Rat Race (2 page)

‘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 passengers 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 grass 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, scraps 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 : ‘Bugger 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 grass. 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 Shore.’

‘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 hellos and goodbyes to the passengers, 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 grass 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 passengers 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 assured 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 Cock 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.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Good.’ His gaze was flicking from one to another of his travelling companions, assessing and suspicious. His eyes narrowed fiercely at Kenny Bayst, opened and narrowed again rapidly on Goldenberg, relaxed on Anne Villars and went cold on the vanishing back of Colin Ross. The thoughts behind the outward physical reactions were unguessable, and when he finally looked back at me he didn’t really see me, he was busy with the activity inside his head.

‘Five fifteen,’ he repeated vaguely. ‘Good.’

Kenny said to me, ‘Don’t waste your money in the three thirty, sport;’ and Goldenberg raised his fist with a face going purple with anger and nearly hit him.

Anne Villars’ voice rapped into him, the steel sticking through the cream with a vengeance, the top-brass quality transcendent and withering.

‘Control your temper, you stupid man.’

Goldenberg’s mouth literally dropped open, to reveal a bottom row of unappetising brown stained teeth. His raised fist lowered slowly, and he looked altogether foolish.

‘As for you,’ she said to Kenny, ‘I told you to keep your tongue still, and that was your last chance.’

‘Are you sacking me?’ he asked.

‘I’ll decide that at the end of the afternoon.’

Kenny showed no anxiety about keeping his job, and I realised that in fact what he had been doing was trying to provoke them into getting rid of him. He’d got himself into nutcrackers and while they squeezed he couldn’t get out.

I became mildly curious to see what would happen in the three thirty. It would help to pass the afternoon.

They straggled off towards the stands, Kenny in front, the Major and Goldenberg together, with Annie Villars several paces behind. The Major kept stopping and looking back and waiting for her, but every time just as she reached him he turned and went off again in front, so that as a piece of courtesy, the whole thing was wasted. He reminded me vividly of an aunt who had taken me for childhood walks in just that way. I remembered quite clearly that it had been infuriating.

I sighed, shut the baggage doors and tidied up the aeroplane. Annie Villars had been smoking thin brown cigars. Goldenberg had been eating indigestion tablets, each from a square wrapper. The Major had left his
Sporting Life
in a tumbled heap on the floor.

While I was fiddling around with the debris, two more aeroplanes flew in, a four seat high winged Cessna and a six seat twin engined Aztec.

I watched their touchdowns with an uncritical eye, though I wouldn’t have given the Aztec pilot a gold medal for his double bounce. Several small men disgorged themselves and made a dart like a flock of starlings across the track towards the paddock. They were followed by three or four larger and slower-moving people slung around with binoculars and what I later learned to be bags for carrying sets of racing colours.
Finally out of each aircraft popped the most leisurely of all the inmates, a man dressed very much as I was, in dark trousers, white shirt, neat dark tie.

They strolled towards each other and lit cigarettes. After a while, not wanting to seem unsociable, I wandered across to join them. They turned and watched me come, but with no welcome in unsmiling faces.

‘Hello,’ I said moderately. ‘Nice day.’

‘Perhaps,’ said one.

‘You think so?’ said the other.

They offered me fish-eyed stares but no cigarette. I had grown hardened to that sort of thing. I turned half away from them and read the names of the firms they flew for, which were painted on the tails of their aircraft. It was the same name on both. Polyplane Services.

How dreary of them, I thought, to be so antagonistic. I gave them the benefit of a very small doubt and made one more approach.

‘Have you come far?’

They didn’t answer. Just gave me the stares, like two cod.

I laughed at them as if I thought their behaviour pathetic, which in fact I did, and turned on my heel to go back to my own territory. When I’d gone ten steps one of them called after me, ‘Where’s Larry Gedge?’ He didn’t sound as if he liked Larry any better than me.

I decided not to hear: if they really wanted to know, they could come and ask nicely. It was their turn to cross the grass.

They didn’t bother. I wasn’t particularly sorry. I had long ago learned that pilots were not all one great happy brotherhood. Pilots could be as bloodyminded to each other as any group on earth.

I climbed back into my seat in the Cherokee and sorted out my maps and flight plans for the return journey. I had four hours to do it in and it took me ten minutes. After that I debated whether to go over to the stands and find some lunch,
and decided I wasn’t hungry. After that I yawned. It was a habit.

I had been depressed for so long that it had become a permanent state of mind. Expectations might lift the edge of the cloud every time one took a new job, but life never turned out to be as good as the hopes. This was my sixth job since I’d gone to learn flying with stars in my eyes, my fourth since the stars had faded for good. I had thought that taxi flying might be interesting, and after crop spraying, which I’d been doing last, anything would be; and perhaps it would indeed be interesting, but if I’d thought it might be free of gripe and bad temper I’d been kidding myself. For here it all was, as usual. Squabbling passengers and belligerent competitors and no discernible joy anywhere.

There was a small buffet on the side of the fuselage and the jar and sound of someone stepping up on to the wing. The slightly open door was pushed wide with a crash, and into its Gpace appeared a girl, bending at the waist and knees and neck so that she could look inside and across at me.

She was slim and dark haired and she was wearing large square sunglasses. Also she had a blue linen dress and long white boots. She looked great. The afternoon instantly improved.

‘You lousy bloody skunk,’ she said.

It really was one of those days.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Wrong man.’ She took off the sunglasses and folded them away in the white handbag which hung from her shoulder by a thick red, white and blue cord.

‘Think nothing of it.’

‘Where’s Larry?’

‘Gone to Turkey.’

‘Gone?’ she said blankly. ‘Do you mean literally gone already, or planning to go, or what?’

I looked at my watch. ‘Took off from Heathrow twenty minutes ago, I believe.’

‘Damn,’ she said forcibly. ‘Bloody damn.’

She straightened up so that all I could see of her was from the waist down. A pleasant enough view for any poor aviator. The legs looked about twenty-three years old and there was nothing wrong with them.

She bent down again. Nothing wrong with the rest of her, either.

‘When will he be back?’

‘He had a three year contract.’

‘Oh,
hell
.’ She stared at me in dismay for a few seconds, then said, ‘Can I come in there and talk to you for a minute?’

‘Sure,’ I agreed, and moved my maps and stuff off Golden-berg’s seat. She stepped down into the cockpit and slid expertly into place. By no means her first entrance into a light aircraft. I wondered about Larry. Lucky Larry.