Dick Francis - Bonecrack

'He gave me everything,' Alessandro had said of his father. I would have said of mine that he gave me not very much. And I felt for him something that Alessandro had never through love or hate felt for his.

I felt- apathy.

'Go away, now,' he said. 'And on your way out, find a nurse. I need a bedpan. They take half an hour, sometimes, if I ring the bell. And I want it now, at once.'

The driver of the car I had hired in Newmarket was quite happy to include Hampstead in the itinerary.

'A couple of hours?' I suggested, when I had hauled myself out on to the pavement outside the flat.

'Sure,' he said. 'Maybe there's somewhere open for tea, even on Sunday.' He drove off hopefully, optimistic soul that he was.

Gillie said she had lost three pounds, she was painting the bathroom sludge green, and how did I propose to make love to her looking like a washed out edition of a terminal consumptive.

'I don't,' I said. 'Propose.'

'Ah,' she said wisely. 'All men have their limits.'

'And just change that description to looking like a racehorse trainer who has just won his first Classic.'

She opened her mouth and obviously was not going to come across with the necessary compliment.

'O. K.,' I interrupted resignedly. 'So it wasn't me. Everyone else, but not me. I do so agree. Wholeheartedly.'

'Self-pity is disgusting,' she said.

'Mm.' I sat gingerly down in a blue armchair, put my head back, and shut my eyes. Didn't get much sympathy for that, either.

'So you collected the bruises,' she observed.

'That's right.'

'Silly old you.'

'Yes.'

'Do you want some tea?'

'No thank you,' I said politely. 'No sympathy, no tea.'

She laughed. 'Brandy, then?'

'If you have some.'

She had enough for the cares of the world to retreat a pace: and she came across, in the end, with her own brand of fellow-feeling.

'Don't wince,' she said, 'When I kiss you.'

'Don't kiss so damned hard.'

After a bit she said, 'Is this shoulder the lot? Or will there be more to come?'

'It's the lot,' I said, and told her all that had happened. Edited, and flippantly; but more or less all.

'And does your own dear dad know all about this?'

'Heaven forbid,' I said.

'But he will, won't he? When you get this Alessandro warned off? And then he will understand how much he owes you?'

'I don't want him to understand,' I said. 'He would loathe it.'

'Charming fellow, your dad.'

'He is what he is,' I said.

'And was Enso what he was?'

I smiled lopsidedly. 'Same principle, I suppose.'

'You're a nut, Neil Griffon.'

I couldn't dispute it.

'How long before he gets out of hospital?' she asked.

'I don't know. He hopes to be on his feet soon. Then a week or two of physiotherapy and walking practice with crutches, or whatever. He expects to be home before the Derby.'

'What will you do then?'

'Don't know,' I said. 'But he'll be three weeks at least, and leverage no longer applies- so would you still like to come to Rowley Lodge?'

'Um,' she said, considering. 'There's a three-year-old Nigerian girl I'm supposed to be settling with a family in Dorset-'

I felt very tired. 'Never mind, then.'

'I could come on Wednesday.'

When I got back to Newmarket I walked round the yard before I went indoors. It all lay peacefully in the soft light of sundown, the beginning of dusk. The bricks looked rosy and warm, the shrubs were out in flower, and behind the green painted doors the six million quids' worth were safely chomping on their evening oats. Peace in all the bays, winners in many of the boxes, and an air of prosperity and timelessness over the whole.

I would be gone from there soon; and Enso had gone, and Alessandro. When my father came back it would be as if the last three months had never happened. He and Etty and Margaret would go on as they had been before; and I would read about the familiar horses in the newspapers.

I didn't yet know what I would do. Certainly I had grown to like my father's job, and maybe I could start a stable of my own, somewhere else. I wouldn't go back to antiques, and I knew by then that I wasn't going to work any more for Russell Arletti.

Build a new empire, Gillie had said.

Well, maybe I would.

I looked in at Archangel, now no longer guarded by men, dogs and electronics. The big brown colt lifted his head from his manger and turned on me an enquiring eye. I smiled at him involuntarily. He still showed the effects of his hard race the day before, but he was sturdy and sound, and there was a very good chance he would give the merchant banker his Derby.

I stifled a sigh and went indoors, and heard the telephone ringing in the office.

Owners often telephoned on Sunday evenings, but it wasn't an owner, it was the hospital.

I'm very sorry,' the voice said several times at the other end. 'We've been trying to reach you for some hours now. Very sorry. Very sorry.'

'But he can't be dead,' I said stupidly. 'He was all right when I left him. I was with him this afternoon, and he was all right.'

'Just after you left,' they said. 'Within half an hour.'

'But how?' My mind couldn't grasp it. 'He only had a broken leg- and that had mended.'

Would I like to talk to the doctor in charge, they said. Yes, I would.

'He was all right when I left him,' I protested. 'In fact he was yelling for a bedpan.'

'Ah. Yes. Well,' said a high pitched voice loaded with professional sympathy. 'That's- er- that's a very common preliminary to a pulmonary embolus. Calling for a bedpan- very typical. But do rest assured, Mr Griffon, your father died very quickly. Within a few seconds. Yes, indeed.'

'What,' I said with a feeling of complete unreality, 'is a pulmonary embolus?'

'Blood clot,' he said promptly. 'Unfortunately not uncommon in elderly people who have been bedridden for some time. And your father's fracture- well, it's tragic, tragic, but not uncommon, I'm afraid. Death sitting up, some people say. Very quick, Mr Griffon. Very quick. There was nothing we could do, do believe me.'

'I believe you.'

But it was impossible, I thought. He couldn't be dead. I had been talking to him just that afternoon-

The hospital would like instructions, they delicately said.

I would send someone from Newmarket, I said vaguely. An undertaker from Newmarket, to fetch him home.

Monday I spent in endless chat. Talked to the police. Talked to the Jockey Club. Talked to a dozen or so owners who telephoned to ask what was going to happen to their horses.

Talked and talked.

Margaret dealt with the relentless pressure as calmly as she did with Susie and her friend. And Susie's friend, she said, had incidentally reported that Alessandro had not left his room since the police took him there on Saturday morning. He hadn't eaten anything, and he wouldn't talk to anyone except to tell them to go away. Susie's chum's mum said it was all very well, but Alessandro never had any money, and his bill had only been paid up to the previous Saturday, and they were thinking of asking him to go.

'Tell Susie's chum's mum that Alessandro has money here, and also that in Switzerland he will be rich.'

'Will do,' she said, and rang the Forbury Inn at once.

Etty took charge of both lots out at exercise, and somehow or other the right runners got dispatched to Bath. Vic Young went in charge of them and said later that the apprentice who had the ride on Pullitzer instead of Alessandro was no effing good.

To the police I told the whole of what had occurred on Saturday morning, but nothing of what had occurred before it. Enso had recently arrived in England, I said, and had developed this extraordinary fixation. There was no reason for them not to accept this abbreviated version, and nothing to be gained by telling them more.