Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,64

understood what he’d seen, even if he took no joy in it.

‘He’s lost his action,’ he said. ‘Back in July, when he won, he had a better stride. Much more fluent. That’s the only trouble with two-year-olds. You think you’ve got a world beater and then they start developing unevenly.’

‘He might be better next year,’ I suggested. ‘Won’t you keep him? He could be worth it.’

Orkney shook his head. ‘He’s going to the sales next week. I wanted a win today to put his price up. Jack knew that.’ The echo of grudge was still strong. ‘Larry Trent might have leased him. He thought, as you seem to, that his action might come back once he’d finished growing, but I’m not risking it. Sell, and buy yearlings, that’s my preference. Different runners every year… more interesting.’

‘You don’t have time to grow fond of them,’ I said neutrally.

‘Quite right,’ he nodded. ‘Once you get sentimental you throw good money down the drain.’

I remembered the friendships my father had had with his steeplechasers, treating each with camaraderie over many years, getting to interpret their every twitch and particularly loving the one that had killed him. Money down the drain, sure, but a bottomless pleasure in return such as Orkney would never get to feel.

‘That damned jockey left his run too late,’ Orkney said, but without undue viciousness. ‘Breezy Palm was still making up ground at the end. You saw that. If he’d got at him sooner…’

‘Difficult to tell,’ I said, drawling.

‘I told him not to leave it too late. I told him.’

‘You told him not to hit the horse,’ Isabella said calmly. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Orkney.’

Orkney could, however. Throughout the sandwiches, the cheese and the strawberry tartlets he dissected and discussed the race stride by stride, mostly with disapproval. My contention that his colt had shown great racing spirit was accepted. Flora’s defence of the jockey wasn’t. I grew soundly tired of the whole circus and wondered how soon we could leave.

The waitress appeared again in the doorway asking if Orkney needed anything else, and Orkney said yes, another bottle of gin.

‘And make sure it’s Seagram’s,’ he said. The waitress nodded and went away, and he said to me, ‘I order Seagram’s just because the caterers have to get it in specially. They serve their own brand if you don’t ask. They charge disgraceful prices… I’m not going to make life easy for them if I can help it.’

Flora’s and Isabella’s expressions, I saw, were identical in pained resignation. Orkney had mounted his hobby horse and would complain about the caterers for another ten minutes. The arrival of the fresh bottle didn’t check him, but at the end he seemed to remember my own job and said with apparently newly-reached decision, ‘It’s local people like you who should be providing the drinks, not this huge conglomerate. If enough people complain to the Clerk of the Course, I don’t see why we couldn’t get the system put back to the old ways. Do you?’

‘Worth a try,’ I said non-committally.

‘What you want to do,’ he insisted, ‘is propose yourself as an alternative. Give these damn monopolists a jolt.’

‘Something to think about,’ I murmured, not meaning to in the least, and he lectured me at tiresome length on what I ought to do personally for the box-renters of Martineau Park, not to mention for all the other racecourses where the same caterers presided, and what I should do about the other firms of caterers who carved up the whole country’s racecourses between them.

‘Er… Orkney,’ Flora said uncertainly, when the tirade had died down, ‘I do believe, you know, that at a few courses they really have finished with the conglomerates and called in local caterers, so perhaps… you never know.’

Orkney looked at her with an astonishment which seemed to be based less on what she’d said than on the fact of her knowing it. ‘Are you sure, Flora?’

‘Yes… I’m sure.’

‘There you are then,’ he said to me. ‘What are your waiting for?’

‘I wouldn’t mind shuttling the drinks along,’ I said. ‘But what about the food? This food is good, you’d have to admit. That’s where these caterers excel.’

‘Food. Yes, their food’s all right,’ he said grudgingly.

We’d finished every crumb and I could have eaten the whole lot again. Orkney returned to the subject of Breezy Palm and two drinks later had exhausted even Isabella’s long-suffering patience.

‘If you want me to drive you home, Orkney, the time is now,’ she said. ‘You may