retain someone else. Expediently, and not too pleased with myself for it, I took the worst crags out of my tone.
‘I presume,’ I said, ‘That you do want your licence back?’
‘There isn’t a chance.’
‘If you’ll keep the lads for a month, I’ll get it back for you.’
Defeatism still showed in every sagging muscle, and he didn’t answer.
I shrugged. ‘Well, I’m going to try. And if I give you your licence back on a plate it will be just too bad if Archie and the lads have gone.’ I walked towards the door and put my hand on the knob. ‘I’ll let you know how I get on.’
Twisted the knob. Opened the door.
‘Wait,’ he said.
I turned round. A vestige of starch had returned, mostly in the shape of the reappearance of the mean lines round his mouth. Not so good.
‘I don’t believe you can do it. But as you’re so cocksure, I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll pay the lads for two weeks. If you want me to keep them on for another two weeks after that, you can pay them yourself.’
Charming. He’d made two thousand pounds out of Cherry Pie and had overtrained Squelch and was the direct cause of my being warned off. I stamped on a violent inner tremble of anger and gave him a cold answer.
‘Very well. I agree to that. But you must make a bargain with me too. A bargain that you’ll keep your mouth tight shut about your guilt feelings. I don’t want to be sabotaged by you hairshirting it all over the place and confessing your theoretical sins at awkward moments.’
‘I am unlikely to do that,’ he said stiffly.
I wasn’t so sure. ‘I want your word on it,’ I said.
He drew himself up, offended. It at least had the effect of straightening his backbone.
‘You have it.’
‘Fine.’ I held the door open for him. ‘Let’s go down to the yard, then.’
He still hesitated, but finally made up his mind to it, and went before me through the door and down the stairs.
Roberta and her mother were standing in the hall, looking as if they were waiting for news at a pithead after a disaster. They watched the reappearance of the head of the family in mixture of relief and apprehension, and Mrs Cranfield said tentatively, ‘Dexter…?’
He answered irritably, as if he saw no cause for anxiety in his having shut himself away with a shotgun for thirty-six hours, ‘We’re going down to the yard.’
‘Great,’ said Roberta practically smothering any tendency to emotion from her mother, ‘I’ll come too;’
Archie hurried to meet us and launched into a detailed account of which horses had gone and which were about to go next. Cranfield hardly listened and certainly didn’t take it in. He waited for a gap in the flow, and when he’d waited long enough, impatiently interrupted.
‘Yes, yes, Archie, I’m sure you have everything in hand. That is not what I’ve come down for, however. I want you to tell the lads at once that their notice to leave is withdrawn for one month.’
Archie looked at me, not entirely understanding.
‘The sack,’ I said, ‘Is postponed. Pending attempts to get wrongs righted.’
‘Mine too?’
‘Absolutely.’ I agreed. ‘Especially, in fact.’
‘Hughes thinks there is a chance we can prove ourselves innocent and recover our licences,’ Cranfield said formally, his own disbelief showing like two heads. ‘In order to help me keep the stable together while he makes enquiries, Hughes has agreed to contribute one half towards your wages for one month.’ I looked at him sharply. That was not at all what I had agreed. He showed no sign of acknowledging his reinterpretation (to put it charitably) of the offer I had accepted, and went authoritatively on. ‘Therefore, as your present week’s notice still has five days to run, none of you will be required to leave here for five weeks. In fact,’ he added grudgingly, ‘I would be obliged if you would all stay.’
Archie said to me, ‘You really mean it?’ and I watched the hope suddenly spring up in his face and thought that maybe it wasn’t only my own chance of a future that was worth eight hundred quid.
‘That’s right,’ I agreed. ‘As long as you don’t all spend the month busily fixing up to go somewhere else at the end of it.’
‘What do you take us for?’ Archie protested.
‘Cynics,’ I said, and Archie actually laughed.
I left Cranfield and Archie talking together with most of the desperation evaporating from both of them, and walked away to