by Dick Francis
‘Right.’ He looked as if he would do it immediately.
‘But,’ I said, ‘quite likely he’s not really fussed about the horses. Quite likely he’s looking for a way to stop people enjoying themselves. He’s enjoying himself, that’s his main aim. He’s been trying for days to get knocked down gently. Tomorrow he may manage to get himself arrested. If he does, he’ll be ecstatic’
‘All fanatics are nutters,’ he said.
‘What about suffragettes and the twelve apostles?’
‘Want a beer?’ he said. ‘I’m not arguing with you.’
‘What we really want is a counter demonstration,’ I suggested. ‘People marching alongside Harold Quest with placards saying, “DD TO UNEMPLOYMENT”, “PUT STABLELADS OUT OF WORK”. “SEND ALL STEEPLECHASE HORSES TO THE GLUE FACTORY”. “PUT BLACKSMITHS ON THE DOLE”.’
‘Farriers,’ Henry said.
‘What?’
‘Farriers shoe horses. Blacksmiths make wrought-iron gates.’
‘Let’s have that beer,’ I said.
Beer got postponed however by the arrival of two cars, both driven by boiling tempers as a result of near-contact with Harold Quest.
Stuck behind the leading bumper came the torn remains of a placard saying ‘BAN CRUELTY’ but as so often in such confrontations, a bossy platitudinous admonition had evoked an opposite response.
In the driver, Oliver Wells, the veneer of gentlemanly affability had rawly peeled to disclose a darker, heavier authority; and I was seeing, I thought, the equivalent of the ramming force of the pistons usually hidden within a smooth-running engine. More power, more relentlessness than on display to the’ world. Cruelty, in this unveiling of the man, could be considered a possibility.
His long nose and sticking-out ears quivering with the strength of his anger, he gave me a brief dismissive glance and demanded, ‘Where’s Roger?’
‘In his office,’ I said.
Oliver strode towards the office door, seemingly oblivious to the hammering activity all around him. The second car, a scarlet Ferrari, arrived to park beside his with a burning of tyres and from it, self-ejecting, came the scowling fury of Rebecca.
She was, it briefly occurred to me, the first Stratton of the day, infinitely less welcome to me than her hair-fixated brother.
Rebecca, too, in well-cut fawn trousers and brilliant scarlet sweater, resonated hotly with maximum outrage.
‘I’ll kill that verminous cretin,’ she told the world. ‘He’s begging to be run down, and I’ll do it, I swear it, if he dares to call me “ducky” again.’
I had difficulty swallowing the inappropriate laugh. Henry, having no inhibitions and sizing up the bristling feminism instantly, simply guffawed.
She half lowered her expressive eyelids and delivered a look of whole-hearted venom which left Henry unmoved.
‘Where’s Oliver?’ Her voice, like her manner, conveyed uncontrolled arrogance. ‘The man who drove in ahead of me?’
‘In that office,’ Henry said, pointing; and I swear the word ‘ducky’ got as far as his teeth.
He watched her pantherish gait as she set off away from us and for comment raised comical eyebrows, a real dagger-between-the-shoulders invitation if she’d chanced to turn round.
‘She’s good looking and brave,’ I said. ‘Pity about the rest.’
‘Who is she?’
‘The Honourable Rebecca Stratton, steeplechase jockey.’
Henry lowered his eyebrows and shrugged her out of his immediate attention.
‘Beer,’ he announced.
Another car again frustrated him; a small black Porsche this time, coasting up like a shadow from the private inner road and coming to an inconspicuous halt half hidden by one of Henry’s trucks. No driver emerged. The tinted side windows obstructed identification.
Henry frowned in the newcomer’s direction. ‘Who’s that skulking behind my lorries?’
‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘Go and see.’
He padded over, inspected briefly, padded back.
‘He’s thin, young, looks like Ducky. He’s sitting in there with the doors locked. He wouldn’t speak to me.’ Henry leered. ‘He made an Italian truck drivers’ gesture! Are you any the wiser?’
‘He just might be Forsyth Stratton. Ducky’s cousin. He looks very like her.’
Henry shrugged, his interest waning. ‘What do you want done with the empties in the bars?’
‘The caterers will deal with them.’
‘Beer, then.’
‘Beer.’
We finally lifted the elbows, discussing things as yet undone. His crew would work to midnight or later, he promised. They would sleep in the cabs of the trucks, as they often did, and would finish setting up early in the morning. His trucks would be gone by nine-thirty, all except the smallest, his own personal travelling workshop, which contained everything for maintenance and urgent repairs.
‘I’l stay for the races,’ he said. ‘Can’t miss them, after all this.’
Roger joined us, a lot of strain showing.
‘Oliver’s in one of his vilest tempers,’ he reported. ‘And as for Rebecca…’
Rebecca herself came fast on his heels but by-passed our group and tried to find a way through the bolted together fence that hid the gutted grandstand. Failing, she powered back to Roger and said forcefully, ‘Let me through that fence. I want to see how much damage has been done.’
‘I’m not in charge of the fence,’ Roger said with restraint. ‘Perhaps you should ask the police.’
‘Where are the police?’
‘On the other side of the fence.’
She narrowed her eyelids. ‘Fetch me a ladder, then.’
When Roger failed to move fast to obey her, she turned instead to a passing workman. ‘Fetch me a step-ladder,’ she told him. She gave him no ‘please’, nor ‘thank you’ when he brought one. She merely told him where to place it and gave him the slightest nod of ungracious approval when he stepped back to let her climb.
She went up the steps with assured liquid movement and looked for a long time at what the fence hid.
Henry and Roger sloped off fast like wily old soldiers and left me alone to benefit from Rebecca’s scalpel-sharp opinions. She descended the steps with the same athletic grace, cast a disparaging look at my still useful walking frame and told me to leave the racecourse at once, as I had no right to be there. I had also had no right to be in the stands two days earlier, on Friday morning, and if I were thinking of suing the Strattons for damages because of my injuries, the Strattons would sue me for trespass.
‘OK,’ I said.
She blinked. ‘OK what?’
‘Have you been talking to Keith?’
‘That’s none of your business, and I’m telling you to leave.’
‘The prosperity of this racecourse is my business,’ I said, unmoving. ‘I own eight hundredths of it. You, after probate, will own three hundredths. So who has the better right to be here?’
She narrowed the brilliant eyes, impatiently ducking the majority-of-interest issue but targeting the truly significant. ‘What do you mean, after probate? Those shares are mine, in the will.’
‘Under English law,’ I said, having discovered it in settling my mother’s affairs, ‘no one actually owns what has been bequeathed to them until the will has been proved genuine, until taxes have been paid and a certificate of probate issued.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Doesn’t alter the facts.’
‘Do you mean,’ she demanded, ‘that my father and Keith and Ivan have no right to be directors? That all their stupid decisions are null and void?’
I dashed her awakening hopes. ‘No, it doesn’t. Directors don’t have to be shareholders. Marjorie could have appointed anyone she liked, whether or not she was aware of it.’
‘You know too damned much,’ Rebecca said with resentment.
‘Are you pleased,’ I asked, ‘that the main stands are now rubble?’
<
br /> She said defiantly, ‘Yes, I am.’
‘And what would you want done?’
‘New stands, of course. Modern. Glass walled. New everything. Get rid of bloody Oliver and fuddy duddy Roger.’
‘And run things yourself?’ I said it without seriousness, but she seized on it fervently.
‘I don’t see why not! Grandfather did. We need change, now. New ideas. But this place should be run by a Stratton.’ Her zeal shone out like a vision. ‘There’s no one else in the family who knows a rabbet from a raceway. Father has to leave Stratton Hays to his heir, but the racecourse land is not entailed. He can leave his racecourse shares to me.’
‘He’s only sixty-five,’ I murmured, wondering what galvanising effect this conversation would have had on Marjorie and Dart, not to mention Roger and Oliver, and Keith.
‘I can wait. I want to ride for at least two more seasons. It’s time a woman reached the top five on the jockeys’ list, and I’m going to do that this year, bar falls and bloody stand-downs by stupid doctors. After that, I’ll manage the place.’
I listened to her confidence, not sure whether she were self-deluded or, in fact, capable.
‘The directors would have to appoint you,’ I said prosaically.
She sharpened her gaze on me assessingly. ‘So they would,’ she said slowly. ‘And I’ve two whole years to make sure that they do.’ She paused. ‘Whoever they are, by then.’
Deciding abruptly that she’d given me enough of her time she prowled back to her scarlet car, casting hungry looks left and right at the domain she aimed to rule. Marjorie, of course, would frustrate her: but couldn’t for ever, in consequence of the difference in decades. Rebecca had had that in mind.
Henry and Roger cravenly returned as Rebecca’s exhaust pipe roared towards the exit.
‘What was she saying to you?’ Roger asked curiously. ‘She looked almost human.’
‘I think she wants to take charge here, like her grandfather.’
‘Rubbish!’ He began a laugh which turned uneasily into a frown. ‘The family won’t let her.’
‘No, they won’t.’ Not this year, I thought, nor next year: but thereafter?
Roger shrugged away the untenable thought. ‘Don’t tell Oliver,’ he said. ‘He’d strangle her first.’
A policeman and the twenty-eight-year-old bomb expert came through a section of the fence, swinging it partly open, revealing the slow sifting activity of others within.
Roger and I walked to meet them and looked curiously at what they were carrying.
‘Remains of an alarm clock,’ the expert said cheerfully, holding up a cog wheel. ‘One nearly always comes across pieces of timing devices. Nothing actually vaporises with this type of explosive.’
‘What type?’ I asked.
‘P.E.4. Not Semtex. Not fertiliser and diesel oil. Not do-it-yourself terrorism. I’d say we’re handling regular army here, not Irish Republican.’
Roger, the colonel, said stiffly, ‘The army keeps strict control of detonators. P.E.4 is pussy-cat stuff without detonators.’
The expert nodded. ‘You can pat it and mould it like marzipan. I wouldn’t hit it with a hammer, though. But detonators under lock and key? Don’t make me laugh. My life would be easier if it were true. But the army’s been known to mislay tanks. What’s a little fulminate of mercury between friends?’
‘Everyone is very careful about detonators,’ Roger insisted.
‘Oh, sure.’ The expert grinned wolfishly. ‘Old soldiers could liberate a field-gun from under your nose. And – you know what they say – there’s nothing as good as a fire.’
From the look on Roger’s face, the saying was all too familiar.
‘When a certain large depot the size of five football pitches went up in flames a few years ago,’ the expert enlarged to me with unholy relish, ‘enough stuff was reported lost to fill double the space. The army produced tons of constructive paperwork to prove that all sorts of things had been sent to the depot during the week before the fire. Things that had earlier gone missing, and might have had to be accounted for, were all reported as having been “sent to the depot”. Things were reported to have been “sent to the depot” that had, after the fire, marched out of their home bases by the suitcaseful to much nearer destinations. A good fire is a godsend, right, Colonel?’
Roger said formally, ‘You don’t expect me to agree.’
‘Of course not, Colonel. But don’t tell me it’s impossible for a caseful of detonators to fail to be counted.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll grant you no one but a fool or an expert would handle them, but a word here, a word there, and there’s a market for anything under the sun.’
CHAPTER 10
The work went on.
Electric cables snaked everywhere and were gradually assimilated invisibly into the canvas. Lighting grew, looking as if it belonged there anyway. White silently whirling fans hung beneath roof vents, to get rid of smells and used air. Henry himself understood tent management and crowd comfort in a way that sweltering guests in sunbaked marquees had never imagined, and as I too put climate control near the top of all living priorities, the Stratton Park racegoers were going to breathe easily without knowing why.
The nineteenth-century chimney-born updraughts in houses had created a boom then in footstools, winged chairs and screens; twentieth-century wind tunnels meant gale-ridden city street corners.
Air pressure, air movement, air temperature; dust removal, mite reduction, dehumidification: all were not just a matter of soft self-indulgence indoors, but of positive no-allergy health and the deterrence of rot, rust, fungus and mildew. The Lazarus act on old buildings began, in my no doubt obsessional mind, with the provision of clean dry air, unobtrusively circulating.
We fed everyone from the Mayflower’s kitchen. My sons fetched and carried, acted as waiters, willingly collected rubbish and generally behaved as they never did normally unless bullied.
Roger and I consulted the racecourse’s water-main maps, and his men laid a branch pipe to the side-tents’ catering areas, with a twiglet off to the female jockeys’ changing room especially for Rebecca. Cold water, of course, but perhaps better than none. Persistent telephoning finally wrung out a promise of one Portaloo van and, from Ivan, Roger bravely cajoled a truckload of garden centre potplants.
‘He says it’s one of the top selling days in his year,’ Roger commented, putting down the receiver. ‘He says the racecourse must pay for what he sends.’
‘Charming.’
We discussed a few more arrangements before Roger bustled away, leaving me in the office. I’d begun in the past hour to find walking easier but on the other hand I felt weary across the shoulders and glad of a chance to perch a rump on the desk, avoiding the worst winces but resting arms and legs. I thought of the admonition card back home in my workshop, given me in happier times by Amanda, which read, ‘If everything is going well you have obviously overlooked something’, and idly wondered what hadn’t occurred to Roger and Henry and me that could become a hopeless disaster on the morrow.
The door opened abruptly to reveal Forsyth Stratton striding over the threshold. None of the Strattons seemed capable of entering a room slowly.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he demanded.
‘Thinking,’ I said. Thinking in fact that I was not pleased to see him, particularly if he had similar ideas to Hannah and Keith. It appeared, however, and somewhat to my relief, that his attack would be verbal, not physical.
He said with rage, ‘You’ve no right to take charge here.’
‘The Colonel’s in charge,’ I replied mildly.
‘The Colonel consults you before he does anything.’ His dark eyes glittered in the same way as Rebecca’s, and I wondered fleetingly whether either or both of them wore contact lenses. ‘And that huge man whose staff are putting up tents, he asks the Colonel for decisions, then they come and ask you, or he by-passes the Colonel and comes to you first. You’re much younger than them, b
ut whatever you say, that’s what they do. I’ve been sitting for hours watching and getting angrier and angrier, so don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. None of us want you here… just who the hell do you think you are?’
I said dryly, ‘A builder.’
‘A sodding builder shouldn’t be running our racecourse.’
‘A shareholder then. A part owner.’
‘Sod that! I’m a Stratton.’
‘Bad luck,’ I said briefly.
He was furiously affronted. His voice rose a couple of octaves and, with a vindictive twist to his mouth, he practically shouted, ‘Your sodding mother had no right to those shares. Keith should have given her a good hiding instead. And Jack says that’s just what you got from Keith yourself yesterday only not enough and you’ve a sodding nerve to stick your snout into our affairs and if you’re thinking of screwing money out of us you can piss in the wind.’
The incoherence of his speech only added to the bile pouring out of him. As far as I was concerned I’d taken one insult too many from the Strattons and it annoyed me into a brutality I seldom felt. I said, with intention to wound, ‘You don’t have an ounce of authority in your own family. They ignore you. They won’t even look at you. What have you done?’
His hands rose fast, closing into fists. He took a fierce step forward. I stood up straight, not looking (I hoped) the pushover I actually was and, regardless of the threat, and with hot blood, I taunted him, ‘I’d guess it’s cost them a fortune to keep you free, walking about and out of prison.’
He yelled, ‘Shut up, shut up. I’ll complain to Aunt Marjorie.’ One of his fists made a pass near my chin.
‘Complain,’ I said. I strove unsuccessfully to regain the tatters of my temper, but even to my own ears, my words came out hurtful and rough. ‘You’re a fool, Forsyth, and no doubt also a knave, and Marjorie despises you enough already, without you snivelling to her to have your pitiful nose wiped. And if you could see the ugly mess hate’s making of your face, you’d run a mile and hide.’
That last childish jibe pierced him keenly. He clearly liked his own good looks. The spiteful facial contortions slackened, the lips lost their rigidity and covered the teeth and his sallow skin reddened.
