Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,19

He sat at the table, picked it up in his fingers and took a couple of small bites before pushing the plate away.

‘It’s tough,’ he said.

He lit a cigar. It took six matches, a lot of squinting and a variety of oaths.

We’d been through so many cures. Six weeks in a private nursing home drying out with a psychiatrist listening daily to his woes had resulted in precisely one month’s sobriety. Then, having been scooped by the police from a Park Lane gutter, he woke in a public ward and didn’t like it. I told him I wasn’t riding races just to keep him in trick cyclists. He said I didn’t care about him. The whole hopeless circus had been going on for years.

Sophie telephoned at nine o’clock that evening. Her voice sounded so immediately familiar that it was incredible to think I had known her for less than twenty-four hours.

‘… Just to thank you for everything…’

‘For crashing your car?’

‘You know what I mean,’ she said.

‘How’s the arm?’

‘Oh, much better. Look… I don’t have a lot of time. I have to go to work after all… rather a nuisance but it can’t be helped.’

‘Say you don’t feel up to it.’

She paused. ‘No. It wouldn’t really be true. I slept for hours when I got home and honestly I feel fine now.’

I didn’t argue. I already knew it was impossible to persuade her against her will.

She said, ‘How are your knight-in-shining-armour instincts?’

‘Rusty.’

‘I could provide brasso.’

I smiled. ‘What do you want done?’

‘Yes. Mm. Well, when it comes to the point, I don’t know that I’ve got any right to ask.’

‘Will you marry me?’ I said.

‘What did you say?’

‘Er…’ I said. ‘Never mind. What was it you wanted done?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, I will. Marry you.’

I stared across the office, seeing nothing. I hadn’t meant to ask her. Or had I? Anyway, not so soon. I swallowed. Cleared my throat.

‘Then… you’ve a right to ask anything.’

‘Good,’ she said crisply. ‘Button your ears back.’

‘They’re buttoned.’

‘My aunt… the one who has the stud farm…’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I’ve been talking to her on the telephone. She’s in a grade one tizzy.’

‘What about?’

‘To be honest, I don’t exactly understand. But she lives near Cirencester and I know you are going over that way tomorrow with Mrs Sanders’ horse… and… well… suppose I sort of vaguely offered your help. Anyway, if you’ve got time to call on her, she’d be grateful.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Mrs Antonia Huntercombe. Paley Stud. Her village is Paley, too. Near Cirencester.’

‘Right.’ I wrote it down. ‘Are you working tomorrow evening?’

‘No. Saturday morning.’

‘Then… I could come to your place… on my way home… to tell you how I got on with her.’

‘Yes.’ Her voice was tentative, almost embarrassed. ‘I live…’

‘I know where you live,’ I said. ‘Somewhere at the end of the five furlong straight of Sandown Racecourse.’

She laughed. ‘If I lean out, I can see the stands from the bathroom window.’

‘I’ll be there.’

‘I’ve got to go now, or I’ll be late.’ She paused, then she said doubtfully, ‘Did you mean it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so. Did you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s silly.’

Friday morning saw the long delayed departure of the seventy thousand pound two-year-old, who seemed to have suffered no harm from his nocturnal junket. I knew, as I thankfully dispatched him with his two slightly less valuable fellows, that I had been luckier than I deserved, and I still sweated at the thought of that headlong gallop down the main road.

Crispin, that Friday morning, lay in the customary coma on his bed. I rang the doctor, who said he would look in on his rounds.

‘How’s the girl I stitched?’ he asked.

‘Gone home. Gone to work.’

‘A lot of starch in that one.’

‘Yes.’

I thought about her every ten minutes or so. A cool girl I had kissed once, on the cheek in the afternoon, standing beside a hired car in Gatwick Airport. She had done nothing in return but smile. One couldn’t call it love. Recognition, perhaps.

Mid-morning I set off for Gloucestershire and without much trouble found the aunt’s stud farm at Paley. As a business breeding venture it had all the first sight marks of imminent skids: weeds in the gravel, an unmended fence, tiles off the stable roof and paint too old to keep out the rain.

The house itself was a pleasant Cotswold stone affair with too much creeper on the walls. I knocked on the front door, which was open, and was told by a rich voice to come in.