?'

I shook my head. 'No, thank you.'

The woman said indifferently, 'No alcohol for eight hours before a flight. Isn't that the rule?'

'More or less,' I agreed.

The third pa.s.senger, the large angry looking man, morosely watched the barman push the measure up twice on the Johnnie Walker. 'Eight hours. Good G.o.d,' he said. He looked as if eight hours seldom pa.s.sed for him without topping up. The bulbous nose, the purple thread veins on his cheeks, the swelling paunch, they had all cost a lot in Excise duty.

The atmosphere I had walked into slowly subsided. The jockey sipped his low calorie lemonade, and the bright pink flush faded from his cheek bones and came out in fainter mottles on his neck. He seemed about twenty-one or two, reddish haired, with a naturally small frame and a moist looking skin. Few weight problems, I thought. No dehydration. Fortunate for him.

The Major and his large friend drank rapidly, muttered unintelligibly, and removed themselves to the gents. The woman eyed the jockey and said in a voice which sounded more friendly than her comment, 'Are you out of your mind, Kenny Bayst? If you go on antagonising Major Tyderman you'll be looking for another job.'

Kenny Bayst flicked his eyes to me and away again, compressing his rosebud mouth. He put the half-finished lemonade on the table and picked up one of the raincoats and the racing saddle.

'Which plane?' he said to me. 'I'll stow my gear.'

He had a strong Australian accent with a resentful bite to it. The woman watched him with what would have pa.s.sed for a smile but for the frost in her eyes.

'The baggage door is locked,' I said. 'I'll come over with you.' To the woman I said, 'Can I carry your coat?'

'Thank you.' She indicated the coat which was obviously hers, a shiny rust-coloured affair with copper b.u.t.tons. I picked it up, and also the businesslike binoculars lying on top, and followed Kenny Bayst out of the door.

After ten fuming paces he said explosively, 'It's too d.a.m.n easy to blame the man on top.'

'They always blame the pilot,' I said mildly. 'Fact of life.'

'Huh?' he said. 'Oh yeah. Too right. They do.'

We reached the end of the path and started across the gra.s.s. He was still oozing grudge. I wasn't much interested.

'For the record,' I said, 'What are the names of my other pa.s.sengers? Besides the Major, that is.'

He turned his head in surprise. 'Don't you know her? Our Annie Villars? Looks like someone's cosy old granny and has a tongue that would flay a kangaroo. Everyone knows our little Annie.' His tone was sour and disillusioned.

'I don't know much about racing,' I said.

'Oh? Well, she's a trainer, then. A d.a.m.ned good trainer, I'll say that for her, I wouldn't stay with her else. Not with that tongue of hers. I'll tell you, sport, she can roust her stable lads out on the gallops in words a Sergeant-Major never thought of. But sweet as milk with the owners. Has them eating out of her little hand.'

'The horses, too?'

'Uh? Oh, yeah. The horses love her. She can ride like a jock, too, when she's a mind to. Not that she does it much now. She must be getting on a bit. Still, she knows what she's at, true enough-. She knows what a horse can do and what it can't, and that's most of the battle in this game.'

His voice held resentment and admiration in roughly equal amounts.

I said, 'What is the name of the other man? The big one.'

This time it was pure resentment: no admiration. He spat the name out syllable by deliberate syllable, curling his lips away from his teeth.

'Mister Eric Goldenberg.'

Having got rid of the name he shut his mouth tight and was clearly taking his employer's remarks to heart. We reached the aircraft and stowed the coats and his saddle in the baggage s.p.a.ce behind the rear seats.

'We're going to Newbury first, aren't we?' he asked. 'To pick up Colin Ross?'

'Yes.'

He gave me a sardonic look. 'Well, you must must have heard of Colin Ross.' have heard of Colin Ross.'

'I guess,' I agreed, 'That I have.'

It would have been difficult not to, since the champion jockey was twice as popular as the Prime Minister and earned six times as much. His face appeared on half the billboards in Britain encouraging the populace to drink more milk and there was even a picture strip about him in a children's comic. Everyone, but everyone, had heard of Colin Ross.

Kenny Bayst climbed in through the rear end door and sat in one of the two rear seats. I took a quick look round the outside of the aircraft, even though I'd done a thorough pre-flight check on it not an hour ago, before I left base. It was my first week, my fourth day, my third flight for Derrydown Sky Taxis, and after the way Fate had clobbered me in the past, I was taking no chances.

There were no nuts loose, no rivets missing on the sharp-nosed little six seater. There were eight quarts of oil where there should have been eight quarts of oil, there were no dead birds clogging up the air intakes to the engine, there were no punctures in the tyres, no cracks in the green or red gla.s.s over navigation lights, no chips in the propellor blades, no loose radio aerials. The pale blue cowling over the engine was securely clipped down, and the matching pale blue cowlings over the struts and wheels of the fixed undercarriage were as solid as rocks.

By the time I'd finished the other three pa.s.sengers were coming across the gra.s.s. Goldenberg was doing the talking with steam still coming out of his ears, while the Major nodded agreement in unhappy little jerks and Annie Villars looked as if she wasn't listening. When they arrived within earshot Goldenberg was saying '... can't lay the horse unless we're sure he'll pull it...' But he stopped with a snap when the Major gestured sharply in my direction. He need hardly have bothered. I had no curiosity about their affairs.

On the principle that in a light aircraft it is better to have the centre of gravity as far forward as possible, I asked Goldenberg to sit in front in the righthand seat beside me, and put the Major and Anne Villars in the centre two seats, and left Kenny in the last two, with the empty one ready for Colin Ross. The four rear seats were reached by the port side door, but Goldenberg had to climb in by stepping up on the low wing on the starboard side and lowering into his seat through the forward door. He waited while I got in before him and moved over to my side, then squeezed his bulk in through the door and settled heavily into his seat.

They were all old hands at air taxis: they had their safety belts fastened before I did mine, and when I looked round to check that they were ready to go, the Major was already deep in the Sporting Life Sporting Life. Kenny Bayst was cleaning his nails with fierce little jabs, relieving his frustration by hurting himself.

I got clearance from the Tower and lifted the little aeroplane away for the twenty mile hop across Berkshire. Taxi flying was a lot different from the airlines, and finding racecourses looked more difficult to me than being radar vectored into Heathrow. I'd never before flown a racecourse trip, and I'd asked my predecessor Larry about it that morning when he'd come into the office to collect his cards.

'Newbury's a cinch,' he said offhandedly. 'Just point its nose at that vast runway the Yanks built at Greenham Common. You can practically see it from Scotland. The racecourse is just north of it, and the landing strip is parallel with the white rails of the finishing straight. You can't miss it. Good long strip. No problems. As for Haydock, it's just where the M6 motorway crosses the East Lanes road. Piece of cake.'

He took himself off to Turkey, stopping on one foot at the doorway for some parting advice. 'You'll have to practise short landings before you go to Bath; and avoid Yarmouth in a heatwave. It's all yours now, mate, and the best of British Luck.'

It was true that you could see Greenham Common from a long way off, but on a fine day it would anyway have been difficult to lose the way from White Waltham to Newbury: the main railway line to Exeter ran more or less straight from one to the other. My pa.s.sengers had all flown into Newbury before, and the Major helpfully told me to look out for the electric cables strung across the approach. We landed respectably on the newly mown gra.s.s and taxied along the strip towards the grandstand end, braking to a stop just before the boundary fence.

Colin Ross wasn't there.

I shut down the engine, and in the sudden silence Anne Villars remarked, 'He's bound to be late. He said he was riding work for Bob Smith, and Bob's never on time getting his horses out.'

The other three nodded vaguely but they were still not on ordinarily chatty terms with each other, and after about five minutes of heavy silence I asked Goldenberg to let me out to stretch my legs. He grunted and mumbled at having to climb out onto the wing to let me past him and I gathered I was breaking Derrydown's number one rule: never annoy the customers, you're going to need them again.

Once I was out of their company, however, they did start talking. I walked round to the front of the aircraft and leant against the leading edge of the wing, and looked up at the scattered clouds in the blue-grey sky and thought unprofitably about this and that. Behind me their voices rose acrimoniously, and when they opened the door wide to get some air, sc.r.a.ps of what they were saying floated across.

'... simply asking for a dope test.' Anne Villars.

'... if you can't ride a losing race better than last time... find someone else.' Goldenberg.

'... very difficult position...' Major Tyderman.

A short sharp snap from Kenny, and Anne Villars' exasperated exclamation. 'Bayst!'

'... not paying you more than last time.' The Major, very emphatically.

Indistinct protest from Kenny, and a violently clear reaction from Goldenberg : 'b.u.g.g.e.r your licence.'

Kenny my lad, I thought remotely, if you don't watch out you'll end up like me, still with a licence but with not much else.

A Ford-of-all-work rolled down the road past the grandstands, came through the gate in the boundary fence, and bounced over the turf towards the aircraft. It stopped about twenty feet away, and two men climbed out. The larger, who had been driving, went round to the back and pulled out a brown canvas and leather overnight grip. The smaller one walked on over the gra.s.s. I took my weight off the wing and stood up. He stopped a few paces away, waiting for the larger man to catch up. He was dressed in faded blue jeans and a whitish cotton sweater with navy blue edgings. Black canvas shoes on his narrow feet. He had nondescript brownish hair over an exceptionally broad forehead, a short straight nose, and a delicate feminine looking chin. All his bones were fine and his waist and hips would have been the despair of Victorian maidens. Yet there was something unmistakably masculine about him: and more than that, he was mature. He looked at me with the small still smile behind the eyes which is the hallmark of those who know what life is really about His soul was old. He was twenty six.

'Good morning,' I said.

He held out his hand, and I shook it. His clasp was cool, firm, and brief.

'No Larry?' he enquired.

'He's left. I'm Matt Sh.o.r.e.'

'Fine,' he said noncommitally. He didn't introduce himself. He knew there was no need. I wondered what it was like to be in that position. It hadn't affected Colin Ross. He had none of the 'I am' aura which often clings around the notably successful, and from the extreme understatement of his clothes I gathered that he avoided it consciously.

'We're late, I'm afraid,' he said. 'Have to bend the throttle.'

'Do my best...'

The larger man arrived with the grip, and I stowed it in the forward luggage locker between the engine wall and the forward bulkhead of the cabin. By the time the baggage door was securely fastened Colin Ross had found his empty seat and strapped himself into it. Goldenberg with heavy grunts moved out again so that I could get back to my lefthand place. The larger man, who was apparently the dilatory trainer Bob Smith, said his h.e.l.los and goodbyes to the pa.s.sengers, and stood watching afterwards while I started the engine and taxied back to the other end of the strip to turn into wind for take-off.

The flight north was uneventful: I went up the easy way under the Amber One airway, navigating on the radio beacons at Daventry, Lichfield and Oldham. Manchester control routed us right round the north of their zone so that I had to drop down southwards towards Haydock racecourse, and there it was, just as Larry had said, near the interchange of the two giant roads. We touched down on the gra.s.s strip indicated in the centre of the course, and I taxied on and parked where the Major told me to, near the rails of the track itself, a mere hundred yards from the grandstand.

The pa.s.sengers disembarked themselves and their belongings and Colin Ross looked at his watch. A faint smile hovered and was gone. He made no comment. He said merely, 'Are you coming in to the races?'

I shook my head. 'Think I'll stay over here.'

'I'll arrange with the man on the gate to let you into the paddock, if you change your mind.'

'Thanks,' I said in surprise. 'Thanks very much.'

He nodded briefly and set off without waiting for the others, ducking under the white-painted rails and trudging across the track.

'Pilots' perks,' Kenny said, taking his raincoat from my hand and putting his arm forward for the saddle. 'You want to take advantage.'

'Maybe I will,' I said, but I didn't mean to. Horse racing began and ended with the Derby as far as I was concerned, and also I was a non-gambler by nature.

Anne Villars said in her deceptively gentle voice, 'You do understand that we're all going on to Newmarket after the races, and not back to Newbury?'

'Yes,' I a.s.sured her. 'That's what I was told.'

'Good.'

'If we don't go to jail,' Kenny said under his breath. Golden-berg looked at me sharply to see if I'd heard that, and I gave no sign of it. Whatever they were about, it was as little my concern as who killed c.o.c.k Robin.

Major Tyderman pushed at his moustache with a hand rigid with nervous energy and said, 'Last race at four thirty. Need a drink after that. Ready to start back at, say, five fifteen. That all right with you?'

'Perfectly, Major,' I nodded.