Straight. Part 18

Clarissa Williams was Lord Knightwood's wife.

CHAPTER TEN.

She had known I would be there, it was clear, and if she hadn't wanted me to find out who she was she could have developed a strategic illness in plenty of time.

She was saying graciously, 'Didn't I see you on television winning the Gold Cup?' and I thought of her speed with that frightful kiyoga and the tumult of her feelings on TUesday, four days ago. She seemed to have no fear that I would give her away, and indeed, what could I say? Lord Knightwood, my brother was your wife's lover? Just the right sort of thing to get the happy party off to a good start.

The said Lord was introducing the Ostermeyers to a professor of physics who with twinkles said that as he was the only true aficionado of horse-racing among the teaching academics he had been pressed into service to carry the flag, although there were about fifty undergraduates out on the course ready to bet their socks off in the cause.

'Derek has a degree,' Martha said brightly, making conversation.

The professorial eyeb.a.l.l.s swivelled my way speculatively. '

What university?'

'Lancaster,' I said dryly, which raised a laugh. Lancaster and York had fought battles of the red and white roses for many a long year.

'And subject?'

'Independent Studies.'

His desultory attention sharpened-abruptly.

'What are Independent Studies?' Harley asked, seeing his interest.

'The student designs his own course and invents his own final subject,' the professor said. 'Lancaster is the only university offering such a course and they let only about eight students a year do it. It's not for the weakwilled or the feeble-minded.'

The Knightwoods and the Ostermeyers listened in silence and I felt embarra.s.sed. I had been young then, I thought.

'What did you choose as your subject?' asked the professor, intent now on an answer. 'Horses? in some way?'

I shook my head. 'No. . . en . . "Roots and Results of War".'

'My dear chap,' Lord Knightwood said heartily, 'sit next to the professor at lunch.' He moved away benignly, taking his wife and the Ostermeyers with him, and the professor, left behind, asked what I fancied for the races.

Clarissa, by accident or design, remained out of talking distance throughout the meal and I didn't try to approach her. The party broke up during and after the first race, although everyone was invited to return for tea, and I spent most of the afternoon, as I'd spent so many others, watching horses stretch and surge and run as their individual natures dictated. The will to win was born and bred in them all, but some cared more than others: it was those with the implacable impulse to lead a wild herd who fought hardest and oftenest won.

Sports writers tended to call it courage but it went deeper than that, right down into the gene pool, into instinct, into the primordial soup on the same evolutionary level as the belligerence so easily aroused in h.o.m.o sapiens, that was the taproot of water.

I was no stranger to the thought that I sought battle on the turf because, though the instinct to fight and conquer ran strong, I was averse to guns. Sublimation.

the pundits would no doubt call it. Datepalm and I both, on the same primitive plane, wanted to win.

'What are you thinking'?' someone asked at my shoulder.

I would have known her voice anywhere, I thought. I turned to see her half-calm half-anxious expression, the Lady Knightwood social poise exPlicit in the smooth hair, the patrician bones and the tailoring of her clothes, the pa.s.sionate woman merely a hint in the eyes.

'Thinking about horses,' I said.

'I suppose you're wondering why I came today, after I learned last night that you'd not only be at the races, which I expected you might be anyway because of Dozen Roses, but actually be coming to our lunch. . .'

She stopped, sounding uncertain.

'I'm not Greville,' I said. 'Don't think of me as Greville.'

Her eyelids flickered. 'You're too d.a.m.ned perceptive.'

She did a bit of introspection. 'Yes, all right, I wanted to be near you. It's a sort of comfort.'

We were standing by the rails of the parade ring watching the runners for the next race walk round, led by their lads. It was the race before the University Trophy, two races before that of Dozen Roses, a period without urgency for either of us. There were crowd noises all around and the clip-crop of horses walking by, and we could speak quietly as in an oasis of private s.p.a.ce without being overheard.

'Are you still angry with me for hitting you?' she said a shade bitterly, as I'd made no comment after her last remark.

I half smiled. 'No.'

'I did think you were a burglar.'

'And what would you have explained to the police, if they'd come?'

She said ruefully, 'I hope I would have come to my senses and done a bunk before they got there.' She sighed. 'Greville said if I ever had to use the kiyoga in earnest to escape at once and not worry what I'd done to my attacker, but he never thought of a burglar in his own house.'

'I'm surprised he gave you a weapon like that,' I said mildly. 'Aren't they illegal? And him a magistrate.'

'I'm a magistrate too,' she said unexpectedly. 'That's how we originally met, at a magistrates' conference.

I've not enquired into the legality of kiyogas. If I were prosecuted for carrying and using an offensive weapon, well; that would be much preferable to being a victim of the appalling a.s.saults that come before us every week.'

'Where did he get it?' I asked curiously.

'America.'

'Do you have it with you here?'

She nodded and touched her handbag. 'It's second nature, now.'

She must have been thirty years younger than her husband, I thought inconsequentially, and I knew what she felt about him. I didn't know whether or not I liked her, but I did recognize there was a weird sort of intimacy between us and that I didn't resent it.

The jockeys came out and stood around the owners in little groups. Nicholas Loder was there with the man he'd come in with, a thickset powerful-looking man in a dark suit, the pink cardboard Club badge fluttering from his lapel.

'Dozen Roses,' I said, watching Loder talking to the owner and his jockey, 'was he named for you?'

'Oh, G.o.d,' she said, disconcerted. 'How ever . . .?'

I said, 'I put your roses on the coffin for the service.'

'Oh...' she murmured with difficulty, her throat closing, her mouth twisting,'I . . . can't . . .'

'Tell me how York University came to be putting its name to a race.' I made it sound conversational, to give her composure time.

She swallowed, fighting for control, steadying her breathing. 'I'm sorry. It's just that I can't even mourn for him except inside; can't let it show to anyone except you, and it sweeps over me, I can't help it.' She paused and answered my unimportant question. 'The Clerk of the Course wanted to involve the city. Some of the bigwigs of the University were against joining in, but Henry persuaded them. He and I have always come here to meetings now and then. We both like it, for a day out with friends.'

'Your husband doesn't actually lecture at the University, does he?'

'Oh, no, he's just a figurehead. He's chairman of a fair number of things in York. A public figure here.'

Vulnerable to scandal, I thought: as she was herself, and Greville also. She and he must have been unwaveringly discreet.

'How long since you first met Greville?' I asked noncommittally.

Four years.' She paused. 'Four marvellous years. Not enough.'

The jockeys swung up onto the horses and moved away to go out onto the course. Nicholas Loder and his owner, busily talking, went off to the stands.

'May I watch the race with you?' Clarissa said. 'Do you mind?'

'I was going to watch from the gra.s.s.' I glanced down apologetically at the crutches. 'It's easier.'

'I don't mind the gra.s.s.'

So we stood side by side on the gra.s.s in front-of the grandstand and she said, 'Whenever we could be together, he bought twelve red roses. It just . . . well . . .'

She stopped) swallowing again hard.

'Mm,' I said. I thought of the ashes and the red rose tree and decided to tell heR about that another time. It had been for him, anyway, not for her.

Nicholas Loder's two-year-old won the sprint at a convincing clip and I caught a glimpse of the owner afterwards looking heavily satisfied but unsmiling.

Hardly a jolly character, I thought.

Clarissa went off to join her husband for the University race and after that, during their speeches and presentations, I went in search of Dozen Roses who was being led round in the pre-parade ring before being taken into a box or a stall to have his saddle put on.

Dozen Roses looked docile to dozy, I thought. An unremarkable bay, he had none of the looks or presence of Datepalm, nor the chaser's alert interest in his surroundings.

He was a good performer, of that there was no question, but he didn't at that moment give an impression of going to be a 'trot-up' within half an hour, and he was vaguely not what I'd expected. Was this the colt that on the video tapes had won his last three races full of verve? Was this the young buck who had tried to mount a filly at the starting gate at Newmarket?

No, I saw with a sense of shock, he was not. I peered under his belly more closely, as it was sometimes difficult to tell, but there seemed to be no doubt that he had lost the essential tackle; that he had in fact been gelded.

I was stunned, and I didn't know whether to laugh or be furious. It explained so much: the loss of form when he had his mind on procreation rather than racing, and the return to speed once the temptation was removed.

It explained why the Stewards hadn't called Loder in to justify the difference in running: horses very often did better after the operation.

I unfolded my racecard at Dozen Roses's race, and there, sure enough, against his name stood not c for colt or h for horse, but g for gelding.

Nicholas Loder's voice, vibrating with fury, spoke from not far behind me, 'That horse is not your horse.

Keep away from him.'

I turned. Loder was advancing fast with Dozen Roses's saddle over his arm and full-blown rage in his face. The heavily unjoyful owner, still for soME reason in tow, was watching the proceedings with puzzlement.

'Mine or not, I'm ent.i.tled to look at him,' I said. 'And look at him I darned well have, and either he is not Dozen Roses or you have gelded him against my brother's express wishes.'

His mouth opened and snapped shut.

'What's the matter, Nick?' the owner said. 'Who is this?'

Loder failed to introduce us. Instead he said to me vehemently, 'You can't do anything about it. I have an AuthoriTY to Act. I am the registered agent for this horse and what I decide is none of your business.'

'My brother refused to have any of his horses gelded.

You knew it well. You disobeyed him because you were sure he wouldn't find out, as he never went to the races'

He glared at me. He was aware that if I lodged a foRmal complaint he would be in a good deal of trouble, and I thought he was certainly afraid that as my brother's executor I could and quite likely would do just that. Even if I only talked about it to others, it could do him damage',,it was the sort of t.i.tbit the hungry racing press would pounce on for a giggle, and the owners of all the princely colts in his prestigious stable would get cold feet that the same might happen to their own property without their knowledge or consent.

He had understood all that, I thought, in the moment I'd told him on the telephone that it was I who would be inheriting Dozen Roses. He'd known that if I ever saw the horse I would realize at once what had been done.

No wonder he'd lost his lower resonances.

'Greville was a fool,' he said angrily. 'The horse has done much better since he was cut.'

'That's true,' I agreed, 'but it's not the point.'

'How much do you want, then?' he demanded roughly.

My own tuRN, I thought, to gape like a fish. I said feebly, 'It's not a matter of money.'

'Everything is,' he declared. 'Name your price and get out of my way.'

I glanced at the attendant owner who looked more phlegmatic than riveted, but might remember and repeat this conversation, and I said merely, 'We'll discuss it later, OK?' and hitched myself away from them without aggression.

Behind me the owner was saying, 'What was that all about, Nick?' and I heard Loder reply, 'Nothing, Rollo.

Don't worry about it,' and when I looked back a few seconds later I saw both of them stalking off towards the saddling boxes followed by Dozen Roses in the grasp of his lad.

Despite Nicholas Loder's anxious rage, or maybe because of it, I came down on the side of amus.e.m.e.nt. I would myself have had the horse gelded several months before the trainer had done it out of no doubt unbearable frustration: Greville had been pigheaded on the subject from both misplaced sympathy and noS knowing enough about horses. I thought I would make peace with Loder that evening on the telephone, whatever the outcome of the race, as I certainly didn't want a fight on my hands for so rocky a cause. Talk about the roots of war, I thought wryly: there had been sillier reasons for b.l.o.o.d.y strife in history than the castration of a thoroughbred.

At York some of the saddling boxes were open to public view, some were furnished with doors. Nicholas Loder seemed to favour the privacy and took Dozen Roses inside away from my eyes.

Harley and Martha Ostermeyer, coming to see the horses saddle, were full of beaming antic.i.p.ation. They had backed the winner of the University Trophy and had wagered all the proceeds on my, that was to say, my brother's horse.