by Dick Francis
I looked at him straightly.
‘Did you know?’
He sighed. ‘You are so cynical, dear boy. But no, I didn’t.’
Chapter Six
Danilo arrived at the Iguana Rock at four o’clock with a hired Triumph, a scarlet open-necked shirt and a suntanned grin.
I had been back there less than an hour myself, Conrad and I having dawdled over a beer and sandwich lunch in an unobtrusive bar. Katya had gone to hospital, with Roderick in frantic tow, and the other journalists were currently stubbing their fingernails on their typewriters. Clifford Wenkins had twittered off at some unmarked point in the proceedings, and when Conrad and I left we saw him, too, engaged in earnest conversation on the telephone. Reporting to Worldic, no doubt. I stifled a despairing sigh. Not a butterfly’s chance in a blizzard that anyone would ignore the whole thing as uninteresting.
Danilo chatted in his carefree way, navigating us round the elevated Sir de Villiers Graaf ring road, that God’s gift to the city’s inhabitants which took the through traffic out of their way, over their heads.
‘I can’t imagine what Johannesburg was like before they built this highway,’ Danilo commented. ‘They still have a big traffic problem downtown, and as for parking… there’s more cars parked along the streets down there than one-armed bandits in Nevada…’
‘You’ve been here quite a time, then?’
‘Hell, no,’ he grinned. ‘Only a few days. But I’ve been here before, once, and anyway it sure only takes twenty minutes of searching around to teach you that all the car parks are permanently full and that you can never park within a quarter mile of where you want to be.’
He drove expertly and coolly on what was to him the wrong side of the road.
‘Greville lives down near Turffontein,’ he said. ‘We drop down off this elevated part soon now… did that sign say Eloff Street Extension?’
‘It did,’ I confirmed.
‘Great.’ He took the turn and we left the South African M.I. and presently passed some football fields and a skating rink.
‘They call this “Wembley”,’ Danilo said. ‘And over there is a lake called Wemmer Pan for boating. And say, they have a water organ there which shoots coloured fountains up into the air in time to the music.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘No… Greville told me, I guess. He also says it’s a great place for fishing out rotting corpses and headless torsos.’
‘Nice,’ I said.
He grinned.
Before we reached Turffontein he turned off down a side road which presently became hard impacted earth covered with a layer of dust.
‘They’ve had no rain here for four-five months,’ Danilo said. ‘Everything’s sure looking dry.’
The grass was certainly brownish, but that was what I expected. I was surprised to learn from Danilo that in a month’s time, when the rain came and the days were warmer, the whole area would be lush, colourful, and green.
‘It’s sure sad you won’t be here to see the jacarandas,’ Danilo said. ‘They’ll flower all over, after you’ve gone.’
‘You’ve seen them before?’
He hesitated. ‘Well no, not exactly. Last time I was here, they weren’t flowering. It’s just what Greville says.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘Here it is. This is Greville’s place, right in here.’ He pointed, then turned in between some severe-looking brick pillars and drove up a gravel drive into a stable which looked as if it had been transplanted straight from England.
Arknold himself was already out in the yard talking to a black African whom he introduced as his head boy, Barty. Arknold’s head lad looked as tough as himself: a solid strong-looking man of about thirty, with a short thick neck and unsmiling cold eyes. He was the first black African I had seen, I thought in mild surprise, whose natural expression had not been good-natured.
There was nothing in his manner, however, but civility, and he nodded to Danilo’s greeting with the ordinary acknowledgment of people who meet each other fairly often.
Arknold said that everything was ready, and we started looking round the boxes without more ado. The horses were all like those I had seen on the track; up on their toes, with slightly less bone all round than those at home.
There was nothing at all to distinguish Nerissa’s horses from their stable-mates. They looked as well, had legs as firm, eyes as bright; and they were not all stabled in one block, but were scattered among the rest. Colts in one quadrangle, fillies in another. Everything as it should be, as it normally would be in England.
The lads—the boys—were all young and all black. Like lads the world over they were possessively proud of the horses they cared for, though alongside this pride there emerged a second, quite definite, pattern of behaviour.
They responded to me with smiles, to Arknold with respect, and to Barty with unmistakable fear.
I had no knowledge of what sort of tribal hold he had over them, and I never did find out, but in their wary eyes and their shrinking away at his approach, one could see he held them in a bondage far severer than any British head lad could have imposed.
I thought back to the iron hand my father had once wielded. The lads had jumped to what he said, the apprentices had scurried, and indeed I had wasted no time, but I could not remember that anyone had held him in actual physical fear.
I looked at Barty and faintly shivered. I wouldn’t have liked to work under him, any more than Arknold’s lads did.
‘This is Tables Turned,’ Arknold was saying, approaching the box door of a dark chestnut colt. ‘One of Mrs Cavesey’s. Running at Germiston on Saturday.’
‘I thought I might go to Germiston,’ I said.
‘Great,’ Danilo said with enthusiasm.
Arknold nodded more moderately, and said he would arrange for me to pick up free entrance tickets at the gate.
We went into the box and stood in the usual sort of appreciative pause, looking Tables Turned over from head to foot while Arknold noted how he was looking compared with the day before and I thought of something not too uncomplimentary to say about him.
‘Good neck,’ I said. ‘Good strong shoulders.’ And a bit rat-like about the head, I thought to myself.
Arknold shrugged heavily. ‘I took him down to Natal for the winter season, along with all the others. Had nearly the whole string down there for getting on for three months, like we do every year. We keep them at Summerveld, do you see?’
‘Where is Summerveld?’ I asked.
‘More like what is Summerveld,’ he said. ‘It’s a large area with stabling for about eight hundred horses, at Shongweni, near Durban. We book a block of stables there for the season. They have everything in the area one could need—practice track, restaurants, hostels for the boys, everything. And the school for jockeys and apprentices is there, as well.’
‘But you didn’t do much good, this year?’ I said sympathetically.
‘We won a few races with the others, but Mrs Cavesey’s string… Well, to be frank, there are so many of hers that I can’t afford to have them all go wrong. Does my reputation no good, do you see?’
I did see. I also thought he spoke with less passion than he might have done.
‘This Tables Turned,’ he said, slapping the horse’s rump, ‘on his breeding and his early form he looked a pretty good prospect for the Hollis Memorial Plate in June… that’s one of the top two-year-old races… and he ran just like you saw Chink do at Newmarket. Blew up five hundred metres from home and finished exhausted, though I’d have sworn he was as fit as any of them.’
He nodded to the boy holding the horse’s head, turned on his heel, and strode out of the box. Further down the line we reached another of Nerissa’s, who evoked an even deeper display of disgust.
‘Now this colt, Medic, he should have been a proper world-beater. I thought once that he’d win the Natal Free Handicap in July, but in the end I never sent him to Clairwood at all. His four races before
that were too shameful.’
I had a strong feeling that his anger was half genuine. It puzzled me. He certainly did seem to care that the horses had all failed, yet I was still sure that he not only knew why they had but had engineered it himself.
With Barty in attendance, pointing out omissions with a stabbing black forefinger to every intimidated stable-boy, we finished inspecting every one of the string, and afterwards went across to the house for a drink.
‘All of Mrs Cavesey’s lot are now counted as three-year-olds, of course,’ Arknold said. ‘The date for the age-change out here is August 1st, not January 1st as with you.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘There isn’t much good racing here on the Rand tracks during August. Nothing much to interest you, I dare say.’
‘I find it all extremely interesting,’ I said truthfully. ‘Will you go on running Mrs Cavesey’s string as three-year-olds?’
‘As long as she cares to go on paying their training fees,’ he said gloomily.
‘And if she decides to sell?’
‘She’d get very little for them now.’
‘If she sold them, would you buy any of them?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer immediately as he was showing us the way into his office, a square room full of papers, form books, filing cabinets and hard upright chairs. Arknold’s guests were not, it seemed, to be made so comfortable that they outstayed their limited welcome.
I repeated my question unwisely, and received the full glare of the Arknold displeasure.
‘Look, Mister,’ he said fiercely. ‘I don’t like what you’re suggesting. You are saying that maybe I lose races so I can buy the horses cheap, then win races when I have them myself, and then sell them well for stud. That’s what you’re saying, Mister.’
‘I didn’t say anything of the sort,’ I protested mildly.
‘It’s what you were thinking.’
‘Well,’ I agreed. ‘It was a possibility. Looking at it from outside, objectively, wouldn’t that have occurred to you, too?’
He still glowered, but the antagonism slowly subsided. I wished I could decide whether he had been angry because I had insulted him, or because I had come too near the truth.
Danilo, who had been tagging along all the way making sunny comments to no one in particular, tried to smooth his ruffled friend.
‘Aw, c’mon Greville, he meant no harm.’
Arknold gave me a sour look.
‘Hey, c’mon. Aunt Nerissa probably told him to poke around for reasons, if he got the chance. You can’t blame her, when she’s pouring all that good money into bad horses, now can you, Greville?’
Arknold made a fair pretence at being pacified and offered us a drink. Danilo smiled hugely in relief and said it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all, for us to quarrel.
I sipped my drink and looked at the two of them. Glossy young golden boy. Square surly middle-aged man. They both drank, and watched me over the rims of the glasses.
I couldn’t see an inch into either of their souls.
Back at the Iguana Rock there was a hand-delivered letter waiting for me. I read it upstairs in my room, standing by the window which looked out over the gardens, the tennis courts, and the great African outdoors. The light had begun fading and would soon go quickly, but the positive handwriting was still easy to see.
Dear Mr Lincoln,
I have received a cable from Nerissa Cavesey asking me to invite you to dinner. My wife and I would be pleased to entertain you during your visit, if you would care to accept.
Nerissa is the sister of my late brother’s wife, Portia, and has become close to us through her visits to our country. I explain this, as Mr Clifford Wenkins of Worldic Cinemas, who very reluctantly informed me of yourwhereabouts, was most insistent that you would not welcome any private invitations.
Yours sincerely,
Quentin van Huren.
Behind the stiffly polite sentences, one could feel the irritation with which he had written that note. It was not only I, it seemed, who would do things slightly against their will, for Nerissa’s sake: and Clifford Wenkins, with his fussing misjudgement of his responsibilities, had clearly not improved the situation.
I went over to the telephone beside the bed and put a call through to the number printed alongside the address on the writing-paper.
The call was answered by a black voice who said she would see if Mr van Huren was home.
Mr van Huren decided he was.
‘I called to thank you for your letter,’ I said. ‘And to say that I would very much like to accept your invitation to dine with you, during my stay.’ Two, I reckoned, could be ultra polite.
His voice was as firm as his handwriting, and equally reserved.
‘Good.’ He didn’t sound overjoyed, however. ‘It is always a pleasure to please Nerissa.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
There was a pause. The conversation could hardly be said to be rocketing along at a scintillating rate.
I said helpfully, ‘I shall be here until a week next Wednesday.’
‘I see. Yes. However, I shall be away from home all next week, and we are already engaged this Saturday and Sunday…’
‘Then please don’t worry,’ I said.
He cleared his throat. ‘I suppose,’ he suggested doubtfully, ‘that you would not be free tomorrow? Or, indeed, this evening? My house is not far from the Iguana Rock… but of course I expect you are fully engaged.’
Tomorrow morning, I thought, all the newspapers would be flourishing a paragraph or two about Roderick Hodge’s girl friend. By tomorrow night, Mrs van Huren, if she felt like it, could fill her house with the sort of party I didn’t like to go to. And tomorrow night I had agreed to have dinner with Conrad, though I could change that if I had to.
I said, ‘If it is not too short notice, tonight would be fine.’
‘Very well, then. Shall we say eight o’clock? I’ll send my car to fetch you.’
I put down the receiver half regretting that I had said I would go, as his pleasure in my acceptance was about as intense as a rice-pudding. However, the alternatives seemed to be the same as the night before: either dine in the Iguana Rock restaurant with the sideways glances reaching me from the other tables, or upstairs alone in my room, wishing I was home with Charlie.
The house to which the van Hurens’ car took me was big, old, and spelled money from the marble doorstep onwards. The hall was large, with the ceiling soaring away into invisibility, and round all four sides there was a graceful colonnade of pillars and arches: it looked like a small, splendid Italian piazza, with a roof somewhere over the top.
Into the hall, from a door under the colonnade on the far side, came a man and a woman.
‘I am Quentin van Huren,’ he said. ‘And this is my wife Vivi.’
‘How do you do?’ I said politely, and shook their hands.
There was a small hiatus.
‘Yes… well,’ he said, making a gesture which was very nearly a shrug. ‘Come along in.’
I followed them into the room they had come from. In the clearer light there, Quentin van Huren was instantly identifiable as a serious man of substance, since about him clung that unmistakable aura of know-how, experience, and ability that constitutes true authority. As solidity and professionalism were qualities I felt at home with, I was immediately prepared to like him more than it seemed probable he would like me.
His wife Vivi was not the same: elegant-looking, but not in the same league intellectually.
She said, ‘Do sit down, Mr Lincoln. We are so pleased you could come. Nerissa is such a very dear friend…’
She had cool eyes and a highly practised social manner. There was less warmth in her voice than in her words.
‘Whiskey?’ van Huren asked, and I said ‘Thank you,’ and got the tumbler full of water with the tablespoon of Scotch.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen any of your films,’ van Huren said, without sounding in the least sorr
y about it, and his wife added, ‘We seldom go to the cinema.’
‘Very wise,’ I said without inflection, and neither of them knew quite how to take it.
I found it easier on the whole to deal with people intent on taking me down a peg rather than with the sycophantically over-flattering. Towards the snubbers I felt no obligation.
I sat down on the gold-brocaded sofa which she had indicated, and sipped my enervated drink.
‘Has Nerissa told you she is… ill?’ I asked.
They both sat without haste. Van Huren shifted a small cushion out of his way, twisting in his armchair to see what he was doing, and answered over his shoulder.
‘She wrote a little while ago. She said she had something wrong with her glands.’
‘She’s dying,’ I said flatly, and got from them their first genuine response. They stopped thinking about me. Thought about Nerissa. About themselves. The shock and regret in their faces was real.
Van Huren still held the cushion in his hand.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
I nodded. ‘She told me herself. A month or two, she says, is all she has.’
‘Oh no,’ Vivi said, her grief showing through the social gloss like a thistle among orchids.
‘I can’t believe it,’ van Huren exclaimed. ‘She is always so full of life. So gay. So vital.’
I thought of Nerissa as I had left her: vitality gone and life itself draining away.
‘She is worried about her racehorses,’ I said. ‘The ones Portia left her.’
Neither of them was ready to think about racehorses. Van Huren shook his head, finished putting the cushion comfortably in his chair, and stared into space. He was a well-built man, at a guess in his fifties, with hair going neatly grey in distinguished wings above his ears. Seen in profile his nose was strongly rounded outwards from the bridge, but stopped straight and short with no impression of a hook. He had a firm, full-lipped, well-defined mouth, hands with square well-manicured nails, and a dark grey suit over which someone had taken a lot of trouble.