The first driver past the pits, already pulling fractionally clear of Nicolo Tracchia, was Harlow in his lime-green Coronado. MacAlpine turned to Dunnet and said heavily: ‘One swallow does not make a summer.’
Eight laps later MacAlpine was beginning to question his ornithological expertise. He was looking slightly dazed while Dunnet was indulging in considerable eyebrow-lifting, Jacobson’s expression was not one indicative of any marked internal pleasure while Rory was positively scowling although manfully trying not to. Only Mary expressed her true emotion and that without inhibition. She looked positively radiant.
Three lap records gone,’ she said incredulously. Three lap records in eight laps.’
By the end of the ninth lap the emotions of those in the Coronado pits, as registered by their facial expressions, had radically altered. Jacobson and Rory were, with difficulty, refraining from looking cheerful. Mary was chewing anxiously on her pencil. MacAlpine looked thunderous but the thunder was overlaid by deep anxiety.
‘Forty seconds overdue!’ he said. ‘Forty seconds! All the field’s gone past and he’s not even in sight. What in God’s name could have happened to him?’
Dunnet said: ‘Shall I phone the track-marshals’ checkpoints ?’
MacAlpine nodded and Dunnet began to make calls. The first two yielded no information and he was about to make a third when Harlow’s Coronado appeared and drew into the pits. The engine note of the Coronado sounded perfectly healthy in every way, which was more than could be said for Harlow when he had climbed out of his car and removed his helmet and goggles.
His eyes were glazed and bloodshot. He looked at them for a moment then spread his hands: the tremor in them was unmistakable.
‘Sorry. Had to pull up about a mile out. Double vision. Could hardly see where I was going. Come to that, I still can’t.’
‘Get changed.’ The bleak harshness in MacAlpine’s voice startled the listeners. ‘I’m taking you to hospital.’
Harlow hesitated, made as if to speak, shrugged, turned and walked away. Dunnet said in a low voice: ‘You’re not taking him to the course doctor?’
‘I’m taking him to see a friend of mine. An optometrist of note but many other things besides. All I want him to do is a little job for me, a job I couldn’t get done in privacy and secrecy on the track.’
‘Dunnet said quietly, almost sadly : ‘A blood sample?’
‘Just one positive blood sample.’
‘And that will be the end of the road for Grand Prix’s superstar?’
The end of the road.’
For a person who might well have good reason for believing he had reached the end of his professional career Harlow, as he sat relaxed in his chair in a hospital corridor, seemed singularly unperturbed. Most unusually for him he was smoking a cigarette, the hand holding the cigarette as steady as if it had been carved from marble. Harlow gazed thoughtfully at the door at the far end of the corridor.
Behind that door MacAlpine, his face registering a combination of disbelief and consternation, looked at the man seated across the desk from him, a benign and elderly bearded doctor in shirt sleeves.
MacAlpine said: ‘Impossible. Quite impossible. You mean to tell me there is no alcohol in his blood?’
‘Impossible or not, I mean what I say. An experienced colleague has just carried out a double-check. He has no more alcohol in his blood than you would find in that of a life-long abstainer.’
MacAlpine shook-his head. ‘Impossible,’ he repeated. ‘Look, Professor, I have proof —’
To us long-suffering doctors nothing is impossible. The speed with which different individuals metabolize alcohol varies beyond belief. With an obviously extremely fit young man like your friend outside-’
‘But his eyes! You saw his eyes. Bleary, bloodshot -’
‘There could be half a dozen reasons for that.’
‘And the double vision?’
‘His eyes seem normal enough. How well he is seeing it’s hard to say yet. There exists always the possibility that the eyes themselves are sound enough but that some damage may have been done to an optical nerve.’ The doctor stood up. ‘A spot check is not enough. I’d need a series of tests, a battery of tests. Unfortunately, not now — I’m already overdue at the theatre. Could he-come along about seven this evening?’
MacAlpine said he could, expressed his thanks and left. As he approached Harlow, he looked at the cigarette in his hand, then at Harlow, then back at the cigarette but said nothing. Still in silence, the two men left the hospital, got into MacAlpine’s Aston and drove back in the direction of Monza.
Harlow broke the silence. He said mildly: ‘As the principal concerned, don’t you think you should tell me what the doctor said?’
MacAlpine said shortly: ‘He’s not sure. He wants to carry out a series of tests. The first is at seven o’clock tonight.’
Still mildly, Harlow said : ‘I hardly think that will be necessary.’
MacAlpine glanced at him in brief speculation. ‘And what’s that meant to mean?’
There’s a lay-by half a kilometre ahead. Pull in, please. There’s something I want to say. ‘
At seven o’clock that evening, the hour when Harlow was supposed to be in hospital, Dunnet sat in MacAlpine’s hotel room. The atmosphere was funereal. Both men had large glasses of scotch in their hands.
Dunnet said: ‘Jesus! Just like that? He said his nerve was gone, he knew he was finished and could he break his contract?’
‘Just like that. No more beating about the bush, he said. No more kidding — especially kidding himself. God knows what it cost the poor devil to say so.’
‘And the scotch?’
MacAlpine sampled his own and sighed heavily, more in sadness than weariness. ‘Quite humorous about it, really. Says he detests the damned stuff and is thankful for a reason never to touch it again.’
It was Dunnet’s turn to have recourse to his scotch. ‘And what’s going to happen to your poor devil now? Mind you, James, I’m not overlooking what this has cost you —you’ve lost the best driver in the world. But right now I’m more concerned about Johnny.’
‘Me, too. But what to do? What to do?’
The man who was the subject of all this concern was displaying a remarkable amount of unconcern. For a man who was the central figure in the greatest fall from grace in the history of motor racing, Johnny Harlow seemed most extraordinarily cheerful. As he adjusted his tie before the mirror in his room he whistled, albeit slightly tunelessly, to himself, breaking off occasionally to smile at some private thought. He shrugged into his jacket, left his room, went down to the lobby, took an orangeade from the bar and sat down at a nearby table. Before he was even able to sip his drink Mary came and sat beside him. She took one of his hands in both of hers.
‘Johnny!’ she said. ‘Oh, Johnny!’ ‘Harlow gazed at her with sorrowful eyes.
She went on : ‘Daddy just told me. Oh, Johnny, what are we going to do?’
‘We?’
She gazed at him for long seconds without speaking, looked away and said : to lose my two best friends in one day.’ There were no tears in her eyes but there were tears in her voice.
‘Your -two —what do you mean?’
‘I thought you knew.’ Now the tears were trickling down her cheeks. ‘Henry’s got bad heart trouble. He has to go.’
‘Henry? Dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ Harlow squeezed her hands and gazed off into the middle distance. ‘Poor old Henry. I wonder what will happen to him?’
‘Oh, that’s all right.’ She sniffed. ‘Daddy’s keeping him on in Marseilles.’
‘Ah. Then it’s probably all for the best—Henry was getting past it anyway.’
Harlow remained thoughtful for some seconds, apparently lost in deep thought, then clasped Mary’s hands with his free one. He said : ‘Mary, I love you. Hang on, will you? Back in a couple of minutes.’
One minute later Harlow was in MacAlpine’s room. Dunnet was there and he had the appearance of a man who was with difficulty keeping his anger under control. MacAlpine was clearly highly distressed. He shook his head many times.
He said: ‘Not at any price. Not under any circumstances. No, no, no. It’s just not on. One day the world champion, the next trundling a lumbering transporter all over the place. Why, man, you’d be the laughing stock of Europe.’
‘Maybe.’ Harlow’s voice was quiet, without bitterness. ‘But not half as much a laughing stock as I’d be if people knew the real reason for my retiral, Mr. MacAlpine.’
‘Mr. MacAlpine? Mr. MacAlpine? I’m always James to you, my boy. Always have been:’-
‘Not any more, sir. You could explain about my so-called double vision, say that I’ve been retained as a specialist adviser. What more natural? Besides, you do need a transporter driver.
MacAlpine shook his head in slow and complete’ finality. ‘Johnny Harlow will never drive any transporter of mine and that’s the end of it.’