Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,3
you know them personally?’ I asked, and they both nodded gloomily. ‘Like that, is it?’ I asked. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but they’ll have to sort it out themselves.’
The young fair-haired woman strolled out of the kitchen with a glass in one hand and a feeding bottle of milk in the other. She nodded vaguely in our direction and went up the staircase and into the room where the boy had taken the baby. My visitors watched in silence.
A brown-haired boy rode a bicycle up the passage from the front door and made a controlled circuit of the room, slowing slightly as he passed behind me and saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, you told me not to,’ before returning along the passage towards the outside world. The bicycle was scarlet, the clothes purple and pink and fluorescent green. The very air seemed to quiver with vibrant colour, settling back to quiet slate when he’d gone.
Tactfully, no one said anything about obedience or keeping children in order.
I offered the visitors a drink but they had nothing to celebrate and murmured about the length of the drive home. I went with them into the softening sunlight and proffered polite apologies for their non-success. They nodded unhappily. I walked across with them to their car.
The three pirate-ambushers had de-materialised from the oak. The scarlet bicycle flashed in the distance. My visitors looked back at the long dark bulk of the barn, and Roger finally came out with a question.
‘What an interesting house,’ he said civilly. ‘How did you find it?’
‘I built it. The interior, that is. Not the barn itself, of course. That’s old. A listed building. I had to negotiate to be allowed windows.’
They looked at the neat dark oblongs of glass set unobtrusively into the timber cladding, the only outward indication of the dwelling within.
‘You had a good architect,’ Roger commented.
‘Thank you.’
‘That’s another thing the Strattons are fighting over. Some of them want to tear down the stands and rebuild, and they’ve engaged an architect to draw up plans.’
His voice was thick with disgust.
I said curiously, ‘Surely new stands would be a good thing? Crowd comfort, and all that?’
‘Of course, new stands would be good!’ Irritation finally swamped him. ‘I implored the old man for years to rebuild. He always said, yes, one day, one day, but he never meant to, not in his lifetime, and now his son Conrad, the new Lord Stratton, he’s invited this dreadful man to design new stands, and he’s been striding about the place telling me we need this and we need that, and it’s all rubbish. He’s never designed stands of any sort before and he knows bugger all about racing.’
His genuine indignation interested me a lot more than a fight about shares.
‘Building the wrong stands would bankrupt everybody,’ I said thoughtfully.
Roger nodded. ‘They’ll have to borrow the money, and racing people are fickle. The punters stay away if you don’t get the bars right, and if the owners and trainers aren’t pampered and comfortable, the buggers will run their horses somewhere else. This lunatic of an architect looked totally blank when I asked him what he thought the crowds did between races. Look at the horses, he said. I ask you! And if it’s raining? Shelter and booze, I told him, that’s what brings in the customers. He told me I was old fashioned. And Stratton Park will get a horrendously expensive white elephant that the public will shun. And, like you said, the place will go bust.’
‘Only if the sell-now or sell-later factions don’t get their way.’
‘But we need new stands,’ Roger insisted. ‘We need good new stands.’ He paused. ‘Who designed your house? Perhaps we need someone like him.’
‘He’s never designed any stands. Only houses… and pubs.’
‘Pubs,’ Roger pounced on it. ‘At least he’d understand the importance of good bars.’
I smiled. ‘I’m sure he would. But you need big-building specialists. Engineers. Your own input. A team.’
‘Tell that to Conrad.’ He shrugged dejectedly and slid behind his steering wheel, winding down the window and peering out for one more question. ‘Could I possibly ask you to let me know if or when the Stratton family contact you? I probably shouldn’t trouble you, but I care about the racecourse, you see. I know the old man believed it would carry on as before, and he wanted it that way, and perhaps there’s something I can do, but I don’t know what, do you see.’
He reached into his jacket again and produced a business card. I took