Dick Francis: Proof

‘No, I certainly couldn’t,’ I said positively. ‘From you it could be a friendly warning, from me it would be a deadly insult. Sorry, Jimmy, but honestly, no.’

With resignation he said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t. But worth a try.’ He poured himself more scotch and again put ice into it, and I thought in passing that true whisky aficionados thought ice an abomination, and wondered about the trustworthiness of his perception of Laphroaig.

Flora, rotund and happy in cherry red wool, came in her light-stepped way into the tent, looking around and nodding in satisfaction.

‘Looks quite bright, doesn’t it, Tony dear?’

‘Splendid,’ I said.

‘When it’s filled with guests...’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

She was conventional, well-intentioned and cosy, mother of three children (not Jack’s) who telephoned her regularly. She liked to talk about them on her occasional visits to my shop and tended to place larger orders when the news of them was good. Jack was her second husband, mellowing still under her wing but reportedly jealous of her offspring. Amazing the things people told their wine merchants. I knew a great deal about a lot of people’s lives.

Flora peered into the tubs. ‘Four cases on ice?’

I nodded. ‘More in the van, if you need it.’

‘Lets hope not.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘But my dear, I wouldn’t bet on it. Jimmy love, you don’t need to drink whisky. Open some champagne. I’d like a quick glass before everyone swamps us.’

Jimmy obliged with languid grace, easing out the cork without explosion, containing the force in his hand. Flora smilingly watched the plume of released gas float from the bottle and tilted a glass forward to catch the first bubbles. At her insistence both Jimmy and I drank also, but from Jimmy’s expression it didn’t go well with his scotch.

‘Lovely!’ Flora said appreciatively, sipping; and I thought the wine as usual a bit too thin and fizzy, but sensible enough for those quantities. I sold a great deal of it for weddings.

Flora took her glass and wandered down the marquee to the entrance through which the guests would come, the entrance which faced away from the house, towards the field where the cars would be parked. Jack Hawthorn’s house and stableyard were built in a hollow high on the eastern end of the Berkshire Downs, in a place surrounded by hills, invisible until one was close. Most people would arrive by the main road over the hill which faced the rear of the house, parking in the field, and continuing the downward journey on foot through a gate in the low-growing rose hedge, and onto the lawn. After several such parties, Flora had brought crowd control to a fine art: and besides, this way, no one upset the horses.

Flora suddenly exclaimed loudly and came hurrying back.

‘It’s really too bad of him. The Sheik is here already. His car’s coming over the hill. Jimmy, run and meet him. Jack’s still changing. Take the Sheik round the yard. Anything. Really, it’s too bad. Tell Jack he’s here.’

Jimmy nodded, put down his glass without haste and ambled off to intercept the oil-rich prince and his retinue. Flora hovered indecisively, not following, talking crossly with maximum indiscretion.

‘I don’t like that particular Sheik. I can’t help it. He’s fat and horrible and he behaves as if he owns the place, which he doesn’t. And I don’t like the way he looks at me with those half-shut eyes, as if I were of no account... and Tony, dear, I haven’t said any of those things, you understand? I don’t like the way Arabs treat women.’

‘And his horses win races,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Flora sighed. ‘It’s not all sweetness and light being a trainer’s wife. Some of the owners make me sick.’ She gave me a brief half-smile and went away to the house, and I finished the unloading with things like orange juice and cola.

Up on the hill the uniformed chauffeur parked the elongated black-windowed Mercedes, which was so identifiably the Sheik’s, with its nose pointing to the marquee, and gradually more cars arrived to swell the row there, bringing waitresses and other helpers, and finally, in a steady stream, the hundred-and-something guests.

They came by Rolls, by Range Rover, by Mini and by Ford. One couple arrived in a horsebox, another by motorcycle Some brought children, some brought dogs, most of which were left with the cars. In cashmere and cords, in checked shirts and tweeds, in elegance and pearls they walked chatteringly down the grassy slope, through the gate in the rose hedge, across a few steps of lawn, into the beckoning tent. A promising Sunday morning jollification ahead, most troubles left behind.

As always with racing-world parties, everyone there knew somebody else. The decibel count rose rapidly to ear-aching levels and only round the very walls could one talk without shouting. The Sheik, dressed in full Arab robes and flanked by his wary-eyed entourage, was one, I noticed, who stood resolutely with his back to the canvas, holding his orange juice before him and surveying the crush with his half-shut eyes. Jimmy was doing his noble best to amuse, rewarded by unsmiling nods, and gradually and separately other guests stopped to talk to the solid figure in the banded white headgear, but none of them with complete naturalness, and none of them women.

Jimmy after a while detached himself and I found him at my elbow.

‘Sticky going, the Sheik?’ I said.

‘He’s not such a bad fellow,’ Jimmy said loyally. ‘No social graces in western gatherings and absolutely paranoid about being assassinated... never even sits in the dentist’s chair, I’m told, without all those bodyguards being right there in the surgery... but he does know about horses. Loves them. You should have seen him just now, going round the yard, those bored eyes came right to life.’ He looked round the gathering and suddenly exclaimed, ‘See that man talking to Flora? That’s Larry Trent.’

‘Of the absent Laphroaig?’

Jimmy nodded, wrinkled his brow in indecision and moved off in another direction altogether, and I for a few moments watched the man with Flora, a middle-aged, dark-haired man with a moustache, one of the few people wearing a suit, in his case a navy pinstripe with the coat buttoned, a line of silk handkerchief showing in the top pocket. The crowd shifted and I lost sight of him, and I talked, as one does, to a succession of familiar half-known people, seen once a year or less, with whom one took on as one had left off, as if time hadn’t existed in between. It was one of those, with best intentions, who said inevitably, ‘And how’s Emma? How’s your pretty wife?’

I thought I would never get used to it, that jab like a spike thrust into a jumpy nerve, that positively physical pain. Emma... dear God.

‘She’s dead,’ I said, shaking my head slightly, breaking it to him gently, absolving him from embarrassment. I’d had to say it like that often: far too often. I knew how to do it now without causing discomfort. Bitter, extraordinary skill of the widowed, taking the distress away from others, hiding one’s own.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, meaning it intensely for the moment, as they do. ‘I’d no idea. None at all. Er... when...?’

‘Six months ago,’ I said.

‘Oh.’ He adjusted his sympathy level suitably. ‘I’m really very sorry.’

I nodded. He sighed. The world went on. Transaction over, until next time. Always a next time. And at least he hadn’t asked ‘How...?’, and I hadn’t had to tell him, hadn’t had to think of the pain and the coma and the child who had died with her, unborn.

A fair few of Jack’s guests were also my customers, so that even in that racing gathering I found myself talking as much about wine as horses, and it was while an earnest elderly lady was soliciting my views on Côtes du Rhône versus Côte de Nuits that I saw Jimmy finally talking to Larry Trent. He spotted me too and waved for me to come over, but the earnest lady would buy the better wine by the caseful if convinced, and I telegraphed ‘later’ gestures to Jimmy, to which he flipped a forgiving hand.