I returned to Ivan's house, detouring to a newsagent for a copy of Horse and Hound and an up-to-date road map, and to my mother's and stepfather's bemusement I told them in detail about the shenanigans in Emily's yard and my travels with Golden Malt.
I said, 'Emily has arranged for a trainer friend of hers to look after your horse and keep him fit so he can run in the King Alfred Gold Cup. If you agree with what we've planned, I'll transfer Golden Malt to the trainer this afternoon. The horse will be in very good hands and it would be only by exceptionally bad luck that Surtees would discover where he is.'
Ivan said slowly, 'You've gone to a lot of trouble.'
'Well, the horse is yours. You asked me to look after your affairs, so… er… I try.'
'For your mother's sake.' A statement, not a question.
'Yes, but for yours, also. You don't approve of the way I live, but you have never been ungenerous to me, and you would have taken me into the brewery, and I don't forget that.'
He looked at his hands and I couldn't read his thoughts, but when I asked if I could borrow his car for the afternoon, he agreed without conditions.
Via the classified advertisements in Horse and Hound and the road map and the telephone, I arranged to meet a four-horse travelling horsebox (the smallest of a prestigious firm) in Phil's yard in East Ilsley, and there loaded Golden Malt for the last leg of his journey.
Phil and I shook hands again, mutually pleased and, asking the box driver of the top-class transport firm to follow Ivan's car as arranged, I led him southwards and eastwards along secondary roads until we arrived somewhere near Basingstoke in a village that looked as if it had never seen a racehorse. But there, in the village's main street, stood a square white house with bronze flaming torches on the gateposts.
I stopped the car, the horsebox braking to a halt behind me, and went to ring the front door bell, as instructed.
A thin, smiling middle-aged man opened the door in welcome. His skin had the grey tautness of terminal illness but his handshake was strong. A pace or two behind him stood a short fine-boned girl whom he introduced as his daughter, saying she would drive through the village in the horsebox and settle Golden Malt into his new home. He watched approvingly as she climbed into the high cab beside the driver for the journey, and he invited me into his house, eyeing Ivan's expensive car with reassurance and telling me that Emily had said she was sending her 'special lad' to ensure the safe transit of a special horse.
Jimmy Jennings asked why I was smiling. Was I not Emily's 'special lad'?
'I'm married to her,' I said.
'Really?' He looked me up and down. 'Are you that painter feller who ran off and left her?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'Good Lord! Come this way. Come this way.'
He hurried down a hallway, beckoning me to follow, and led me into his office, furnished, like most trainers' such rooms, with ranks of framed photographs on the walls. He stood and pointed in silence, but I didn't need his directing finger: among the clutter hung a painting I'd done and sold four or more years earlier.
As always when I saw my own work freshly after an interval, I felt a mixture of excitement and shock. The picture was of a jockey plodding back to the stands after a fall, disappointment in his shoulders, a tear in his grass-stained breeches. I remembered the intensity of feeling in the brushstrokes, the stoicism and the loneliness of that man's defeat.
Teller I trained for couldn't pay his bill,' Jimmy Jennings explained. 'He offered me that picture instead. He swore it would be worth a fortune one day, but I took it because I liked it. Whether you realise it or not, that picture just about sums up a jump jockey's life. Endurance. Courage. Persistence. All those things. Do you see?'
I said lamely, 'I'm glad you like it.' He thrust out his chin, a defiant gesture against an imminent and inevitable fate.
'That picture keeps me going,' he said.
I drove back to London, having briefly checked on Golden Malt in his isolated splendour, Jimmy Jennings's daughter tending him with years of experience showing.
The horsebox driver had already unloaded and gone, as agreed with his firm. The hiding of Ivan's horse should, barring accidents, be complete.
I left Ivan's car in its underground lair and returned to his house to learn that Patsy had spent the afternoon with him, complaining that I had attacked Surtees so murderously as to leave him concussed, that I had committed child abuse against Xenia, and had brazenly stolen Golden Malt for my own illegal ends, such as holding him for ransom.
'I listened to her,' Ivan said judiciously. 'Is my horse safe?'
'Yes.'
'And a ransom?'
I said tiredly, 'Don't be silly.'
He actually laughed. 'I listened to her, and she's my daughter, but when she went on and on about how devious and dishonest you are, I slowly realised that I've truly been trusting you all along, that my inner instinct has held firm, even though to you I may sometimes have shown indecision. I love my daughter, but I think she's wrong. I said once impulsively that I wished you were my son. I didn't think I meant it when I said it. I do mean it now.'
My mother embraced him with uncharacteristic delight and he stroked her arm happily, content to have pleased her. I saw in them both the youthful faces they had left behind, and thought I might paint that perception, one day soon.
There was time after that for the three of us to eat dinner calmly before I left for the night train. We drank wine in friendship, Ivan and I, and had come nearer than ever before to an appreciative and lasting understanding. I did believe, against all previous experience, that Patsy could not henceforth sow overthrowing doubts of me in his decent mind.
He insisted on returning to my care the unopened envelope containing the codicil to his Will.
'Don't argue, Alexander,' he said. 'It will be safest with you.'
'We won't need it for years. By then it will be out of date.'
'Yes. Perhaps. Anyway, I've decided to tell you what's in it.'
'You don't have to.'
'I need to,' he said, and told me.
I smiled and hugged him for the first time ever.
I hugged my mother, and went to Scotland.
CHAPTER TEN
To my surprise Jed was waiting at Dalwhinnie in the dawn. Himself had telephoned my mother late the previous evening, he said, and she'd told him I was on the train. Himself wanted me to go directly from train to castle, a command automatically to be obeyed.
On the way Jed told me that I now had a new bed and a new armchair in the bothy (chosen by Jed, paid for by Himself) and I was to write a list of other things I would need. My uncle would foot the bill unconditionally.
'But he doesn't have to,' I protested.
'If you ask me, he feels guilty. Let him atone.'
I glanced at Jed sideways. 'A shrink, are you?' I asked.
'He told me you wouldn't think, let alone suggest, that he ought to make good your losses. I explained that you'd cleared out the bothy and he had me get that pile of muck removed. I hope to God the hilt wasn't hidden in it.'
'Your prayers are answered. Where's the painting, the one in the sheet?'
'In my house, with all the other things you gave me.'
I sighed with relief.
'Flora looked at it,' he said. 'She says it's the portrait of a ghost.'
Flora, his wife, had 'the sight', the ability deep in the Scottish gene-pool of being able sometimes to see the future.
'The word ghost means spirit,' I said. 'If Flora sees a spirit, that's what I painted.'
'You make it sound so prosaic.'
'It isn't finished,' I said.