Second Wind Part 5

"That's exactly the point. Whatever's wrong with the filly, stay away from it. " She frowned, however, and I reckoned she didn't clearly know what she meant. Worse than physical weakness, I always feared, would be the atrophy of her sharp mind, so what she'd said about the filly was either acutely perceptive or nonsense, and I didn't want to guess which.

To Jett van Els the exchange meant nothing as horses weren't her interest. She arranged cushions comfortably at her patient's back and showed in every fluid movement the expertise of a good nurse. Regardless of her un-English name, she spoke and looked like a homegrown rose, very much the type for whom I'd once ditched a tyc.o.o.n's daughter, only to be dumped in my turn when the novelty of being escorted by a well-known face had worn off. Real life began when the screen went dark.

Jett van Els with composure said that Mrs. Mevagissey would be having fish pie with parsley sauce for supper, did I want to stay?

Mrs. Mevagissey was my grandmother.

"No, he won't stay, " she placidly said. "But on past form you may find him asking you to share a pub sandwich in a week or two. " "Gran, " I protested.

"I'm glad of it, " she said truthfully. "So off you go, and I'll watch you tomorrow on the box. " I always left at her bidding so as not to exhaust her, and this time I collected on the way out a friendly and amused reaction from the brown van Els eyes, a visible message that if I asked I might get my sandwich.

Mrs. Mevagissey knew me a shade too well, I thought.

I SPENT FRIDAY in the Weather Centre watching reports come in from all over the world. The steady continental wind from the east was breaking up, but the Newmarket turf would still have been dry and fast for Harvey's filly that afternoon if she'd been capable of benefiting.

Messages from Bell sounded as if frustration largely prevailed. The industry's busy news-diggers had broken off their filly chase for the weekend in order to report the races themselves, and by Monday the sick horse would be of back-burner stature, if she got a mention at all. The transfer of all Harvey's other horses along the road from Quigley to Loricroft earned one strong paragraph, the engagement of Bell as Loricroft's a.s.sistant trainer merited a picture-of Bell, not of Loricroft, not of Harvey, and not of the horses. It was Bell who was pretty.

Poor Oliver Quigley no longer troubled my telephone twice at least every day, I received one pathetic call from him, a matter of a choking throat and barely swallowed emotion, the quivers back at full force.

Racing, though, even including the top two-year-old colts' races, the Dewhurst and the Middle Park Stakes, and the fillies' championship, the Cheveley Park Stakes, was not near my highest priority.

Winds around the globe were increasingly in turmoil as usual in that autumnal time of year, with a full-blown hurricane in the Pacific threatening the southwest California coast, and a destructively raging typhoon coming ash.o.r.e and drowning people in the Philippines. j.a.pan was suffering appalling waves, called tsunamis, caused by offsh.o.r.e ocean-bed earthquakes.

In the Atlantic the count of hurricanes and lesser tropical depressions had reached thirteen for the year, with possibly the most active cyclonic weeks of autumn still ahead, and although roaring and ma.s.sive disturbances of hurricane strength seldom reached the British Isles except as decaying systems of heavy rain, to us as to meteorologists round the world they were of ultimate interest.

Two weeks after Caspar Harvey's lunch the year's fourteenth cyclonic swirl of clouds formed off the west coast of Africa and crossed the Atlantic slightly north of the equator. The three essentials for its transformation into a full hurricane were all in place, being, first, a seawater temperature above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, second, hot air from the tropics converging with equatorial air full of moisture taken up from the sea, and third, winds caused by the warm moist air rising and letting cold air flood in underneath. The rotation of the earth kept the in flowing winds spinning, and the heat of the ocean went on intensifying the whole circling air ma.s.s.

Its identifying name, chosen years before to be given to the fourteenth storm of that season, was Nicky.

Kris watched its development moodily.

"It's heading westwards, straight to Florida, " he complained, "and it's traveling quite fast at twenty miles an hour. " "I thought you'd be interested, " I said.

"Of course I'd be interested, but it will get there ahead of me, won't it? I don't go for another eight days. " "It's getting more organized, " I commented, nodding. "The surface winds are circling at about eighty miles an hour already.

" Kris said,

"I've always wanted to fly through a hurricane. " He paused.

"I mean... as a pilot... fly through one. " I listened to the fanatical relish in his voice, he wasn't making idle chat.

"People do, you know, " he said seriously.

"It's crazy, " I said, but I wanted to as well, badly.

"Just think of it! " His pale eyes glazed with growing excitement.

"And don't tell me the idea of it doesn't get your own blood racing, because who was it who competed in the North Cornwall high-surfing contests? Who can stand upright on a surfboard? Riding the tunnel, isn't it called? " "The tube. That was different. It was totally safe. " "Oh really? " "Well, almost. " "I'll fly you safely through Hurricane Nicky. " To his enormous disappointment, however, he didn't get the chance. Hurricane Nicky, although intensifying to a Category 3 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with circulating wind speeds between 111 and 130 miles an hour, not only didn't wait around for Kris to arrive in the States, but turned northwards before it reached the American eastern seaboard at all, and blew itself out harmlessly over the cold waters of the North Atlantic.

Kris nevertheless set off to Florida, with the rocketry at Cape Canaveral as his priority, followed by contacts with the National Hurricane Tracking Center in Miami, but no storms at all, to his great disappointment, were shaping up in their chief sp.a.w.ning ground, west of Africa.

During an otherwise uneventful week there he sent me a fax to say he was now staying for a few days with the people we met at Caspar Harvey's lunch, as arranged.

I couldn't remember at first whom he meant. The lunch itself had receded in my mind, semi-eclipsed by the poisoning of the filly, but a backwards-looking search came up tentatively with the Darcys, Robin the brains and Evelyn the pearls.

L.

Confirmation quickly followed. Kris dispatched, "This is a casual place. Robin and Evelyn are adamant they want you to join us on Monday, to stay for a few days, so send a yes-thank you p.r.o.nto. Just to remind you, the minor disturbance now forming in the Caribbean will be called Odin if it develops. I intend to fly through it. Won't you come? " The minor disturbance in the Caribbean, I judged from a swift trawl of the chaotic conditions there, would probably collapse into a fizzle, saving the name Odin for another day.

Next morning, though, the winds south of Jamaica gained speed, and the barometric pressure dropped to well below a thousand millibars, an ominously low reading considering that the average was nearer 1013. A wind sheer aloft that had been preventing an organized circling movement had disintegrated and stopped tearing the upper atmosphere apart, and the minor disturbance, as if taking stock of the possibilities, had begun a slow invitation to a dance.

Kris transmitted,

"Odin is now designated a tropical storm.

Pity it's not yet a hurricane, but come on Monday anyway. " He included directions to reach the Darcys, and welcoming messages from both.

The Monday ahead was the beginning of my official leave.

I pondered over the meager savings I'd intended to devote to walking in Sicily, and then telephoned Belladonna Harvey.

I learned about the state of the filly (feeble but on her feet, test results still not available), the state of Oliver Quigley (lachrymose), the state of her relations with her new employer Loricroft (he was chasing her), and the state of her father (fuming).

And how was Kris doing, she finally wanted to know, as he'd been missing from the screen for a week.

"He went to Florida. " "So he did. " "He wanted you to go. " "Mm. " "He's staying with Robin and Evelyn Darcy. They've asked me to join them. Is that odd? " There was a pause before she said,

"What do you want to know? " With a smile that I knew reached my voice, I asked, "For a start, what does he do? " "Evelyn tells everyone he sells mushrooms. He never denies it. " "He can't sell mushrooms, " I protested.

"Why not? Evelyn says he sells all the sorts of mushrooms the food world's gone mad about. Portobello, cepes, chanterelles, shiitake, things like that. He has them freeze-dried and sealed in vacuum packs and they're making him a fortune. " She paused.

"Also he sells gra.s.s. " "He what? " "He sells gra.s.s. I don't mean that sort of gra.s.s. You may laugh, but in Florida they don't grow garden gra.s.s from seed.

The climate's wrong, or something. They plant sods instead.

They lay lawns like laying carpets. Robin Darcy has a sod farm. Don't laugh. That's what it's called, and it's a million dollar business. " I said slowly, "You also said he was born clever. " "Yes. He was. And I told you not to be fooled. He goes around in those thick black eyegla.s.s frames looking like a rather inadequate and cuddly little ninny, but everything he touches turns to gold. " "And do you like him? " I asked.

"Not really. " She answered without hesitation. "He's Dad's buddy, not mine. He's too calculating. Everything he does has a purpose, but you only realize that later. " "And Evelyn? " I asked.

"She's his front man, like I told you. Well, woman. I've known them for ages, on and off. Robin and Dad have always talked farming, though you wouldn't think mushrooms and sod have much in common with birdseed, which is Dad's major industry. " I said vaguely, "I thought your father grew barley. " "Yes, he does. It makes great whisky. He doesn't grow the birdseed. He buys every variety of seed by the hundred tons and has a factory which mixes them and sells them in small packets to people who keep budgerigars and things. You might say that both Robin Darcy and my father make millions four ounces at a time. " "So... er... Evelyn? " I murmured again.

"She and my mother get on fine. They both adore jewelry.

If you talk diamonds to Evelyn you'll be her friend for life. " Bell hadn't persuaded me pro or con, but the thought of Florida, so far unvisited, easily won, and it was at that point that I thoughtlessly told my grandmother that Kris wanted to fly with me through a hurricane.

"Don'tgo, Perry. Itgives me the heebiejeebies.... " But I'd kissed her and given her anxiety no weight. It was years, by then, since the slow paralysis of the Phoenix-to London flight, and no heebies or indeed jeebies had since that dreadful journey raised a threatening head.

"I'll come back safely, " I a.s.sured her, and flew to Florida on the cheapest ticket I could find.