by Dick Francis
‘Sorry about this,’ the young vet said, having given Moonrock three full seconds’ examination. ‘Have to put him down, I’m afraid.’
‘I suppose that hock couldn’t just be dislocated?’ I suggested, clinging to straws.
He gave me a brief glance full of the expert’s forgiveness for a layman’s ignorance. ‘The joint is shattered,’ he said succinctly.
He went about his business, and splendid old Moonrock quietly folded down on to the straw. Packing his bag again he said, ‘Don’t look so depressed. He had a better life than most. And be glad it wasn’t Archangel.’
I watched his chubby back depart at speed. Not so very unlike his father, I thought. Just faster.
I went slowly into the house and telephoned to the people who removed dead horses. They would come at once, they said, sounding cheerful. And within half an hour, they came.
Another cup of coffee. Sat down beside the kitchen table and went on feeling unwell. Abduction didn’t agree with me in the least.
The string came back from the Heath without Etty, without a two-year-old colt called Lucky Lindsay, and with a long tale of woe.
I listened with increasing dismay while three lads at once told me that Lucky Lindsay had whipped round and unshipped little Ginge over by Warren Hill, and had then galloped off loose and seemed to be making for home, but had diverted down Moulton Road instead, and had knocked over a man with a bicycle and had sent a woman with a pram into hysterics, and had ended up by the clock tower, disorganizing the traffic. The police, added one boy, with more relish than regret, were currently talking to Miss Etty.
‘And the colt?’ I asked. Because Etty could take care of herself, but Lucky Lindsay had cost thirty thousand guineas and could not.
‘Someone caught him down the High Street outside Woolworths.’
I sent them off to their horses and waited for Etty to come back, which she presently did, riding Lucky Lindsay herself and with the demoted and demoralized Ginge slopping along behind on a quiet three-year-old mare.
Etty jumped down and ran an experienced hand down the colt’s chestnut legs.
‘Not much harm done,’ she said. ‘He seems to have a small cut there … I think he probably did it on the bumper of a parked car.’
‘Not on the bicycle?’ I asked.
She looked up, and then straightened. ‘Shouldn’t think so.’
‘Was the cyclist hurt?’
‘Shaken,’ she admitted.
‘And the woman with the pram?’
‘Anyone who pushes a baby and drags a toddler along Moulton Road during morning exercise should be ready for loose horses. The stupid woman wouldn’t stop screaming. It upset the colt thoroughly, of course. Someone had caught him at that point, but he backed off and broke free and went down into the town …’
She paused and looked at me. ‘Sorry about all this.’
‘It happens,’ I said. I stifled the small inward smile at her relative placing of colts and babies. Not surprising. To her, colts were in sober fact more important than humans.
‘We had finished the canters,’ she said. ‘The ground was all right. We went right through the list we mapped out yesterday. Ginge came off as we turned for home.’
‘Is the colt too much for him?’
‘Wouldn’t have thought so. He’s ridden him before.’
‘I’ll leave it to you, Etty.’
‘Then maybe I’ll switch him to something easier for a day or two …’ She led the colt away and handed him over to the lad who did him, having come as near as she was likely to admitting she had made an error in putting Ginge on Lucky Lindsay. Anyone, any day, could be thrown off. But some were thrown off more than others.
Breakfast. The lads put straight the horses they had just ridden and scurried to the hostel for porridge, bacon sandwiches and tea. I went back into the house and didn’t feel like eating.
It was still cold indoors. There were sad mounds of fir cones in the fireplaces of ten dust-sheeted bedrooms, and a tapestry fire screen in front of the hearth in the drawing-room. There was a two-tier electric fire in the cavernous bedroom my father used and an undersized convector heater in the oak-panelled room where he sat at his desk in the evenings. Not even the kitchen was warm, as the cooker fire had been out for repairs for a month. Normally, having been brought up in it, I did not notice the chill of the house in winter: but then, normally I did not feel so physically wretched.
A head appeared round the kitchen door. Neat dark hair coiled smoothly at the base, to emerge in a triumphant arrangement of piled curls on the crown.
‘Mr Neil?’
‘Oh … good morning, Margaret.’
A pair of fine dark eyes gave me an embracing once-over. Narrow nostrils moved in a small quiver, testing the atmosphere. As usual I could see no further than her neck and half a cheek, as my father’s secretary was as economical with her presence as with everything else.
‘It’s cold in here,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Warmer in the office.’
The half-head disappeared and did not come back. I decided to accept what I knew had been meant as an invitation, and retraced my way towards the corner of the house which adjoined the yard. In that corner were the stable office, a cloakroom, and the one room furnished for comfort, the room we called the owners’ room, where owners and assorted others were entertained on casual visits to the stable.
The lights were on in the office, bright against the grey day outside. Margaret was taking off her sheepskin coat, and hot air was blowing busily out of a mushroom-shaped heater.
‘Instructions?’ she asked briefly.
‘I haven’t opened the letters yet.’
She gave me a quick comprehensive glance.
‘Trouble?’
I told her about Moonrock and Lucky Lindsay. She listened attentively, showed no emotion, and asked how I had cut my face.
‘Walked into a door.’
Her expression said plainly, ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ but she made no comment.
In her way she was as unfeminine as Etty, despite her skirt, her hairdo and her efficient make-up. In her late thirties, three years widowed and bringing up a boy and a girl with masterly organization, she bristled with intelligence and held the world at arm’s length from her heart.
Margaret was new at Rowley Lodge, replacing mouse-like old Robinson who had finally scratched his way at seventy into unwilling retirement. Old Robinson had liked his little chat, and had fritted away hours of working time telling me in my childhood about the days when Charles II rode in races himself, and made Newmarket the second capital of England, so that ambassadors had to go there to see him, and how the Prince Regent had left the town for ever because of an inquiry into the running of his colt Escape, and refused to go back even though the Jockey Club apologized and begged him to, and how in 1905 King Edward VII was in trouble with the police for speeding down the road to London – at forty miles an hour on the straight bits.
Margaret did old Robinson’s work more accurately and in half the time, and I understood after knowing her for six days why my father found her inestimable. She demanded no human response, and he was a man who found most human relationships boring. Nothing tired him quicker than people who constantly demanded attention for their emotions and problems, and even social openers about the weather irritated him. Margaret seemed to be a matched soul, and they got on excellently.
I slouched down in my father’s revolving office armchair and told Margaret to open the letters herself. My father never let anyone open his letters, and was obsessive about it. She simply did as I said without comment, either spoken or implied. Marvellous.
The telephone rang. Margaret answered it.
‘Mr Bredon? Oh yes. He’ll be glad you called. I’ll put you on to him.’
She handed me the receiver across the desk, and said, ‘John Bredon.’
‘Thanks.’
I took the receiver with none of the eagernes
s I would have shown the day before. I had spent three intense days trying to find someone who was free at short notice to take over Rowley Lodge until my father’s leg mended, and of all the people whom helpful friends had suggested, only John Bredon, and elderly recently retired trainer, seemed to be of the right experience and calibre. He had asked for time to think it over and had said he would let me know as soon as he could.
He was calling to say he would be happy to come. I thanked him and uncomfortably apologized as I put him off. ‘The fact is that after thinking it over I’ve decided to stay on myself ….’
I set the receiver down slowly, aware of Margaret’s astonishment. I didn’t explain. She didn’t ask. After a pause she went back to opening the letters.
The telephone rang again. This time, with schooled features, she asked if I would care to speak to Mr Russell Arletti.
Silently I stretched out a hand for the receiver.
‘Neil?’ a voice barked. ‘Where the hell have you got to? I told Grey and Cox you’d be there yesterday. They’re complaining. How soon can you get up there?’
Grey and Cox in Huddersfield were waiting for Arletti Incorporated to sort out why their once profitable business was going down the drain. Arletti Incorporated’s sorter was sitting disconsolately in a stable office in Newmarket wishing he was dead.
‘You’ll have to tell Grey and Cox that I can’t come.’
‘You what?’
‘Russell … count me out for a while. I’ve got to stay on here.’
‘For God’s sake, why?’
‘I can’t find anyone to take over.’
‘You said it wouldn’t take you more than a week.’
‘Well, it has. There isn’t anyone suitable. I can’t go and sort out Grey and Cox and leave Rowley Lodge rudderless. There is six million involved here. Like it or not, I’ll have to stay.’
‘Damn it, Neil …’
‘I’m really sorry.’
‘Grey and Cox will be livid.’ He was exasperated.
‘Go up there yourself. It’ll only be the usual thing. Bad costing. Underpricing their product at the planning stage. Rotten cash flow. They say they haven’t any militants, so it’s ninety per cent to a cornflake that it’s lousy finance.’
He sighed. ‘I don’t have quite your talent. Better ones, mind you. But not the same.’ He paused for thought. ‘Have to send James, when he gets back from Shoreham. If you’re sure?’
‘Better count me out for three months at least.’
‘Neil!’
‘Better say, in fact, until after the Derby …’
‘Legs don’t take that long,’ he protested.
‘This one is a terrible mess. The bones were splintered and came through the skin, and it was touch and go whether they amputated.’
‘Oh hell.’
‘I’ll give you a call,’ I said. ‘As soon as I look like being free.’
After he had rung off I sat with the receiver in my hand, staring into space. Slowly I put it back in its cradle.
Margaret sat motionless, her eyes studiously downcast, her mouth showing nothing. She made no reference at all to the lie I had told.
It was, I reflected, only the first of many.
Chapter Three
Nothing about that day got better.
I rode out with the second lot on the Heath and found there were tender spots I hadn’t even known about. Etty asked if I had toothache. I looked like it, she said. Sort of drawn, she said.
I said my molars were in good crunching order and how about starting the canters. The canters were started, watched, assessed, repeated, discussed. Archangel, Etty said, would be ready for the Guineas.
When I told her I was going to stay on myself as the temporary trainer she looked horrified.
‘But you can’t.’
‘You are unflattering, Etty.’
‘Well, I mean … You don’t know the horses.’ She stopped and tried again. ‘You hardly ever go racing. You’ve never been interested, not since you were a boy. You don’t know enough about it.’
‘I’ll manage,’ I said, ‘with your help.’
But she was only slightly reassured, because she was not vain, and she never overestimated her own abilities. She knew she was a good head lad. She knew there was a lot to training that she wouldn’t do so well. Such self-knowledge in the Sport of Kings was rare, and facing it rarer still. There were always thousands of people who knew better, on the stands.
‘Who will do the entries?’ she asked astringently, her voice saying quite clearly that I couldn’t.
‘Father can do them himself when he’s a bit better. He’ll have a lot of time.’
At this she nodded with more satisfaction. The entering of horses in races suited to them was the most important skill in training. All the success and prestige of a stable started with the entry forms, where for each individual horse the aim had to be not too high, not too low, but just right. Most of my father’s success had been built on his judgement of where to enter, and when to run, each horse.
One of the two-year-olds pranced around, lashed out, and caught another two-year-old on the knee. The boys’ reactions had not been quick enough to keep them apart, and the second colt was walking lame. Etty cursed them coldly and told the second boy to dismount and lead his charge home.
I watched him following on foot behind the string, the horse’s head ducking at every tender step. The knee would swell and fill and get hot, but with a bit of luck it would right itself in a few days. If it did not, someone would have to tell the owner. That someone would be me.
That made one horse dead and two damaged in one morning. If things went on at that rate there would soon be no stable left for the fat man to bother about.
When we got back there was a small police car in the drive and a large policeman in the office. He was sitting in my chair and staring at his boots, and rose purposefully to his feet as I came through the door.
‘Mr Griffon?’
‘Yes.’
He came to the point without preliminaries.
‘We’ve had a complaint, sir, that one of your horses knocked over a cyclist on the Moulton Road this morning. Also a young woman has complained to us that this same horse endangered her life and that of her children.’
He was a uniformed sergeant, about thirty, solidly built, uncompromising. He spoke with the aggressive politeness that in some policemen is close to rudeness, and I gathered that his sympathies were with the complainants.
‘Was the cyclist hurt, Sergeant?’
‘I understand he was bruised, sir.’
‘And his bicycle?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir.’
‘Do you think that a … er … a settlement out of court, so to speak, would be in order?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ he repeated flatly. His face was full of the negative attitude which erects a barrier against sympathy or understanding. Into my mind floated one of the axioms that Russell Arletti lived by: in business matters with trade unions, the press, or the police, never try to make them like you. It arouses antagonism instead. And never make jokes: they are anti jokes.
I gave the sergeant back a stare of equal indifference and asked if he had the cyclist’s name and address. After only the slightest hesitation he flicked over a page or two of notebook and read it out to me. Margaret took it down.
‘And the young woman’s?’
He provided that too. He then asked if he might take a statement from Miss Craig and I said, certainly Sergeant, and took him out into the yard. Etty gave him a rapid adding-up inspection and answered his questions in an unemotional manner. I left them together and went back to the office to finish the paperwork with Margaret, who preferred to work straight through the lunch hour and leave at three to collect her children from school.
‘Some of the account books are missing,’ she observed.
‘I had them last night,’ I said. ‘They’re in the oak room … I’ll go and fetch them.’
‘Oh yes, sir? And do you want to make a formal allegation?’
I smiled slightly. It seemed ridiculous. The sergeant would produce a stare of top-grade disbelief, and I could hardly blame him. Only my depressing state of health and the smashed telephone lying on the desk made the night’s events seem real at all.
The fat man, I reflected, hardly needed to have warned me away from the police. The sergeant had done the job for him.
Etty came into the office fuming while I was returning the account books to Margaret.
‘Of all the pompous clods …’
‘Does this sort of thing happen often?’ I asked.
‘Of course not,’ Etty said positively. ‘Horses get loose, of course, but things are usually settled without all this fuss. And I told that old man that you would see he didn’t suffer. Why he had to go complaining to the police beats me.’
‘I’ll go and see him this evening,’ I said.
‘Now, the old sergeant, Sergeant Chubb,’ Etty said forcefully, ‘he would have sorted it out himself. He wouldn’t have come round taking down statements. But this one, this one is new here. They’ve posted him here from Ipswich and he doesn’t seem to like it. Just promoted, I shouldn’t wonder. Full of his own importance.’
‘The stripes were new,’ Margaret murmured in agreement.
‘We always have good relations with the police here,’ Etty said gloomily. ‘Can’t think what they’re doing, sending the town someone who doesn’t understand the first thing about horses.’