I had recommended the loan. Henry had wanted the adventure and Val and Gordon had been willing, but it was my own report which had carried the day. I couldn’t have foreseen the consequences any more than Oliver, but I felt most horribly and personally responsible for the mess.
‘What shall I do?’ he said again.
‘About the mares?’
‘And everything else.’
I stared into space. The disaster that for the bank would mean a loss of face and a sharp dip in the profits and to the private subscribers just a painful financial set-back meant in effect total ruin for Oliver Knowles.
If Sandcastle couldn’t generate income, Oliver would be bankrupt. His business was not a limited company, which meant that he would lose his farm, his horses, his house; everything he possessed. To him too, as to my mother, the bailiffs would come, carrying off his furniture and his treasures and Ginnie’s books and toys....
I shook myself mentally and physically and said, ‘The first thing to do is nothing. Keep quiet and don’t tell anyone what you’ve told me. Wait to hear if any more of the foals are... wrong. I will consult with the other directors at Ekaterin’s and see what can be done in the way of providing time. I mean... I’m not promising... but we might consider suspending repayments while we look into other possibilities.’
He looked bewildered. ‘What possibilities?’
‘Well... of having Sandcastle tested. If the original tests of his fertility weren’t thorough enough, for instance, it might be possible to show that his sperm had always been defective in some way, and then the insurance policy would protect you. Or at least it’s a very good chance.’
The insurers, I thought, might in that case sue the laboratory that had originally given the fertility all-clear, but that wasn’t Oliver’s problem, nor mine. What did matter was that all of a sudden he looked a fraction more cheerful, and drank his tea absentmindedly.
‘And the mares?’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘In fairness to their owners you’ll have to say that Sandcastle’s off colour.’
‘And repay their fees,’ he said gloomily.
‘Mm.’
‘He’ll have covered two today,’ he said. ‘I haven’t mentioned any of this to Nigel. I mean, it’s his job to organise the breeding sessions. He has a great eye for those mares, he knows when they are feeling receptive. I leave it to his judgement a good deal, and he told me this morning that two were ready for Sandcastle. I just nodded. I felt sick. I didn’t tell him.’
‘So how many does that leave, er, uncovered?’
He consulted a list, fumbling slightly. ‘The one that hasn’t foaled, and... four others.’
Thirty-five more mares, I thought numbly, could be carrying that seed.
‘The mare that hasn’t yet foaled,’ Oliver said flatly, ‘Was bred to Sandcastle last year.’
I stared. ‘You mean... one of his foals will be born here?’
‘Yes.’ He rubbed his hand over his face. ‘Any day.’
There were footsteps outside the door and Ginnie came in, saying on a rising, enquiring inflection, ‘Dad?’
She saw me immediately and her face lit up. ‘Hello! How lovely. I didn’t know you were coming.’
I stood up to give her a customarily enthusiastic greeting, but she sensed at once that the action didn’t match the climate. ‘What’s the matter?’ She looked into my eyes and then at her father. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘Dad, you’re lying.’ She turned again to me. ‘Tell me. I can see something bad has happened. I’m not a child any more. I’m seventeen.’
‘I thought you’d be at school,’ I said.
‘I’ve left. At the end of last term. There wasn’t any point in me going back for the summer when all I’m interested in is here.’
She looked far more assured, as if the schooldays had been a crysallis and she were now the imago, flying free. The beauty she had longed for hadn’t quite arrived, but her face was full of character and far from plain, and she would be very much liked, I thought, throughout her life.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s happened?’
Oliver made a small gesture of despair and capitulation. ‘You’ll have to know sometime.’ He swallowed. ‘Some of Sandcastle’s foals... aren’t perfect.’
‘How do you mean, not perfect?’
He told her about all six and showed her the letters, and she went slowly, swaying, pale. ‘Oh Dad, no. No. It can’t be. Not Sandcastle. Not that beautiful boy.’
‘Sit down,’ I said, but she turned to me instead, burying her face against my chest and holding on to me tightly. I put my arms round her and kissed her hair and comforted her for an age as best I could.
I went to the office on the following morning, Friday, and with a slight gritting of teeth told Gordon the outcome of my visit to Oliver.
He said ‘My God,’ several times, and Alec came over from his desk to listen also, his blue eyes for once solemn behind the gold-rimmed spectacles, the blond eyelashes blinking slowly and the laughing mouth grimly shut.
‘What will you do?’ he said finally, when I stopped.
‘I don’t really know.’
Gordon stirred, his hands trembling unnoticed on his blotter in his overriding concern. ‘The first thing, I suppose,’ he said, ‘is to tell Val and Henry. Though what any of us can do is a puzzle. As you said, Tim, we’ll have to wait to assess quite how irretrievable the situation is, but I can’t imagine anyone with a top-class broodmare having the confidence to send her to Sandcastle in future. Can you, really, Tim? Would you?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Well, there you are,’ Gordon said. ‘No one would.’
Henry and Val received the news with undisguised dismay and told the rest of the directors at lunch. The man who had been against the project from the beginning reacted with genuine anger and gave me a furious dressing-down over the grilled sole.
‘No one could foresee this,’ Henry protested, defending me.
‘Anyone could foresee,’ said the dissenting director caustically, ‘that such a scatterbrained scheme would blow up in our faces. Tim has been given too much power too soon, and it’s his judgement that’s at fault here, his alone. If he’d had the common nous to recognise the dangers, you would have listened to him and turned the proposal down. It’s certainly because of his stupidity and immaturity that the bank is facing this loss, and I shall put my views on record at the next board meeting.’
There were a few uncomfortable murmurs round the table, and Henry with unruffled geniality said, ‘We are all to blame, if blame there is, and it is unfair to call Tim stupid for not foreseeing something that escaped the imaginations of all the various experts who drew up the insurance policy.’
The dissenter however repeated his ‘I told you so’ remarks endlessly through the cheese and coffee, and I sat there depressedly enduring his digs because I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me leave before he did.
‘What will you do next?’ Henry asked me, when at long last everyone rather silently stood up to drift back to their desks. ‘What do you propose?’
I was grateful that by implication he was leaving me in the position I’d reached and not taking the decisions out of my hands. ‘I’m going down to the farm tomorrow,’ I said, ‘to go through the financial situation. Add up the figures. They’re bound to be frightful.’
He nodded with regret. ‘Such a marvellous horse. And no one, Tim, whatever anyone says, could have dreamt he’d have such a flaw.’