Dick Francis: In the Frame

‘Let me see.’

I turned the canvas round. He stared and stared, but said nothing at all. The taxi drove up to the front door.

‘See you,’ I said, propping Regina against a wall.

He nodded and punched my arm, opened the door for me, and sketched a farewell wave. Speechlessly, because his eyes were full of tears.

I spent nearly a week in Yorkshire doing my best to immortalise a patient old steeplechaser, and then went home to my noisy flat near Heathrow airport, taking the picture with me to finish.

Saturday I downed tools and went to the races, fed up with too much nose-to-the-grindstone.

Jump racing at Plumpton, and the familiar swelling of excitement at the liquid movement of racehorses. Paintings could never do justice to them: never. The moment caught on canvas was always second best.

I would love to have ridden in races, but hadn’t had enough practice or skill; nor, I dare say, nerve. Like Donald, my childhood’s background was of middle-sized private enterprise, with my father an auctioneer in business on his own account in Sussex. I had spent countless hours in my growing years watching the horses train on the Downs round Findon, and had drawn and painted them from about the age of six. Riding itself had been mostly a matter of begging the wherewithal for an hour’s joy from indulgent aunts, never of a pony of my own. Art school later had been fine, but at twenty-two, alone in the world with both parents newly dead, I’d had to face the need to eat. It had been a short meant-to-be-temporary step to the estate agents across the street, but I’d liked it well enough to stay.

Half the horse painters in England seemed to have turned up at Plumpton, which was not surprising, as the latest Grand National winner was due to make his first appearance of the new season. It was a commercial fact that a picture called for instance ‘Nijinsky on Newmarket Heath’ stood a much better chance of being sold than one labelled ‘A horse on Newmarket Heath’, and ‘The Grand National winner at the start’ won hands down over ‘A runner at Plumpton before the Off’. The economic facts of life had brought many a would-be Rembrandt down to market research.

‘Todd!’ said a voice in my ear. ‘You owe me fifteen smackers.’

‘I bloody don’t,’ I said.

‘You said Seesaw was a certainty for Ascot.’

‘Never take sweets from a stranger.’

Billy Pyle laughed extravagantly and patted me heavily on the shoulder. Billy Pyle was one of those people you met on racecourses who greeted you as a bosom pal, plied you with drinks and bonhomie, and bored you to death. On and off I’d met Billy Pyle at the races for umpteen years, and had never yet worked out how to duck him without positive rudeness. Ordinary evasions rolled off his thick skin like mercury off glass, and I found it less wearing on the whole to get the drink over quickly than dodge him all afternoon.

I waited for him to say ‘how about a beverage’, as he always did.

‘How about a beverage?’ he said.

‘Er... sure,’ I agreed, resignedly.

‘Your father would never forgive me if I neglected you.’ He always said that, too. They had been business acquaintances, I knew, but I suspected the reported friendship was posthumous.

‘Come along, laddie.’

I knew the irritating routine by heart. He would meet his Auntie Sal in the bar, as if by accident, and in my turn I would buy them both a drink. A double brandy and ginger for Auntie Sal.

‘Why, there’s Auntie Sal,’ Billy said, pushing through the door. Surprise, surprise.

Auntie Sal was a compulsive racegoer in her seventies with a perpetual cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth and one finger permanently inserted in her form book, keeping her place.

‘Know anything for the two-thirty?’ she demanded.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘What? Oh, I see. Hello. How are you? Know anything for the two-thirty?’

‘ ’Fraid not.’

‘Huh.’

She peered into the form book. ‘Treetops is well in at the weights, but can you trust his leg?’ She looked up suddenly and with her free hand prodded her nephew, who was trying to attract service from the bar. ‘Billy, get a drink for Mrs. Matthews.’

‘Mrs. Who?’

‘Matthews. What do you want, Maisie?’

She turned to a large middle-aged woman who had been standing in the shadows behind her.

‘Oh... gin and tonic, thanks.’

‘Got that, Billy? Double brandy and ginger for me, gin and tonic for Mrs. Matthews.’

Maisie Matthews’ clothes were noticeably new and expensive, and from laquered hair via crocodile handbag to gold-trimmed shoes she shouted money without saying a word. The hand which accepted the drink carried the weight of a huge opal set in diamonds. The expression on her expertly painted face showed no joy at all.

‘How do you do?’ I said politely.

‘Eh?’ said Auntie Sal. ‘Oh yes, Maisie, this is Charles Todd. What do you think of Treetops?’

‘Moderate,’ I said.

Auntie Sal peered worriedly into the form book and Billy handed round the drinks.

‘Cheers,’ Maisie Matthews said, looking cheerless.

‘Down the hatch,’ said Billy, raising his glass.

‘Maisie’s had a bit of bad luck,’ Auntie Sal said.

Billy grinned. ‘Backed a loser, then, Mrs. Matthews?’

‘Her house burned down.’

As a light conversation-stopper, it was a daisy.

‘Oh... I say...’ said Billy uncomfortably. ‘Hard luck.’

‘Lost everything, didn’t you, Maisie?’

‘All but what I stand up in,’ she agreed gloomily.

‘Have another gin,’ I suggested.

‘Thanks, dear.’

When I returned with the refills she was in full descriptive flood.

‘... I wasn’t there, of course, I was staying with my sister Betty up in Birmingham, and there was this policeman on the doorstep telling me what a job they’d had finding me. But by that time it was all over, of course. When I got back to Worthing there was just a heap of cinders with the chimney-breast sticking up in the middle. Well, I had a real job finding out what happened, but anyway they finally said it was a flash fire, whatever that is, but they didn’t know what started it, because there’d been no one in the house of course for two days.’

She accepted the gin, gave me a brief unseeing smile, and returned to her story.

‘Well, I was spitting mad, I’ll tell you, over losing everything like that, and I said why hadn’t they used sea water, what with the sea being only the other side of the tamarisk and down the shingle, because of course they said they hadn’t been able to save a thing because they hadn’t enough water, and this fireman, the one I was complaining to, he said they couldn’t use sea water because for one thing it corroded everything and for another the pumps sucked up sea-weed and shells and things, and in any case the tide was out.’

I smothered an unseemly desire to laugh. She sensed it, however.

‘Well, dear, it may seem funny to you, of course, but then you haven’t lost all your treasures that you’d been collecting since heaven knows when.’

‘I’m really sorry, Mrs. Matthews. I don’t think it’s funny. It was just...’

‘Yes, well, dear. I suppose you can see the funny side of it, all that water and not a drop to put a fire out with, but I was that mad, I can tell you.’

1 think I’ll have a bit on Treetops,’ Auntie Sal said thoughtfully.

Maisie Matthews looked at her uncertainly and Billy Pyle, who had heard enough of disaster, broke gratefully into geniality, clapped me again on the shoulder, and said yes, it was time to see the next contest.

Duty done, I thought with a sigh, and took myself off to watch the race from the top of the stands, out of sight and earshot.