by Dick Francis
I filled ten long envelopes with the various statements, and stuck them down. I addressed one to the senior steward and four others to influential people in the National Hunt Committee. One to the Chairman of Universal Telecast, one to John Ballerton, and one to Corin Kellar, to show them their idol’s clay feet. One to James. And one to Maurice Kemp-Lore.
‘Can’t he get you for libel?’ asked Joanna looking over my shoulder.
‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘There’s a defence in libel actions called justification, which roughly means that if a man has done something dishonest you are justified in disclosing it. You have to prove it is true, that’s all.’
‘I hope you are right,’ she said dubiously, sticking on some stamps.
‘Don’t worry. He won’t sue me,’ I said positively.
I stacked nine of the envelopes into a neat pile on the bookshelf and propped the tenth, the unstamped one for Kemp-Lore, up on end behind them.
‘We’ll post that lot on Friday,’ I said. ‘And I’ll deliver the other one myself.’
At eight-thirty on Thursday morning Joanna made the telephone call upon which so much depended.
I dialled the number of Kemp-Lore’s London flat. There was a click as soon as the bell started ringing, and an automatic answering device invited us to leave a recorded message. Joanna raised her eyebrows; I shook my head, and she put down the receiver without saying anything.
‘Out,’ I said unnecessarily. ‘Damn.’
I gave her the number of Kemp-Lore’s father’s house in Essex and she was soon connected and talking to someone there. She nodded to me and put her hand over the mouthpiece, and said, ‘He’s there. They’ve gone to fetch him. I … I hope I don’t mess it up.’
I shook my head encouragingly. We had rehearsed pretty thoroughly what she was going to say. She licked her lips, and looked at me with anxious eyes.
‘Oh? Mr Kemp-Lore?’ She could do a beautiful cockney-suburban accent, not exaggerated and very convincing. ‘You don’t know me, but I wondered if I could tell you something that you could use on your programme in the newsy bits at the end? I do admire your programme, I do really. It’s ever so good, I always think …’
His voice clacked, interrupting the flow.
‘What information?’ repeated Joanna. ‘Oh, well, you know all the talk there’s been about athletes using them pep pills and injections and things, well I wondered if you wanted to know about jockeys doing it too … one jockey, actually that I know of, but I expect they all do it if the truth were known … Which jockey? Oh … er … Robbie Finn, you know, the one you talked to on the telly on Saturday after he won that race. Pepped to the eyebrows as usual he was, didn’t you guess? You was that close to him I thought you must have … How do I know? Well I do know … you want to know how I know … well … it’s a bit dodgy, like, but it was me got some stuff for him once. I work in a doctor’s dispensary … cleaning you see … and he told me what to take and I got it for him. But now look here, I don’t want to get into no trouble, I didn’t mean to let on about that … I think I’d better ring off … Don’t ring off? You won’t say nothing about it then, you know, me pinching the stuff?
‘Why am I telling you? … Well, he don’t come to see me no more, that’s why.’ Her voice was superbly loaded with jealous spite. ‘After all I’ve done for him … I did think of telling one of the newspapers, but I thought I’d see if you were interested first. I can tell them if you’d rather … Check, what do you mean check? … You can’t take my word for it on the telephone? Well, yes, you can come and see me if you want to … no, not today, I’m at work all day … yes, all right, tomorrow morning then.
‘How do you get there? … Well, you go to Newbury and then out towards Hungerford …’ She went on with the directions slowly while he wrote them down. ‘And it’s the only cottage along there, you can’t miss it. Yes, I’ll wait in for you, about eleven o’clock, all right then. What’s my name? … Doris Jones. Yes, that’s right. Mrs Doris Jones … Well ta-ta then.’ The telephone clicked and buzzed as he disconnected.
She put the receiver down slowly, looking at me with a serious face.
‘Hook, line and sinker,’ she said.
When the banks opened I went along and drew out one hundred and fifty pounds. As Joanna had said, what I was doing was complicated and expensive; but complication and expense had achieved top-grade results for Kemp-Lore, and at least I was paying him the compliment of copying his methods. I grudged the money not at all: what is money for, if not to get what you want? What I wanted, admirable or not, was to pay him in his own coin.
I drove off to the Bedfordshire farmer who promised to lend me his Land-Rover and trailer. It was standing ready in the yard when I arrived at noon, and before I left I bought from the farmer two bales of straw and one of hay, which we stowed in the back of the Land-Rover. Then, promising to return that evening, I started away to the first of my appointments with the Horse and Hound advertisers.
The first hunter, an old grey gelding in Northamptonshire, was so lame that he could hardly walk out of his box and he was no bargain even at the sixty pounds they were asking for him. I shook my head, and pressed on into Leicestershire.
The second appointment proved to be with a brown mare, sound in limb but noisy in wind, as I discovered when I cantered her across a field. She was big, about twelve years old and gawky, but quiet to handle and not too bad to look at, and she was for sale only because she could not go as fast as her ambitious owner liked. I haggled, bringing him from the hundred he had advertised her for down to eighty-five pounds, and clinched the deal. Then I loaded the mare, whose name, her ex-owner said, was Buttonhook, into the trailer and turned my face South again to Berkshire.
Three hours later, at half-past five in the afternoon, I turned the Land-Rover into the lane at the cottage, and bumped Buttonhook to a standstill on the rough ground behind the bushes beyond the building. She had to wait in the trailer while I got the straw and spread it thickly over the floorboards in the room with the water pipes cemented over the window, and again while I filled her a bucket of water out of the rain butt and carried an armful of hay into the room and put it in the corner behind the door.
She was an affectionate old thing, I found. She came docilely out of the trailer and made no fuss when I led her up the little garden path and in through the front door of the cottage and across the little hall into the room prepared for her. I gave her some sugar and rubbed her ears, and she butted her head playfully against my chest. After a while, as she seemed quite content in her unusual and not very spacious loose box, I went out into the hall, shut the door, and padlocked her in. Then I walked round the outside of the cottage and shook the water-pipe bars to see if they were secure, as the frosty air might have prevented the cement from setting properly. But they were all immovably fixed.
The mare came to the window and tried to poke her muzzle through the glassless squares of the window frame and through the bars outside them, but the maze defeated her. I put my hand through and fondled her muzzle, and she blew contentedly down her nostrils. Then she turned and went over to the corner where her hay was, and quietly and trustfully put her head down to eat.
I dumped the rest of the hay and straw in one of the front rooms of the cottage, shut the front door, manoeuvred the trailer round with some difficulty into the lane again, and set off back to Bedfordshire. In due course I delivered the Land-Rover and trailer to their owner, thanked him, and drove the hired car back to Joanna’s mews.
When I went in, she kissed me. She sprang up from the sofa where she had been sitting reading, and kissed me lightly on the mouth. It was utterly spontaneous; without thought: and it was a great surprise to both of us. I put my hands on her arms and smiled incredulously down into her black eyes, and watched the surprise there turn to confusion and the confusion to panic. I took my hands away and turned my back on her to give her time, taking off the anorak and saying casually over my shoulder, ‘The lodger is installe
d in the cottage. A big brown mare with a nice nature.’
I hung up the anorak in the cupboard.
‘I was just … glad to see you back,’ she said in a high voice.
‘That’s fine,’ I said lightly. ‘Can I rustle up an egg, do you think?’
‘There are some mushrooms for an omelette,’ she said, more normally.
‘Terrific,’ I said, going into the kitchen. ‘Not peeled, by any chance?’
‘Damn it, no,’ she said, following me and beginning to smile. She made the omelette for me and I told her about Buttonhook, and the difficult moment passed.
Later on she announced that she was coming down to the cottage with me when I went in the morning.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘He is expecting Mrs Doris Jones to open the door to him. It will be much better if she does.’
I couldn’t budge her.
‘And,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve thought of putting curtains in the windows? If you want him to walk into your parlour, you’ll have to make it look normal. He probably has a keen nose for smelling rats.’ She fished some printed cotton material out of the drawer and held it up. ‘I’ve never used this … we can pin it up to look like curtains.’ She busily collected some drawing pins and scissors, and then rolled up the big rag rug which the easel stood on and took a flower picture off the wall.
‘What are those for?’ I said.
‘To furnish the hall, of course. It’s got to look right.’
‘Okay, genius,’ I said, giving in. ‘You can come.’
We put all the things she had gathered into a tidy pile by the door, and I added two boxes of cubed sugar from her store cupboard, the big electric torch she kept in case of power cuts, and a broom.
After that springing kiss, the sofa was more of a wasteland than ever.
Seventeen
We set off early and got down to the cottage before nine, because there was a good deal to be done before Kemp-Lore arrived.
I hid the car behind the bushes again, and we carried the rug and the other things indoors. Buttonhook was safe and sound in her room, and was delighted to see us, neighing purringly in her throat when we opened her door. While I tossed her straw and fetched her some more hay and water, Joanna said she would clean the windows at the front of the cottage, and presently I heard her humming softly as she wiped away the grime of years.
The putty round the new panes had hardened well, and after I had finished Buttonhook, and Joanna was stepping back admiring the sparkle of the glass, I fetched the paint and began the tedious job of covering the patchwork of old decayed black paint and pale new putty with a bright green skin. Joanna watched me for a while and then went indoors. She put down the rug in the little hall, and I heard her banging a nail into the wall to hang up the picture just inside the front door where no visitor could fail to see it. After that she worked on the inside of the windows while I painted their outsides. She cut the flowery material into lengths and pinned it so that it hung like curtains.
When we had both finished we stood at the gate in front of the cottage admiring our handiwork. With its fresh paint, pretty curtains, and the rug and picture showing through the half-open door, it looked well cared for and homely.
‘Has it got a name?’ Joanna asked.
‘I don’t think so. It’s always called “The Keeper’s Cottage,” as far as I know,’ I said.
‘We should name it Sundew,’ she said.
‘After the Grand National winner?’ I said, puzzled.
‘No,’ she said soberly, ‘the carnivorous plant.’
I put my arm round her waist. She didn’t stir.
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ she said.
‘Yes, I will,’ I assured her. I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes to eleven. ‘We’d better go indoors in case he comes early.’
We went in and shut the front door and sat on the remains of the hay bale in the front room, giving ourselves a clear view of the front gate.
A minute or two ticked by in silence. Joanna shivered.
‘Are you too cold?’ I said with concern. There had been another frost during the night and there was, of course, no heating in the cottage. ‘We should have brought a stove.’
‘It’s nerves as much as cold,’ she said, shivering again.
I put my arm round her shoulders. She leaned comfortably against me, and I kissed her cheek. Her black eyes looked gravely, warily into mine.
‘It isn’t incest,’ I said.
Her eyelids flickered in shock, but she didn’t move.
‘Our fathers may be brothers,’ I said, ‘but our mothers are not related to them or to each other.’
She said nothing. I had a sudden feeling that if I lost this time I had lost for ever, and a leaden chill of despair settled in my stomach.
‘No one forbids marriage between cousins,’ I said slowly. ‘The Law allows it and the Church allows it, and you can be sure they wouldn’t if there were anything immoral in it. And in a case like ours, the medical profession raises no objection either. If there were a good genetic reason why we shouldn’t marry, it would be different. But you know there isn’t.’ I paused, but she still looked at me gravely and said nothing. Without much hope I said, ‘I don’t really understand why you feel the way you do.’
‘It’s instinct,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand it myself. It’s just that I’ve always thought of it as wrong … and impossible.’
There was a little silence.
I said, ‘I think I’ll sleep in my digs down here in the village tonight, and ride out at exercise with the horses tomorrow morning. I’ve been neglecting my job this week …’
She sat up straight, pulling free of my arm.
‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘Come back to the flat.’
‘I can’t. I can’t any more,’ I said.
She stood up and went over to the window and looked out. Minutes passed. Then she turned round and perched on the window-sill with her back to the light, and I couldn’t see her expression.
‘It’s an ultimatum, isn’t it?’ she said shakily. ‘Either I marry you or you clear out altogether? No more having it both ways like you’ve given me this past week …’
‘It isn’t a deliberate ultimatum,’ I protested. ‘But we can’t go on like this for ever. At least, I can’t. Not if you know beyond any doubt that you’ll never change your mind.’
‘Before last week-end there wasn’t any problem as far as I was concerned,’ she said. ‘You were just something I couldn’t have … like oysters, which give me indigestion … something nice, but out of bounds. And now’ – she tried to laugh – ‘now it’s as if I’ve developed a craving for oysters. And I’m in a thorough muddle.’
‘Come here,’ I said persuasively. She walked across and sat down again beside me on the hay bale. I took her hand.
‘If we weren’t cousins, would you marry me?’ I held my breath.
‘Yes,’ she said simply. No reservations, no hesitation any more.
I turned towards her and put my hands on the sides of her head and tilted her face up. There wasn’t any panic this time. I kissed her; gently, and with love.
Her lips trembled, but there was no rigidity in her body, no blind instinctive retreat as there had been a week ago. I thought, if seven days can work such a change, what could happen in seven weeks?
I hadn’t lost after all. The chill in my stomach melted away. I sat back on the hay bale, holding Joanna’s hand again and smiling at her.
‘It will be all right,’ I said. ‘Our being cousins won’t worry you in a little while.’
She looked at me wonderingly for a moment and then unexpectedly her lips twitched at the corners. ‘I believe you,’ she said, ‘because I’ve never known anyone more determined in all my life. You’ve always been like it. You don’t care what trouble you put yourself to to get what you want … like riding in the race last Saturday, and fixing up this fly-trap of a cottage
, and living with me how you have this week … so my instinct against blood relatives marrying, wherever it is seated, will have to start getting used to the idea that it is wrong, I suppose, otherwise I’ll find myself being dragged by you along to Claudius Mellitt to be psychoanalysed or brain-washed, or something. I will try,’ she finished more seriously, ‘not to keep you waiting very long.’
‘In that case,’ I said, matching her lightheartedness, ‘I’ll go on sleeping on your sofa as often as possible, so as to be handy when the breakthrough occurs.’
She laughed without strain. ‘Starting tonight?’ she asked.
‘I guess so,’ I said smiling. ‘I never did like my digs much.’
‘Ouch,’ she said.
‘But I’ll have to come back here on Sunday evening in any case. As James has given me my job back, the least I can do is show some interest in his horses.’
We went on sitting on the hay bale, talking calmly as if nothing had happened; and nothing had, I thought, except a miracle that one could reliably build a future on, the miracle that Joanna’s hand now lay intimately curled in mine without her wanting to remove it.
The minutes ticked away towards eleven o’clock.
‘Suppose he doesn’t come?’ she said.
‘He will.’
‘I almost hope he doesn’t,’ she said. ‘Those letters would be enough by themselves.’
‘You won’t forget to post them when you get back, will you?’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘but I wish you’d let me stay.’
I shook my head. We sat on, watching the gate. The minute hand crept round to twelve on my watch, and passed it.
‘He’s late,’ she said.
Five past eleven. Ten past eleven.
‘He isn’t coming,’ Joanna murmured.
‘He’ll come,’ I said.
‘Perhaps he got suspicious and checked up and found there wasn’t any Mrs Doris Jones living in the Keeper’s Cottage,’ she said.
‘There shouldn’t be any reason for him to be suspicious.’ I pointed out. ‘He clearly didn’t know at the end of that television interview with me last Saturday that I was on to him, and nothing I’ve done since should have got back to him, and James and Tick-Tock promised to say nothing to anyone about the doped sugar. As far as Kemp-Lore should know, he is unsuspected and undiscovered. If he feels as secure as I am sure he does, he’ll never pass up an opportunity to learn about something as damaging as pep pills … so he’ll come.’