Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

‘He looks great,’ I agreed.

Calder Jackson smiled as if with indulgence at the shallowness of my judgement compared with the weight of his inside knowledge. ‘He should have won the Derby,’ he said. ‘He got shut in on the rails, couldn’t get out in time.’

My place at the great man’s side was taken by Bettina, who threaded her arm through his and said, ‘Dear Calder, come down to the front, you can see better than here at the back.’ She gave me a photogenic little smile and pulled her captive after her down the steps.

In a buzz that rose to a roar the runners covered their mile and a half journey; longer than the 2,000 Guineas, the same length as the Derby. Sandcastle in scarlet and white was making no show at all to universal groans and lay only fifth as the field swept round the last bend, and Dissdale looked as if he might have a heart attack.

Alas for my shirt, I thought. Alas for Lorna’s forecasts. Bang goes the banker that can’t lose.

Dissdale, unable to watch, collapsed weakly onto one of the small chairs which dotted the balcony, and in the next-door boxes people were standing on top of theirs and jumping up and down and screaming.

‘Sandcastle making his move...’ the commentator’s voice warbled over the loudspeakers, but the yells of the crowd drowned the rest.

The scarlet and white colors had moved to the outside. The daisy-cutter action was there for the world to see. The superb horse, the big rangy colt full of courage was eating up his ground.

Our box in the grandstand was almost a furlong down the course from the winning post, and when he reached us Sandcastle still had three horses ahead. He was flying, though, like a streak, and I found the sight of this fluid valour, this all-out striving, most immensely moving and exciting. I grabbed Dissdale by his despairing shoulder and hauled him forcefully to his feet.

‘Look,’ I shouted in his ear. ‘Watch. Your banker’s going to win. He’s a marvel. He’s a dream.’

He turned with a gaping mouth to stare in the direction of the winning post and he saw... he saw Sandcastle among the tumult going like a javelin, free now of all the others, aiming straight for the prize.

‘He’s won,’ Dissdale’s mouth said slackly, though amid the noise I could hardly hear him. ‘He’s bloody won.’

I helped him up the steps into the box. His skin was grey and damp and he was stumbling.

‘Sit down,’ I said, pulling out the first chair I came to, but he shook his head weakly and made his shaky way to his own place at the head of the table. He almost fell into it, heavily, and stretched out a trembling hand to his champagne.

‘My God,’ he said, ‘I’ll never do that again. Never on God’s earth.’

‘Do what?’

He gave me a flickering glance over his glass and said, ‘All on one throw.’

All. He’d said it before. ‘All on the banker...’ He surely couldn’t, I thought, have meant literally all; but yet not much else could have produced such physical symptoms.

Everyone else piled back into the room with ballooning jollity. Everyone without exception had backed Sandcastle, thanks to Dissdale. Even Calder Jackson, when pressed by Bettina, admitted to ‘a small something on the Tote. I don’t usually, but just this once.’ And if he’d lost, I thought, he wouldn’t have confessed.

Dissdale, from near fainting, climbed rapidly to a pulse-throbbing high, the colour coming back to his plump cheeks in a hectic red. No one seemed to have noticed his near-collapse, certainly not his wife, who flirted prettily with the healer and got less than her due response. More wine easily made its way down every throat, and there was no doubt that for the now commingled party the whole day was a riotous success.

In a while Henry offered to take Judith to the paddock. Gordon to my relief invited Lorna, which left me with the mystery lady, Pen Warner, with whom I’d so far exchanged only the thrilling words ‘How do you do.’

‘Would you like to go down?’ I asked.

‘Yes, indeed. But you don’t need to stay with me if it’s too much bother.’

‘Are you so insecure?’

There was a quick widening of the eyes and a visible mental shift. ‘You’re damned rude,’ she said. ‘And Judith said you were nice.’

I let her go past me out onto the landing and smiled as she went. ‘I should like to stay with you,’ I said, ‘if it’s not too much bother.’

She gave me a dry look, but as we more or less had to walk in single file along the narrow passageway owing to people going in the opposite direction she said little more until we had negotiated the lifts, the escalators and the pedestrian tunnel and had emerged into the daylight of the paddock.

It was her first time at Ascot, she said. Her first time, in fact, at the races.

‘What do you think of it?’

‘Very beautiful. Very brave. Quite mad.’

‘Does sanity lie in ugliness and cowardice?’ I asked.

‘Life does, pretty often,’ she said. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’

‘And some aren’t happy unless they’re desperate.’

She quietly laughed. ‘Tragedy inspires, so they say.’

‘They can stick it,’ I said. ‘I’d rather lie in the sun.’

We stood on the raised tiers of steps to watch the horses walk round the ring, and she told me that she lived along the road from Judith in another house fronting the common. ‘I’ve lived there all my life, long before Judith came. We met casually, as one does, in the local shops, and just walked home together one day several years ago. Been friends ever since.’

‘Lucky,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you live alone?’ I asked conversationally.

Her eyes slid my way with inner amusement. ‘Yes, I do. Do you?’

I nodded.

‘I prefer it,’ she said.

‘So do I.’

Her skin was clear and still girlish, the thickened figure alone giving an impression of years passing. That and the look in the eyes, the ‘I’ve seen the lot’ sadness.

‘Are you a magistrate?’ I asked.

She looked startled. ‘No, I’m not. What an odd thing to ask.’

I made an apologetic gesture. ‘You just look as if you might be.’

She shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t have time, even if I had the urge.’

‘But you do do good in the world.’

She was puzzled. ‘What makes you say so?’

‘I don’t know. The way you look.’ I smiled to take away any seriousness and said, ‘Which horse do you like? Shall we choose one and bet?’

‘What about Burnt Marshmallow?’

She liked the name, she said, so we queued briefly at a Tote window and invested some of the winnings from Cretonne and Sandcastle.

During our slow traverse of the paddock crowds on our way back towards the box we came towards Calder Jackson, who was surrounded by respectful listeners and didn’t see us.

‘Garlic is as good as penicillin,’ he was saying. ‘If you scatter grated garlic onto a septic wound it will kill all the bacteria...’

We slowed a little to hear.

’... and comfrey is miraculous,’ Calder said. ‘It knits bones and cures intractable skin ulcers in half the time you’d expect.’

‘He said all that upstairs,’ I said.

Pen Warner nodded, faintly smiling. ‘Good sound herbal medicine,’ she said. ‘You can’t fault him. Comfrey contains allantoin, a well-known cell proliferant.’

‘Does it? I mean... do you know about it?’

‘Mm.’ We walked on, but she said nothing more until we were high up again in the passageway to the box. ‘I don’t know whether you’d think I do good in the world... but basically I dole out pills.’

‘Er...?’ I said.

She smiled. ‘I’m a lady in a white coat. A pharmacist.’