‘I made some tea. Do you want some, Dad?’
‘Yes, please,’ I said immediately, before he could answer, and she looked almost painfully relieved. Oliver Knowles turned what had seemed like an incipient shake of the head into a nod, and Ginnie, handing over the mugs, said that if I wanted sugar she would go and fetch some. ‘And a spoon, I guess.’
‘My wife’s away,’ Oliver Knowles said abruptly.
‘No sugar,’ I said. ‘This is great.’
‘You won’t forget, Dad, will you, about me going back to school?’
‘Nigel will take you.’
‘He’s got visitors.’
‘Oh... all right.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In half an hour, then.’
Ginnie looked even more relieved, particularly as I could clearly sense the irritation he was suppressing. ‘The school run,’ he said as the door closed behind his daughter, ‘was one of the things my wife always did. Does...’ He shrugged. ‘She’s away indefinitely. You might as well know.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Can’t be helped.’ He looked at the tea-mug in my hand. ‘I was going to offer you something stronger.’
‘This is fine.’
‘Ginnie comes home on four Sundays a term. She’s a boarder, of course.’ He paused. ‘She’s not yet used to her mother not being here. It’s bad for her, but there you are, life’s like that.’
‘She’s a nice girl,’ I said.
He gave me a glance in which I read both love for his daughter and a blindness to her needs. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘That you go anywhere near High Wycombe on your way home?’
‘Well,’ I said obligingly, ‘I could do.’
I consequently drove Ginnie back to her school, listening on the way to her views on the new headmistress’s compulsory jogging programme (‘all our bosoms flopping up and down, bloody uncomfortable and absolutely disgusting to look at’) and to her opinion of Nigel (‘Dad thinks the sun shines out of his you-know-what and I dare say he is pretty good with the mares, they all seem to flourish, but what the lads get up to behind his back is nobody’s business. They smoke in the feed sheds, I ask you! All that hay around... Nigel never notices. He’d make a rotten school prefect’) and to her outlook on life in general (‘I can’t wait to get out of school uniform and out of dormitories and being bossed around, and I’m no good at lessons; the whole thing’s a mess. Why has everything changed? I used to be happy, or at least I wasn’t unhappy, which I mostly seem to be nowadays, and no, it isn’t because of Mum going away, or not especially, as she was never a lovey-dovey sort of mother, always telling me to eat with my mouth shut and so on... and you must be bored silly hearing all this.’)
‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’m not bored.’
‘I’m not even beautiful,’ she said despairingly. ‘I can suck in my cheeks until I faint but I’ll never look pale and bony and interesting.’
I glanced at the still rounded child-woman face, at the peach-bloom skin and the worried eyes.
‘Practically no one is beautiful at fifteen,’ I said. ‘It’s too soon.’
‘How do you mean — too soon?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘say at twelve you’re a child and flat and undeveloped and so on, and at maybe seventeen or eighteen you’re a full-grown adult, just think of the terrific changes your body goes through in that time. Appearance, desires, mental outlook, everything. So at fifteen, which isn’t much more than halfway, it’s still too soon to know exactly what the end product will be like. And if it’s of any comfort to you, you do now look as if you may be beautiful in a year or two, or at least not unbearably ugly.’
She sat in uncharacteristic silence for quite a distance, and then she said, ‘Why did you come today? I mean, who are you? If it’s all right to ask?’
‘It’s all right. I’m a sort of financial adviser. I work in a bank.’
‘Oh.’ She sounded slightly disappointed but made no further comment, and soon after that gave me prosaic and accurate directions to the school.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ she said, politely shaking hands as we stood beside the car.
‘A pleasure.’
‘And thanks...’ she hesitated. ‘Thanks anyway.’
I nodded, and she half-walked, half-ran to join a group of other girls going into the buildings. Looking briefly back she gave me a sketchy wave, which I acknowledged. Nice child, I thought, pointing the car homewards. Mixed up, as who wasn’t at that age. Middling brains, not quite pretty, her future a clean stretch of sand waiting for footprints.
December
It made the headlines in the Sporting Life (OLIVER KNOWLES, KING OF THE SANDCASTLE) and turned up as the lead story under less fanciful banners on the racing pages of all the other dailies.
SANDCASTLE TO GO TO STUD, SANDCASTLE TO STAY IN BRITAIN, SANDCASTLE SHARES NOT FOR SALE, SANDCASTLE BOUGHT PRIVATELY FOR HUGE SUM. The story in every case was short and simple. One of the year’s top stallions had been acquired by the owner of a heretofore moderately-ranked stud farm. ‘I am very happy,’ Oliver Knowles was universally reported as saying. ‘Sandcastle is a prize for British bloodstock.’
The buying price, all the papers said, was ‘not unadjacent to five million pounds,’ and a few of them added ‘the financing was private.’
‘Well,’ Henry said at lunch, tapping the Sporting Life, ‘not many of our loans make so much splash.’
‘It’s a belly-flop,’ muttered the obstinate dissenter, who on that day happened to be sitting at my elbow.
Henry didn’t hear and was anyway in good spirits. ‘If one of the foals run in the Derby we’ll take a party from the office. What do you say, Gordon? Fifty people on open-topped buses?’
Gordon agreed with the sort of smile which hoped he wouldn’t actually be called upon to fulfil his promise.
‘Forty mares,’ Henry said musingly. ‘Forty foals. Surely one of them might be Derby material.’
‘Er,’ I said, from new-found knowledge. ‘Forty foals is stretching it. Thirty-five would be pretty good. Some mares won’t “take”, so to speak.’
Henry showed mild alarm. ‘Does that mean that five or six fees will have to be returned? Doesn’t that affect Knowles’ programme of repayment?’
I shook my head. ‘For a horse of Sandcastle’s stature the fee is all up in front. Payable for services rendered, regardless of results. That’s in Britain, of course, and Europe. In America they have the system of no foal, no fee, even for the top stallions. A live foal, that is. Alive, on its feet and suckling.’
Henry relaxed, leaning back in his chair and smiling. ‘You’ve certainly learnt a lot, Tim, since this all started.’
‘It’s absorbing.’
He nodded. ‘I know it isn’t usual, but how do you feel about keeping an eye on the bank’s money at close quarters? Would Knowles object to you dropping in from time to time?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Not out of general interest.’
‘Good. Do that, then. Bring us progress reports. I must say I’ve never been as impressed with any horse as I was that day with Sandcastle.’
Henry’s direct admiration of the colt had led in the end to Ekaterin’s advancing three of the five million to Oliver Knowles, with private individuals subscribing the other two. The fertility tests had been excellent, the owner had been paid, and Sandcastle already stood in the stallion yard in Hertfordshire alongside Rotaboy, Diarist and Parakeet.
December was marching along towards Christmas, with trees twinkling all over London and sleet falling bleakly in the afternoons. On an impulse I sent a card embossed with tasteful robins to Calder Jackson, wishing him well, and almost by return of post received (in the office) a missive (Stubbs reproduction) thanking me sincerely and asking if I would be interested some time in looking round his place. If so, he finished, would I telephone — number supplied.