by Dick Francis
I told him more or less exactly what I had told the Major-General. He stopped looking at his hands and came to mental life in a very positive and alert way, quite different from his habitual air of boredom.
I talked and coughed, and coughed and talked, and he gave me another and slightly larger sherry.
‘So there you are,’ I said finally. ‘As far as I could tell there will be a great deal of hush over the whole scene. And as for johnny Farringford… well, I got no definite assurances, but I doubt if after this the comrades would consider him a suitable prospect. So from that point of view I think it would be safe for him to go… but it’s of course up to you and the Prince.’
I stood up. I really felt most unwell. Nothing new, however. The story of my life.
He came with me all the way to the front door and saw me off in an official car, which represented a radical rethink on his part of the usefulness of horses.
I found that meeting the Prince at Fontwell Park races involved lunch with him, the Princess, Johnny Farringford, the Chairman of the racecourse, sundry Stewards and assorted ladies, all in the glass-walled corner box at the top of the stands, looking down over the green turf.
There was a lot of champagne and civilised chat, which on other days would have pleased me well enough: but the shadows of Moscow still sat close at my shoulder, and I thought of the fear of Boris and Evgeny and the doubts and caution of Yuri and Misha and Kropotkin. I should be glad to hear in time from Ian and Stephen that none of them had come to harm.
I had spent a toss-and-turn night in a hotel and hired a car and driver to take me to the races. Practically every remedy in the plastic box had been pressed into service, to only moderate avail. It was a bore to drag around with lungs filling up like sumps and every breath an effort, but I’d ridden in races in that state once or twice in my foolish life, so why fret at some gentle spectating. Bits of lines of the Scottish ballad of the dying Lord Randal, with whom I’d identified heavily as a child, ran from long habit in my mind, more as a sort of background music than organised thought, but now with an added new meaning…
…make my bed soon.
For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain would lie doon.
‘Randall,’ the Prince said, ‘we must talk.’
We talked in short snatches through the afternoon, standing alone on the Stewards’ balcony between the races, using the times when everyone else went down to look at the horses in the parade ring.
Make my bed soon…
‘There were two plots involving Johnny,’ I said.
‘Two?’
‘Mm… Being who he is, he’s a natural target. He always will be. It’s something that needs to be faced.’
I told him bit by bit about the terrorists, and about the identity of Alyosha. It all shocked him a great deal more deeply than it had those two wily gamesplayers, Hughes-Beckett and the Major-General.
‘Dreadful. Dreadful.’ he said.
‘There was also,’ I said eventually, ‘some question of the K.G.B. setting him up.’
‘How do you mean?’
I explained about the pornography.
‘Johnny?’ The Prince looked surprised and most displeased. ‘The bloody fool… doesn’t he realise that is just what the Press Jire always looking for?’
‘If he was warned, sir…’
‘Warned?’ He looked grim. ‘You can safely leave that to me.’
I’d like to be a fly on the wall, I thought.
A memory struck him. ‘But look here, Randall,’ he said. ‘What about those two men who attacked Johnny on the day he came to my house? The day he crashed into your car. Where did they come from? Were they… the terrorists?’
‘No… Um… as a matter of fact… they didn’t exist.’
He gave me a right Royal stare. ‘Are you meaning to say that Johnny was lying?’
Yes, I was. I said, however, more temperately, ‘I think he invented them, certainly.’
‘But he couldn’t have done! He was badly beaten up.’
I shook my head. ‘He was injured from crashing into my car.’
‘There you are, Randall,’ the Prince said with exasperation. ‘He only crashed because he was already hurt.’
‘Er…’ I said. ‘I think, sir, that he crashed because he fainted at the sight of blood. I think… he cut his finger to make it bleed… to put some blood on his face to back up his story of being attacked… and when he got to the front of your house he simply passed out. He had his foot on the accelerator, and his car kept on going.’
‘You can’t be right!’
‘You could ask him, sir.’
Make my bed soon…
‘But why, Randall? Whyever should he invent such a story?’
‘He passionately wants to go to the Olympics. He didn’t want people poking into his relationship with Hans Kramer, which was a little less innocent than he would have us believe, but not really so terrible. I would guess he was afraid all the same that if you found out you might not buy him the new horse… so he invented two men and a beating up to persuade you not to send me to look for Alyosha. I quite believe that Johnny himself knew of no scandal, but he didn’t know what I might find out about Hans. He didn’t want me to look, that was all.’
‘But,’ he said, looking bewildered, ‘it had the opposite effect. After that I was more sure than ever that the rumours must be looked into.’
I watched Johnny and the Princess weaving their way through the crowds returning to the stands for the next race, his crisp red curls gleaming like copper in the December air.
I sighed. ‘He’s a great rider, sir.’
The Prince slid me a sideways glance. ‘We all do dumb things from time to time, Randall. Is that it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
…and fain would lie doon.
‘Why are you so sure they weren’t your terrorists?’
‘Because from Johnny’s account they weren’t at all the same sort of people. Johnny said they spoke English and were ordinary British men… which the terrorists were not.’
Johnny and the Princess climbed the steps and came up on to the balcony. The Princess was untroubled, but Johnny had been uncomfortable with me all day.
I said mildly, ‘Johnny, how well did you know Malcolm Herrick?’
‘Who?’
‘Herrick. Journalist. Wrote for The Watch.’
‘Oh, him.’ Johnny’s face said it was an unwelcome memory. ‘He was at Burghley. Always hanging around Hans. Er… Hans Kramer.’ He hesitated, shrugged, and went on. ‘I didn’t like the fellow. Why? What’s he done? He called me “sport” all the time. Can’t say I liked it, what? I told him to piss off. Haven’t seen him since.’
It seemed a bit much to put a man at the top of the death list for saying piss off, but Malcolm had done it. ‘Sport’ and piss off’… next stop, Alyosha.
For I’m weary wi’ hunting, and fain…
‘Cards on the table, Johnny,’ the Prince said. ‘Were you beaten up by those two chaps, or weren’t you?’
The Farringford expression went through a lot of motions in very quick time. He started to nod and say yes, and then switched his gaze suddenly to my face. Correctly read my scepticism; realised I had told the Prince; changed his plea instantaneously to guilty, and finished with a sheepish little-boy grin.
The Prince compressed his lips and shook his head. ‘Grow up, Johnny,’ he said.
Emma came for the weekend, two days later, silver and brittle and a-jangle with tensions.
‘How boring of you to be in bed,’ she said. ‘I’m lousy at mopping fevered brows.’
She moved restlessly round the room, getting rid of electric energy in purposeless fidgeting.
‘You’re wheezing like an old granny,’ she said. ‘And spitting… That’s a really disgusting disease.’
‘I thought you liked facing life’s nitty-gritties.’
‘Why did you want me to come?’ she said, rearranging the brushes on my dressing chest. �
��You usually tell me to stay away, when you’re ill.’
‘I wanted your company.’
‘Oh.’ She seemed disconcerted, gave me a quick sharp glance like a startled bird, and went out of the room. Friday night. I thought ruefully, was too soon for truth.
She returned in an hour, bringing a tray: bringing supper. Soup, bread, fruit, cheese, and a bottle of wine.
‘They seemed to be lying around,’ she said defensively, ‘so I thought I might as well lug them up here.’
‘Great.’
We ate in reasonable peace, and she asked about Moscow.
‘You might like it there,’ I said, peeling a tangerine. ‘Mind you, over there the life you choose to lead here wouldn’t be an act of rebellion, but a necessity forced upon you.’
‘I hate you sometimes.’
‘If you ever get tired of your shop.’ I said. ‘I could give you another job here.’
‘What as?’
‘Domestic servant. Nanny. Cook. Laundry-maid. General all-purpose dogsbody. Farmhand. Wife.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
I looked at the shining fall of platinum hair and at the finality in the delicate well-loved determined face. The patterns of youth couldn’t be changed. One became a rebel, a romantic, a puritan, a bigot, a hypocrite, a saint, a crusader, a terrorist… One became it young and stayed it forever. She could never return to the well-off, well-ordered country life she had kicked her way out of. She would revisit it uneasily for weekends as long as I pleased her, but one Monday morning she would drive off and not come back.
I might regret, might feel lost and lonely without her, but she was depressingly right.
As a long-term prospect, it wouldn’t work.
In the New Year edition of the Horse and Hound I read that the Germans had sold one of their best young horses to Lord Farringford. who would be training it in the hope of being considered for the Olympic Games.
MICHAEL JOSEPH LTD
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First published in Great Britain
Copyright © Dick Francis 1978
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ISBN: 978-0-14-192970-5