Forfeit

by Dick Francis

  I looked at Elizabeth. She didn’t seem to have followed Vjoersterod’s rather involved syntax. Her head lay in a relaxed way on the pillow and her eyes were shut. She was relieved that I had told where the horse was: she thought that everything was now all right.

  Vjoersterod followed my glance and my thought. He nodded. ‘We have many polio victims on respirators in my country. I understand about them. About the importance of electricity. The importance of constant attendance. The razor edge between life and death. I understand it well.’

  I said nothing. He said, ‘Many men desert wives like this. Since you do not, you would care if harm came to her. Am I right? You have, in fact, just this minute proved it, have you not? You wasted so little time in telling me correctly what I wanted to know.’

  I made no comment. He waited a fraction, then went smoothly on. What he said, as Dembley had found out, was macabrely at variance with the way he said it.

  ‘I have an international reputation to maintain. I simply cannot afford to have pipsqueak journalists interfering with my enterprises and trying to hold me up to ridicule. I intend to make it clear to you once and for all, to impress upon you indelibly, that I am not a man to be crossed.’

  Ross moved a pace at my side. My skin crawled. I made as good a job as I could of matching Vjoersterod’s immobility of expression.

  Vjoersterod had more to say. As far as I was concerned, he could go on all night. The alternative hardly beckoned.

  ‘Charlie Boston reports to me that you have put both his men out of action. He too cannot afford such affronts to his reputation. Since all you learned from his warning attentions on the train was to strike back, we will see if my chauffeur can do any better.’

  I tucked one foot under the stool, pivoted on it, and on the way to my feet struck at Ross with both hands, one to the stomach, one to the groin. He bent over, taken by surprise, and I wrenched the small truncheon out of his hand, raising it to clip him on the head.

  ‘Ty …’ Elizabeth’s voice rose in an agonised wail. I swung round with the truncheon in my hand and met Vjoersterod’s fiercely implacable gaze.

  ‘Drop it.’

  He had his toe under the switch. Three yards between us.

  I hesitated, boiling with fury, wanting above anything to hit him, knock him out, get rid of him out of my life and most particularly out of the next hour of it. I couldn’t risk it. One tiny jerk would cut off the current. I couldn’t risk not being able to reach the switch again in time, not with Vjoersterod in front of it and Ross behind me. Under the weight of the Spirashell she would suffocate almost immediately. If I resisted any more I could kill her. He might really do it. Let her die. Leave me to explain her death and maybe even be accused of slaughtering her myself. The unwanted wife bit … He didn’t know I knew his name or anything about him. He would think he could kill Elizabeth with reasonable safety. I simply couldn’t risk it.

  I put my arm down slowly and dropped the truncheon on the carpet. Ross, breathing heavily, bent and picked it up.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Tyrone,’ Vjoersterod said. ‘And stay sitting down. Don’t get up again. Do I make myself clear?’

  He still had his toe under the switch. I sat down, seething inside, rigid outside, and totally apprehensive. Twice in a fortnight was definitely too much.

  Vjoersterod nodded to Ross, who hit me solidly with the truncheon on the back of the shoulder. It sounded horrible. Felt worse.

  Elizabeth cried out. Vjoersterod looked at her without pity and told Ross to switch on the television. They both waited while the set warmed up. Ross adjusted the volume to medium loud and changed the channel from a news magazine to song and dance. No neighbours, unfortunately, would call to complain about the noise. The only ones who lived near enough were out working in a night club.

  Ross had another go with his truncheon. Instinctively I started to stand up … to retaliate, to escape, heaven knows.

  ‘Sit down,’ Vjoersterod said.

  I looked at his toe. I sat down. Ross swung his arm and that time I fell forward off the stool on to my knees.

  ‘Sit.’ Vjoersterod said. Stiffly I returned to where he said.

  ‘Don’t,’ Elizabeth said to him in a wavering voice. ‘Please don’t.’

  I looked at her, met her eyes. She was terrified. Scared to death. And something else. Beseeching. Begging me. With a flash of blinding understanding I realised she was afraid I wouldn’t take any more, that I wouldn’t think she was worth it, that I would somehow stop them hurting me even if it meant switching off her pump. Vjoersterod knew I wouldn’t. It was ironic, I thought mordantly, that Vjoersterod knew me better than my own wife.

  It didn’t last a great deal longer. It had anyway reached the stage where I no longer felt each blow separately but rather as a crushing addition to an intolerable whole. It seemed as though I had the whole weight of the world across my shoulders. Atlas wasn’t even in the race.

  I didn’t see Vjoersterod tell Ross to stop. I had the heels of my hands against my mouth and my fingertips in my hair. Some nit on the television was advising everyone to keep their sunny side up. Ross cut him off abruptly in mid note.

  ‘Oh God,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Oh God.’

  Vjoersterod’s smooth voice dryly comforted her. ‘My dear Mrs Tyrone, I assure you that my chauffeur knows how to be a great deal more unpleasant than that. He has, I hope you realise, left your husband his dignity.’

  ‘Dignity,’ Elizabeth said faintly.

  ‘Quite so. My chauffeur used to work in the prison service in the country I come from. He knows about humiliation. It would not have been suitable, however, to apply certain, of his techniques to your husband.’

  ‘Russia?’ she asked. ‘Do you come from Russia?’

  He didn’t answer her. He spoke to me.

  ‘Mr Tyrone, should you try to cross me again, I would allow my chauffeur to do anything he liked. Anything at all. Do you understand?’

  I was silent. He repeated peremptorily, ‘Do you understand?’

  I nodded my head.

  ‘Good. That’s a start. But only a start. You will also do something more positive. You will work for me. You will write for me in your newspaper. Whatever I tell you to write, you will write.’

  I detached my hands slowly from my face and rested my wrists on my knees.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said dully.

  ‘I think you will find that you can. In fact you will. You must. And neither will you contemplate resigning from your paper.’ He touched the electric switch with his brown polished toe cap. ‘You cannot guard your wife adequately every minute for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said slowly. ‘I will write what you say.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Poor old Bert Checkov, I thought drearily. Seven floors down to the pavement. Only I couldn’t insure myself for enough to compensate Elizabeth for having to live for ever in a hospital.

  ‘You can start this week,’ Vjoersterod said. ‘You can say on Sunday that what you have written for the last two weeks turns out to have no foundation in fact. You will restore the situation to what it was before you started interfering.’

  ‘Very well.’

  I put my right hand tentatively over my left shoulder. Vjoersterod watched me and nodded.

  ‘You’ll remember that,’ he said judiciously. ‘Perhaps you will feel better if I assure you that many who have crossed me are now dead. You are more useful to me alive. As long as you write what I say, your wife will be safe, and my chauffeur will not need to attend to you.’

  His chauffeur, did he but know it, had proved to be a pale shadow of the Boston boys. For all my fears, it now seemed to me that the knuckledusters had been worse. The chauffeur’s work was a bore, a present burden, yet not as crippling as before. No broken ribs. No all-over weakness. This time I would be able to move.

  Elizabeth was close to tears. ‘How can you,’ she said, ‘How can you be so … beastly.’

  Vjoersterod remained
unruffled. ‘I am surprised you care so much for your husband after his behaviour with that coloured girl.’

  She bit her lip and rolled her head away from him on the pillow. He stared at me calmly. ‘So you told her.’

  There was no point in saying anything. If I’d told him where Tiddely Pom had been on Tuesday, when he first tried to make me, I would have saved myself a lot of pain and trouble. I would have saved Elizabeth from knowing about Gail. I would have spared her all this fear. Some of Bert Checkov’s famous last words floated up from the past … ‘It’s the ones who don’t know when to give in who get the worst clobbering … in the ring, I mean …’

  I swallowed. The ache from my shoulders was spreading down my back. I was dead tired of sitting on that stool. Mrs Woodward could keep it, I thought scrappily. I wouldn’t want it in the flat any more.

  Vjoersterod said to Ross, ‘Pour him a drink.’

  Ross went over to where the whisky bottle stood on its tray with two glasses and the Malvern Water. The bottle was nearly half full. He unscrewed the cap, picked up one of the tumblers, and emptied into it all the whisky. It was filled to the brim.

  Vjoersterod nodded. ‘Drink it.’

  Ross gave me the glass. I stared at it.

  ‘Go on,’ Vjoersterod said. ‘Drink it.’

  I took a breath to protest. He moved his toe towards the switch. I put the glass to my lips and took a mouthful. Jump through hoops when the man said.

  ‘All of it,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’

  I had eaten nothing for more than twenty four hours. In spite of a natural tolerance, a tumbler full of alcohol on an empty stomach was not my idea of fun. I had no choice. Loathing Vjoersterod, I drank it all.

  ‘He seems to have learned his lesson,’ Ross said.

  14

  They stood in silence for nearly fifteen minutes, watching me. Then Vjoersterod said, ‘Stand up.’

  I stood.

  ‘Turn round in a circle.’

  I turned. Lurched. Staggered. Swayed on my feet.

  Vjoersterod nodded in satisfaction. ‘That’s all, Mr Tyrone. All for today. I expect to be pleased by what you write in the paper on Sunday. I had better be pleased.’

  I nodded. A mistake. My head swam violently. I overbalanced slightly. The whisky was being absorbed into my bloodstream at a disastrous rate.

  Vjoersterod and Ross let themselves out unhurriedly and without another word. As soon as the door closed behind them I turned and made tracks for the kitchen. Behind me Elizabeth’s voice called in a question, but I had no time to waste and explain. I pulled the tin of salt from the shelf, poured two inches of it into a tumbler and splashed in an equal amount of water.

  Stirred it with my fingers. No time for a spoon. Seconds counted. Drank the mixture. It tasted like the Seven Seas rolled into one. Scorched my throat. An effort to get more than one mouthful down. I was gagging over the stuff even before it did its work and came up again, bringing with it whatever of the whisky hadn’t gone straight through my stomach wall.

  I leaned over the sink, retching and wretched. I had lurched for Vjoersterod more than was strictly necessary, but the alcohol had in fact taken as strong and fast a hold as I had feared it would. I could feel its effects rising in my brain, disorganising co-ordination, distorting thought. No possible antidote except time.

  Time. Fifteen minutes, maybe, since I had taken the stuff. In ten minutes more, perhaps twenty, I would be thoroughly drunk.

  I didn’t know whether Vjoersterod had made me drink for any special purpose or just from bloody-mindedness. I did know that it was a horrible complication to what I had planned to do.

  I rinsed my mouth out with clean water and straightened up. Groaned as the heavy yoke of bruises across my shoulders reminded me I had other troubles besides drink. Went back to Elizabeth concentrating on not knocking into the walls and doors, and picked up the telephone.

  A blank. Couldn’t remember the number.

  Think.

  Out it came. Willie Onroy answered.

  ‘Willie,’ I said. ‘Move that horse out of box sixty eight. That was the opposition you were talking to earlier. Put on all the guards you can, and move the horse to another box. Stake out sixty eight and see if you can catch any would-be nobblers in the act.’

  ‘Ty! Will do.’

  ‘Can’t stop, Willie. Sorry about this.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll see no one reaches him. I think like you, that it’s essential that he should be kept safe until the race.’

  ‘They may be determined …’

  ‘So am I.’

  I put the receiver back in its cradle with his reassurance shoring me up, and met Elizabeth’s horrified gaze.

  ‘Ty,’ she said faintly, ‘What are you doing?’

  I sat down for a moment on the arm of the chair. I felt terrible. Battered, sick and drunk.

  I said, ‘Listen, honey. Listen well. I can’t say it twice. I can’t put things back to where they were before I wrote the articles.’

  ‘You told him you would,’ she interrupted in bewilderment.

  ‘I know I did. I had to. But I can’t. I’ve told the Stewards about him. I can’t go back on that. In fact I won’t. He’s utter poison, and he’s got to be stopped.

  ‘Let someone else do it.’

  ‘That’s the classic path to oppression.’

  ‘But why you?’ A protesting wail, but a serious question.

  ‘I don’t know … someone has to.’

  ‘But you gave in to him … you let him …’ She looked at me with wide, appalled eyes, struck by sudden realisation. ‘He’ll come back.’

  ‘Yes. When he finds out that Tiddely Pom has changed boxes and the whole stable is bristling with guards, he’ll guess I warned them, and he’ll come back. So I’m moving you out of here. Away. At once.’

  ‘You don’t mean now?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘But Ty … all that whisky … Wouldn’t it be better to leave it until the morning?’

  I shook my head. The room began spinning. I held on to the chair and waited for it to stop. In the morning I would be sore and ill, much worse than at that moment; and the morning might anyway be too late. Heathbury and back would take less than three hours in a Rolls.

  ‘Ring up Sue Davis and see if Ron can come along to help. I’m going downstairs to get the van out. O.K.?’

  ‘I don’t want to go.’

  I understood her reluctance. She had so little grasp on life that even a long-planned daytime move left her worried and insecure. This sudden bustle into the night seemed the dangerous course to her, and staying in a familiar warm home the safe one. Whereas they were the other way round.

  ‘We must.’ I said. ‘We absolutely must.’

  I stood up carefully and concentrated on walking a straight path to the door. Made it with considerable success. Down the stairs. Opened the garage doors, started the van, and backed it out into the mews. A new set of batteries for Elizabeth’s pump were in the garage. I lifted them into the van and put them in place. Waves of giddiness swept through me every time I bent my head down. I began to lose hope that I could retain any control of my brain at all. Too much whisky sloshing about in it. Too much altogether.

  I went upstairs again. Elizabeth had the receiver to her ear and her eyes were worried.

  ‘There isn’t any reply. Sue and Ron must be out.’

  I swore inwardly. Even at the best of times it was difficult to manage the transfer to the van on my own. This was far from the best of times.

  I took the receiver out of the cradle, disconnected the Davis’s vainly ringing number, and dialled that of Antonio Perelli. To my bottomless relief, he answered.

  ‘Tonio, will you call the nursing home and tell them I’m bringing Elizabeth over.’

  ‘Do you mean now, tonight?’

  ‘Almost at once, yes.’

  ‘Bronchial infection?’ He sounded brisk, preparing to be reassuring, acknowledging the urgency.


  ‘No. She’s well. It’s a different sort of danger. I’ll tell you later. Look … could you possibly down tools and come over here and help me with her?’

  ‘I can’t just now, Ty. Not if she isn’t ill.’

  ‘But life and death, all the same,’ I said with desperate flippancy.

  ‘I really can’t, Ty. I’m expecting another patient.’

  ‘Oh. Well, just ring the nursing home, huh?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘And … er … bring Elizabeth here on the way. Would you do that? It isn’t much of a detour. I’d like just to be sure she’s in good shape. I’ll leave my patient for a few minutes, and just say hello to her in the van. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Thanks, Tonio.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘Don’t give it a thought,’ I said. ‘Be seeing you.’

  The room whirled when I put the receiver down. I held on to the bedhead to steady myself, and looked at my watch. Couldn’t focus on the dial. The figures were just a blur. I made myself see. Concentrated hard. The numbers and the hands came back sharp and clear. Ten thirty-seven. As if it mattered.

  Three more trips to make up and down the stairs: Correction; five. Better start, or I’d never finish. I took the pillows and blankets off my bed, folded them as I would need them in the van, and took them down. When I’d made up the stretcher bed ready for Elizabeth, I felt an overpowering urge to lie down on it myself and go to sleep. Dragged myself back to the stairs instead.

  Ridiculous, I thought. Ridiculous to try to do anything in the state I was in. Best to unscramble the eggs and go to bed. Wait till morning. Go to sleep. Sleep.

  If I went to sleep I would sleep for hours. Sleep away our margin of safety. Put it into the red time-expired section. Cost us too much.

  I shook myself out of it. If I walked carefully, I could stop the world spinning round me. If I thought slowly, I could still think. There was a block now somewhere between my brain and my tongue, but if the words themselves came out slurred and wrong, I still knew with moderate clarity what I had intended them to be.