Дик Фрэнсис - Decider

He had steel grey eyes: unusual. Unlike his sister, he hadn’t honed his bone structure to angular leanness. Not for him the agonies and bad-temper-inducing deprivations of an unremitting battle with weight. Thirty or thereabouts, Dart already showed the roundness which could develop into the all-over weightiness of his father. Unlike his father he was also showing early signs of baldness, and this did, I slowly discovered, upset him radically.

‘I’d heard about you,’ Dart said, ‘but you were always cast as a villain. You don’t look villainous in the least.’

‘Who cast me as a villain?’

‘Hannah, mostly, I suppose. She’s never got over being rejected by her mother. I mean, mothers aren’t supposed to dump infants, are they? Fathers do, regularly, male prerogative. Rebecca would kill me for saying that. Anyway, your mother dumped Hannah but not you . I’d look out for knives between the shoulder blades, if I were you.’

His voice sounded light and frivolous but I had the impression I’d received a serious warning.

‘What do you do?’ I asked neutrally. ‘What do you all do?’

‘Do? I farm. That is to say, I look after the family estates.’ Perhaps he read polite surprise on my face because he grimaced self-deprecatingly and said, ‘As it happens, we have a farm manager who runs the land and also an agent who sees to the tenants, but I make the decisions. That is to say, I listen to what the manager wants to do and to what the agent wants to do, and then I decide that that’s what I want them to do, so they do it. Unless Father has different ideas. Unless Grandfather had different ideas, in the old days. And, of course, unless they’ve all been listening to my Great Aunt Marjorie whose ideas are ultimate.’ He paused quite cheerfully. ‘The whole thing’s bloody boring, and not what I’d like to do at all.’

‘Which is?’ I asked, entertained.

‘Fantasy land,’ he said. ‘Private property. Keep out.’ He meant no offence. The same words in Keith’s mouth would have been a curse. ‘What do you do, yourself?’ he asked.

‘I’m a builder,’ I said.

‘Really? What of?’

‘Houses, mostly.’

It didn’t interest him greatly. He trotted briefly through the occupations of the other Strattons, or at least the ones I’d met.

‘Rebecca’s a jockey, I suppose you guessed? She’s been besotted with horses all her life. She’s two years younger than me. Our papa owns a racehorse or two and goes hunting. He used to do my own job until he decided I was too idle, so now he does even less. But to be fair, he does no harm, which in these days invests him with sainthood. My Uncle Keith... heaven knows. He’s supposed to be in finance, whatever that means. My Uncle Ivan has a garden centre, all ghastly gnomes and things. He potters about there some days and trusts his manager.’

He paused to drink and gave me a glimmering inspection over the glass’s rim.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Hannah,’ he nodded. ‘She’s never done a hard day’s work. My grandfather poured money over her to make up for her mother — your mother — rejecting her, but he never seemed to love her... I suppose I shouldn’t say that. Anyway, Hannah’s not married but she has a son called Jack who’s a pain in the arse. Who else is there? Great Aunt Marjorie. Apart from Stratton money, she married a plutocrat who did the decent thing by dying fairly early. No children.’ He considered. ‘That’s the lot.’

‘What about Forsyth?’ I asked

A shutter came down fast on his easy loquacity.

‘Grandfather divided his seventy-five shares of Stratton Park among all of us,’ he stated. ‘Twenty-one shares each to his three sons, and three shares each to his four grandchildren. Forsyth gets his three like the rest of us.’ He stopped, his expression carefully non-committal. ‘Whatever Forsyth does isn’t my business.’ He left the clear implication that it wasn’t mine, either.

‘What will you all do,’ I asked, ‘about the racecourse?’

‘Besides quarrel? In the short term, nothing, as that’s what the great aunt is set on. Then we’ll get some hopeless new stands at enormous cost, then we’ll have to sell the land to pay for the stands. You may as well tear up your shares right away.’

‘You don’t seem unduly worried.’

His quick grin shone and vanished. ‘To be honest, I don’t give a toss. Even if I get myself disinherited by doing something diabolical, like voting to abolish hunting, I can’t help but get richer as time goes by. Grandfather gave me millions nine years ago, for a start. And my father has his good points. He’s already given me a chunk of his own fortune, and if he lives another three years it’ll be clear of tax.’ He stared at me, frowning. ‘Why do I tell you that?’

‘Do you want to impress me?’

‘No, I don’t. I don’t care a bugger what you think.’ He blinked a bit. ‘I suppose that’s not true.’ He paused. ‘I have irritating holes in my life.’

‘Like what?’

‘Too much money. No motivation. And I’m going bald.’

‘Marry,’ I said.

‘That wouldn’t grow hair.’

‘It might stop you minding.’

‘ Nothing stops you minding. And it’s damned unfair. I go to doctors who say I can’t do a bugger about it, it’s in the genes, and how did it get there , I’d like to know? Father’s OK and Grandfather had the full thatch, even though he was eighty-eight last birthday, and look at Keith with enough to brush back with his hands all the time like a ruddy girl. I hate that mannerism. And even Ivan has no bare patches, he’s going thin all over but that’s not as bad .’ He looked balefully at my head. ‘You’re about my age, and yours is thick .’

‘Try snake oil,’ I suggested.

‘That’s typical. People like you have no idea what it’s like to find hair all over the place. Washbasin. Pillow. Hairs which ought to stay growing in my scalp, dammit. How did you know I wasn’t married, anyway? And don’t give me the stock answer that I don’t look worried. I am worried, dammit, about my hair.’

‘You could try implants.’

‘Yes. Don’t laugh, I’m going to.’

‘I’m not laughing.’

‘I bet you are, inside. Everybody thinks it’s hilarious, someone else going bald. But when it’s you, it’s tragic.’

There were irretrievable disasters, I saw, that could only get worse. Dart drank deep as if beer would irrigate the failing follicles and asked if I were married, myself.

‘Do I look it?’

‘You look stable.’

Surprised, I said yes, I was married.

‘Children?’

‘Six sons.’

‘Six!’ He seemed horrified. ‘You’re not old enough.’

‘We married at nineteen, and my wife likes having babies.’

‘Good Lord.’ Other words failed him, and I thought back, as I did pretty often, to the heady student days when Amanda and I had taken to each other with excitement. Friends around us were pairing and living together: it was accepted behaviour.

‘Let’s get married,’ I said impulsively. ‘No one gets married ,’ Amanda said. ‘Then let’s be different ,’ I said.

So we married, giggling happily, and I paid no attention to my mother, who tried to tell me I was marrying Amanda with my eyes, marrying a half-grown woman I didn’t really know. ‘I married Keith Stratton for his beauty,’ she told me, ‘and it was a dreadful mistake. It’s always a mistake.’

‘But Amanda’s lovely.’

‘She’s lovely to look at and she’s kind and she clearly loves you , but you’re both so young, you’ll change as you grow older and so will she.’