Dick Francis - Wild Horses

He had for years shod a stableful of racehorses trained by my grandfather. He’d looked after the feet of the ponies I’d been given to ride. He had seemed to me to be already a wise man of incredible age, though I knew now he’d been barely sixty-five when I was ten.

His education had consisted of reading (the racing newspapers), writing (bills for his customers) and arithmetic (costing the work and materials so that he made a profit). Not until his forties had his mental capacity expanded to match his muscles. Not until, he’d told me during the past debilitated weeks, not decisively until in his job he was no longer expected to make individual shoes to fit the hooves of horses, but to trim the hooves to fit mass-produced uniform shoes. No longer was he expected to hammer white-hot iron bars into shape, but to tap softer metals cold.

He had begun to read history and biography, at first all to do with racing but later with wider horizons. He had begun in shy anonymity to submit observations and anecdotes to the newspapers he daily studied. He wrote about horses, people, events, opinions. One of the papers had given him a regular column with a regular salary and room to grow a reputation. While still plying his original trade, Valentine had become an honoured institution in print, truly admired and enjoyed for his insights and his wit.

As physical strength waned, his journalistic prowess had grown. He’d written on into his eighties, written into semi-blindness, written indeed until four weeks earlier, when the cancer battle had entered the stage of defeat.

And this was the old man, amusing, wise and revered, who had poured out in panic an apparently unbearable secret.

‘I killed the Cornish boy... ’

He must have meant, I thought, that he was blaming himself for an error in his shoeing, that by some mischance a lost nail in a race had caused a fatal accident to a jockey.

Not for nothing had Valentine adopted often enough the doctrine of doing things thoroughly, quoting now and then the fable of the horseshoe nail. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost... little oversights led to great disasters.

A dying mind, I thought again, was scrambling old small guilts into mountainous terrors. Poor old Valentine. I watched him sleep, the white hair scanty on his scalp, big blotchy freckles brown in his skin.

For a long time, no one came. Valentine’s breathing grew heavier, but not to the point of snoring. I looked round the familiar room, at the horses’ photographs I’d come to know well in the past few months, at the framed awards on the dark green wall, the flower-printed curtains, the worn brown carpet, the studded leather chairs, the basic portable typewriter on an unfussy desk, the struggling potted plant.

Nothing had changed from week to week: only the old man’s tenure there was slipping away.

One wall, shelved from floor to ceiling, held the books that I supposed would soon be mine. There were years and years of form-books listing thousands upon thousands of bygone races, with a small red dot inked in beside the name of every horse Valentine had fitted with racing shoes for the test.

Winners, hundreds of them, had been accorded an exclamation mark.

Below the form books there were many volumes of an ancient encyclopedia and rows of glossily jacketed life stories of recently dead racing titans, their bustling, swearing vigour reduced to pale paper memories. I’d met many of those people. My grandfather was among them. Their world, their passions, their achievements were passing into oblivion and already the young jockeys I’d star-gazed at ten were grandfathers.

I wondered who would write Valentine’s life story, a worthy subject if ever there was one. He had steadfastly refused to write it himself, despite heavy prompting from all around. Too boring, he’d said. Tomorrow’s world, that was where interest lay.

Dorothea came back apologetically half an hour late and tried without success to rouse her brother. I told her I’d phoned the doctor fruitlessly, which didn’t surprise her.

‘He says Valentine should be in hospital,’ she said. ‘Valentine refuses to go. He and the doctor swear at each other.’ She shrugged resignedly. ‘I expect the doctor will come in time. He usually does.’

‘I’ll have to leave you,’ I said regretfully. ‘I’m already overdue at a meeting.’ I hesitated. ‘Are you by any chance Roman Catholic?’ I asked. ‘I mean... Valentine said something about wanting a priest.’

‘A priest?’ She looked astounded. ‘He was rambling on all morning... his mind is going... but the old bugger would never ask for a priest .’

‘I just thought... perhaps... last rites?’

Dorothea gave me a look of sweet sisterly exasperation.

‘Our mother was Roman Catholic, but not Dad. Lot of nonsense, he used to say. Valentine and I grew up outside the Church and were never the worse for it. Our mother died when he was sixteen and I was eleven. A mass was said for her. Dad took us to that but it made him sweat, he said. Anyway, Valentine’s not much of a sinner except for swearing and such, and I know that being so weak as he is he wouldn’t want to be bothered by a priest .’

‘I just thought I’d tell you,’ I said.

‘You’re a dear to come here, Thomas, but I know you’re mistaken.’ She paused. ‘My poor dear boy is very ill now, isn’t he?’ She looked down at him in concern. ‘Much worse?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Going.’ She nodded, and tears came into her eyes. ‘We’ve known it would come, but when it happens... oh, dear.’

‘He’s had a good life.’

She disregarded the inadequate words and said forlornly, ‘I’ll be so alone .’

‘Couldn’t you live with your son?’

‘No!’ She straightened herself scornfully. ‘Paul is forty-five and pompous and domineering, though I hate to say it, and I don’t get on with his wife. They have three obnoxious teenagers who switch on deafening radios all the time until the walls vibrate.’ She broke off and smoothed her brother’s unresponsive head fondly. ‘No. Me and Valentine, we set up home here together when his Cathy died and my Bill passed on. Well, you know all that... and we always liked each other, Valentine and me, and I’ll miss him. I’ll miss him something awful, but I’ll stay here.’ She swallowed. ‘I’ll get used to being alone, same as I did after Bill went.’

Dorothea, like many elderly women, it seemed to me, had a resolute independence that survived where youth quaked. With help once daily from the district nurse, she’d cared for her failing brother, taking on ever more personal tasks for him, exhausting herself to give him comfort and painkillers when he lay awake in the night. She might mourn him when he’d gone, but her dark-rimmed eyes showed she was much overdue on rest.

She sat down tiredly on the tapestry stool and held her brother’s hand. He breathed slowly, shallowly, the sound rasping. Fading daylight from the window beside Valentine fell softly on the aged couple, light and shadow emphasizing the rounded commitment of the one and the skeletal dependence of the other, the hovering imminence of death as plain as if the scythe had hung above their heads.

I wished I had a camera. Wished indeed for a whole camera crew. My normal day to day life involved the catching of emotion on the wing, the recording of ephemeral images to illumine a bedrock of truth. I dealt with unreality to give illusion the insight of revelation.

I directed films.

Knowing that one day I would use and recreate the quiet drama before me, I looked at my watch and asked Dorothea if I might use her telephone.

‘Of course, dear. On the desk.’

I reached Ed, my earnest assistant, who as usual sounded flustered in my absence.