Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,24
who caused such horror?’
‘Yes, I’d think so. You know how they play. They love cars. They’re always climbing into my van when I deliver things. Little wretches, if you don’t watch them. I’d guess that that child released the brake and gear. Then when he’d run off with the dog the weight of the van would eventually make it roll if it was on even the slightest incline.’
‘Oh dear.’ She looked increasingly upset. ‘Whose child?’
I described the boy as best I could but she said she didn’t know everyone’s children by sight, they changed so fast as they grew.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Wilson has addresses for all your guests. He’ll find out. And dearest Flora, be grateful. If it was someone else’s child who let off the brakes, your friends Peter and Sally won’t be ruined.’
‘It wasn’t their child… they haven’t any. But that poor little boy!’
‘If everyone’s got any sense,’ I said, ‘which you can be sure they haven’t, no one will tell him he killed eight people until he’s long grown up.’
On my way home from Flora’s I got no further than the second delivery because my customer, a retired solicitor, was delighted (he said) that I had brought his order myself, and I must come in straightaway and share a bottle of Chåteau Palmer 1970 which he had just decanted.
I liked the man, who was deeply experienced after countless holidays spent touring vineyards, and we passed a contented evening talking about the small parcels of miraculous fields in Pauillac and Margaux and about the universal virtues of the great grape Cabernet Sauvignon which would grow with distinction almost anywhere on earth. Given poor soil, of course, and sun.
The solicitor’s wife, it transpired, was away visiting relatives. The solicitor suggested cold underdone beef with the claret, to which I easily agreed, thinking of my own empty house, and he insisted also on opening a bottle of Clos St Jacques 1982 to drink later.
‘It’s so seldom,’ he said to my protestations, ‘that I have anyone here with whom I can truly share my enthusiasm. My dear wife puts up with me, you know, but even after all these years she would as soon drink ordinary everyday Beaujolais or an undemanding Mosel. Tonight, and please don’t argue, my dear chap, tonight is a treat.’
It was for me also. I drank my share of the Château Palmer and of the Clos St Jacques, which I had originally tasted when I sold it to him a year earlier; and I greatly enjoyed discovering how that particular wine was satisfactorily changing colour from purplish youth to a smooth deep burgundy red as it matured in excellence and power. It might well improve, I thought, and he said he would put it away for maybe a year. ‘But I’m getting old, my dear chap. I want to drink all my treasures, you know, before it’s too late.’
What with one thing and another it was nearly midnight before I left. Alcohol decays in the blood at a rate of one glass of wine an hour, I thought driving home, so with luck, after six glasses in five hours, I should be legitimately sober. It wasn’t that I was unduly moral; just that to survive in business I needed a driving licence.
Perhaps because of the wine, perhaps because of the tossing and turning I’d done the previous night, I slept long and soundly without bad dreams, and in the morning rose feeling better than usual about facing a new day. The mornings were in any case always better than the nights. Setting out wasn’t so bad; it was going home that was hell.
My mother had advised me on the telephone to sell and live somewhere else.
‘You’ll never be happy there,’ she said. ‘It never works.’
‘You didn’t move when Dad died,’ I protested.
‘But this house was mine to begin with,’ she said, surprised. ‘Inherited from my family. Quite different, Tony darling.’
I wasn’t quite sure where the difference lay, but I didn’t argue. I thought she might possibly be right that I should move, but I didn’t. All my memories of Emma were alive there in the old renovated cottage overlooking the Thames, and to leave it seemed to be an abandonment of her: an ultimate unfaithfulness. I thought that if I sold the place I would feel guilty, not released, so I stayed there and sweated for her at nights and paid the mortgage and could find no ease.
The morning deliveries were widely scattered which meant a