Дик Фрэнсис - Bolt

The princess’s thoughts were following my own. ‘When Paul Peck had that dreadful fall and decided to retire,’ she said, ‘there we were at the height of the season with no stable jockey and all the other top jockeys signed up elsewhere. Wykeham told me and the other owners that there was this young Fielding boy in Newmarket who had been riding as an amateur since he’d left school a year earlier...’ She smiled. ‘We were very doubtful. Wykeham said to trust him, he was never wrong. You know how modest he is!’ She paused, considering. ‘How long ago was that?’

‘Ten years last October.’

She sighed. ‘Time goes so fast.’

The older the faster... and for me also. Time no longer stretched out to infinity. My years in the saddle would end, maybe in four years, maybe five, whenever my body stopped mending fast from the falls, and I was far from ready to face the inexorability of the march of days. I intensely loved my job and dreaded its ending: anything after, I thought, would be unutterably dreary.

The princess was silent for a while, her thoughts reverting to Cascade and Cotopaxi.

‘That bolt,’ she said tentatively, ‘I didn’t like to ask Robin... I don’t really know what a humane killer looks like.’

‘Robin says the bolt type isn’t much used nowadays,’ I said, ‘but I saw one once. My grandfather’s vet showed me. It looked like an extra heavy pistol with a very thick barrel. The bolt itself is a metal rod which slides inside the barrel. When the trigger is pulled, the metal rod shoots out, but because it’s fixed inside to a spring, it retracts immediately into the barrel again.’ I reflected. ‘The rod... the bolt... is a bit thicker than a pencil, and about four inches of it shoots out into... er... whatever it’s aimed at.’

She was surprised. ‘So small? I’d thought, somehow, you know, that it would be much bigger. And I didn’t know until today that it was... from in front.’

She stopped talking abruptly and spent a fair time concentrating on the scenery. She had agreed without reserve to the dog patrols and had told Wykeham not to economise, the vulnerability of her other horses all too clearly understood.

‘I had so been looking forward to the Grand National,’ she said eventually. ‘So very much.’

‘Yes, I know. So had I.’

‘You’ll ride something else. For someone else.’

‘It won’t be the same.’

She patted my hand rather blindly. ‘It’s such a waste,’ she said passionately. ‘So stupid. My husband would never trade in guns to save my horses. Never. And I wouldn’t ask it. My dear, dear horses.’

She struggled against tears and with a few sniffs and swallows won the battle, and when we reached Eaton Square she said we would go into the sitting room for a drink ‘to cheer ourselves up’.

This good plan was revised, however, because the sitting room wasn’t empty. Two people, sitting separately in armchairs, stood up as the princess walked in; and they were Prince Litsi and Danielle.

‘My dear aunt,’ the prince said, bowing to her, kissing her hand, kissing her also on both cheeks. ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ she said faintly, and kissed Danielle. ‘I thought you were returning late this evening.’

‘The weather was frightful.’ The prince shook my hand. ‘Rain. Mist. Freezing. We decided yesterday we’d had enough and left early today, before breakfast.’

I kissed Danielle’s smooth cheek, wanting much more. She looked briefly into my eyes and said Dawson had told them I was staying in the house. I hadn’t seen her for three weeks and I didn’t want to hear about Dawson. Around the princess, however, one kept raw emotions under wraps, and I heard myself asking if she’d enjoyed the lectures, as if I hoped she had.

‘They were great.’

The princess decided that Prince Litsi, Danielle and myself should have the drinks, while she went upstairs to see her husband.

‘You pour them,’ she said to her nephew. ‘And you, Kit, tell them everything that’s been happening, will you? My dears... such horrid troubles.’ She waved a hand vaguely and went away, her back straight and slender, a statement in itself.

‘Kit,’ the prince said, transferring his attention.

‘Sir.’

We stood as if assessing each other, he taller, ten years older, a man of a wider world. A big man, Prince Litsi, with heavy shoulders, a large head, full mouth, positive nose and pale intelligent eyes. Light brown hair had begun to recede with distinction from his forehead, and a strong neck rose from a cream open-necked shirt. He looked as impressive as I’d remembered. It had been a year or more since we’d last met.

From his point of view, I suppose he saw brown curly hair, light brown eyes and a leanness imposed by the weights allocated to racehorses. Perhaps he saw also the man whose fiancée he had lured away to esoteric delights, but to do him justice there was nothing in his face of triumph or amusement.

‘I’d like a drink,’ Danielle said abruptly. She sat down, waiting. ‘Litsi...’

His gaze lingered my way for another moment, then he turned to busy himself with the bottles. We had talked only on racecourses, I reflected, politely skimming the surface with post-race chit-chat. I knew him really as little as he knew me.

Without enquiring, he poured white wine for Danielle and Scotch for himself and me.

‘OK?’ he said, proffering the glass.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Call me Litsi,’ he said easily. ‘All this protocol... I drop it in private. It’s different for Aunt Casilia, but I never knew the old days. There’s no throne any more... I’ll never be king. I live in the modern world... so will you let me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If you like.’

He nodded and sipped his drink. ‘You call Aunt Casilia “Princess”, anyway,’ he pointed out.

‘She asked me to.’

‘There you are, then.’ He waved a large hand, the subject closed. ‘Tell us what has been disturbing the household.’

I looked at Danielle, dressed that day in black trousers, white shirt, blue sweater. She wore the usual pink lipstick, her cloudy dark hair held back in a blue band, everything known and loved and familiar. I wanted fiercely to hold her and feel her warmth against me, but she was sitting very firmly in an armchair built for one, and she would only meet my eyes for a flicker or two between concentrations on her drink.

I’m losing her, I thought, and couldn’t bear it.

‘Kit,’ the prince said, sitting down.

I took a slow breath, returned my gaze to his face, sat down also, and began the long recital, starting chronologically with Henri Nanterre’s bullying invasion on Friday afternoon and ending with the dead horses in Wykeham’s stable that morning.

Litsi listened with increasing dismay, Danielle with simpler indignation.

‘That’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Poor Aunt Casilia.’ She frowned. ‘I guess it’s not right to knuckle under to threats, but why is Uncle Roland so against guns? They’re made all over the place, aren’t they?’

‘In France,’ Litsi said, ‘for a man of Roland’s background to deal in guns would be considered despicable.’

‘But he doesn’t live in France,’ Danielle said.

‘He lives in himself.’ Litsi glanced my way. ‘You understand, don’t you, why he can’t?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

He nodded. Danielle looked from one of us to the other and sighed. ‘The European mind, I guess. Trading in arms in America isn’t any big deal.’

I thought it was probably more of a big deal than she realised, and from his expression Litsi thought so too.

‘Would the old four hundred families trade in arms?’ he asked, but if he expected a negative, he didn’t get it.