and the threat was no idle boast. People found it easy to believe Vic Vincent. The two clients I had already lost to him had believed I cheated them because Vic Vincent had told them so. He could stop the sale of a good filly just by saying she had a heart murmur. He could no doubt smash my growing business with a rumour just as simple and just as false. A bloodstock agent was only as secure as his clients’ faith.
I could think of no adequate answer. I said, ‘You used not to be like this,’ which was true enough but got me nowhere.
‘I’m telling you,’ he said. ‘You play ball or we’ll get you out.’
He turned on his heel and walked jerkily away, the anger spilling out of the hunched shoulders and rigid legs. Ronnie North and Jiminy Bell circled round him like anxious satellites and I could hear his voice telling them, low, vigorous and sharp.
Within an hour most of the bloodstock agents knew of the row and during the day I found out who my friends were. The bunch I had said I wouldn’t join drew their skirts away and spoke about me among themselves while looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. The chaps in the big firms treated me exactly as usual, and even one or two with approval, as officially they frowned on exorbitant kickbacks.
The uncommitted in the no-man’s-land between were the most informative.
I had coffee and a sandwich with one of them, a man who had been in the game longer but was in much my position, more or less established and just beginning to prosper. He was distinctly worried and cheered up not at all when I confirmed what Vic had threatened.
‘They’ve approached me as well,’ he said. ‘They didn’t say what would happen if I didn’t join them. Not like with you. They just said I would be better off if I did.’
‘So you would.’
‘Yes… but… I don’t know what to do.’ He put down his sandwich half finished. ‘They’re getting so much worse.’
I said I’d noticed it.
‘There used to be just a few of them,’ he said. ‘When I started, only a few. But lately they’re getting so powerful.’
‘And so greedy,’ I said.
‘That’s it,’ he said in eager agreement. ‘I don’t mind a little extra on the side. Who does? It’s just that… they’ve started pushing so hard. I don’t know what to do… I don’t like their methods and I can’t afford…’ He stopped, looked depressed, and went on slowly, ‘I suppose I could just not bid when the word goes round. There wouldn’t be much harm in that.’
The make-the-best-of-it syndrome. The buttress of every tyrant in history. He took his worries away and later I saw him smiling uneasily with Vic.
During the day I bought one more yearling, bidding against one of the big firms and securing it for a fair price. However extensively Vic’s tentacles might stretch they had not reached every breeder in the country, or at any rate not yet. Neither he nor his friends showed any intrest in my second purchase.
Towards the end of the day one of my regular clients arrived with a flashy girl in one hand and a cigar in the other. Eddy Ingram, member of the well-heeled unemployed.
‘Staying for the week,’ he said cheerfully, waving the cigar in a large gesture. ‘How about you joining me and Marji for dinner tomorrow night?’
‘I’d like to.’
‘Great, great.’ He beamed at me, beamed at Marji. An overgrown school-boy with a nature as generous as his inheritance. I thought him a fool and liked him a lot. ‘Have you found me a couple of good ‘uns, then?’ he asked.
‘There’s one tomorrow…’
‘You buy it. Tell me after.’ He beamed again. ‘This lad,’ he said to Marji, ‘He’s bought me four horses and they’ve all shown a profit. Can’t complain about that, can you?’
Marji smiled sweetly and said ‘Yes Eddy’ which was a fair measure of her brain-power.
‘Don’t forget now. Dinner tomorrow.’ He told me where and when, and I said I would see him at the races or the sales before that, if not both.
He beamed and led Marji away to the bar and I wished there were more like him.
In the morning I bought him a well-bred filly for eleven thousand pounds, outbidding one of Vic Vincent’s cronies. As none of his bunch looked upset, I guessed that one or all of them jointly would be collecting a kick-back from