by Dick Francis
J. Rolls Eaglewood, for instance, identified as he stood with his runner in the parade ring before the first race, was an old man with a walking stick on which he leant heavily. J. Rolls Eaglewood, father of Russet-of-the-no-panties, was undoubtedly the same man, and was also related no doubt to Izzy, Ken McClure’s onetime love.
I wouldn’t have recognized him: his name alone remained stuck in a remote neural pathway, lighting up when one pressed the right button, a name associated not with a face but with power and threat.
Only the horses themselves were wholly unfamiliar, including their breeding; too many horse generations had turned over like pages. Many owners, however, were recognizably the same, witnesses to enduring pleasure and faith.
I looked through the race card for Ronnie Upjohn, the owner threatening to sue Ken for daring to win with an Upjohn castoff, but he had no runner that day.
Upjohn ... and Travers. Upjohn and Travers.
They ran together in my mind like Abbott and Costello, but definitely without the laughs.
I turned away from the parade ring and began to thread a way through the throng to a good watching place on the stands. The racegoing crowd had changed not at all: there were perhaps fewer hats and more open-necked shirts, but the same manufacturers of overcoats and padded jackets were clearly healthily in business. The faces scurrying to beat the odds bore the same calculating anxiety, the bookmakers shouted from under the same fictitious nameboards, the snatches of overheard conversation exactly echoed the voices of a quarter century ago.
“... Blew up turning into the straight...”
“... Couldn’t ride in a cart with a pig net over it...”
“... Honest as a corkscrew ...”
“... It’s a bloody disgrace ...”
“... The handicapper murdered him ...”
I smiled to myself and felt like an alien returned to a loved-and-lost planet, and through not looking where I was going almost cannoned into two short men in navy overcoats, who happened to be Japanese.
I apologized in English. They bowed to me, unspeaking. I went on up to the stands.
The two Japanese, standing below and to the left of me in the area outside the weighing room, looked bewildered and lost, and I had a feeling I’d met one of them before, though a quick run-through of the government officials I’d usually worked with brought no enlightenment. I shrugged, looked away, watched the runners canter down to the post.
The jockey riding for J. Rolls Eaglewood wore purple and white and remained unexcitingly in midfield throughout, the uneventful contest being won by the hot favorite, pulling up.
The crowd, roaring approval, streamed down from the stands to collect their winnings and, once the dust had settled, I glanced to where the Japanese had been standing.
They were still there, still looking lost, though they had by now been joined by a young woman who was trying to talk to them by signs. Black round heads together, the two men consulted each other earnestly and bowed a few times to their companion, but it was obvious that no one was understanding anything much.
The impulse to help was ingrained, I supposed. I strolled down from the stands and stopped a pace or two from the young woman who, at close quarters, looked impatient as well as harassed.
I said, “Can I perhaps be of service?” Good old Foreign Office lingo.
She flicked me the briefest of glances, which would have stopped Casanova, and said with crisp disapproval, “Not unless you speak Japanese.”
“Well, yes, I do. That’s why I asked.”
She turned her full attention my way and metaphorically clutched the offered life buoy as one seeing escape from drowning.
“Then please,” she said, “ask them what they want. They want something and they can’t seem to be able to tell me what.”
I bowed to the Japanese and asked them the question. The extent of their relief at hearing their own language was almost comical, and so was their answer. I bowed and pointed out to them what they wanted, and they hurried away, bowing sketchily as they went.
The young woman watched open-mouthed, crossly.
“They wanted the loo,” I said. “They were bursting.”
“Why for God’s sake didn’t they say so!”
“With sign language?” I asked.
She stared at me, then melted inside and began to laugh.
“Thanks, then,” she said. “What are you doing for the rest of the afternoon?”
“I’ll be around, watching the races.”
“Can I send up smoke signals?”
“I’ll look out for them,” I promised.
“I was supposed to bring three of them,” she said, talking easily, promoting me to instant friend. “The third one speaks English. I’ve been showing them round London for three days and this morning Mr. Kamato, he’s the English speaker, had the squits. The other two didn’t want to miss seeing Stratford, and if you’ve ever tried explaining Anne Hathaway’s cottage with your hands you’ll understand the morning I’ve had. They’re perfectly charming and they think I’m retarded.”
“Are they businessmen?” I asked.
“No, they’re part of the Japanese Jockey Club.”
“Ah,” I said.
“What do you mean, ah?”
“I think I’ve met one of them before.”
“Really. Where?”
“In Japan. I used to work there.”
She gave me a bright assessing look and I in turn noted the small mouth, the huge blue eyes and the thick frizzed blond-streaked brown hair chopped off straight all round at earlobe level, except for an eyebrow-length fringe. The overall effect was slightly zany-doll, but the Japanese were wrong, the mind inside was no toy.
“I work for the British Jockey Club,” she said. “I arrange things for visiting bigwigs. Transport, hotels, tourist traps, all that sort of thing. A general nanny.”
I could think of worse things than having my path smoothed by her.
“I’m Peter,” I said.
“Annabel.”
First names only meant no commitment beyond that afternoon but made a temporary sharing of her workload possible. The unspoken signaling was like a formal dance, I thought, with advances, retreats and do-si-dos. No one at that stage was going to break step.
We waited for the return of her charges.
“They are supposed to be watching these races from the directors’ room,” she said, “but they wanted to mix with the crowds. We had drinks up there.”
“Japanese feel at home in crowds.”
She said casually, “What did you do in Japan?”
“Worked for the Foreign Office.”
She wrinkled her nose. “As a career?”
“Mm.”
“I suppose you know the famous definition of a diplomat?”
I knew. Everyone in the foreign service knew. I quoted, “An honest man sent to lie abroad for his country.”
She smiled. “And do you?”
“Sometimes.”
“The Foreign Office stirs up more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Who’s that a quote from?”
She looked startled, then a shade defensive. “My father, as a matter of fact.”
I didn’t comment or argue. Every dogmatic opinion had a basis somewhere in truth, and there had been times when British along with other ambassadors had given wrong signals to would-be aggressors, indicating that opposition to intended tyranny might be slight or even nonexistent. Both the Kaiser and Hitler had reportedly felt aggrieved when the supposedly acquiescent British Lion had awoken and roared.
Ambassadors from every country could get things wrong and often did: it depended both on their orders from home and on the information they’d been locally fed. My exact job in every posting had been to try to find out what was really going on behind the scenes in our host country and to keep my superiors up to date. In consequence, I went to local parties and dinners, and gave them myself, with the sole object of gathering and checking rum
ors, of learning who had leverage, who had ideals, who was ill with what, who was sleeping with whom, who was on drugs, who drank, who beat their wives, who was up-and-coming, who was gullible, who was greedy, who could be bought or blackmailed, who would be likely to crack or resign, whose information could sometimes be trusted, whose never, whose professed friendship might be genuine, whose not.
At that game I’d become fairly adept but it was impossible to get it right every time. Then, too, even if an ambassador were primed with impeccable inside dope, there was no guarantee the government back home would believe it or act in accordance. Hair-tearing in ignored embassies could reach epic proportions. No country on earth was exempt.
The Japanese Jockey Club came back and bowed several times, expressing especial pleasure when I said I recognized one of them. He apologized for not having immediately recognized me in turn. We went through a lot of platitudes and bowing. Finally I asked them if there were anything else I could achieve for them, and they said with visible eagerness that they would like hot weak tea with no milk and no sugar and—in a decorous shaft of humor—a Japanese tea ceremony to go with it. I, who had watched countless tea ceremonies and enjoyed them, asked if Miss Annabel could stand in, even though without kimono and obi. Their Oriental eyes smiled. They said gravely that they would be delighted. I asked if they would like to return to the directors’ room for the purpose, but it seemed they would not.
I said to Annabel, “They’re thirsty. They would like weak tea, no milk, no sugar. They would very much like you to get it for them down here.”
“Is that all they said?”
“Not really. In Japan there are traditional tea ceremonies as part of the entertainment some days at race meetings. I think they’re homesick.”
“I suppose,” she said, “you wouldn’t come with me?”
“Might consider it. Where’s the tearoom?”
We tracked down the required liquid and over the cups held a three-way conversation slowly. After that, as I took my temporary leave, Annabel said, “Why do you bow to them more than they do to you? It’s un-English.”
“They are older. They are Jockey Club and we are on a racecourse. They feel reassured, I am not humbled.”
“You are one crazy diplomat and can come to my rescue anytime.”
I smiled at her and got a vivid smile back. Promising, I thought. She read my expression accurately, curled her little mouth and shook her head.
Still promising, nevertheless.
She took her charges at their gestured request into the Tattersalls enclosure to see the bookmakers at close quarters, and I watched them from the stands as the runners cantered down for the next race. She was taller than the two men, and the combination of two black and one frizzy blond heads was very easy to follow. They moved slowly from bookmaker to bookmaker, pointing at the odds chalked on the boards until in the end one of the men produced some money, which Annabel offered to a bookie. The bet was struck, the ticket given. The trio went up into the Tattersalls stands behind the ranks of bookmakers and watched the race from there.
Greg and Vicky appeared at my side and tiredly said it was all very interesting, wasn’t it? I diagnosed a slight case of boredom but Vicky said it wasn’t boredom but the dearth of places to sit down. They had bet and lost in the first race, but at least the third race brought them a win, which sent them off to collect in less depression.
I didn’t see Ken and Belinda at all and found later they’d walked down the course to be nearer the jumps. Annabel brought the Japanese to stand by the parade ring rails to watch the next lot of runners walk round and, far more from enjoyment than obligation, I joined them.
They were all pleased, the men almost effusively so: I’d become their dearest buddy in the West. They hoped I could tell them which of the horses in front of us would win the next race as they’d had to tear up their tickets after the last.
Sort out the fittest-looking had long been my policy, thanks to my adopted name, so I watched the parade and pointed to a load of lean glossy muscle striding round phlegmatically with its head down. The Japanese bowed their thanks and hurried back to the bookies, who were a novelty for them, they said, and Annabel asked why I had picked the horse I had.
“It looks well,” I said.
“So you know about horses?”
“I wanted to be a jockey, once.”
She looked up at my height. “There have been six-foot jockeys, I suppose.”
I nodded. “But you might say I grew out of it in other ways.”
“What ways?”
“Total lack of opportunity.”
“I was a pony freak,” she said, nodding, “and one fine day there was more to life than riding.”
She wore black and white all over: black boots and thin legs, checked skirt, white turtleneck, black short coat and a huge fluffy white scarf with black pompom fringes. She looked at times sixteen and at times double that and had an overall air of competence, when not hurling herself against language barriers.
“Do you live in London?” I asked.
“Fulham Road, if you can call that London. And you?”
“Homeless.”
I got a disillusioned stare worthy of the remark. “Does that mean a grating in Trafalgar Square?”
“Are there any good gratings down Fulham way?”
She answered with a look that said games had gone far enough, and I thought to myself that, if I didn’t start searching soon for somewhere to lay my head, a nice warm grating where hot air vented up from subterranean tunnels would have its attractions. I’d slept rough in the capital several times in my student days: guessed I was too old for it now.
The Japanese came back happily waving tickets and we all went up on the stands to watch the fittest. He survived to the last hurdle and there turned end over end in a flurry of legs.
I apologized. They said it wasn’t my fault. The horse got up and galloped riderless past the stands, looking ready to go round twice more without panting. The Japanese put their useless tickets in their pockets along with their dashed hopes and decided that for the next race they would like to walk down to the fences, as they had seen other people do. I was ready to say I’d go with them when I spotted Ken walking alone slowly, looking at his race card, stopping in indecision.
“I’ll be here when you come back,” I said hastily in two languages, “but I have to speak to someone. Please, please excuse me.”
I left them in midbow and reached Ken before he moved off, slowing to a stop at his elbow.
“I want to talk to you,” I said.
“Fire away.” He lifted his gaze briefly from the race card.
“Alone and uninterrupted.”
“But Belinda...”
“If you want me to do anything useful, I need some of your time.”
“All right.” He made up his mind. “How about the bar?”
The bar turned out to be worse than useless because as we reached the door we came face-to-face with J. Rolls Eaglewood, who was on his way out, limping along with his walking stick.
“Afternoon, sir,” Ken said. I hoped his tremble was detectable by me alone: I felt his panic flow across like a breeze. His impulse to turn and run couldn’t have been clearer.
J. Rolls stopped dead, fixing a dire glare on Ken’s face.
“You killed my horse,” he said.
Ken shook his head weakly. “He died. We couldn’t save him.”
“Sheer bloody incompetence, and I won’t put up with it any longer.”
Eaglewood at close quarters, though thin, gray-haired and with age-freckled skin, still generated the power and threat I associated with his name. His voice held the rasp of one long used to instant obedience, and he could and did score several patriarchal points over a vet less than half his age.
“I’ve put up with you this long because of my granddaughter’s infatuation with you,” he said, “and out of respect, too, for your father’s memory, but I’ve had to tell Carey that you’re ne
ver to attend my horses again or I’ll be transferring my business to another firm of vets, and I’d be sorry to do that after all these years, as I told him, but this slaughter has got to stop.”
Ken miserably made no attempt at defense. Eaglewood gave him a brief fierce nod, gestured to him with his stick to get out of the way, and stumped off out of earshot.
“You see?” Ken said, shaking and as pale as ever. “I can’t even blame him. The horse that died on Thursday morning—with the split cannon bone—came from his stable.”
“It sounded as if it might not have been the first disaster.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t. Another of his died on the table about a month ago while I was doing respiratory-tract surgery. And one died in its own box....” His voice took the by-now familiar note of desperation. “I don’t do anything wrong, I’m always careful. They just died.”
“Mm. Well, why don’t you give me a complete chronological list of all the things that have ended badly? Also the names of all the owners and trainers and anything special or particular about them? If you’re sure what you did was OK, we have to find another explanation.”
“What explanation?”
“Villainy, wouldn’t you think?”
“But it’s impossible. That’s the trouble. I’ve checked everything over and over again. Gone over everything in my mind. I can’t sleep ... And what’s the point of killing them?”
I sighed. “Let’s start with the list.”
“I’d need my notes.” He broke off, freshly appalled. “All my notes are burnt.”
We’d moved away from the door to the bar and stood in the area outside the weighing room. Several people, I’d noticed, gave Ken sidelong glances, but I thought it might have been only because of his visible distress until I later heard Eaglewood spreading his opinions far and wide. “... ruining a good old firm ...” and “... three of mine dead ... can’t go on.” At what point, I wondered, did opinion become slander?