High Stakes

by Dick Francis

  ‘I hate the winter,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t mind it.’

  ‘You’re young,’ he said. ‘You don’t feel the cold.’

  ‘Not that young. Thirty-five.’

  ‘Practically a baby.’

  We turned the corner and the wind bit sharply with Arctic teeth. ‘I hate it,’ Charlie said.

  His car, a big blue Rover 3500, was parked nearer than my Lamborghini. We stopped beside his and he unlocked the door. Down the street a girl in a long dress walked in our direction, the wind blowing her skirt sideways and her hair like flags.

  ‘Very informative evening,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘Not what you expected, though,’ I said, shaking it.

  ‘Better, perhaps.’

  He opened his door and began to lower himself into the driver’s seat. The girl in the long dress walked past us, her heels brisk on the pavement. Charlie fastened his seat belt and I shut his door.

  The girl in the long dress stopped, hesitated and turned back.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘But I wonder…’ She stopped, appearing to think better of it.

  ‘Can we help you?’ I said.

  She was American, early twenties, and visibly cold. Round her shoulders she wore only a thin silk shawl, and under that a thin silk shirt. No gloves. Gold sandals. A small gold mesh purse. In the street lights her skin looked blue and she was shivering violently.

  ‘Get in my car,’ Charlie suggested, winding down his window, ‘out of the wind.’

  She shook her head. ‘I guess…’ She began to turn away.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘You need help. Accept it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Tell us what you need.’

  She hesitated again and then said with a rush, ‘I need some money.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I said and fished out my wallet. ‘How much?’

  ‘Enough for a taxi… to Hampstead.’

  I held out a fiver. ‘That do?’

  ‘Yes. I… where shall I send it back to?’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  ‘But I must.’

  Charlie said, ‘He’s got wads of the stuff. He won’t miss it.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ the girl said. ‘If you won’t tell me how to repay it, I can’t take it.’

  ‘It is ridiculous to argue about morals when you’re freezing,’ I said. ‘My name is Steven Scott. Address, Regent’s Park Malthouse. That’ll find me.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll drive you, if you like. I have my car.’ I pointed along the street.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said. ‘How d’you think I got into this mess?’

  ‘How then?’

  She pulled the thin shawl close. ‘I accepted a simple invitation to dinner and found there were strings attached. So I left him at the soup stage and blasted out, and it was only when I was walking away that I realised that I’d no money with me. He’d collected me, you see.’ She smiled suddenly, showing straight white teeth. ‘Some girls are dumber than others.’

  ‘Let Steven go and find you a taxi, then,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Okay.’

  It took me several minutes, but she was still huddled against the outside of Charlie’s car, sheltering as best she could from the worst of the wind, when I got back. I climbed out of the taxi and she climbed in and without more ado drove away.

  ‘A fool and his money,’ Charlie said.

  ‘That was no con trick.’

  ‘It would be a good one,’ he said. ‘How do you know she’s not hopping out of the cab two blocks away and shaking a fiver out of the next Sir Galahad?’

  He laughed, wound up the window, waved and pointed his Rover towards home.

  Monday morning brought the good news and the bad.

  The good was a letter with a five pound note enclosed. Sucks to Charlie, I thought.

  Dear Mr Scott,

  I was so grateful for your help on Saturday night. I guess I’ll never go out on a date again without the cab fare home.

  Yours sincerely,

  Alexandra Ward.

  The bad news was in public print: comments in both newspapers delivered to my door (one sporting, one ordinary) about the disloyalty of owners who shed their hardworking trainers. One said:

  Particularly hard on Jody Leeds that after all he had done for Mr Scott the owner should see fit to announce he would be sending his horses elsewhere. As we headlined in this column a year ago, Jody Leeds took on the extensive Berksdown Court Stables especially to house the expanding Scott string. Now without as much as half an hour’s warning, the twenty-eight-year-old trainer is left flat, with all his new liabilities still outstanding. Treachery may sound a harsh word. Ingratitude is not.

  And the other, in more tabloid vein:

  Leeds (28) smarting from the sack delivered by ungrateful owner Steven Scott (35) said at Sandown on Saturday, ‘I am right in the cart now. Scott dumped me while still collecting back-slaps for the win on his hurdler Energise, which I trained. I am sick at heart. You sweat your guts out for an owner, and he kicks you in the teeth.’

  High time trainers were protected from this sort of thing. Rumour has it Leeds may sue.

  All those Press note books, all those extended Press ears, had not been there for nothing. Very probably they did all genuinely believe that Jody had had a raw deal, but not one single one had bothered to ask what the view looked like from where I stood. Not one single one seemed to think that there might have been an overpowering reason for my action.

  I disgustedly put down both papers, finished my breakfast and settled down to the day’s work, which as usual consisted mostly of sitting still in an armchair and staring vacantly into space.

  Around mid-afternoon, stiff and chilly, I wrote to Miss Ward.

  Dear Miss Ward,

  Thank you very much for the fiver. Will you have dinner with me? No strings attached. I enclose five pounds for the cab fare home.

  Yours sincerely,

  Steven Scott.

  In the evening I telephoned three different racehorse trainers and offered them three horses each. They all accepted, but with the reservations blowing cool in their voices. None actually asked why I had split with Jody though all had obviously read the papers.

  One, a blunt north countryman, said, ‘I’ll want a guarantee you’ll leave them with me for at least six months, so long as they don’t go lame or something.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘In writing.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Ay, I do like. You send’ em up with a guarantee and I’ll take’ em.’

  For Energise I picked a large yard in Sussex where hurdlers did especially well, and under the guarded tones of the trainer Rupert Ramsey I could hear that he thought almost as much of the horse as I did.

  For the last three I chose Newmarket, a middle-sized stable of average achievement. No single basket would ever again contain all the Scott eggs.

  Finally with a grimace I picked up the receiver and dialled Jody’s familiar number. It was not he who answered, however, but Felicity, his wife.

  Her voice was sharp and bitter. ‘What do you want?’

  I pictured her in their luxuriously furnished drawing-room, a thin positive blonde girl, every bit as competent and hard-working as Jody. She would be wearing tight blue jeans and an expensive shirt, there would be six gold bracelets jingling on her wrist and she would smell of a musk-based scent. She held intolerant views on most things and stated them forthrightly, but she had never, before that evening, unleashed on me personally the scratchy side of her mind.

  ‘To talk about transport,’ I said.

  ‘So you really are kicking our props away.’

  ‘You’ll survive.’

  ‘That’s bloody complacent claptrap,’ she said angrily. ‘I could kill you. After all Jody’s done for you.’

  I paused. ‘Did he tell you why I’m breaking with him?’

  ‘Some stupid
little quarrel about ten quid on a bill.’

  ‘It’s a great deal more than that,’ I said.

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘Ask him,’ I said. ‘In any case, three horseboxes will collect my horses on Thursday morning. The drivers will know which ones each of them has to take and where to take them. You tell Jody that if he mixes them up he can pay the bills for sorting them out.’

  The names she called me would have shaken Jody’s father to the roots.

  ‘Thursday,’ I said. ‘Three horseboxes, different destinations. And goodbye.’

  No pleasure in it. None at all.

  I sat gloomily watching a play on television and hearing hardly a word. At nine forty-five the telephone interrupted and I switched off.

  ‘… Just want to know, sir, where I stand.’

  Raymond Child. Jump jockey. Middle-ranker, thirty years old, short on personality. He rode competently enough, but the longer I went racing and the more I learnt, the more I could see his short-comings. I was certain also that Jody could not have manipulated my horses quite so thoroughly without help at the wheel.

  ‘I’ll send you an extra present for Energise,’ I said. Jockeys were paid an official percentage of the winning prize money through a central system, but especially grateful owners occasionally came across with more.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ He sounded surprised.

  ‘I had a good bet on him.’

  ‘Did you, sir?’ The surprise was extreme. ‘But Jody said…’ He stopped dead.

  ‘I backed him on the Tote.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The silence lengthened. He cleared his throat. I waited.

  ‘Well, sir. Er… about the future…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, half meaning it. ‘I’m grateful for the winners you’ve ridden. I’ll send you the present for Energise. But in the future he’ll be ridden by the jockey attached to his new stable.’

  This time there was no tirade of bad language. This time, just a slow defeated sigh and the next best thing to an admission.

  ‘Can’t really blame you, I suppose.’

  He disconnected before I could reply.

  Tuesday I should have had a runner at Chepstow, but since I’d cancelled Jody’s authority he couldn’t send it. I kicked around my rooms unproductively all morning and in the afternoon walked from Kensington Gardens to the Tower of London. Cold grey damp air with seagulls making a racket over the low-tide mud. Coffee-coloured river racing down on the last of the ebb. I stood looking towards the City from the top of little Tower Hill and thought of all the lives that had ended there under the axe. December mood, through and through. I bought a bag of roast chestnuts and went home by bus.

  Wednesday brought a letter.

  Dear Mr Scott,

  When and where?

  Alexandra Ward.

  She had kept the five pound note.

  On Thursday evening the three new trainers confirmed that they had received the expected horses; on Friday I did a little work and on Saturday I drove down to Cheltenham races. I had not, it was true, exactly expected a rousing cheer, but the depth and extent of the animosity shown to me was acutely disturbing.

  Several backs were turned, not ostentatiously but decisively. Several acquaintances lowered their eyes in embarrassment when talking to me and hurried away as soon as possible. The Press looked speculative, the trainers wary and the Jockey Club coldly hostile.

  Charlie Canterfield alone came up with a broad smile and shook me vigorously by the hand.

  ‘Have I come out in spots?’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘You’ve kicked the underdog. The British never forgive it.’

  ‘Even when the underdog bites first?’

  ‘Underdogs are never in the wrong.’

  He led me away to the bar. ‘I’ve been taking a small poll for you. Ten per cent think it would be fair to hear your side. Ten per cent think you ought to be shot. What will you drink?’

  ‘Scotch. No ice or water. What about the other eighty per cent?’

  ‘Enough righteous indignation to keep the Mothers’ Union going for months.’ He paid for the drinks. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘And to you too.’

  ‘It’ll blow over,’ Charlie said.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘What do you fancy in the third?’

  We discussed the afternoon’s prospects and didn’t refer again to Jody, but later, alone, I found it hard to ignore the general climate. I backed a couple of horses on the Tote for a tenner each, and lost. That sort of day.

  All afternoon I was fiercely tempted to protest that it was I who was the injured party, not Jody. Then I thought of the further thousands he would undoubtedly screw out of me in damages if I opened my mouth, and I kept it shut.

  The gem of the day was Quintus himself, who planted his great frame solidly in my path and told me loudly that I was a bloody disgrace to the good name of racing. Quintus, I reflected, so often spoke in clichés.

  ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said. ‘You would have been elected to the Jockey Club if you hadn’t served Jody such a dirty trick. Your name was up for consideration. You won’t be invited now, I’ll see to that.’

  He gave me a short curt nod and stepped aside. I didn’t move.

  ‘Your son is the one for dirty tricks.’

  ‘How dare you!’

  ‘You’d best believe it.’

  ‘Absolute nonsense. The discrepancy on your bill was a simple secretarial mistake. If you try to say it was anything else…”

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘He’ll sue.’

  ‘Quite right. He has a right to every penny he can get.’

  I walked away. Quintus might be biased, but I knew I’d get a straight answer from the Press.

  I asked the senior columnist of a leading daily, a fiftyish man who wrote staccato prose and sucked peppermints to stop himself smoking.

  ‘What reason is Jody Leeds giving for losing my horses?’

  The columnist sucked and breathed out a gust of sweetness.

  ‘Says he charged you by mistake for some schooling Raymond Child didn’t do.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘Says you accused him of stealing and were changing your trainer.’

  ‘And what’s your reaction to that?’

  ‘I haven’t got one.’ He shrugged and sucked contemplatively. ‘Others… The concensus seems to be it was a genuine mistake and you’ve been unreasonable… to put it mildly.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is that all? No story?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

  He put another peppermint in his mouth, nodded noncommittally, and turned away to more fertile prospects. As far as he was concerned, I was last week’s news. Others, this Saturday, were up for the chop.

  I walked thoughtfully down on the Club lawn to watch the next race. It really was not much fun being cast as everyone’s villain, and the clincher was delivered by a girl I’d once taken to Ascot.

  ‘Steven dear,’ she said with coquettish reproof, ‘you’re a big rich bully. That poor boy’s struggling to make ends meet. Even if he did pinch a few quid off you, why get into such a tizz? So uncool, don’t you think?’

  ‘You believe the rich should lie down for Robin Hood?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  I gave it up and went home.

  The evening was a great deal better. At eight o’clock I collected Miss Alexandra Ward from an address in Hampstead and took her to dinner in the red and gold grill room of the Café Royal.

  Seen again in kinder light, properly warm and not blown to rags by the wind, she was everything last week’s glimpse had suggested. She wore the same long black skirt, the same cream shirt, the same cream silk shawl. Also the gold sandals, gold mesh purse and no gloves. But her brown hair was smooth and shining, her skin glowing, her eyes bright, and over all lay the indefinable extra, a typically American brand of grooming.

  She o
pened the door herself when I rang the bell and for an appreciable pause we simply looked at each other. What she saw was, I supposed, about six feet of solidly built chap, dark hair, dark eyes, no warts to speak of. Tidy, clean, house-trained and dressed in a conventional dinner jacket.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said.

  She smiled, nodded as if endorsing a decision, stepped out through the door, and pulled it shut behind her.

  ‘My sister lives here,’ she said, indicating the house. ‘I’m on a visit. She’s married to an Englishman.’

  I opened the car door for her. She sat smoothly inside, and I started the engine and drove off.

  ‘A visit from the States?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. From Westchester… outside New York.’

  ‘Executive ladder-climbing country?’ I said, smiling.

  She gave me a quick sideways glance. ‘You know Westchester?’

  ‘No. Been to New York a few times, that’s all.’

  We stopped at some traffic lights. She remarked that it was a fine night. I agreed.

  ‘Are you married?’ she said abruptly.

  ‘Did you bring the fiver?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Well… No, I’m not.’

  The light changed to green. We drove on.

  ‘Are you truthful?’ she said.

  ‘In that respect, yes. Not married now. Never have been.’

  ‘I like to know,’ she said with mild apology.

  ‘I don’t blame you.’

  ‘For the sakes of the wives.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I pulled up in due course in front of the Café Royal at Piccadilly Circus, and helped her out of the car. As we went in she looked back and saw a small thin man taking my place in the driving seat.

  ‘He works for me,’ I said. ‘He’ll park the car.’

  She looked amused. ‘He waits around to do that?’

  ‘On overtime, Saturday nights.’

  ‘So he likes it?’

  ‘Begs me to take out young ladies. Other times I do my own parking.’

  In the full light inside the hall she stopped for another straight look at what she’d agreed to dine with.

  ‘What do you expect of me?’ she said.

  ‘Before I collected you, I expected honesty, directness and prickles. Now that I’ve known you for half an hour I expect prickles, directness and honesty.’