by Dick Francis
‘When the driver returns from taking your father,’ he said to me, disconnecting, ‘we can spare him to ferry you back to your car.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’m trusting you, you know, to maintain communications between me and your father.’
‘I’ll telephone here every morning, if you like.’
‘I’d much rather know where he is.’
I shook my head. ‘The fewer people know, the safer.’
He couldn’t exactly accuse me of taking unreasonable precautions, so he left it, and asked instead, ‘What did your half-brother burn you with?’
‘A cigarette. Nothing fancy.’
‘And what information did he want?’
‘Where I’d hidden my new cricket bat,’ I answered: but it hadn’t been about cricket bats, it had been about illegitimacy, which I hadn’t known at the time but had come to understand since.
‘How old were you both?’
‘I was eleven. Gervase must have been thirteen.’
‘Why didn’t you give him the bat?’ Yale asked.
‘It wasn’t the bat I wouldn’t give him. It was the satisfaction. Is this part of your enquiries?’
‘Everything is,’ he said laconically.
The hired car was movable when I got back to it and as it was pointing in that direction I drove it along to Quantum. There were still amazing numbers of people there, and I couldn’t get past the now more substantial barrier across the drive until the policeman guarding it had checked with Superintendent Yale by radio
‘Sorry, sir,’ one of them said, finally letting me in. ‘The superintendent’s orders.’
I nodded and drove on, parking in front of thf .bease beside two police cars which had presumably returned from taking the many family members to their various cars.
I had already grown accustomed to the sight of the house; it still looked as horrific but held no more shocks. Another policeman walked purposefully towards me as I got out of the car and asked what I wanted. To look through the downstairs windows, I said.
He checked by radio. The superintendent replied that I could look through the windows as long as the constable remained at my side, and as long as 1 would point out to him anything I thought looked wrong. I readily agreed to that. With the constable beside me, I walked towards the place where the hall could still be discerned,skirting the heavy front door, which had been blown outwards, frame and all, when the brickwork on either side of it had given way.
QUANTUM IN ME FUIT lay face downwards on the gravel. I did the best I could. Someone’s best, I thought, grateful to be alive, hadn’t quite been good enough.
‘Don’t go in, sir,’ the young constable said warningly. ‘There’s more could come down.’
I didn’t try to go in. The hall was full of ceilings and floors and walls from upstairs, though one could see daylight over the top of the heap, the daylight from the back garden. Somewhere in the heap were all of Malcolm’s clothes except the ones he’d worn to Cheltenham, all his vicuna coats and handmade shoes, all of the gold-and-silver brushes he’d packed on his flight to Cambridge, and somewhere, too, the portrait of Moira.
Jagged arrows of furniture stuck up from the devastation like the arms of the drowning, and pieces of dusty unrecognisable fabric flapped forlornly when a gust of wind took them. Tangled there, too, was everything I’d brought with me from my flat, save only my racing kit - saddle, helmet and holdall—which was still in the boot of the car along with Malcolm’s briefcase. Everything was replaceable, I supposed; and I felt incredibly glad I hadn’t thought of bringing the silver-framed picture of Coochie and the boys.
There was glass everywhere along the front of the house, fallen from the shattered windows. With the constable in tow, I crunched along towards the office, passing the ruins of the downstairs cloakroom on the way, where a half-demolished wall had put paid to the plumbing.
The office walls themselves, like those of the kitchen, were intact, but the office door that I’d set at such a careful angle was wide open with another brick and plaster glacier spilling through it. The shockwave that must have passed through the room to smash its way out through the windows had lifted every unweighted sheet of paper and redistributed it on the floor. Most of the pictures and countless small objects were down there also, including, I noticed, the pen pot holding the piece of wire. Apart from the ancient bevelled glass of a splendid breakfront bookcase which stood along one wall, everything major looked restorable, though getting rid of the dust would be a problem in itself.
I spent a good deal of time gazing through the open spaces of the office windows, but in the end had to admit defeat. The positions oftoo much had been altered for me to see anything inexplicably wrong. I’d seen nothing significant in there the previous evening when I’d fetched Malcolm’s briefcase, when I’d been wide awake with alarm to such things.
Shaking my head I moved on round the house, passing the still shut and solidly bolted garden door which marked the end of the indoor passage. The blast hadn’t shifted it, had dissipated on nearer targets. Past it lay the long creeper-covered north wall of the old playroom, and I walked along there and round into the rear garden.
The police had driven stakes into the lawn and tied ropes to them, making a line for no one to cross. Behind the rope the crowd persisted, open-eyed, chattering, pointing, coming to look and moving away to trail back over the fields. Among them Arthur Bellbrook, the dogs at his side, was holding a mini-court in a semicircle of respectful listeners. The reporters and Press photographers seemed to have vanished but other cameras still clicked in a barrage. There was a certain restrained orderliness about everything which struck me hard as incongruous.
Turning my back to the gawpers, I looked through the playroom window, seeing it, like the office, from the opposite angle to the previous night. Apart from the boxroom and my bedroom, it was the only room unmetamorphosed by Moira, and it still looked what it had been for forty years, the private domain of children.
The old battered armchairs were still there, and the big table that with a little imagination had been fort, boat, spaceship and dungeon in its time. The long shelves down the north wall still bore generations of train sets, building sets, board games and stuffed toys. Robin and Peter’s shiny new bicycles were still propped there, that had been the joy of their lives in the week before the crash. There were posters of pop groups pinned to the walls and a bookcase bulging with reprehensible tastes.
The explosion on the other side of the thick load-bearing wall had done less damage to the playroom than to anywhere else I’d seen; only the broken windows and the ubiquitous dust, which had flooded in from the passage, showed that anything had happened. A couple of teddy bears had tumbled off the shelves, but the bicycles were still standing.
Anything there that shouldn’t be there, anything not there that should be, Yale had said. I hadn’t seen anything the night before in those categories, and I still couldn’t.
With a frustrated shrug, I skirted the poured-out guts of the house and on the far side looked through the dining-room windows. Like the playroom, the dining-room was relatively undamaged, though here the blast had blown in directly from the hall, leaving the now familiar tongue of rubble and covering everything with a thick grey film. For ever after, I would equate explosions with dust.
The long table, primly surrounded by high-backed chairs, stood unmoved. Some display plates held in wires on the wall had broken and fallen off. The sideboard was bare, but then it had been before. Malcolm had said the room had hardly been used since he and Moira had taken to shouting.
I continued round to the kitchen and went in through the door, to the agitation of the constable. I told him I’d been in there earlier to fetch the pine chair, which someone had since brought back, and he relaxed a very little.
‘That door,’ I said, pointing to one in a corner, ‘leads to the cellars. Do you know if anyone’s been down there?’
He didn’t think so. He was pret
ty sure not. He hadn’t heard anyone mention cellars.
The two underground rooms lay below the kitchen and dining-room, and without electric lights I wasn’t keen to go down there. Still… what excuse did I have not to?
Malcolm kept some claret in racks there, enough to grieve him if the bottles were broken. Coochie had used the cellars romantically for candlelit parties with red-checked tablecloths and gypsy music, and the folding tables and chairs were still stacked there, along with the motley junk of ages that was no longer used but too valuable to throw away.
‘Do you have a torch, constable?’ I asked.
No, he hadn’t. I went to fetch the one I’d installed by habit in the hired car and, in spite of his disapproval, investigated downstairs. He followed me, to do him justice.
To start with, the cellars were dry, which was a relief as I’d been afraid the water from the storage tank and the broken pipes would have drained down and flooded them.
None of Malcolm’s bottles was broken. The chimney wall, continuing downwards as sturdy foundations, had sheltered everything on its outer side as stalwartly below as it had above.
The dire old clutter of pensioned-off standard lamps, rocking-chair, pictures, tin trunk, tiger skin, bed headboard, tea-trolley, alltook brief life in the torchlight and faded back to shadow. Same old junk, undisturbed.
All that one could say again was that nothing seemed to be there in the cellar that shouldn’t be, and nothing not there that should. Shrugging resignedly, I led the way upstairs and closed the door.
Outside again, I looked into the garage, which seemed completely untouched, and walked round behind it to the kitchen garden. The glass in the old greenhouse was broken, and I supposed Moira’s little folly, away on the far side of the garden, would have suffered the same fate.
I dearly wanted to go down to the far end of the kitchen garden to make sure the gold store was safe, but was deterred by the number of interested eyes already swivelled my way, and particularly by Arthur Bellbrook’s.
The wall itself looked solid enough. The crowds were nowhere near it, as it was away to the left, while they were coming in from the fields on the right.
The constable stood by my side, ready to accompany me everywhere.
Shrugging, I retreated. Have faith, I thought, and drove away to London.
Twelve
Malcolm had achieved a double suite at the Ritz with views of Green Park. He had lunched on Strasbourg pâté and Dover sole, according to the remains on the white-clothed room-service table, and had reached the lower half of a bottle of Krug.
‘How are the shakes?’ I said, putting his briefcase down beside him.
‘Were you followed here?’ he asked.
‘I was not.’
He was doing his best to pretend he had regained total command of himself, yet I guessed the train journey had been an anxious and lonely ordeal. It was difficult for me to imagine the escalating trauma within him. How could anyone be the target of deadly unrelenting virulence and not in the end break down? I’d got to invent something better for him, I thought, than cooping him up in millionaire cells. Make him safe, give him back his lightheartedness, set him free.
‘Um,’ I said, i hope your passport’s still in your briefcase.’
‘Yes, it is.’ He had taken it in his briefcase to Paris.
‘Good.’
An unfortunate thought struck him. ‘Where’s yours?’ Malcolm asked.
‘In the rubble. Don’t worry, I’ll get a replacement. Do you have a visa for America?’
‘Yes. I also had one for Australia once, but they only last a year. If we go, we’ll have to get new visas from Australia House.’
‘How about if you go to America tomorrow?’ I said.
‘Tomorrow? How can I?’
‘I’ll take you safely to Heathrow and see you off.’
‘Dammit, that’s not what I meant.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Well… the Breeders’ Cup races are three weeks tomorrow at Santa Anita. Why don’t we phone Ramsey Osborn? Why don’t we phone Blue Clancy’s trainer? Why don’t you fly to Los Angeles tomorrow and have a n’ne old time at the races for three weeks? They have racing every day on the same track. If I know you, you’ll be cronies with the racetrack committee immediately. Ramsey Osborn will send introductions. You can stay where the Breeders’ Cup organisers do, at the Beverly Wilshire hotel which I’ve heard is right at the end of Rodeo Drive where there’s a man’s shop so expensive you have to make an appointment to be let in. Buy a few shirts there, it’ll make a nice dent in your bankroll. Forget Quantum. Forget the bloody family. They won’t know where you are and they’ll never find you.’
I stopped only a fraction for breath, not long enough for him to raise objections. ‘On the Tuesday after the Breeders’ Cup, they’re running the Melbourne Cup in Melbourne, Australia. That’s their biggest race. The whole country stops for it. A lot of the people from the Breeders’ Cup will go on to Australia. You’ll have made cronies among them by the dozen. I’ve heard it’s all marvellous. I’ve never been, and I’d love to. I’ll join you as soon as my passport’s renewed and I’ll go on minding your back - if you still want me to.’
He had listened at first with apathy, but by the end he was smiling. I’d proposed the sort of impulsive behaviour that had greatly appealed to him in the past, and it still did, I was grateful to see.
‘A damn sight better than rotting at the Ritz,’ he announced.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Get out your diary for the numbers.’
It was soon settled. Blue Clancy would go over for the Breeders’ Cup as long as he was fit. Ramsey Osborn, booming away in Stamford, Connecticut, promised introductions galore to a score of very dear friends he’d met a couple of times out West. Why didn’t Malcolm stop off at Lexington on the way and feast his eyes on some real bloodstock? Ramsey had some very good friends in Lexington who would be delighted to have Malcolm stay with them. Ramsey would call them and fix it. Stay by the phone, you guys, he said. He would fix it and call back. It was breakfast time in Connecticut, he said. It would be an hour earlier in Lexington. He would see if the lazy so and so’s were out of bed.
Whether they were or they weren’t, Ramsey phoned back within twenty minutes. As before, Malcolm talked on the sitting-room telephone, I on the extension in my bedroom.
‘All set,’ Ramsey said. ‘They’re expecting you, Malcolm, tomorrow, and I’m flying down Sunday. They’re real sweet guys, you’ll love them. Dave and Sally Cander. Dogwood Drift Farm, outside of Lexington.’ He read out the telephone number. ‘You got that?’
Malcolm had got it.
Ramsey asked where Malcolm was planning to stay for the Breeders’ Cup. ‘Beverly Wilshire? Couldn’t be better. Centre of the universe. I’ll make reservations right away.’
Malcolm explained he needed a two-bedroom suite for himself and me. Sure thing, Ramsey agreed. No problem. See you, he said. We had made his day, he said, and to have a good one.
The sitting-room seemed smaller and quieter when he’d gone off the line, but Malcolm had revitalised remarkably. We went at once by taxi to Australia House where Malcolm got his visa without delay, and on the way back stopped first at his bank for more travellers’ cheques and then in Piccadilly a little short of the Ritz to shop in Simpson’s for replacement clothes from the skin up, not forgetting suitcases to pack them in. Malcolm paid for all of mine with his credit card, which was a relief. I hardly liked to ask him outright for my fare to California, but he’d thought of my other finances himself already and that evening gave me a bumper cheque to cover several additional destinations.
‘Your fare and so on. Pay Arthur Bellbrook. Pay Norman West. Pay the contractors for weatherproofing Quantum. Pay for the hired car. Pay your own expenses. Anything else?’
‘Tickets to Australia?’
‘We’ll get those in the morning. I’ll pay for them here, with mine to Lexington. If we can get you a Los Angeles ticket without a date on, I ca
n pay for that, too.’
We made plans about telephone calls. He was not to phone me, I would phone him.
We dined in good spirits, the dreadful morning at least overlaid. He raised his glass: ‘To Blue Clancy’ and ‘To racing’ and ‘To life.’
‘To life,’ I said.
I drove him to Heathrow in the morning safely as promised, and saw him on his way to Lexington via New York and Cincinnati. He was fizzing at least at half strength and gave me a long blue look before he departed.
‘Don’t think I don’t know what I owe you,’ he said.
‘You owe me nothing.’
‘Bloody Moira,’ he said unexpectedly, and looked back and waved as he went.
Feeling good about him, I telephoned from the airport to Superintendent Yale but got one of his assistants: his chief was out at Quantum and had left a message that if I phoned I was to be asked if I could join him. Yes, I could, I agreed, and arrived in the village about forty minutes later.
The road to the house wasn’t as congested as the day before, but fresh waves of sightseers still came and went continuously. I drove up to the gate and after radio consultation the constable there let me pass. Another policeman was at my side the moment I stopped in front of the house. Different men, both of them, from the day before.
Superintendent Yale appeared from the direction of the kitchen, having been alerted by the gateman, I surmised.
‘How is Mr Pembroke?’ he asked, shaking hands with every sign of having adopted humanity as a policy.
‘Shaken,’ I said.
He nodded understandingly. He was wearing an overcoat and looked cold in the face, as if he’d been out of doors for some time. The mild wind of yesterday had intensified rawly and the clouds looked more threatening, as if it would rain. Yale glanced with anxiety at the heavens and asked me to go round with him to the back garden.
The front of the house looked sad and blind, with light brown plywood hammered over all the windows and a heavy black tarpaulin hanging from under the roof to hide the hole in the centre. At the rear, the windows were shuttered and the bare roof rafters were covered but the devastated centre was still open to the elements. Several men in hard hats and overalls were working there, slowly picking up pieces from the huge jumble and carrying them to throw them into a rubbish skip which stood a short distance away across the lawn.
