For Kicks

by Dick Francis

  ‘Here you are,’ he said unemotionally. ‘This is Miss Tarren’s room.’ He turned away and started to shuffle back to his post.

  The card on the door said Miss E. C. Tarren. I knocked. Miss E. C. Tarren opened it.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. No smile.

  I went in. She shut the door behind me. I stood still, looking at her room. I was so accustomed to the starkness of the accommodation at Humber’s that it was an odd, strange sensation to find myself again in a room with curtains, carpet, sprung chairs, cushions and flowers. The colours were mostly blues and greens, mixed and blending, with a bowl of daffodils and red tulips blazing against them.

  There was a big desk with books and papers scattered on it; a bookshelf, a bed with a blue cover, a wardrobe, a tall built-in cupboard, and two easy chairs. It looked warm and friendly. A very good room for working in. If I had had more than a moment to stand and think about it, I knew I would be envious: this was what my father and mother’s death had robbed me of, the time and liberty to study.

  ‘Please sit down.’ She indicated one of the easy chairs.

  ‘Thank you.’ I sat, and she sat down opposite me, but looking at the floor, not at me. She was solemn and frowning, and I rather gloomily wondered if what October wanted her to say to me meant more trouble.

  ‘I asked you to come here,’ she started. ‘I asked you to come here because…’ She stopped and stood up abruptly, and walked round behind me and tried again.

  ‘I asked you to come,’ she said to the back of my head, ‘Because I have to apologise to you, and I’m not finding it very easy.’

  ‘Apologise?’ I said, astonished. ‘What for?’

  ‘For my sister.’

  I stood up and turned towards her. ‘Don’t,’ I said vehemently. I had been too much humbled myself in the past weeks to want to see anyone else in the same position.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid,’ she swallowed, ‘I’m afraid that my family has treated you very badly.’

  The silver-blonde hair shimmered like a halo against the pale sunshine which slanted sideways through the window behind her. She was wearing a scarlet jersey under a sleeveless dark green dress. The whole effect was colourful and gorgeous, but it was clearly not going to help her if I went on looking at her. I sat down again in the chair and said with some light-heartedness, as it appeared October had not after all despatched a dressing-down, ‘Please don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Worry,’ she exclaimed. ‘What else can I do? I knew of course why you were dismissed, and I’ve said several times to Father that he ought to have had you sent to prison, and now I find none of it is true at all. How can you say there is nothing to worry about when everyone thinks you are guilty of some dreadful crime, and you aren’t?’

  Her voice was full of concern. She really minded that anyone in her family should have behaved as unfairly as Patty had. She felt guilty just because she was her sister. I liked her for it: but then I already knew she was a thoroughly nice girl.

  ‘How did you find out?’ I asked.

  ‘Patty told me last week-end. We were just gossiping together, as we often do. She had always refused to talk about you, but this time she laughed, and told me quite casually, as if it didn’t matter any more. Of course I know she’s… well… used to men. She’s just built that way. But this… I was so shocked. I couldn’t believe her at first.’

  ‘What exactly did she tell you?’

  There was a pause behind me, then her voice went on, a little shakily. ‘She said she tried to make you make love to her, but you wouldn’t. She said… she said she showed you her body, and all you did was to tell her to cover herself up. She said she was so flamingly angry about that that she thought all next day about what revenge she would have on you, and on Sunday morning she worked herself up into floods of tears, and went and told Father… told Father…’

  ‘Well,’ I said good humouredly, ‘yes, that is, I suppose, a slightly more accurate picture of what took place.’ I laughed.

  ‘It isn’t funny,’ she protested.

  ‘No. It’s relief.’

  She came round in front of me and sat down and looked at me.

  ‘You did mind, then, didn’t you?’

  My distaste must have shown. ‘Yes. I minded.’

  ‘I told Father she had lied about you. I’ve never told him before about her love affairs, but this was different… anyway, I told him on Sunday after lunch.’ She stopped, hesitating. I waited. At last she went on, ‘It was very odd. He didn’t seem surprised, really. Not utterly overthrown, like I was. He just seemed to get very tired, suddenly, as if he had heard bad news. As if a friend had died after a long illness, that sort of sadness. I didn’t understand it. And when I said that of course the only fair thing to do would be to offer you your job back, he utterly refused. I argued, but I’m afraid he is adamant. He also refuses to tell Mr Inskip that you shouldn’t have had to leave, and he made me promise not to repeat to him or anyone what Patty had said. It is so unfair,’ she concluded passionately, ‘and I felt that even if no one else is to know, at least you should. I don’t suppose it makes it any better for you that my father and I have at last found out what really happened, but I wanted you to know that I am sorry, very, very sorry for what my sister did.’

  I smiled at her. It wasn’t difficult. Her colouring was so blazingly fair that it didn’t matter if her nose wasn’t entirely straight. Her direct grey eyes were full of genuine, earnest regret, and I knew she felt Patty’s misbehaviour all the more keenly because she thought it had affected a stable lad who had no means of defending himself. This also made it difficult to know what to say in reply.

  I understood, of course, that October couldn’t declare me an injured innocent, even if he wanted to, which I doubted, without a risk of it reaching Humber’s ears, and that the last thing that either of us wanted was for him to have to offer to take me back at Inskip’s. No one in their right mind would stay at Humber’s if they could go to Inskip’s.

  ‘If you knew,’ I said slowly, ‘how much I have wanted your father to believe that I didn’t harm your sister, you would realise that what you have just said is worth a dozen jobs to me. I like your father. I respect him. And he is quite right. He cannot possibly give me my old job back, because it would be as good as saying publicly that his daughter is at least a liar, if not more. You can’t ask him to do that. You can’t expect it. I don’t. Things are best left as they are.’

  She looked at me for some time without speaking. It seemed to me that there was relief in her expression, and surprise, and finally puzzlement.

  ‘Don’t you want any compensation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, getting up, away from her enquiring gaze. ‘I’m not as blameless as the snow. I did kiss your sister. I suppose I led her on a bit. And then I was ashamed of myself and backed out, and that’s the truth of it. It wasn’t all her fault. I did behave very badly. So please… please don’t feel so much guilt on my account.’ I reached the window and looked out.

  ‘People shouldn’t be hung for murders they decide not to commit,’ she said dryly. ‘You are being very generous, and I didn’t expect it.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have asked me here,’ I said idly. ‘You were taking too big a risk.’ The window looked down on to a quadrangle, a neat square of grass surrounded by broad paths, peaceful and empty in the early spring sunshine.

  ‘Risk… of what?’ she said.

  ‘Risk that I would raise a stink. Dishonour to the family. Tarnish to the Tarrens. That sort of thing. Lots of dirty linen and Sunday newspapers and your father losing face among his business associates.’

  She looked startled, but also determined. ‘All the same, a wrong had been done, and it had to be put right.’

  ‘And damn the consequences?’

  ‘And damn the consequences,’ she repeated faintly.

  I grinned. She was a girl after my own
heart. I had been damning a few consequences too.

  ‘Well,’ I said reluctantly, ‘I’d better be off. Thank you for asking me to come. I do understand that you have had a horrible week screwing yourself up for this, and I appreciate it more than I can possibly say.’

  She looked at her watch, and hesitated. ‘I know it’s an odd time of day, but would you like some coffee? I mean, you’ve come quite a long way…’

  ‘I’d like some very much,’ I said.

  ‘Well… sit down, and I’ll get it.’

  I sat down. She opened the built-in cupboard, which proved to hold a wash basin and mirror on one side and a gas ring and shelves for crockery on the other. She filled a kettle, lit the gas, and put some cups and saucers on the low table between the two chairs, moving economically and gracefully. Unselfconscious, I thought. Sure enough of herself to drop her title in a place where brains mattered more than birth. Sure enough of herself to have a man who looked like I did brought to her bed-sitting-room, and to ask him to stay for coffee when it was not necessary, but only polite.

  I asked her what subject she was reading, and she said English. She assembled some milk, sugar, and biscuits on the table.

  ‘May I look at your books?’ I asked.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said amiably.

  I got up and looked along her bookshelves. There were the language text books – Ancient Icelandic, Anglo Saxon and Middle English-and a comprehensive sweep of English writings from Alfred the Great’s Chronicles to John Betjemann’s unattainable amazons.

  ‘What do you think of my books?’ she asked curiously.

  I didn’t know how to answer. The masquerade was damnably unfair to her.

  ‘Very learned,’ I said lamely.

  I turned away from the bookshelves, and came suddenly face to face with my full-length reflection in the mirror door of her wardrobe.

  I looked at myself moodily. It was the first comprehensive view of Roke the stable lad that I had had since leaving October’s London house months before, and time had not improved things.

  My hair was too long, and the sideburns flourished nearly down to the lobes of my ears. My skin was a sort of pale yellow now that the suntan had all faded. There was a tautness in the face and a wary expression in the eyes which had not been there before: and in my black clothes I looked disreputable and a menace to society.

  Her reflection moved behind mine in the mirror, and I met her eyes and found her watching me.

  ‘You look as if you don’t like what you see,’ she said.

  I turned round. ‘No,’ I said wryly. ‘Would anyone?’

  ‘Well…’ Incredibly she smiled mischievously. ‘I wouldn’t like to set you loose in this college, for instance. If you don’t realize, though, the effect which you… you may have a few rough edges, but I do now see why Patty tried… er… I mean…’ Her voice tailed off in the first confusion she had shown.

  ‘The kettle’s boiling,’ I said helpfully.

  Relieved, she turned her back on me and made the coffee. I went to the window and looked down into the deserted quad, resting my forehead on the cold glass.

  It still happened, I thought. In spite of those terrible clothes, in spite of the aura of shadiness, it could still happen. What accident, I wondered for the thousandth time in my life, decided that one should be born with bones of a certain design? I couldn’t help the shape of my face and head. They were a legacy from a pair of neat featured parents: their doing, not mine. Like Elinor’s hair, I thought. Born in you. Nothing to be proud of. An accident, like a birth mark or a squint. Something I habitually forgot, and found disconcerting when anyone mentioned it. And it had been expensive, moreover. I had lost at least two prospective customers because they hadn’t liked the way their wives looked at me instead of my horses.

  With Elinor, I thought, it was a momentary attraction which wouldn’t last. She was surely too sensible to allow herself to get tangled up with one of her father’s ex-stable lads. And as for me, it was strictly hands off the Tarren sisters, both of them. If I was out of the frying-pan with one, I was not jumping into the fire with the other. It was a pity, all the same. I liked Elinor rather a lot.

  ‘The coffee’s ready,’ she said.

  I turned and went back to the table. She had herself very well controlled again. There was no mischievous revealing light in her face any more, and she looked almost severe, as if she very much regretted what she had said and was going to make quite certain I didn’t take advantage of it.

  She handed me a cup and offered the biscuits, which I ate because the lunch at Humber’s had consisted of bread, margarine, and hard tasteless cheese, and the supper would be the same. It nearly always was, on Saturdays, because Humber knew we ate in Posset.

  We talked sedately about her father’s horses. I asked how Sparking Plug was getting on, and she told me, very well, thank you.

  ‘I’ve a newspaper cutting about him, if you’d like to see it?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I’d like to.’

  I followed her to her desk while she looked for it. She shifted some papers to search underneath, and the top one fell on to the floor. I picked it up, put it back on the desk, and looked down at it. It seemed to be some sort of quiz.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I mustn’t lose that, it’s the Literary Society’s competition, and I’ve only one more answer to find. Now where did I put that cutting?’

  The competition consisted of a number of quotations to which one had to ascribe the author. I picked up the paper and began reading.

  ‘That top one’s a brute,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘No one’s got it yet, I don’t think.’

  ‘How do you win the competition?’ I asked.

  ‘Get a complete, correct set of answers in first.’

  ‘And what’s the prize?’

  ‘A book. But prestige, mostly. We only have one competition a term, and it’s difficult.’ She opened a drawer full of papers and oddments. ‘I know I put that cutting somewhere.’ She began shovelling things out on to the top of the desk.

  ‘Please don’t bother any more,’ I said politely.

  ‘No, I want to find it.’ A handful of small objects clattered on to the desk.

  Among them was a small chromium-plated tube about three inches long with a loop of chain running from one end to the other. I had seen something like it before, I thought idly. I had seen it quite often. It had something to do with drinks.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing.

  ‘That? Oh, that’s a silent whistle.’ She went on rum-magging. ‘For dogs,’ she explained.

  I picked it up. A silent dog whistle. Why then did I think it was connected with bottles and glasses and… the world stopped.

  With an almost physical sensation, my mind leaped towards its prey. I held Adams and Humber in my hand at last. I could feel my pulse racing.

  So simple. So very simple. The tube pulled apart in the middle to reveal that one end was a thin whistle, and the other its cap. A whistle joined to its cap by a little length of chain. I put the tiny mouthpiece to my lips and blew. Only a thread of sound came out.

  ‘You can’t hear it very well,’ Elinor said, ‘but of course a dog can. And you can adjust that whistle to make it sound louder to human ears, too.’ She took it out of my hand and unscrewed part of the whistle itself. ‘Now blow.’ She gave it back.

  I blew again. It sounded much more like an ordinary whistle.

  ‘Do you think I could possibly borrow this for a little while?’ I asked. ‘If you’re not using it? I… I want to try an experiment.’

  ‘Yes, I should think so. My dear old sheepdog had to be put down last spring, and I haven’t used it since. But you will let me have it back? I am getting a puppy in the long vac, and I want to use it for his training.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘All right, then. Oh, here’s that cutting, at last.’

  I took the strip of newsprint, but I couldn’t concentrate on it. All I cou
ld see was the drinks compartment in Humber’s monster car, with the rack of ice-picks, tongs and little miscellaneous chromium-plated objects. I had never given them more than a cursory glance; but one of them was a small tube with a loop of chain from end to end. One of them was a silent whistle for dogs.

  I made an effort, and read about Sparking Plug, and thanked her for finding the cutting.

  I stowed her whistle in my money belt and looked at my watch. It was already after half past three. I was going to be somewhat late back at work.

  She had cleared me with October and shown me the whistle: two enormous favours. I wanted to repay her, and could think of only one way of doing it.

  ‘ “Nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul…”’ I quoted.

  She looked up at me, startled. ‘That’s the beginning of the competition.’

  ‘Yes. Are you allowed help?’

  ‘Yes. Anything. But…’

  ‘It’s Marcus Aurelius.’

  ‘Who?’ She was staggered.

  ‘Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Roman Emperor, 121 to 180 A.D.…’

  ‘The Meditations?’ I nodded.

  ‘What language was it originally written in? We have to put that too. Latin, I suppose.’

  ‘Greek.’

  ‘This is fantastic… just where did you go to school?’

  ‘I went to a village school in Oxfordshire.’ So I had, for two years, until I was eight. ‘And we had a master who perpetually crammed Marcus Aurelius down our throats.’ But that master had been at Geelong.

  I had been tempted to tell her the truth about myself all afternoon, but never more than at that moment. I found it impossible to be anything but my own self in her company, and even at Slaw I had spoken to her more or less in my natural accent. I hated having to pretend to her at all. But I didn’t tell her where I had come from and why, because October hadn’t, and I thought he ought to know his daughter better than I did. There were her cosy chats with Patty… whose tongue could not be relied on; and perhaps he thought it was a risk to his investigations. I didn’t know. And I didn’t tell her.