For Kicks

by Dick Francis

  ‘Yes. I see. All the same, you did finish the job in spite of those disadvantages.’

  ‘It was luck. You couldn’t count on being lucky twice.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ He smiled. ‘What do you plan to do with your twenty thousand pounds?’

  ‘I… er… plan to let Edward keep most of it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t take that sort of money. All I ever wanted was to get away for a bit. It was he who suggested such a large sum, not me. I don’t think he thought I would take on the job for less, but he was wrong… I’d have done it for nothing if I could. All I’ll accept from him is the amount it has cost for me to be away. He knows, I told him last night.’

  There was a long pause. Finally Beckett sat up and picked up a telephone. He dialled and waited.

  ‘This is Beckett,’ he said. ‘It’s about Daniel Roke… yes, he’s here.’ He took a postcard out of an inner pocket. ‘Those points we were discussing this morning… I have had a talk with him. You have your card?’

  He listened for a moment, and leaned back again in his chair. His eyes were steady on my face.

  ‘Right?’ He spoke into the telephone. ‘Numbers one to four can all have an affirmative. Number five is satisfactory. Number six, his weakest spot… he didn’t maintain his role in front of Elinor Tarren. She said he was good mannered and intelligent. No one else thought so… yes, I should say so, sexual pride… apparently only because Elinor is clever as well as pretty, since he kept it up all right with her younger sister… yes… oh undoubtedly it was his intellect as much as his physical appearance which attracted her… yes, very good looking: I believe you sometimes find that useful… no, he doesn’t. He didn’t look in the mirror in the washroom at the Club or in the one on the wall here… no, he didn’t admit it today, but I’d say he is well aware he failed on that point… yes, rather a harsh lesson… it may still be a risk, or it may have been sheer unprofessionalism… your Miss Jones could find out, yes.’

  I didn’t particularly care for this dispassionate vivisection, but short of walking out there seemed to be no way of avoiding it. His eyes still looked at me expressionlessly.

  ‘Number seven… normal reaction. Eight, slightly obsessive, but that’s all the better from your point of view.’ He glanced momentarily down at the card he held in his hand. ‘Nine… well, although he is British by birth and spent his childhood here, he is Australian by inclination, and I doubt whether subservience comes easily… I don’t know, he wouldn’t talk about it… no, I wouldn’t say he had a vestige of a martyr complex, he’s clear on that.… Of course you never get a perfect one… it’s entirely up to you… Number ten? The three B’s. I should say definitely not the first two, much too proud. As for the third, he’s the type to shout for help. Yes, he’s still here. Hasn’t moved a muscle… yes, I do think so… all right… I’ll ring you again later.’

  He put down the receiver. I waited. He took his time and I refrained consciously from fidgeting under his gaze.

  ‘Well?’ he said at last.

  ‘If you’re going to ask what I think, the answer is no.’

  ‘Because you don’t want to, or because of your sisters and brother?’

  ‘Philip is still only thirteen.’

  ‘I see.’ He made a weak–looking gesture with his hand. ‘All the same, I’d better make sure you know what you are turning down. The colleague who kept me late this morning, and to whom I was talking just now, runs one of the counter-espionage departments – not only political but scientific and industrial, and anything else which crops up. His section are rather good at doing what you have done – becoming an inconspicuous part of the background. It’s amazing how little notice even agents take of servants and workmen… and his lot have had some spectacular results. They are often used to check on suspected immigrants and political refugees who may not be all they seem, not by watching from afar, but by working for or near them day by day. And recently, for instance, several of the section have been employed as labourers on top-secret construction sites… there have been some disturbing leaks of security; complete site plans of secret installations have been sold abroad; and it was found that a commercial espionage firm was getting information through operatives actually putting brick on brick and photographing the buildings at each stage.’

  ‘Philip,’ I said, ‘is only thirteen.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be expected to plunge straight into such a life. As you yourself pointed out, you are untrained. There would be at least a year’s instruction in various techniques before you were given a job.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘Between jobs all his people are given leave. If a job takes as long as four months, like the one you have just done, they get about six weeks off. They never work more than nine months in a year, if it can be helped. You could often be home in the school holidays.’

  ‘If I am not there all the time, there won’t be enough money for fees and there won’t be any home.’

  ‘It is true that the British Government wouldn’t pay you as much as you earn now,’ he said mildly, ‘but there are such things as full–time stud managers.’

  I opened my mouth and shut it again.

  ‘Think about it,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve another colleague to see… I’ll be back in an hour.’

  He levered himself out of the chair and slowly walked out of the room.

  The pigeons fluttered peaceably on the window sill. I thought of the years I had spent building up the stud farm, and what I had achieved there. In spite of my comparative youth the business was a solid success, and by the time I was fifty I could with a bit of luck put it among the top studs in Australia and enjoy a respected, comfortably-off, influential middle–age.

  What Beckett was offering was a lonely life of unprivileged jobs and dreary lodgings, a life of perpetual risk which could very well end with a bullet in the head.

  Rationally, there was no choice. Belinda and Helen and Philip still needed a secure home with the best I could do for them as a father substitute. And no sensible person would hand over to a manager a prosperous business and become instead a sort of sweeper–up of some of the world’s smaller messes… one couldn’t put the job any higher than that.

  But irrationally… With very little persuasion I had already left my family to fend for themselves, for as Beckett said, I wasn’t of the stuff of martyrs; and the prosperous business had already driven me once into a pit of depression.

  I knew now clearly what I was, and what I could do.

  I remembered the times when I had been tempted to give up, and hadn’t. I remembered the moment when I held Elinor’s dog whistle in my hand and my mind made an almost muscular leap at the truth. I remembered the satisfaction I felt in Kandersteg’s scorched enclosure, knowing I had finally uncovered and defeated Adams and Humber. No sale of any horse had ever brought so quiet and complete a fulfilment.

  The hour passed. The pigeons defecated on the window and flew away. Colonel Beckett came back.

  ‘Well?’he said.‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He laughed aloud. ‘Just like that? No questions or reservations?’

  ‘No reservations. But I will need time to arrange things at home.’

  ‘Of course.’ He picked up the telephone receiver. ‘My colleague will wish you to see him before you go back.’ He rested his fingers on the dial. ‘I’ll make an appointment.’

  ‘And one question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are the three Bs of number ten?’

  He smiled secretly, and I knew he had intended that I should ask: which meant that he wanted me to know the answer. Devious, indeed. My nostrils twitched as if at the scent of a whole new world. A world where I belonged.

  ‘Whether you could be bribed or bludgeoned or blackmailed,’ he said casually, ‘into changing sides.’

  He dialled the number, and altered my life.

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  Dick Francis, For Kicks