Bonecrack

Since my last visit, my father's room had taken on the appearance of an office. The regulation bedside locker had been replaced by a much larger table which pushed around easily on huge wheel castors, like the bed. On the table was the telephone on which he had broadcast so much blight, also a heap of Racing Calendars, copies of the Sporting Life, entry forms, a copy of Horses in Training, the three previous years' form books and, half hidden, the reports from Etty in her familiar schoolgirl handwriting.

'What, no typewriter?' I said flippantly, and he said stiffly that he was arranging for a local girl to come in and take dictation some time in the next week.

'Fine,' I said encouragingly; but he refused to be friendly. He saw the winning of the Lincoln as a serious threat to his authority, and his manner said plainly that that authority was not passing to me or even to Etty, while he could do anything to prevent it.

He was putting himself in a very ambivalent position. Every winner would be to him personally excruciating, yet at the same time he needed it desperately from the financial angle. Too much of his fortune for safety was still invested in half shares: and if the horses all ran as badly as it seemed he would like them to, their value would curl up like dahlias in a frost.

Understanding him was one thing: sorting him out, quite another.

'I can't wait for you to get back,' I said, but that didn't work either. It seemed that the bones were not mending as fast as had been hoped, and the reminder of the delay simply switched him into a different sort of aggravation.

'Some tommy-rot about elderly bones taking longer to knit,' he said irritably. 'All these weeks- and they can't say when I can get out of all these confounded pulleys. I told them I want a plaster cast I can walk on- damn it, enough people have them- but they say there are lots of cases where it isn't possible, and that I'm one of them.'

'You're lucky to have a leg at all,' I pointed out. 'At first they thought they would have to take it off.'

'Better if they had,' he snorted. Then I would have been back at Rowley Lodge by now.'

I had brought some more champagne, but he refused to drink any. Afraid it might look too much like a celebration, I supposed.

Gillie gave me an uncomplicated hug, and it was she who said, 'I told you so.'

'So you did,' I agreed contentedly. 'And since I won two thousand pounds on your convictions, I'll take you to the Empress.'

The tatty black, however, was tight.

'Just look,' she wailed, pressing in her abdomen with her fingers, 'I wore it only ten days ago and it was perfectly all right. And now, it's impossible.'

'I'm not over addicted to flat chested ladies with hip bones sticking up like Mont Blancs,' I said comfortingly.

'No- but voluptuous plenty can go too far.'

'Grapefruit, then?'

She sighed, considered, went to fetch a cream trench coat which covered a multitude of bulges, and said cheerfully, 'Whoever could do justice to Pease Pudding on a grapefruit?'

We toasted the victory in Chateau Figeac 1964, but out of respect for the tatty black seams ate melon and steak and averted our eyes strong mindedly from the puddings.

Gillie said over the coffee that owing to the continued shortage of orphans she was more or less having time off thrust upon her, and couldn't I think again and let her come to Newmarket.

'No,' I said, more positively than I intended.

She looked a little hurt, which was unusual enough in her to bother me considerably.

'You remember those bruises I had, about five weeks ago?' I said.

'Yes, I do.'

'Well- they were the beginning of a rather unpleasant argument I am still having with a man who has a strong line in threats. So far I have resisted some of the threats, and at present there's a sort of stalemate.' I paused. 'I don't want to upset that balance. I don't want to give him any levers. I've no wife, no children, and no near relatives except a father well protected in hospital. There's no one the enemy can threaten- no one for whose sake I will do anything he says. But you see- if you come to Newmarket, there would be.'

She looked at me for a long time, taking it in, but the hurt went away at once.

Finally she said, 'Archimedes said that if he could find somewhere to stand he could shift the world.'

'Huh?'

'With a lever,' she said, smiling. 'You uneducated goose.'

'Let's not give Archimedes a foothold.'

'No.' She sighed. 'Set your tiny mind at rest. I'll pay you no visits until invited.'

Back at the flat, lying side by side in bed and reading the Sunday papers in companionable quiet, she said, 'You do see what follows from allowing him no levers?'

'What?'

'More bruises.'

'Not if I can help it.'

She rolled her head on the pillow and looked at me. 'You know damn well. You're no great fool.'

'It won't come to that,' I said.

She turned back to the Sunday Times. 'There's an advertisement here for travel on a cargo boat to Australia- Would you feel safer if I went on a cruise on a cargo boat to Australia? Would you like me to go?'

'Yes, I would,' I said. 'And no I wouldn't.'

'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.'