I smiled without actually answering, shielding my coffee inadequately from adjacent nudging elbows.
‘Thought so,’ she said. ‘Look — there’s a table. Grab it.’
We sat down in a corner with the racket going on over our heads and the closed-circuit television playing re-runs of the last race fortissimo. Ursula bent her head towards mine. ‘A wow-sized coup for Oliver Knowles.’
‘You approve?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘He’ll be among the greats in one throw. Smart move. Clever man.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Yes. Meet him often at the sales. He had a snooty wife who left him for some Canadian millionaire or other, and maybe that’s why he’s aiming for the big-time; just to show her.’ She smiled fiendishly. ‘She was a real pain and I hope he makes it.’
She drank half her whisky and I said it was a shame about Ian Pargetter, and that I’d met him once at Calder’s house.
She grimaced with a stronger echo of the anger I had myself felt. ‘He’d been out all evening saving the life of a classic-class colt with colic. It’s so beastly. He went home well after midnight, and they reckon whoever killed him was already in the house stealing whatever he could lay his hands on. Ian’s wife and family were away visiting her mother, you see, and the police think the killer thought the house would be empty for the night.’ She swallowed. ‘He was hit on the back of the head with a brass lamp off one of the tables in the sitting room. Just casual. Unpremeditated. Just... stupid.’ She looked moved, as I guessed everyone must have been who had known him. ‘Such a waste. He was a really nice man, a good vet, everyone liked him. And all for practically nothing... The police found a lot of silver and jewellery lying on a blanket ready to be carried away, but they think the thief just panicked and left it when Ian came home... all that anyone can think of that’s missing is his case of instruments and a few drugs that he’d had with him that evening... nothing worth killing for... not even for an addict. Nothing in it like that.’ She fell silent and looked down into her nearly empty glass, and I offered her a refill.
‘No, thanks all the same, one’s enough. I feel pretty maudlin as it is. I liked Ian. He was a good sort. I’d like to throttle the little beast who killed him.’
‘I think Calder Jackson feels much as you do,’ I said.
She glanced up, her good-looking fiftyish face full of genuine concern. ‘Calder will miss Ian terribly. There aren’t that number of vets around who’d not only put up with a faith-healer on their doorstep but actually treat him as a colleague. Ian had no professional jealousy. Very rare. Very good man. Makes it all the worse.’
We went out again into the raw air and I lost five pounds on the afternoon, which would have sent Lorna Shipton swooning to Uncle Freddie, if she’d known.
Two weeks later with Oliver Knowles’ warm approval I paid another visit to his farm in Hertfordshire, and although it was again a Sunday and still winter, the atmosphere of the place had fundamentally changed. Where there had been quiet sleepy near-hibernation there was now a wakeful bustle and eagerness, where a scattering of dams and foals across the paddocks, now a crowd of mares moving alone and slowly with big bellies.
The crop had come to the harvest. Life was ripening into the daylight, and into the darkness the new seed would be sown.
I had not been truly a country child (ten acres of wooded hill in Surrey) and to me the birth of animals still seemed a wonder and joy: to Oliver Knowles, he said, it meant constant worry and profit and loss. His grasp of essentials still rang out strong and clear, but there were lines on his forehead from the details.
‘I suppose,’ he said frankly, walking me into the first of the big yards, ‘that the one thing I hadn’t mentally prepared myself for was the value of the foals now being born here. I mean...’ he gestured around at the patient heads looking over the rows of half-doors, ‘... these mares have been to the top stallions. They’re carrying fabulous blood-lines. They’re history.’ His awe could be felt. ‘I didn’t realise, you know, what anxiety they would bring me. We’ve always done our best for the foals, of course we have, but if one died it wasn’t a tragedy, but with this lot....’ He smiled ruefully. ‘It’s not enough just owning Sandcastle. I have to make sure that our reputation for handling top broodmares is good and sound.’
We walked along beside one row of boxes with him telling me in detail the breeding of each mare we came to and of the foal she carried, and even to my ignorant ears it sounded as if every Derby and Oaks winner for the past half century had had a hand in the coming generation.
‘I had no trouble selling Sandcastle’s nominations,’ he said. ‘Not even at forty thousand pounds a throw. I could even choose, to some extent, which mares to accept. It’s been utterly amazing to be able to turn away mares that I considered wouldn’t do him justice.’
‘Is there a temptation,’ I asked mildly, ‘to sell more than forty places? To... er... accept an extra fee... in untaxed cash... on the quiet?’
He was more amused than offended. ‘I wouldn’t say it hasn’t been done on every farm that ever existed. But I wouldn’t do it with Sandcastle... or at any rate not this year. He’s still young. And untested, of course. Some stallions won’t look at as many as forty mares... though shy breeders do tend to run in families, and there’s nothing in his pedigree to suggest he’ll be anything but energetic and fertile. I wouldn’t have embarked on all this if there had been any doubts.’
It seemed that he was trying to reassure himself as much as me; as if the size and responsibility of his undertaking had only just penetrated, and in penetrating, frightened.
I felt a faint tremor of dismay but stifled it with the reassurance that come hell or high water Sandcastle was worth his buying price and could be sold again even at this late date for not much less. The bank’s money was safe on his hoof.
It was earlier in the day than my last visit — eleven in the morning — and more lads than before were to be seen mucking out the boxes and carrying feed and water.
‘I’ve had to take on extra hands,’ Oliver Knowles said matter-of-factly. ‘Temporarily, for the season.’
‘Has recruitment been difficult?’ I asked.
‘Not really. I do it every spring. I keep the good ones on for the whole year, if they’ll stay, of course: these lads come and go as the whim takes them, the unmarried ones, that is. I keep the nucleus on and put them painting fences and such in the autumn and winter.’
We strolled into the second yard, where the butty figure of Nigel could be seen peering over a half-door into a box.
‘You remember Nigel?’ Oliver said. ‘My stud manager?’
Nigel, I noted, had duly been promoted.
‘And Ginnie,’ I asked, as we walked over, ‘is she home today?’
‘Yes, she’s somewhere about.’ He looked around as if expecting her to materialise at the sound of her name, but nothing happened.
‘How’s it going, Nigel?’ he asked.
Nigel’s hairy eyebrows withdrew from the box and aimed themselves in our direction. ‘Floradora’s eating again,’ he said, indicating the inspected lady and sounding relieved. ‘And Pattacake is still in labour. I’m just going back there.’
‘We’ll come,’ Oliver said. ‘If you’d like to?’ he added, looking at me questioningly.
I nodded and walked on with them along the path into the third, smaller quadrangle, the foaling yard.
Here too, in this place that had been empty, there was purposeful life, and the box to which Nigel led us was larger than normal and thickly laid with straw.