by Dick Francis
My stepfather came to the office door and leaned on the frame.
‘Josephine, my dear, I don’t think Tom here would be prepared to be in the army simply to push paper round a desk.’ He looked me in the eye and, for the first time in twenty-four years, I thought there might be some flicker of understanding between us.
‘Derek is so right,’ I said.
‘So for how long have the army sent you home on leave?’ my mother asked. ‘How long before they decide if they want you back or not?’
‘Six months.’
‘Six months! But you can’t possibly stay here six months.’
That was clearly true. I had arrived only eighteen hours previously and I had already been there too long for her liking.
‘I’ll look for somewhere else to go this week,’ I said.
‘Oh, darling, it’s not that I want to throw you out, you understand,’ she said, ‘but I think it might be for the best.’
Best for her, I thought, ungenerously. But perhaps it would be the best for us all. A full-scale shouting match couldn’t be very far away.
‘I could pay you rent,’ I said, purposely fishing for a reaction.
‘Don’t be a silly boy,’ my mother said. ‘This is your home. You don’t pay rent here.’
My home, but I can’t stay in it. My mother clearly didn’t appreciate the irony of her words.
‘A contribution towards your food might be welcome,’ my stepfather interjected.
Things must have been tight. Very tight indeed.
I lay on my bed for a while in the middle of the morning, staring at the moulded ceiling and wondering what to do.
Life in hospital had been so structured: time to wake up; cup of tea; read the paper; breakfast; morning physiotherapy session in the rehab centre; return to the ward for lunch in the day room; afternoon physiotherapy session; return to ward; watch the evening news; read a book or watch more television; evening hot drink; lights out; sleep. Every day the same, except there was no physio on Saturday afternoons or all day Sunday. A strict routine, regular as clockwork, with no decisions having to be made by me.
At first, I had hated to have such a straitjacket to my existence, but I’d become used to it. I suppose one gets used to anything.
Abruptly, here in Lambourn, I was on my own; free to make my own choice of activity without a hospital regime to do it for me. And all of a sudden I was lost, unable to make up my mind, mostly because I was at a loss to know what to do.
It was a new and alien sensation. Even in the boring times between contacts in Afghanistan I’d had things to do: clean my weapon, fix my kit, train my men, make plans, even write a note home. I had always had something to do. In fact, most of the time I had far too much to do, and not enough time.
Yet, try as I might, I couldn’t think of a single thing I had to do now.
Maybe I could have written a note of thanks to the staff at the rehab clinic, but both they and I would know I didn’t mean it.
I had hated feeling that I was being treated like a child, and I hadn’t been slow to say so.
Looking back, even after just one day away from it, I could see that my frustration, and my anger, hadn’t helped anyone, least of all myself. But it had been the only way I’d known to express my fury at the hand that fate had dealt me. There had been times when, if I’d still had my sidearm with me, I am sure I would have used it to blow my brains out, such had been the depth of my depression.
Even in recent weeks, I had often thought about suicide. But I could have walked out and thrown myself under the wheels of the London bus right outside the hospital if I’d really wanted to, and I hadn’t, so at least I must be on the way up from the nadir.
My life needed targets and objectives.
In hospital my goal had been simply to be discharged.
Now that I had achieved it, a void had opened up in front of me. A future seemingly devoid of purpose and direction. Only a tentative ‘we’ll see’ to give me any hope. Was it enough?
I looked at my watch.
It was twenty to twelve and I had been lying on my bed doing nothing for nearly three hours, ever since I had walked away from a stormy encounter with my parent out on the driveway.
She had been inspecting her car and I hadn’t been able to resist telling her that it was high time she changed her old blue Ford for a new, smarter make.
‘Mind your own bloody business,’ she had hissed at me, thrusting her face towards mine.
‘I’m sorry,’ I’d said, feigning surprise. ‘I didn’t realize the matter touched such a sore nerve.’
‘It doesn’t,’ she’d replied, back in some sort of control. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with this one.’
‘But surely a trainer of your standing should have a better car than this; how about a BMW, for example?’
I had really believed she was about to cry again and, quite suddenly, I had been angry with myself. What was I doing? I tried to see myself as she would have done and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. So I had turned away and climbed the stairs to my room like a naughty boy.
How long, I wondered, should I remain in my room before I had paid sufficient penance for my misdeeds? An hour? A day? A week? A lifetime?
I sat up on the side of the bed and decided to write to the staff at the rehab centre to thank them for their care and to apologize for my consistent lack of good humour.
Maybe, then, they might just believe that I meant it.
4
The remainder of Sunday proved to be a quiet day at Kauri House Stables with the human residents managing to stay out of arguing distance.
In the afternoon I ventured out into Lambourn, deciding to go for a walk mostly just to get me out of the house but also because I was curious about how much the place had changed over fifteen years. I didn’t intend to go very far. It had been only a week or so since I’d thrown away the crutches and my leg tended to tire easily.
There were a few more houses than I remembered, a new estate of smart little homes with postage-stamp gardens having sprung up in what once had been a field full of ponies. But, overall, the village was as familiar as it had been when I’d delivered the morning papers as a teenager.
And why wouldn’t it have been? The previous fifteen years may have changed me a great deal but it was a mere blink of an eye compared to the long history of human habitation in Lambourn.
‘Modern’ documented Lambourn dates from the ninth century, when the church and village were named in the will of King Alfred, the mighty king of the Saxons, the only monarch of England to have ever been designated ‘The Great’.
But Lambourn has a history that stretches back far further than medieval times. Numerous Bronze Age burial grounds exist on the hills just north of the modern village, together with The Ridgeway, the Stone Age super-highway that had once stretched from the Dorset coast to The Wash.
Nowadays, Lambourn and its surroundings are known as ‘The Valley of the Racehorse’, but the racing industry is a relative newcomer. First records show that racehorses were trained here in the late eighteenth century, but it was not until the arrival of the railway a hundred years later that Lambourn became established as a national centre for racing, and jump-racing in particular, to rival that at Newmarket. Trains enabled the horses to be sent to racecourses further and further from home and hence a national sport was established.
But the major factor that made Lambourn such a wonderful place for horses was simple geology, and nothing to do with man.
Whereas the rolling Berkshire Downs certainly lend themselves so ideally to the formation of the gallops and the training of the horses, it is what lies beneath the turf that makes the real difference. The Downs, together with the Chiltern Hills, were created many millions of years ago, laid down as sediment in some prehistoric organism-rich sea. Billions and billions of primitive sea creatures died and their skeletons drifted to the bottom, over time being compressed into rock, into the white chalk we see today
. It is almost pure calcium carbonate and the grass that grows on such a base is rich in calcium, ideal for the formation of strong bones in grass-eating racehorses.
I wandered down to the centre of the village, past the Norman church that, sometime in the twelfth century, had replaced the earlier Saxon version. Even though I was not what is known as a ‘regular’ churchgoer, I had been into Lambourn church many times, mostly along with the other boys and girls from the local primary school. My memory was of somewhere cold, and that was not just because the temperature was always low. It was also due to the realization that people were actually buried beneath my feet, under the stones set in the church floor. I could recall how my over-active childhood imagination had caused me to shiver, and I did so again now.
I stopped and thought it anomalous that the bodies of those buried so long ago could still have such an effect on me, whereas the bodies of the Taliban, those I had so recently sent to their graves, seemingly had none.
I walked on.
The centre of the village was mostly unchanged although some of the shops had different names, and others had a different purpose.
I went into the general store to buy a sandwich for lunch and waited for my turn at the checkout.
‘Oh, hello,’ said the woman behind the till, looking at me intently. ‘It’s Tom, isn’t it? Tom Kauri?’
I casually looked back at her. She was about my age with long fair hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore a loose-fitting dark grey sweatshirt that did a moderate job of camouflaging the fairly substantial body beneath.
‘Tom Forsyth,’ I said, correcting her.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘That’s right. I remember now. But your mum is Mrs Kauri, isn’t she?’ I nodded and she smiled. I handed her my sandwich and can of drink. ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ she said.
I looked at her more closely.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘No.’
‘I’m Virginia,’ she said expectantly.
I went on looking at her, obviously with a blank expression.
‘Virginia Bayley,’ she went on. ‘Ginny.’ She paused, waiting for a response. ‘From primary school.’ Another pause. ‘Of course, I was Ginny Worthington then.’
Ginny Worthington, from primary school? I looked at her once more. I vaguely remembered a Ginny Worthington but she’d definitely had black hair, and she’d been as thin as a rake.
‘Dyed my hair since then.’ She laughed nervously. ‘And put on a few pounds, you know, due to having had the kids.’
Virginia Bayley, plump and blonde, née Ginny Worthington, skinny and brunette. One and the same person.
‘How nice to see you again,’ I said, not really meaning it.
‘Staying with your mother, are you?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘That’s nice.’ She scanned my sandwich and the can of drink. ‘Such a lovely woman, your mother. That’s three pounds twenty, please.’ I gave her a five-pound note. ‘A real star round here.’ She gave me my change. ‘Real proud of her, we are, winning that award.’ She handed me my sandwich and drink in a plastic bag. ‘Lovely to see you again.’
‘Thanks,’ I said taking the bag. ‘You too.’ I started to leave but turned back. ‘What award?’
‘You must know,’ she said. ‘The National Woman of the Year Award. Last month. In London. Presented by the Prince of Wales, on the telly.’
I looked blank. Had I really been so involved with my own life that I hadn’t even noticed my mother receiving such an accolade?
‘I can’t believe you don’t know,’ Ginny said.
‘I’ve been away,’ I replied absent-mindedly.
I turned away from her again.
She spoke to my back. ‘You can come and buy me a drink later, if you like.’
I was about to ask why on earth I would like to buy her a drink when she went on. ‘My old man has arranged a bit of a get-together in the Wheelwright for my birthday. There’ll be others there, too. Some from school. You’re welcome to come.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Where did you say?’
‘The Wheelwright,’ she repeated. ‘The Wheelwright Arms. At seven o’clock.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So, is it your birthday today?’
‘Yeah,’ she said again, grinning.
‘Then, happy birthday, Ginny,’ I said with a flourish.
‘Ta,’ she said, smiling broadly. ‘Do come tonight if you can. It’ll be fun.’
I couldn’t, offhand, think of a less fun-filled evening than going to the pub birthday party of someone I couldn’t really remember, where there would be other people I also wouldn’t be able to remember, all of whom had nothing more in common with me than having briefly attended the same school twenty years previously.
But, I supposed, anything might be preferable to sitting through another excruciating dinner with my mother and stepfather.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I will.’
‘Great,’ Ginny said.
So I did.
The evening proved to be better than I had expected, and I so nearly didn’t go.
By seven o’clock the rain was falling vertically out of the dark sky with huge droplets splashing back from the flooded area between the house and the stables.
I looked at my black leather shoes, my only shoes, and wondered if staying at home in front of the television might be the wiser option. Perhaps I could watch the weekly motoring show and use it to bully my mother further over her car.
Well, perhaps not, but it was tempting.
I decided instead to find out if it would be possible to pull a wellington boot over my false leg. I suppose I could always have worn only one boot while leaving the prosthesis completely bare. I don’t think the water would have done it much harm, but the sight of a man walking on such a night with one bare foot might have scared the neighbours, to say nothing of the people in the pub.
I borrowed the largest pair of wellies I could find in the boot room and had surprisingly little difficulty in getting both of them on. I also ‘borrowed’ my mother’s long Barbour coat and my stepfather’s cap. I set off for the Wheelwright Arms relatively well protected but still with the rain running down my neck.
‘I thought you wouldn’t come,’ said Ginny as I stood in the public bar removing my mother’s coat with pools of water forming on the bleached stone floor. ‘Not with the weather this bad.’
‘Crazy,’ I agreed.
‘You or me?’ she said.
‘Both.’
She laughed. Ginny was trying very hard to make me welcome. Too hard, in fact. She would have been better leaving me alone and enjoying herself with her other guests. Her husband didn’t like it either, which I took to be a good sign for their marriage. But he had no worries with me. Ginny was nice enough but not my sort.
What was my sort? I wondered.
I’d slept with plenty of girls but they had all been casual affairs, sometimes just one-nighters. I’d never had a ‘real’ girlfriend.
Whereas many of my fellow junior officers had enjoyed long-term relationships, even marriages, both at Sandhurst and in the regiment, I was, in truth, married only to the military.
There was no doubt that I had been, as I remained, deeply in love with the army and I had certainly betrothed myself to ‘her’, forsaking all others until death do us part.
But it seemed it wouldn’t be death that would do us part: just the small matter of a missing foot.
‘So what do you do for a living?’ Ginny’s husband asked me.
‘I’m between jobs,’ I said unhelpfully.
‘What did you do?’ he persisted.
Why, I thought, didn’t I simply tell them I was in the army? Was I not proud to be a soldier? I had been before I was injured. Wasn’t I still?
‘A banker,’ I said. ‘In the city.’
‘Recession got you, did it?’ he said with a slightly mocking laugh in his voice. ‘Your trouble was too many
big bonuses.’ He nodded. He knew.
‘You’re probably right,’ I said.
There were seven of us standing in a circle near the bar. As well as Ginny and her husband, there were two other couples. I didn’t recognize any of them and none of the four looked old enough to have been at school with me.
One of the men stepped forward to buy a round at the bar.
‘Should I know any of these?’ I said quietly to Ginny, waving a hand at the others.
‘No, not these,’ she said. ‘I think the weather has put some people off.’
I was beginning to wish it had put me off as well when the door of the pub opened and another couple came in, again dripping water into puddles on the floor.
At least, I thought they were a couple until they removed their coats. Both of them were girls – more correctly they were young women – and one of them I knew the instant she removed her hat and shook out her long blonde hair.
‘Hello, Isabella,’ I said.
‘My God,’ she replied. ‘No one’s called me Isabella for years.’ She looked closely at my face. ‘Bloody hell. It’s Tom Kauri.’
‘Tom Forsyth,’ I corrected.
‘I know, I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘I was just winding you up. As per usual.’
It was true. She had teased me mercilessly, ever since I had told her, aged about ten, that I was deeply in love with her, and I had asked her to marry me. She had clearly filled out a bit since then, and in all the right places.
‘So what do people call you now?’ I asked.
‘Bella,’ she said. ‘Or Issy. Only my mother calls me Isabella, and then only when I’ve displeased her.’
‘And do you displease her often?’ I asked flippantly.
She looked me straight in the eyes, and smiled. ‘As often as possible.’
Wow, I thought.
Both Isabella and I rather ignored Ginny’s birthday celebration as we renewed our friendship and, in my case anyway, renewed my feelings of longing.
‘Are you married?’ I asked her almost immediately.
‘Why do you want to know?’ she replied.
‘To know where I stand,’ I said somewhat clumsily.