by Dick Francis
I woke up with a start, my heart pounding, my face cold, clammy, sweaty. So vivid had been the dream that I had to feel with my hands to be sure that my legs were actually there. I lay in the dark, breathing hard, while my pulse returned to something near normal.
It was the first of a repeating pattern.
Two disturbed nights in a row left me totally exhausted.
I SPENT MOST of Sunday morning lying down, first on the sofa and then on the floor, which was more comfortable. I watched the twenty-four-hour news channels to find out more about what was being dubbed “Terror at the Guineas.” There had been dozens of television cameras covering the races, but only one had, peripherally, captured the scene on the balcony Head On Grandstand box numbers 1 and 2 at the moment the bomb went off. The fleeting footage was played over and over again with every news bulletin. It showed a bright flash, with bits of glass, steel and concrete being flung outwards, along with bodies. Many of the Delafield Industries guests had been literally blown from the balcony, falling, rag doll like, onto the flat roof below and then onto the unsuspecting racegoers in the viewing areas below that. They, apparently, had been the lucky ones, injured but alive. It had been those inside the rooms, like MaryLou, who had suffered the worst.
I thought again about Robert and Louisa. I knew I should call someone to ask what had happened to them. I also knew that I didn’t want to make the call because I was afraid of the answer. I went on lying on the floor.
I discovered from the television that while I had been sitting obediently on my white plastic chair wrapped in my red blanket, there had been much activity at the racetrack. The police had moved in, en masse, and had taken the names and addresses of all the thousands in the crowd. I had somehow been missed.
The racing had been abandoned and the 2,000 Guineas had been declared void, as half the horses had stopped during the final furlong while others had been driven hard for the line, their jockeys concentrating so intently on the race that they were unaware of the explosion until they pulled up after the finish. The television pictures clearly showed how one young rider’s joy at winning his first Classic had quickly turned to despair as realization struck that he had won a race that wouldn’t be.
Speculation was rife as to who had caused such murder and why.
One television channel had a reporter situated near the Devil’s Dyke, with the racetrack clearly visible in the background, the front of boxes 1 and 2 now covered by a large blue tarpaulin. He claimed that a police source had indicated to him that the bomb may have struck the wrong target. The track manager, who was unavailable for comment due to ill health, had apparently confirmed to police that the occupants of box number 1 had been switched at the last minute. The reporter, who I thought was rather inappropriately dressed in an open-neck striped shirt with no jacket, went on to speculate that the real targets had been an Arab prince and his entourage who originally had been expected to be in box 1. The Middle East conflict has once again been brought to our shores, the reporter stated with confidence.
I wondered if MaryLou would feel better in the knowledge that she had lost her legs by mistake. I doubted it.
I called my mother, in case she was worrying about me.
She wasn’t.
“Hello, darling,” she trilled down the wire. “What an awful thing to have happened.”
“I was there,” I said.
“What, at the races?”
“No, I mean right there when the bomb exploded.”
“Really. How exciting,” she said. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that I might have been killed.
“I am very lucky to be alive,” I said, hoping for some compassionate words from my parent.
“Of course you are, dear.”
Since my father died, my mother had become somewhat blasé about death. I think she really believed that whether one lived or died was preordained and out of one’s control. Recently, I thought that the collision with the brick truck had been, in my mother’s eyes, a neat way out of what was becoming a loveless marriage. Some time after his death, I had discovered that he had been having several minor affairs. Perhaps my mother believed that the accident was some sort of divine retribution.
“Well,” I said, “I thought I would let you know that I was OK.”
“Thank you, dear,” she said.
She didn’t ask me what had happened, and I decided not to share the horror. She enjoyed her quiet world of coffee mornings, church flower arranging and outings to visit well-tended gardens. Missing limbs and mutilated torsos didn’t have a place.
“Speak to you soon, Mum,” I said.
“Lovely, darling,” she said. “Bye.” She hung up.
We had never been very close.
As a child, it had always been to my father that I had gone for advice and affection. We had laughed together at my mother’s little foibles and joked about her political naivety. We had smiled and rolled our eyes when she had committed another faux pas, an all-too-regular occurrence.
I may not have actually cried when my father died, but I was devastated nevertheless. I worshipped him as my hero, and the loss was almost too much to bear. I remember clearly the feeling of despair when, a few weeks after his death, I could no longer smell him in the house. I had come home from boarding school for the weekend, and, suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore. The lack of his smell brought his demise into sharp reality-he wasn’t just out getting a newspaper, he was gone forever. I had rushed upstairs to his dressing room to smell his clothes. I had opened his wardrobes and drawers, and I had held his favorite sweaters to my nose. But he had gone. I had sat on the floor in that room for a very long time, just staring into space, totally bereft but unable to shed the tears, unable to properly grieve for his passing. Even now, I ached to be able to tell him about my life and my job, my joys and my sadnesses. I cursed him out loud for being dead and not being around when I needed him. I longed for him to be there to talk to, to soothe my hurting knee, to ease my troubled brain and to take away the horrors in my memory. But, still, I couldn’t cry for him.
THE ONE O’CLOCK news program started on the television, and I realized that I was hungry. Apart from a couple of pieces of French bread at the racetrack and a chocolate bar at the hospital, I hadn’t eaten since Friday night, and that meal hadn’t got past my stomach. Now that I thought about it, hunger was a nagging pain in my abdomen. It was one pain that I could do something about.
I limped gingerly into the kitchen and made myself a Spanish omelette. Food is often said to be a great comforter; indeed, most people under stress eat sugary foods like chocolate not only because it gives them energy but because it makes them feel better. I had done just the same at Bedford Hospital. However, for me, food gave me comfort when I cooked it.
I took some spring onions from my vegetable rack, diced them into small rounds, then fried them in a pan with a little extra-virgin olive oil. I found some cooked new potatoes hiding in the rear recesses of my fridge, so I sliced and added them to the onions with a splash of soy sauce to season and flavor. Three eggs, I thought, and broke them one-handed into a glass bowl. I really loved to cook, and I felt much better, in both mind and body, long before I sat down on my sofa to complete the experience by actually eating my creation.
Carl called sometime during the afternoon.
“Thank God you’re there,” he said.
“Been here all night,” I said.
“Sorry, should have called you earlier.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I didn’t call you either.” I knew why. No news was better news than we feared.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
“Hurt my knee,” I said. “I was taken to Bedford Hospital, and then home by taxi late last night. And you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I helped people to get down at the far end of the stand. Police took my name and address, then they sent me home.”
“Did you see Louisa or Robert?” I dreaded the answer.
“Wasn’t Robert in the box when the bomb went off?”
“He said that the bomb was definitely in box 1, and he was behind the folded back dividing wall in box 2 when it exploded and that protected him. But it seems to have left him somewhat deaf. I had to shout down the telephone.”
I knew how he felt.
“How about Louisa?” I asked.
“No idea,” said Carl. “I tried the emergency number the police gave out, but it’s permanently busy.”
“Any news on anyone else?” I asked.
“Nothing, except what’s on the TV. How about you? Heard anything?”
“No, nothing. I saw the American woman organizer, you know, MaryLou Fordham, just after the bomb went off.” I could see the image in my head. “She’d lost her legs.”
“Oh God.”
“I felt so bloody helpless,” I said.
“Was she still alive?” he asked.
“When I saw her she was, but I don’t know if they got her out. She had lost so much blood. I was finally led away by a fireman, who told me to go down.”
There was a pause, as if both of us were reliving the events at the racetrack.
“What shall we do about the restaurant?” Carl asked at length.
“I haven’t even thought about it,” I said. “I suppose the kitchen’s still sealed. I’ll start sorting it out tomorrow. I’m too tired now.”
“Yeah, me too. Didn’t get much sleep last night. Call me in the morning.”
“OK,” I said. “Call me tonight if you hear anything.”
“Will do,” he said, and hung up.
I spent the afternoon in an armchair with my left leg supported by a cushion on the coffee table. I seemed unable to turn the television away from the news channels, so I watched the same not-new news repeated time and time again. The Arab prince theory gained more credence throughout the day, mostly, it appeared to me, because there was nothing new to report and they had to fill the time somehow. Middle East experts were wheeled in to the studio to make endless, meaningless comments about a speculative theory about which they had no facts or evidence. It occurred to me that the TV networks were simply allowing several of these “so-called experts” the opportunity to postulate their own extremist positions, something that would do nothing to calm the turmoil that existed in their lands. Violent death and destruction were clearly nothing out of the ordinary to many of them, and some even appeared to justify the carnage, saying that the prince may have been seen as a legitimate target by rebel forces in his homeland, and the fact that innocents had died by mistake was merely unfortunate…you know, casualties of war and all that. It all made me very angry, but I still couldn’t switch it off, just in case I missed some new item.
At some point around five o’clock, I drifted off to sleep.
I woke suddenly with the now-familiar thumping heart and clammy face. Another encounter with the hospital gurney, the windowless corridor, the legless MaryLou and the blood.
Oh God, I said to myself, not another night of this.
But, indeed, it was.
4
M aryLou didn’t make it.
On Monday morning, The Times was delivered, as usual, to my cottage door at seven o’clock. MaryLou’s name was clearly there, in black and white, along with six of the others known to have died. The remaining victims had yet to be identified or their next of kin informed. The current police estimate was that fifteen people had perished in the bombing, but they still weren’t absolutely sure. They were still trying to piece together the bodies.
I was amazed that anyone near those boxes could have survived, but apparently half of them had, although, according to the paper, many of the survivors had been badly injured and more deaths were expected.
As for me, my knee was definitely getting better, and I had managed to hop upstairs to bed on Sunday evening, not that being more comfortable had been any more restful for my unconscious brain. I was beginning to expect the return of the windowless corridor like the proverbial bad penny. Perhaps now the sure knowledge that MaryLou was dead would get through to wherever gray-matter dreams originate.
I sat on my sofa in my dressing gown and read the reports through from start to finish. They ran to six pages, but the information contained in them was sketchy and thin. The police had obviously not been willing to give journalists too many hard facts until they themselves were sure of the details. Sources close to the police were quoted without names, a sure sign of a reporter fishing in the dark for information.
I made myself a coffee and flicked on the BBC breakfast news. More names had been released overnight by the police, and a press conference was expected at any time. We were assured that it would be covered in full, but, meantime, “here is the sports news.”
Somehow, the weekend’s sports results seemed somewhat inappropriate, sandwiched as they were between graphic reports of death and maiming at Newmarket racetrack. Karl Marx stated in 1844 that religion was the opium of the people, but nowadays sport in general, and soccer in particular, had taken over that mantle. And so I waited through an analysis of how City had defeated United and Rovers had trounced Albion, before a return to more serious matters. Apparently, a minute’s silence had been observed before each of Sunday’s games. This was not unexpected. A minute’s silence might be observed at a soccer match over the death of the manager’s dog. In fact, any excuse will be good enough for a bit of head bowing around the center circle.
Did people really care about unknown victims? I suppose they cared that it was not them or their families who had been blown up. It is difficult to care about people one hasn’t met and never knew. Outrage, yes, that such an act had been perpetrated on anyone. But care? Maybe just enough for a minute’s silence ahead of ninety further minutes’ shouting and singing at the match.
My wandering thoughts were brought back to the television, as the Chief Constable of Suffolk police was introduced at the televised press conference. He sat, in uniform, in front of a blue board bearing the large star and crown crest of Suffolk Constabulary.
“Our investigations,” he began, “are continuing into the explosion at Newmarket races on Saturday. I can confirm that, as of now, eighteen people are known to have lost their lives. Whereas next of kin have been informed where possible, there are still some victims whose families have as yet been impossible to contact. I cannot therefore give a full list of victims. However, I have the names of fourteen of those known to have died.”
He read them out slowly, pausing dramatically after each name.
Some I didn’t recognize, but others I knew all too well.
MaryLou Fordham, as expected, was on the list. So was Elizabeth Jennings, the tease. There was no mention of Rolf Schumann. And just when I was beginning to hope that Louisa had survived, the Chief Constable said, “And, finally, Louisa Whitworth.”
I sat there, stunned. I suppose I should not have been greatly surprised. I had seen the devastation in that room for myself, and the surprise was that so many had lived, not that Louisa had died. But with Robert being alive, I had hoped against reason that Louisa was alive too.
The press conference continued, but I wasn’t really listening. I could picture Louisa as I had last seen her, in a white blouse and black skirt, hurrying around the tables, doing her job. She had been a smart girl with, at nineteen years old, a great future. Having achieved better-than-expected results on her examinations, she had been toying with the idea of going to college. In the meantime, she had worked for me since September, and had been saving to go away to South America with her boyfriend. How bloody unfair, I thought. Cut down, with her whole life ahead of her. How could anyone have done such a thing?
Another policeman on the television was holding up a diagram, a map of the boxes in the Newmarket Head On Grandstand.
“The bomb was placed here,” he said, pointing, “inside the air conditioner in box 1, just above the main window at the front of the room. Consequently, the bomb was between those people inside the room and those on the viewing balcony outside. We estimate that some five pounds of high explosive was used, and this was sufficient to cause considerable structural problems within the building. The majority of those killed or injured were subject to blast damage, although one person lost her life as a result of being hit by flying masonry.”
In the wrong place at the wrong time, but so were we all.
The Chief Constable took over again.
“There has been some speculation in the media that the bomb was planted in an attempt to assassinate a foreign national.” He paused. “Whereas it is too early for us to comment, I can confirm that the occupants of box number 1 were switched with box 6 down the corridor. This switch had been made at the request of the new occupants of box 1 since they would then be able to accommodate a larger party in boxes 1 and 2 with the dividing wall folded away between them instead of having two separate rooms as originally allocated. The switch was made early last week. It would appear that the explosive device was detonated by a timing mechanism. We have yet been unable to establish for how long the device had been in situ and therefore we have to consider the possibility that it was intended for a different target than that actually hit.” He paused again before adding, “As part of the security check for the foreign national, the air conditioner in box 6 was opened and inspected early on Saturday morning and found to be clear.”
Oh great, I thought.
The press conference went on for a while longer, but it was clear that the police had no idea who was responsible and seemingly no leads to act on.
My phone rang.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Chef?” said a voice. “Gary here. Are you coming to work?”