Bonecrack

'It is less troublesome,' he admitted. He smoothed the already wrinkle-free bed clothes which lay over his stomach, engaged in his perennial habit of making his surroundings as orderly, as dignified, as starched as his soul.

I asked if there was anything I could bring him. 'A book,' I suggested. 'Or some fruit? Or some champagne?' Like most racehorse trainers he saw champagne as a sort of superior Coca Cola, best drunk in the mornings if at all, but he knew that as a pick-me-up for the sick it had few equals.

He inclined his head sideways, considering. 'There are some half bottles in the cellar at Rowley Lodge.'

'I'll bring some,' I said.

He nodded. He would never, whatever I did, say thank you. I smiled inwardly. The day my father thanked me would be the day his personality disintegrated.

Via the hospital telephone I checked whether I would be welcome at Hampstead, and having received a warming affirmative, headed the Jensen along the further eight miles south.

Gillie had finished painting the bedroom but its furniture was still stacked in the hall.

'Waiting for the carpet,' she explained. 'Like Godot.'

'Godot never came,' I commented.

'That,' she agreed with exaggerated patience, 'is what I mean.'

'Send up rockets, then.'

'Fire crackers have been going off under backsides since Tuesday.'

'Never mind,' I said soothingly. 'Come out to dinner.'

'I'm on a grapefruit day,' she objected.

'Well I'm not. Positively not. I had no lunch and I'm hungry.'

'I've got a really awfully nice grapefruit recipe. You put the halves in the oven doused in saccharine and Kirsch and eat it hot-'

'No,' I said definitely. 'I'm going to the Empress.'

That shattered the grapefruit programme. She adored the Empress.

'Oh well- it would be so boring for you to eat alone,' she said. 'Wait a mo while I put on my tatty black.'

Her tatty black was a long-sleeved St Laurent dress that made the least of her curves. There was nothing approaching tatty about it, very much on the contrary, and her description was inverted, as if by diminishing its standing she could forget her guilt over its price. She had recently developed some vaguely socialist views, and it had mildly begun to bother her that what she had paid for one dress would have supported a ten-child family throughout Lent.

Dinner at the Empress was its usual quiet, spacious, superb self. Gillie ordered curried prawns to be followed by chicken in a cream and brandy sauce, and laughed when she caught my ironic eye.

'Back to the grapefruit,' she agreed. 'But not until tomorrow.'

'How are the suffering orphans?' I asked. She worked three days a week for an adoption society which because of the Pill and easy abortion was running out of its raw materials.

'You don't happen to want two-year-old twins, Afro-Asian boys, one of them with a squint?' she said.

'Not all that much, no.'

'Poor little things.' She absent-mindedly ate a bread roll spread with enjoyable chunks of butter. 'We'll never place them. They don't look even averagely attractive-'

'Squints can be put right,' I said.

'Someone has to care enough first, to get it done.'

We drank a lesser wine than Gillie's but better than most.

'Do you realise,' Gillie said, 'that a family of ten could live for a week on what this dinner is costing?'

'Perhaps the waiter has a family of ten,' I suggested. 'And if we didn't eat it, what would they live on?'

'Oh- Blah,' Gillie said, but looking speculatively at the man who brought her chicken.

She asked how my father was. I said better, but by no means well.

'He said he would do the entries,' I explained, 'but he hasn't started. He told me it was because he isn't given time, but the Sister says he sleeps a great deal. He had a frightful shaking and his system hasn't recovered yet.'

'What will you do, then, about the entries? Wait until he's better?'

'Can't. The next lot have to be in by Wednesday.'

'What happens if they aren't?'

'The horses will go on eating their heads off in the stable when they ought to be out on a racecourse trying to earn their keep. It's now or never to put their names down for some of the races at Chester and Ascot and the Craven meeting at Newmarket.'

'So you'll do them yourself,' she said matter-of-factly, 'And they'll all go and win.'

'Almost any entry is better than no entry at all,' I sighed. 'And by the law of averages, some of them must be right.'

'There you are, then. No more problems.'

But there were two more problems, and worse ones, sticking up like rocks on the fairway. The financial problem, which I could solve if I had to; and that of Alessandro, which I didn't yet know how to.

The following morning, he arrived late. The horses for first lot were already plodding round the cinder track, while I stood with Etty in the centre as she changed the riders, when Alessandro appeared through the gate from the yard. He waited for a space between the passing horses and then crossed the cinder track and came towards us.

The finery of the week before was undimmed. The boots shone as glossily, the gloves as palely, and the ski jacket and jodhpurs were still immaculate. On his head, however, he wore a blue and white striped woolly cap with a pom-pom, the same as most of the other lads: but on Alessandro this cosy protection against the stinging March wind looked as incongruous as a bowler hat on the beach.

I didn't even smile. The black eyes regarded me with their customary chill from features that were more gaunt than delicate. The strong shape of the bones showed clearly through the yellowish skin, and more so, it seemed to me, than a week ago.

'What do you weigh?' I asked abruptly.

He hesitated a little. 'I will be able to ride at six stone seven when the races begin. I will be able to claim all the allowances.'

'But now? What do you weigh now?'

'A few pounds more. But I will lose them.'

Etty fumed at him but forbore to point out to him that he wouldn't get any rides if he weren't good enough. She looked down at her list to see which horse she had allotted him, opened her mouth to tell him, and then shut it again, and I literally saw the impulse take hold of her.

'Ride Traffic,' she said. 'You can get up on Traffic.'

Alessandro stood very still.

'He doesn't have to,' I said to Etty; and to Alessandro, 'You don't have to ride Traffic. Only if you choose.'

He swallowed. He raised his chin and his courage, and said, 'I choose.'

With a stubborn set to her mouth Etty beckoned to Andy, who was already mounted on Traffic, and told him of the change.

'Happy to oblige,' Andy said feelingly, and gave Alessandro a leg-up into his unrestful place. Traffic lashed out into a few preliminary bucks, found he had a less hard-bitten customer than usual on his back, and started off at a rapid sideways trot across the paddock.

Alessandro didn't fall off, which was the best that could be said. He hadn't the experience to settle the sour colt to obedience, let alone to teach him to be better, but he was managing a great deal more efficiently than I could have done.

Etty watched him with disfavour and told everyone to give him plenty of room.

'That nasty little squirt needs taking down a peg,' she said in unnecessary explanation.

'He isn't doing too badly,' I commented.

'Huh.' There was a ten ton lorry-load of scorn in her voice. 'Look at the way he's jabbing him in the mouth. You wouldn't catch Andy doing that in a thousand years.'

'Better not let him out on the Heath,' I said.

'Teach him a lesson,' Etty said doggedly.

'Might kill the goose, and then where would we be for golden eggs?'

She gave me a bitter glance. 'The stable doesn't need that sort of money.'

'The stable needs any sort of money it can get.'

But Etty shook her head in disbelief. Rowley Lodge had been in the top division of the big league ever since she had joined it, and no one would ever convince her that its very success was leading it into trouble.