Dick Francis - Silks

She blushed, the crimson colouring spreading up from her neck and over her face.

‘Did you know,’ I said, ‘that if you are naked you blush all over your body.’

‘Bastard,’ she said. She turned away and laughed.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ I asked her.

‘I’m not coming to another of your awful dining-in nights, that’s for sure.’

We laughed together.

‘I have to admit that it was a bit of a disaster,’ I agreed. ‘But I’m sure the next one will be better.’

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘I had always thought lawyers were boring, and now I know they are.’

‘You just haven’t met the right lawyers,’ I said.

She paused and smiled at me. ‘Oh yes I have,’ she said.

Wow, I thought. The bus had made a round trip. Now do I get on?

Sadly, I didn’t spend the evening with Eleanor, nor the night.

In fact, I spent very little time with her at all. Her bleep went off as we were still on the balcony and she rushed off to find a quiet spot to make a call, returning only briefly to tell me that she had to go back to Lambourn. There was an emergency at the hospital, something about a prize stallion and a twisted gut.

‘Will you be here tomorrow?’ I shouted after her rather forlornly as she rushed away.

‘Hope so,’ she called back. ‘Call me on the mobile in the morning.’

Suddenly she was gone. I was surprised at how disappointed I felt. Was I really ready after seven and a half years? Don’t rush things, I told myself.

I spent much of the rest of the afternoon drifting between the box upstairs and the parade ring. I had intended to use the time to familiarize myself with the surroundings, the sounds and the smells of the Festival in mental preparation for the race the following day. Instead, I spent most of the time thinking about Eleanor, and about Angela. They were quite different but in many ways they were the same. Eleanor was blonde with blue eyes whereas Angela had been dark with brown, but they both had a similar sense of humour, and a love for life and fun.

‘Which one do you fancy?’

I looked at the man standing next to me who had spoken. I didn’t know him.

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

‘Which one do you fancy?’ he said again, nodding at the horses. We were leaning up against the rail of the parade ring where the horses for the next race were walking round and round.

‘Oh,’ I said in sudden understanding. ‘Sorry, I don’t even know what’s running.’

He lost interest in me instantly, and went on studying the horseflesh on parade in front of him prior, no doubt, to making an investment with the bookies.

I went back upstairs to the box, telling myself to snap out of this daydreaming and pay attention to the racing.

‘How’s he doing?’ Francesca Dacey whispered in my ear as she stood behind me to watch the race on the balcony.

‘Fed up,’ I said, turning slightly. ‘But otherwise OK.’

‘Say hi to him for me if you get the chance,’ she whispered again before moving away to her left and talking to another of the guests.

The World Hurdle, the big race of the day, was a three-mile hurdle race for horses with stamina for the long distance, especially the uphill finish in the March mud. And stamina they had. Four horses crossed the last obstacle in line abreast and each was driven hard for the line, the crowd cheering them on with fervour, the result to be determined only by the race judge and his photographs.

There was a buzz in the crowd after the horses swept past the winning post, such had been the exhilarating effect of the closest of finishes; the adrenalin still rushed round our veins, our breathing was still just a tad faster than normal. Such moments were what brought the crowds back time and again to Cheltenham. The best horses, ridden by the best jockeys, stretching to reach the line first. Winning was everything.

‘First, number seven,’ said the announcer to a huge cheer from some and a groan of misery from others. Reno Clemens on horse number seven stood bolt upright in his stirrups and punched the air, saluting the crowd, who roared back their appreciation. How I longed for it to be me doing just that the following afternoon.

Most of the guests rushed off to watch the winner come back to the unsaddling enclosure, where he would receive a fresh wave of cheering and applause. I, however, decided to stay put. I had done my share of aimlessly wandering the racecourse wishing that Eleanor had been with me to share it.

The lunch table had been pushed up against one wall and was now heaving under large trays of sandwiches and cakes ready for tea. I looked longingly at a cream-filled chocolate éclair and opted instead for the smallest cucumber sandwich I could find.

‘I hear you are a lawyer,’ said a female voice on my right.

I turned to find Deborah Radcliffe standing next to me. Why did I think she didn’t like lawyers? Maybe it was the way she looked down her nose at me. Lots of people didn’t like lawyers, that is until they got themselves into trouble. Then their lawyer became their best friend, maybe their only friend.

‘That’s right,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I’m a barrister.’

‘Do you wear a wig?’ she asked.

‘Only in court,’ I said. ‘Lots of my work is not done in courts. I represent people at professional disciplinary hearings and the like.’

‘Oh,’ she said, as if bored. ‘And do you represent jockeys at enquiries?’

‘I have done,’ I said. ‘But not very often.’

She seemed to lose interest completely.

‘How is Peninsula?’ I asked her.

‘Fine, as far as I know,’ she said. ‘He’s now at Rushmore Stud in Ireland. In his first season.’

Retired at age three to spend the rest of his life treated like royalty, passing his days eating, sleeping and covering mares. Horse paradise.

‘But he wasn’t born himself at Rushmore?’ I said.

‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘We bred him at home.’

‘Where’s home?’ I asked her.

‘Near Uffington,’ she said. ‘In south Oxfordshire.’

‘Where the White Horse is,’ I said. The Uffington White Horse was a highly stylized Bronze Age horse figure carved into the chalk of the Downs a few miles north of Lambourn.

‘Exactly,’ she replied, suddenly showing more interest in me. ‘I can almost see White Horse Hill from my kitchen window.’

‘I’ve never actually seen the horse,’ I said. ‘Except in photos.’

‘It’s not that easy to see unless you get up in the air,’ she said. ‘We are forever getting tourists who ask us where it is. They seem disappointed when you show them the hill. The horse is almost on the top of it and you can’t even see it properly if you walk up to it. Goodness knows how they made it in the first place.’

‘Perhaps it was the fact that they couldn’t see it properly that made it such a weird-looking horse,’ I said.

‘Good point,’ she said.

‘Do you remember Millie Barlow being there when Peninsula was born?’ I asked.

‘Who?’ she said.

‘Millie Barlow,’ I repeated. ‘She was the vet who was present.’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘We have foals being born all the time. We have a sort of maternity hospital for horses. They come to us to deliver, especially if they are to then be covered by a local stallion.’

‘But I would have thought you would remember Peninsula,’ I said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘We didn’t know at the time that he would turn out so good. He had good breeding but it was not exceptional. We were just lucky.’

It made sense. After all, the world knows that William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, but it is not known for sure exactly where and on which day he was born, although it is often assumed, for neatness, to be the same day of the year as his death. All that is actually recorded is that he was baptized on 26 April 1564.