Dick Francis - In the Frame

‘Is it usually hot?’

‘Melbourne’s weather can change twenty degrees in an hour.’ He sounded proud of it. ‘Now then, this business of yours.’ He delved into an inner breast pocket and surfaced with a folded paper. ‘Here you are, typed out for Donald. The gallery was called Yarra River Fine Arts.’

I would have been astounded if it hadn’t been.

‘And the man we dealt with was someone called Ivor Wexford.’

‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

‘I don’t remember very clearly. It was back in April, do you see?’

I thought briefly and pulled a small slim sketchbook out of my pocket.

‘If I draw him, might you know him?’

He looked amused. ‘You never know.’

I drew quickly in soft pencil a reasonable likeness of Greene, but without the moustache.

‘Was it him?’

Hudson Taylor looked doubtful. I drew in the moustache. He shook his head decisively. ‘No, that wasn’t him.’

‘How about this?’

I flipped over the page and started again. Hudson Taylor looked pensive as I did my best with the man from the basement office.

‘Maybe,’ he said.

I made the lower lip fuller, added heavy-framed spectacles, and a bow tie with spots.

‘That’s him,’ said Hudson in surprise. ‘I remember the bow tie, anyway. You don’t see many of those these days. How did you know? You must have met him.’

‘I walked round a couple of galleries yesterday afternoon.’

‘That’s quite a gift you have there,’ he said with interest, watching me put the notebook away.

‘Practice, that’s all.’ Years of seeing people’s faces as matters of shapes and proportions and planes, and remembering which way the lines slanted. I could already have drawn Hudson’s eyes from memory. It was a knack I’d had from childhood.

‘Sketching is your hobby?’ Hudson asked.

‘And my work. I mostly paint horses.’

‘Really?’ He glanced at the equine portraits decorating the wall. ‘Like these?’

I nodded, and we talked a little about painting for a living.

‘Maybe I can give you a commission, if my horse runs well in the Cup.’ He smiled, the outer edges of his eyes crinkling finely. ‘If he’s down the field, I’ ll feel more like shooting him.’

He stood up and gestured me still to follow. ‘Time for the next race. Care to watch it with me?’

We emerged into daylight in the prime part of the stands, overlooking the big square enclosure which served both for parading the runners before the race and unsaddling the winners after. I was amused to see that the front rows of seats were all for men: two couples walking in front of us split like amoebas, the husbands going down left, the women up right.

‘Down here,’ Hudson said, pointing.

‘May we only go up there if accompanied by a lady?’ I asked.

He glanced at me sideways, and smiled. ‘You find our ways odd? We’ll go up, by all means.’

He led the way and settled comfortably among the predominantly female company, greeting several people and introducing me companionably as his friend Charles from England. Instant first names, instant acceptance, Australian style.

‘Regina hated all this division of the sexes, poor lass,’ he said. ‘But it has interesting historical roots.’ He chuckled. ‘Australia was governed nearly all last century with the help of the British Army. The officers and gentlemen left their wives back in England, but such is nature, they all set up liaisons here with women of low repute. They didn’t want their fellow officers to see the vulgarity of their choice, so they invented a rule that the officers’ enclosures were for men only, which effectively silenced their popsies’ pleas to be taken.’

I laughed ‘Very neat.’

‘It’s easier to establish a tradition,’ Hudson said, ‘than to get rid of it.’

‘You’re establishing a great tradition for fine wines, Donald says.’

The sad-looking eyes twinkled with civilized pleasure. ‘He was most enthusiastic. He travelled round all the big vineyards, of course, besides visiting us.’

The horses for the third race cantered away to the start, led by a fractious chestnut colt with too much white about his head.

‘Ugly brute,’ Hudson said. ‘But he’ ll win.’

‘Are you backing it?’

He smiled. ‘I’ve a little bit on.’

The race started and the field sprinted, and Hudson’s knuckles whitened so much from his grip as he gazed intently through his binoculars that I wondered just how big the little bit was. The chestnut colt was beaten into fourth place. Hudson put his race-glasses down slowly and watched the unsatisfactory finish with a blank expression.

‘Oh well,’ he said, his sad eyes looking even sadder. ‘Always another day.’ He shrugged resignedly, cheered up, shook my hand, told me to remember him to Donald, and asked if I could find my own way out.

‘Thank you for your help,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Any time. Any time.’

With only a couple of wrong turnings I reached ground level, listening on the way to fascinating snippets of Australian conversation.

‘... They say he’s an embarrassment as a Committee man. He only opens his mouth to change feet...’

‘... a beastly stomach wog, so he couldn’t come...’

‘... told him to stop whingeing like a bloody Pommie, and get on with it...’

‘... won twenty dollars? Good on yer, Joanie...’

And everywhere the diphthong vowels which gave the word ‘No’ about five separate sounds, defying my attempts to copy it. I’d been told on the flight over, by an Australian, that all Australians spoke with one single accent. It was about as true as saying all Americans spoke alike, or all British. English was infinitely elastic; and alive, well and living in Melbourne.

Jik and Sarah, when I rejoined them, were arguing about their fancies for the Victoria Derby, next race on the card.

‘Ivory Ball is out of his class and has as much chance as a blind man in a blizzard.’

Sarah ignored this. ‘He won at Moonee Valley last week and two of the tipsters pick him.’

‘Those tipsters must have been drunk.’

‘Hello Todd,’ Sarah said, ‘Pick a number, for God’s sake.’

‘Ten.’

‘Why ten?’

‘Eleven minus one.’

‘Jesus,’ Jik said. ‘You used to have more sense.’

Sarah looked it up. ‘Royal Road. Compared with Royal Road, Ivory Ball’s a certainty.’

We bought our tickets and went up to the roof, and none of our bets came up. Sarah disgustedly yelled at Ivory Ball who at least managed fifth, but Royal Road fell entirely by the wayside. The winner was number twelve.

‘You should have added eleven and one,’ Sarah said. ‘You make such silly mistakes.’

‘What are you staring at?’ Jik said.

I was looking attentively down at the crowd which had watched the race from ground level on the Members’ lawn.

‘Lend me your raceglasses...’

Jik handed them over. I raised them, took a long look, and slowly put them down.

‘What is it?’ Sarah said anxiously. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘That,’ I said, ‘has not only torn it, but ripped the bloody works apart.’

‘What has?’

‘Do you see those two men... about twenty yards along from the parade ring railing... one of them in a grey morning suit?’

‘What about them?’ Jik said.

‘The man in the morning suit is Hudson Taylor, the man I just had a drink with. He’s the managing director of a wine-making firm, and he saw a lot of my cousin Donald when he was over here. And the other man is called Ivor Wexford, and he’s the manager of the Yarra River Fine Arts gallery.’

‘So what?’ Sarah said.

‘So I can just about imagine the conversation that’s going on down there,’ I said. ‘Something like, “Excuse me, sir, but didn’t I sell a picture to you recently?”