by Dick Francis
I was amused and far from minding. Life was like that. I might as well make the most of Malcolm’s coat-tails while I was on them, I thought. I asked if I could see round the trainer’s yard next time I was in Newmarket, and he said sure, he’d like it, and almost seemed to mean it.
‘I’m sometimes there with George and Jo,’ I said. ‘Schooling their few jumpers. I ride them in amateur’chases.’ Everyone in Newmarket knew who George and Jo were: they were the equivalent of minor royalty.
‘Oh, that’s you, is it?’ He put a few things together. ‘Didn’t realise that was you.’
‘Mm.’
‘Then come any time.’ He sounded warmer, more positive. ‘I mean it,’ he said.
The way upwards in racing, I thought, ironic at myself, could lead along devious paths. I thanked him without effusiveness, and said ‘Soon.’
Blue Clancy went out to the parade and the rest of us moved to the owners’ and trainers’ stand, which was near the core of things and buzzing with other similar groups locked in identical tensions.
‘What chance has he got?’ Malcolm demanded of me. ‘Seriously.’ His eyes searched my face as if for truth, which wasn’t what I thought he wanted to hear.
‘A bit better than he had on Thursday, since the second favourite has been scratched.’ He wanted me to tell him more, however unrealistic, so I said, ‘He’s got a good chance of being placed. Anything can happen. He could win.’
Malcolm nodded, not knowing whether or not to believe me, but wanting to. Well and truly hooked, I thought, and felt fond of him.
I thought in my heart of hearts that the horse would finish sixth or seventh, not disgraced but not in the money. I’d backed him on the pari-mutuel but only out of loyalty: I’d backed the French horse Meilleurs Voeux out of conviction.
Blue Clancy moved well going down to the start. This was always the best time for owners, I thought, while the heart beat with expectation and while the excuses, explanations, disappointments were still ten minutes away. Malcolm lifted my binoculars to his eyes with hands that were actually trembling.
The trainer himself was strung up, I saw, however he might try to disguise it. There was only one‘Arc’ in a year, of course, and too few years in a lifetime.
The horses seemed to circle for an interminable time at the gate but were finally fed into the slots to everyone’s satisfaction. The gates crashed open, the thundering rainbow poured out, and twenty-six of Europe’s best thoroughbreds were out on the right-hand circuit straining to be the fastest, strongest, bravest over one and a half miles of grass.
‘Do you want your binoculars?’ Malcolm said, hoping not.
‘No. Keep them, I can see.’
I could see Ramsey Osborn’s colours on the rails halfway back in the field, the horse moving easily, as were all the others at that point of the race. In the‘Arc’, the essentials were simple: to be in the first ten coming round the last long right-hand bend, not to swing too wide into the straight and, according to the horse’s stamina, pile on the pressure and head for home. Sometimes in a slow-starting‘Arc’, one jockey would slip the field on the bend and hang on to his lead; in others, there would be war throughout to a whisker verdict. Blue Clancy’s ‘Arc’ seemed to be run at give-no-quarter speed, and he came into the finishing straight in a bunch of flying horses, lying sixth or eighth, as far as I could see.
Malcolm shouted‘Come on,’ explosively as if air had backed up in his lungs from not breathing, and the ladies around us in silk dresses and hats, and the men in grey morning suits, infected by the same urgency, yelled and urged and cursed in polyglot babel. Malcolm put down the raceglasses and yelled louder, totally involved, rapt, living through his eyes.
Blue Clancy was doing his bit, I thought. He hadn’t blown up. In fact, he was hanging on to fifth place. Going faster. Fourth …
The trainer, more restrained than owners, was now saying, ‘Come on, come on’ compulsively under his breath, but two of the horses already in front suddenly came on faster than Blue Clancy and drew away from the field, and the real hope died in the trainer with a sigh and a sag to the shoulders.
The finish the crowd watched was a humdinger which only a photograph could decide. The finish Malcolm, Ramsey, the trainer and I watched was two lengths further back, where Blue Clancy and his jockey, never giving up, were fighting all out to the very end, flashing across the line absolutely level with their nearest rival, only the horse’s nose in front taking his place on the nod.
‘On the nod,’ the trainer said, echoing my thought.
‘What does that mean?’ Malcolm demanded. He was high with excitement, flushed, his eyes blazing. ‘Were we third? Say we were third.’
‘I think so,’ the trainer said. ‘There’ll be a photograph.’
We hurried down from the stand to get to the unsaddling enclosure, Malcolm still short of breath and slightly dazed. ‘What does on the nod mean?’ he asked me.
‘A galloping horse pokes his head out forward with each stride in a sort of rhythm, forward, back, forward, back. If two horses are as close as they were, and one horse’s nose is forward when it passes the finishing line, and the other horse’s happens to be back… well, that’s on the nod.’
‘Just luck, you mean?’
‘Luck.’
‘My God,’ he said, ‘I never thought I’d feel like that. I never thought I’d care. 1 only did it for a jaunt.’
He looked almost with wonderment at my face, as if I’d beenbefore him into a far country and he’d now discovered the mystery for himself.
Ramsey Osborn, who had roared with the best, beamed with pleasure when an announcement confirmed Blue Clancy’s third place, saying he was sure glad the half-share sale had turned out fine. There were congratulations all round, with Malcolm and Ramsey being introduced to the owners of the winner, who were Italian and didn’t understand Ramsey’s drawl. Press photographers flashed like popping suns. There were television cameras, enquiring journalists, speeches, presentations. Malcolm looked envious of the Italian owners: third was fine but winning was better.
The four of us went for a celebratory drink; champagne, of course.
‘Let’s go for it,’ Ramsey said. ‘The Breeders’ Cup. All the way.’
‘We’ll have to see how he is after today,’ the trainer said warningly. ‘He had a hard race.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ Ramsey said with hearty confidence. ‘Did you see the distance? Two lengths behind the winner. That’s world class and no kidding.’
The trainer looked thoughtful but didn’t argue. The favourite, undeniably world class, had finished second, victory snatched away no doubt by his earlier exhausting outing. He might not come back at all after his gruelling‘Arc’. The French favourite (and mine), Meilleurs Voeux, had finished fifth which made Blue Clancy better than I’d thought. Maybe he wouldn’t be disgraced in the Breeders’ Cup, if we went. I hoped we would go, but I was wary of hope.
The afternoon trickled away with the champagne, and Malcolm, almost as tired as his horse, sank euphorically into the limousine going back to the airport and closed his eyes in the jet.
‘My first ever runner,’ he said sleepily. ‘Third in the “Arc”. Not bad, eh?’
‘Not bad.’
‘I’m going to call the yearling Chrysos.’
‘Why Chrysos?’ I said.
He smiled without opening his eyes, it’s Greek for gold.’
Malcolm was feeling caged in the Savoy.
On Sunday night, when we returned from Paris, he’d hardly had the energy to undress. By Monday morning, he was pacing the carpetwith revitalised energy and complaining that another week in the suite would drive him bonkers.
‘I’m going back to Quantum,’ he said. ‘I miss the dogs.’
I said with foreboding, ‘It would take the family half a day at most to find out you were there.’
‘I can’t help it. I can’t hide for ever. You can come and stay close to me there.’
&nb
sp; ‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘You’re safe here.’
‘Keep me safe at Quantum.’
He was adamant and began packing, and short of roping him to the bedstead, I couldn’t stop him.
Just before we left, I telephoned Norman West and found him at home — which didn’t bode well for the investigations. He was happy to tell me, he said, that it was now certain Mrs Deborah Pembroke, Ferdinand’s wife, couldn’t have been at Newmarket Bloodstock Sales, as on that day she had done a photo-modelling session. He had checked up with the magazine that morning, as Mrs Deborah had told him he could, and they had provided proof.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘What about Ferdinand himself?’
‘Mr Ferdinand was away from his office on both those days. Working at home on the Friday. The next week, he attended a course on the statistical possibilities of insurance fraud. He says that after registration on the Monday, they kept no record of attendance. I checked there too, and no one clearly remembers, they’re all half strangers to each other.’
I sighed. ‘Well… my father and I are going back to Quantum.’
‘That’s not wise, surely.’
‘He’s tired of imprisonment. Report to us there, will you?’
He said he would, when he had more news.
Cross off Debs, I thought. Bully for Debs.
I drove us down to Berkshire, stopping at Arthur Bellbrook’s house in the village to collect the dogs. The two full-grown Dobermanns greeted Malcolm like puppies, prancing around him and rubbing against his legs as he slapped and fondled them. Real love on both sides, I saw. Uncomplicated by greed, envy or rejection.
Malcolm looked up and saw me watching him.
‘You should get a dog,’ he said. ‘You need something to love.’
He could really hit home, I thought.
He bent back to his friends, playing with their muzzles, letting them try to snap at his fingers, knowing they wouldn’t bite. Theyweren’t guard dogs as such: he liked Dobermanns for their muscular agility, for their exuberance. I’d been brought up with relays of them around me, but it wasn’t the affection of dogs I wanted, and I’d never asked for one of my own.
I thought of the afternoon he’d let them out of the kitchen and then been hit on the head. The dogs must have seen or sensed someone there. Though not guard dogs, they should still have warned Malcolm.
‘Do those two dogs bark when strangers call?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course.’ Malcolm straightened, still smiling, letting the lithe bodies press against his knees. ‘Why?’
‘Did they bark a week last Friday, when you set out to walk them?’
The smile died out of his face. With almost despair he said, ‘No. I don’t think so. I don’t remember. No… not especially. They were pleased to be going out.’
‘How many of the family do they know well?’ I said.
‘Everyone’s been to the house several times since Moira died. All except you. I thought at first it was to support me, but …’ he shrugged with disillusion, ‘they were all busy making sure none of the others ingratiated themselves with me and cut them out.’
Every possibility led back to the certainty we couldn’t accept.
Malcolm shuddered and said he would walk through the village with the dogs. He would meet people he knew on the way, and there were people in that village who’d been close friends with Vivien, Alicia and Joyce and had sided with them, and had since fed them inflammatory half-lies about Malcolm’s doings.
‘You know the village grapevine is faster than telex,’ I said. ‘Put the dogs in the car.’
He wouldn’t listen. It was only six days since the second time someone had tried to kill him, but he was already beginning to believe there would be no more attempts. Well, no more that morning, I supposed. He walked a mile and a half with the dogs, and I drove slowly ahead, looking back, making sure at each turn that he was coming into sight. When he reached the house safely, he said I was being over-protective.
‘I thought that was what you wanted,’ I said.
‘It is and it isn’t.’
Surprisingly, I understood him. He was afraid and ashamed of it, and in consequence felt urged to bravado. Plain straightforward fear, I thought, would have been easier to deal with. At least I got him towait outside with the dogs for company while I went into the house to reconnoitre, but no one had been there laying booby traps, no one was hiding behind doors with raised blunt instruments, no one had sent parcel bombs in the post.
I fetched him, and we unpacked. We both took it for granted I would sleep in my old room, and I made up the bed there. I had bought provisions in London to the extent of bread, milk, lemons, smoked salmon and caviar, a diet both of us now considered normal. There was champagne in the cellar and a freezer full of post-Moira TV dinners in cardboard boxes. We weren’t going to starve, I thought, inspecting them, though we might get indigestion.
Malcolm spent the afternoon in his office opening letters and talking to his stockbroker on the telephone, and at the routine time proposed to give the dogs their pre-dinner walk.
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.
He nodded without comment, and in the crisp early October air we set off down the garden, through the gate into the field, and across to the willow-lined stream he had been aiming for ten days earlier.
We had all sailed toy boats down that stream when we’d been children, and picked watercress there, and got thoroughly wet and muddy as a matter of course. Alicia had made us strip, more than once, before she would let us into her bridal-white kitchen.
‘Last Monday,’ Malcolm said casually, watching the dogs sniff for water rats round the tree roots, ‘I made a new will.’
‘Did you?’
‘I did. In Cambridge. I thought I might as well. The old one left a lot to Moira. And then, after that Friday… well, I wanted to put things in order, in case… just in case.’
‘What did you do with it?’ I asked.
He seemed amused. ‘The natural question is surely, “What’s in it? What have you left to me?”’
‘Mm,’ I said dryly. ‘I’m not asking that, ever. What I’m asking is more practical.’
‘I left it with the solicitor in Cambridge,’
We were wandering slowly along towards the stream, the dogs quartering busily. The willow leaves, yellowing, would fall in droves in the next gale, and there was bonfire smoke drifting somewhere in the still air.
‘Who knows where your will is?’ I asked.
‘I do. And the solicitor.’
‘Who’s the solicitor?’
‘I saw his name on a brass plate outside his office and went in on impulse. I’ve got his card somewhere. We discussed what I wanted, he had it typed up, and I signed it with witnesses in his office and left it there for safekeeping.’
‘For a brilliant man,’ I said peaceably, ‘you’re as thick as two planks.’
Nine
Malcolm said explosively, ‘You’re bloody rude,’ and, after a pause, in what way am I thick? A new will was essential.’
‘Suppose you died without telling me or anybody else you’d made it, or where it could be found?’
‘Oh.’ He was dismayed, then brightened. ‘The solicitor would have produced it.’
If he knew you by reputation, if he had any idea of the sums involved, if he heard you were dead, if he were conscientious, and if he knew who to get in touch with. If he were lazy, he might not bother, he’s under no obligation. Within a month, unless you boasted a bit about your wealth, he’ll have forgotten your will’s in his files.’
‘You seem to know an awful lot about it.’
‘Joyce worked for years for the Citizens Advice Bureau, do you remember? I used to hear lurid tales of family squabbles because no one knew where to find a will they were sure had been made. And equally lurid tales of family members knowing where the will was and burning it before anyone else could find it, if they didn’t like what was in it.’
‘That’s why
I left it in safekeeping,’ Malcolm said. ‘Precisely because of that.’
We reached the far boundary of the field. The stream ran on through the neighbour’s land, but we at that point turned back.
‘What should I do then?’ he asked. ‘Any ideas?’
‘Send it to the probate office at Somerset House.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Joyce told me about it, one time. You put your will in a special envelope they’ll send you if you apply for it, then you take it or send it to the central probate office. They register your will there and keep it safe. When anyone dies and any solicitor anywhere applies for probate, the central probate office routinely checks its files. If it has ever registered a will for that person, that’s die envelope that will be opened, and that’s the will that will be proved.’
He thought it over. ‘Do you mean, if I registered a will with the probate office, and then changed my mind and wrote a new one, it wouldn’t be any good?’
‘You’d have to retrieve the old will and re-register the new one. Otherwise the old will would be the one adhered to.’
‘Good God. I didn’t know any of this.’
‘Joyce says not enough people know. She says if people would only register their wills, they couldn’t be pressured into changing them when they’re gaga or frightened or on their deathbeds. Or at least, wills made like that would be useless.’
‘I used to laugh, rather, at Joyce’s voluntary work. Felt indulgent.’ He sighed. ‘Seems it had its uses.’
The Citizens Advice Bureau, staffed by knowledgeable armies of Joyces, could steer one from the cradle to the grave, from marriage to divorce to probate, from child allowance to old age supplements. I’d not always listened attentively to Joyce’s tales, but I’d been taken several times to the Bureau, and I seemed to have absorbed more than I’d realised.
