by Dick Francis
Archie, releasing my wrist, said to me, “The British Horseracing Board wants you to double-check some of their own members for loyalty. Ultra-secret digging.”
“They wouldn’t ask me.” I shook my head. “I’m not the new people’s idea of reliable.”
“They asked me,” he said, the eyes blazing with amusement. “I said it would be you or nobody.”
“Nobody,” I said.
He laughed. “You start as soon as the Quint thing is over.”
The trouble, I thought, as I sat quietly beside Charles as he drove to Aynsford, was that for me the Quint thing would never be over. Ellis might or might not go to jail ... but that wouldn’t be the end for either of us. Gordon’s obsession might deepen. Ellis might maim more than horses. In both of them lay a compulsive disregard of natural law.
No one could ever be comprehensively protected from obsession. One simply had to live as best one could and disregard the feral threat lying in wait—and I would somehow have to shake Gordon loose from staking out my Pont Square door.
Charles said, “Do you consider that transferring Yorkshire’s secret files to your own computer was at all immoral? Was it ... theft?”
He spoke without censure, but censure was implied. I remembered a discussion we’d had once along the lines of what was honorable and what was not. He’d said I had a vision of honor that made my life a purgatory and I’d said he was wrong, and that purgatory was abandoning your vision of honor and knowing you’d done it. “Only for you, Sid,” he’d said. “The rest of the world has no difficulty at all.”
It seemed he was applying to me my own rash judgment. Was stealing knowledge ever justified, or was it not?
I said without self-excuse, “It was theft, and dishon orable, and I would do it again.”
“And purgatory can wait?”
I said with amusement, “Have you read The Pump?”
After about five miles he said, “That’s specious.”
“Mm.”
“The Pump’s a different sort of purgatory.”
I nodded and said idly, “The anteroom to hell.”
He frowned, glancing across in distaste. “Has hell arrived, then?” He hated excess emotion. I cooled it.
I said, “No. Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
He drove another mile, then asked, “How did you hurt your hand?”
I sighed. “I don’t want a fuss. Don’t fuss, Charles, if I tell you.”
“No. All right. No fuss.”
“Then ... Ellis had a go at it.”
“Ellis?”
“Mm. Lord Tilepit and Owen Yorkshire watched Ellis enjoy it. That’s how they now know he’s guilty as charged with the colts. If Ellis had had shears instead of a wrench to use on my wrist, I would now have no hands—and for God’s sake, Charles, keep your eyes on the road.”
“But, Sid . . .”
“No fuss. You promised. There’ll be no lasting harm.” I paused. “If he’d wanted to kill me today, he could have done it, but instead he gave me a chance to escape. He wanted ...” I swallowed. “He wanted to make me pay for defeating him ... and he did make me pay . . . and on Monday in court I’ll try to disgrace him forever ... and I loathe it.”
He drove to Aynsford in a silence I understood to be at least empty of condemnation. Braking outside the door, he said regretfully, “If you and Ellis hadn’t been such good friends ... no wonder poor Ginnie couldn’t stand it.”
Charles saw the muscles stiffen in my face.
“What is it, Sid?” he asked.
“I ... I may have made a wrong assumption.”
“What assumption?”
“Mm?” I said vaguely. “Have to think.”
“Then think in bed,” he said lightly. “It’s late.”
I thought for half the night. Ellis’s revenge brutally throbbed in my fingers. Ellis had tied my wrists and given me thirty seconds ... I would be dead, I thought, if we hadn’t been friends.
At Aynsford I kept duplicates of all the things I’d lost in my car—battery charger, razor, clothes and so on—all except the mobile phone. I did have the SIM card, but nothing to use it in.
The no-car situation was solved again by Teledrive, which came to pick me up on Sunday morning.
To Charles’s restrained suggestion that I pass the day resting with him—“A game of chess, perhaps?”—I replied that I was going to see Rachel Ferns. Charles nodded.
“Come back,” he said, “if you need to.”
“Always.”
“Take care of yourself, Sid.”
Rachel, Linda told me on the telephone, was home from the hospital for the day.
“Oh, do come,” she begged. “Rachel needs you.”
I went empty-handed with no new fish or wigs, but it didn’t seem to matter.
Rachel herself looked bloodless, a white wisp of a child in the foothills of a far country. In the five days since I’d seen her, the bluish shadows under her eyes had deepened, and she had lost weight so that the round cheeks of the steroids under the bald head and the big shadowed eyes gave her the look of an exotic little bird, unlike life.
Linda hugged me and cried on my shoulder in the kitchen.
“It’s good news, really,” she said, sobbing. “They’ve found a donor.”
“But that’s marvelous.” Like a sunburst of hope, I thought, but Linda still wept.
“He’s a Swiss,” she said. “He’s coming from Swit zerland. He’s coming on Wednesday. Joe is paying his airfare and the hotel bills. Joe says money’s no object for his little girl.”
“Then stop crying.”
“Yes ... but it may not work.”
“And it may,” I said positively. “Where’s the gin?”
She laughed shakily. She poured two glasses. I still didn’t much care for gin but it was all she liked. We clinked to the future and she began talking about paella for lunch.
Rachel was half sitting, half lying, on a small sofa that had been repositioned in the sitting room so that she could look straight and closely into the fish tank. I sat beside her and asked how she felt.
“Did my mum tell you about the transplant?” she said.
“Terrific news.”
“I might be able to run again.”
Running, it was clear from her pervading lassitude, must have seemed at that point as distant as the moon.
Rachel said, “I begged to come home to see the fishes. I have to go back tonight, though. I hoped you would come. I begged God.”
“You knew I would come.”
“I meant today, while I’m home.”
“I’ve been busy since I saw you on Tuesday.”
“I know. Mummy said so. The nurses tell me when you phone every day.”
Pegotty was crawling all around the floor, growing in size and agility and putting everything unsuitable in his mouth; making his sister laugh.
“He’s so funny,” she said. “They won’t let him come to the hospital. I begged to see him and the fishes. They told me the transplant is going to make me feel sick, so I wanted to come home first.”
“Yes,” I said.
Linda produced steamy rice with bits of chicken and shrimps, which we all ate with spoons.
“What’s wrong with your hand?” Linda asked. “In places it’s almost black.”
“It’s only a bruise. It got a bit squashed.”
“You’ve got sausage fingers,” Rachel said.
“They’ll be all right tomorrow.”
Linda returned to the only important subject. “The Swiss donor,” she said, “is older than I am! He has three children of his own. He’s a schoolteacher ... he sounds a nice man, and they say he’s so pleased to be going to give Rachel some of his bone marrow.”
Rachel said, “I wish it had been Sid’s bone marrow.”
I’d had myself tested, right at the beginning, but I’d been about as far from a match as one could get. Neither Linda nor Joe had been more than fifty percent compatible.
“They say he’s a ninety percent match,” Linda said. “You never get a hundred percent, even from siblings. Ninety percent is great.”
She was trying hard to be positive. I didn’t know enough to put a bet on ninety percent. It sounded fine to me; and no one was going to kill off Rachel’s own defective bone marrow if they didn’t believe they could replace it.
“They’re going to put me into a bubble,” Rachel said. “It’s a sort of plastic tent over my bed. I won’t be able to touch the Swiss man, except through the plastic. And he doesn’t speak English, even. He speaks German. Danke schoen. I’ve learned that, to say to him. Thank you very much.”
“He’s a lucky man,” I said.
Linda, clearing the plates and offering ice cream for dessert, asked if I would stay with Rachel while she took Pegotty out for a short walk in fresh air.
“Of course.”
“I won’t be long.”
When she’d gone, Rachel and I sat on the sofa and watched the fish.
“You see that one?” Rachel pointed. “That’s the one you brought on Tuesday. Look how fast he swims! He’s faster than all the others.”
The black and silver angel fish flashed through the tank, fins waving with vigor.
“He’s you,” Rachel said. “He’s Sid.”
I teased her, “I thought half of them were Sid.”
“Sid is always the fastest one. That’s Sid.” She pointed. “The others aren’t Sid anymore.”
“Poor fellows.”
She giggled. “I wish I could have the fishes in the hospital. Mummy asked, but they said no.”
“Pity.”
She sat loosely cuddled by my right arm but held my other hand, the plastic one, pulling it across towards her. That hand still wasn’t working properly, though a fresh battery and a bit of tinkering had restored it to half-life.
After a long, silent pause, she said, “Are you afraid of dying?”
Another pause. “Sometimes,” I said.
Her voice was quiet, almost murmuring. It was a conversation all in a low key, without haste.
She said, “Daddy says when you were a jockey you were never afraid of anything.”
“Are you afraid?” I asked.
“Yes, but I can’t tell Mummy. I don’t like her crying.”
“Are you afraid of the transplant?”
Rachel nodded.
“You will die without it,” I said matter-of-factly. “I know you know that.”
“What’s dying like?”
“I don’t know. No one knows. Like going to sleep, I should think.” If you were lucky, of course.
“It’s funny to think of not being here,” Rachel said. “I mean, to think of being a space.”
“The transplant will work.”
“Everyone says so.”
“Then believe it. You’ll be running by Christmas.”
She smoothed her fingers over my hand. I could feel the faint vibrations distantly in my forearm. Nothing, I thought, was ever entirely lost.
She said, “Do you know what I’ll be thinking, lying there in the bubble feeling awfully sick?”
“What?”
“Life’s a bugger.”
I hugged her, but gently. “You’ll do fine.”
“Yes, but tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“How to be brave.”
What a question, I thought. I said, “When you’re feeling awfully sick, think about something you like doing. You won’t feel as bad if you don’t think about how bad you feel.”
She thought it over. “Is that all?”
“It’s quite a lot. Think about fishes. Think about Pegotty pulling off his socks and putting them in his mouth. Think about things you’ve enjoyed.”
“Is that what you do?”
“It’s what I do if something hurts, yes. It does work.”
“What if nothing hurts yet, but you’re going into something scary?”
“Well ... it’s all right to be frightened. No one can help it. You just don’t have to let being frightened stop you.”
“Are you ever frightened?” she asked.
“Yes.” Too often, I thought.
She said lazily, but with certainty, “I bet you’ve never been so frightened you didn’t do something. I bet you’re always brave.”
I was startled. “No ... I’m not.”
“But Daddy said ...”
“I wasn’t afraid of riding in races,” I agreed. “Try me in a pit full of snakes, though, and I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“What about a bubble?”
“I’d go in there promising myself I’d come out running.”
She smoothed my hand. “Will you come and see me?”
“In the bubble?” I asked. “Yes, if you like.”
“You’ll make me brave.”
I shook my head. “It will come from inside you. You’ll see.”
We went on watching the fish. My namesake flashed his fins and seemed to have endless stamina.
“I’m going into the bubble tomorrow,” Rachel murmured. “I don’t want to cry when they put me in there.”
“Courage is lonely,” I said.
She looked up into my face. “What does that mean?”
It was too strong a concept, I saw, for someone of nine. I tried to make things simpler.
“You’ll be alone in the bubble,” I said, “so make it your own palace. The bubble is to keep you safe from infection—safe from dragons. You won’t cry.”
She snuggled against me; happier, I hoped. I loved her incredibly. The transplant had a fifty-fifty chance of success. Rachel would run again. She had to.
Linda and Pegotty came back laughing from their walk and Linda built towers of bright plastic building blocks for Pegotty to knock down, a game of endless enjoyment for the baby. Rachel and I sat on the floor, playing checkers.
“You always let me be white,” Rachel complained, “and then you sneak up with the black counters when I’m not looking.”
“You can play black, then.”
“It’s disgusting,” she said, five minutes later. “You’re cheating.”
Linda looked up and said, astounded, “Are you two quarreling?”
“He always wins,” Rachel objected.
“Then don’t play with him,” Linda said reasonably.
Rachel set up the white pieces as her own. I neglected to take one of them halfway through the game, and with glee she huffed me, and won.
“Did you let me win?” she demanded.
“Winning’s more fun.”
“I hate you.” She swept all the pieces petulantly from the board and Pegotty put two of them in his mouth.
Rachel, laughing, picked them out again and dried them and set up the board again, with herself again as white, and peacefully we achieved a couple of close finishes until, suddenly as usual, she tired.
Linda produced tiny chocolate cakes for tea and talked happily of the Swiss donor and how everything was going to be all right. Rachel was convinced, I was convinced, Pegotty smeared chocolate all over his face. Whatever the next week might bring to all of us, I thought, that afternoon of hope and ordinariness was an anchor in reality, an affirmation that small lives mattered.
It wasn’t until after she’d fastened both children into the back of her car to drive to the hospital that Linda mentioned Ellis Quint.
“That trial is on again tomorrow, isn’t it?” she asked.
We stood in the chilly air a few paces from her car. I nodded. “Don’t let Rachel know.”
“She doesn’t. It hasn’t been hard to keep it all away from her. She never talks about Silverboy anymore. Being so ill... she hasn’t much interest in anything else.”
“She’s terrific.”
“Will Ellis Quint go to prison?”
How could I say “I hope so”? And did I hope so? Yet I had to stop him, to goad him, to make him fundamentally wake up.
I said, dodging it, “It will be for the judge to
decide.”
Linda hugged me. No tears. “Come and see Rachel in her bubble?”
“You couldn’t keep me away.”
“God . . . I hope . . .”
“She’ll be all right,” I said. “So will you.”
Patient Teledrive took me back to London and, because of the fixed hour of Linda’s departure to the hospital, I again had time to spare before meeting India for dinner.
I again ducked being dropped in Pont Square in the dark evening, and damned Gordon for his vigilance. He had to sleep sometime ... but when?
The restaurant called Kensington Place was near the northern end of Church Street, the famous road of endless antique shops, stretching from Kensington High Street, in the south, up to Notting Hill Gate, north. Teledrive left me and my overnight bag on the northwest corner of Church Street, where I dawdled awhile looking in the brightly lit windows of Waterstone’s bookshop, wondering if Rachel would be able to hear the store’s advertised children’s audio tapes in her bubble. She enjoyed the subversive Just William stories. Pegotty, she thought, would grow up to be like him.
A large number of young Japanese people were milling around on the comer, all armed with cameras, taking flash pictures of one another. I paid not much attention beyond noticing that they all had straight black hair, short padded jackets, and jeans. As far as one could tell, they were happy. They also surged between me and Wa terstone’s windows.
They bowed to me politely, I bowed unenthusiastically in return.
They seemed to be waiting, as I was, for some prearranged event to occur. I gradually realized from their quiet chatter, of which I understood not a word, that half of them were men, and half young women.
We all waited. They bowed some more. At length, one of the young women shyly produced a photograph that she held out to me. I took it politely and found I was looking at a wedding. At a mass wedding of about ten happy couples wearing formal suits and Western bridal gowns. Raising my head from the photo, I was met by twenty smiles.
I smiled back. The shy young woman retrieved her photo, nodded her head towards her companions and clearly told me that they were all on their honeymoon. More smiles all around. More bows. One of the men held out his camera to me and asked—I gathered—if I would photograph them all as a group.
I took the camera and put my bag at my feet, and they arranged themselves in pairs neatly, as if they were used to it.
