I turned away and began slowly to stack the box sides and the bars, wished painfully that Billy hadn’t been quite so rough, and forgot about it.
The following day I went down to the wharf building and hooked Simon out for a liquid lunch[115]. We shambled down the road to the usual hideous pub and he buried his face in a pint like a camel at an oasis.
‘That’s better,’ he said, sighing, when a scant inch remained. ‘How did yesterday’s trip go?’
‘All right.’
His eyes considered me thoughtfully. ‘Did you have a fall on Saturday?’
‘No. A winner. Why?’
‘You’re moving a bit carefully, that’s all.’
I grinned suddenly. ‘You should see the other fellow.’
His face melted in comprehension and he laughed. ‘I imagine I have’, he said. ‘Billy has a sunset of a black eye[116].’
‘You’ve seen him?’ I was surprised.
Simon nodded. ‘He was in the office this morning, talking to Yardman.’
‘Getting his version in first[117], I suppose’.
‘What happened?’ he asked interestedly.
‘Billy picked a fight.’ I shrugged. ‘He resents my existence. It’s ridiculous. No one can help what his father is. You can’t choose your birth.’
‘You feel strongly about it,’ Simon observed, ordering another pint. I shook my head to his invitation.
‘So would you, if you had to live with it. I mostly get treated as a villain or a nit or a desirable match, and not much else.’ I was exaggerating, but not unduly.
‘That last doesn’t sound too bad,’ he grinned.
‘You haven’t had half the debs’ mums in London trying to net you for their daughters,’ I said gloomily, ‘with your own mother egging them on.’
‘It sounds a wow.[118]’ He had no sympathy for such a fate.
‘It isn’t me they want,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s only my name. Which is no fun at all. And on the other end from the wedding ring I get bashed around for exactly the same reason.’
‘Very few can feel as strongly as Billy.’
I looked at him. ‘There were the French in seventeen eighty-nine[119], remember? And the Russians in nineteen-seventeen[120]. They all felt as strongly as Billy’.
‘The English like their aristocrats.’
‘Don’t you believe it. They don’t mind them from the social point of view because titles make the scandal sheets juicier. But they make damn sure they have no effective power. They say we are a joke, an anachronism, out of date, and weak and silly. They pretend we are these things so that we are kept harmless, so that no one will take us seriously. Think of the modern attitude to the House of Lords, for example. And you – you still think it funny that I want this sort of job, but you wouldn’t think so if my father was a… a farmer, or a pub-keeper, or a schoolmaster. But I’m me, here and now, a man of now, not of some dim glorious past. I am not an anachronism. I’m Henry Grey, conceived and born like everyone else, into this present world. Well, I insist on living in it. I am not going to be shoved off into an unreal playboy existence where my only function is to sire the next in line, which is what my parents want.’
‘You could renounce your title, when you get it,’ Simon pointed out calmly. He spotted a pin on the bar counter and absent-mindedly tucked it into his lapel. It was such a habit with him that he sported a whole row of them, like a dressmaker.
‘I could,’ I said, ‘but I won’t. The only good reason for doing that is to stay in the House of Commons, and I’ll never be a politician, I’m not the type. Renouncing for any other reason would be just a retreat. What I want is for people to acknowledge that an earl is as good as the next man[121], and give him an equal chance’.
‘But if you get on, they say it’s because of your title, not because you have talent.’
‘You are so right. But there’s a prince or two, a few dukes’ sons, and some others like me, all in the same boat just now, and I reckon that our generation, if we try hard enough, might in the end be treated on our own terms. Have some more beer.’
He laughed and agreed.
‘I’ve never heard you say so much,’ he said smiling.
‘It’s Billy’s fault. Forget it.’
‘I don’t think I will.’
‘You know something odd? I’m covered with bruises, and there isn’t a single one on my face.’
He considered, drinking.
‘He’d have got into trouble if he’d marked you for all to see.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘I gather you haven’t told Yardman?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
I shrugged. ‘I think he expected it, or something like it. He was ironic when he gave me the job. He must have known that sooner or later I would come up against Billy. And yesterday, he knew Billy would be after me[122]. He warned me, in his way.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But what if you find yourself on another trip with Billy? I mean, you’re bound to, sometime[123].’
‘Yes, I know. Well, it’s up to him entirely[124]. I wouldn’t start anything. I didn’t yesterday. But I did tell him plainly that I’d fight back any time. And I am not, repeat not, leaving here because of him.’
‘And you look so quiet and mild.’ He smiled one-sidedly, looking down into his again empty glass. ‘I think,’ he said slowly, almost it seemed to me sadly, ‘that one or two people in Yardman Transport have miscalculated about you[125], Henry’.
But when I pressed him to explain, he wouldn’t.
With no more export trips to be flown until Thursday, I went the next day, Wednesday, to the races. Someone offered me a spare ride in the novice chase and for some reason it fretted me more than ever to have to refuse. ‘I can’t,’ I said, explaining thoroughly so that he wouldn’t think I was being rude. ‘I’m only allowed to ride in fifty open races a season, and I’m already over the forty mark, and I’ve got mounts booked for Cheltenham and the Whitbread and so on. And if I ride too much now I’ll be out of those, but thank you very much for asking me.’
He nodded understandingly and hurried off to find someone else, and in irritation two hours later I watched his horse canter home to a ten lengths win[126]. It was some consolation, however, when immediately afterwards I was buttonholed by a large shrewd-faced man I knew very slightly, the father of another well-occupied amateur jockey. Between them, father and son owned and trained half a dozen good hunter chasers which they ran only in amateur events with notoriously satisfactory results. But on this particular afternoon Mr Thackery, a large-scale farmer from Shropshire, showed signs both of worry and indecision.
‘Look,’ he said,