Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

‘Mm.’

Molesting Danielle de Brescou, I thought, would be my quickest route to unemployment. Not that in other circumstances and with her willing cooperation I would have found it unthinkable. Danielle de Brescou moved with understated long-legged grace and watched the world from clear eyes, and if I found the sheen and scent of her hair and skin fresh and pleasing, it did no more than change the journey from a chore to a pleasure.

Between Exeter and Bristol, while dusk dimmed the day, she told me that she had been in England for three weeks and was staying with her uncle and aunt while she found herself an apartment. She had come because she’d been posted to London by the national broadcasting company she worked for: she was the bureau coordinator, and as it was only her second week there it was essential not to be late.

‘You won’t be late,’ I assured her.

‘No... Do you always drive at eighty miles an hour?’

‘Not if I’m in a real hurry.’

‘Very funny.’

She told me Roland de Brescou, the princess’s husband, was her father’s eldest brother. Her father had emigrated to California from France as a young man and had married an American girl, Danielle being their only child.

‘I guess there was a family ruckus when Dad left home, but he never told me the details. He’s been sending greetings cards lately though, nostalgic for his roots, I guess. Anyway, he told Uncle Roland I was coming to London and the princess wrote me to say come visit. I hadn’t met either of them before. It’s my first trip to Europe.’

‘How do you like it?’

She smiled. ‘How would you like being cosseted in a sort of mansion in Eaton Square with a cook and maids and a butler? And a chauffeur. All last week the chauffeur drove me to work and picked me up after. Same thing yesterday. Aunt Casilia says it’s not safe here after midnight on the subway, the same as it isn’t in New York. She fusses worse than my own mother. But I can’t live with them for too long. They’re both sweet to me. I like her a lot and we get along fine. But I need a place of my own, near the office. And I’ll get a car. I guess I’ll have to.’

‘How long will you be in England?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know. Three years, maybe. Maybe less. The company can shift you around.’

She said I didn’t need to tell her much about myself on account of information from her aunt.

She said she knew I lived in Lambourn and came from an old racing family and had a twin sister married to a racehorse trainer in Newmarket. She said she knew I wasn’t married. She left the last observation dangling like a question mark, so I answered the unasked query.

‘Not married. No present girlfriend. A couple in the past.’

I could feel her smile.

‘And you?’ I asked.

‘Same thing.’

We drove for a good while in silence on that thought, and I rather pensively wondered what the princess would say or think if I asked her niece out to dinner. The close but arms-length relationship I’d had with her for so many years would change subtly if I did, and perhaps not for the better.

Between Bristol and Chiswick, while we sped with headlights on up the M4 motorway, Danielle told me about her job, which was, she said, pretty much a matter of logistics: she sent the camera crews and interviewers to wherever the news was.

‘Half the time I’m looking at train schedules and road maps to find the fastest route, and starting from when we did, and taking the road we’re on right now, I expected to be late.’ She glanced at the speedometer. ‘I didn’t dream of ninety.’

I eased the car back to eighty-eight. A car passed us effortlessly. Danielle shook her head. ‘I guess it’ll take a while,’ she said. ‘How often do you get speeding tickets?’

‘I’ve had three in ten years.’

‘Driving like this every day?’

‘Pretty much.’

She sighed. ‘In dear old US of A we think seventy is sinful. Have you ever been there?’

‘America?’ I nodded. ‘Twice. I rode there once in the Maryland Hunt Cup.’

‘That’s an amateurs’ race,’ she said without emphasis, careful, it seemed, not to appear to doubt my word.

‘Yes. I started as an amateur. It seemed best to find out if I was any good before I committed my future to what I do.’

‘And if it hadn’t worked out?’

‘I had a place at college.’

‘And you didn’t take it?’ she said incredulously.

‘No. I started winning, and that was what I wanted most. I tried for the place at college only in case I couldn’t make it as a jockey. Sort of insurance.’

‘What subject?’

‘Veterinary science.’

It shocked her. ‘You mean you passed up being a veterinarian to be a jockey?’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘But... but...’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘All athletes... sportsmen... whatever... find themselves on the wrong side of thirty-five with old age staring them point blank in the face. I might have another five years yet.’

‘And then?’

‘Train them, I suppose. Train horses for others to ride.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s a long way off.’

‘It came pretty close this afternoon,’ Danielle said.

‘Not really.’

‘Aunt Casilia says the Cresta Run is possibly more dangerous than the life of a jump jockey. Possibly. She wasn’t sure.’

‘The Cresta Run is a gold medal or the fright of a lifetime, not a career.’

‘Have you been down it?’

‘Of course not. It’s dangerous.’

She laughed. ‘Are all jockeys like you?’

‘No. All different. Like princesses.’

She took a deep breath, as if of sea air. I removed my attention from the motorway for a second’s inspection of her face, for whatever her aunt might think of my ability to read minds I never seemed to be able to do it with any young woman except Holly... I was aware also that I wanted to, that without it, any loving was incomplete. I thought that if I hadn’t had Holly I might have married one of the two girls I’d most liked: as it was, I hadn’t reached the living-in stage with either of them.

I hadn’t wanted to marry Holly, nor to sleep with her, but I’d loved her more deeply. It seemed that sex and telepathy couldn’t co-exist in me, and until or unless they did, I probably would stay single.

‘What are you thinking?’ Danielle asked.

I smiled wryly. ‘About not knowing what you were thinking.’

After a pause she said, ‘I was thinking that when Aunt Casilia said you were exceptional, I can see what she meant.’

‘She said what?’

‘Exceptional. I asked her in what way, but she just smiled sweetly and changed the subject.’

‘Er... when was that?’

‘On our way down to Devon this morning. She’s been wanting me to go racing with her ever since I came over, so today I did, because she’d arranged that ride back for me, although she herself was staying with the Inscombes tonight for some frantically grand party. She hoped I would love racing like she does, I think. Do you think sometimes she’s lonesome, travelling all those miles to racemeets with just her chauffeur?’

‘I don’t think she felt lonesome until you came.’

‘Oh!’

She fell silent for a while, and eventually I said prosaically, ‘We’ll be in Chiswick in three minutes.’

‘Will we?’ She sounded almost disappointed. ‘I mean, good. But I’ve enjoyed the journey.’

‘So have I.’

My inner vision was suddenly filled very powerfully with the presence of Holly, and I had a vivid impression of her face, screwed up in deep distress.

I said abruptly to Danielle, ‘Is there a public telephone anywhere near your office?’

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ She seemed slightly puzzled by the urgency I could hear in my voice. ‘Sure... use the one on my desk. Did you remember something important?’