"It's all right, Jerry."

"The others were ribbing you, see, and it seemed the thing, like, to do what they done. So they would… would let me go with them, see?"

"Yes, Jerry, I see. It doesn't matter, really it doesn't."

"You never ribbed me, when I done wrong."

"Forget it."

"I've been thinking," he said, wrinkling his forehead, 'about me main.

She tried scrubbing some floors once. In some office, it was. She came home fair whacked, she did. She said scrubbing floors was wicked. It made your back ache something chronic, she said, as I remember. "

"Did she?"

"Does your back ache, Clan?"

"Yes, a bit."

He nodded, pleased.

"She knows a thing or two, does my mam." He lapsed into one of his mindless silences, rocking himself gently backwards and forwards on the creaking bed.

I was touched by his apology.

"I'll read your comic for you," I said.

"You ain't too whacked?" he asked eagerly.

I shook my head.

He fetched the comic from the cardboard box in which he kept his few belongings and sat beside me while I read him the captions of Mickey the Monkey, Beryl and Peril, Julius Cheeser, the Bustom Boys, and all the rest. We went through the whole thing at least twice, with him laughing contentedly and repeating the words after me. By the end of the week he would know most of them by heart.

At length I took the comic out of his hands and put it down on the bed.

"Jerry," I said, 'which of the horses you look after belongs to Mr. Adams? "

"Mr. Adams?"

"The man whose hunters I've got. The man who was here this morning, with a grey Jaguar, and a scarlet coat."

"Oh, that Mr. Adams."

"Why, is there another one?"

"No, that's Mr. Adams, all right." Jerry shuddered.

"What do you know about him?" I asked.

"The chap what was here before you came, Dennis, his name was, Mr. Adams didn't like him, see? He cheeked Mr. Adams, he did."

"Oh," I said. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what had happened to Dennis.

"He weren't here above three weeks," said Jerry reflectively.

"The last couple of days, he kept on falling down. Funny, it was, really."

I cut him short.

"Which of your horses belongs to Mr. Adams?" I repeated.

"None of them do," he said positively.

"Cass said so."

He looked surprised, and also scared.

"No, Clan, I don't want none of Mr. Adams' horses."

"Well, who do your horses belong to?"

"I don't rightly know. Except of course Pageant. He belongs to Mr. Byrd."

"That's the one you take to the races?"

"Uh huh, that's the one."

"How about the others?"

"Well, Mickey…" His brow furrowed.

"Mickey is the horse in the box next to Mr. Adams' black hunter, which I do?"

"Yeah." He smiled brilliantly, as if I had made a point.

"Who does Mickey belong to?"

"I dunno."

"Hasn't his owner ever been to see him?"

He shook his head doubtfully. I wasn't sure whether or not he would remember if an owner had in fact called.

"How about your other horse?" Jerry had only three horses to do, as he was slower than everyone else.

"That's Champ," said Jerry triumphantly.

"Who owns him?"

"He's a hunter."

"Yes, but who owns him?"

"Some fellow." He was trying hard.

"A fat fellow. With sort of sticking out ears." He pulled his own ears forward to show me.

"You know him well?"

He smiled widely.

"He gave me ten bob for Christmas."

So it was Mickey, I thought, who belonged to Adams, but neither Adams nor Humber nor Cass had let Jerry know it. It looked as though Cass had let it slip out by mistake.

I said, "How long have you worked here, Jerry?"

"How long?" he echoed vaguely.

"How many weeks were you here before Christmas?"

He put his head on one side and thought. He brightened.

"I came on the day after the Rovers beat the Gunners. My dad took me to the match, see? Near our house, the Rovers' ground is."

I asked him more questions, but he had no clearer idea than that about when he had come to Humber's.

"Well," I said, 'was Mickey here already, when you came? "

"I've never done no other horses since I've been here," he said. When I asked him no more questions he placidly picked up the comic again and began to look at the pictures. Watching him, I wondered what it was like to have a mind like his, a brain like cotton wool upon which the accumulated learning of the world could make no dent, in which reason, memory, and awareness were blanketed almost out of existence.

He smiled happily at the comic strips. He was, I reflected, none the worse off for being simple-minded. He was good at heart, and what he did not understand could not hurt him. There was a lot to be said for life on that level.

If one didn't realize one was an object of calculated humiliations, there would be no need to try to make oneself be insensitive to them.

If I had his simplicity, I thought, I would find life at Humber's very much easier.

He looked up suddenly and saw me watching him, and gave me a warm, contented, trusting smile.

"I like you," he said; and turned his attention back to the paper.

There was a raucous noise from downstairs and the other lads erupted up the ladder, pushing Cecil among them as he was practically unable to walk. Jerry scuttled back to his own bed and put his comic carefully away;

and I, like all the rest, wrapped myself in two grey blankets and lay down, boots and all, on the inhospitable canvas. I tried to find a comfortable position for my excessively weary limbs, but unfortunately failed.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The office was as cold and unwelcoming as Humber's personality, with none of the ostentation of his car. It consisted of a long narrow room with the door and the single smallish window both in the long wall facing down the yard. At the far end, away to the left as one entered, there was a door which opened into a washroom: this was whitewashed and lit by three slit-like, frosted glass windows, and led through an inner door into a lavatory. In the washroom itself there was a sink, a plastic topped table, a refrigerator, and two wall cupboards. The first of these on investigation proved to hold all the bandages, liniments, and medicines in common use with horses.

Careful not to move anything from its original position I looked at every bottle, packet, and tin. As far as I could see there was nothing of a stimulating nature among them.

The second cupboard however held plenty of stimulant in the shape of alcohol for human consumption, an impressive collection of bottles with a well stocked shelf of glasses above them. For the entertainment of owners, not the quickening of their horses. I shut the door.

There was nothing in the refrigerator except four bottles of beer, some milk, and a couple of trays of ice cubes.

I went back into the office.

Humber's desk stood under the window, so that when he was sitting at it he could look straight out down the yard. It was a heavy flat-topped knee-hole desk with drawers at each side, and it was almost aggressively tidy. Granted Humber was away at Nottingham races and had not spent long in the office in the morning, but the tidiness was basic, not temporary. None of the drawers was locked, and their contents (stationery, tax tables, and so on) could be seen at a glance. On top of the desk there was only a telephone, an adjustable reading lamp, a tray of pens and pencils, and a green glass paper weight the size of a cricket ball. Trapped air bubbles rose in a frozen spray in its depths.

The single sheet of paper which it held down bore only a list of duties for the day and had clearly been drawn up for Cass to work from. I saw disconsolately that I would be cleaning tack that afternoon with baby voiced Kenneth, who never stopped talking, and doing five horses at evening stables, this last because the horses normally done by Bert, who had gone racing, had to be shared out among those left behind.