by Dick Francis
‘I’m glad he didn’t hit the beeches,’ said the Prince, and left me unsure whether it was for Johnny’s sake or theirs. ‘Sorry about your car, of course. I hope it was insured, and all that? Better just tell the insurers it was a parking accident. Keep it simple. Cars get written off so easily, these days. You don’t want to claim against Johnny, or anything like that, do you?’
I shook my head reassuringly. The Prince smiled faintly with relief and relaxed several notches.
‘We don’t want the place crawling with Press, do you see? Telephoto lenses… Any sniff of this and they’d be down here in droves.’
‘But too late for the action,’ I said.
He looked at me in alarm. ‘You won’t say anything about us hauling Johnny out, will you? Not to anyone. I don’t want the Press getting hold of a story like that. It really doesn’t do.’
‘Would you mind people knowing you would take a slight risk to rescue your wife’s brother, sir?’
‘Yes, I should,’ he said positively. ‘Don’t you say a word, there’s a good chap.’ He cast a glance at my singed hair. ‘And not so much of the “slight”, come to that.’ He put his head on one side. ‘We could say you did it yourself, if you like.’
‘No, sir, I don’t like.’
‘Didn’t think you would. You wouldn’t want them crawling all over you with their notebooks any more than I should.’
He turned away and with a movement of his hand that was more a suggestion than a command, he called over the hovering gardener.
‘What do we do about all this, Bob?’ he said.
The gardener was knowledgeable about breakdown trucks and suitable garages, and said he would fix it. His manner with the Prince was comfortable and spoke of long term mutual respect, which would have irritated the anti-royalists no end.
‘Don’t know what I’d do without Bob,’ confirmed the Prince as we walked back towards the house. ‘If I ring up shops or garages and say who I am they either don’t believe it and say yes, they’re the Queen of Sheba, or else they’re so fussed they don’t listen properly and get everything wrong. Bob will get those cars shifted without any trouble, but if I tried to arrange it myself the first people to arrive would be the reporters.’
He stopped on the doorstep and looked back at the skeleton of what had been my favourite vehicle.
‘We’ll have to fix you a car to get home in,’ he said. ‘Lend you one.’
‘Sir,’ I said. ‘Who or what is Alyosha?’
‘Ha!’ he said explosively, his head turning to me sharply, his eyes suddenly shining. ‘That’s the first bit of interest you’ve shown without me actually forcing you into it.’
‘I did say I would see what I could do.’
‘Meaning to do as precious little as possible.’
‘Well, I…’
‘And looking as if you’d been offered rotting fish.’
‘Er…’ I said. ‘Well… what about Alyosha?’
‘That’s just the point,’ the Prince said. ‘We don’t know about Alyosha. That’s just what I want you to find out.’
Johnny Farringford got himself out of hospital and back home pretty fast, and I drove over to see him three days after the accident.
‘Sorry about your car,’ he said, looking at the Range-Rover in which I had arrived. ‘Bit of a buggers’ muddle, what?’
He was slightly nervous, and still pale. The numerous facial cuts were healing with the quick crusts of youth and looked unlikely to leave permanent scars; and he moved as if the soreness still in his body was after all more a matter of muscle than bone. Nothing, I thought a shade ruefully, that would stop him training hard for the Olympics.
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Coffee, and all that.’
He led the way into a thatched cottage and we stepped straight into a room that deserved a magazine article on traditional country living. Stone flagged floors, good rugs, heavy supporting beams, inglenook fire-place, exposed old bricks, and masses of sagging sofas and chairs in faded chintzy covers.
‘This place isn’t mine,’ he said, sensing my inspection. ‘It’s rented. I’ll get the coffee.’
He headed towards a door at the far end, and I slowly followed. The kitchen, where he was pouring boiling water into a filter pot, was as modern as money could make it.
‘Sugar? Milk?’ he said. ‘Would you rather have tea?’
‘Milk, please. Coffee’s fine.’
He carried the loaded tray back into the living-room and put it on a low table in front of the fire-place. Logs were stacked there ready on a heap of old dead ash, but the fire, like the cottage itself, was cold. I coughed a couple of times and drank the hot liquid gratefully, warmed inside if not out.
‘How are you feeling now?’ I asked.
‘Oh… all right.’
‘Still shaken, I should imagine.’
He shivered. ‘I understand I’m lucky to be alive. Good of you to dig me out, and all that.’
‘It was your brother-in-law, as much as me.’
‘Beyond the call of duty, one might say.’
He fidgeted with the sugar bowl and his spoon, making small movements for their own sake.
‘Tell me about Alyosha,’ I said.
He flicked a quick glance at my face and looked away, leaving me the certainty that what he mainly felt at that moment was depression.
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said tiredly. ‘Alyosha is just a name which cropped up in the summer. One of the German team died at Burghley in September, and someone said it was because of Alyosha who came from Moscow. Of course there were enquiries and so on, but I never heard the results because I wasn’t directly involved, do you see?’
‘But… indirectly?’ I suggested.
He gave me another quick glance and a faint smile.
‘I knew him quite well. The German chap. One does, do you see? One meets all the same people everywhere, at every international event.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well… I went out with him one evening, to a club in London. I was stupid, I admit it, but I thought it was just a gambling club. He played backgammon, as I do. I had taken him to my club a few days earlier, you know, so I thought he was just repaying my, er, hospitality.’
‘But it wasn’t just a gambling club?’ I said, prompting him as he lapsed into gloomy silence.
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘It was full of, well… transvestites.’ His depression increased. ‘I didn’t realise, at first. No one would have done. They all looked like women. Attractive. Pretty, even, some of them. We were shown to a table. It was dark. And there was this girl, in the spotlight, doing a striptease, taking off a lot of cloudy gold scarf things. She was beautiful… dark-skinned, but not black… marvellous dark eyes… the most stunning little breasts. She undressed right down to the skin and then did a sort of dance with a bright pink feathery boa thing… it was brilliant, really. One would see her backview totally naked, but when she turned round there was always the boa falling in the… er… strategic place. When it was over, and I was applauding, Hans leant across grinning like a monkey and said into my ear, that she was a boy.’ He grimaced. ‘I felt a complete fool. I mean… one doesn’t mind seeing performances like that if one knows. But to be taken in…’
‘Embarrassing,’ I said, agreeing.
‘I laughed it off,’ he said. ‘I mean, one has to, doesn’t one? And there was sort of weird fascination, of course. Hans said he had seen the boy in a nightclub in West Berlin, and he had thought it might amuse me. He seemed to be enjoying my discomfiture. Thought it a huge joke. I had to pretend to take it well, do you see, because he was my host, but to be honest, I thought it a bit off.’
A spot of dented pride, I thought.
‘The Event started two days after that,’ he said, ‘and Hans died the day after, after the cross-country.’
‘How?’ I asked. ‘How did he die?’
‘Heart attack.’
I was surprised. ‘Wasn’t he a bit young?’
‘Yes,’ Johnny said. ‘Only thirty-six. Makes one think, doesn’t it?’
‘And then what happened?’ I said.
‘Oh… nothing, really. Nothing one could put one’s finger on. But there were these rumours flying about, and I expect I was the last to hear them, that there was something queer about Hans, and about me as well. That we were, in fact, gay, if you see what I mean? And that a certain Alyosha from Moscow was jealous and had made a fuss with Hans, and because of it all he had a heart attack. And there was a message, do you see, that if I ever went to Moscow, Alyosha would be waiting.’
‘What sort of message? I mean, in what form was it delivered?’ I said.
He looked frustrated. ‘But that’s just it, the message itself was only a rumour. Everyone seemed to know it. I was told it by several people. I just don’t know who started it.’
‘Did you take it seriously?’ I asked.
‘No, of course I didn’t. It’s all rubbish. No one would have the slightest reason to be jealous of me when it came to Hans Kramer. In fact, you know, I more or less avoided him after that evening, as much as one could do without being positively boorish, do you see?’
I put my empty cup on the tray and wished I had worn a second sweater. Johnny himself seemed totally impervious to cold.
‘But your brother-in-law,’ I said, ‘takes it very seriously indeed.’
He made a face. ‘He’s paranoid about the Press. Haven’t you noticed?’
‘He certainly doesn’t seem to like them.’
‘They persecuted him when he was trying to keep them off the scent of his romance with my sister. I thought it a bit of a laugh, really, but I suppose it wasn’t to him. And then there was a lot of brouhaha, if you remember, because a fortnight after the engagement our mama upped and scarpered with her hairdresser.’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ I said.
‘Just before I went to Eton,’ Johnny said. ‘It slightly deflated my confidence, do you see, at a point when a fellow needs all he can get.’ He spoke flippantly, but the echo of a desperate hurt was clearly there. ‘So they couldn’t get married for months, and when they did, the papers raked up my mama’s sex-life practically every day. And any time there’s any real news story about any of us, up it pops again. Which is why HRH has this thing.’
‘I can see,’ I said soberly, ‘why he wouldn’t want you mixed up in a murky scandal at the Olympics with the eyes of the gossip columns swivelling your way like searchlights. Particularly with transvestite overtones.’
The Prince’s alarm, indeed, seemed to me now to be entirely justified, but Johnny disagreed.
‘There can’t be any scandal, because there isn’t any,’ he said. ‘The whole thing is absolutely stupid.’
‘I think that’s what your brother-in-law wants to prove, and the Foreign Office also, because anyone going to Russia is vulnerable, but anyone with a reputation for homosexual behaviour is a positive political risk, as it is still very much against the law there. They do want you to take part in the Olympics. They’re trying to get me to investigate the rumours entirely for your sake.’
He compressed his mouth obstinately. ‘But there isn’t any need.’
‘What about the men?’ I said.
‘What men?’
‘The men who attacked you and warned you off Alyosha.’
‘Oh.’ He looked blank. ‘Well… I should think it’s obvious that whoever Alyosha is, she doesn’t want an investigation any more than I do. It will probably do her a lot of harm… did you think of that?’
He stood up restlessly, picked up the tray, and carried it out to the kitchen. He rattled the cups out there for a bit and when he came back showed no inclination to sit down again.
‘Come out and see the horses,’ he said.
‘Tell me about the men first,’ I said persuasively.
‘What about them?’
He put a foot on a pile of logs beside the fire and fiddled unnecessarily with the fire tongs.
‘Were they English?’
He looked up in surprise. ‘Well, I suppose so.’
‘You heard them speak. What sort of accents did they have?’
‘Ordinary. I mean… well, you know… ordinary working-class accents.’
‘But they differ,’ I said. He shook his head, but all accents differed, to my mind, to an infinitely variable degree.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘were they Irish? Scots? Geordies? London? Birmingham? Liverpool? West Country? All those are easy.’
‘London, then,’ he said.
‘Not foreign? Not Russian, for example?’
‘No.’ He seemed to see the point for the first time. ‘They had a rough, sloppy way of speaking, swallowing all the consonants. Southern England. London or the South-East, I should think, or Berkshire.’
‘The accent you hear around here, every day?’
‘I suppose so, yes. Anyway, I didn’t notice anything special about it.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘They were both big.’ He arranged the fire irons finally in a tidy row and straightened to his full height. ‘Taller than I am. They were just men. Nothing remarkable. No beards or limps or scars down the cheek. I’m awfully sorry to be so useless, but honestly I don’t think I’d know them again if I passed them in the street.’
‘But you would,’ I guessed, ‘if they walked into this room.’
‘You mean I’d feel it was them?’
‘I mean I expect you remember more than you think, and if your memory were jogged it would all come rushing back.’
He looked doubtful, but he said, ‘If I do see them again, I’ll certainly let you know.’
‘They might of course return with another, er, warning,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘If you can’t persuade your brother-in-law to drop the whole affair.’
‘Christ, do you think so?’ He swung his thin beaky nose towards the door as if expecting instant attack. ‘You do say the most bloody comforting things, don’t you?’
‘The crude deterrent,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Biff bang.’
‘Oh… yes.’
‘Cheap and often effective,’ I said.
‘Yes, well. I mean… so what?’
‘So who was it meant to deter? You, me, or your brother-in-law?’
He gave me a slow look behind which the alternatives seemed to be being inspected for the first time.
‘See what you mean,’ he said. ‘But it’s too subtle for me by half. Come out and see the horses. Now those I do understand. Even if they kill you, there’s no malice.’
He shed a good deal of his nervousness and most of his depression as we walked the fifty yards across the country road to the stables. Horses were his natural element, and being among them obviously gave him comfort and confidence. I wondered whether his half-controlled jitters with me were simply because I was human, and not because of my errand.
The stable yard was a small quadrangle of elderly wooden boxes round an area of impacted clay and gravel. There were clipped patches of grass, a straggling tree, and empty tubs for flowers. Green paint, nearing the end of its life. A feeling that weeds would grow in the spring.
‘When I inherit the lolly, I’ll buy a better yard,’ Johnny said, uncannily picking up my thoughts again. ‘This is rented. Trustees, do you see.’
‘It’s a friendly place,’ I said mildly.
‘Unsuitable.’
The trustees however had put the money where it mattered, which was in four legs, head and tail. Although it was then the comparative rest period of their annual cycle, the five resident horses looked well-muscled and fit. For the most part bred by thoroughbred stallions out of hunter mares, they had looks as well as performance, and Johnny told me the history of each with a decisive and far from casual pride. I saw come alive in him for the first time the single-minded, driving fanaticism which had to be there: the essential fuel for Olympic fire.
Even the crinkly red hair see
med to crisp into tighter curls, though I dare say this was due to the dampness in the air. But there was nothing climatic about the zeal in the eye, the tautness of the jaw, or the intensity of his manner. Enthusiasm of that order was bound to be infectious. I found myself responding to it easily, and understood why everyone was so anxious to make his Russian journey possible.
‘I’ve an outside chance for the British team with this fellow,’ he said, briskly slapping the rounded quarters of a long-backed chestnut, and reeling off the fullest list of successes. ‘But he’s not top world class. I know that. I need something better. The German horse. I’ve seen him. I really covet that horse.’ He let out his breath abruptly and gave a small laugh, as if hearing his own obsession and wanting to disguise it. ‘I do go on a bit.’
The self-deprecation in his voice showed nowhere in his healing face.
‘I want a Gold,’ he said.
3
My packing for Moscow consisted, in order of priority, of an army of defences for dicky lungs, mostly on a be-prepared-and-it-won’t-happen basis; a thick woolly scarf; a spare pair of glasses; a couple of paperbacks and a camera.
Emma surveyed my medicine box with a mixture of amusement and horror.
‘You’re a hypochondriac,’ she said.
‘Stop poking around. Everything in there is tidy.’
‘Oh, sure. What are these?’ She lifted a small plastic pill bottle and shook it.
‘Ventolin tablets. Put them down.’
She opened the cap instead and shook one on to her palm.
‘Pink and tiny. What do they do?’
‘Help one breathe.’
‘And these?’ She picked up a small cylindrical tin and read the yellow label. ‘Intal spincaps?’
‘Help one breathe.’
‘And this? And this?’ She picked them out and laid them in a row. ‘And these?’
‘Ditto, ditto, ditto.’
‘And a syringe, for God’s sake. Why a syringe?’
‘Last resort. If a shot of adrenalin doesn’t work, one sends for the undertaker.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘No,’ I said; but the truth was probably yes. I had never actually found out.