Дик Фрэнсис - Banker

The agony of adolescence, I thought. So real, so overpowering... so remembered.

The track curved through the bushes and opened suddenly into a wider place where grass grew in patches beside the rutted mud; and there stood Sandcastle, head high, nostrils twitching to the wind, a brown and black creature of power and beauty and majesty.

Ginnie stopped running in one stride and caught my arm fiercely.

‘Don’t move,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. You stay here. Keep still. Please keep still.’

I nodded obediently, respecting her experience. The colt looked ready to run again at the slightest untimely movement, his sides quivering, his legs stiff with tension, his tail sweeping up and down restlessly.

He’s frightened, I thought suddenly. He’s out here, lost, not knowing where to go. He’s never been free before, but his instinct is still wild, still against being caught. Horses were never truly tamed, only accustomed to captivity.

Ginnie walked towards him making crooning noises and holding out her hand palm upwards, an offering hand with nothing to offer. ‘Come on, boy,’ she said. ‘Come on boy, there’s a good boy, it’s all right, come on now.’

The horse watched her as if he’d never seen a human before, his alarm proclaimed in a general volatile trembling. The rope hung down from his head collar, its free end curling on the ground; and I wondered whether Ginnie would be able to control the colt if she caught him, where Lenny with all his strength had let him go.

Ginnie came to within a foot of the horse’s nose, offering her open left hand upwards and bringing her right hand up slowly under his chin, reaching for the head collar itself, not the rope: her voice made soothing, murmuring sounds and my own tensed muscles began to relax.

At the last second Sandcastle would have none of it. He wheeled away with a squeal, knocking Ginnie to her knees; took two rocketing strides towards a dense patch of bushes, wheeled again, laid back his ears and accelerated in my direction. Past me lay the open track, down hill again to the slaughtering main road.

Ginnie, seen in peripheral vision, was struggling to her feet in desperation. Without thinking of anything much except perhaps what that horse meant to her family, I jumped not out of his way but at his flying head, my fingers curling for the head collar and missing that and fastening round the rope.

He nearly tore my arms out of their sockets and all the skin off my palms. He yanked me off my feet, pulled me through the mud and trampled on my legs. I clung all the same with both hands to the rope and bumped against his shoulder and knee, and shortly more by weight than skill hauled him to the side of the track and into the bushes.

The bushes, indeed, acted as an anchor. He couldn’t drag my heaviness through them, not if I kept hold of the rope; and I wound the rope clumsily round a stump of branch for leverage, and that was roughly that. Sandcastle stood the width of the bush away, crossly accepting the inevitable, tossing his head and quivering but no longer trying for full stampede.

Ginnie appeared round the curve in the track, running and if possible looking more than ever distraught. When she saw me she stumbled and half fell and came up to me uninhibitedly crying.

‘Oh, I’m so glad, so glad, and you should never do that, you can be killed, you should never do it, and I’m so grateful, so glad... oh dear.’ She leant against me weakly and like a child wiped her eyes and nose on my sleeve.

‘Well,’ I said pragmatically, ‘what do we do with him now?’

What we decided, upon consideration, was that I and Sandcastle should stay where we were, and that Ginnie should go and find Nigel or her father, neither she nor I being confident of leading our prize home without reinforcements.

While she was gone I made an inventory of damage, but so far as my clothes went there was nothing the cleaners couldn’t see to, and as for the skin, it would grow again pretty soon. My legs though bruised were functioning, and there was nothing broken or frightful. I made a ball of my handkerchief in my right palm which was bleeding slightly and thought that one of these days a habit of launching oneself at things like fleeing stallions and boys with knives might prove to be unwise.

Oliver, Ginnie, Nigel and Lenny all appeared in the Land Rover, gears grinding and wheels spinning in the mud. Sandcastle, to their obvious relief, was upon inspection pronounced sound, and Oliver told me forcefully that no one , should ever , repeat ever , try to stop a bolting horse in that way.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

‘You could have been killed.’

‘So Ginnie said.’

‘Didn’t it occur to you?’ He sounded almost angry; the aftermath of fright. ‘Didn’t you think ?’

‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘I just did it.’

‘Never do it again,’ he said, ‘And thanks,’ he paused and swallowed and tried to make light of his own shattered state. ‘Thanks for taking care of my investment.’

Lenny and Nigel had brought a different sort of head collar which involved a bit in the mouth and a fierce looking curb chain, and with these in place the captive (if not chastened) fugitive was led away. There seemed to me to be a protest in the stalking hindquarters, a statement of disgust at the injustices of life. I smiled at that fanciful thought; the pathetic fallacy, the ascribing to animals of emotions one felt only oneself.

Oliver drove Ginnie and me back in the Land Rover, travelling slowly behind the horse and telling how Nigel and Lenny had allowed him to go free.

‘Sheer bloody carelessness,’ he said forthrightly. ‘Both of them should know better. They could see the horse was fresh and jumping out of his skin yet Lenny was apparently holding the rope with only one hand and stretching to swing the gate open with the other. He took his eyes off Sandcastle so he wasn’t ready when Nigel made some sharp movement or other and the horse reared and ran backwards. I ask you! Lenny! Nigel! How can they be so bloody stupid after all these years?’

There seemed to be no answer to that so we just let him curse away, and he was still rumbling like distant thunder when the journey ended. Once home he hurried off to the stallion yard and Ginnie trenchantly said that if Nigel was as sloppy with discipline for animals as he was with the lads, it was no wonder any horse with spirit would take advantage.

‘Accidents happen,’ I said mildly.

‘Huh.’ She was scornful. ‘Dad’s right. That accident shouldn’t have happened. It was an absolute miracle that Sandcastle came to no harm at all. Even if he hadn’t got out on the road he could have tried to jump the paddock rails — loose horses often do — and broken his leg or something.’ She sounded as angry as her father, and for the same reason; the flooding release after fear. I put my arm round her shoulders and gave her a quick hug, which seemed to disconcert her horribly. ‘Oh dear, you must think me so silly... and crying like that... and everything.’

‘I think you’re a nice dear girl who’s had a rotten morning,’ I said. ‘But all’s well now, you know; it really is.’

I naturally believed what I said, but I was wrong.

Calder Jackson finally came to dinner with me while he was staying in London to attend a world conference of herbalists. He would be glad, he said, to spend one of the evenings away from his colleagues, and I met him in a restaurant on the grounds that although my flat was civilized my cooking was not.

I sensed immediately a difference in him, though it was hard to define; rather as if he had become a figure still larger than life. Heads turned and voices whispered when we walked through the crowded place to our table, but because of television this would have happened anyway. Yet now, I thought, Calder really enjoyed it. There was still no overt arrogance, still a becoming modesty of manner, but something within him had intensified, crystallized, become a governing factor. He was now, I thought, even to himself, the Great Man.