by Dick Francis
Shaken to my soul, I’d wholeheartedly embraced what he offered, knowing there weren’t two such chances in any life: and it had worked out fine, on the whole.
The princess’s thoughts were following my own. ‘When Paul Peck had that dreadful fall and decided to retire,’ she said, ‘there we were at the height of the season with no stable jockey and all the other top jockeys signed up elsewhere. Wykeham told me and the other owners that there was this young Fielding boy in Newmarket who had been riding as an amateur since he’d left school a year earlier …’ She smiled. ‘We were very doubtful. Wykeham said to trust him, he was never wrong. You know how modest he is!’ She paused, considering. ‘How long ago was that?’
‘Ten years last October.’
She sighed. ‘Time goes so fast.’
The older the faster … and for me also. Time no longer stretched out to infinity. My years in the saddle would end, maybe in four years, maybe five, whenever my body stopped mending fast from the falls, and I was far from ready to face the inexorability of the march of days. I intensely loved my job and dreaded its ending: anything after, I thought, would be unutterably dreary.
The princess was silent for a while, her thoughts reverting to Cascade and Cotopaxi.
‘That bolt,’ she said tentatively, ‘I didn’t like to ask Robin … I don’t really know what a humane killer looks like.’
‘Robin says the bolt type isn’t much used nowadays,’ I said, ‘but I saw one once. My grandfather’s vet showed me. It looked like an extra heavy pistol with a very thick barrel. The bolt itself is a metal rod which slides inside the barrel. When the trigger is pulled, the metal rod shoots out, but because it’s fixed inside to a spring, it retracts immediately into the barrel again.’ I reflected. ‘The rod … the bolt … is a bit thicker than a pencil, and about four inches of it shoots out into … er … whatever it’s aimed at.’
She was surprised. ‘So small? I’d thought, somehow, you know, that it would be much bigger. And I didn’t know until today that it was … from in front.’
She stopped talking abruptly and spent a fair time concentrating on the scenery. She had agreed without reserve to the dog patrols and had told Wykeham not to economise, the vulnerability of her other horses all too clearly understood.
‘I had so been looking forward to the Grand National,’ she said eventually. ‘So very much.’
‘Yes, I know. So had I.’
‘You’ll ride something else. For someone else.’
‘It won’t be the same.’
She patted my hand rather blindly. ‘It’s such a waste,’ she said passionately. ‘So stupid. My husband would never trade in guns to save my horses. Never. And I wouldn’t ask it. My dear, dear horses.’
She struggled against tears and with a few sniffs and swallows won the battle, and when we reached Eaton Square she said we would go into the sitting room for a drink ‘to cheer ourselves up’.
This good plan was revised, however, because the sitting room wasn’t empty. Two people, sitting separately in armchairs, stood up as the princess walked in; and they were Prince Litsi and Danielle.
‘My dear aunt,’ the prince said, bowing to her, kissing her hand, kissing her also on both cheeks. ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ she said faintly, and kissed Danielle. ‘I thought you were returning late this evening.’
‘The weather was frightful.’ The prince shook my hand. ‘Rain. Mist. Freezing. We decided yesterday we’d had enough and left early today, before breakfast.’
I kissed Danielle’s smooth cheek, wanting much more. She looked briefly into my eyes and said Dawson had told them I was staying in the house. I hadn’t seen her for three weeks and I didn’t want to hear about Dawson. Around the princess, however, one kept raw emotions under wraps, and I heard myself asking if she’d enjoyed the lectures, as if I hoped she had.
‘They were great.’
The princess decided that Prince Litsi, Danielle and myself should have the drinks, while she went upstairs to see her husband.
‘You pour them,’ she said to her nephew. ‘And you, Kit, tell them everything that’s been happening, will you? My dears … such horrid troubles.’ She waved a hand vaguely and went away, her back straight and slender, a statement in itself.
‘Kit,’ the prince said, transferring his attention.
‘Sir.’
We stood as if assessing each other, he taller, ten years older, a man of a wider world. A big man, Prince Litsi, with heavy shoulders, a large head, full mouth, positive nose and pale intelligent eyes. Light brown hair had begun to recede with distinction from his forehead, and a strong neck rose from a cream open-necked shirt. He looked as impressive as I’d remembered. It had been a year or more since we’d last met.
From his point of view, I suppose he saw brown curly hair, light brown eyes and a leanness imposed by the weights allocated to racehorses. Perhaps he saw also the man whose fiancée he had lured away to esoteric delights, but to do him justice there was nothing in his face of triumph or amusement.
‘I’d like a drink,’ Danielle said abruptly. She sat down, waiting. ‘Litsi …’
His gaze lingered my way for another moment, then he turned to busy himself with the bottles. We had talked only on racecourses, I reflected, politely skimming the surface with post-race chit-chat. I knew him really as little as he knew me.
Without enquiring, he poured white wine for Danielle and Scotch for himself and me.
‘OK?’ he said, proffering the glass.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Call me Litsi,’ he said easily. ‘All this protocol … I drop it in private. It’s different for Aunt Casilia, but I never knew the old days. There’s no throne any more … I’ll never be king. I live in the modern world … so will you let me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you like.’
He nodded and sipped his drink. ‘You call Aunt Casilia “Princess”, anyway,’ he pointed out.
‘She asked me to.’
‘There you are, then.’ He waved a large hand, the subject closed. ‘Tell us what has been disturbing the household.’
I looked at Danielle, dressed that day in black trousers, white shirt, blue sweater. She wore the usual pink lipstick, her cloudy dark hair held back in a blue band, everything known and loved and familiar. I wanted fiercely to hold her and feel her warmth against me, but she was sitting very firmly in an armchair built for one, and she would only meet my eyes for a flicker or two between concentrations on her drink.
I’m losing her, I thought, and couldn’t bear it.
‘Kit,’ the prince said, sitting down.
I took a slow breath, returned my gaze to his face, sat down also, and began the long recital, starting chronologically with Henri Nanterre’s bullying invasion on Friday afternoon and ending with the dead horses in Wykeham’s stable that morning.
Litsi listened with increasing dismay, Danielle with simpler indignation.
‘That’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Poor Aunt Casilia.’ She frowned. ‘I guess it’s not right to knuckle under to threats, but why is Uncle Roland so against guns? They’re made all over the place, aren’t they?’
‘In France,’ Litisi said, ‘for a man of Roland’s background to deal in guns would be considered despicable.’
‘But he doesn’t live in France,’ Danielle said.
‘He lives in himself.’ Litsi glanced my way. ‘You understand, don’t you, why he can’t?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He nodded. Danielle looked from one of us to the other and sighed. ‘The European mind, I guess. Trading in arms in America isn’t any big deal.’
I thought it was probably more of a big deal than she realised, and from his expression Litsi thought so too.
‘Would the old four hundred families trade in arms?’ he asked, but if he expected a negative, he didn’t get it.
‘Yes, sure, I guess so,’ Danielle said. ‘I mean, why would it worry them?’
‘Neve
rtheless,’ Litsi said, ‘for Roland it is impossible.’
A voice on the stairs interrupted the discussion: a loud female voice coming nearer.
‘Where is everyone? In there?’ She swept into view in the sitting room doorway. ‘Dawson says the bamboo room is occupied. That’s ridiculous. I always have the bamboo room. I’ve told Dawson to remove the things of whoever is in there.’
Dawson gave me a bland look from over her shoulder and continued on his way to the floor above, carrying a suitcase.
‘Now then,’ said the vision in the doorway. ‘Someone fix me a “bloody”. The damn plane was two hours late.’
‘Good grief,’ Danielle said faintly, as all three of us rose to our feet, ‘Aunt Beatrice.’
SEVEN
Aunt Beatrice, Roland de Brescou’s sister, spoke with a slight French accent heavily overlaid with American. She had a mass of cloudy hair, not dark and long like Danielle’s, but white going on pale orange. This framed and rose above a round face with round eyes and an expression of habitual determination.
‘Danielle!’ Beatrice said, thin eyebrows rising. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I work in England.’ Danielle went to her aunt to give her a dutiful peck. ‘Since last fall.’
‘Nobody tells me anything.’
She was wearing a silk jersey suit – her outdoor mink having gone upstairs over Dawson’s arm – with a heavy seal on a gold chain shining in front. Her fistful of rings looked like ounce-heavy nuggets, and a crocodile had passed on for her handbag. Beatrice, in short, enjoyed her cash.
She was clearly about to ask who Litsi and I were when the princess entered, having come downstairs, I reckoned, at record speed.
‘Beatrice,’ she said, advancing with both hands outstretched and a sugar-substitute smile, ‘what a delightful surprise.’ She grasped Beatrice’s arms and gave her two welcoming kisses, and I saw that her eyes were cold with dismay.
‘Surprise?’ Beatrice said, as they disengaged. ‘I called on Friday and spoke to your secretary. I told her to be sure to give you the message, and she said she would leave a note.’
‘Oh.’ A look of comprehension crossed the princess’s face. ‘Then I expect it’s down in the office, and I’ve missed it. We’ve been … rather busy.’
‘Casilia, about the bamboo room …’ Beatrice began purposefully, and the princess with dexterity interrupted her.
‘Do you know my nephew, Litsi?’ she said, making sociable introductions. ‘Litsi, this is Roland’s sister, Beatrice de Brescou Bunt. Did you leave Palm Beach last evening, Beatrice? Such a long flight from Miami.’
‘Casilia …’ Beatrice shook hands with Litsi. ‘The bam –’
‘And this is Danielle’s fiancé, Christmas Fielding.’ The princess went on, obliviously. ‘I don’t think you’ve met him either. And now, my dear Beatrice, some tomato juice and vodka?’
‘Casilia!’ Beatrice said, sticking her toes in. ‘I always have the bamboo room.’
I opened my mouth to say obligingly that I didn’t mind moving, and received a rapid look of pure steel from the princess. I shut my mouth, amazed and amused, and held my facial muscles in limbo.
‘Mrs Dawson is unpacking your things in the rose room, Beatrice,’ the princess said firmly. ‘You’ll be very comfortable there.’
Beatrice, furious but outmanoeuvred, allowed a genial Litsi to concoct her a bloody mary, she issuing sharp instructions about shaking the tomato juice, about how much Worcestershire sauce, how much lemon, how much ice. The princess watched with a wiped-clean expression of vague benevolence and Danielle was stifling her laughter.
‘And now,’ Beatrice said, the drink finally fixed to her satisfaction, ‘what’s all this rubbish about Roland refusing to expand the business?’
After a frosty second of immobility, the princess sat collectedly in an armchair, crossing her wrists and ankles in artificial composure.
Beatrice repeated her question insistently. She was never, I discovered, one to give up. Litsi busied himself with offering her a chair, smoothly settling her into it, discussing cushions and comfort and giving the princess time for mental re-mustering.
Litsi sat in a third armchair, leaning forward to Beatrice with smothering civility, and Danielle and I took places on a sofa, although with half an acre of flowered chintz between us.
‘Roland is being obstructionist and I’ve come to tell him I object. He must change his mind at once. It is ridiculous not to move with the times and it’s time to look for new markets.’
The princess looked at me, and I nodded. We had heard much the same thing, even some of the identical phrases, from Henri Nanterre on Friday evening.
‘How do you know of any business proposals?’ the princess asked.
‘That dynamic young son of Louis Nanterre told me, of course. He made a special journey to see me, and explained the whole thing. He asked me to persuade Roland to drag himself into the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first, and I decided I would come over here myself and insist on it.’
‘You do know,’ I said, ‘that he’s proposing to make and export guns?’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘but only plastic parts of guns. Roland is old fashioned. I’ve a good friend in Palm Beach whose husband’s corporation makes missiles for the Defense Department. Where’s the difference?’ She paused. ‘And what business is it of yours?’ Her gaze travelled to Danielle, and she remembered. ‘I suppose if you’re engaged to Danielle,’ she said grudgingly, ‘then it’s marginally your business. I didn’t know Danielle was engaged. Nobody tells me anything.’
Henri Nanterre, I thought, had told her a great deal too much.
‘Beatrice,’ the princess said, ‘I’m sure you’ll want to wash after your journey. Dawson is arranging a late lunch for us, although as we didn’t know there would be so many …’
‘I want to talk to Roland,’ Beatrice said obstinately.
‘Yes, later. He’s resting just now.’ The princess stood, and we also, waiting for Danielle’s aunt to be impelled upstairs by the sheer unanimity of our expectant good manners; and it was interesting, I thought, that she gave in, put down her unfinished drink and went, albeit grumbling as she departed that she expected to be reinstated in the bamboo room by the following day at the latest.
‘She’s relentless,’ Danielle said as her voice faded away. ‘She always gets what she wants. And anyway, the bamboo room’s empty, isn’t it? How odd of Aunt Casilia to refuse it.’
‘I’ve slept in there the last two nights,’ I said.
‘Have you indeed!’ Litsi’s voice answered. ‘In accommodation above princes.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Danielle said. ‘You said you preferred those rooms on the ground floor because you could go in and out without disturbing anyone.’
Litsi looked at her fondly. ‘So I do. I only meant that Aunt Casilia must esteem your fiancé highly.’
‘Yes,’ Danielle said, giving me an embarrassed glance. ‘She does.’
We all sat down again, though Danielle came no nearer to me on the sofa.
Litsi said, ‘Why did Henri Nanterre recruit your Aunt Beatrice so diligently? She won’t change Roland’s mind.’
‘She lives on de Brescou money,’ Danielle said unexpectedly. ‘My parents do now as well, now that my black sheep of a father has been accepted back into the fold. Uncle Roland set up generous trusts for everybody out of the revenues from his land, but for as long as I’ve known my aunt, she’s complained he could afford more.’
‘For as long as you’ve known her?’ Litsi echoed. ‘Haven’t you always known her?’
She shook her head. ‘She disapproved of Dad. He left home originally under the heaviest of clouds, though what exactly he did, he’s never told me; he just laughs if I ask, but it must have been pretty bad. It was a choice, Mom says, between exile or jail, and he chose California. She and I came on the scene a lot later. Anyway, about eight years ago, Aunt Beatrice suddenly swooped down on us t
o see what had become of her disgraced little brother, and I’ve seen her several times since then. She married an American businessman way way back, and it was after he died she set out to track Dad down. It took her two years – the United States is a big country – but she looks on persistence as a prime virtue. She lives in a marvellous Spanish-style house in Palm Beach – I stayed there for a few days one Spring Break – and she makes trips to New York, and every summer she travels in Europe and spends some time in “our château”, as she calls it.’
Litsi was nodding. ‘Aunt Casilia has been known to visit me in Paris when her sister-in-law stays too long. Aunt Casilia and Roland,’ he explained, unnecessarily, ‘go to the château for six weeks or so around July and August, to seek some country air and play their part as landowners. Did you know?’
‘They mention it sometimes,’ I said.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘What’s the château like?’ Danielle asked.
‘Not a Disney castle,’ Litsi answered, smiling. ‘More like a large Georgian country house, built of light-coloured stone, with shutters on all the windows. Château de Brescou … The local town is built on land south of Bordeaux mostly owned by Roland, and he takes moral and civil pride in its well being. Even without the construction company, he could fund a mini-Olympics on the income he receives in rents, and his estates are run as the company used to be, with good managers and scrupulous fairness.’
‘He cannot,’ I commented, ‘deal in arms.’
Danielle sighed. ‘I do see,’ she admitted, ‘that with all that old aristocratic honour, he simply couldn’t face it.’
‘But I’m really surprised,’ I said, ‘that Beatrice could face it quite easily. I would have thought she would have shared her brother’s feelings.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Danielle said, ‘that Henri Nanterre promised her a million dollar hand-out if she got Uncle Roland to change his mind.’
‘In that case,’ I suggested mildly, ‘your uncle could offer her double to go back to Palm Beach and stay there.’
Danielle looked shocked. ‘That wouldn’t be right.’