Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,55

ahead.

‘What do you look for?’ Sophie said.

‘Partly whether they dish their feet out sideways.’

‘Is that good?’

I shook my head, smiling, ‘The fastest ones generally don’t do it.’

We went up to the O shaped sale ring, where the wind whistled through with enthusiasm and the meagre crowd of participants stamped their feet and tucked their hands under their armpits. Ronnie North was there, breathing out clouds of steam and wiping a running nose; and Vic was there, dandified in a belted white shiny jacket with a blue shirt underneath.

While he was deep in conversation with a client I pointed him out to Sophie.

‘But he looks nice,’ she objected.

‘Of course he does. Hundreds of people love him.’

She grinned. ‘Such sarcasm.’

I bought two three-year-old fillies for a client in Italy and Vic watched broodingly from directly opposite.

Sophie said ‘When he looks at you like that… he doesn’t look nice at all.’

I took her to warm up over some coffee. It occurred to me uneasily and belatedly that maybe I had not been clever to bring her to Ascot. It had seemed to me that Vic was as much interested in Sophie herself as in what I was buying, and I wondered if he were already thinking of ways to get at me through her.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sophie said. ‘You’ve gone very quiet.’

‘Have a doughnut?’

‘Yes please.’

We munched and drank, and I checked ahead through the catalogue, making memory-jogging notes about the horses we had seen in their boxes.

‘Does it go on like this all day?’ Sophie asked.

‘A bit boring for you, I’m afraid.’

‘No… Is this what you do, day after day?’

‘On sales days, yes. Other days I fix up deals privately, or go to the races, or see to things like transport and insurance. Since last week I’ve barely had time to cough.’ I told her about Wilton Young and the consequently mushrooming business.

‘Are there a lot of horses for sale?’ she said doubtfully. ‘I wouldn’t have thought there were enough for so many people all to be involved in buying and selling.’

‘Well… In Britain alone there are at present about seventeen thousand thoroughbred broodmares. A mare can theoretically have a foal every year, but some years they’re barren and some foals die. I suppose there must be about nine thousand new foals or yearlings on the market every season. Then there are about twenty thousand horses in training for flat races, and heaven knows how many jumpers, but more than on the Flat. Horses which belong to the same people from birth to death are exceptions. Most of them change hands at least twice.’

‘With a commission for the agent every time?’ Her expression held no approval.

I smiled, ‘Stockbrokers work for commission. Are they more respectable?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Don’t confuse me.’

I said, ‘France, Italy and especially America are all at it in the bloodstock business hammer and tongs. There are about thirteen hundred stud farms in the British Isles and thousands more round the world.’

‘All churning out horses… and only so that people can gamble.’

I smiled at her still disapproving expression. ‘Everyone needs some sort of fantasy on their bread.’

She opened her mouth and shut it, and shook her head. ‘I can never decide whether you are very wise or an absolute fool.’

‘Both.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Dead easy, I’m afraid. Most people are.’

We went back to the ring and watched Vic and Ronnie North beat up the price of a weedy four-year-old hurdler to twice the figure his form suggested. Vic would no doubt be collecting a sizeable kick-back from the seller along with the commission from his client, and Ronnie North looked expansively pleased both with his status as underbidder for this one horse and with life in general.

Fynedale’s successor, it seemed to me, had been elected.

Fynedale himself, I noticed, had arrived in the ring in time to see what was happening. He seemed to be in much the same state as before, white-faced, semi-dazed and radiating unfocused hatred.

Sophie said, ‘He looks like gelignite on the boil.’

‘With luck he’ll explode all over Vic.’

‘You’re pretty heartless… he looks ill.’

‘Buzz off and mother him then,’ I said.

‘No thanks.’

We looked at some more horses and I bought another; we had some more coffee and the wind blew even colder. Sophie however seemed content.

‘Nose needs powdering,’ she said at one point. ‘Where will I meet you?’

I consulted the catalogue. ‘I’d better look at eighty-seven and ninety-two, in their boxes.’

‘O.K. I’ll find you.’

I looked at eighty-seven and decided against it. Not much bone and too much white around the eye. There was