‘And after that... every time, every year you sell your nomination, it’s clear profit?’
‘Yes. But taxed, of course.’
‘And how long does that go on?’
She shrugged. ‘Ten to fifteen years. Depends on the stallion’s potency.’
‘Butthat’s...’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘One of the best investments on earth.’
The bar had filled up behind us with people crowding in, talking loudly, and breathing on their fingers against the chill of the raw day outside. Ursula Young accepted a warmer in the shape of whisky and ginger wine, while I had coffee.
‘Don’t you drink?’ she asked with mild disapproval.
‘Not often in the daytime.’
She nodded vaguely, her eyes scanning the company, her mind already on her normal job. ‘Any more questions?’ she asked.
‘I’m bound to think of some the minute we part.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll be here until the end of racing. If you want me, you’ll see me near the weighing room after each race.’
We were on the point of standing up to leave when a man whose head one could never forget came into the bar.
‘Calder Jackson!’ I exclaimed.
Ursula casually looked. ‘So it is.’
‘Do you know him?’ I asked.
‘Everyone does.’ There was almost a conscious neutrality in her voice as if she didn’t want to be caught with her thoughts showing. The same response, I reflected, that he had drawn from Henry and Gordon and me.
‘You don’t like him?’ I suggested.
‘I feel nothing either way.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s part of the scene. From what people say, he’s achieved some remarkable cures.’ She glanced at me briefly. ‘I suppose you’ve seen him on television, extolling the value of herbs?’
‘I met him,’ I said, ‘at Ascot, back in June.’
‘One tends to.’ She got to her feet, and I with her, thanking her sincerely for her help.
‘Think nothing of it,’ she said. ‘Any time.’ She paused. ‘I suppose it’s no use asking what stallion prompted this chat?’
‘Sorry, no. It’s on behalf of a client.’
She smiled slightly. ‘I’m here if he needs an agent.’
We made our way towards the door, a path, I saw, which would take us close to Calder. I wondered fleetingly whether he would know me, remember me after several months. I was after all not as memorable as himself, just a standard issue six foot with eyes, nose and mouth in roughly the right places, dark hair on top.
‘Hello Ursula,’ he said, his voice carrying easily through the general din. ‘Bitter cold day.’
‘Calder.’ She nodded acknowledgement.
His gaze slid to my face, dismissed it, focused again on my companion. Then he did a classic double-take, his eyes widening with recognition.
‘Tim,’ he said incredulously. ‘Tim...’ he flicked his fingers to bring the difficult name to mind, ‘... Tim Ekaterin!’
I nodded.
He said to Ursula, ‘Tim, here, saved my life.’
She was surprised until he explained, and then still surprised I hadn’t told her. ‘I read about it, of course,’ she said. ‘And congratulated you, Calder, on your escape.’
‘Did you ever hear any more,’ I asked him. ‘From the police, or anyone?’
He shook his curly head. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘The boy didn’t try again?’
‘No.’
‘Did you really have no idea where he came from?’ I said. ‘I know you told the police you didn’t know, but... well... you just might have done.’
He shook his head very positively however and said, ‘If I could help to catch the little bastard I’d do it at once. But I don’t know who he was. I hardly saw him properly, just enough to know I didn’t know him from Satan.’
‘How’s the healing?’ I said. ‘The tingling touch.’
There was a brief flash in his eyes as if he had found the question flippant and in bad taste, but perhaps mindful that he owed me his present existence he answered civilly. ‘Rewarding,’ he said. ‘Heartwarming.’
Standard responses, I thought. As before.
‘Is your yard full, Calder?’ Ursula asked.
‘Always a vacancy if needed,’ he replied hopefully. ‘Have you a horse to send me?’
‘One of my clients has a two-year-old which looks ill and half dead all the time, to the despair of the trainer, who can’t get it fit. She — my client — was mentioning you.’
‘I’ve had great success with that sort of general debility.’
Ursula wrinkled her forehead in indecision. ‘She feels Ian Pargetter would think her disloyal if she sent you her colt. He’s been treating him for weeks, I think, without success.’
Calder smiled reassuringly. ‘Ian Pargetter and I are on good terms, I promise you. He’s even persuaded owners himself sometimes to send me their horses. Very good of him. We talk each case over, you know, and act in agreement. After all, we both have the recovery of the patient as our prime objective.’ Again the swift impression of a statement often needed.
‘Is Ian Pargetter a vet?’ I asked incuriously.
They both looked at me.
‘Er... yes,’ Calder said.
‘One of a group practice in Newmarket,’ Ursula added. ‘Very forward-looking. Tries new things. Dozens of trainers swear by him.’
‘Just ask him, Ursula,’ Calder said, ‘Ian will tell you he doesn’t mind owners sending me their horses. Even if he’s a bit open-minded about the laying on of hands, at least he trusts me not to make the patient worse.’ It was said as a self-deprecating joke, and we all smiled. Ursula Young and I in a moment or two walked on and out of the bar, and behind us we could hear Calder politely answering another of the everlasting questions.
‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘one of my favourite remedies for a prolonged cough in horses is liquorice root boiled in water with some figs. You strain the mixture and stir it into the horse’s normal feed...’
The door closed behind us and shut him off.
‘You’d think he’d get tired of explaining his methods,’ I said. ‘I wonder he never snaps.’
The lady said judiciously, ‘Calder depends on television fame, good public relations and medical success, roughly in that order. He owns a yard with about thirty boxes on the outskirts of Newmarket — it used to be a regular training stables before he bought it — and the yard’s almost always full. Short-term and long-term crocks, all sent to him either from true belief or as a last resort. I don’t pretend to know anything about herbalism, and as for supernatural healing powers...’ she shook her head. ‘But there’s no doubt that whatever his methods, horses do usually seem to leave his yard in a lot better health than when they went in.’
‘Someone at Ascot said he’d brought dying horses back to life.’
‘Hmph.’
‘You don’t believe it?’
She gave me a straight look, a canny businesswoman with a lifetime’s devotion to thoroughbreds.
‘Dying,’ she said, ‘Is a relative term when it doesn’t end in death.’
I made a nod into a slight bow of appreciation.
‘But to be fair,’ she said, ‘I know for certain that he totally and permanently cured a ten-year-old broodmare of colitis X, which has a habit of being fatal.’
‘They’re not all horses in training, then, that he treats?’
‘Oh no, he’ll take anybody’s pet from a pony to an event horse. Show jumpers, the lot. But the horse has to be worth it, to the owner, I mean. I don’t think Calder’s hospital is terribly cheap.’
‘Exorbitant?’
‘Not that I’ve heard. Fair, I suppose, if you consider the results.’
I seemed to have heard almost more about Calder Jackson than I had about stallion shares, but I did after all have a sort of vested interest. One tended to want a life one had saved to be of positive use in the world. Illogical, I dare say, but there it was. I was pleased that it was true that Calder cured horses, albeit in his own mysterious unorthodox ways: and if I wished that I could warm to him more as a person, that was unrealistic and sentimental.