“And wear it for six weeks? And get atrophied muscles?”
“Atrophy is a strong word.” He knew all the same that jump jockeys needed strong leg muscles above all else, and the way to keep them strong was to keep them moving. Inside plaster they couldn’t move at all and weakened rapidly. If movement cost a few twinges, it was worth it.
“Delta-cast is lightweight,” he said persuasively. “It’s a polymer, not like the old plaster of paris. It’s porous, so air circulates and you don’t get skin problems. It’s good. And I could make you a cast with a zip in it so you could take it off for physiotherapy.”
“How long before I was racing?”
“Nine or ten weeks.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment or two and he looked up fast, he eyes bright and quizzical.
“A cast, then?” he said.
“No.
He smiled and picked up a roll of crepe bandage. “Don’t fall on it again in the next month, or you’ll be back to square one.”
“I’ll try not to.”
He bandaged it all tight again from just below the knee down to my toes and back, and gave me another prescription for Distalgesic. “No more than eight tablets in twenty-four hours and not with alcohol.” He said it every time.
“Right.”
He considered me thoughtfully for a moment and then rose and went over to a cabinet where he kept packets and bottles of drugs. He came back tucking a small plastic bag into an envelope, which he held out to me.
“I’m giving you something known as DF 118s. Rather appropriate, as they’re your own initials! I’ve given you three of them. They are serious painkillers, and I don’t want you to use them unless something like yesterday happens again.”
“OK,” I said, putting the envelope into my pocket. “Thanks.”
“If you take one, you won’t feel a thing.” He smiled. “If you take two at once, you’ll be spaced out, high as a kite. If you take all three at once, you’ll be unconscious. So be warned.” He paused. “They are a last resort.”
“I won’t forget,” I said, “and I truly am grateful.”
Brad drove to a chemist’s, took my prescription in, waited for it to be dispensed, and finished the ten miles home, parking outside my door.
“Same time tomorrow morning?” I asked. “Back to London?”
“Yerss.”
“I’d be in trouble without you,” I said, climbing out with his help. He gave me a brief haunted glance and handed me the crutches. “You drive great,” I said.
He was embarrassed, but also pleased. Nowhere near a smile, of course, but a definite twitch in the cheeks. He turned away, ducking my gaze, and set off doggedly toward his mother.
I let myself into the house and regretted the embargo on a large scotch. Instead, with June’s lunchtime sandwich a distant memory, I refueled with sardines on toast and ice cream after, which more or less reflected my habitual laziness about cooking.
Then, aligned with icepacks along the sofa, I telephoned to the man in Newmarket who trained Greville’s two racehorses.
He picked up the receiver as if he’d been waiting for it to ring.
“Yes?” he said. “What are they offering?”
“I’ve no idea,” I said. “Is that Nicholas Loder?”
“What? Who are you?” He was brusque and impatient, then took a second look at things and with more honey said, “I beg your pardon, I was expecting someone else. I’m Loder, yes, who am I talking to?”
“Greville Franklin’s brother.”
“Oh, yes?”
It meant nothing to him immediately. I pictured him as I knew him, more by sight than face to face, a big light-haired man in his forties with enormous presence and self-esteem to match. Undoubtedly a good-to-great trainer, but in television interviews occasionally overbearing and condescending to the interviewer, as I’d heard he could be also to his owners. Greville kept his horses with him because the original horse he’d taken as a bad debt had been in that stable. Nicholas Loder had bought Greville all his subsequent horses and done notably well with them, and Greville had assured me that he got on well with the man by telephone, and that he was perfectly friendly.
The last time I’d spoken to Greville myself on the telephone he’d been talking of buying another two-year-old, saying that Loder would get him one at the October sales, perhaps.
I explained to Loder that Greville had died and after the first sympathetic exclamations of dismay he reacted as I would have expected, not as if missing a close friend but on a practical business level.
“It won’t affect the running of his horses,” he said. “They’re owned in any case by the Saxony Franklin company, not by Greville himself. I can run the horses still in the company name. I have the company’s Authority to Act. There should be no problem.”
“I’m afraid there may be,” I began.
“No, no. Dozen Roses runs on Saturday at York. In with a great chance. I informed Greville of it only a few days ago. He always wanted to know when they were running, though he never went to see them.”
“The problem is,” I said, “about my being his brother. He has left the Saxony Franklin company to me.”
The size of the problem suddenly revealed itself to him forcibly. “You’re not his brother, Derek Franklin? That brother? The jockey?”
“Yes. So... could you find out from Weatherby’s whether the horses can still run while the estate is subject to probate?”
“My God,” he said weakly.
Professional jockeys, as we both knew well, were not allowed to own runners in races. They could own other horses such as brood mares, foals, stallions, hacks, hunters, show-horses, but they couldn’t run them.
“Can you find out?” I asked again.
“I will.” He sounded exasperated. “Dozen Roses should trot up on Saturday.”
Dozen Roses was currently the better of Greville’s two horses whose fortunes I followed regularly in the newspapers and on television. A triple winner as a three-year-old, he had been disappointing at four, but in the current year, as a five-year-old, he had regained all his old form and had scored three times in the past few weeks. A “trot-up” on Saturday was a reasonable expectation.
Loder said, “If Weatherby’s gives the thumbs-down to the horse running, will you sell it? I’ll find a buyer by Saturday, among my owners.”
I listened to the urgency in his voice and wondered whether Dozen Roses was more than just another trot-up, of which season by season he had many. He sounded a lot more fussed over than seemed normal.
“I don’t know whether I can sell before probate,” I said. “You’d better find that out too.”
“But if you can, will you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, puzzled. “Let’s wait and see, first.”
“You won’t be able to hang on to him, you know,” he said forcefully. “He’s got another season in him. He’s still worth a good bit. But unless you do something like turn in your license, you won’t be able to run him, and he’s not worth turning in your license for. It’s not as if he were favorite for the Derby.”
“I’ll decide during the week.”
“But you’re not thinking of turning in your license, are you?” He sounded almost alarmed. “Didn’t I read in the paper that you’re on the injured list but hope to be back racing well before Christmas?”
“You did read that, yes.”
“Well, then.” The relief was as indefinable as the alarm, but came clear down the wires. I didn’t understand any of it. He shouldn’t have been so worried.
“Perhaps Saxony Franklin could lease the horse to someone,” I said.