Whip Hand

by Dick Francis

  If I had to choose, and it seemed to me that I did have to choose, I would have to settle for wholeness of mind, and put up with what it cost. Perhaps I could deal with physical fear. Perhaps I could deal with anything that happened to my body, and even with helplessness. What I could not forever deal with … and I saw it finally with clarity and certainty … was despising myself.

  I pressed the ‘play’ and ‘record’ buttons together, and irrevocably broke my assurance to Trevor Deansgate.

  16

  I telephoned Chico at lunchtime and told him what I’d found out about Rosemary’s horses.

  ‘What it amounts to,’ I said, ‘is that those four horses had bad hearts because they’d been given a pig disease. There’s a lot of complicated info about how it was done, but that’s now the Stewards’ headache.’

  ‘Pig disease?’ Chico said disbelievingly.

  ‘Yeah. That big bookmaker Trevor Deansgate has a brother who works in a place that produces vaccines for inoculating people against smallpox and diphtheria and so on, and they cooked up a plan to squirt pig germs into those red-hot favourites.’

  ‘Which duly lost,’ Chico said. ‘While the bookmaker raked in the lolly.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  It felt very odd to put Trevor Deansgate’s scheme into casual words and to be talking about him as if he were just one of our customary puzzles.

  ‘How did you find out?’ Chico said.

  ‘Gleaner died at Henry Thrace’s, and the pig disease turned up at the post-mortem. When I went to the vaccine lab I saw a man called Shummuck who deals in odd germs, and I remembered that Shummuck was Trevor Deansgate’s real name. And Trevor Deansgate is very thick with George Caspar … and all the affected horses, that we know of, have come from George Caspar’s stable.’

  ‘Circumstantial, isn’t it?’ Chico said.

  ‘A bit, yes. But the Security Service can take it from there.’

  ‘Eddy Keith?’ he said sceptically.

  ‘He can’t hush this one up, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Have you told Rosemary?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Bit of a laugh,’ Chico said.

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Well, Sid mate,’ he said. ‘This is results day all round. We got a fix on Nicky Ashe.’

  Nicky Ashe with a knife in his sock. A pushover, compared with … compared with …

  ‘Hey,’ Chico’s voice said aggrievedly through the receiver. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Yes, of course. What sort of fix?’

  ‘He’s been sending out some of those damn fool letters. I went to your place this morning, just to see, like, and there were two great envelopes there with our sticky labels on.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘I opened them. They’d both been sent to us by people whose names started with P. All that leg work paid off.’

  ‘So we’ve got the begging letter?’

  ‘We sure have. It’s exactly the same as the ones your wife had, except for the address to send the money to, of course. Got a pencil?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He read the address, which was in Clifton, Bristol. I looked at it thoughtfully. I could either give it straight to the police, or I could check it first myself. Checking it, in one certain way, had persuasive attractions.

  ‘Chico,’ I said. ‘Ring Jenny’s flat in Oxford and ask for Louise McInnes. Ask her to ring me here at the Rutland Hotel in Newmarket.’

  ‘Scared of your missus, are you?’

  ‘Will you do it?’

  ‘Oh sure.’ He laughed, and rang off. When the bell rang again, however, it was not Louise at the other end, but still Chico.

  ‘She’s left the flat,’ he said. ‘Your wife gave me her new number.’ He read it out. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Can you bring your cassette player to the Jockey Club, Portman Square, tomorrow afternoon at, say, four o’clock?’

  ‘Like last time?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Front door, all the way.’

  Louise, to my relief, answered her telephone. When I told her what I wanted, she was incredulous.

  ‘You’ve actually found him?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Probably. Will you come, then, and identify him?’

  ‘Yes.’ No hesitation. ‘Where and when?’

  ‘Some place in Bristol.’ I paused, and said diffidently, ‘I’m in Newmarket now. I could pick you up in Oxford this afternoon, and we could go straight on. We might spot him this evening … or tomorrow morning.’

  There was a silence at the other end. Then she said, ‘I’ve moved out of Jenny’s flat.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Another silence, and then her voice, quiet, and committed.

  ‘All right.’

  She was waiting for me in Oxford, and she had brought an overnight bag.

  ‘Hallo,’ I said, getting out of the car.

  ‘Hallo.’

  We looked at each other. I kissed her cheek. She smiled with what I had to believe was enjoyment, and slung her case in the boot beside mine.

  ‘You can always retreat,’ I said.

  ‘So can you.’

  We sat in the car, however, and I drove to Bristol feeling contented and carefree. Trevor Deansgate wouldn’t yet have started looking for me, and Peter Rammileese and his boys hadn’t been in sight for a week, and no one except Chico knew where I was going. The shadowy future, I thought, was not going to spoil the satisfactory present. I decided not even to think of it, and for most of the time, I didn’t.

  We went first to the country house hotel which someone had once told me of, high on the cliffs overlooking the Avon gorge, and geared to rich-American-tourist comfort.

  ‘Well never get in here,’ Louise said, eyeing the opulence.

  ‘I telephoned.’

  ‘How organized! One room or two?’

  ‘One.’

  She smiled as if that suited her well, and we were shown into a large wood-panelled room with stretches of carpet, antique polished furniture, and a huge fourposter bed decked with American-style white muslin frills.

  ‘My God,’ Louise said. ‘And I expected a motel.’

  ‘I didn’t know about the fourposter,’ I said a little weakly.

  ‘Wow,’ she said, laughing. ‘This is more fun.’

  We parked the suitcases and freshened up in the modern bathroom tucked discreetly behind the panelling, and went back to the car: and Louise smiled to herself all the way to the new address of Nicholas Ashe.

  It was a prosperous-looking house in a prosperous-looking street. A solid five-or-six-bedroomed affair, mellowed and white-painted and uninformative in the early evening sun.

  I stopped the car on the same side of the road, pretty close, at a place from where we could see both the front door and the gate into the driveway. Nicky, Louise had said on the way down, often used to go out for a walk at about seven o’clock, after a hard day’s typing. Maybe he would again, if he was there.

  Maybe he wouldn’t.

  We had the car’s windows open because of the warm air. I lit a cigarette, and the smoke floated in a quiet curl through lack of wind. Very peaceful, I thought, waiting there.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ Louise said.

  I blew a smoke ring. ‘I’m the posthumous illegitimate son of a twenty-year-old window cleaner who fell off his ladder just before his wedding.’

  She laughed. ‘Very elegantly put.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘The legitimate daughter of the manager of a glass factory and a magistrate, both alive and living in Essex.’

  We consulted about brothers and sisters, of which I had none and she had two, one of each. About education, of which I’d had some and she a lot. About life in general, of which she’d seen a little, and I a bit more.

  An hour passed in the quiet street. A few birds sang. Sporadic cars. drove by. Men came home from work and turned into the driveways. Distant doors slammed. No one moved in the house we were watc
hing.

  ‘You’re patient,’ Louise said.

  ‘I spend hours doing this, sometimes.’

  ‘Pretty unexciting.’

  I looked at her clear intelligent eyes. ‘Not this evening.’

  Seven o’clock came and went; and Nicky didn’t.

  ‘How long will we stay?’

  ‘Until dark.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  Half an hour drifted by. I learned that she liked curry and paella and hated rhubarb. I learned that the thesis she was writing was giving her hell.

  ‘I’m so far behind schedule,’ she said, ‘and … oh my goodness, there he is.’

  Her eyes had opened very wide. I looked where she looked, and saw Nicholas Ashe.

  Coming not from the front door, but from the side of the house. My age, or a bit younger. Taller, but of my own thin build. My colouring. Dark hair, slightly curly. Dark eyes. Narrow jaw. All the same.

  He looked sufficiently like me for it to be a shock, but was nevertheless quite different. I took my baby camera out of my trouser pocket and pulled it open with my teeth as usual, and took his picture.

  When he reached the gate he paused and looked back, and a woman ran after him calling, ‘Ned, Ned, wait for me.’

  ‘Ned!’ Louise said, sliding down in her seat. ‘If he comes this way, won’t he see me?’

  ‘Not if I kiss you.’

  ‘Well, do it,’ she said.

  I took, however, another photograph.

  The woman looked older, about forty; slim, pleasant, excited. She tucked her arm into his and looked up at his eyes, her own clearly, even from twenty feet away, full of adoration. He looked down and laughed delightfully, then he kissed her forehead and swung her round in a little circle on to the pavement, and put his arm round her waist, and walked towards us with vivid gaiety and a bounce in his step.

  I risked one more photograph from the shadows of the car, and leaned across and kissed Louise with enthusiasm.

  Their footsteps went past. Abreast of us they must have seen us, or at least my back, for they both suddenly giggled lightheartedly, lovers sharing their secret with lovers. They almost paused, then went on, their steps growing softer until they had gone.

  I sat up reluctantly.

  Louise said ‘Whew!’ but whether it was the result of the kiss, or the proximity of Ashe, I wasn’t quite sure.

  ‘He’s just the same,’ she said.

  ‘Casanova himself,’ I said drily.

  She glanced at me swiftly and I guessed she was wondering whether I was jealous of his success with Jenny, but in fact I was wondering whether Jenny had been attracted to him because he resembled me, or whether she had been attracted to me in the first place, and also to him, because we matched some internal picture she had of a sexually interesting male. I was more disturbed than I liked by the physical appearance of Nicholas Ashe.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that’s that. Let’s find some dinner.’

  I drove back to the hotel, and we went upstairs before we ate, Louise saying she wanted to change out of the blouse and skirt she had worn all day.

  I took the battery charger out of my suitcase and plugged it in: took a spent battery from my pocket, and rolled up my shirtsleeve and snapped out the one from my arm, and put them both in the charger. Then I took a charged battery from my suitcase and inserted it in the empty socket in the arm. And Louise watched.

  I said, ‘Are you … revolted?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  I pulled my sleeve down and buttoned the cuff.

  ‘How long does a battery last?’ she said.

  ‘Six hours, if I use it a lot. About eight, usually.’

  She merely nodded, as if people with electric arms were as normal as people with blue eyes. We went down to dinner and ate sole and afterwards strawberries, and if they’d tasted of seaweed I wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t only because of Louise, but also because since that morning I had stopped tearing myself apart, and had slowly been growing back towards peace. I could feel it happening, and it was marvellous.

  We sat side by side on a sofa in the hotel lounge, drinking small cups of coffee.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘now that we have seen Nicky, we don’t really need to stay until tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you thinking of leaving?’ I said.

  ‘About as much as you are.’

  ‘Who is seducing whom?’ I said.

  ‘Mm,’ she said, smiling. ‘This whole thing is so unexpected.’

  She looked calmly at my left hand, which rested on the sofa between us. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but I said on impulse, ‘Touch it.’

  She looked up at me quickly. ‘What?’

  ‘Touch it. Feel it.’

  She tentatively moved her right hand until her fingers were touching the tough, lifeless plastic skin. There was no drawing back, no flicker of revulsion in her face.

  ‘It’s metal, inside there,’ I said. ‘Gears and levers and electric circuits. Press harder, and you’ll feel them.’

  She did as I said, and I saw her surprise as she discovered the shape of the inner realities.

  ‘There’s a switch inside there too,’ I said. ‘You can’t see it from the outside, but it’s just below the thumb. One can switch the hand off, if one wants.’

  ‘Why would you want to?’

  ‘Very useful for carrying things, like a briefcase. You shut the fingers round the handle, and switch the current off, and the hand just stays shut without you having to do it all yourself.’

  I put my right hand over and pushed the switch off and on, to show her.

  ‘It’s like the push-through switch on a table lamp,’ I said. ‘Feel it. Push it.’

  She fumbled a bit because it wasn’t all that easy to find if one didn’t know, but in the end pushed it both ways, off and on. Nothing in her expression but concentration.

  She felt some sort of tension relax in me, and looked up, accusingly.

  ‘You were testing me,’ she said.

  I smiled. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You’re a pig.’

  I felt an unaccustomed uprush of mischief. ‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, holding my left hand in my right, ‘if I unscrew it firmly round this way several times the whole hand will come right off at the wrist.’

  ‘Don’t do it,’ she said, horrified.

  I laughed with absolute enjoyment. I wouldn’t have thought I would ever feel that way about that hand.

  ‘Why does it come right off?’ she said.

  ‘Oh … servicing. Stuff like that’

  ‘You look so different,’ she said.

  I nodded. She was right. I said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’

  ‘What a world of surprises,’ she said, a good while later. ‘Almost the last thing I would have expected you to be as a lover is gentle.’

  ‘Too gentle?’

  ‘No. I liked it.’

  We lay in the dark, drowsily. She herself had been warmly receptive and generous, and had made it for me an intense sunburst of pleasure. It was a shame, I thought hazily, that the act of sex had got so cluttered up with taboos and techniques and therapists and sin and voyeurs and the whole commercial ballyhoo. Two people fitting together in the old design should be a private matter, and if you didn’t expect too much, you’d get on better. One was as one was. Even if a girl wanted it, I could never have put on a pretence of being a rough, aggressive bull of a lover, because, I thought sardonically, I would have laughed at myself in the middle. And it had been all right, I thought, as it was.

  ‘Louise,’ I said.

  No reply.

  I shifted a little for deeper comfort, and drifted, like her, to sleep.

  A while later, awake early as usual, I watched the daylight strengthen on her sleeping face. The fair hair lay tangled round her head in the way I had seen it first, and her skin looked soft and fresh. When she woke, even before she opened her eyes, she was smiling.

  ‘Good morning,’ I sai
d.

  ‘Morning.’

  She moved towards me in the big bed, the white muslin frills on the canopy overhead surrounding us like a frame.

  ‘Like sleeping in clouds,’ she said.

  She came up against the hard shell of my left arm, and blinked from the awareness of it.

  ‘You don’t sleep in this when you’re alone, do you?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Take it off, then.’

  I said with a smile, ‘No.’

  She gave me a long considering inspection.

  ‘Jenny’s right about you being like flint,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘She told me that at the exact moment some chap was smashing up your arm you were calmly working out how to defeat him.’

  I made a face.

  ‘Is it true?’ she said.

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Jenny said …’

  ‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘I’d rather talk about you.’

  ‘I’m not interesting.’

  ‘That’s a right come-on, that is,’ I said.

  ‘What are you waiting for, then?’

  ‘I do so like your retreating maidenly blushes.’

  I touched her lightly on her breast and it seemed to do for her what it did for me. Instant arousal, mutually pleasing.

  ‘Clouds,’ she said contentedly. ‘What do you think of when you’re doing it?’

  Sex?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I feel. It isn’t thought.’

  ‘Sometimes I see roses … on trellises … scarlet and pink and gold. Sometimes spiky stars. This time it will be white frilly muslin clouds.’

  I asked her, after.

  ‘No. All bright sunlight Quite blinding.’

  The sunlight, in truth, had flooded into the room, making the whole white canopy translucent and shimmering.

  ‘Why didn’t you want the curtains drawn, last night?’ she said. ‘Don’t you like the dark?’

  ‘I don’t like sleeping when my enemies are up and about.’

  I said it without thinking. The actual truth of it followed after, like a freezing shower.

  ‘Like an animal,’ she said, and then, ‘What’s the matter?’

  Remember me, I thought, as I am. And I said, ‘Like some breakfast?’

  We went back to Oxford. I took the film to be developed, and we had lunch at Les Quat’ Saisons, where the delectable pâté de turbot and the superb quenelle de brochet soufflée kept the shadows at bay a while longer. With the coffee, though, came the unavoidable minute.