by Dick Francis
Most of the others, fired by Dissdale’s certainty, happily clutched tickets doubling Sandcastle every which-way. Even Lorna Shipton, with a pink glow on each bony cheekbone, confessed to Henry that just for once, as it was a special day, she had staked five pounds in forecasts.
‘And you, Tim?’ Henry teased. ‘Your shirt?’
Lorna looked confused. I smiled. ‘Buttons and all,’ I said Cheerfully.
‘No, but…’ Lorna said.
‘Yes, but,’ I said, ‘I’ve dozens more shirts at home.’
Henry laughed and steered Lorna gently away, and I found myself standing next to Calder Jackson.
‘Do you gamble?’ I asked, for something to say.
‘Only on certainties.’ He smiled blandly in the way that scarcely warmed his eyes. ‘Though on certainties it’s hardly a gamble.’
‘And is Sandcastle a certainty?’
He shook his curly head. ‘A probability. No racing bet’s a certainty. The horse might feel ill. Might be kicked at the start.’
I glanced across at Dissdale who was faintly sweating, and hoped for his sake that the horse would feel well and come sweetly out of the stalls.
‘Can you tell if a horse is sick just by looking at him?’ I enquired. ‘I mean, if you just watched him walk round the parade ring, could you tell?’
Calder answered in the way that revealed it was again an often-asked question. ‘Of course sometimes you can see at once, but mostly a horse as ill as that wouldn’t have been brought to the races. I prefer to look at a horse closely. To examine for instance the colour inside the eyelid and inside the nostril. In a sick horse, what should be a healthy pink may be pallid.’ He stopped with apparent finality, as if that were the appointed end of that answer, but after a few seconds, during which the whole huge crowd watched Sandcastle stretch out in the sun in the canter to the post, he said almost with awe, ‘That’s a superb horse. Superb.’ It sounded to me like his first spontaneous remark of the day and it vibrated with genuine enthusiasm.
‘He looks great,’ I agreed.
Calder Jackson smiled as if with indulgence at the shallowness of my judgement compared with the weight of his inside knowledge. ‘He should have won the Derby,’ he said. ‘He got shut in on the rails, couldn’t get out in time.’
My place at the great man’s side was taken by Bettina, who threaded her arm through his and said, ‘Dear Calder, come down to the front, you can see better than here at the back.’ She gave me a photogenic little smile and pulled her captive after her down the steps.
In a buzz that rose to a roar the runners covered their mile and a half journey; longer than the 2,000 Guineas, the same length as the Derby. Sandcastle in scarlet and white was making no show at all to universal groans and lay only fifth as the field swept round the last bend, and Dissdale looked as if he might have a heart attack.
Alas for my shirt, I thought. Alas for Lorna’s forecasts. Bang goes the banker that can’t lose.
Dissdale, unable to watch, collapsed weakly onto one of the small chairs which dotted the balcony, and in the next-door boxes people were standing on top of theirs and jumping up and down and screaming.
‘Sandcastle making his move…’ the commentator’s voice warbled over the loudspeakers, but the yells of the crowd drowned the rest.
The scarlet and white colours had moved to the outside. The daisy-cutter action was there for the world to see. The superb horse, the big rangy colt full of courage was eating up his ground.
Our box in the grandstand was almost a furlong down the course from the winning post, and when he reached us Sandcastle still had three horses ahead. He was flying, though, like a streak, and I found the sight of this fluid valour, this all-out striving, most immensely moving and exciting. I grabbed Dissdale by his despairing shoulder and hauled him forcefully to his feet.
‘Look,’ I shouted in his ear. ‘Watch. Your banker’s going to win. He’s a marvel. He’s a dream.’
He turned with a gaping mouth to stare in the direction of the winning post and he saw… he saw Sandcastle among the tumult going like a javelin, free now of all the others, aiming straight for the prize.
‘He’s won,’ Dissdale’s mouth said slackly, though amid the noise I could hardly hear him. ‘He’s bloody won.’
I helped him up the steps into the box. His skin was grey and damp and he was stumbling.
‘Sit down,’ I said, pulling out the first chair I came to, but he shook his head weakly and made his shaky way to his own place at the head of the table. He almost fell into it, heavily, and stretched out a trembling hand to his champagne.
‘My God,’ he said, ‘I’ll never do that again. Never on God’s earth.’
‘Do what?’
He gave me a flickering glance over his glass and said, ‘All on one throw.’
All. He’d said it before. ‘All on the banker…’ He surely couldn’t, I thought, have meant literally all; but yet not much else could have produced such physical symptoms.
Everyone else piled back into the room with ballooning jollity. Everyone without exception had backed Sandcastle, thanks to Dissdale. Even Calder Jackson, when pressed by Bettina, admitted to ‘a small something on the Tote. I don’t usually, but just this once.’ And if he’d lost, I thought, he wouldn’t have confessed.
Dissdale, from near fainting, climbed rapidly to a pulsethrobbing high, the colour coming back to his plump cheeks in a hectic red. No one seemed to have noticed his near-collapse, certainly not his wife, who flirted prettily with the healer and got less than her due response. More wine easily made its way down every throat, and there was no doubt that for the now commingled party the whole day was a riotous success.
In a while Henry offered to take Judith to the paddock. Gordon to my relief invited Lorna, which left me with the mystery lady, Pen Warner, with whom I’d so far exchanged only the thrilling words ‘How do you do.’
‘Would you like to go down?’ I asked.
‘Yes, indeed. But you don’t need to stay with me if it’s too much bother.’
‘Are you so insecure?’
There was a quick widening of the eyes and a visible mental shift. ‘You’re damned rude,’ she said. ‘And Judith said you were nice.’
I let her go past me out onto the landing and smiled as she went. ‘I should like to stay with you,’ I said, ‘if it’s not too much bother.’
She gave me a dry look, but as we more or less had to walk in single file along the narrow passageway owing to people going in the opposite direction she said little more until we had negotiated the lifts, the escalators and the pedestrian tunnel and had emerged into the daylight of the paddock.
It was her first time at Ascot, she said. Her first time, in fact, at the races.
‘What do you think of it?’
‘Very beautiful. Very brave. Quite mad.’
‘Does sanity lie in ugliness and cowardice?’ I asked.
‘Life does, pretty often,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’
‘And some aren’t happy unless they’re desperate.’
She quietly laughed. ‘Tragedy inspires, so they say.’
‘They can stick it,’ I said. ‘I’d rather lie in the sun.’
We stood on the raised tiers of steps to watch the horses walk round the ring, and she told me that she lived along the road from Judith in another house fronting the common. ‘I’ve lived there all my life, long before Judith came. We met casually, as one does, in the local shops, and just walked home together one day several years ago. Been friends ever since.’
‘Lucky,’ I said.
‘Yes.’
‘Do you live alone?’ I asked conversationally.
Her eyes slid my way with inner amusement. ‘Yes, I do. Do you?’
I nodded.
‘I prefer it,’ she said.
‘So do I.’
Her skin was clear and still girlish, the thickened figure alone giving an impression of years passing. That and the look in the ey
es, the ‘I’ve seen the lot’ sadness.
‘Are you a magistrate?’ I asked.
She looked startled. ‘No, I’m not. What an odd thing to ask.’
I made an apologetic gesture. ‘You just look as if you might be.’
She shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t have time, even if I had the urge.’
‘But you do do good in the world.’
She was puzzled. ‘What makes you say so?’
‘I don’t know. The way you look.’ I smiled to take away any seriousness and said, ‘Which horse do you like? Shall we choose one and bet?’
‘What about Burnt Marshmallow?’
She liked the name, she said, so we queued briefly at a Tote window and invested some of the winnings from Cretonne and Sandcastle.
During our slow traverse of the paddock crowds on our way back towards the box we came towards Calder Jackson, who was surrounded by respectful listeners and didn’t see us.
‘Garlic is as good as penicillin,’ he was saying. ‘If you scatter grated garlic onto a septic wound it will kill all the bacteria…’
We slowed a little to hear.
’… and comfrey is miraculous,’ Calder said. ‘It knits bones and cures intractable skin ulcers in half the time you’d expect.’
‘He said all that upstairs,’ I said.
Pen Warner nodded, faintly smiling. ‘Good sound herbal medicine,’ she said. ‘You can’t fault him. Comfrey contains allantoin, a well-known cell proliferant.’
‘Does it? I mean… do you know about it?’
‘Mm.’ We walked on, but she said nothing more until we were high up again in the passageway to the box. ‘I don’t know whether you’d think I do good in the world… but basically I dole out pills.’
‘Er…?’ Isaid.
She smiled. ‘I’m a lady in a white coat. A pharmacist.’
I suppose I was in a way disappointed, and she sensed it.
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘we can’t all be glamorous. I told you life was ugly and frightening, and from my point of view that’s often what it is for my customers. I see fear every day… and I know its face.’
‘Pen,’ I said, ‘forgive my frivolity. I’m duly chastened.’
We reached the box to find Judith alone there, Henry having loitered to place a bet.
‘I told Tim I’m a pharmacist,’ Pen said. ‘He thinks it’s boring.’
I got no further than the first words of protestation when Judith interrupted.
‘She’s not just “a” pharmacist,’ she said. ‘She owns her own place. Half the medics in London recommend her. You’re talking to a walking gold-mine with a heart like a wet sponge.’
She put her arm round Pen’s waist and the two of them together looked at me, their eyes shining with what perhaps looked like liking, but also with the mischievous feminine superiority of being five or six years older.
‘Judith!’ I said compulsively. ‘I… I…’ I stopped. ‘Oh damn it,’ I said. ‘Have some Krug.’
Dissdale’s friends returned giggling to disrupt the incautious minute and shortly Gordon, Henry and Lorna crowded in. The whole party pressed out onto the balcony to watch the race, and because it was a time out of reality Burnt Marshmallow romped home by three lengths.
The rest of the afternoon slid fast away. Henry at some point found himself alone out on the balcony beside me while inside the box the table was being spread with a tea that was beyond my stretched stomach entirely and a temptation from which the ever-hungry Henry had bodily removed himself.
‘How’s your cartoonist?’ he said genially. ‘Are we staking him, or are we not?’
‘You’re sure… I have to decide… all alone?’
‘I said so. Yes.’
‘Well… I got him to bring some more drawings to the bank. And his paints.’
‘His paints?’
‘Yes. I thought if I could see him at work, I’d know…’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway, I took him into the private interview room and asked him to paint the outline of a cartoon film while I watched; and he did it, there and then, in acrylics. Twenty-five outline sketches in bright colour, all within an hour. Same characters, different story, and terrifically funny. That was on Monday. I’ve been… well… dreaming about those cartoons. It sounds absurd. Maybe they’re too much on my mind.’
‘But you’ve decided?’
After a pause I said, ‘Yes.’
‘And?’
With a sense of burning bridges I said, ‘To go ahead.’
‘All right.’ Henry seemed unalarmed. ‘Keep me informed.’
‘Yes, of course.’
He nodded and smoothly changed the subject. ‘Lorna and I have won quite a bit today. How about you?’
‘Enough to give Uncle Freddie fits about the effect on my unstable personality.’
Henry laughed aloud. ‘Your Uncle Freddie,’ he said, ‘knows you better than you may think.’
At the end of that splendid afternoon the whole party descended together to ground level and made its way to the exit; to the gate which opened onto the main road, and across that to the car park and to the covered walk which led to the station.
Calder just ahead of me walked in front, the helmet of curls sent kindly over Bettina, the strong voice thanking her and Dissdale for ‘a most enjoyable time.’ Dissdale himself, not only fully recovered but incoherent with joy as most of his doubles, crebles and accumulators had come up, patted Calder plumply on the shoulder and invited him over to ‘my place’ for the weekend.
Henry and Gordon, undoubtedly the most sober of the party, were fiddling in their pockets for car keys and throwing their racecards into wastebins. Judith and Pen were talking to each other and Lorna was graciously unbending to Dissdale’s friends. It seemed to be only I, with unoccupied eyes, who saw at all what was about to happen.
We were out on the pavement, still in a group, half-waiting for a chance to cross the road, soon to break up and scatter. All talking, laughing, busy; except me.
A boy stood there on the pavement, watchful and still. I noticed first the fixed, burning intent in the dark eyes, and quickly after that the jeans and faded shirt which contrasted sharply with our Ascot clothes, and then finally with incredulity the knife in his hand.
I had almost to guess at whom he was staring with such deadly purpose, and no time even to shout a warning. He moved across the pavement with stunning speed, the stab already on its upward travel.
I jumped almost without thinking; certainly without assessing consequences or chances. Most unbankerlike behaviour.
The steel was almost in Calder’s stomach when I deflected it. I hit the boy’s arm with my body in a sort of flying tackle and in a flashing view saw the weave of Calder’s trousers, the polish on his shoes, the litter on the pavement. The boy fell beneath me and I thought in horror that somewhere between our bodies he still held that wicked blade.
He writhed under me, all muscle and fury, and tried to heave me off. He was lying on his back, his face just under mine, his eyes like slits and his teeth showing between drawn-back lips. I had an impression of dark eyebrows and white skin and I could hear the breath hissing between his teeth in a tempest of effort.
Both of his hands were under my chest and I could feel him trying to get space enough to up-end the knife. I pressed down onto him solidly with all my weight and in my mind I was saying ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, you bloody fool’; and I was saying it for his sake, which seemed crazy to me at the time and even crazier in retrospect. He was trying to do me great harm and all I thought about was the trouble he’d be in if he succeeded.
We were both panting but I was taller and stronger and I could have held him there for a good while longer but for the two policemen who had been out on the road directing traffic. They had seen the melee; seen as they supposed a man in morning dress attacking a pedestrian, seen us struggling on the ground. In any case the first I knew of their presence was the feel of vice-like hands fastening onto my arms and pulling me backw
ards.
I resisted with all my might. I didn’t know they were policemen. I had eyes only for the boy: his eyes, his hands, his knife.
With peremptory strength they hauled me off, one of them anchoring my upper arms to my sides by encircling me from behind. I kicked furiously backwards and turned my head, and only then realised that the new assailants wore navy blue.
The boy comprehended the situation in a flash. He rolled over onto his feet, crouched for a split second like an athlete at the blocks and without lifting his head above waist-height slithered through the flow of the crowds still pouring out of the gates and disappeared out of sight inside the racecourse. Through there they would never find him. Through there he would escape to the cheaper rings and simply walk out of the lower gate.
I stopped struggling but the policemen didn’t let go. They had no thought of chasing the boy. They were incongruously calling me ‘sir’ while treating me with contempt, which if I’d been calm enough for reflection I would have considered fairly normal.
‘For God’s sake,’ I said finally to one of them, ‘what do you think that knife’s doing on the pavement?’
They looked down to where it lay; to where it had fallen when the boy ran. Eight inches of sharp steel kitchen knife with a black handle.
‘He was trying to stab Calder Jackson,’ I said. ‘All I did was stop him. Why do you think he’s gone?’
By this time Henry, Gordon, Laura, Judith and Pen were standing round in an anxious circle continually assuring the law that never in a million years would their friend attack anyone except out of direst need, and Calder was looking dazed and fingering a slit in the waistband of his trousers.
The farce slowly resolved itself into duller bureaucratic order. The policemen relinquished their hold and I brushed the dirt off the knees of my father’s suit and straightened my tangled tie. Someone picked up my tumbled top hat and gave it to me. I grinned at Judith. It all seemed such a ridiculous mixture of death and bathos.