by Dick Francis
‘It was my father’s,’ I said.
‘Such a stupid man.’
I glanced at her face, but she was merely expressing her thoughts, not positively trying to offend.
‘A beautiful day for racing,’ I said.
‘You should be working. Your Uncle Freddie won’t like it, you know. I’m certain that when he bailed you out he made it a condition that you and your mother should both stay away from racecourses. And now look at you. It’s really too bad. I’ll have to tell him, of course.’
I wondered how Henry put up with it. Wondered, as one does, why he’d married her. He, however, his ear attuned across the table in a husbandly way, said to her pleasantly. ‘Freddie knows that Tim is here, my dear. Gordon and I obtained dispensation, so to speak.’ He gave me a glimmer of a smile. ‘The wrath of God has been averted.’
‘Oh.’ Lorna Shipton looked disappointed and I noticed Judith trying not to laugh.
Uncle Freddie, ex-vice chairman, now retired, still owned enough of the bank to make his unseen presence felt, and I knew he was in the habit of telephoning Henry two or three times a week to find out what was going on. Out of interest, one gathered, not from desire to meddle; as certainly, once he had set his terms, he never meddled with mother and me.
Dissdale’s last guest arrived at that point with an unseen flourish of trumpets, a man making an entrance as if well aware of newsworthiness. Dissdale leapt to his feet to greet him and pumped him warmly by hand.
‘Calder, this is great. Calder Jackson, everybody.’
There were yelps of delight from Dissdale’s end and polite smiles round Gordon’s. ‘Calder Jackson,’ Dissdale said down the table, ‘You know, the miracle-worker. Brings dying horses back to life. You must have seen him on television.’
‘Ah yes,’ Gordon responded. ‘Of course.’
Dissdale beamed and returned to his guest who was lapping up adulation with a show of modesty.
‘Who did he say?’ Lorna Shipton asked.
‘Calder Jackson,’ Gordon said.
‘Who?’
Gordon shook his head, his ignorance showing. He raised his eyebrows in a question to me, but I fractionally shook my head also. We listened, however, and we learned.
Calder Jackson was a shortish man with a head of hair designed to be noticed. Designed literally, I guessed. He had a lot of dark curls going attractively grey, cut short towards the neck but free and fluffy on top of his head and over his forehead; and he had let his beard grow in a narrow fringe from in front of his ears round the line of his jaw, the hairs of this being also bushy and curly but grey to white. From in front his weathered face was thus circled with curls: from the side he looked as if he were wearing a helmet. Or a coalscuttle, I thought unflatteringly. Once seen, in any case, never forgotten.
‘It’s just a gift,’ he was saying deprecatingly in a voice that had an edge to it more compelling than loudness: an accent very slightly of the country but of no particular region; a confidence born of acclaim.
The girl sitting next to me was ecstatic. ‘How divine to meet you. One has heard so much… Do tell us, now do tell us your secret.’
Calder Jackson eyed her blandly, his gaze sliding for a second beyond her to me and then back again. Myself he quite openly discarded as being of no interest, but to the girl he obligingly said, ‘There’s no secret, my dear. None at all. Just good food, good care and a few age-old herbal remedies. And, of course… well… the laying on of hands.’
‘But how,’ asked the girl, ‘how do you do that to horses?’
‘I just… touch them.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘And then sometimes I feel them quiver, and I know the healing force is going from me into them.’
‘Can you do it infallibly?’ Henry asked politely, and I noted with interest that he’d let no implication of doubt sound in his voice: Henry whose gullibility could be measured in micrograms, if at all.
Calder Jackson took his seriousness for granted and slowly shook his head. ‘If I have the horse in my care for long enough, it usually happens in the end. But not always. No, sadly, not always.’
‘How fascinating,’ Judith said, and earned another of those kind bland smiles. Charlatan or not, I thought, Calder Jackson had the mix just right: an arresting appearance, a modest demeanour, no promise of success. And for all I knew, he really could do what he said. Healers were an age-old phenomenon, so why not a healer of horses?
‘Can you heal people too?’ I asked in a mirror-image of Henry’s tone. No doubts. Just enquiry.
The curly head turned my way with more civility than interest and he patiently answered the question he must have been asked a thousand times before. Answered in a sequence of words he had perhaps used almost as often. ‘Whatever gift it is that I have is especially for horses. I have no feeling that I can heal humans, and I prefer not to try. I ask people not to ask me, because I don’t like to disappoint them.’
I nodded my thanks, watched his head turn away and listened to him willingly answering the next question, from Bettina, as if it too had never before been asked. ‘No, the healing very seldom happens instantaneously. I need to be near the horse for a while. Sometimes for only a few days. Sometimes for a few weeks. One can never tell.’
Dissdale basked in the success of having hooked his celebrity and told us all that two of Calder’s ex-patients were running that very afternoon. ‘Isn’t that right, Calder?’
The curly head nodded. ‘Cretonne, in the first race, she used to break blood vessels, and Molyneaux, in the fifth, he came to me with infected wounds. I feel they are my friends now. I feel I know them.’
‘And shall we back them, Calder?’ Dissdale asked roguishly. ‘Are they going to win?’
The healer smiled forgivingly. ‘If they’re fast enough. Dissdale.’
Everyone laughed. Gordon refilled his own guests’ glasses. Lorna Shipton said apropos of not much that she had occasionally considered becoming a Christian Scientist and Judith wondered what colour the Queen would be wearing. Dissdale’s party talked animatedly among themselves, and the door from the corridor tentatively opened.
Any hopes I might have had that Gordon’s sixth place was destined for a Bettina-equivalent for my especial benefit were immediately dashed. The lady who appeared and whom Judith greeted with a kiss on the cheek was nearer forty than twentyfive and more solid than lissom. She wore a brownish pink linen suit and a small white straw hat circled with a brownish pink ribbon. The suit, I diagnosed, was an old friend: the hat, new in honour of the occasion.
Judith in her turn introduced the newcomer: Penelope Warner – Pen – a good friend of hers and Gordon’s. Pen Warner sat where invited, next to Gordon and made small-talk with Henry and Lorna. I half listened, and took in a few desultory details like no rings on the fingers, no polish on the nails, no grey in the short brown hair, no artifice in the voice. Worthy, I thought. Well-intentioned; slightly boring. Probably runs the church.
A waitress appeared with an excellent lunch, during which Calder could from time to time be heard extolling the virtues of watercress for its iron content and garlic for the treatment of fever and diarrhoea.
‘And of course in humans,’ he was saying, ‘garlic is literally a life saver in whooping-cough. You make a poultice and bind it onto the bottom of the feet of the child every night, in a bandage and a sock, and in the morning you’ll smell the garlic on the breath of the child, and the cough will abate. Garlic, in fact, cures almost anything. A truly marvellous life-giving plant.’
I saw Pen Warner lift her head to listen and I thought that I’d been wrong about the church. I had missed the worldliness of the eyes, the long sad knowledge of human frailty. A magistrate, perhaps? Yes, perhaps.
Judith leaned across the table and said teasingly, ‘Tim, can’t you forget you’re a banker even at the races?’
‘What?’ I said.
‘You look at everyone as if you’re working out just how much you can lend them without risk.’
‘I’d lend you my soul,’ I said.
‘For me to pay back with interest?’
‘Pay in love and kisses.’
Harmless stuff, as frivolous as her hat. Henry, sitting next to her, said in the same vein, ‘You’re second in the queue, Tim. I’ve a first option, eh, Judith? Count on me, dear girl, for the last drop of blood.’
She patted his hand affectionately and glowed a little from the deep truth of our idle protestations: and Calder Jackson’s voice came through with ‘Comfrey heals tissues with amazing speed and will cause chronic ulcers to disappear in a matter of days, and of course it mends fractures in half the time considered normal. Comfrey is miraculous.’
There was a good deal of speculation after that all round the table about a horse called Sandcastle that had won the 2,000 Guineas six weeks earlier and was hot favourite for the King Edward VII Stakes, the top Ascot race for three-year-old colts, due to be run that afternoon.
Dissdale had actually seen the Guineas at Newmarket and was enthusiastic. ‘Daisy-cutter action. Positively eats up the ground.’ He sprayed his opinions good naturedly to the furthest ear. ‘Big rangy colt, full of courage.’
‘Beaten in the Derby, though,’ Henry said, judiciously responding.
‘Well, yes,’ Dissdale allowed. ‘But fourth, you know. Not a total disgrace, would you say?’
‘He was good as a two-year-old,’ Henry said, nodding.
‘Glory, yes,’ said Dissdale fervently. ‘And you can’t fault his breeding. By Castle out of an Ampersand mare. You can’t get much better than that.’
Several heads nodded respectfully in ignorance.
‘He’s my banker,’ Dissdale said and then spread his arms wide and half laughed. ‘OK, we’ve got a roomful of bankers. But Sandcastle is where I’m putting my money today. Doubling him with my bets in every other race. Trebles. Accumulators. The lot. You all listen to your Uncle Dissdale. Sandcastle is the soundest banker at Ascot.’ His voice positively shook with evangelical belief. ‘He simply can’t be beaten.’
‘Betting is out for you, Tim,’ Lorna Shipton said severely in my ear.
‘I’m not my mother,’ I said mildly.
‘Heredity’ Lorna said darkly. ‘And your father drank.’
I smothered a bursting laugh and ate my strawberries in good humour. Whatever I’d inherited from my parents it wasn’t an addiction to their more expensive pleasures; rather a firm intention never again to lose my record collection to the bailiffs. Those stolid men had taken even the rocking horse on which at the age of six I’d ridden my fantasy Grand Nationals. They’d taken my books, my skis and my camera. Mother had fluttered around in tears saying those things were mine, not hers, and they should leave them, and the men had gone on marching out with all our stuff as if they were deaf. About her own disappearing treasures she had been distraught, her distress and grief hopelessly mixed with guilt.
I had been old enough at twenty-four to shrug off our actual losses and more or less replace them (except for the rocking horse) but the fury of that day had affected my whole life since: and I had been silent when it happened, white and dumb with rage.
Lorna Shipton removed her disapproval from me long enough to tell Henry not to have cream and sugar on his strawberries or she would have no sympathy if he put on weight, had a heart attack, or developed pimples. Henry looked resignedly at the forbidden delights which he wouldn’t have eaten anyway. God preserve me, I thought, from marrying a Lorna Shipton.
By the coffee-brandy-cigar stage the tranquil seating pattern had broken up into people dashing out to back their hopes in the first race and I, not much of a gambler whatever Mrs Shipton might think, had wandered out onto the balcony to watch the Queen’s procession of sleek horses, open carriages, gold, glitter and fluttering feathers trotting like a fairy tale up the green course.
‘Isn’t it splendid,’ said Judith’s voice at my shoulder, and I glanced at the characterful face and met the straight smiling eyes. Damn it to hell, I thought, I’d like to live with Gordon’s wife.
‘Gordon’s gone to bet,’ she said, ‘so I thought I’d take the opportunity… He’s appalled at what happened… and we’re really grateful to you, you know, for what you did that dreadful day.’
I shook my head. ‘I did nothing, believe me.’
‘Well, that’s half the point. You said nothing. In the bank, I mean. Henry says there hasn’t been a whisper.’
‘But… I wouldn’t.’
‘A lot of people would,’ she said. ‘Suppose you had been that Alec’
I smiled involuntarily. ‘Alec isn’t unkind. He wouldn’t have told.’
‘Gordon says he’s as discreet as a town-crier.’
‘Do you want to go down and see the horses?’ I asked.
‘Yes. It’s lovely up here, but too far from life.’
We went down to the paddock, saw the horses walk at close quarters round the ring and watched the jockeys mount ready to ride out onto the course. Judith smelled nice. Stop it, I told myself. Stop it.
‘That horse over there,’ I said, pointing, ‘is the one Calder Jackson said he cured. Cretonne. The jockey in bright pink.’
‘Are you going to back it?’ she asked.
‘If you like.’
She nodded the yellow silk roses and we queued up in good humour to make the wager. All around us in grey toppers and frothy dresses the Ascot crowd swirled, a feast to the eye in the sunshine, a ritual in make-believe, a suppression of gritty truth. My father’s whole life had been a pursuit of the spirit I saw in these Royal Ascot faces; the pursuit and entrapment of happiness.
‘What are you thinking,’ Judith said, ‘so solemnly?’
‘That lotus-eaters do no harm. Let terrorists eat lotus.’
‘As a steady diet,’ she said, ‘it would be sickening.’
‘On a day like this one could fall in love.’
‘Yes, one could.’ She was reading her race-card over-intently. ‘But should one?’
After a pause I said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Nor do I.’ She looked up with seriousness and understanding and with a smile in her mind. ‘I’ve known you six years.’
‘I haven’t been faithful,’ I said.
She laughed and the moment passed, but the declaration had quite plainly been made and in a way accepted. She showed no awkwardness in my continued presence but rather an increase of warmth, and in mutual contentment we agreed to stay in the paddock for the first short race rather than climb all the way up and find it was over by the time we’d reached the box.
The backs of the jockeys disappeared down the course as they cantered to the start, and I said, as a way of conversation, ‘Who is Dissdale Smith?’
‘Oh.’ She looked amused. ‘He’s in the motor trade. He loves co make a splash, as no doubt you saw, but I don’t think he’s doing as well as he pretends. Anyway, he told Gordon he was Looking for someone to share the expense of this box here and asked if Gordon would be interested in buying half the box for Today. He’s sold halves for the other days as well. I don’t think he’s supposed to, actually, so better say nothing to anyone else.’
‘No.’
‘Bettina’s his third wife,’ she said. ‘She’s a model.’
‘Very pretty.’
‘And not as dumb as she looks.’
I heard the dryness in her voice and acknowledged that I had myself sounded condescending.
‘Mind you,’ Judith said forgivingly, ‘his second wife was the most gorgeous thing on earth, but without two thoughts to rub together. Even Dissdale got tired of the total vacancy behind the sensational violet eyes. It’s all very well to get a buzz when all men light up on meeting your wife, but it rather kicks the stilts away when the same men diagnose total dimness within five minutes and start pitying you instead.’
‘I can see that. What became of her?’
‘Dissdale introduced her to a boy who’d inherited millions and had an IQ on a par with hers. The l
ast I heard they were in a fog of bliss.’
From where we stood we couldn’t see much of the race, only a head-on view of the horses as they came up to the winning post. In no way did I mind that, and when one of the leaders proved to carry bright pink Judith caught hold of my arm and shook it.
‘That’s Cretonne, isn’t it?’ She listened to the announcement of the winner’s number. ‘Do you realise, Tim, that we’ve damned well won?’ She was laughing with pleasure, her face full of sunshine and wonder.
‘Bully for Calder Jackson.’
‘You don’t trust him,’ she said. ‘I could see it in all your faces, yours and Henry’s and Gordon’s. You all have the same way of peering into people’s souls: you too, though you’re so young. You were all being incredibly polite so that he shouldn’t see your reservations.’
I smiled. ‘That sounds disgusting.’
‘I’ve been married to Gordon for nine years,’ she said.
There was again a sudden moment of stillness in which we looked at each other in wordless question and answer. Then she shook her head slightly, and after a pause I nodded acquiescence: and I thought that with a woman so straightforwardly intelligent I could have been content for ever.
‘Do we collect our winnings now or later?’ she asked.
‘Now, if we wait awhile.’
Waiting together for the jockeys to weigh-in and the all clear to be given for the pay-out seemed as little hardship for her as for me. We talked about nothing much and the time passed in a flash; and eventually we made our way back to the box to find that everyone there too had backed Cretonne and was high with the same success. Calder Jackson beamed and looked modest, and Dissdale expansively opened more bottles of excellent Krug, champagne of Kings.
Escorting one’s host’s wife to the paddock was not merely acceptable but an expected civility, so that it was with a benign eye that Gordon greeted our return. I was both glad and sorry, looking at his unsuspecting friendliness, that he had nothing to worry about. The jewel in his house would stay there and be his alone. Unattached bachelors could lump it.
The whole party, by now markedly carefree, crowded the box’s balcony for the big race. Dissdale said he had staked his all on his banker, Sandcastle; and although he said it with a laugh I saw the tremor in his hands which fidgetted with the raceglasses. He’s in too deep, I thought. A bad way to bet.