Дик Фрэнсис: Decider

By the time we reached the stands, the fifth race, over hurdles, was already being run, but none of my five much cared about the result, not having had a chance to pick their fancy.

No one had won on the fourth race. Everyone’s hopes had ended at the ditch. Edward’s choice was the horse that died.

I gave them all tea in the tea-room: ruinously expensive but a necessary antidote to shock. Toby drowned his brush with the real world in four cups of hot sweet milky pick-you-up and every cake he could cajole from the waitress.

They ate through the sixth race. They all went to the gents. The crowds were pouring homewards out of the gates when we made our way to the Clerk of the Course’s office beside the weighing room.

The boys entered quietly behind me, unusually subdued and giving a misleading impression of habitual good behaviour. Oliver Wells, sitting at a busy-looking desk, eyed the children vaguely and went on speaking into a walkie-talkie. Roger Gardner, racecourse manager, was also in attendance, sitting with one hip on the desk, one foot swinging. The colonel’s worry-level had if anything intensified during the week, lines having deepened across his forehead. Civilised habits of behaviour would see him through, though, I thought, even if he rose to full height at our entrance, looking as if he had expected Lee Morris but not five smaller clones.

‘Come in,’ Oliver said, putting down his instrument. ‘Now, what shall we do with these boys?’ The question seemed to be merely rhetorical as he had recourse again to his walkie-talkie, pressing buttons. ‘Jenkins? To my office, please.’ He switched off again. ‘Jenkins will see to them.’

An official knocked briefly on an inner door and came in without waiting for a summons: a middle-aged messenger in a belted navy raincoat, with a slightly stodgy expression and slow-moving reassuring bulk.

‘Jenkins,’ Oliver said, ‘take these boys into the jockeys’ changing rooms and let them collect autographs.’

‘Won’t they be a nuisance?’ I asked, as parents do.

‘Jockeys are quite good with children,’ Oliver said, making shooing motions to my sons. ‘Go with Jenkins, boys, I want to talk to your father.’

‘Take them, Christopher,’ I encouraged, and all five of them went cheerfully with the safe escort.

‘Sit down,’ Oliver invited, and I pulled up a chair and sat round the desk with the two of them. ‘We’re not going to get five minutes without interruptions,’ Oliver said, ‘so we’ll come straight to the point.’ The walkie-talkie crackled. Oliver picked it up, pressed a switch and listened.

A voice said brusquely, ‘Oliver, get up here, pronto. The sponsors want a word.’

Oliver said reasonably, ‘I’m writing my report of the fourth race.’

‘Now, Oliver.’ The domineering voice switched itself off, severing argument.

Oliver groaned. ‘Mr Morris... can you wait?’ He rose and departed, whether I could wait or not.

‘That,’ Roger explained neutrally, ‘was a summons from Conrad Darlington Stratton, the fourth baron.’

I made no comment.

‘Things have changed since we saw you on Sunday,’ Roger said. ‘For the worse, if possible. I wanted to go and see you again, but Oliver thought it useless. And now... well, here you are! Why are you here?’

‘Curiosity. But with what the boys saw at that fence today, I shouldn’t have come.’

‘Terrible mix up.’ He nodded. ‘A horse killed. It does racing no good.’

‘What about the spectators? My son Toby thought one of them, too, was dead.’

Roger said disgustedly, ‘A hundred dead spectators wouldn’t raise marches against cruel sports. The stands could collapse and kill a hundred, but racing would go on. Dead people are irrelevant, don’t you know.’

‘So... the man was dead?’

‘Did you see him?’

‘Only with a dressing covering his face.’

Roger said gloomily, ‘It’ll be in the papers. The horse came through the wing into him and slashed him across the eyes with a foreleg — those racing plates on their hooves cut like swords — it was gruesome, Oliver said. But the man died of a snapped neck. Died instantly under half a ton of horse. Best that can be said.’

‘My son Toby saw the man’s face,’ I said.

Roger looked at me. ‘Which is Toby?’

‘The second one. He’s twelve. The boy who rode his bike into the house.’

‘I remember. Poor little bugger. Nightmares ahead, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Toby was anyway the one I most worried about, and this wouldn’t help. He’d been born rebellious, grown into a cantankerous toddler and had never since been easy to persuade. I had a sad feeling that in four years’ time he would develop, despite my best efforts, into a sullen world-hating youth, alienated and miserable. I could sense that it would happen and I ached for it not to, but I’d seen too many other suffering families where a much loved son or daughter had grown destructively angry in the mid-teens, despising attempts to help.

Rebecca Stratton, I surmised, might have been like that, ten years earlier. She came into Oliver’s office now like a whirlwind, smashing the door open until it hit the wall, bringing in with her a swirl of cold outside air and a towering attack of fury.

‘Where’s that bloody Oliver?’ she loudly demanded, looking round.

‘With your father...’

She didn’t listen. She still wore breeches and boots, but with a tan sweater in place of her racing colours. Her eyes glittered, her body looked rigid, she seemed half-way demented. ‘Do you know what that stupid bloody doctor’s done? He’s stood me down from racing for four days. Four days! I ask you. He says I’m concussed. Concussed, my arse. Where’s Oliver? He’s got to tell that bloody man I’m going to ride on Monday. Where is he?’

Rebecca spun on her heel and strode out with the same energy expenditure as on the way in.

I said, closing the door after her, ‘She’s concussed to high heaven, I’d have said.’

‘Yes, but she’s always a bit like that. If I were the doctor I’d stand her down for life.’

‘She’s not your favourite Stratton, I gather.’

Caution returned to Roger with a rush, ‘I never said...’

‘Of course not.’ I paused. ‘So what has changed since last Sunday?’

He consulted the light cream walls, the framed print of Arkle, the big calendar with days crossed off, a large clock (accurate) and his own shoes, and finally said, ‘Mrs Binsham came out of the woodwork.’

‘Is that so momentous?’

‘You know who she is ?’ He was curious, a little surprised.

‘The old Lord’s sister.’

‘I thought you didn’t know anything about the family.’

‘I said I had no contact with them, and I don’t. But my mother talked about them. Like I told you, she was once married to the old man’s son.’

‘Do you mean Conrad? Or Keith? Or... Ivan?’

‘Keith,’ I said. ‘Conrad’s twin.’

‘Fraternal twins,’ Roger said. ‘The younger one.’

I agreed. ‘Twenty-five minutes younger, and apparently never got over it.’

‘It does make a difference, I suppose.’

It made the difference between inheriting a barony, and not. Inheriting the family mansion, and not. Inheriting a fortune, and not. Keith’s jealousy of his twenty-five minute elder brother had been one — but only one, according to my mother — of the habitual rancours poisoning her ex-husband’s psyche.

I had my mother’s photographs of her Stratton wedding day, the bridegroom tall, light-haired, smiling, strikingly good looking, all the promise of a splendid life ahead in the pride and tenderness of his manner towards her. She had that day been exploding with bliss, she’d told me; with an indescribable floating feeling of happiness.