‘We weren’t given a sodding minute to get off the sodding plane.’
The Customs man in his navy blue suit glanced at me sideways in amusement. I gathered[94] that he had met Billy before.
‘O.K.’ he said. ‘See you this afternoon, then.’
He opened the big double doors, beckoned to the men outside who were wheeling up the ramp, and as soon as it was in position walked jauntily down it and back across the tarmac towards the airport building. As we were now more or less up to schedule through not having to load and unload the French hurdlers, John and Billy and I followed him in order to have lunch. I sat at one table and Billy and John ostentatiously moved to another as far away as they could get. But if Billy thought he could distress me in that way, he was wrong. I felt relieved to be alone, not shunned.
By one o’clock the horseboxes bringing the next consignment had arrived, and we started the loading all over again. This time I got the groom who had brought the horses to lead them up to the plane. Billy and I made the boxes, and John belched and got in the way[95].
When I had finished I went into the airport building, checked the horse’s export papers with the customs man and persuaded the pilot away from his fourth cup of coffee. Up we went again into the clear wintry sky, across the grey sea, and down again in France. The same French customs men came on board, checked every horse as meticulously as before, and as politely let them go. We took down the boxes, led out the horses, saw them loaded into their horseboxes, and watched them depart.
This time the French hurdlers for the return journey had already arrived and without a pause we began getting them on board. As there were only four we had only two boxes to set up, which by that point I found quite enough. John’s sole contribution towards the fourth journey was to refill and hang the haynets for the hurdlers to pick from on their way, and even at that he was clumsy and slow[96].
With the horses at length unconcernedly munching in their boxes we went across to the airport buildings, Billy and John ahead, I following. The only word I heard pass between them as they left down the ramp was ‘beer.’
There was a technical delay over papers in one of the airport offices. One of the things I had grown to expect in the racehorse export business was technical delays. A journey without one of some sort was a gift. With up to twenty horses sometimes carried on one aeroplane there only had to be a small query about a single animal for the whole load to be kept waiting for hours. Occasionally it was nothing to do with the horses themselves but with whether the airlines owed the airport dues for another plane or another trip: in which case the airport wouldn’t clear the horse plans to leave until the dues were paid. Sometimes the quibbling was enough to get one near to jumping out of the window. I was growing very good indeed at keeping my temper[97] when all around were losing theirs and blaming it on me. Kipling would have been proud.
This time it was some question of insurance which I could do nothing to smooth out as it involved the owner of one of the hurdlers, who was fighting a contested claim on a road accident it had been slightly hurt in. The insurance company didn’t want the horse to leave France. I said it was a bit late, the horse was sold, and did the insurance company have the right to stop it anyway. No one was quite sure about that. A great deal of telephoning began.[98]
I was annoyed, mainly because the horse in question was in the forward of the two boxes: if we had to take it off the plane it meant dismantling the rear box and unloading the back pair first in order to reach it, and then reloading those two again once we had got it off. And with Billy and John full of all the beer they were having plenty of time to ship, this was likely to be a sticky manoeuvre. The horse’s own grooms and motor boxes had long gone home. The hurdlers were each worth thousands. Who, I wondered gloomily, was I going to trust not to let go of them if we had to have them standing about on the tarmac.
The pilot ran me to earth[99] and said that if we didn’t take off soon we would be staying all night as after six oc’lock he was out of time[100]. We had to be able to be back at Cambridge at six, or he couldn’t start at all.
I relayed this information to the arguing officials. It produced nothing but some heavy gallic shrugs. The pilot swore and told me that until twenty to five I would find him having coffee and after that he’d be en route for Paris. And I would have to get another pilot as he had worked the maximum hours for a long spell and was legally obliged now to have forty-eight hours rest.
Looking morosely out of the window across to where the plane with its expensive cargo sat deserted on the apron[101], I reflected that this was the sort of situation I could do without. And if we had to stay all night, I was going to have to sleep with those horses. A delightful new experience every day, I thought in wry amusement. Join Yardman Transport and see the world, every discomfort thrown in.
With minutes to spare, the insurance company relented: the hurdler could go. I grabbed the papers, murmuring profuse thanks, raced to dig out the pilot, and ran Billy to earth behind a large frothy glass. It was clearly far from his first.
‘Get John,’ I said shortly. ‘We’ve got to be off within ten minutes.’
‘Get him yourself,’ he said with sneering satisfaction. ‘If you can.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Half way to Paris.’ He drank unconcernedly. ‘He’s got some whore there. He said he’d come back tomorrow on a regular airline. There isn’t a sodding thing you can do about it, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.’
John’s presence, workwise, made little difference one way or another. I really cared not a bent sou[102] if he wanted to pay his own fare back. He was free enough. He had his passport in his pocket, as we all did. Mine was already dog-eared and soft[103] from constant use. We had to produce them whenever asked, though they were seldom stamped as we rarely went into the passengers’ immigration section of airports. We showed them more like casual passes than weighty official documents, and most countries were so tolerant of people employed on aircraft that one pilot told me he had left his passport in a hotel bedroom in Madrid and had been going unhindered round the world for three weeks without it while he tried to get it back.
‘Ten minutes,’ I said calmly to Billy. ‘Fifteen, and you’ll be paying your own fare back too.’
Billy gave me his wide-eyed stare. He picked up his glass of beer and poured it over my foot. The yellow liquid ran away in a pool on the glossy stone floor, froth bubbles popping round the edges.
‘What a waste,’ I said, unmoving. ‘Are you coming?’
He didn’t answer. It was too much to expect him to get up meekly while I waited, and as I wanted to avoid too decisive a clash with him if I could I turned away and went back alone, squelching slightly, to the aircraft. He came as I had thought he would, but with less than two minutes in hand to emphasize his independence[104]. The engines were already running when he climbed aboard, and we were moving as soon as the doors were shut.
As usual during take-off and landing, Billy stood holding the heads of two horses and I of the other two. After that, with so much space on the half loaded aircraft, I expected him to keep as far from me as he could, as he had done all day. But Billy by then was eleven hours away from Yardman’s restraining influence and well afloat on airport beer[105]. The crew were all up forward in the cockpit, and fat useless John was sex-bent for Paris.
Billy had me alone, all to himself.
Billy intended to make the most of it[106].
Chapter