Before The Cock Crow (First Born of Egypt)
Page 28
Tessa, walking unsteadily towards the horsebox, checked her stride (what there was of it) when she saw the tail was up.
‘Christ, sir,’ came a squeal from within, ‘Christ, sir, I’m coming, sir, oh Christ.’
Nicholas Christopher, first past the post by two lengths, went on up the hill gradually easing his pace; the grey Lover Pie followed, in vain passed Nicholas Christopher, and like him slowly pulled up. Both horses turned to come down towards the paddock and the Winners’ Enclosure which lay just beside it. Marius was about to go to meet Lover Pie on the course when he remembered Raisley Conyngham’s orders. ‘Do not stir an inch, Marius,’ Raisley Conyngham had said, ‘unless instructed by Milo or myself, until all the horses which are still running have passed the winning post.’ Which was not yet the case.
Boadicea still had the last jump to take and then the run in.
So Marius, who had already taken Lover Pie’s blanket off the rails, stood waiting with it on the grass between the entrance of the paddock and the entrance on to the course.
‘If we want to see the finale, sir,’ said Milo to Jeremy inside the horsebox as they both adjusted their clothes, ‘we’d better be quick.’
‘Finale?’
‘You asked what was going on, sir; now you’re going to find out.’
Tessa, standing at the rear of the horsebox, heard all this. She turned and ran for the paddock.
Thus Marius was standing by the gap in the rail which led on to the course; Fielding Gray and Corpy Chead were approaching him round the paddock rail; Jack Lamprey was walking round the other side of the paddock from Fielding Gray, on a route which would avoid the crowd and eventually bring him to the enclosure for the winner and the placed horses; Aunt Flo was already dashing for the nearest internal TV Tote screen, on which the dividend to be paid by the winning Nicholas Christopher would shortly be displayed; Theodosia and Palairet were thoughtfully coming down from the stand by the open stairway on its side, which overlooked the paddock; Tessa was emerging from the horsebox park on the far side of the paddock from the stand; and Milo and Jeremy were walking briskly behind her when the following scene took place:
Boadicea at last passed the winning post with a very weary and galumphing motion, came to a halt, and made a group of three with Lover Pie and Nicholas Christopher, who had now come back down the course.
Marius approached this group, intending to put the blanket on Lover Pie, and spread it in order to do so.
All three horses started rearing violently and neighing as if from extreme terror.
Marius, now surrounded by the three horses, who were kicking and lunging more viciously than ever, put the blanket over his head for protection and sank on to his knees.
Fielding Gray and Jeremy Morrison both ran (from diametrically opposite positions) towards the entrance on to the course (through which Marius had gone with the blanket), there met and stopped, confronted each other briefly, turned towards the course, and began to shake and sweat, some fifteen yards short of the mêlée and within full sight of it.
Tessa Malcolm dashed out on to the course and made straight for the horses but was cut off and forcibly restrained by Milo Hedley, who had darted under the rails a little higher up.
Galahad Palairet leapt down the last few steps from the stand, hurtled past the rail of the paddock with a thin, high wail of love and grief which was to haunt all present until the day they died, slipped through the grasp of the not very nimble Corpy Chead, sprinted on to the course, running zigzag to avoid any who would stop him, and was felled instantly by a flying back kick in the throat.
Gat-Toothed Jenny, who had seen the end of the race from just outside the bar, then swallowed the rest of her Guinness in one and had been well on her way to assist Marius with Lover Pie by the time that the horses erupted – Gat-Toothed Jenny, all breast and hips and jaw and guts, charged through the mêlée, snatched the blanket off the cowering Marius and carried it ten yards away over the grass; then returned towards the horses (who were already quiet and obedient to their jockeys), bent down over Marius, who was vibrating with terror, calmed him by the touch of her thick, brown, loving fingers, and raised him to his feet.
Raisley Conyngham, having observed with complacency the outbreak and its consequences, vaulted the fenced rail between the enclosure and the course, walked lightly across it, ducked under a plain rail, and came to two St. John’s Ambulances which were parked on the other side. One of these was already starting up the side of the course towards the recumbent Palairet. Raisley climbed into the co-driver’s seat of the second and ordered it to proceed (as by previous arrangement with the driver) towards the vehicle-crossing just beyond the winning post.
Meanwhile Gat-Toothed Jenny, making for the Winners’ Enclosure and Jack Lamprey on the other side of it, was escorting Marius through the crowd, which divided like the Red Sea in the legend to let them pass and then, seeing the beautiful, shivering boy still alive in his pathetically crumpled grey suit and observing the well rigged motherly woman (with her arm round his shoulders) who had passed through the whirling hooves of death to his rescue, broke into a warm and throaty English cheer, much to the puzzlement of Aunt Flo by the Tote TV screen, which showed that her dividend would be £97.40 to a £1 stake for a win, and £11.10 for a place. One thousand and eighty sovs and the odd pence, she said to herself: not a bad afternoon’s work.
As the Tote would not actually be paying out until Nicholas Christopher had weighed in (which would not be for some minutes yet), she walked along the back of the stand and round the end of it, making for that part of the enclosure (adjacent to the paddock) from which the applause was rising. This was changing in quality as she approached. Having started as an expression of conventional approval (jolly good show), it next became apprehensive in tone, then affectionate, then boisterous and rather embarrassed, and at last sentimental. As Aunt Flo came round the end of the stand, she began to understand why.
Jenny had sensibly taken Marius well to one side while the three horses which had so nearly killed him in their recent fury passed Jenny and Marius, bound for the Winners’ Enclosure. Marius, still fearful of them, slunk into Jenny’s arms as the animals passed, at which juncture the crowd’s apprehensive tone showed that it shared Marius’ reaction. As he clung to Jenny, and as she responded with more than mere maternal warmth, the crowd started joshing; as the pair clung yet closer, the spectators cooed with vicarious pleasure; as the look on both Marius’ and Jenny’s faces become intent yet dreamy (lips slightly parted, eyes spread wide), the witnesses, scenting the onset of sudden heat, shouted and boomed to disguise their fear and their hope that Eros would make himself manifest under their very eyes; and as Raisley drove up in the ambulance, and with the assistance of the driver coaxed the now inseparable couple into the back of it, the populace, reassured, disappointed and on the whole congratulatory, bade a gushing goodbye to Jenny and Marius, as if to say: ‘Only the Brave, Only the Brave, Only the Brave deserve the Fair.’
‘Galahad shall make my child,’ said Theodosia Canteloupe aloud as she walked over the course towards him.
The team of the other St. John’s Ambulance, two fat and jovial women and two skimpy young men with the insignia of full lieutenants on their shoulders, ran past Theodosia towards the supine Palairet.
‘He is very young,’ said Theodosia: ‘but I shall be kind to him and he will be kind to me; we shall be very gentle together. He is the only man I could bear to touch me. He was among those that showed courage this afternoon; Fielding Gray, the old soldier, and Jeremy Morrison, the would-be prophet, both shook right down their worthless shanks, having no stomach for this fight.’
She turned to look for them, but they had slunk away into the crowd.
‘Galahad,’ she called as she neared him. ‘You were so quick in need, so true.’
But already the two skimpy lieutenants were pulling up one end of a brown blanket over the deaf ears of Galahad, the true knight, who lay upon the field.
‘We shall go on moving until I make the driver a signal,’ Raisley said, ‘and there will be no interference. First, then, the cleansing.’
With occasional help from Jenny, Raisley began, deftly and gently, to strip Marius of his ruined suit, his sweat-drenched shirt and his silly tie, his scuffed shoes and clinging socks, and his horribly soiled pants. Then he took from a kind of aumbry, which was under a fitted couch, a basin and ewer and a flask of lavender water. He poured lukewarm water from the ewer into the basin, laced it liberally with the lavender, and with his hands washed Marius clean from his feet to the top of his thighs, from his head down to his navel, and then from his navel to his crotch, being particularly careful of his tumescent penis.
‘What a pretty little scar,’ said Jenny, bending to kiss it.
Raisley Conyngham rapped on the wall behind the driver. The ambulance stopped.
‘It will take you back to Ullacote,’ said Raisley. ‘You will be alone until then.’ He went to the back of the ambulance, unfastened the door, and climbed down. ‘This is my gift to you both,’ he said; ‘that having been a little chastised you shall be greatly rewarded; for I, Raisley Conyngham, have proved you, and found you worthy for myself.’
‘So what was Raisley up to?’ said Giles Glastonbury to Jack Lamprey.
The three horses had been taken from the Winners’ Enclosure, and Giles and Jack had crossed the course, for privacy, to the meadow at its centre.
‘He never really said. Mind you, we all knew something was up. Raisley told us something was up. Something which was going to earn us all hefty bonus payments – with the money right up front. It was nothing bent, he said, nothing to get anyone warned off; he was just interested in conducting some psychological tests, for a treatise which he was writing, on young Marius – on any boy of his age, come to that, Raisley said – but Marius was easily available and was a particularly good sort of subject, being intelligent and responsive and whaah, whaah, whaah. In short, he wanted to know how, in certain circumstances, the boy would behave. It might also be interesting, he added, to watch the reactions of the crowd to Marius’ behaviour. So Marius was to be put in charge of Lover Pie in the paddock at one meeting, when nothing at all would happen, though he’d thank us to scrutinise him very carefully for his form, and to report our opinions. And then the boy would be put in the same situation at a second meeting – but this time he would be faced with something unexpected.’
‘And no one enquired what form the unexpected would take?’
‘The basic plan was that three or more horses had to congregate at the end of the race, and that Marius would then be confronted with some difficulty or confusion due to crowding or ill temper or whatever. That was why Boadicea and Danny Chead were important. Raisley could be almost certain that Lover Pie and at least one more would finish, and he needed to be sure that Boadicea would also be there to make up a minimum complement of three at the end of the race. If the worst came to the very worst, Raisley said, two horses would have to do, so the Lover and Boadicea must stand up, and the best way of ensuring they did was to let Boadicea, who is totally reliable if not pushed, take it very slowly, and to allow Lover Pie, who likes having a crack, to have his crack.’
‘Mightn’t that have been fatal to the scheme?’ said Giles. ‘I mean, if Lover Pie had gone, and Boadicea had finished alone, or even with something else, Marius wouldn’t have been there at all. He would have been somewhere down the course looking after the fallen Lover.’
‘The old Lover has never fallen yet,’ said Jack, ‘provided he’s been allowed his own way. That’s why Raisley bought him for this stunt. For the rest, well, in this sort of game there had to be chances, and Raisley had made as sure as he could of having Marius in the right place by instructing him not to move until the last horse still in the race had passed the post. In any case, and as you saw, the scheme worked. Three horses were duly assembled near the exit from the course, and there was Marius going to put that blanket on one of them. Perfect…from Raisley’s point of view.’
‘Did no one ask Raisley any questions about the “difficulty” to which he proposed to expose Marius when he went out with the blanket?’
‘Everyone was far too busy counting their bonus payments,’ said Jack.
‘Even you? A gentleman? An ex-Officer of the 49th? Did you feel no concern for the boy?’
‘I did, oh yes, I did,’ tooted Jack in his Bloomsbury accent, ‘and when I began to suspect, some little time ago, that Marius’ test might perhaps be dangerous, I tried to warn Fielding Gray, whom I knew to be interested. But I couldn’t find him at the crucial moment, and then I thought, oh well, I’m probably making a fuss about nothing, everyone else seems quite happy. Why shouldn’t Raisley, who is a highly respected schoolmaster, be conducting a perfectly bona fide if rather weird experiment in the psychology of adolescence, et cetera, et cetera. None of us had the faintest idea – except perhaps that sly little beast, Milo Hedley – what a hideous affair Raisley was in fact planning. Now we do know, the jockeys will be furious at what he let them in for–but they’re both the kind that can be easily bought off for ready money. As for Prideau, he’s too cut up about his boy to mind anything.’
‘Phil Loche?’
‘No names, no pack drill, is Phil’s philosophy: just button your lip. Phil just don’t want to know, let alone to talk. No, Giles. An accident it looked, and an accident it will go on looking.’
‘Anyway,’ agreed Giles, ‘after a pig’s breakfast like that, nothing can ever be known for certain. But I’m fascinated by the mechanics of the thing. What about Boadicea’s being in season? Did that have anything to do with it all?’
‘Nothing. No one, not even in her own stable – knew she was coming into season – no one ever does – until Regis Priory. Possibly the state was brought on by her seeing a stallion there. Anyhow, she was still allowed by the rules to run here at Bellhampton, and it made no difference to the plans whatever.’
‘It might have done if Lover Pie had got excited.’
‘Lover Pie ain’t the excitable sort, and anyhow Danny kept Boadicea out of Lover Pie’s way. You see, it didn’t matter where Danny and Boadicea finished so long as they did finish.’
‘How much did that stable lass know?’ said Giles. ‘Was she told to go in and rescue Marius?’
‘If so, she never let on…though she’d do anything for Raisley, if he asked her. He picked her out of some Borstal, or whatever they have for girls. Years ago now, but girls like Jenny don’t forget.’
‘You’re saying she would have risked her life for Raisley?’
‘And the next life too, good Catholic as she is–or tries to be. But my view is that Raisley left that last act up to chance. It was to be a far stiffer test of Marius than Raisley dared tell anyone – far more than a test of how Marius would behave if confronted with some nasty little local difficulty, or how the crowd would carry on if he wet his knickers. It was to be an ordeal of death itself, trial by battle. Would he save himself, and if not who would?’
‘An initiation?’
‘That’s it,’ said Jack: ‘an initiation.’
‘He told me,’ said Jenny as she held Marius in her arms on the couch in the ambulance, ‘that I could either save you or leave you. But I never thought it would really work out like he said. I never thought those horses would really create like they did. So I didn’t decide what to do; I just waited. When the race was over I went to meet you – and then the horses did do what Mr Conyngham said, and so I went in after you. Without thinking. Which is what he wanted. Or so I think. He wanted to see what would happen if I saved you.’
‘And did he know it would be this?’
Although they had separated their bodies not many minutes b
efore, Marius now showed a renewed readiness, taut and curved and glistening.
‘I think so,’ said Jenny as she caressed him. ‘That scar,’ she said, and lowered her head to kiss it. ‘I think that he knew, or guessed, that what happened would make a special sort of excitement…a kind of madness…which we felt there by the paddock…a kind of frenzy which very few people ever know. That was his present to us: his gift, his reward. There will only be this one time,’ she said, ‘this one time, here in the ambulance. He will find other uses for both of us, and other prizes, but for this…this…we only have till Ullacote. It’s your first, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Jenny. It’s almost too much to bear. It’s so strange with you like this. Wonderful, but somehow too…dangerous ever to be allowed again.’
‘Go on. Say it, Marius.’
‘I feel as if I were being shown this…the finest of all things…by someone who has nursed, cherished, protected and saved me just for this one hour. I feel as if I were being shown…this great secret…for the first and only time that the gods, or God, permits…by my mother. Cupid with his mother.’
‘Jesus Christ, how fucking marvellous,’ cried Jenny, and pressed her open lips on Marius’ scar.
Theodosia and Aunt Flo went with Galahad Palairet to the place where he was being taken.
‘I missed it all,’ said the old woman, broken but not irreparably broken. ‘I was finding out about my divvy. Over a thousand. I’d sooner have you, my darling,’ she said, stroking the brown blanket, ‘but two monkeys is some kind of consolation… How did it all start?’
‘The three remaining horses came together after the race. Marius Stern came up to them with a blanket and got it all ready to put on to Lover Pie – and then there they were, all rearing and raging, like the horses of Diomedes.’
‘And who might they be when they’re at home?’