For Kicks

by Dick Francis

  She was wearing a straightish dress of soft looking knobbly green tweed with a row of silver buttons from throat to hem. Her chestnut hair hung in a clean shining bob on her shoulders and was held back from her forehead by a wide green band, and with her fluffy eyelashes and pale pink mouth she looked about as enticing an interruption as a hard worked stable hand could ask for.

  ‘Hullo, Danny boy,’ she said.

  ‘Good afternoon, miss.’

  ‘I saw you from my window,’ she said.

  I turned in surprise, because I had thought October’s house entirely hidden by trees, but sure enough, up the slope, one stone corner and a window could be seen through a gap in the leafless boughs. It was, however, a long way off. If Patty had recognised me from that distance she had been using binoculars.

  ‘You looked a bit lonely, so I came down to talk to you.’

  ‘Thank you, miss.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, lowering the eyelashes, ‘the rest of the family don’t get here until this evening, and I had nothing to do in that barn of a place all by myself, and I was bored. So I thought I’d come down and talk to you.’

  ‘I see.’ I leant on the broom, looking at her lovely face and thinking that there was an expression in her eyes too old for her years.

  ‘It’s rather cold out here, don’t you think? I want to talk to you about something… don’t you think we could stand in the shelter of that doorway?’ Without waiting for an answer she walked towards the doorway in question, which was that of the hay barn, and went inside. I followed her, resting the broom against the door post on the way.

  ‘Yes, miss?’ I said. The light was dim in the barn.

  It appeared that talking was not her main object after all.

  She put her hands round the back of my neck and offered her mouth for a kiss. I bent my head and kissed her. She was no virgin, October’s daughter. She kissed with her tongue and with her teeth, and she moved her stomach rhythmically against mine. My muscles turned to knots. She smelled sweetly of fresh soap, more innocent than her behaviour.

  ‘Well… that’s all right, then,’ she said with a giggle, disengaging herself and heading for the bulk of the bales of hay which half filled the barn.

  ‘Come on,’ she said over her shoulder, and climbed up the bales to the flat level at the top. I followed her slowly. When I got to the top I sat looking down at the hay barn floor with the broom, the bucket and the rug touched with sunshine through the doorway. On top of the hay had been Philip’s favourite play place for years when he was little… and this is a fine time to think of my family, I thought.

  Patty was lying on her back three feet away from me. Her eyes were wide and glistening, and her mouth curved open in an odd little smile. Slowly, holding my gaze, she undid all the silver buttons down the front of her dress to a point well below her waist. Then she gave a little shake so that the edges of the dress fell apart.

  She had absolutely nothing on underneath.

  I looked at her body, which was pearl pink and slender, and very desirable; and she gave a little rippling shiver of anticipation.

  I looked back at her face. Her eyes were big and dark, and the odd way in which she was smiling suddenly struck me as being half furtive, half greedy; and wholly sinful. I had an abrupt vision of myself as she must see me, as I had seen myself in the long mirror in October’s London house, a dark, flashy looking stable boy with an air of deceitfulness and an acquaintance with dirt.

  I understood her smile, then.

  I turned round where I sat until I had my back to her, and felt a flush of anger and shame spread all over my body.

  ‘Do your dress up,’ I said.

  ‘Why? Are you impotent after all, Danny boy?’

  ‘Do your dress up,’ I repeated. ‘The party’s over.’

  I slid down the hay, walked across the floor and out of the door without looking back. Twitching up the broom and cursing under my breath I let out my fury against myself by scrubbing the rug until my arms ached.

  After a while I saw her (green dress re-buttoned) come slowly out of the hay barn, look around her, and go across to a muddy puddle on the edge of the tarmac. She dirtied her shoes thoroughly in it, then childishly walked on to the rug I had just cleaned, and wiped all the mud off carefully in the centre.

  Her eyes were wide and her face expressionless as she looked at me.

  ‘You’ll be sorry, Danny boy,’ she said simply, and without haste strolled away down the yard, the chestnut hair swinging gently on the green tweed dress.

  I scrubbed the rug again. Why had I kissed her? Why, after knowing about her from that kiss, had I followed her up into the hay? Why had I been such a stupid, easily roused, lusting fool? I was filled with useless dismay.

  One didn’t have to accept an invitation to dinner, even if the appetiser made one hungry. But having accepted, one should not so brutally reject what was offered. She had every right to be angry.

  And I had every reason to be confused. I had been for nine years a father to two girls, one of whom was nearly Patty’s age. I had taught them when they were little not to take lifts from strangers and when they were bigger how to avoid more subtle snares. And here I was, indisputably on the other side of the parental fence.

  I felt an atrocious sense of guilt towards October, for I had had the intention, and there was no denying it, of doing what Patty wanted.

  Chapter 7

  It was Elinor who rode out on my horse the following morning, and Patty, having obviously got her to change mounts, studiously refused to look at me at all.

  Elinor, a dark scarf protecting most of the silver blonde hair, accepted a leg up with impersonal grace, gave me a warm smile of thanks and rode away at the head of the string with her sister. When we got back after the gallops, however, she led the horse into its box and did half of the jobs for it while I was attending to Sparking Plug. I didn’t know what she was doing until I walked down the yard, and was surprised to find her there, having grown used to Patty’s habit of bolting the horse into the box still complete with saddle, bridle, and mud.

  ‘You go and get the hay and water,’ she said. ‘I’ll finish getting the dirt off, now I’ve started.’

  I carried away the saddle and bridle to the tack room, and took back the hay and water. Elinor gave the horse’s mane a few final strokes with the brush, and I put on his rug and buckled the roller round his belly. She watched while I tossed the straw over the floor to make a comfortable bed, and waited until I had bolted the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much.’

  She smiled faintly, ‘It’s a pleasure. It really is. I like horses. Especially race horses. Lean and fast and exciting.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. We walked down the yard together, she to go to the gate and I to the cottage which stood beside it.

  ‘They are so different from what I do all the week,’ she said.

  ‘What do you do all the week?’

  ‘Oh… study. I’m at Durham University.’ There was a sudden, private, recollecting grin. Not for me. On level terms, I thought, one might find more in Elinor than good manners.

  ‘It’s really extraordinary how well you ride,’ she said suddenly. ‘I heard Mr Inskip telling Father this morning that it would be worth getting a licence for you. Have you ever thought of racing?’

  ‘I wish I could,’ I said fervently, without thinking.

  ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Oh… I might be leaving soon.’

  ‘What a pity.’ It was polite; nothing more.

  We reached the cottage. She gave me a friendly smile and walked straight on, out of the yard, out of sight. I may not ever see her again, I thought; and was mildly sorry.

  When the horse box came back from a day’s racing (with a winner, a third, and an also-ran) I climbed up into the cab and borrowed the map again. I wanted to discover the location of the village where Mr Paul Adams lived, and after some searching I found it. As its significance
sank in I began to smile with astonishment. There was, it seemed, yet another place where I could apply for a job.

  I went back into the cottage, into Mrs Allnut’s cosy kitchen, and ate Mrs Allnut’s delicious egg and chips and bread and butter and fruit cake, and later slept dreamlessly on Mrs Allnut’s lumpy mattress, and in the morning bathed luxuriously in Mrs Allnut’s shining bathroom. And in the afternoon I went up beside the stream with at last something worthwhile to tell October.

  He met me with a face of granite, and before I could say a word he hit me hard and squarely across the mouth. It was a back-handed expert blow which started from the waist, and I didn’t see it coming until far too late.

  ‘What the hell’s that for?’ I said, running my tongue round my teeth and being pleased to find that none of them were broken off.

  He glared at me. ‘Patty told me…’ He stopped as if it were too difficult to go on.

  ‘Oh,’ I said blankly.

  ‘Yes, oh,’ he mimicked savagely. He was breathing deeply and I thought he was going to hit me again. I thrust my hands into my pockets and his stayed where they were, down by his side, clenching and unclenching.

  ‘What did Patty tell you?’

  ‘She told me everything.’ His anger was almost tangible. ‘She came to me this morning in tears… she told me how you made her go into the hay barn… and held her there until she was worn out with struggling to get away… she told the… the disgusting things you did to her with your hands… and then how you forced her… forced her to…’ He couldn’t say it.

  I was appalled. ‘I didn’t,’ I said vehmently. ‘I didn’t do anything like that. I kissed her… and that’s all. She’s making it up.’

  ‘She couldn’t possibly have made it up. It was too detailed… She couldn’t know such things unless they had happened to her.’

  I opened my mouth and shut it again. They had happened to her, right enough; somewhere, with someone else, more than once, and certainly also with her willing co-operation. And I could see that to some extent at least she was going to get away with her horrible revenge, because there are some things you can’t say about a girl to her father, especially if you like him.

  October said scathingly, ‘I have never been so mistaken in a man before. I thought you were responsible… or at least able to control yourself. Not a cheap lecherous jackanapes who would take my money – and my regard – and amuse yourself behind my back, debauching my daughter.’

  There was enough truth in that to hurt, and the guilt I felt over my stupid behaviour didn’t help. But I had to put up some kind of defence, because I would never have harmed Patty in any way, and there was still the investigation into the doping to be carried on. Now I had got so far, I did not want to be packed off home in disgrace.

  I said slowly, ‘I did go with Patty into the hay barn. I did kiss her. Once. Only once. After that I didn’t touch her. I literally didn’t touch any part of her, not her hand, not her dress… nothing.’

  He looked at me steadily for a long time while the fury slowly died out of him and a sort of weariness took its place.

  At length he said, almost calmly, ‘One of you is lying. And I have to believe my daughter.’ There was an unexpected flicker of entreaty in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I looked away, up the gully. ‘Well… this solves one problem, anyway.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘How to leave here with the ignominious sack and without a reference.’

  It was so far away from what he was thinking about that it was several moments before he showed any reaction at all, and then he gave me an attentive, narrow-eyed stare which I did not try to avoid.

  ‘You intend to go on with the investigation, then?’

  ‘If you are willing.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said heavily, at length. ‘Especially as you are moving on and will have no more opportunities of seeing Patty. In spite of what I personally think of you, you do still represent our best hope of success, and I suppose I must put the good of racing first.’

  He fell silent. I contemplated the rather grim prospect of continuing to do that sort of work for a man who hated me. Yet the thought of giving up was worse. And that was odd.

  Eventually he said, ‘Why do you want to leave without a reference? You won’t get a job in any of these three stables without a reference.’

  ‘The only reference I need to get a job in the stable I am going to is no reference at all.’

  ‘Whose stable?’

  ‘Hedley Humber’s.’

  ‘Humber!’ He was sombrely incredulous. ‘But why? He’s a very poor trainer and he didn’t train any of the doped horses. What’s the point of going there?’

  ‘He didn’t train any of the horses when they won,’ 1 agreed, ‘but he had three of them through his hands earlier in their careers. There is also a man called P. J. Adams who at one time or another owned six more of them. Adams lives, according to the map, less than ten miles from Humber. Humber lives at Posset, in Durham, and Adams at Tellbridge, just over the Northumberland border. That means that nine of the eleven horses spent some time in that one small area of the British Isles. None of them stayed long. The dossiers of Transistor and Rudyard are much less detailed than the others on the subject of their earlier life, and I have now no doubt that checking would show that they too, for a short while, came under the care of either Adams or Humber.’

  ‘But how could the horses having spent some time with Adams or Humber possibly affect their speed months or years later?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I’ll go and find out.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Very well,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll tell Inskip that you are dismissed. And I’ll tell him it is because you pestered Patricia.’

  ‘Right.’

  He looked at me coldly. ‘You can write me reports. I don’t want to see you again.’

  I watched him walk away strongly up the gully. I didn’t know whether or not he really believed any more that I had done what Patty said; but I did know that he needed to believe it. The alternative, the truth, was so much worse. What father wants to discover that his beautiful eighteen-year-old daughter is a lying slut?

  And as for me, I thought that on the whole I had got off lightly; if I had found that anyone had assaulted Belinda or Helen I’d have half killed him.

  After second exercise the following day Inskip told me exactly what he thought of me, and I didn’t particularly enjoy it.

  After giving me a public dressing down in the centre of the tarmac (with the lads grinning in sly amusement as they carried their buckets and hay nets with both ears flapping) he handed back the insurance card and income tax form-there was still a useful muddle going on over the illegible Cornish address on the one October had originally provided me with-and told me to pack my bags and get out of the yard at once. It would be no use my giving his name as a reference he said, because Lord October had expressly forbidden him to vouch for my character, and it was a decision with which he thoroughly agreed. He gave me a week’s wages in lieu of notice, less Mrs Allnut’s share, and that was that.

  I packed my things in the little dormitory, patted goodbye to the bed I had slept in for six weeks, and went down to the kitchen where the lads were having their midday meal. Eleven pairs of eyes swivelled in my direction. Some were contemptuous, some were surprised, one or two thought it funny. None of them looked sorry to see me go. Mrs Allnut gave me a thick cheese sandwich, and I ate it walking down the hill to Slaw to catch the two o’clock bus to Harrogate.

  And from Harrogate, where?

  No lad in his senses would go straight from a prosperous place like Inskip’s to ask for a job at Humber’s, however abruptly he had been thrown out; there had to be a period of some gentle sliding downhill if it were to look unsuspicious. In fact, I decided, it would be altogether much better if it were Humber’s head travelling lad who offered me work, and not I who asked for it. It should not be too difficult. I co
uld turn up at every course where Humber had a runner, looking seedier and seedier and more and more ready to take any job at all, and one day the lad-hungry stable would take the bait.

  Meanwhile I needed somewhere to live. The bus trundled down to Harrogate while I thought it out. Somewhere in the north east, to be near Humber’s local meetings. A big town, so that I could be anonymous in it. An alive town, so that I could find ways of passing the time between race meetings. With the help of maps and guide books in Harrogate public library I settled on Newcastle, and with the help of a couple of tolerant lorry drivers I arrived there late that afternoon and found myself a room in a back-street hotel.

  It was a terrible room with peeling, coffee coloured walls, tatty printed linoleum wearing out on the floor, a narrow, hard divan bed, and some scratched furniture made out of stained plywood. Only its unexpected cleanliness and a shiny new washbasin in one corner made it bearable, but it did, I had to admit, suit my appearance and purpose admirably.

  I dined in a fish and chip shop for three and six, and went to a cinema, and enjoyed not having to groom three horses or think twice about every word I said. My spirits rose several points at being free again and I succeeded in forgetting the trouble I was in with October.

  In the morning I sent off to him in a registered package the second seventy-five pounds, which I had not given him in the gully on Sunday, together with a short formal note explaining why there would have to be a delay before I engaged myself to Humber.

  From the post office I went to a betting shop and from their calendar copied down all the racing fixtures for the next month. It was the beginning of December, and I found there were very few meetings in the north before the first week in January; which was, from my point of view, a waste of time and a nuisance. After the following Saturday’s programme at Newcastle itself there was no racing north of Nottinghamshire until Boxing Day, more than a fortnight later.