by Dick Francis
We got back before Etty so that he should be gone before she returned, but instead of striding away to his Mercedes he followed me to the office door.
‘Griffon,’ he said behind me.
I turned; regarded him. The arrogant stare was much in evidence. His eyes were blacker than space.
‘I have been to see my father,’ he said. ‘He says that you should be treating me with deference. He says I should not take orders from a woman and that you must arrange that I do not. If necessary, Miss Craig must leave. He says I must be given better horses to ride, and in particular, Archangel. He says that if you do not see to these things immediately, he will show you that he meant what he said. And he told me to give you this. He said it was a promise of what he could do.’
He produced a flat tin box from an inner pocket of his anorak, and held it out to me.
I took it. I said, ‘Do you know what it contains?’
He shook his head, but I was sure he did know.
‘Alessandro,’ I said. ‘Whatever your father threatens, or whatever he does, your only chance of success is to leave the stable unharmed. If your father destroys it, there will be nothing for you to ride.’
‘He will make another trainer take me,’ he asserted.
‘He will not,’ I said flatly, ‘because should he destroy this stable I will put all the facts in front of the Jockey Club and they will take away your licence and stop you riding in any races whatsoever.’
‘He would kill you,’ he said matter-of-factly. The thought of it did not surprise or appal him.
‘I have already lodged with my solicitor a full account of my interview with your father. Should he kill me, they will open that letter. He could find himself in great trouble. And you, of course, would be barred for life from racing anywhere in the world.’
A lot of the starch had turned to frustration. ‘He will have to talk to you himself,’ he said. ‘You do not behave as he tells me you will. You confuse me … He will talk to you himself.’
He turned on his heel and took himself stiffly away to the attendant Mercedes. He climbed into the back, and the patient chauffeur, who waited always in the car all the time that his passenger was on the horses, started the purring engine and, with a scrunch of his Michelins, carried him away.
I took the flat tin with me into the house, through into the oak-panelled room, and opened it there on the desk.
Between the layers of cotton wool it contained a small carved wooden model of a horse. Round its neck was tied a label, and on the label was written one word: Moonrock.
I picked the little horse out of the tin. It was necessary to lift it out in two pieces, because the off-hind leg was snapped through at the hock.
Chapter Six
I sat for quite a long time turning the little model over in my hands, and its significance over in my mind, wondering whether Enso Rivera could possibly have organized the breaking of Moonrock’s leg, or whether he was simply pretending that what had been a true accident was all his own work.
I did not on the whole believe that he had destroyed Moonrock. What did become instantly ominous, though, was his repeated choice of that word, destroy.
Almost every horse which broke a leg had to be destroyed, as only in exceptional cases was mending them practicable. Horses could not be kept in bed. They would scarcely ever even lie down. To take a horse’s weight off a leg meant supporting him in slings. Supporting him in slings for the number of weeks that it took a major bone to mend incurred debility and gut troubles. Racehorses, always delicate creatures, could die of the inactivity, and if they survived were never as good afterwards; and only in the case of valuable stallions and brood mares was any attempt normally made to keep them alive.
If Enso Rivera broke a horse’s leg, it would have to be destroyed. If he broke enough of them, the owners would remove their survivors in a panic, and the stable itself would be destroyed.
Alessandro had said his father had sent the tin as a promise of what he could do.
If he could break horses’ legs, he could indeed destroy the stable.
But it wasn’t as easy as all that, to break a horse’s leg.
Fact or bluff.
I fingered the little maimed horse. I didn’t know, and couldn’t decide, which it represented. But I did decide at least to turn a bit of my own bluff into fact.
I wrote a full account of the abduction, embellished with every detail I could remember. I packed the little wooden horse back into its tin and wrote a short explanation of its possible significance. Then I enclosed everything in a strong manilla envelope, wrote on it the time-honoured words, ‘To be opened in the event of my death’, put it into a larger envelope with a covering letter and posted it to my London solicitor from the main post office in Newmarket.
‘You’ve done what?’ my father exclaimed.
‘Taken on a new apprentice.’
He looked in fury at all the junk anchoring him to his bed. Only the fact that he was tied down prevented him from hitting the ceiling.
‘It isn’t up to you to take on new apprentices. You are not to do it. Do you hear?’
I repeated my fabrication about Enso paying well for Alessandro’s privilege. The news percolated through my father’s irritation and the voltage went out of it perceptibly. A thoughtful expression took over, and finally a grudging nod.
He knows, I thought. He knows that the stable will before long be short of ready cash.
I wondered whether he were well enough to discuss it, or whether even if he were well enough he would be able to talk to me about it. We had never in our lives discussed anything: he had told me what to do, and I either had or hadn’t done it. The divine right of kings had nothing on his attitude, which he applied also to most of the owners. They were all in varying degrees in awe of him and a few were downright afraid: but they kept their horses in his stable because year after year he brought home the races that counted.
He asked how the horses were working. I told him at some length and he listened with a sceptical slant to his mouth and eyebrows, intending to show doubt of the worth of any or all of my assessments. I continued without rancour through everything of any interest, and at the end he said, ‘Tell Etty I want a list of the work done by each horse, and its progress.’
‘All right,’ I agreed readily. He searched my face for signs of resentment and seemed a shade disappointed when he didn’t find any. The antagonism of an ageing and infirm father towards a fully grown healthy son was a fairly universal manifestation throughout nature, and I wasn’t fussed that he was showing it. But all the same, I was not going to give him the satisfaction of feeling he had scored over me; and he had no idea of how practised I was at taking the prideful flush out of people’s ill-natured victories.
I said merely, ‘Shall I take a list of the entries home, so that Etty will know which races the horses are to be prepared for?’
His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened, and he explained that it had been impossible for him to do the entries: treatment and X-rays took up so much of his time and he was not left alone long enough to concentrate.
‘Shall Etty and I have a go, between us?’
‘Certainly not. I will do them … when I have more time.’
‘All right,’ I said equably. ‘How is the leg feeling? You are certainly looking more your old self now …’
‘It is less troublesome,’ he admitted. He smoothed the already wrinkle-free bedclothes which lay over his stomach, engaged in his perennial habit of making his surroundings as orderly, as dignified, as starched as his soul.
I asked if there was anything I could bring him. ‘A book,’ I suggested. ‘Or some fruit? Or some champagne?’ Like most racehorse trainers he saw champagne as a sort of superior Coca-Cola, best drunk in the mornings if at all, but he knew that as a pick-me-up for the sick it had few equals.
He inclined his head sideways, considering. ‘There are some half bottles in the cellar at Rowley Lodge.’
‘I�
��ll bring some,’ I said.
He nodded. He would never, whatever I did, say thank you. I smiled inwardly. The day my father thanked me would be the day his personality disintegrated.
Via the hospital telephone I checked whether I would be welcome at Hampstead, and, having received a warming affirmative, headed the Jensen along the further eight miles south.
Gillie had finished painting the bedroom but its furniture was still stacked in the hall.
‘Waiting for the carpet,’ she explained. ‘Like Godot.’
‘Godot never came,’ I commented.
‘That’, she agreed with exaggerated patience, ‘is what I mean.’
‘Send up rockets, then.’
‘Fire crackers have been going off under backsides since Tuesday.’
‘Never mind,’ I said soothingly. ‘Come out to dinner.’
‘I’m on a grapefruit day,’ she objected.
‘Well I’m not. Positively not. I had no lunch and I’m hungry.’
‘I’ve got a really awfully nice grapefruit recipe. You put the halves in the oven doused in saccharine and Kirsch and eat it hot …’
‘No,’ I said definitely. ‘I’m going to the Empress.’
That shattered the grapefruit programme. She adored the Empress.
‘Oh well … it would be so boring for you to eat alone,’ she said. ‘Wait a mo while I put on my tatty black.’
Her tatty black was a long-sleeved Saint Laurent dress that made the least of her curves. There was nothing approaching tatty about it, very much on the contrary, and her description was inverted, as if by diminishing its standing she could forget her guilt over its price. She had recently developed some vaguely socialist views, and it had mildly begun to bother her that what she had paid for one dress would have supported a ten-child family throughout Lent.
Dinner at the Empress was its usual quiet, spacious, superb self. Gillie ordered curried prawns to be followed by chicken in a cream and brandy sauce, and laughed when she caught my ironic eye.
‘Back to the grapefruit,’ she agreed. ‘But not until tomorrow.’
‘How are the suffering orphans?’ I asked. She worked three days a week for an adoption society which because of the Pill and easy abortion was running out of its raw materials.
‘You don’t happen to want two-year-old twins, Afro-Asian boys, one of them with a squint?’ she said.
‘Not all that much, no.’
‘Poor little things.’ She absent-mindedly ate a bread roll spread with enjoyable chunks of butter. ‘We’ll never place them. They don’t look even averagely attractive …’
‘Squints can be put right,’ I said.
‘Someone has to care enough first, to get it done.’
We drank a lesser wine than Gillie’s but better than most.
‘Do you realize’, Gillie said, ‘that a family of ten could live for a week on what this dinner is costing?’
‘Perhaps the waiter has a family of ten,’ I suggested. ‘And if we didn’t eat it, what would they live on?’
‘Oh … Blah,’ Gillie said, but looked speculatively at the man who brought her chicken.
She asked how my father was. I said better, but by no means well.
‘He said he would do the entries,’ I explained, ‘but he hasn’t started. He told me it was because he isn’t given time, but the Sister says he sleeps a great deal. He had a frightful shaking and his system hasn’t recovered yet.’
‘What will you do, then, about the entries? Wait until he’s better?’
‘Can’t. The next lot have to be in by Wednesday.’
‘What happens if they aren‘t?’
‘The horses will go on eating their heads off in the stable when they ought to be out on a racecourse trying to earn their keep. It’s now or never to put their names down for some of the races at Chester and Ascot and the Craven meeting at Newmarket.’
‘So you’ll do them yourself,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘and they’ll all go and win.’
‘Almost any entry is better than no entry at all,’ I sighed. ‘And by the law of averages, some of them must be right.’
‘There you are, then. No more problems.’
But there were two more problems, and worse ones, sticking up like rocks on the fairway. The financial problem, which I could solve if I had to; and that of Alessandro, which I didn’t yet know how to.
The following morning, he arrived late. The horses for first lot were already plodding round the cinder track, while I stood with Etty in the centre as she changed the riders, when Alessandro appeared through the gate from the yard. He waited for a space between the passing horses and then crossed the cinder track and came towards us.
The finery of the week before was undimmed. The boots shone as glossily, the gloves as palely, and the ski jacket and jodhpurs were still immaculate. On his head, however, he wore a blue and white striped woolly cap with a pom-pom, the same as most of the other lads: but on Alessandro this cosy protection against the stinging March wind looked as incongruous as a bowler hat on the beach.
I didn’t even smile. The black eyes regarded me with their customary chill from features that were more gaunt than delicate. The strong shape of the bones showed clearly through the yellowish skin, and more so, it seemed to me, than a week ago.
‘What do you weigh?’ I asked abruptly.
He hesitated a little. ‘I will be able to ride at six stone seven when the races begin. I will be able to claim all the allowances.’
‘But now? What do you weigh now?’
‘A few pounds more. But I will lose them.’
Etty fumed at him but forebore to point out to him that he wouldn’t get any rides if he weren’t good enough. She looked down at her list to see which horse she had allotted him, opened her mouth to tell him, and then shut it again, and I literally saw the impulse take hold of her.
‘Ride Traffic,’ she said. ‘You can get up on Traffic.’
Alessandro stood very still.
‘He doesn’t have to,’ I said to Etty; and to Alessandro, ‘You don’t have to ride Traffic. Only if you choose.’
He swallowed. He raised his chin and his courage, and said, ‘I choose.’
With a stubborn set to her mouth Etty beckoned to Andy, who was already mounted on Traffic, and told him of the change.
‘Happy to oblige,’ Andy said feelingly, and gave Alessandro a leg-up into his unrestful place. Traffic lashed out into a few preliminary bucks, found he had a less hard-bitten customer than usual on his back, and started off at a rapid sideways trot across the paddock.
Alessandro didn’t fall off, which was the best that could be said. He hadn’t the experience to settle the sour colt to obedience, let alone to teach him to be better, but he was managing a great deal more efficiently than I could have done.
Etty watched him with disfavour and told everyone to give him plenty of room.
‘That nasty little squirt needs taking down a peg,’ she said in unnecessary explanation.
‘He isn’t doing too badly,’ I commented.
‘Huh.’ There was a ten-ton lorry-load of scorn in her voice. ‘Look at the way he’s jabbing him in the mouth. You wouldn’t catch Andy doing that in a thousand years.’
‘Better not let him out on the Heath,’ I said.
‘Teach him a lesson,’ Etty said doggedly.
‘Might kill the goose, and then where would we be for golden eggs?’
She gave me a bitter glance. ‘The stable doesn’t need that sort of money.’
‘The stable needs any sort of money it can get.’
But Etty shook her head in disbelief. Rowley Lodge had been in the top division of the big league ever since she had joined it, and no one would ever convince her that its very success was leading it into trouble.
I beckoned to Alessandro and he came as near as his rocking-horse permitted.
‘You don’t have to ride him on the Heath,’ I said.
Traffic turned his quarters toward
s us and Alessandro called over his shoulder: ‘I stay here. I choose.’
Etty told him to ride fourth in the string and everyone else to keep out of his way. She herself climbed into Indigo’s saddle, and I into Cloud Cuckoo-land’s, and George opened the gates. We turned right on to the walking ground, bound for the canter on Warren Hill, and nothing frantic happened on the way except that Traffic practically backed into an incautious tout when crossing Moulton Road. The tout retreated with curses, calling the horse by name. The Newmarket touts knew every horse on the Heath by sight. A remarkable feat, as there were about two thousand animals in training there, hundreds of them two-year-olds which altered shape as they developed month by month. Touts learned horses like headmasters learned new boys, and rarely made a mistake. All I hoped was that this one had been too busy getting himself to safety to take much notice of the rider.
We had to wait our turn on Warren Hill as we were the fourth stable to choose to work there that morning. Alessandro walked Traffic round in circles a little way apart – or at least tried to walk him. Traffic’s idea of walking would have tired a bucking bronco.
Eventually Etty sent the string off up the hill in small clusters, with me sitting halfway up the slope on Cloud Cuckoo-land, watching them as they swept past. At the top of the hill they stopped, peeled off to the left, and went back down the central walking ground to collect again at the bottom. Most mornings each horse cantered up the hill twice, the sharpish incline getting a lot of work into them in a comparatively short distance.
Alessandro started up the hill in the last bunch, one of only four.
Long before he drew level with me I could see that of the two it was the horse who had control. Galloping was hard labour up Warren Hill, but no one had given Traffic the message.
As he passed me he was showing all the classic signs of the bolter in action: head stretched horizontally forward, bit gripped between his teeth, eyes showing the whites. Alessandro, with as much hope of dominating the situation as a virgin in a troop ship, hung grimly on to the neck-strap and appeared to be praying.