by Dick Francis
I had recommended the loan. Henry had wanted the adventure and Val and Gordon had been willing, but it was my own report which had carried the day. I couldn’t have foreseen the consequences any more than Oliver, but I felt most horribly and personally responsible for the mess.
‘What shall I do?’ he said again.
‘About the mares?’
‘And everything else.’
I stared into space. The disaster that for the bank would mean a loss of face and a sharp dip in the profits and to the private subscribers just a painful financial set-back meant in effect total ruin for Oliver Knowles.
If Sandcastle couldn’t generate income, Oliver would be bankrupt. His business was not a limited company, which meant that he would lose his farm, his horses, his house; everything he possessed. To him too, as to my mother, the bailiffs would come, carrying off his furniture and his treasures and Ginnie’s books and toys….
I shook myself mentally and physically and said, ‘The first thing to do is nothing. Keep quiet and don’t tell anyone what you’ve told me. Wait to hear if any more of the foals are… wrong. I will consult with the other directors at Ekaterin’s and see what can be done in the way of providing time. I mean… I’m not promising… but we might consider suspending repayments while we look into other possibilities.’
He looked bewildered. ‘What possibilities?’
‘Well… of having Sandcastle tested. If the original tests of his fertility weren’t thorough enough, for instance, it might be possible to show that his sperm had always been defective in some way, and then the insurance policy would protect you. Or at least it’s a very good chance.’
The insurers, I thought, might in that case sue the laboratory that had originally given the fertility all-clear, but that wasn’t Oliver’s problem, nor mine. What did matter was that all of a sudden he looked a fraction more cheerful, and drank his tea absentmindedly.
‘And the mares?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘In fairness to their owners you’ll have to say that Sandcastle’s off colour.’
‘And repay their fees,’ he said gloomily.
‘Mm.’
‘He’ll have covered two today,’ he said. ‘I haven’t mentioned any of this to Nigel. I mean, it’s his job to organise the breeding sessions. He has a great eye for those mares, he knows when they are feeling receptive. I leave it to his judgement a good deal, and he told me this morning that two were ready for Sandcastle. I just nodded. I felt sick. I didn’t tell him.’
‘So how many does that leave, er, uncovered?’
He consulted a list, fumbling slightly. ‘The one that hasn’t foaled, and… four others.’
Thirty-five more mares, I thought numbly, could be carrying that seed.
‘The mare that hasn’t yet foaled,’ Oliver said flatly, ‘Was bred to Sandcastle last year.’
I stared. ‘You mean… one of his foals will be born here}’
‘Yes.’ He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘Any day.’
There were footsteps outside the door and Ginnie came in, saying on a rising, enquiring inflection, ‘Dad?’
She saw me immediately and her face lit up. ‘Hello! How lovely. I didn’t know you were coming.’
I stood up to give her a customarily enthusiastic greeting, but she sensed at once that the action didn’t match the climate. ‘What’s the matter?’ She looked into my eyes and then at her father. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Dad, you’re lying.’ She turned again to me. ‘Tell me. I can see something bad has happened. I’m not a child any more. I’m seventeen.’
‘I thought you’d be at school,’ I said.
‘I’ve left. At the end of last term. There wasn’t any point in me going back for the summer when all I’m interested in is here.’
She looked far more assured, as if the schooldays had been a crysallis and she were now the imago, flying free. The beauty she had longed for hadn’t quite arrived, but her face was full of character and far from plain, and she would be very much liked, I thought, throughout her life.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’
Oliver made a small gesture of despair and capitulation. ‘You’ll have to know sometime.’ He swallowed. ‘Some of Sandcastle’s foals… aren’t perfect.’
‘How do you mean, not perfect?’
He told her about all six and showed her the letters, and she went slowly, swaying, pale. ‘Oh Dad, no. No. It can’t be. Not Sandcastle. Not that beautiful boy.’
‘Sit down,’ I said, but she turned to me instead, burying her face against my chest and holding on to me tightly. I put my arms round her and kissed her hair and comforted her for an age as best I could.
I went to the office on the following morning, Friday, and with a slight gritting of teeth told Gordon the outcome of my visit to Oliver.
He said ‘My God,’ several times, and Alec came over from his desk to listen also, his blue eyes for once solemn behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, the blond eyelashes blinking slowly and the laughing mouth grimly shut.
‘What will you do?’ he said finally, when I stopped.
‘I don’t really know.’
Gordon stirred, his hands trembling unnoticed on his blotter in his overriding concern. ‘The first thing, I suppose,’ he said, ‘is to tell Val and Henry. Though what any of us can do is a puzzle. As you said, Tim, we’ll have to wait to assess quite how irretrievable the situation is, but I can’t imagine anyone with a top-class broodmare having the confidence to send her to Sandcastle in future. Can you, really, Tim? Would you?
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Well, there you are,’ Gordon said. ‘No one would.’
Henry and Val received the news with undisguised dismay and told the rest of the directors at lunch. The man who had been against the project from the beginning reacted with genuine anger and gave me a furious dressing-down over the grilled sole.
‘No one could foresee this,’ Henry protested, defending me.
‘Anyone could foresee,’ said the dissenting director caustically, ‘that such a scatterbrained scheme would blow up in our faces. Tim has been given too much power too soon, and it’s his judgement that’s at fault here, his alone. If he’d had the common nous to recognise the dangers, you would have listened to him and turned the proposal down. It’s certainly because of his stupidity and immaturity that the bank is facing this loss, and I shall put my views on record at the next board meeting.’
There were a few uncomfortable murmurs round the table, and Henry with unruffled geniality said, ‘We are all to blame, if blame there is, and it is unfair to call Tim stupid for not forseeing something that escaped the imaginations of all the various experts who drew up the insurance policy.’
The dissenter however repeated his ‘I told you so’ remarks endlessly through the cheese and coffee, and I sat there de-pressedly enduring his digs because I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me leave before he did.
‘What will you do next?’ Henry asked me, when at long last everyone rather silently stood up to drift back to their desks. ‘What do you propose?’
I was grateful that by implication he was leaving me in the position I’d reached and not taking the decisions out of my hands. ‘I’m going down to the farm tomorrow,’ I said, ‘to go through the financial situation. Add up the figures. They’re bound to be frightful.’
He nodded with regret. ‘Such a marvellous horse. And no one, Tim, whatever anyone says, could have dreamt he’d have such a flaw.’
I sighed. ‘Oliver has asked me to stay tomorrow night and Sunday night. I don’t really want to, but they do need support.’
‘They?’
‘Ginnie, his daughter, is with him. She’s only just seventeen. It’s very hard on them both. Shattering, in fact.’
Henry patted my arm and walked with me to the lift. ‘Do what you can,’ he said. ‘Let us know the full state of affairs on Monday.�
��
Before I left home that Saturday morning I had a telephone call from Judith.
‘Gordon’s told me about Sandcastle. Tim, it’s so terrible. Those poor, poor people.’
‘Wretched,’ I said.
‘Tim, tell Ginnie how sorry I am. Sorry… how hopeless words are, you say sorry if you bump someone in the supermarket. That dear child… she wrote to me a couple of times from school, just asking for feminine information, like I’d told her to.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes. She’s such a nice girl. So sensible. But this… this is too much. Gordon says they’re in danger of losing everything.’
‘I’m going down there today to see where he stands.’
‘Gordon told me. Do please give them my love.’
‘I will.’ I paused fractionally. ‘My love to you, too.’
‘Tim…’
‘I just wanted to tell you. It’s still the same.’
‘We haven’t seen you for weeks. I mean… I haven’t.’
‘Is Gordon in the room with you?’ I asked.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
I smiled twistedly. ‘I do hear about you, you know,’ I said. ‘He mentions you quite often, and I ask after you… it makes you feel closer.’
‘Yes,’ she said in a perfectly neutral voice. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same about it exactly.’
‘Judith…’ I took a breath and made my own voice calm to match hers. ‘Tell Gordon I’ll telephone him at home, if he’d like, if there is anything that needs consultation before Monday.’
‘I’ll tell him. Hang on.’ I heard her repeating the question and Gordon’s distant rumble of an answer, and then she said, ‘Yes, he says please do, we’ll be at home this evening and most of tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps you’ll answer when the telephone rings.’
‘Perhaps.’
After a brief silence I said, ‘I’d better go.’
‘Goodbye then, Tim,’ she said. ‘And do let us know. We’ll both be thinking of you all day, I know we will.’
‘I’ll call,’ I said. ‘You can count on it.’
The afternoon was on the whole as miserable as I’d expected and in some respects worse. Oliver and Ginnie walked about like pale automatons making disconnected remarks and forgetting where they’d put things, and lunch, Ginnie version, had consisted of eggs boiled too hard and packets of potato crisps.
‘We haven’t told Nigel or the lads what’s happening,’ Oliver said. ‘Fortunately there is a lull in Sandcastle’s programme. He’s been very busy because nearly all his mares foaled in mid-March, close together, except for four and the one who’s still carrying.’ He swallowed. ‘And the other stallions, of course, their mares are all here too, and we have their foals to deliver and their matings to be seen to. I mean… we have to go on. We have to.’
Towards four o’clock they both went out into the yards for evening stables, visibly squaring their shoulders to face the stable hands in a normal manner, and I began adding the columns of figures I’d drawn up from Oliver’s records.
The tally when I’d finished was appalling and meant that Oliver could be an undischarged bankrupt for the rest of his life. I put the results away in my briefcase and tried to think of something more constructive; and Oliver’s telephone rang.
‘Oliver?’ a voice said, sounding vaguely familiar.
‘He’s out,’ I said. ‘Can I take a message?’
‘Get him to ring me. Ursula Young. I’ll give you the number.’
‘Ursula!’ I said in surprise. ‘This is Tim Ekaterin.’
‘Really?’ For her it was equally unexpected. ‘What are you doing there?’
‘Just staying the weekend. Can I help?’
She hesitated slightly but then said, ‘Yes, I suppose you can. I’m afraid it’s bad news for him, though. Disappointing, you might say.’ She paused. ‘I’ve a friend who has a small stud farm, just one stallion, but quite a good one, and she’s been so excited this year because one of the mares booked to him was in foal to Sandcastle. She was thrilled, you see, to be having a foal of that calibre born on her place.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, she rang me this morning, and she was crying.’ Ursula herself gulped: she might appear tough but other people’s tears always moved her. ‘She said the mare had dropped the Sandcastle foal during the night and she hadn’t been there. She said the mare gave no sign yesterday evening, and the birth must have been quick and easy, and the mare was all right, but…’
‘But what?’ I said, scarcely breathing.
‘She said the foal – a filly – was on her feet and suckling when she went to the mare’s box this morning, and at first she was overjoyed, but then… but then…’
‘Go on,’ I said hopelessly.
‘Then she saw. She says it’s dreadful.’
‘Ursula…’
‘The foal has only one eye.’
Oh my God, I thought: dear God.
‘She says there’s nothing on the other side,’ Ursula said, ‘No proper socket.’ She gulped again. ‘Will you tell Oliver? I thought he’d better know. He’ll be most disappointed. I’m so sorry.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘These things happen, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But it’s so upsetting when they happen to your friends.’
‘You’re very right.’
‘Goodbye then, Tim. See you soon, I hope, at the races.’
I put down the receiver and wondered how I would ever tell them, and in fact I didn’t tell Ginnie, only Oliver, who sat with his head in his hands, despair in every line of his body.
‘It’s hopeless,’ he said.
‘Not yet,’ I said encouragingly, though I wasn’t as certain as I sounded. ‘There are still the tests to be done on Sandcastle.’
He merely slumped lower. ‘I’ll get them done, but they won’t help. The genes which are wrong will be minute. No one will see them, however powerful the microscope.’
‘You can’t tell. If they can see DNA, why not a horse’s chromosomes?’
He raised his head slowly. ‘Even then… it’s such a long shot.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I think I’ll ask the Equine Research Establishment at Newmarket to have him there, to see what they can find. I’ll ring them on Monday.’
‘I suppose,’ I said tentatively, ‘Well, I know it sounds silly, but I suppose it couldn’t be anything as simple as something he’d eaten? Last year, of course.’
He shook his head. ‘I thought of that. I’ve thought of bloody well everything, believe me. All the stallions had the same food, and none of the others’ foals are affected… or at least we haven’t heard of any. Nigel feeds the stallions himself out of the feed room in that yard, and we’re always careful what we give them because of keeping them fit.’
‘Carrots?’ I said.
‘I give carrots to every horse on the place. Everyone here does. Carrots are good food. I buy them by the hundredweight and keep them in the first big yard where the main feed room is. I put handfuls in my pockets every day. You’ve seen me. Rotaboy, Diarist and Parakeet all had them. It can’t possibly be anything to do with carrots.’
‘Paint: something like that? Something new in the boxes, when you put in all the security? Something he could chew?’
He again shook his head. ‘I’ve been over it and over it. We did all the boxes exactly the same as each other. There’s nothing in Sandcastle’s box that wasn’t in the others. They’re all exactly alike.’ He moved restlessly. ‘I’ve been down there to make sure there’s nothing Sandcastle could reach to lick if he put his head right over the half-door as far as he could get. There’s nothing, nothing at all.’
‘Drinking pails?’
‘No. They don’t always have the same pails. I mean, when Lenny fills them he doesn’t necessarily take them back to the particular boxes they come from. The pails don’t have the stallions’ names on, if that’s what you mean.’
I didn’t mean anyth
ing much: just grabbing at straws.
‘Straw…’ I said. ‘How about an allergy? An allergy to something around him? Could an allergy have such an effect?’
‘I’ve never heard of anything like that. I’ll ask the Research people, though, on Monday.’
He got up to pour us both a drink. ‘It’s good to have you here,’ he said. ‘A sort of net over the bottomless pit.’ He gave me the glass with a faint half-smile, and I had a definite impression that he would not in the end go to pieces.
I telephoned then to the Michaels’ house and Gordon answered at the first ring as if he’d been passing nearby. Nothing good to report, I said, except that Ginnie sent Judith her love. Gordon said Judith was in the garden picking parsley for supper, and he would tell her. ‘Call tomorrow,’ he said, ‘if we can help.’
Our own supper, left ready in the refrigerator by Oliver’s part-time housekeeper, filled the hollows left by lunch, and Ginnie went to bed straight afterwards, saying she would be up at two o’clock and out with Nigel in the foal yard.
‘She goes most nights,’ Oliver said. ‘She and Nigel make a good team. He says she’s a great help, particularly if three or four mares are foaling at the same time. I’m often out there myself, but with all the decisions and paperwork as well I get very tired if I do it too much. Fall asleep over meals, that sort of thing.’
We ourselves went to bed fairly early, and I awoke in the large high-ceilinged guest room while it was still blackly dark. It was one of those fast awakenings which mean that sleep won’t come back easily, and I got out of bed and went to the window, which looked out over the yard.
I could see only roofs and security lights and a small section of the first yard. There was no visible activity, and my watch showed four-thirty.
I wondered if Ginnie would mind if I joined her in the foaling yard; and got dressed and went.
They were all there, Nigel and Oliver as well as Ginnie, all in one open-doored box where a mare lay on her side on the straw. They all turned their heads as I approached but seemed unsurprised to see me and gave no particular greeting.
‘This is Plus Factor,’ Oliver said. ‘In foal to Sandcastle.’