by Dick Francis
‘So I’ve noticed,’ I said dryly.
He grinned. ‘Everyone lives on a precipice. All the time. And Midge keeps telling me and Nancy that if we’re not careful she’ll outlive us both.’
‘She’s marvellous.’
‘Yes, she is.’ He looked out of the window. ‘It was a terrible shock at first. Terrible. But now… I don’t know… we seem to have accepted it. All of us. Even her.’
I said hesitantly, ‘How long…?’
‘How long will she live? No one knows. It varies so much, apparently. She’s had it, they think, for about three years now. It seems a lot of people have it for about a year before it becomes noticeable enough to be diagnosed, so no one knows when it started with Midge. Some people die within days of getting it. Some have lived for twenty years. Nowadays, with all the modern treatments, they say the average after diagnosis is from two to six years, but it will possibly be ten. We’ve had two… We just believe it will be ten… and that makes it much easier…’
‘She doesn’t look especially ill.’
‘Not at the moment. She had pneumonia a short while ago and the odd thing about that is that it reverses leukaemia for a while. Any fever does it, apparently. Actually makes her better. So do doses of radiation on her arms and legs, and other bones and organs. She’s had several relapses and several good long spells of being well. It just goes on like that… but her blood is different, and her bones are changing inside all the time… I’ve seen pictures of what is happening… and one day… well, one day she’ll have a sort of extreme relapse, and she won’t recover.’
‘Poor Midge…’
‘Poor all of us.’
‘What about… Nancy? Being her twin…’
‘Do identical bodies get identical blood diseases, do you mean?’ He looked at me across the room, his eyes in shadow. ‘There’s that too. They say the chances are infinitesimal. They say there are only eighteen known cases of leukaemia occurring twice in the same family unit. You can’t catch it, and you can’t inherit it. A girl with leukaemia can have a baby, and the baby won’t have leukaemia. You can transfuse blood from someone with leukaemia into someone without it, and he won’t catch it. They say there’s no reason why Nancy should develop it any more than me or you or the postman. But they don’t know. The books don’t record any cases of an identical twin having it, or what became of the other one.’ He paused. Swallowed, ‘I think we are all more afraid of Nancy getting it too than of anything on earth.’
I stayed until the sky cleared up at five o’clock. Colin spent most of the day working out which races he wanted to ride in during the coming week and answering telephone calls from owners and trainers anxious to engage him. Principally he rode for a stable half a mile down the road, he said, but the terms of his retainer there gave him a good deal of choice.
He worked at a large chart with seven columns, one for each day of the week. Under each day he listed the various meetings, and under each meeting he listed the names, prizes and distances of the races. Towards the end of the afternoon there was a horse’s name against a fair proportion of races, especially, I noticed, those with the highest rewards.
He grinned at my interest. ‘A business is a business,’ he said.
‘So I see. A study in time and motion.’
On three of the days he proposed to ride at two meetings.
‘Can you get me from Brighton to Windsor fast enough for two races an hour and a half apart? Three o’clock race at Brighton. Four-thirty, Windsor. And on Saturday, three o’clock race at Bath, four-thirty at Brighton?’
‘With fast cars both ends, don’t see why not.’
‘Good.’ He crossed out a couple of question marks and wrote ticks instead. ‘And next Sunday, can you take me to France?’
‘If Harley says so.’
‘Harley will say so,’ he said with certainty.
‘Don’t you ever take a day off?’
He raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘is off. Hadn’t you noticed?’
‘Er… yes.’
‘The horse I was going over to ride today went lame on Thursday. Otherwise I was going to Paris. B.E.A., though, for once.’
Nancy said with mock resignation, ‘The dynamo whirs nonstop from March to November in England and Europe and then goes whizzing off to Japan and so on, and around about February there might be a day or two when we can all flop back in armchairs and put our feet up.’
Midge said, ‘We put them up in the Bahamas last time. It was gorgeous. All that hot sun…’
The others laughed. ‘It rained the whole of the first week.’
The girls cooked steaks for lunch. ‘In your honour,’ Midge said to me. ‘You’re too thin.’
I was fatter than any of them; which wasn’t saying much.
Midge cleared the things away afterwards and Nancy covered the kitchen table with maps and charts.
‘I really am flying Colin to the races one day soon, and I wondered if you’d help…’
‘Of course.’
She bent over the table, the long dark hair swinging down over her neck. Don’t get involved, I said to myself. Just don’t.
‘Next week, to Haydock. If the weather’s good enough.’
‘She’s doing you out of a job,’ Midge observed, wiping glasses.
‘Wait till it thunders.’
‘Beast,’ Nancy said.
She had drawn a line on the map. She wanted me to tell her how to proceed in the Manchester control zone, and what to do if they gave her instructions she didn’t understand.
‘Ask them to repeat them. If you still don’t understand, ask them to clarify.’
‘They’ll think I’m stupid,’ she protested.
‘Better that than barging on regardless and crashing into an airliner.’
‘O.K.,’ she sighed. ‘Point taken.’
‘Colin deserves a medal,’ Midge said.
‘Just shut up,’ Nancy said. ‘You’re all bloody rude.’
When the drizzle stopped they all three took me back to Cambridge, squashing into the Aston Martin. Midge drove, obviously enjoying it. Nancy sat half on Colin and half on me, and I sat half on the door handle.
They stood in a row, and waved when I took off. I rolled the wings in salute and set course for Buckingham, and tried to ignore the regret I felt to be leaving.
Honey was up in the control tower at Derrydowns, Sunday or no Sunday, and Harley was aloft in the trainer giving someone a lesson. When he heard me on the radio he said snappily ‘And about time too,’ and I remembered the dimensions of my bank balance and didn’t snap back. Chanter, I thought wryly, would have plain despised me.
I left the Cherokee Six in the hangar and walked round to the caravan. It seemed emptier, more sordid, more dilapidated than before. The windows all needed cleaning. The bed wasn’t made. Yesterday’s milk had gone sour again, and there was still no food.
I sat for a while watching the evening sun struggle through the breaking clouds, watching Harley’s pupil stagger through some ropy landings, wondering how long it would be before Derrydowns went broke, and wondering if I could save enough before that happened to buy a car. Harley was paying me forty-five pounds a week, which was more than he could afford and less than I was worth. Of that, Susan, taxes and insurance would be taking exactly half, and with Harley deducting four more for my rent it wasn’t going to be easy.
Impatiently I got up and cleaned all the windows, which improved my view of the airfield but not of the future.
When the light began to fade I had a visitor. A ripe shapely girl in the minimum of green cotton dress. Long fair hair. Long legs. Large mouth. Slightly protruding teeth. She walked with a man-eating sway and spoke with the faintest of lisps.
Honey Harley, come down from her tower.
She knocked on her way in. All the same if I’d been naked. As it was, I had my shirt off from the window cleaning and for Honey, it seemed, that was invitation enough. She came over holding out a pa
per in one hand and putting the other lightly on my shoulder. She let it slide down against my skin to half way down my back and then brought it up again to the top.
‘Uncle and I were making out the list for the next week. We wondered if you fixed anything up with Colin Ross.’
I moved gently away, picked up a nylon sweater, and put it on.
‘Yes… he wants us Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.’
‘Great.’
She followed me across the small space. One step further backwards and I’d be in my bedroom. Internally I tried lo stifle a laugh. I stepped casually round her, back towards the door. Her face showed nothing but businesslike calm.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘Monday, that’s tomorrow, then, you collect a businessman at Coventry, take him to Rotterdam, wait for him, and bring him back. That’s in the Aztec. Tuesday, Colin Ross. Wednesday, nothing yet. Thursday, probably a trainer in Lambourn wanting to look at a horse for sale in Yorkshire, he’ll let us know, and then Colin Ross again all the end of the week.’
‘O.K.’
‘And the Board of Trade want to come out and see you again. I told them early Tuesday or Wednesday.’
‘All right.’ As usual, the automatic sinking of the heart even at the words Board of Trade: though this time, surely, surely, my responsibility was a technicality. This time, surely, I couldn’t get ground to bits.
Honey sat down on the two seat sofa and crossed her legs. She smiled.
‘We haven’t seen much of each other yet, have we?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Can I have a cigarette?’
‘I’m sorry… I don’t smoke… I haven’t any.’
‘Oh. Well, give me a drink, then.’
‘Look, I really am sorry… all I can offer you is black coffee… or water.’
‘Surely you’ve got some beer?’
‘Afraid not.’
She stared at me. Then she stood up, went into the tiny kitchen, and opened all the cupboards. I thought it was because she thought I was lying, but I’d done her an injustice. Sex minded she might be, but no fool.
‘You’ve no car, have you? And the shops and the pub are nearly two miles away.’ She came back frowning, and sat down again. ‘Why didn’t you ask someone to give you a lift?’
‘Didn’t want to be a bother.’
She considered it. ‘You’ve been here three weeks and you don’t get paid until the end of the month. So… have you any money?’
‘Enough not to starve,’ I said. ‘But thanks all the same.’
I’d sent ten pounds to Susan and told her she’d have to wait for the rest until I got my pay cheque. She’d written back short and to the point. Two months, by then, don’t forget. As if I could. I had under four pounds left in the world and too much pride.
‘Uncle would give you an advance.’
‘I wouldn’t like to ask him.’
A small smile lifted the corners of her mouth. ‘No, I can see that, as he’s so intent on slapping you down.’
‘Is he?’
‘Don’t pretend to be surprised. You know he is. You give him a frightful inferiority complex and he’s getting back at you for it.’
‘It’s silly.’
‘Oh sure. But you are the two things he longs to be and isn’t, a top class pilot and an attractive man. He needs you badly for the business, but he doesn’t have to like it. And don’t tell me you didn’t know all that, because it’s been obvious all along that you understand, otherwise you would have lost your temper with him every day at the treatment he’s been handing out.’
‘You see a lot from your tower,’ I said smiling.
‘Sure. And I’m very fond of my uncle And I love this little business, and I’d do anything to keep us afloat.’ She said it with intense feeling. I wondered whether ‘anything” meant sleeping with the pilots, or whether that came under the heading of pleasure, not profit. I didn’t intend to find out. Not getting involved included Honey, in the biggest possible way.
I said, ‘It must have been a blow to the business, losing that new Cherokee.’
She pursed her mouth and put her head on one side. ‘Not altogether. In fact, absolutely the reverse. We had too much capital tied up in it. We had to put down a lump sum to start with, and the H.P. instalments were pretty steep.… I should think when everything’s settled, and we get the insurance, we will have about five thousand pounds back, and with that much to shore us up we can keep going until times get better.’
‘If the aircraft hadn’t blown up, would you have been able to keep up with the H.P.?’
She stood up abruptly, seeming to think that she had already said too much. ‘Let’s just leave it that things are all right as they are.’
The daylight was fading fast. She came and stood close beside me, not quite touching.
‘You don’t smoke, you don’t eat, you don’t drink,’ she said .softly. ‘What else don’t you do?’
‘That too.’
‘Not ever?’
‘Not now. Not here.’
‘I’d give you a good time.’…
‘Honey… I just… don’t want to.’
She wasn’t angry. Not even hurt. ‘You’re cold,’ she said judiciously. ‘An iceberg.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘You’ll thaw,’ she said. ‘One of these days.’
The Board of Trade had sent the same two men, the tall one and the silent one, complete with notebook and bitten green pencil. As before, I sat with them in the crew room and offered them coffee from the slot machine in the passengers’ lounge. They accepted, and I went and fetched three plastic cupfuls. The staff as well as the customers had to buy their coffee or whatever from the machine. Honey kept it well stocked. It made a profit.
Outside on the airfield my part-time colleague, Ron, was showing a new pupil how to do the external checks. They crept round the trainer inch by inch. Ron talked briskly. The pupil, a middle-aged man, nodded as if he understood.
The tall man was saying in effect that they had got nowhere with the bomb.
‘The police have been happy to leave the investigation with us, but frankly in these cases it is almost impossible to find the identity of the perpetrator. Of course if someone on board is a major political figure, or a controversial agitator… Or if there is a great sum of personal insurance involved… But in this case there is nothing like that.’
‘Isn’t Colin Ross insured?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but he has no new policy, or anything exceptional. And the beneficiaries are his twin sisters. I cannot believe…’
‘Impossible’ I said with conviction.
‘Quite so.’
‘How about the others?’
He shook his head. ‘They all said, in fact, that they ought to be better insured than they were.’ He coughed discreetly. ‘There is, of course, the matter of yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
His sharp eyes stared at me unblinkingly.
‘Several years ago you took out a policy for the absolute benefit of your wife. Although she is now your ex-wife, she would still be the beneficiary. You can’t change that sort of policy.’
‘Who told you all this?’
‘She did,’ he said. ‘We went to see her in the course of our enquiries.’ He paused. ‘She didn’t speak kindly of you.’
I compressed my mouth. ‘No. I can imagine. Still. I’m worth more to her alive than dead. She’ll want me to live as long as possible.’
‘And if she wanted to get married again? Your alimony payments would stop then, and a lump sum from insurance might be welcome.’
I shook my head. ‘She might have killed me in a fury three years ago, but not now, cold bloodedly, with other people involved. It isn’t in her nature. And besides, she doesn’t know anything about bombs and she had no opportunity… You’ll have to cross out that theory too.’
‘She has been going out occasionally with an executive from a firm specialising in demolitions.’
/> He kept his voice dead even, but he had clearly expected more reaction than he got. I wasn’t horrified or even much taken aback.
‘She wouldn’t do it. Or put anyone else up to doing it. Ordinarily, she was too… too kind hearted. Too sensible, anyway. She used to be so angry whenever innocent passengers were blown up… she would never do it herself. Never.’
He watched me for a while in the special Board of Trade brand of unnerving silence. I didn’t see what I could add. Didn’t know what he was after.
Outside on the airfield the trainer started up and taxied away. The engine noise faded. It was very quiet. I sat. I waited.
Finally he stirred. ‘All in all, for all our trouble, we have come up with only one probability. And even that gets us no nearer knowing who the bomb was intended for, or who put it on board.’
He put his hand in his inner pocket and brought out a stiff brown envelope. Out of that he shook onto the crew room table a twisted piece of metal. I picked it up and looked at it. Beyond the impression that it had once been round and flat, like a button, it meant nothing.
‘What is it?’
The remains,’ he said, ‘of an amplifier.’
I looked up, puzzled. ‘Out of the radio?’
‘We don’t think so.’ He chewed his lip. ‘We think it was in the bomb. We found it embedded in what had been the tail-plane.’
‘Do you mean… it wasn’t a time bomb after all?’
‘Well… probably not. It looks as if it was exploded by a radio transmission. Which puts, do you see, a different slant on things.’
‘What difference? I don’t know much about bombs. How does a radio bomb differ from a time bomb?’
‘They can differ a lot, though in many the actual explosive is the same. In those cases it’s just the trigger mechanism that’s different.’ He paused. ‘Well, say you have a quantity of plastic explosive. Unfortunately that’s all too easy to get hold of, nowadays. In fact, if you happen to be in Greece, you can go into any hardware shop and buy it over the counter. On its own, it won’t explode. It needs a detonator. Gunpowder, old-fashioned gunpowder, is the best. You also need something to ignite the gunpowder before it will detonate the plastic. Are you with me?’
‘Faint but pursuing,’ I said.