For Kicks - Страница 18

I scrubbed the rug again. Why had I kissed her? Why, after knowing about her from that kiss, had I followed her up into the hay? Why had I been such a stupid, easily roused, lusting fool? I was filled with useless dismay.

One didn't have to accept an invitation to dinner, even if the appetizer made one hungry. But having accepted, one should not so brutally reject what was offered. She had every right to be angry.

And I had every reason to be confused. I had been for nine years a father to two girls, one of whom was nearly Patty's age. I had taught them when they were little not to take lifts from strangers and when they were bigger how to avoid more subtle snares. And here I was, indisputably on the other side of the parental fence.

I felt an atrocious sense of guilt towards October, for I had had the intention, and there was no denying it, of doing what Patty wanted.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was Elinor who rode out on my horse the following morning, and Patty, having obviously got her to change mounts, studiously refused to look at me at all.

Elinor, a dark scarf protecting most of the silver- blonde hair, accepted a leg up with impersonal grace, gave me a warm smile of thanks and rode away at the head of the string with her sister. When we got back after the gallops, however, she led the horse into his box and did half of the jobs for him while I was attending to Sparking Plug. I didn't know what she was doing until I walked down the yard, and was surprised to find her there, having grown used to Patty's habit of bolting the horse into the box still complete with saddle, bridle, and mud.

"You go and get the hay and water," she said.

"I'll finish getting the dirt off, now I've started."

I carried away the saddle and bridle to the tack room, and took back the hay and water. Elinor gave the horse's mane a few final strokes with the brush, and I put on his rug and buckled the roller round his belly. She watched while I tossed the straw over the floor to make a comfortable bed, and waited until I had bolted the door.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you very much."

She smiled faintly, "It's a pleasure. It really is. I like horses.

Especially racehorses. Lean and fast and exciting. "

"Yes," I agreed. We walked down the yard together, she to go to the gate and I to the cottage which stood beside it.

"They are so different from what I do all the week," she said.

"What do you do all the week?"

"Oh… study. I'm at Durham University." There was a sudden, private, recollecting grin. Not for me. On level terms, I thought, one might find more in Elinor than good manners.

"It's really extraordinary how well you ride," she said suddenly.

"I heard Mr. Inskip telling Father this morning that it would be worth getting a licence for you. Have you ever thought of racing? "

"I wish I could," I said fervently, without thinking.

"Well, why not?"

"Oh… I might be leaving soon."

"What a pity." It was polite; nothing more.

We reached the cottage. She gave me a friendly smile and walked straight on, out of the yard, out of sight. I may not ever see her again, I thought; and was mildly sorry.

When the horse box came back from a day's racing (with a winner, a third, and an also-ran) I climbed up into the cab and borrowed the map again. I wanted to discover the location of the village where Mr. Paul Adams lived, and after some searching I found it. As its significance sank in I began to smile with astonishment. There was, it seemed, yet another place where I could apply for a job.

I went back into the cottage, into Mrs. Allnut's cosy kitchen, and ate Mrs. Allnut's delicious egg and chips and bread and butter and fruit cake, and later slept dreamlessly on Mrs. Allnut's lumpy mattress, and in the morning bathed luxuriously in Mrs. Allnut's shining bathroom.

And in the afternoon I went up beside the stream with at last something worthwhile to tell October.

He met me with a face of granite, and before I could say a word he hit me hard and squarely across the mouth. It was a back-handed expert blow which started from the waist, and I didn't see it coming until far too late.

"What the hell's that for?" I said, running my tongue round my teeth and being pleased to find that none of them were broken off.

He glared at me.

"Patty told me…" He stopped as if it were too difficult to go on.

"Oh," I said blankly.

"Yes, oh," he mimicked savagely. He was breathing deeply and I thought he was going to hit me again. I

thrust my hands into my pockets and his stayed where they were, down by his sides, clenching and unclenching.

"What did Patty tell you?"

"She told me everything." His anger was almost tangible.

"She came to me this morning in tears… she told me how you made her go into the hay barn… and held her there until she was worn out with struggling to get away… she told the… the disgusting things you did to her with your hands… and then how you forced her… forced her to…"

He couldn't say it.

I was appalled.

"I didn't," I said vehemently.

"I didn't do anything like that. I kissed her… and that's all. She's making it up."

"She couldn't possibly have made it up. It was too detailed… She couldn't know such things unless they had happened to her."

I opened my mouth and shut it again. They had happened to her, right enough; somewhere, with someone else, more than once, and certainly also with her willing co-operation. And I could see that to some extent at least she was going to get away with her horrible revenge, because there are some things you can't say about a girl to her father, especially if you like him.

October said scathingly, "I have never been so mistaken in a man before. I thought you were responsible… or at least able to control yourself. Not a cheap lecherous jackanapes who would take my money and my regard and amuse yourself behind my back, debauching my daughter."

There was enough truth in that to hurt, and the guilt I felt over my stupid behaviour didn't help. But I had to put up some kind of defence, because I would never have harmed Patty in any way, and there was still the investigation into the doping to be carried on. Now I had got so far, I did not want to be packed off home in disgrace.

I said slowly, "I did go with Patty into the hay barn. I did kiss her.

Once. Only once. After that I didn't touch her. I literally didn't touch any part of her, not her hand, not her dress. nothing. "

He looked at me steadily for a long time while the fury slowly died out of him and a sort of weariness took its place.

At length he said, almost calmly, "One of you is lying. And I have to believe my daughter." There was an unexpected flicker of entreaty in his voice.

"Yes," I said. I looked away, up the gully.

"Well… this solves one problem, anyway."

"What problem?"

"How to leave here with the ignominious sack and without a reference."

It was so far away from what he was thinking about that it was several moments before he showed any reaction at all, and then he gave me an attentive, narrow- eyed stare which I did not try to avoid.

"You intend to go on with the investigation, then?"

"If you are willing."

"Yes," he said heavily, at length.

"Especially as you are moving on and will have no more opportunities of seeing Patty. In spite of what I personally think of you, you do still represent our best hope of success, and I suppose I must put the good of racing first."

He fell silent. I contemplated the rather grim prospect of continuing to do that sort of work for a man who hated me. Yet the thought of giving up was worse. And that was odd.

Eventually he said, "Why do you want to leave without a reference? You won't get a job in any of these three stables without a reference."

"The only reference I need to get a job in the stable I am going to is no reference at all."

"Whose stable?"

"Hedley Humber's."

"Humber!" He was sombrely incredulous.

"But why? He's a very poor trainer and he didn't train any of the doped horses. What's the point of going there?"

"He didn't train any of the horses when they won," I agreed, 'but he had three of them through his hands earlier in their careers. There is also a man called P. J. Adams who at one time or another owned six more of them. Adams lives, according to the map, less than ten miles from Humber. Humber lives at Posset, in Durham, and Adams at Tellbridge, just over the Northumberland border. That means that nine of the eleven horses spent some time in that one small area of the

British Isles. None of them stayed long. The dossiers of Transistor and Rudyard are much less detailed than the others on the subject of their earlier life, and I have now no doubt that checking would show that they too, for a short while, came under the care of either Adams or Humber. "

"But how could the horses having spent some time with Adams or Hunter possibly affect their speed months or years later?"

"I don't know," I said.

"But I'll go and find out."

There was a pause.

"Very well," he said heavily.

"I'll tell Inskip that you are dismissed. And I'll tell him it is because you pestered Patricia."

"Right."

He looked at me coldly.

"You can write me reports. I don't want to see you again."

I watched him walk away strongly up the gully. I didn't know whether or not he really believed any more that I had done what Patty said;

but I did know that he needed to believe it. The alternative, the truth, was so much worse. What father wants to discover that his beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter is a lying slut?