Bonecrack

'Just an offer.'

'Declined.'

She smiled. 'Don't leave this address lying about, then.'

'I haven't.'

She put the paper down. 'Just how much of a lever do you suppose I am?'

I threw the Observer on to the floor. 'I'll show you, if you like.'

'Please do,' she said; and switched off the light.

CHAPTER TWELVE

'I would like you to come in my car to the races,' I said to Alessandro on Wednesday morning, when he turned up for the first lot. 'Give Carlo a day off.'

He looked back dubiously to where Carlo sat as usual in the Mercedes, staring watchfully down the yard.

'He says I talk with you too much. He will object.'

I shrugged. 'All right,' I said, and walked off to mount Cloud Cuckoo-land. We took the string down to Waterhall, where Alessandro rode a pipe opener on both Buckram and Lancat, and Etty grudgingly said that they both seemed to be going well for him. The thirty or so others that we took along there didn't seem to be doing so badly either, and the Lincoln booster was still fizzing around in grins and good humour. The whole stable, that week, had come alive.

Pullitzer had set off to Catterick early in the smaller of the stable's two horse-boxes, accompanied by his own lad and the travelling head lad, Vic Young, who supervised the care of the horses while they were away from home. Second in command to Etty, he was a resourceful, quick-witted Londoner grown too heavy in middle age to ride most of the young stable inmates; but the weight came in useful for throwing around. Vic Young was a great one for getting his own way, and it was just good luck that his own way was usually to the stable's advantage. He was, like all the best older lads, deeply partisan.

When I went out after changing, ready to follow to the races, I found Alessandro waiting beside the Jensen, with Carlo glowering in the Mercedes six feet away.

'I will come in your car,' announced Alessandro firmly. 'But Carlo will follow us.'

'Very well,' I nodded.

I slid down into the driving seat and waited while he got in beside me. Then I started up, moved down the drive, and turned out of the gate with Carlo following in convoy.

'My father ordered him to drive me everywhere-' Alessandro explained.

'And he doesn't care to disobey your father,' I finished for him.

'That is right. My father also ordered him to make sure I am safe.'

I slid a glance sideways.

'Don't you feel safe?'

'No one would dare to hurt me,' he said simply.

'It would depend what there was to gain,' I said, speeding away from Newmarket.

'But my father-'

'I know,' I said. 'I know. And I have no wish to harm you. None at all.'

Alessandro subsided, satisfied. But I reflected that levers could work both ways, and Enso unlike me did have someone for whose sake he could be forced to do things against his will. Suppose, I daydreamed idly, that I abducted Alessandro and shut him up in the convenient cellar in the flat in Hampstead. I would then have Enso by the short and curlies in a neat piece of tit for tat.

I sighed briefly. Too many problems that way. And since all I wanted from Enso was for him to get off my back and out of my life before my father came out of hospital, abducting Alessandro didn't seem the quickest way of doing it. The quickest way to the dissolution of Rowley Lodge, more like. Pity, though-

Alessandro was impatient for the journey to be over, but was otherwise calmer than I had feared. Determination, however, shouted forth from the arrogant carriage of his head down to the slender hands which clenched and unclenched at intervals on his knees.

I avoided an oncoming oil tanker whose driver seemed to think he was in France, and said casually, 'You won't be able to threaten the other apprentices with reprisals if you don't get it all your own way. You do understand that, don't you?'

He looked almost hurt. 'I will not do that.'

'The habits of a lifetime,' I said without censure, 'are apt to rear their ugly heads at moments of stress.'

'I will ride to win,' he asserted.

'Yes- But do remember that if you win by pushing someone else out of the way, the Stewards will take the race away from you, and you'll gain nothing.'

'I will be careful,' he said, with his chin up.

'That's all that is required,' I confirmed. 'Generosity is not.'

He looked at me with suspicion. 'I do not always know if you are meaning to make jokes.'

'Usually,' I said.

We drove steadily north.

'Did it ever occur to your father to buy you a Derby prospect, rather than to insert you into Rowley Lodge by force?' I enquired conversationally, as we sped past Wetherby.

He looked as if the possibility were new to him. 'No,' he said. 'It was Archangel I wanted to ride. The favourite. I want to win the Derby, and Archangel is the best. And all the money in Switzerland would not buy Archangel.'

That was true, because the colt belonged to a great sportsman, an eighty-year-old merchant banker, whose life-long ambition it had been to win the great race. His horses had in years gone by finished second and third, and he had won every other big race in the Calendar, but the ultimate peak had always eluded him. Archangel was the best he had ever had, and time was running short.

'Besides,' Alessandro added, 'My father would not spend the money if a threat would do instead.'

As usual when referring to his father's modus operandi, he took it entirely for granted and saw nothing in it but logic.

'Do you ever think objectively about your father?' I asked. 'About how he achieves his ends, and about whether the ends themselves are of any merit?'

He looked puzzled. 'No-' he said uncertainly.

'Where did you go to school, then?' I said, changing tack.

'I didn't go to school,' he said. 'I had two teachers at home. I did not want to go to school. I did not want to be ordered about and to have to work all day-'

'So your two teachers spent a lot of time twiddling their thumbs?'

'Twiddling-? Oh, yes. I suppose so. The English one used to go off and climb mountains and the Italian one chased the local girls.' There was no humour, however, in his voice. There never was. 'They both left when I was fifteen. They left because I was then riding my two horses all day long and my father said there was no point in paying for two tutors instead of one riding master- so he hired one old Frenchman who had been an instructor in the cavalry, and he showed me how to ride better. I used to go and stay with a man my father knew and go hunting on his horse- and that is when I rode a bit in races. Four or five races. There were not many for amateurs. I liked it, but I didn't feel as I do now- And then, one day at home when I was saying I was bored, my father said, very well, Alessandro, say what you want and I will get it for you, and into my head came Archangel, and I just said, just like that, without really thinking, I want to win the English Derby on Archangel- and he just laughed, how he sometimes does, and said, so I should.' He paused. 'After that, I asked him if he meant it, because the more I thought about it the more I knew there was nothing on earth I wanted more. Nothing on earth I wanted at all. He kept saying all in good time, but I was impatient to come to England and start, so when he had finished some business, we came.'

For about the tenth time he twisted round in his seat to look out of the back window. Carlo was still there, faithfully following.

Tomorrow,' I said, 'He can follow us again, to Liverpool. After Buckram for you tomorrow we have five other horses running at the meeting, and I'm staying there for the three days. I won't be coming with you to Teesside for Lancat.'

He opened his mouth to protest, but I said, 'Vic Young is going up with Lancat. He will do all the technical part. It's the big race of the afternoon, as you know, and you'll be riding against very experienced jockeys. But all you've got to do is get quietly up on that colt, point it in the right direction, and tell it where to accelerate. And if it wins, for God's sake don't brag about how brilliant you are. There's nothing puts backs up quicker than a boastful jockey, and if you want the Press on your side, which you most certainly do, you will give the credit to the horse. Even if you don't feel in the least modest, it will pay to act it.'