Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

I suppose I was in a way disappointed, and she sensed it.

‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘we can’t all be glamorous. I told you life was ugly and frightening, and from my point of view that’s often what it is for my customers. I see fear every day... and I know its face.’

‘Pen,’ I said, ‘forgive my frivolity. I’m duly chastened.’

We reached the box to find Judith alone there, Henry having loitered to place a bet.

‘I told Tim I’m a pharmacist,’ Pen said. ‘He thinks it’s boring.’

I got no further than the first words of protestation when Judith interrupted.

‘She’s not just “a” pharmacist,’ she said. ‘She owns her own place. Half the medics in London recommend her. You’re talking to a walking gold-mine with a heart like a wet sponge.’

She put her arm round Pen’s waist and the two of them together looked at me, their eyes shining with what perhaps looked like liking, but also with the mischievous feminine superiority of being five or six years older.

‘Judith!’ I said compulsively. ‘I... I...’ I stopped. ‘Oh damn it,’ I said. ‘Have some Krug.’

Dissdale’s friends returned giggling to disrupt the incautious minute and shortly Gordon, Henry and Lorna crowded in. The whole party pressed out onto the balcony to watch the race, and because it was a time out of reality Burnt Marshmallow romped home by three lengths.

The rest of the afternoon slid fast away. Henry at some point found himself alone out on the balcony beside me while inside the box the table was being spread with a tea that was beyond my stretched stomach entirely and a temptation from which the ever-hungry Henry had bodily removed himself.

‘How’s your cartoonist?’ he said genially. ‘Are we staking him, or are we not?’

‘You’re sure... I have to decide... all alone?’

‘I said so. Yes.’

‘Well... I got him to bring some more drawings to the bank. And his paints.’

‘His paints?’

‘Yes. I thought if I could see him at work, I’d know...’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway, I took him into the private interview room and asked him to paint the outline of a cartoon film while I watched; and he did it, there and then, in acrylics. Twenty-five outline sketches in bright colour, all within an hour. Same characters, different story, and terrifically funny. That was on Monday. I’ve been... well... dreaming about those cartoons. It sounds absurd. Maybe they’re too much on my mind.’

‘But you’ve decided?’

After a pause I said, ‘Yes.’

‘And?’

With a sense of burning bridges I said, ‘To go ahead.’

‘All right.’ Henry seemed unalarmed. ‘Keep me informed.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He nodded and smoothly changed the subject. ‘Lorna and I have won quite a bit today. How about you?’

‘Enough to give Uncle Freddie fits about the effect on my unstable personality.’

Henry laughed aloud. ‘Your Uncle Freddie,’ he said, ‘knows you better than you may think.’

At the end of that splendid afternoon the whole party descended together to ground level and made its way to the exit; to the gate which opened onto the main road, and across that to the car park and to the covered walk which led to the station.

Calder just ahead of me walked in front, the helmet of curls sent kindly over Bettina, the strong voice thanking her and Dissdale for ‘a most enjoyable time.’ Dissdale himself, not only fully recovered but incoherent with joy as most of his doubles, trebles and accumulators had come up, patted Calder plumply on the shoulder and invited him over to ‘my place’ for the weekend.

Henry and Gordon, undoubtedly the most sober of the party, were fiddling in their pockets for car keys and throwing their race cards into wastebins. Judith and Pen were talking to each other and Lorna was graciously unbending to Dissdale’s friends. It seemed to be only I, with unoccupied eyes, who saw at all what was about to happen.

We were out on the pavement, still in a group, half-waiting for a chance to cross the road, soon to break up and scatter. All talking, laughing, busy; except me.

A boy stood there on the pavement, watchful and still. I noticed first the fixed, burning intent in the dark eyes, and quickly after that the jeans and faded shirt which contrasted sharply with our Ascot clothes, and then finally with incredulity the knife in his hand.

I had almost to guess at whom he was staring with such deadly purpose, and no time even to shout a warning. He moved across the pavement with stunning speed, the stab already on its upward travel.

I jumped almost without thinking; certainly without assessing consequences or chances. Most unbankerlike behaviour.

The steel was almost in Calder’s stomach when I deflected it. I hit the boy’s arm with my body in a sort of flying tackle and in a flashing view saw the weave of Calder’s trousers, the polish on his shoes, the litter on the pavement. The boy fell beneath me and I thought in horror that somewhere between our bodies he still held that wicked blade.

He writhed under me, all muscle and fury, and tried to heave me off. He was lying on his back, his face just under mine, his eyes like slits and his teeth showing between drawn-back lips. I had an impression of dark eyebrows and white skin and I could hear the breath hissing between his teeth in a tempest of effort.

Both of his hands were under my chest and I could feel him trying to get space enough to up-end the knife. I pressed down onto him solidly with all my weight and in my mind I was saying ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it, you bloody fool’; and I was saying it for his sake , which seemed crazy to me at the time and even crazier in retrospect. He was trying to do me great harm and all I thought about was the trouble he’d be in if he succeeded.

We were both panting but I was taller and stronger and I could have held him there for a good while longer but for the two policemen who had been out on the road directing traffic. They had seen the melee; seen as they supposed a man in morning dress attacking a pedestrian, seen us struggling on the ground. In any case the first I knew of their presence was the feel of vice-like hands fastening onto my arms and pulling me backwards.

I resisted with all my might. I didn’t know they were policemen. I had eyes only for the boy: his eyes, his hands, his knife.

With peremptory strength they hauled me off, one of them anchoring my upper arms to my sides by encircling me from behind. I kicked furiously backwards and turned my head, and only then realized that the new assailants wore navy blue.

The boy comprehended the situation in a flash. He rolled over onto his feet, crouched for a split second like an athlete at the blocks and without lifting his head above waist-height slithered through the flow of the crowds still pouring out of the gates and disappeared out of sight inside the racecourse. Through there they would never find him. Through there he would escape to the cheaper rings and simply walk out of the lower gate.

I stopped struggling but the policemen didn’t let go. They had no thought of chasing the boy. They were incongruously calling me ‘sir’ while treating me with contempt, which if I’d been calm enough for reflection I would have considered fairly normal.

‘For God’s sake,’ I said finally to one of them, ‘what do you think that knife’s doing on the pavement?’

They looked down to where it lay; to where it had fallen when the boy ran. Eight inches of sharp steel kitchen knife with a black handle.

‘He was trying to stab Calder Jackson,’ I said. ‘All I did was stop him. Why do you think he’s gone?’

By this time Henry, Gordon, Laura, Judith and Pen were standing round in an anxious circle continually assuring the law that never in a million years would their friend attack anyone except out of direst need, and Calder was looking dazed and fingering a slit in the waistband of his trousers.