by Dick Francis
‘Where are we going?’
‘Fasten your lap straps,’ I said. ‘To Newmarket.’
‘Newmarket?’
‘To look at horses.’ I let in the clutch and pointed the Lamborghini roughly north-east.
‘I might have guessed.’
I grinned. ‘Is there anything you’d really rather do?’
‘I’ve visited three museums, four picture galleries, six churches, one Tower of London, two Houses of Parliament and seven theatres.’
‘In how long?’
‘Sixteen days.’
‘High time you saw some real life.’
The white teeth flashed. ‘If you’d lived with my two small nephews for sixteen days you couldn’t wait to get away from it.’
‘Your sister’s children?’
She nodded. ‘Ralph and William. Little devils.’
‘What do they play with?’
She was amused. ‘The toy maker’s market research?’
‘The customer is always right.’
We crossed the North Circular road and took the Ai towards Baldock.
‘Ralph dresses up a doll in soldier’s uniforms and William makes forts on the stairs and shoots dried beans at anyone going up.’
‘Healthy aggressive stuff.’
‘When I was little I hated being given all those educational things that were supposed to be good for you.’
I smiled. ‘It’s well known there are two sorts of toys. The ones that children like and the ones their mothers buy. Guess which there are more of?’
‘You’re cynical.’
‘So I’m often told,’ I said. ‘It isn’t true.’
The wipers worked overtime against the sleet on the windscreen and I turned up the heater. She sighed with what appeared to be contentment. The car purred easily across Cambridgeshire and into Suffolk, and the ninety minute journey seemed short.
It wasn’t the best of weather but even in July the stable I’d chosen for my three young flat racers would have looked depressing. There were two smallish quadrangles side by side, built tall and solid in Edwardian brick. All the doors were painted a dead dull dark brown. No decorations, no flowers, no grass, no gaiety of spirit in the whole place.
Like many Newmarket yards it led straight off the street and was surrounded by houses. Allie looked around without enthusiasm and put into words exactly what I was thinking.
‘It looks more like a prison.’
Bars on the windows of the boxes. Solid ten foot tall gates at the road entrance. Jagged glass set in concrete along the top of the boundary wall. Padlocks swinging on every bolt on every door in sight. All that was missing was a uniformed figure with a gun, and maybe they had those too, on occasion.
The master of all this security proved pretty dour himself. Trevor Kennet shook hands with a smile that looked an unaccustomed effort for the muscles involved and invited us into the stable office out of the rain.
A bare room; linoleum, scratched metal furniture, strip lighting and piles of paper work. The contrast between this and the grace of Rupert Ramsey was remarkable. A pity I had taken Allie to the wrong one.
‘They’ve settled well, your horses.’ His voice dared me to disagree.
‘Splendid,’ I said mildly.
‘You’ll want to see them, I expect.’
As I’d come from London to do so, I felt his remark silly.
‘They’re doing no work yet, of course.’
‘No,’ I agreed. The last Flat season had finished six weeks ago. The next lay some three months ahead. No owner in his senses would have expected his Flat horses to be in full work in December. Trevor Kennet had a genius for the obvious.
‘It’s raining,’ he said. ‘Bad day to come.’
Allie and I were both wearing macs, and I carried the umbrella. He looked lengthily at these preparations and finally shrugged.
‘Better come on, then.’
He himself wore a raincoat and a droopy hat that had suffered downpours for years. He led the way out of the office and across the first quadrangle with Allie and me close under my umbrella behind him.
He flicked the bolts on one of the dead chocolate doors and pulled both halves open.
‘Wrecker,’ he said.
We went into the box. Wrecker moved hastily away across the peat which covered the floor, a leggy bay yearling colt with a nervous disposition. Trevor Kennet made no effort to reassure him but stood four square looking at him with an assessing eye. Jody for all his faults had been good with young stock, fondling them and talking to them with affection. I thought I might have chosen badly, sending Wrecker here.
‘He needs a gentle lad,’ I said.
Kennet’s expression was open scorn. ‘Doesn’t do to mollycoddle them. Soft horses win nothing.’
End of conversation.
We went out into the rain and he slammed the bolts home. Four boxes further along he stopped again.
‘Hermes.’
Again the silent appraisal. Hermes, from the experience of two full racing seasons, could look at humans without anxiety and merely stared back. Ordinary to look at, he had won several races in masterly fashion… and lost every time I’d seriously backed him. Towards the end of the Flat season he had twice trailed in badly towards the rear of the field. Too much racing, Jody had said. Needed a holiday.
‘What do you think of him?’ I asked.
‘He’s eating well,’ Kennet said.
I waited for more, but nothing came. After a short pause we trooped out again into the rain and more or less repeated the whole depressing procedure in the box of my third colt, Bubbleglass.
I had great hopes of Bubbleglass. A late-developing two-year-old, he had run only once so far, and without much distinction. At three, though, he might be fun. He had grown and filled out since I’d seen him last. When I said so, Kennet remarked that it was only to be expected.
We all went back to the office, Kennet offered us coffee and looked relieved when I said we’d better be going.
‘What an utterly dreary place,’ Allie said, as we drove away.
‘Designed to discourage owners from calling too often, I dare say.’
She was surprised. ‘Do you mean it?’
‘Some trainers think owners should pay their bills and shut up.’
‘That’s crazy.’
I glanced sideways at her.
She said positively, ‘If I was spending all that dough, I’d sure expect to be welcomed.’
‘Biting the hand that feeds is a national sport.’
‘You’re all nuts.’
‘How about some lunch?’
We stopped at a pub which did a fair job for a Monday, and in the afternoon drove comfortably back to London. Allie made no objections when I pulled up outside my own front door and followed me in through it with none of the prickly reservations I’d feared.
I lived in the two lower floors of a tall narrow house in Prince Albert Road overlooking Regent’s Park. At street level, garage, cloakroom, workshop. Upstairs, bed, bath, kitchen and sitting-room, the last with a balcony half as big as itself. I switched on lights and led the way.
‘A bachelor’s pad if ever I saw one,’ Allie said, looking around her. ‘Not a frill in sight.’ She walked across and looked out through the sliding glass wall to the balcony. ‘Don’t you just hate all that traffic?’
Cars drove incessantly along the road below, yellow sidelights shining through the glistening rain.
‘I quite like it,’ I said. ‘In the summer I practically live out there on the balcony… breathing in great lungfuls of exhaust fumes and waiting for the clouds to roll away.’
She laughed, unbuttoned her mac and took it off. The red dress underneath looked as unruffled as it had at lunch. She was the one splash of bright colour in that room of creams and browns, and she was feminine enough to know it.
‘Drink?’ I suggested.
‘It’s a bit early…’ She looked around her as if she had expected to see more
than sofas and chairs. ‘Don’t you keep any of your toys here?’
‘In the workshop,’ I said. ‘Downstairs.’
‘I’d love to see them.’
‘All right.’
We went down to the hall again and turned towards the back of the house. I opened the civilised wood-panelled door which led straight from carpet to concrete, from white collar to blue, from champagne to tea breaks. The familiar smell of oil and machinery waited there in the dark. I switched on the stark bright lights and stood aside for her to go through.
‘But it is… a factory.’ She sounded astonished.
‘What did you expect?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Something much smaller, I guess.’
The workshop was fifty feet long and was the reason I had bought the house on my twenty-third birthday with money I had earned myself. Selling off the three top floors had given me enough back to construct my own first floor flat, but the heart of the matter lay here, legacy of an old-fashioned light engineering firm that had gone bust.
The pulley system that drove nearly the whole works from one engine was the original, even if now powered by electricity instead of steam, and although I had replaced one or two and added another, the old machines still worked well.
‘Explain it to me,’ Allie said.
‘Well… this electric engine here…’ I showed her its compact floor-mounted shape. ‘… drives that endless belt, which goes up there round that big wheel.’
‘Yes.’ She looked up where I pointed.
‘The wheel is fixed to that long shaft which stretches right down the workshop, near the ceiling. When it rotates, it drives all those other endless belts going down to the machines. Look, I’ll show you.’
I switched on the electric motor and immediately the big belt from it turned the wheel, which rotated the shaft, which set the other belts circling from the shaft down to the machines. The only noises were the hum of the engines, the gentle whine of the spinning shaft and the soft slapping of the belts.
‘It looks alive,’ Allie said. ‘How do you make the machines work?’
‘Engage a sort of gear inside the belt, then the belt revolves the spindle of the machine.’
‘Like a sewing machine,’ Allie said.
‘More or less.’
We walked down the row. She wanted to know what job each did, and I told her.
‘That’s a milling machine, for flat surfaces. That’s a speed lathe; I use that for wood as well as metal. That tiny lathe came from a watchmaker for ultra fine work. That’s a press. That’s a polisher. That’s a hacksaw. And that’s a drilling machine; it bores holes downwards.’
I turned round and pointed to the other side of the workshop.
‘That big one on its own is an engine lathe, for heavier jobs. It has its own electric power.’
‘It’s incredible. All this.’
‘Just for toys?’
‘Well…’
‘These machines are all basically simple. They just save a lot of time.’
‘Do toys have to be so… well… accurate?’
‘I mostly make the prototypes in metal and wood. Quite often they reach the shops in plastic, but unless the engineering’s right in the first place the toys don’t work very well, and break easily.’
‘Where do you keep them?’ She looked around at the bare well-swept area with no work in sight.
‘Over there. In the right-hand cupboard.’
I went over with her and opened the big double doors. She pulled them wider with outstretched arms.
‘Oh!’ She looked utterly astounded.
She stood in front of the shelves with her mouth open and her eyes staring, just like a child.
‘Oh,’ she said again, as if she could get no breath to say anything else. ‘Oh… They’re the Rola toys!’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Why didn’t you say so?’
‘Habit, really. I never do.’
She gave me a smile without turning her eyes away from the bright coloured rows in the cupboard. ‘Do so many people ask for free samples?’
‘It’s just that I get tired of talking about them.’
‘But I played with them myself.’ She switched her gaze abruptly in my direction, looking puzzled. ‘I had a lot of them in the States ten or twelve years ago.’ Her voice plainly implied that I was too young to have made those.
‘I was only fifteen when I did the first one,’ I explained. ‘I had an uncle who had a workshop in his garage… he was a welder, himself. He’d shown me how to use tools from the time I was six. He was pretty shrewd. He made me take out patents before I showed my idea to anyone, and he raised and lent me the money to pay for them.’
‘Pay?’
‘Patents are expensive and you have to take out one for each different country, if you don’t want your idea pinched. Japan, I may say, costs the most.’
‘Good heavens.’ She turned back to the cupboard, put out her hand and lifted out the foundation of all my fortunes, the merry-go-round.
‘I had the carousel,’ she said. ‘Just like this, but different colours.’ She twirled the centre spindle between finger and thumb so that the platform revolved and the little horses rose and fell on their poles. ‘I simply can’t believe it.’
She put the merry-go-round back in its slot and one by one lifted out several of the others, exclaiming over old friends and investigating the strangers. ‘Do you have a Rola-base down here?’
‘Sure,’ I said, lifting it from the bottom of the cupboard.
‘Oh do let me… please?’ She was as excited as if she’d still been little. I carried the base over to the workbench and laid it there, and she came over with four of the toys.
The Rola-base consisted of a large flat box, in this case two feet square by six inches deep, though several other sizes had been made. From one side protruded a handle for winding, and one had to have that side of the Rola-base aligned with the edge of the table, so that winding was possible. Inside the box were the rollers which gave the toy its phonetic Rola name; wide rollers carrying a long flat continuous belt inset with many rows of sideway facing cogwheel teeth. In the top of the box were corresponding rows of holes: dozens of holes altogether. Each of the separate mechanical toys, like the merry-go-round and a hundred others, had a central spindle which protruded down from beneath the toy and was grooved like a cogwheel. When one slipped any spindle through any hole it engaged on the belt of cog teeth below, and when one turned the single handle in the Rola-base, the wide belt of cog teeth moved endlessly round and all the spindles rotated and all the toys performed their separate tasks. A simple locking device on the base of each toy engaged with stops by each hole to prevent the toy rotating as a whole.
Allie had brought the carousel and the roller-coaster from the fairground set, and a cow from the farm set, and the firing tank from the army set. She slotted the spindles through random holes and turned the handle. The merry-go-round went round and round, the trucks went up and down the roller-coaster, the cow nodded its head and swished its tail, and the tank rotated with sparks coming out of its gun barrel.
She laughed with pleasure.
‘I don’t believe it. I simply don’t believe it. I never dreamt you could have made the Rola toys.’
‘I’ve made others, though.’
‘What sort?’
‘Um… the latest in the shops is a coding machine. It’s doing quite well this Christmas.’
‘You don’t mean the Secret Coder?’
‘Yes.’ I was surprised she knew of it.
‘Do show me. My sister’s giving one each to the boys, but they were already gift-wrapped.’
So I showed her the coder, which looked like providing me with racehorses for some time to come, as a lot of people besides children had found it compulsive. The new adult version was much more complicated but also much more expensive, which somewhat increased the royalties.
From the outside the children’s version
looked like a box, smaller than a shoe box, with a sloping top surface. Set in this were letter keys exactly like a conventional typewriter, except that there were no numbers, no punctuations and no space bar.
‘How does it work?’ Allie asked.
‘You type your message and it comes out in code.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Try it.’
She gave me an amused look, turned so that I couldn’t see her fingers, and with one hand expertly typed about twenty-five letters. From the end of the box a narrow paper strip emerged, with letters typed on it in groups of five.
‘What now?’
‘Tear the strip off,’ I said.
She did that. ‘It’s like ticker-tape,’ she said.
‘It is. Same size, anyway.’
She held it out to me. I looked at it and came as close to blushing as I’m ever likely to.
‘Can you read it just like that?’ she exclaimed. ‘Some coder, if you can read it at a glance.’
‘I invented the damn thing,’ I said. ‘I know it by heart.’
‘How does it work?’
‘There’s a cylinder inside with twelve complete alphabets on it, each arranged in a totally random manner and all different. You set this dial here… see,’ I showed her, ‘to any numbers from one to twelve. Then you type your message. Inside, the keys don’t print the letter, you press on the outside, but the letter that’s aligned with it inside. There’s an automatic spring which jumps after every five presses, so the message comes out in groups of five.’
‘It’s fantastic. My sister says the boys have been asking for them for weeks. Lots of children they know have them, all sending weird secret messages all over the place and driving their mothers wild.’
‘You can make more involved codes by feeding the coded message through again, or backwards,’ I said. ‘Or by switching the code number every few letters. All the child receiving the message needs to know is the numbers he has to set on his own dial.’
‘How do I decode this?’
‘Put that tiny lever… there… down instead of up, and just type the coded message. It will come out as it went in, except still in groups of five letters, of course. Try it.’
She herself looked confused. She screwed up the tape and laughed, ‘I guess I don’t need to.’