Second Wind

by Dick Francis

  “God,” Bell groaned. “I told him that bit of feminism yonks ago.”

  “Good jokes never die.”

  “Did you know that sometimes he writes verses?”

  “Mm.” I paused. “Scientific, mostly.”

  “I’ve seen him tear them up,” Bell said.

  So. had I. A form of suicide, I’d thought: but better to kill a poem than himself.

  Bell turned her back on Kris and said there was food in the dining room. There were also white-clothed tables and cater ers’ gold chairs and an autumnal buffet suitable for millionaires and hungry weathermen. I collected a disgracefully full plate and was welcomed by an insistent Evelyn Darcy into a space on a round table where her husband and four other guests were munching roast grouse with concentration.

  The four unknowns and I went through the usual recognition routine and a promise that it wouldn’t rain before bedtime ; and I smiled and answered them placidly because in fact I liked my job very much, and good public relations never hurt.

  Two of the unknowns slowly identified themselves as George Loricroft, distinguished, forty-five, top-dog racehorse trainer, and his blonde and over-shapely young wife, Glenda. Every time Glenda spoke, her dominating husband either contradicted or interrupted her. Glenda’s nervous titter hid some razor-sharp resentment, I’d have said.

  Evelyn Darcy, who besides the three rows of pearls, the black dress and the gray-silver over-lacquered hair was decidedly nosy, had no inhibitions about question time. She wanted to know—and used her loud voice to get attention—whether Kris and I earned a fortune for our many onscreen appearances. How else could Kris afford the upkeep of an airplane?

  Everyone heard her. Kris across the room gave me a comical look, half choked with laughter and yelled her an answer.

  “We’re both civil servants. We get civil service pay. You all pay us ... and it’s not enough to fund a month of condoms.”

  Reactions to this intimate and inaccurate revelation varied from laughter among the guests to distaste and embarrassment. I peacefully ate my grouse. Being a friend of Kris’s meant being willing to accept the whole package. He could have said far worse. He had done, in the past.

  Evelyn Darcy enjoyed the ripples. Robin looked long-suffering at her side. George Loricroft, the constant wife repressor, checked with me that we did indeed get civil service pay and I unexcitedly agreed that yes we did, and why not, we gave a public service.

  Oliver Quigley at that point inserted a chair where there was hardly enough space for it between Evelyn and myself and behaved in general as if the military police were hot on his trail for unspeakable offenses. Did the man never relax?

  “I wanted to say to you,” he more or less stuttered into my lunch, “that I had a sort of pamphlet in the post yesterday from a new sort of organization that offers ... er, well, I mean, it’s worth a try, you know ...”

  “Offers what?” I asked without pressing interest as he rambled to a halt.

  “Well ... er ... a personalized reading of the weather.”

  “A private firm?” I asked. “Is that it?”

  “Well ... yes. You give the ... er, by e-mail of course ... the time and place where you want to know what weather to expect and you get the answer back at once.”

  “Fascinating,” I said dryly.

  “Haven’t you heard of it? Bit of competition for you, isn’t it?”

  If he’d had more courage, what he’d said would have neared sarcasm. As it was, I finished the excellent grouse and fried breadcrumbs and smiled without annoyance.

  “You go ahead and sign on with them, Mr. Quigley,” I said. “Fine.”

  “I didn’t expect you to say that!” he exclaimed. “I mean ... don’t you mind?”

  “Not in the least.”

  Robin Darcy leaned forward and asked me from across his wife and the shaky trainer. “How much do you charge Mr. Quigley for saying to run Caspar’s filly on Friday?”

  Oliver Quigley might be nervous, but not stupid. He listened, and understood. He opened and closed his mouth and would, I knew, continue to tap me for accurate info that he didn’t have to pay for.

  Robin Darcy, with seemingly genuine interest, then asked me politely when I’d first become interested in the weather, and I told him, as I’d explained a hundred times before, that I’d watched the clouds since I was six, and had never wanted a different life.

  His amiability, I thought, was built on his certainty of his own mental superiority. I had long ago learned to leave that sort of belief unchallenged, and had received a couple of advancements in consequence. Only to myself could I admit my reprehensible cynicism. And to myself, often enough, I could also, with humility, admit that I’d more than met my match. I smiled weakly at Robin Darcy and couldn’t decide where his cleverness ended—or began.

  Evelyn asked, “Where did you go to learn meteorology? Is there a special school for it?”

  I said, “It’s called standing out in the rain.”

  Kris, on the move back to the buffet, overheard both question and answer and replied to her over his shoulder, “Don’t listen to him. He’s a physicist. Dr. Perry Stuart, no less.”

  Robin yawned and closed his myopic eyes, but somewhere in that sharp brain there had been a quickening. I had seen it and could feel it, and didn’t know why he wanted to hide it.

  Oliver Quigley hastened to assure me with many a quiver that he hadn’t meant to insult me by considering an outside firm better, when we both knew he had come darned near to it. The difference was that although he appeared vastly disturbed by it, I didn’t care at all. If Oliver Quigley would only take his shivery nerves and dump them on someone else’s doorstep, I would be delighted.

  Caspar Harvey played the genial host faultlessly to give his guests good memories, collecting me from table, taking me in tow and introducing me to everyone in turn, persuading them to let me take their photo. Those who disliked the idea were overridden: Caspar offered refilled glasses, and got his way.

  I snapped Quigley and Loricroft together, the pair of racehorse trainers topping up on crisp roast potatoes and pausing briefly in passing to discuss their trade. I heard snatches of Quigtey—“He never pays on time”—and then Loricroft—“My runner at Baden-Baden got bumped at the start:”

  Loricroft’s bosomy wife confided proudly to others at the table, “George goes to Germany often and wins races there, don’t you, George?” But Loricroft, coldly undermining her enthusiasm, cut the “often” to “only once” during the past season. “I win far more races in France, but I can’t expect my dear wife to get things right.”

  He looked around to gather sympathetic responses and smiled with superiority down his nose. I thought Glenda a pain but her dear George an agony.

  The splendid lunch narrowed down to coffee and worthwhile port and eventually, with regret, the guests began to leave. Kris and I needed transport back to the Cherokee, though, and Bell was nowhere to be seen.

  Caspar Harvey himself put an end to my hovering on one foot by halting in front of me and saying decisively, “While you’re here in Newmarket you may as well take a peek at my filly. Take her photo too. Then you’ll know what’s at stake when you’re looking at Friday.”

  He put a tugging hand on my arm and made it downright rude for me to pull away: but I had no reason not to see the filly, if that was what he wanted. and felt it a small enough courtesy after such a lunch, if Kris were not pressed for time for flying home before dark.

  It wasn’t time that upset Kris, but the realization that he was expected to travel in the Land Rover again with Bell. There seemed no logical reason for four of us to travel in two cars to see the filly, but that was clearly what Caspar Harvey wanted; and when he’d cordially waved a temporary adieu to Oliver Quigley, his last departing guest, that was what Caspar Harvey got.

  He drove out through the front gates, following Quigley’s pale blue Volvo, and leaving Kris behind for his daughter to bring in the Land Rover.

  Wit
h only a six or so miles’ journey to go, Caspar Harvey lost no time in saying what he’d maneuvered me into hearing.

  “How unstable is your friend Kris?”

  I said vaguely, “Um ...”

  Harvey announced, “I don’t want him as a son-in-law.”

  “At the moment,” I said, “it doesn’t look probable.,,

  “Rubbish! The girl’s besotted. A year ago they fought like cats, and I’ll tell you, I was glad of it. Not that he’s not a brilliant forecaster; he is. So I went on acting on his weather advice and he’s saved me thousands, literally thousands.”

  He paused, finding the question difficult, I guessed, but asking it just the same.

  “Can you tell him to leave my daughter alone?”

  The short answer was of course no, I couldn’t. It didn’t seem to me, though, to be the right question.

  When I didn’t answer at once Harvey said, “A year ago she was spitting mad. She went off and got a job in Spain. Then six weeks ago she came back wanting me to arrange today’s lunch and not to tell Kris she’d be here, and I did it for her, God knows why, thinking she’d thoroughly got over him, and I was wrong. She hasn’t.”

  He paused gloomily, his big car purring, eating up the miles. “He asked if he could bring a friend to navigate today and when I saw you ... and you’re obviously sensible—not like him—I thought of getting you to tell him not to upset Bell all over again ... but I suppose you’ll think it was a bad idea....”

  I said a shade helplessly, “They’ll work it out for themselves.”

  It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, and we finished the six miles in mutually unsatisfied silence.

  Oliver Quigley’s stableyard, it transpired, was on the far side of the town, where shops and hotels gave way to the essential business of the place, to stalls for polished horses, and to the Heath galloping grounds, where they could practice winning and turn their gloss into procreation.

  Quigley the trainer drove his pale blue Volvo into his own domain, and even there he looked ill at ease. The big quadrangle stableyard was alive with grooms fetching hay and water to each horse, and putting the straw floor covering clean and comfortable for the night. The groom in authority—cleady the foreman, the head groom—was doling out scoops of food for each horse. Some of the stalls had open doors, some had interior lights on, some were altogether closed and dark. There was an air of wanting to finish the Sunday afternoon program and get off as soon as possible for more enjoyable pursuits.

  Caspar Harvey had stopped his car beside Quigley’s and made no more reference to his daughter’s feelings for Kris.

  There was a notable smartening of body language among the grooms at the sight of the two most powerful men in their lives, Oliver Quigley the trainer (and never mind his self-conscious fluttering, it was he who paid the wages) and Caspar Harvey, owner of four superstars that gave kudos not only to Quigley’s stable, but to the whole sport of racing.

  The filly who might run on Friday was to be found, it seemed, behind one of the closed doors, not yet put right for the night.

  Caspar Harvey with pleased anticipation strode over to a row of six stalls separated from the others on one side by the path leading out from the yard and down towards the Warren Hill gallops, and on the other side by a path giving on to the large house where it seemed Quigley lived.

  “This is the filly’s stall,” he said, beckoning to me to come as he unlatched the bolts of the top half of the split stable door. “She’s in here.”

  And so she was. But she wouldn’t race on Friday.

  I watched Harvey’s face change from pride to horror. I saw his throat constrict as he groped for air. His treasure, the Friday filly, the two-year-old preparing to take the females’ crown, the possible over-winter favorite for the following year’s 1,000 Guineas and Oaks, the future dam of champions, the golden chestnut with a single small white star on her forehead; this fast and famous athlete was down on her knees and groaning, sweat darkening her flanks.

  While Harvey, Quigley and I watched in long stunned seconds she toppled over onto her side, labored breath wheezing, her pain obvious.

  She looked on the point of death, but she didn’t die.

  2

  Deeply upset on many levels, Caspar Harvey took charge, and it was he who sent for the veterinarian, brushing Quigley out of the way and offering the veterinarian, whom he knew well, twice his normal fee if he abandoned his Sunday afternoon rest and appeared in Quigley’s yard immediately.

  There was nothing he could physically do for his filly because he didn’t know what was wrong with her: he understood the power of money, though, and he would spend it lavishly if it would get useful results.

  “Colic?” He speculated. “Oliver, shouldn’t you be walking her round? Surely walking is what you do for colic?”

  Oliver Quigley squatted down beside his horse’s head and stroked her nose. He said he thought walking might do more harm than good, even if he could get the filly to stand up again, and that he would wait for the veterinarian. And it was noticeable, I thought, that, faced with a real and disastrous-looking crisis with his horses, his constant anxiety shivers abated and almost died away.

  Caspar Harvey stifled his emotions and thought of the future.

  “You...” he said to me. “I mean you. Stuart, do you still have that camera?”

  I produced it from my pants pocket.

  He nodded. “Take the filly, for the insurance. Pictures. Stronger than words.”

  I did his bidding, the flash bright inside the darkening stall.

  “Send them to me.” he said, and I assured him I would.

  Belladonna, driving Kris into the yard in the Land Rover, reacted to the filly’s plight with loving distress and absolute priority, and Kris infuriated her by saying his and my departure time was more important than waiting around for the veterinarian, because we couldn’t navigate or land safely at White Waltham in fading light. Filly or no filly we needed to be off the ground by half past four, he said. Bell argued sharply that half past five would do. Kris said if she wouldn’t take us to the plane when he wanted to go, he would call for a taxi. It seemed to me, listening to the vinegary exchange, that Caspar Harvey had no immediate worry about a son-in-law.

  The veterinarian earned his double fee with screeching tires and, while listening through his stethoscope, metaphorically scratched his head over the filly,

  “I don’t think she has colic,” he said. “What has she been eating?”

  The head groom and all the others were immediately insulted at the slur on their care.

  The filly had eaten nothing that day, they swore, except oats and bran and hay.

  Kris argued insistently with Bell, who finally in a rage told her father she would be away for a while delivering the infuriating Kris to his transport. Her father nodded absentmindedly, his attention all now on his suffering animal, and he looked vague also when, on the point of leaving, I thanked him for the lunch and repeated that I would send the snaps.

  Bell, braking with a jerk beside the Cherokee after a bad-tempered ride through the town, listened with a frown while Kris tried to explain yet again that as we were both on duty that evening it was essential to return in time. It was true that we were on duty, but it wasn’t strictly necessary for us to leave Newmarket by half past four. A long-established loyalty, however, tied my tongue.

  She watched Kris walk round the Cherokee doing the ever-necessary checks.

  “He makes me lose my temper,” she said.

  I nodded. “I’ll look after him. You go back to your father.”

  She stared at me concentratedly with the blue eyes.

  She said, “I don’t mean to be a bitch.”

  I thought that as she was dealing with two strong-willed men and was hardly pliant herself, she was not, even with the winsomely blinking eyelids, going to activate any sort of three-way equilibrium without a maybe volcanic show of strength first.

  Kris finished his checks, and Bel
l and I both stood up out of the Land Rover. Bell and Kris stood looking at each other in a silence that crackled as if electric.

  Bell said finally, “I’ve got a job as assistant trainer to George Loricroft. I’ll be staying in Newmarket from now on.”

  Loricroft had been at the lunch table where I sat with Evelyn (pearls) and Robin (glasses) Darcy.

  Kris considered it, scowling.

  “I’ve a month’s leave coming up,” he said. “I’m going to Florida for part of it.”

  “Nice for you.”

  “You could come.”

  “No.”

  Kris turned his back abruptly and climbed into his flying machine, anything but, I thought wryly, a magnificent man as in the song.

  I said goodbye awkwardly to Bell and said I hoped for the best with the filly.

  “Give me your phone number, and I’ll tell you.”

  I had a. pen but no paper. She took the pen and wrote the number on her left-hand palm.

  “Get in, get in, Perry,” Kris shouted, “or I’ll go without you.”

  “He’s a shit,” Bell said.

  “He loves you,” I commented.

  “Like a tornado tears you apart.”

  Kris started the engine and, not wanting to risk being actually abandoned, I climbed into the Cherokee, closed the door, fastened its hatch and buckled on my seat belt. Bell gave a vestige of a wave in return for my more vigorous farewell through the window, but Kris stared unforgivingly ahead until it was too late even for courtesy. When we were airborne, though, and while Bell still stood by the Land Rover watching us depart, Kris made a ceremonial pass in front of her and waggled his wings as we flew away.

  Newmarket to White Waltham wasn’t really very far. We had plenty of time and plenty of light when we landed, and the good spirits of the morning had returned to the pilot.

  The cold wind blew until Friday, its Sunday sunshine fading to a depressing iron gray. Caspar Harvey’s filly clung onto life, her symptoms and progress delivered to me at first hand by Bell, who had at the last minute, she said, remembered to write my telephone number onto something more lasting than skin only when she’d already squeezed liquid soap onto her hands.