Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,51

prospect was good enough for him.’

‘Flattering,’ I said.

‘Ay.’ He pursed his mouth and screwed up his eyes. ‘Maybe I was too hasty, getting rid of that Singeling. I reckon you’d better buy me another one, and I’ll keep it, even if it’s got three legs and a squint.’

‘You positively ask to be cheated,’ i said.

‘You won’t cheat me.’

‘How do you know?’

He looked non-plussed. Waved his arm about. ‘Everybody knows,’ he said.

Vic was not his confident cheerful self. He spent a great deal of his time drawing people into corners and talking to them vehemently, and in due course I learned that he was saying I was so desperate for clients I was telling outright lies about sincere men like Fynedale, and that I had a fixed obsession that he, Vic Vincent, had set fire to my stables, which was mad as well as wicked because the police had arrested the man who had really done it. I supposed the extent to which people believed his version was a matter of habit: his devotees never doubted him, or if they did they kept it to themselves.

Vic and Pauli Teksa stood alone together on the far side of the collecting ring, with Vic’s tongue working overtime. Pauli shook his head. Vic spoke faster than ever. Pauli shook his head again.

Vic looked around him as if to make sure he was not being overheard, then advanced his head to within three inches of Pauli’s, his red-brown forward-growing hair almost mingling with Pauli’s crinkly black.

Pauli listened for quite a while. Then he drew back and stood with his head on one side, considering, while Vic talked some more. Then slowly again he shook his head.

Vic was not pleased. The two men began to walk towards the sale building: or rather Pauli began to walk and Vic, unsuccessfully trying to stop him, had either to let him go or go with him. He went, still talking, persuading, protesting.

I was standing between them and the sale building. They saw me from four paces away, and stopped. Vic looked as lividly angry as I’d ever seen him, Pauli as expressionless as a concrete block.

Vic gave Pauli a final furious look and strode away.

Pauli said, ‘I plan to go home tomorrow.’

There were some big American sales the next week. I said, ‘You’ve been here a month, I suppose…’

‘Nearer five weeks.’

‘Has it been a successful trip?’

He smiled ruefully. ‘Not very.’

We went together for a cup of coffee, but he seemed preoccupied.

‘I’d sure like to have bought a colt by Transporter,’ he said.

‘There’ll be another crop next year.’

‘Yeah…’

He said nothing more about me going along with the crowd, with conforming unless I got hurt. What he did say,though, with his mind clearly on his recent encounter, was, ‘You don’t want to stir up that Vic Vincent more than you can help.’

I smiled.

He looked at the smile and read it right. He shook his head.

‘He’s an angry man, and angry men are dangerous.’

‘That makes two of us,’ I said.

He soberly consulted his stock of inner wisdom and came up with a cliché. ‘It’s easier to start something than to stop it.’

12

Wilton Young came to the following Doncaster Sales not to buy but to see some of his horses-in-training sold. Cutting his losses, he said. Weeding out all those who’d eaten more during the just ended flat season than they’d earned. He slapped me jovially on the back and told me straight that slow horses ate as much as fast, and he, Wilton Young, was no meal ticket for flops.

‘Profit, lad,’ he boomed. ‘That’s what it’s all about. Brass, lad. Brass.’

I bought one of his cast-offs, a three-year-old colt with little form and a reputation for kicking visitors out of his box. I got him cheap for a Sussex farmer who couldn’t afford more.

His ex-owner said disparagingly, ‘What did you buy that for? It’s no bloody good. If that’s what you buy, what the hell will you buy for me?’

I explained about the poorish farmer. ‘He’ll geld it and hack it about the farm. Teach it to jump. Make it a four-year-old novice hurdler by April.’

‘Huh.’

Second rate jumpers were of less account than marbles to self-made tycoons with cheque books open for Derby prospects. I realised that whatever his fury against Fynedale he was still expecting to pay large sums for his horses. Perhaps he needed to. Perhaps he felt a reflected glory in their expense. Perhaps he wanted to prove to the world how much brass he’d made. Conspicuous consumption, no