by Dick Francis
She smiled widely, the white teeth shining and little pouches of fun swelling her lower eyelids.
‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘No… So what do you expect of me?’
‘Thoroughly gentlemanly conduct and a decent dinner.’
‘How dull.’
‘Take it or leave it.’
‘The bar,’ I said, pointing, ‘is over there. I take it.’
She gave me another flashing smile, younger sister to the first, and moved where I’d said. She drank vodka martini, I drank scotch, and we both ate a few black olives and spat out the stones genteelly into fists.
‘Do you usually pick up girls in the street?’ she said.
‘Only when they fall.’
‘Fallen girls?’
I laughed. ‘Not those, no.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
I took a mouthful of scotch. ‘I’m a sort of engineer.’ It sounded boring.
‘Bridges and things?’
‘Nothing so permanent or important.’
‘What then?’
I smiled wryly. ‘I make toys.’
‘You make… what?’
‘Toys. Things to play with.’
‘I know what toys are, damn it.’
‘What do you do?’ I asked, ‘In Westchestcr.’
She gave me an amused glance over her glass. ‘You take it for granted that I work?’
‘You have the air.’
‘I cook, then.’
‘Hamburgers and French fries?’
Her eyes gleamed. ‘Weddings and stuff. Parties.’
‘A lady caterer.’
She nodded. ‘With a girl friend. Millie.’
‘When do you go back?’
‘Thursday.’
Thursday suddenly seemed rather close. After a noticeable pause she added almost defensively, ‘It’s Christmas, you see. We’ve a lot of work then and around New Year. Millie couldn’t do it all alone.’
‘Of course not.’
We went into dinner and ate smoked trout and steak wrapped in pastry. She read the menu from start to finish with professional interest and checked with the head waiter the ingredients of two or three dishes.
‘So many things are different over here,’ she explained.
She knew little about wine. ‘I guess I drink it when I’m given it, but I’ve a better palate for spirits.’ The wine waiter looked sceptical, but she wiped that look off his face later by correctly identifying the brandy he brought with the coffee as Armagnac.
‘Where is your toy factory?’ she asked.
‘I don’t have a factory.’
‘But you said you made toys.’
‘Yes, I do.’
She looked disbelieving. ‘You don’t mean you actually make them. I mean, with your own hands?’
I smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘But…’ She looked round the velvety room with the thought showing as clear as spring water: if I worked with my hands how could I afford such a place.
‘I don’t often make them,’ I said. ‘Most of the time I go to the races.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I give in. You’ve got me hooked. Explain the mystery.’
‘Have some more coffee.’
‘Mr Scott…’ She stopped. ‘That sounds silly, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, Miss Ward, it does.’
‘Steven…’
‘Much better.’
‘My mother calls me Alexandra, Millie calls me Al. Take your pick.’
‘Allie?’
‘For God’s sakes.’
‘I invent toys,’ I said. ‘I patent them. Other people manufacture them. I collect royalties.’
‘Oh.’
‘Does “oh” mean enlightenment, fascination, or boredom to death?’
‘It means oh how extraordinary, oh how interesting, and oh I never knew people did things like that.’
‘Quite a lot do.’
‘Did you invent Monopoly?’
I laughed. ‘Unfortunately not.’
‘But that sort of thing?’
‘Mechanical toys, mostly.’
‘How odd…’ She stopped, thinking better of saying what was in her mind. I knew the reaction well, so I finished the sentence for her.
‘How odd for a grown man to spend his life in toyland?’
‘You said it.’
‘Children’s minds have to be fed.’
She considered it. ‘And the next bunch of leaders are children today?’
‘You rate it too high. The next lot of parents, teachers, louts and layabouts are children today.’
‘And you are fired with missionary zeal?’
‘All the way to the bank.’
‘Cynical.’
‘Better than pompous.’
‘More honest,’ she agreed. Her eyes smiled in the soft light, half mocking, half friendly, greeny-grey and shining, the whites ultra white. There was nothing wrong with the design of her eyebrows. Her nose was short and straight, her mouth curved up at the corners, and her cheeks had faint hollows in the right places. Assembled, the components added up not to a standard type of beauty, but to a face of character and vitality. Part of the story written, I thought. Lines of good fortune, none of discontent. No anxiety, no inner confusion. A good deal of self assurance, knowing she looked attractive and had succeeded in the job she’d chosen. Definitely not a virgin: a girl’s eyes were always different, after.
‘Are all your days busy,’ I asked, ‘Between now and Thursday?’
‘There are some minutes here and there.’
‘Tomorrow?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘Not a chink tomorrow. Monday if you like.’
‘I’ll collect you,’ I said. ‘Monday morning, at ten.’
4
Rupert Ramsey’s voice on the telephone sounded resigned rather than welcoming.
‘Yes, of course, do come down to see your horses, if you’d like to. Do you know the way?’
He gave me directions which proved easy to follow, and at eleven thirty, Sunday morning, I drove through his white painted stone gateposts and drew up in the large gravelled area before his house.
He lived in a genuine Georgian house, simple in design, with large airy rooms and elegant plaster-worked ceilings. Nothing self-consciously antique about the furnishings: all periods mingled together in a working atmosphere that was wholly modern.
Rupert himself was about forty-five, intensely energetic under a misleadingly languid exterior. His voice drawled slightly. I knew him only by sight and it was to all intents the first time we had met.
‘How do you do?’ He shook hands. ‘Care to come into my office?’
I followed him through the white painted front door, across the large square hall and into the room he called his office, but which was furnished entirely as a sitting-room except for a dining table which served as a desk, and a grey filing cabinet in one corner.
‘Do sit down.’ He indicated an armchair. ‘Cigarette?’
‘Don’t smoke.’
‘Wise man.’ He smiled as if he didn’t really think so and lit one for himself.
‘Energise,’ he said, ‘is showing signs of having had a hard race.’
‘But he won easily,’ I said.
‘It looked that way, certainly.’ He inhaled, breathing out through his nose. ‘All the same, I’m not too happy about him.’
‘In what way?’
‘He needs building up. We’ll do it, don’t you fear. But he looks a bit thin at present.’
‘How about the other two?’
‘Dial’s jumping out of his skin. Ferryboat needs a lot of work yet.’
‘I don’t think Ferryboat likes racing any more.’
The cigarette paused on its way to his mouth.
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
‘He’s had three races this autumn. I expect you’ll have looked up his form. He’s run badly every time. Last year he was full of enthusiasm and w
on three times out of seven starts, but the last of them took a lot of winning… and Raymond Child cut him raw with his whip… and during the summer out at grass Ferryboat seems to have decided that if he gets too near the front he’s in for a beating, so it’s only good sense not to get near the front… and he consequently isn’t trying.’
He drew deeply on the cigarette, giving himself time.
‘Do you expect me to get better results than Jody?’
‘With Ferryboat, or in general?’
‘Let’s say… both.’
I smiled. ‘I don’t expect much from Ferryboat. Dial’s a novice, an unknown quantity. Energise might win the Champion Hurdle.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said pleasantly.
‘No… I expect you to get different results from Jody. Will that do?’
‘I’d very much like to know why you left him.’
‘Disagreements over money,’ I said. ‘Not over the way he trained the horses.’
He tapped ash off with the precision that meant his mind was elsewhere. When he spoke, it was slowly.
‘Were you always satisfied with the way your horses ran?’
The question hovered delicately in the air, full of inviting little traps. He looked up suddenly and met my eyes and his own widened with comprehension. ‘I see you understand what I’m asking.’
‘Yes. But I can’t answer. Jody says he will sue me for slander if I tell people why I left him, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.’
‘That remark in itself is a slander.’
‘Indubitably.’
He got cheerfully to his feet and stubbed out the cigarette. A good deal more friendliness seeped into his manner.
‘Right then, Let’s go out and look at your horses.’
We went out into his yard, which showed prosperity at every turn. The thin cold December sun shone on fresh paint, wall-to-wall tarmac, tidy flower tubs and well-kept stable lads. There was none of the clutter I was accustomed to at Jody’s; no brooms leaning against walls, no rugs, rollers, brushes and bandages lying in ready heaps, no straggles of hay across the swept ground. Jody liked to give owners the impression that work was being done, that care for the horses was non-stop. Rupert, it seemed, preferred to tuck the sweat and toil out of sight. At Jody’s, the muck heap was always with you. At Rupert’s it was invisible.
‘Dial is here.’
We stopped at a box along a row outside the main quadrangle, and with an unobtrusive flick of his fingers Rupert summoned a lad hovering twenty feet away.
‘This is Donny,’ he said. ‘Looks after Dial.’
I shook hands with Donny, a young tough-looking boy of about twenty with unsmiling eyes and a you-can’t-con-me expression. From the look he directed first at Rupert and then later at the horse I gathered that this was his overall attitude to life, not an announcement of no confidence in me personally. When we’d looked at and admired the robust little chestnut I tried Donny with a fiver. It raised a nod of thanks, but no smile.
Further along the same row stood Ferryboat, looking out on the world with a lack-lustre eye and scarcely shifting from one leg to the other when we went into his box. His lad, in contrast to Donny, gave him an indulgent smile, and accepted his gift from me with a beam.
‘Energise is in the main yard,’ Rupert said, leading the way. ‘Across in the corner.’
When we were halfway there two other cars rolled up the drive and disgorged a collection of men in sheepskin coats and ladies in furs and jangly bracelets. They saw Rupert and waved and began to stream into the yard.
Rupert said, ‘I’ll show you Energise in just a moment.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You tell me which box he’s in. I’ll look at him myself. You see to your other owners.’
‘Number fourteen, then. I’ll be with you again shortly.’
I nodded and walked on to number fourteen. Unbolted the door. Went in. The near-black horse was tied up inside. Ready, I supposed, for my visit.
Horse and I looked at each other. My old friend, I thought. The only one of them all with whom I’d ever had any real contact. I talked to him, as in the horsebox, looking guiltily over my shoulder at the open door, for fear someone should hear me and think me nuts.
I could see at once why Rupert had been unhappy about him. He looked thinner. All that crashing about in the horsebox could have done him no good.
Across the yard I could see Rupert talking to the newcomers and shepherding them to their horses. Owners came en masse on Sunday mornings.
I was content to stay where I was. I spent probably twenty minutes with my black horse, and he instilled in me some very strange ideas.
Rupert came back hurrying and apologising. ‘You’re still here… I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ I assured him.
‘Come into the house for a drink.’
‘I’d like to.’
We joined the other owners and returned to his office for lavish issues of gin and scotch. Drinks for visiting owners weren’t allowable as a business expense for tax purposes unless the visiting owners were foreign. Jody had constantly complained of it to all and sundry while accepting cases of the stuff from me with casual nods. Rupert poured generously and dropped no hints, and I found it a refreshing change.
The other owners were excitedly making plans for the Christmas meeting at Kempton Park. Rupert made introductions, explaining that Energise, too, was due to run there in the Christmas Hurdle.
‘After the way he won at Sandown,’ remarked one of the sheepskin coats, ‘he must be a cast-iron certainty.’
I glanced at Rupert for an opinion but he was busy with bottles and glasses.
‘I hope so,’ I said.
The sheepskin coat nodded sagely.
His wife, a cosy-looking lady who had shed her ocelot and now stood five-feet-nothing in bright green wool, looked from him to me in puzzlement.
‘But George honey, Energise is trained by that nice young man with the pretty little wife. You know, the one who introduced us to Ganser Mays.’
She smiled happily and appeared not to notice the pole-axed state of her audience. I must have stood immobile for almost a minute while the implications fizzed around my brain, and during that time the conversation between George-honey and the bright green wool had flowed on into the chances of their own chaser in a later race. I dragged them back.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but I didn’t catch your names.’
‘George Vine,’ said the sheepskin coat, holding out a chunky hand, ‘and my wife, Poppet.’
‘Steven Scott,’ I said.
‘Glad to know you.’ He gave his empty glass to Rupert, who amiably refilled it with gin and tonic. ‘Poppet doesn’t read the racing news much, so she wouldn’t know you’ve left Jody Leeds.’
‘Did you say,’ I asked carefully, ‘that Jody Leeds introduced you to Ganser Mays?’
‘Oh no’ Poppet said, smiling. ‘His wife did.’
‘That’s right,’ George nodded. ‘Bit of luck.’
‘You see,’ Poppet explained conversationally, ‘the prices on the Tote are sometimes so awfully small and it’s all such a lottery isn’t it? I mean, you never know really what you’re going to get for your money, like you do with the bookies.’
‘Is that what she said?’ I asked.
‘Who? Oh… Jody Leeds’ wife. Yes, that’s right, she did. I’d just been picking up my winnings on one of our horses from the Tote, you see, and she was doing the same at the next window, the Late-Pay window that was, and she said what a shame it was that the Tote was only paying three to one when the bookies’ starting price was five to one, and I absolutely agreed with her, and we just sort of stood there chatting. I told her that only last week we had bought the steeplechaser which had just won and it was our first ever racehorse, and she was so interested and explained that she was a trainer’s wife and that sometimes when she got tired of the Tote paying out so little she bet with a bookie. I said I didn
’t like pushing along the rows with all those men shoving and shouting and she laughed and said she meant one on the rails, so you could just walk up to them and not go through to the bookies’ enclosure at all. But of course you have to know them, I mean, they have to know you, if you see what I mean. And neither George nor I knew any of them, as I explained to Mrs Leeds.’
She stopped to take a sip of gin. I listened in fascination.
‘Well,’ she went on, ‘Mrs Leeds sort of hesitated and then I got this great idea of asking her if she could possibly introduce us to her bookie on the rails.’
‘And she did?’
‘She thought it was a great idea.’
She would.
‘So we collected George and she introduced us to dear Ganser Mays. And,’ she finished triumphantly, ‘he gives us much better odds than the Tote.’
George Vine nodded several times in agreement.
‘Trouble is,’ he said, ‘you know what wives are, she bets more than ever.’
‘George honey.’ A token protest only.
‘You know you do, love.’
‘It isn’t worth doing in sixpences,’ she said smiling. ‘You never win enough that way.’
He patted her fondly on the shoulder and said man-to-man to me, ‘When Ganser Mays’ account comes, if she’s won, she takes the winnings, and if she’s lost, I pay.’
Poppet smiled happily. ‘George honey, you’re sweet.’
‘Which do you do most?’ I asked her. ‘Win or lose?’
She made a face. ‘Now that’s a naughty question, Mr Scott.’
Next morning, ten o’clock to the second, I collected Allie from Hampstead.
Seen in daylight for the first time she was sparkling as the day was rotten. I arrived at her door with a big black umbrella holding off slanting sleet, and she opened it in a neat white mackintosh and knee-high black boots. Her hair bounced with new washing, and the bloom on her skin had nothing to do with Max Factor.
I tried a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek. She smelled of fresh flowers and bath soap.
‘Good morning,’ I said.
She chuckled. ‘You English are so formal.’
‘Not always.’
She sheltered under the umbrella down the path to the car and sat inside with every glossy hair dry and in place.