by Dick Francis
‘Oliver Knowles?’ a racing acquaintance from the long past said. ‘Don’t know him myself. I’ll ask around,’ and an hour later called back with the news. ‘He seems to be a good guy but his wife’s just buggered off with a Canadian. He might be a secret wife-beater, who can tell? Otherwise the gen is that he’s as honest as any horse-breeder, which you can take as you find it, and how’s your mother?’
‘She’s fine, thanks. She remarried last year. Lives in Jersey.’
‘Good. Lovely lady. Always buying us icecreams. I adored her.’
I put the receiver down with a smile and tried a credit rating agency. No black marks, they said: the Knowles credit was good.
I told Gordon across the room that I seemed to be getting nothing but green lights, and at lunch that day repeated the news to Henry. He looked around the table, collecting a few nods, a few frowns and a great deal of indecision.
‘We couldn’t carry it all ourselves, of course,’ Val said. ‘And it isn’t exactly something we could go to our regular sources with. They’d think us crackers.’
Henry nodded. ‘We’d have to canvas friends for private money. I know a few people here or there who might come in. Two million, I think, is all we should consider ourselves. Two and a half at the outside.’
‘I don’t approve,’ a dissenting director said. ‘It’s madness. Suppose the damn thing broke its leg?’
‘Insurance,’ Henry said mildly.
Into a small silence I said, ‘If you felt like going into it further I could get some expert views on Sandcastle’s breeding, and then arrange blood and fertility tests. And I know it’s not usual with loans, but I do think someone like Val should go and personally meet Oliver Knowles and look at his place. It’s too much of a risk to lend such a sum for a horse without going into it extremely carefully.’
‘Just listen to who’s talking,’ said the dissenter, but without ill-will.
‘Mm,’ Henry said, considering. ‘What do you think, Val?’
Val Fisher smoothed a hand over his always smooth face. ‘Tim should go,’ he said. ‘He’s done the groundwork, and all I know about horses is that they eat grass.’
The dissenting director almost rose to his feet with the urgency of his feelings.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘all this is ridiculous. How can we possibly finance a horse?’
‘Well, now,’ Henry answered. ‘The breeding of thoroughbreds is big business, tens of thousands of people round the world make their living from it. Look upon it as an industry like any other. We gamble here on shipbuilders, motors, textiles, you name it, and all of those can go bust. And none of them,’ he finished with a near-grin, ‘can pro-create in their own image.’
The dissenter heavily shook his head. ‘Madness. Utter madness.’
‘Go and see Oliver Knowles, Tim,’ Henry said.
Actually I thought it prudent to bone up on the finances of breeding in general before listening to Oliver Knowles himself, on the basis that I would then have a better idea of whether what he was proposing was sensible or not.
I didn’t myself know anyone who knew much on the subject, but one of the beauties of merchant banking was the ramification of people who knew people who knew people who could find someone with the information that was wanted. I sent out She question-mark smoke signal and from distant out-of-sight mountain tops the answer puff-puffed back.
Ursula Young, I was told, would put me right. ‘She’s a bloodstock agent. Very sharp, very talkative, knows her stuff. She used to work on a stud farm, so you’ve got it every whichway. She says she’ll tell you anything you want, only if you want to see her in person this week it will have to be at Doncaster races on Saturday, she’s too busy to spend the time else.’
I went north to Doncaster by train and met the lady at the racecourse, where the last Flat meeting of the year was being held. She was waiting as arranged by the entrance to the Members’ Club and wearing an identifying red velvet beret, and she swept me off to a secluded table in a bar where we wouldn’t be interrupted.
She was fifty, tough, good-looking, dogmatic and inclined to treat me as a child. She also gave me a patient and invaluable lecture on the economics of owning a stallion.
‘Stop me,’ she said to begin with, ‘if I say something you con’t understand.’
I nodded.
‘All right. Say you own a horse that’s won the Derby and you want to capitalise on your goldmine. You judge what you think you can get for the horse, then you divide that by forty and try to sell each of the forty shares at that price. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. It depends on the horse. With Troy, now, they were queuing up. But if your winner isn’t frightfully well bred or if it made little show except in the Derby you’ll get a cool response and have to bring the price down. OK so far?’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘Why only forty shares?’
She looked at me in amazement. ‘You don’t know a thing, do you?’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Well, a stallion covers forty mares in a season, and the season, incidentally, lasts roughly from February to June. The mares come to him, of course. He doesn’t travel, he stays put at home. Forty is just about average; physically I mean. Some can do more, but others get exhausted. So forty is the accepted number. Now, say you have a mare and you’ve worked out that if you mate her with a certain stallion you might get a top-class foal, you try to get one of those forty places. The places are called nominations. You apply for a nomination, either directly to the stud where the stallion is standing, or through an agent like me, or even by advertising in a breeders’ newspaper. Follow?’
‘Gasping,’ I nodded.
She smiled briefly. ‘People who invest in stallion shares sometimes have broodmares of their own they want to breed from.’ She paused. ‘Perhaps I should have explained more clearly that everyone who owns a share automatically has a nomination to the stallion every year.’
‘Ah,’ I said.
‘Yes. So say you’ve got your share and consequently your nomination but you haven’t a mare to send to the stallion, then you sell your nomination to someone who has a mare, in the ways I already described.’
‘I’m with you.’
‘After the first three years the nominations may vary in price and in fact are often auctioned, but of course for the first three years the price is fixed.’
‘Why of course?’
She sighed and took a deep breath. ‘For three years no one knows whether the progeny on the whole are going to be winners or not. The gestation period is eleven months, and the first crop of foals don’t race until they’re two. If you work it out, that means that the stallion has stood for three seasons, and therefore covered a hundred and twenty mares, before the crunch.’
‘Right.’
‘So to fix the stallion fee for the first three years you divide the price of the stallion by one hundred and twenty, and that’s it. That’s the fee charged for the stallion to cover a mare. That’s the sum you receive if you sell your nomination.’
I blinked.
‘That means,’ I said, ‘that if you sell your nomination for three years you have recovered the total amount of your original investment?’
That’s right.’
‘And after that… every time, every year you sell your nomination, it’s clear profit?’
‘Yes. But taxed, of course.’
‘And how long does that go on?’
She shrugged. ‘Ten to fifteen years. Depends on the stallion’s potency.’
‘Butthat’s…’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One of the best investments on earth.’
The bar had filled up behind us with people crowding in, talking loudly, and breathing on their fingers against the chill of the raw day outside. Ursula Young accepted a warmer in the shape of whisky and ginger wine, while I had coffee.
‘Don’t you drink?’ she asked with mild disapproval.
‘Not often in the daytime.’
She nodd
ed vaguely, her eyes scanning the company, her mind already on her normal job. ‘Any more questions?’ she asked.
‘I’m bound to think of some the minute we part.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll be here until the end of racing. If you want me, you’ll see me near the weighing room after each race.’
We were on the point of standing up to leave when a man whose head one could never forget came into the bar.
‘Calder Jackson!’ I exclaimed.
Ursula casually looked. ‘So it is.’
‘Do you know him?’ I asked.
‘Everyone does.’ There was almost a conscious neutrality in her voice as if she didn’t want to be caught with her thoughts showing. The same response, I reflected, that he had drawn from Henry and Gordon and me.
‘You don’t like him?’ I suggested.
‘I feel nothing either way.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s part of the scene. From what people say, he’s achieved some remarkable cures.’ She glanced at me briefly. ‘I suppose you’ve seen him on television, extolling the value of herbs?’
‘I met him,’ I said, ‘at Ascot, back in June.’
‘One tends to.’ She got to her feet, and I with her, thanking her sincerely for her help.
‘Think nothing of it,’ she said. ‘Any time.’ She paused. ‘I suppose it’s no use asking what stallion prompted this chat?’
‘Sorry, no. It’s on behalf of a client.’
She smiled slightly. ‘I’m here if he needs an agent.’
We made our way towards the door, a path, I saw, which would take us close to Calder. I wondered fleetingly whether he would know me, remember me after several months. I was after all not as memorable as himself, just a standard issue six foot with eyes, nose and mouth in roughly the right places, dark hair on top.
‘Hello Ursula,’ he said, his voice carrying easily through the general din. ‘Bitter cold day.’
‘Calder.’ She nodded acknowledgement.
His gaze slid to my face, dismissed it, focussed again on my companion. Then he did a classic double-take, his eyes widening with recognition.
‘Tim,’ he said incredulously. ‘Tim…’ he flicked his fingers to bring the difficult name to mind, ‘… Tim Ekaterin!’
I nodded.
He said to Ursula, ‘Tim, here, saved my life.’
She was surprised until he explained, and then still surprised I hadn’t told her. ‘I read about it, of course,’ she said. ‘And congratulated you, Calder, on your escape.’
‘Did you ever hear any more,’ I asked him. ‘From the police, or anyone?’
He shook his curly head. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘The boy didn’t try again?’
‘No.’
‘Did you really have no idea where he came from?’ I said. ‘I know you told the police you didn’t know, but… well… you just might have done.’
He shook his head very positively however and said, ‘If I could help to catch the little bastard I’d do it at once. But I don’t know who he was. I hardly saw him properly, just enough to know I didn’t know him from Satan.’
‘How’s the healing?’ I said. ‘The tingling touch.’
There was a brief flash in his eyes as if he had found the question flippant and in bad taste, but perhaps mindful that he owed me his present existence he answered civilly. ‘Rewarding,’ he said. ‘Heartwarming.’
Standard responses, I thought. As before.
‘Is your yard full, Calder?’ Ursula asked.
‘Always a vacancy if needed,’ he replied hopefully. ‘Have you a horse to send me?’
‘One of my clients has a two-year-old which looks ill and half dead all the time, to the despair of the trainer, who can’t get it fit. She – my client – was mentioning you.’
‘I’ve had great success with that sort of general debility.’
Ursula wrinkled her forehead in indecision. ‘She feels Ian Pargetter would think her disloyal if she sent you her colt. He’s been treating him for weeks, I think, without success.’
Calder smiled reassuringly. ‘Ian Pargetter and I are on good terms, I promise you. He’s even persuaded owners himself sometimes to send me their horses. Very good of him. We talk each case over, you know, and act in agreement. After all, we both have the recovery of the patient as our prime objective.’ Again the swift impression of a statement often needed.
‘Is Ian Pargetter a vet?’ I asked incuriously.
They both looked at me.
‘Er… yes,’ Calder said.
‘One of a group practice in Newmarket,’ Ursula added. ‘Very forward-looking. Tries new things. Dozens of trainers swear by him.’
‘Just ask him, Ursula,’ Calder said, ‘Ian will tell you he doesn’t mind owners sending me their horses. Even if he’s a bit open-minded about the laying on of hands, at least he trusts me not to make the patient worse.’ It was said as a self-deprecating joke, and we all smiled. Ursula Young and I in a moment or two walked on and out of the bar, and behind us we could hear Calder politely answering another of the everlasting questions.
‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘one of my favourite remedies for a prolonged cough in horses is liquorice root boiled in water with some figs. You strain the mixture and stir it into the horse’s normal feed…’
The door closed behind us and shut him off.
‘You’d think he’d get tired of explaining his methods,’ I said. ‘I wonder he never snaps.’
The lady said judiciously, ‘Calder depends on television fame, good public relations and medical success, roughly in that order. He owns a yard with about thirty boxes on the outskirts of Newmarket – it used to be a regular training stables before he bought it – and the yard’s almost always full. Short-term and long-term crocks, all sent to him either from true belief or as a last resort. I don’t pretend to know anything about herbalism, and as for supernatural healing powers…’ she shook her head. ‘But there’s no doubt that whatever his methods, horses do usually seem to leave his yard in a lot better health than when they went in.’
‘Someone at Ascot said he’d brought dying horses back to life.’
‘Hmph.’
‘You don’t believe it?’
She gave me a straight look, a canny businesswoman with a lifetime’s devotion to thoroughbreds.
‘Dying,’ she said, ‘Is a relative term when it doesn’t end in death.’
I made a nod into a slight bow of appreciation.
‘But to be fair,’ she said, ‘I know for certain that he totally and permanently cured a ten-year-old broodmare of colitis X, which has a habit of being fatal.’
‘They’re not all horses in training, then, that he treats?’
‘Oh no, he’ll take anybody’s pet from a pony to an event horse. Showjumpers, the lot. But the horse has to be worth it, to the owner, I mean. I don’t think Calder’s hospital is terribly cheap.’
‘Exorbitant?’
‘Not that I’ve heard. Fair, I suppose, if you consider the results.’
I seemed to have heard almost more about Calder Jackson than I had about stallion shares, but I did after all have a sort of vested interest. One tended to want a life one had saved to be of positive use in the world. Illogical, I dare say, but there it was. I was pleased that it was true that Calder cured horses, albeit in his own mysterious unorthodox ways: and if I wished that I could warm to him more as a person, that was unrealistic and sentimental.
Ursula Young went off about her business, and although I caught sight of both her and Calder during the afternoon, I didn’t see them again to speak to. I went back to London on the train, spent two hours of Sunday morning on the telephone, and early Sunday afternoon drove off to Hertfordshire in search of Oliver Knowles.
He lived in a square hundred-year-old stark red brick house which to my taste would have been friendlier if softened by trailing creeper. Blurred outlines, however, were not in Oliver Knowles’ soul: a crisp bare tidy ness was apparent in every corner of his spread.
There were no dead leaves as such to be seen. No flower beds, no ornamental hedges, no nearby trees. A barren mind, I thought, behind a business whose aim was fertility and the creation of life.
Oliver Knowles himself opened his front door to my knock, proving to be a pleasant lean man with an efficient, cultured manner of authority and politeness. Accustomed to command, I diagnosed. Feels easy with it; second nature. Positive, straightforward, self-controlled. Charming also, in an understated way.
‘Mr Ekaterin?’ he shook hands, smiling. ‘I must confess I expected someone… older.’
There were several answers to that, such as ‘time will take care of it’ and ‘I’ll be older tomorrow’, but nothing seemed appropriate. Instead I said ‘I report back’ to reassure him, which it did, and he invited me into his house.
Predictably the interior was also painfully tidy, such papers and magazines as were to be seen being squared up with the surface they rested on. The furniture was antique, well polished, brass handles shining, and the carpets venerably from Persia. He led me into a sitting room which was also office, the walls thickly covered with framed photographs of horses, mares and foals, and the window giving on to a view of, across a further expanse of gravel, an archway leading into an extensive stable yard.
‘Boxes for mares,’ he said, following my eyes. ‘Beyond them, the foaling boxes. Beyond those, the breeding pen, with the stallion boxes on the far side of that again. My stud groom’s bungalow and the lads’ hostel, those roofs you can see in the hollow, they’re just beyond the stallions.’ He paused. ‘Would you care perhaps to look round?’