by Dick Francis
‘Yes. I started as an amateur. It seemed best to find out if I was any good before I committed my future to what I do.’
‘And if it hadn’t worked out?’
‘I had a place at college.’
‘And you didn’t take it?’ she said incredulously.
‘No. I started winning, and that was what I wanted most. I tried for the place at college only in case I couldn’t make it as a jockey. Sort of insurance.’
‘What subject?’
‘Veterinary science.’
It shocked her. ‘You mean you passed up being a veterinarian to be a jockey?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘But… but…’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘All athletes… sportsmen… whatever… find themselves on the wrong side of thirty-five with old age staring them point blank in the face. I might have another five years yet.’
‘And then?’
‘Train them, I suppose. Train horses for others to ride.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s a long way off.’
‘It came pretty close this afternoon,’ Danielle said.
‘Not really.’
‘Aunt Casilia says the Cresta Run is possibly more dangerous than the life of a jump jockey. Possibly. She wasn’t sure.’
‘The Cresta Run is a gold medal or the fright of a lifetime, not a career.’
‘Have you been down it?’
‘Of course not. It’s dangerous.’
She laughed. ‘Are all jockeys like you?’
‘No. All different. Like princesses.’
She took a deep breath, as if of sea air. I removed my attention from the motorway for a second’s inspection of her face, for whatever her aunt might think of my ability to read minds I never seemed to be able to do it with any young woman except Holly… I was aware also that I wanted to, that without it, any loving was incomplete. I thought that if I hadn’t had Holly I might have married one of the two girls I’d most liked: as it was, I hadn’t reached the living-in stage with either of them.
I hadn’t wanted to marry Holly, nor to sleep with her, but I’d loved her more deeply. It seemed that sex and telepathy couldn’t co-exist in me, and until or unless they did, I probably would stay single.
‘What are you thinking?’ Danielle asked.
I smiled wryly. ‘About not knowing what you were thinking.’
After a pause she said, ‘I was thinking that when Aunt Casilia said you were exceptional, I can see what she meant.’
‘She said what?’
‘Exceptional. I asked her in what way, but she just smiled sweetly and changed the subject.’
‘Er… when was that?’
‘On our way down to Devon this morning. She’s been wanting me to go racing with her ever since I came over, so today I did, because she’d arranged that ride back for me, although she herself was staying with the Inscombes tonight for some frantically grand party. She hoped I would love racing like she does, I think. Do you think sometimes she’s lonesome, travelling all those miles to racemeets with just her chauffeur?’
‘I don’t think she felt lonesome until you came.’
‘Oh!’
She fell silent for a while, and eventually I said prosaically, ‘We’ll be in Chiswick in three minutes.’
‘Will we?’ She sounded almost disappointed. ‘I mean, good. But I’ve enjoyed the journey.’
‘So have I.’
My inner vision was suddenly filled very powerfully with the presence of Holly, and I had a vivid impression of her face, screwed up in deep distress.
I said abruptly to Danielle, ‘Is there a public telephone anywhere near your office?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ She seemed slightly puzzled by the urgency I could hear in my voice. ‘Sure… use the one on my desk. Did you remember something important?’
‘No… er, I…’ I drew back from the impossibility of rational explanation. ‘I have a feeling,’ I said lamely, ‘that I should telephone my sister.’
‘A feeling?’ she asked curiously. ‘You looked as if you’d forgotten a date with the President, at least.’
I shook my head. ‘This is Chiswick. Where do we go from here?’
She gave me directions and we stopped in a parking space labelled ‘Staff Only’ outside a warehouse-like building in a side street. Six-twenty on the clock; ten minutes to spare.
‘Come on in,’ Danielle said. ‘The least I can do is lend you a phone.’
I stood up stiffly out of the car, and she said with contrition, ‘I guess I shouldn’t have let you drive all this way.’
‘It’s not much further than going home.’
‘You lie in your teeth. We passed the exit to Lambourn fifty miles back.’
‘A bagatelle.’
She watched me lock the car door. ‘Seriously, are you OK?’
‘It’s nothing that a hot bath won’t put right.’
She nodded and turned to lead the way into the building, which proved to have glass entrance doors into a hallway furnished with armchairs, potted plants and a uniformed guard behind a reception desk. She and he signed me into a book, gave me a pass to clip to my clothes, and ushered me through a heavy door that opened to an electronic buzz.
‘Sorry about the fortress syndrome,’ Danielle said. ‘The company is currently paranoid about bombs.’
We went down a short corridor into a wide open office inhabited by six or seven desks, mostly with people behind them showing signs of packing up to go home. There was also a sea of green carpet, a dozen or so computers, and on one long wall a row of television screens above head height, all showing different programmes and none of them emitting a sound.
Danielle and the other inhabitants exchanged a few ‘Hi’s, and ‘How’re you doing’s, and no one questioned my presence. She took me across the room to her own domain, an area of two large desks set at right angles with a comfortable-looking swivelling chair serving both. The desk tops bore several box files, a computer, a typewriter, a stack of newspapers and a telephone. On the wall behind the chair there was a large chart on which things could be written in chinagraph and rubbed off: a chart with columns labelled along the top as SLUG, TEAM, LOCATION, TIME, FORMAT.
‘Sit down,’ Danielle said, pointing to the chair. She picked up the receiver and pressed a lighted button on the telephone. ‘OK. Make your call.’ She turned to look at the chart. ‘Let’s see what’s been happening in the world since I left it.’ She scanned the segments. Under SLUG someone had written ‘Embassy’ in large black letters. Danielle called across the room, ‘Hank, what’s this embassy story?’ and a voice answered, ‘Someone painted “Yanks Go Home” in red on the US embassy steps and there’s a stink about security.’
‘Good grief.’
‘You’ll need to do a follow-up for Nightline.’
‘Right… has anyone interviewed the Ambassador?’
‘We couldn’t reach him earlier.’
‘Guess I’ll try again.’
‘Sure. It’s your baby, baby. All yours.’
Danielle smiled vividly down at me, and I recognised with some surprise that her job was of far higher status than I’d guessed, and that she herself came alive also when she was working.
‘Make your call,’ she said again.
‘Yes.’
I pressed the buttons and at the first ring Holly picked up the receiver.
‘Kit,’ she said immediately, full of stress.
‘Yes,’ I said.
Holly’s voice had come explosively out of the telephone, loudly enough to reach Danielle’s ears.
‘How did she know?’ she asked. Then her eyes widened. ‘She was waiting… you knew.’
I half nodded. ‘Kit,’ Holly was saying. ‘Where are you? Are you all right? Your horse fell…’
‘I’m fine. I’m in London. What’s the matter?’
‘Everything’s worse. Everything’s terrible. We’re going to lose… lose the yard… everything… Bobby’s out walking somewher
e…’
‘Holly, remember the telephone,’ I said.
‘What? Oh, the bugs? I simply don’t care any more. The telephone people are coming to look for bugs in the morning, they’ve promised. But what does it matter? We’re finished… It’s over.’ She sounded exhausted. ‘Can you come? Bobby wants you. We need you. You hold us together.’
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
‘It’s the bank. The new manager. We went to see him today and he says we can’t even have the money for the wages on Friday and they’re going to make us sell up… he says we haven’t enough security to cover all we owe them… and we’re just slipping further into debt because we aren’t making enough profit to pay the interest on the loan for those yearlings, and do you know how much he’s charging us for that now? Seven per cent over base rate. Seven. That’s about seventeen per cent right now. And he’s adding the interest on, so now we’re paying interest on the interest… it’s like a snowball… it’s monstrous… it’s bloody unfair.’
A shambles, I thought. Banks were never in the benefaction business.
‘He admitted it was because of the newspaper articles,’ Holly said wretchedly. ‘He said it was unfortunate… unfortunate!… that Bobby’s father wouldn’t help us, not even a penny… I’ve caused Bobby all this trouble… it’s because of me…’
‘Holly, stop it,’ I said. ‘That’s nonsense. Sit tight and I’ll come. I’m at Chiswick. It will take me an hour and a half.’
‘The bank manager says we will have to tell the owners to take their horses away. He says we’re not the only trainers who’ve ever had to sell up… he says it happens, it’s quite common… he’s so hard-hearted I could kill him.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Well, don’t do anything yet. Have a drink. Cook me some spinach or something, I’m starving. I’ll be on my way… See you soon.’
I put down the receiver with a sigh. I didn’t really want to drive on to Newmarket with stiffening bruises and an echoingly empty stomach, and I didn’t really want to shoulder all the Allardeck troubles again, but a pact was a pact and that was the end of it. My twin, my bond, and all that.
‘Trouble?’ Danielle said, watching.
I nodded. I told her briefly about the attacks in the Flag and their dire financial consequences and she came swiftly to the same conclusion as myself.
‘Bobby’s father is crass.’
‘Crass,’ I said appreciatively, ‘puts it in a nutshell.’
I stood up slowly from her chair and thanked her for the telephone.
‘You’re in no shape for all this,’ she said objectively.
‘Never believe it.’ I leaned forward and kissed her fragrant cheek. ‘Will you come racing again, with your aunt?’
She looked at me straightly. ‘Probably,’ she said.
‘Good.’
Bobby and Holly were sitting in silence in the kitchen, staring into space, and turned their heads towards me apathetically when I went in.
I touched Bobby on the shoulder and kissed Holly and said, ‘Come on, now, where’s the wine? I’m dying of various ills and the first thing I need is a drink.’
My voice sounded loud in their gloom. Holly got heavily to her feet and went over to the cupboard where they kept glasses. She put her hand out towards it and then let it fall again. She turned towards me.
‘I had my test results since you phoned,’ she said blankly. ‘I definitely am pregnant. This should have been the happiest night of our lives.’ She put her arms around my neck and began quietly to cry. I wrapped my arms round her and held her, and Bobby stayed sitting down, too defeated, it seemed, to be jealous.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll drink to the baby. Come on, loves, businesses come and go, and this one hasn’t gone yet, but babies are for ever, God rot their dear little souls.’
I disentangled her arms and picked out the glasses while she silently wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jersey.
Bobby said dully, ‘You don’t understand,’ but I did, very well. There was no fight in him, the deflation was too great; and I’d had my own agonising disappointments now and then. It could take a great effort of will not to sit around and mope.
I said to Holly, ‘Put on some music, very loud.’
‘No,’ Bobby said.
‘Yes, Bobby. Yes,’ I said. ‘Stand up and yell. Stick two fingers up at fate. Break something. Swear your guts out.’
‘I’ll break your neck,’ he said with a flicker of savagery.
‘All right, then, do it.’
He raised his head and stared at me and then rose abruptly to his feet, power crowding back into his muscles and vigour and exasperation into his face.
‘All right then,’ he shouted, ‘I’ll break your fucking Fielding neck.’
‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘And give me something to eat.’
Instead he went over to Holly and enfolded her and the two of them stood there half weeping, half laughing, entwined in privacy and back with the living. I resignedly dug in the freezer for something fast and unfattening and transferred it to the microwave oven, and I poured some red wine and drank it at a gulp.
Over the food Bobby admitted that he’d been too depressed to walk round at evening stables, so after coffee he and I both went out into the yard for a last inspection. The night was windy and cold and moonlit behind scurrying clouds. Everything looked normal and quiet, all the horses dozing behind closed doors, scarcely moving when we looked in on them, checking.
The boxes that had contained Jermyn Graves’s horses were still empty, and the string which led to the bell had been detached from the door and hung limply from its last guiding staple. Bobby watched while I attached it to the door again.
‘Do you think it’s still necessary?’ he asked dubiously.
‘Yes, I do,’ I said positively. ‘The feed-merchant will have paid in Graves’s cheque yesterday, but it won’t have been cleared yet. I wouldn’t trust Graves out of sight and I’d rig as many strings to the bell as we can manage.’
‘He won’t come back again,’ Bobby said, shaking his head.
‘Do you want to risk it?’
He stared at me for a while and then said, ‘No.’
We ran three more strings, all as tripwires across pathways, and made sure the bell would fall if any one of them was tugged. It was perhaps not the most sophisticated of systems, but it had twice proved that it worked.
It worked for the third time at one in the morning.
EIGHT
My first feeling, despite what I’d said to Bobby, was of incredulity. My second, that springing out of bed was a bad idea, despite the long hot soaking I’d loosened up with earlier; and I creaked and groaned and felt sore.
As I took basic overnight things with me permanently in a bag in the car – razor, clean shirt, toothbrush – I was sleeping (as usual in other people’s houses) in bright blue running shorts. I would have dressed, I think, if I’d felt more supple. Instead I simply thrust my feet into shoes and went out on to the landing, and found Bobby there, bleary-eyed, indecisive, wearing the top half of his pyjamas.
‘Was that the bell?’ he said.
‘Yes. I’ll take the drive again. You take the yard.’
He looked down at his half-nakedness and then at mine.
‘Wait.’ He dived back into his and Holly’s bedroom and reappeared with a sweater for me and trousers for himself, and, struggling into these garments en route, we careered down the stairs and went out into the windy night. There was enough moonlight to see by, which was as well, as we hadn’t brought torches.
At a shuffle more than a run I hurried down the drive, but the string across that route was still stretched tight. If Graves had come, he hadn’t come that way.
I turned back and went to help Bobby in the yard, but he was standing there indecisively in the semi-darkness, looking around him, puzzled. ‘I can’t find Graves,’ he said. ‘Do you think the bell just blew off in the wind?’
‘It’s
too heavy. Have you checked all the strings?’
‘All except the one across the gate from the garden. But there’s no one here. No one’s come that way.’
‘All the same…’ I set off down the path to the gate to the garden, Bobby following: and we found the rustic wooden barrier wide open. We both knew it couldn’t have blown open. It was held shut normally with a loop of chain, and the chain hung there on the gatepost, lifted off the gate by human hands.
We couldn’t hear much for the wind. Bobby looked doubtfully back the way we had come and made as if to return to the yard.
I said, ‘Suppose he’s in the garden.’
‘But what for? And how?’
‘He could have come through the hedge from the road into the paddock, and over the paddock fence, and then down this path, and he’d have missed all the strings except this one.’
‘But it’s pointless. He can’t get horses out through the garden. There are walls all round it. He wouldn’t try.’
I was inclined to agree, but all the same, someone had opened the gate.
The walled garden of Bobby’s house was all and only on one side, with the drive, stable yard and outhouses wrapping round the other three; and apart from the gate where we now stood, the only way into the garden was through French windows from the drawing room of the house.
Maybe Bobby was struck by the same unwelcome thought as myself. In any case he followed me instantly through the gate and off the paving-stone path inside on to the grass, which would be quieter underfoot.
We went silently, fast, the short distance towards the French windows, but they appeared shut, the many square glass frames reflecting the pale light from the sky.
We were about to go over to try them to make sure they were still locked when a faint click and a rattle reached my ears above the breeze, followed by a sharp and definite ‘Bugger’.
Bobby and I stood stock still. We could see no one, even with eyes fast approaching maximum night vision.
‘Get down,’ a voice said. ‘I don’t like it.’
‘Shut up.’
Feeling highly visible in my long bare legs and electric blue shorts I moved across the grass in the direction of the shadows which held the voices, and as policemen will tell you, you should not do that; one should go indoors and telephone the force.