To the hilt [en]

'Um… um… How is the brewery going to pay its workers this week?'

He sighed. 'You do have a way of cutting down to the essentials.'

'Will the bank cough up?'

'They say not. Not a penny more.'

'Do I have to go to them on my knees?'

He said with compassion, 'Yes.'

It was by then Wednesday afternoon. Payroll day at the brewery, as in most business enterprises, was Friday. On the Tollright telephone I engaged the professional services of the lady negotiator and also made an appointment with the bank for the following morning.

I asked Tobias how much was needed to keep the ship afloat until the creditors could set up the rescue operation - if they would - and he obligingly referred to King Alfred's ledgers and told me a sum that made Ivan's heart attack seem a reasonable response to the information.

'You can only do your best,' Tobias observed, busy with a toothpick. 'None of this is your fault. It appears you've just been dumped into it up to the hilt.'

I didn't know whether to wince or smile at the familiar phrase. Up to the hilt - in one particular way I'd been in jeopardy up to the hilt for the last five years. It had taken five years for the demons to arrive at my door.

I said, 'About that horse - Golden Malt, did you say? - why is there a doubt about who owns it?'

Tobias frowned. 'You'll have to ask Sir Ivan. The horse isn't listed as an actual asset of the brewery. There's been no annual claim for depreciation, as if it were office equipment, but the brewery has paid the training fees and claimed them against tax as an advertising expense. As I said, you'll need to sort it out.'

For the next hour he tracked with me through the past year's accounts, item by item. I could see, as he demonstrated, that but for the perfidy of the man in charge of the cash flow, the beer business would have fermented its yeast to its usual profitable heights.

'The head brewer's the best asset,' Tobias said. 'Don't lose him.'

I said helplessly, 'I know nothing about brewing beer.'

'You don't have to. You are the overall strategist. I'm simply advising you as an outsider, and I can tell you the brewery's share of the market has risen perceptibly since they appointed this particular brewmaster.'

'Thank you.'

'You do look exhausted,' he said.

'I was never that good at maths.'

'You're doing all right.'

He produced papers for me to sign. I read them and did my best to understand, but trusted a lot to his good faith. As Ivan had trusted his Finance Director, no doubt.

'Good luck with the bank tomorrow,' Tobias said, shuffling the papers together and sucking his toothpick. 'Don't let them mug you.'

They wouldn't be the first, I thought. 'Will you come with me?'

He shook his head. 'It's your job, not mine. I wish you good luck.'

I said, 'There's one other thing…'

'Yes?'

'How do I get from here to Lambourn nowadays, without a car?'

'Taxi.'

'And without much money.'

'Ah,' he said. 'Same as ever. Bus to Newbury. Bus from there to Lambourn.' He summoned a timetable from reception. 'Bus from Newbury to Lambourn leaves at five forty-five.'

'Thanks.'

'What you need,' he said, 'is the out-patients department of the Royal Berkshire Hospital.'

I caught the bus instead. I even had time at Newbury to spend some of my mother's cash on a new pair of jeans and to discard the old paint-stained denims in the bus station's gents. In fractionally more respectable mode, therefore, I arrived on a Lambourn doorstep that I would have been happier to avoid.

My stepfather's horses - and that included Golden Malt - and also my uncle Robert 'Himself's' horses, were trained at the racing town of Lambourn by a young woman, Emily Jane Cox.

She said at the sight of me, 'What the hell are you doing here?'

'Slumming.'

'I hate you, Alexander.'

The problem was that she didn't, any more than what I felt for her could at worst be described as lust, and at best as unrealistic Round Table chivalry. Worse than hate or love, we had come near to apathy.

I had walked, feet metaphorically dragging, from the bus stop to the stable on Upper Lambourn Road. I had arrived as she was completing her evening rounds of the stable, checking on the welfare of each of the fifty or so horses entrusted to her care.

It was true, as jealous detractors pointed out, that she had inherited the yard as a going concern from a famous father, but it was her own skill that continued to turn out winners trained by Cox.

She loved the life. She loved the horses. She was respected and successful. She might once also have loved Alexander Kinloch, but she was not going to dump a busy and fulfilled career for solitude on a bare cold mountain.

'If you love me,' she'd said, 'live in Lambourn.'

I'd lived with her in Lambourn for nearly six months, once, and I'd painted nothing worth looking at.

'It doesn't matter,' she'd consoled me early on. 'Marry me and be content.'

I had married her and after a while left her. She'd never used my name, but had become simply Mrs Cox.

'What are you doing here?' she repeated.

'Er… Ivan has had a heart attack.'

She frowned. 'Yes, I read about it in the papers. But he's all right, isn't he? I telephoned. Your mother said not to worry.'

'He's not well. He asked me to look after his horses.'

'You? Look after them? You don't know all that much about horses.'

'He just said…'

She shrugged. 'Oh, all right then. You may as well set his mind at rest.'

She turned away from me and walked back across her stable yard to an open door where a lad was positioning a bucket of water.

She had dark hair cut like a cap and the sort of figure that looked good in trousers. We were the same age almost to the day, and at twenty-three had married without doubts.

She'd always had a brisk authoritative way of talking that now had intensified with the years of responsibility and success. I had admired - loved - her positive energy, but it had drained my own. Even if I'd still loved her physically, I couldn't have forever bowed to her natural habit of command. We would have quarrelled if I'd stayed. We would have fought if I'd ever tried to return. We existed in a perpetual uncontested truce. We had met four times since I'd left, but never alone and never in Lambourn.

Ivan had three horses in training in Emily's yard. She showed me two unremarkable bays and one bright chestnut, Golden Malt. Somewhat to my dismay he had noticeably good looks, two white socks and a bright white blaze down his nose: great presence as an advertisement for a brewery, not such a good idea for disappearing without trace.

'He's entered for the King Alfred Gold Cup,' Emily said with pride, patting the horse's glossy neck. 'Ivan wants to win his own race.'

'And will he?'

'Win?' She pursed her lips. 'Let's say Golden Malt's running for the news value. He won't disgrace himself, can't put it higher than that.'

I said absently, 'I'm sure he'll do fine.'

'What's the matter with your eye?'

'I got mugged.'

She nearly laughed, but not quite. 'Do you want a drink?'

'Good idea.'

I followed her into her house, where she led the way through the much lived-in kitchen, past her efficient office and into the larger sitting-room where she entertained visiting owners and, it seemed, revenant husbands.

'Still Campari?' she enquired, hands hovering over a tray of bottles and glasses.

'Anything.'

'I'll get some ice.'

'Don't bother,' I said, but she went all the same to the kitchen.

I walked across the unchanged room with its checked wool sofas and dark oak side tables and stood before a painting she'd hung on the wall. It showed a view of windswept links with a silver slit of sea in the background; with grey scudding clouds and two golfers doggedly leaning face-against the gale, trudging and pulling their golf clubs behind them on trolleys. In the foreground, where long dry grass bent away from the wind, there lay a small white ball, invisible still to the players.