Дик Фрэнсис - Bolt

By the time we reached Eaton Square, she had physically recovered completely, and mentally to a great extent. She still looked pale and strained, though, and took Thomas’s strong hand to help her from the ear. I followed her onto the pavement, and she stood for a moment looking at Thomas and myself, as we stood there lit by the street-lamps.

‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘thank you both.’

Thomas looked as always as if he would willingly die for her besides driving her carefully to and from the races, but more mundanely at that moment walked across the pavement and with his bunch of keys opened the princess’s front door.

She and I went in, leaving Thomas to drive away, and together walked up the wide staircase to the first floor. The ground floor of the big old house consisted of offices, a guest suite, a library and a breakfast room. It was upstairs that the princess and her husband chiefly lived, with drawing room, sitting room and dining room on the first floor and bedrooms on three floors above. Staff lived in the semi-basement, and there was an efficient lift from top to bottom, installed in modern times to accommodate M. de Brescou’s wheelchair.

‘Will you wait in the sitting room?’ she said. ‘Help yourself to a drink. If you’d like tea, ring down to Dawson...’ The social phrases came out automatically, but her eyes were vague, and she was looking very tired.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid I may be a long time.’

‘I’ll be here.’

She nodded and went up the next broad flight of stairs to the floor above, where she and her husband each had a private suite of rooms, and where Roland de Brescou spent most of his time. I had never been up there, but Danielle had described his rooms as a mini-hospital, with besides his bedroom and sitting room, a physiotherapy room and a room for a male nurse.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I’d asked.

‘Some frightful virus. I don’t know exactly what, but not polio. His legs just stopped working, years ago. They don’t say much about it, and you know what they’re like, it feels intrusive to ask.’

I went into the sitting room, which had become familiar territory, and phoned down to Dawson, the rather august butler, asking for tea.

‘Certainly, sir,’ he said austerely. ‘Is Princess Casilia with you?’

‘She’s upstairs with Monsieur de Brescou.’

He said, ‘Ah,’ and the line clicked off. He appeared in a short time, bearing a small silver tray with tea and lemon but no milk, no sugar and no biscuits.

‘Did we have a successful afternoon, sir?’ he asked, setting down his burden.

‘A win and a third.’

He gave me a small smile, a man nearing sixty, unextended and happy in his work. ‘Very gratifying, sir.’

‘Yes.’

He nodded and went away, and I poured out and drank the tea and tried not to think of buttered toast. During the February freeze, I had somehow gained three pounds and was in consequence having a worse than usual battle against weight.

The sitting room was comfortable with flowered fabrics, rugs and pools of warm lamplight, altogether friendlier than the satins and gilt of the very French drawing room next door. I switched on the television to watch the news, and switched it off after, and wandered around looking for something to read. I also wondered fleetingly why the princess had wanted me to wait, and exactly what help it was that she might find too much to ask.

Reading materials seemed to be a straight choice between a glossy magazine about architecture in French and a worldwide airline timetable, and I was opting for the second when on a side table I came across a folded leaflet which announced ‘Master Classes in a Distinguished Setting’, and found myself face to face with Danielle’s weekend.

I sat in an armchair and read the booklet from front to back. The hotel, with illustrating photographs, was described as a country house refurbished in the grand manner, with soul-shaking views over fells and lakes and blazing log fires to warm the heart indoors.

The entertainments would begin with a reception on the Friday evening at six o’clock (which meant it was in progress as I read), followed by dinner, followed by Chopin sonatas performed in the gold drawing room.

On Saturday would come the lectures on ‘The Masters of the Italian Renaissance’, given by the illustrious Keeper of Italian paintings in the Louvre. In the morning, ‘Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael: Masterworks in the Louvre’, and in the afternoon, ‘Giorgione’s Concert Champêtre and Titian’s Laura Dianti : The Cinquecento in Venice’, all to be accompanied by slides illuminating points of brushwork and technique. These lectures, the leaflet said, represented a rare privilege seldom granted outside France by probably the world’s greatest expert in Italian Renaissance art.

On Saturday evening there would be a grand Florentine banquet especially created by a master chef from Rome, and on Sunday visits would be arranged to the Lakeland houses of Wordsworth, Ruskin and (if desired) Beatrix Potter. Finally, afternoon tea would be served round the fire in the Great Hall, and everyone would disperse.

I seldom felt unsure either of myself or of my chosen way of life, but I put down the leaflet feeling helplessly inadequate.

I knew practically nothing of the Italian Renaissance and I couldn’t reliably have dated da Vinci within a hundred years. I knew he painted the Mona Lisa and drew helicopters and submarines, and that was about all. Of Botticelli, Giorgione and Raphael I knew just as little. If Danielle’s interests deeply lay with the Arts, would she ever come back to a man whose work was physical, philistine and insecure? To a man who’d liked biology and chemistry in his teens and not wanted to go to college. To someone who would positively have avoided going where she had gone with excitement.

I shivered. I couldn’t bear to lose her, not to long-dead painters, nor to a live prince.

Time passed. I read the world-wide air timetables and found there were many places I’d never heard of, with people busily flying in and out of them every day. There were far too many things I didn’t know.

Eventually, shortly after eight, the unruffled Dawson reappeared and invited me upstairs, and I followed him to the unfamiliar door of M. de Brescou’s private sitting room.

‘Mr Fielding, sir,’ Dawson said, announcing me, and I walked in to a room with gold swagged curtains, dark green walls and dark red leather armchairs.

Roland de Brescou sat as usual in his wheelchair, and it was clear at once that he was suffering from the same severe shock that had affected the princess. Always weak-looking, he seemed more than ever to be on the point of expiring, his pale yellow-grey skin stretched over his cheekbones and the eyes gaunt and staring. He had been, I supposed, a good looking man long ago, and he still retained a noble head of white hair and a naturally aristocratic manner. He wore, as ever, a dark suit and tie, making no concessions to illness. Old and frail he might be, but still his own master, unimpaired in his brain. Since my engagement to Danielle, I had met him a few times, but although unfailingly courteous he was reclusive always, and as reticent as the princess herself.

‘Come in,’ he said to me, his voice, always surprisingly strong, sounding newly hoarse. ‘Good evening, Kit.’ The French echo in his English was as elusive as the princess’s own.

‘Good evening, monsieur,’ I said, making a small bow to him also, as he disliked shaking hands: his own were so thin that the squeezing of strangers hurt him.

The princess, sitting in one of the armchairs, raised tired fingers in a small greeting, and with Dawson withdrawing and closing the door behind me, she said apologetically, ‘We’ve kept you waiting so long...’