‘You,’ he said forcefully, ‘you’re the interfering bastard who’s fouled up the works, aren’t you? Well you can damn well clear off, that’s what you can do. It’s no business of yours where Simon’s gone and in future you keep your bloody nose out of things that don’t concern you.’
‘If,’ I said mildly, ‘you prefer me to ask the police to find him, I will.’
He looked ready to explode, a large red faced man in khaki clothes and huge gum boots, standing four square in a muddy yard. He struggled visibly between the pleasure of telling me to go to hell and fear of the consequences if he did so. Prudence just won.
‘All right. All right. I don’t know where he is and that’s straight. He didn’t tell me he was going, and I don’t know when he’s coming back.’
Depressed, I drove home to Bedfordshire. The bulk and grandeur of the great house lay there waiting as I rolled slowly up the long drive. History in stone; the soul of the Creggans. Earl upon earl had lived there right back to the pirate who brought Spanish gold to Queen Bess, and since my father died I had only to enter to feel the chains fall heavily on me like a net. I stopped in the sweep of gravel in front instead of driving round to the garages as usual, and looked at what I had inherited. There was beauty, I admitted, in the great façade with its pillars and pediments and the two wide flights of steps sweeping up to meet at the door. The Georgian Palladian architect who had grafted a whole new mansion on to the Elizabethan and Stuart one already existing had produced a curiously satisfactory result, and as a Victorian incumbent had luckily confined his Gothic urges to a ruined folly in the garden, the only late addition had been a square red-bricked block of Edwardian plumbing. But for all its splendid outer show it had those beetles in the roof, miles of draughty passages, kitchens in the basement, and twenty bedrooms mouldering into dust. Only a multi-millionaire could maintain and fill such a place now with servants and guests, whereas after death duties I would be hard put to it to find a case of champagne once the useless pile had voraciously gulped what it cost just to keep standing.
Opening it to the public might have been a solution if I had been any sort of a showman. But to someone solitary by nature that way meant a lifetime of horrifying square-peggery. Slavery to a building. Another human sacrifice on the altar of tradition. I simply couldn’t face it. The very idea made me wilt.
Since it was unlikely anyone would simply let me pull the whole thing down, the National Trust, I thought, was the only hope. They could organise the sight-seeing to their heart’s content and they might let Mother live there for the rest of her life, which she needed.
Mother usually used the front entrance while Alice and I drove on and went in through one of the doors at the side, near the garages. That early evening, however, I left my little car on the gravel and walked slowly up the shallow steps. At the top I leaned against the balustrade and looked back over the calm wide fields and bare branched trees just swelling into bud. I didn’t really own all this, I thought. It was like the baton in a relay race, passed on from one, to be passed on to the next, belonging to none- for more than a lap. Well, I wasn’t going to pass it on. I was the last runner. I would escape from the track at a tangent and give the baton away. My son, if I ever had one, would have to lump it.
I pushed open the heavy front door and stepped into the dusk-filled house. I, Henry Grey, descendant of the sea pirate, of warriors and explorers and empire builders and of a father who’d been decorated for valour on the Somme, I, the least of them, was going to bring their way of life to an end. I felt one deep protesting pang for their sakes, and that was all. If they had anything of themselves to pass on to me, it was already in my genes. I carried their inheritance in my body, and I didn’t need their house.
Not only did John Kyle and his engineer come to Cheltenham, but Patrick as well.
‘I’ve never been before,’ he said, his yellow eyes and auburn hair shining as he stood in the bright March sun. ‘These two are addicts. I just came along for the ride.’
‘I’m glad you did,’ I said, shaking hands with the other two. John Kyle was a bulky battered looking young man going prematurely thin on top. His engineer, tall and older, had three racing papers and a form sheet tucked under his arm.
‘I see,’ he said, glancing down at them, ‘th... that you won the United Hunts Ch... Challenge Cup yesterday.’ He managed his stutter unselfconsciously. ‘W... w... well done.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I was a bit lucky. I wouldn’t have won if Century hadn’t fallen at the last.’
‘It d... d... d... does say that, in the p... p... paper,’ he agreed disarmingly.
Patrick laughed and said, ‘What are you riding in today?’
‘The Gold Cup and the Mildmay of Flete Challenge Cup.’
‘Clobber and Boathook,’ said John Kyle readily.
‘I’ll back you,’ Patrick said.
‘M... m... money down the drain b... backing Clobber,’ said the engineer seriously.
‘Thanks very much,’ I said with irony.
‘F... form’s all haywire. V... v... very inconsistent,’ he explained.
‘Do you think you’ve got a chance?’ Patrick asked.
‘No, not much. I’ve never ridden him before. The owner’s son usually rides him, but he’s got jaundice.’
‘N... not a b... betting proposition,’ nodded the engineer.
‘For God’s sake don’t be so depressing, man,’ protested Kyle.
‘How about Boathook?’ I asked, smiling.
The engineer consulted the sky. The result wasn’t written there, as far as I could see.
‘B... B... Boathook,’ he remarked, coming back to earth, ‘m... m... might just do it. G... good for a p... place anyway.’
‘I shall back both, just the same,’ said Patrick firmly.
I took them all to lunch and sat with them while they ate.
‘Aren’t you having any?’ said Patrick.
‘No. It makes you sick if you fall after eating.’
‘How often do you fall, then?’ asked Kyle curiously, cutting into his cold red beef.
‘On average, once in a dozen rides, I suppose. It varies. I’ve never really counted.’
‘When did you fall last?’
‘Day before yesterday.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ asked Patrick, shaking salt. ‘The prospect of falling?’
‘Well, no. You never think you’re going to, for a start. And a lot of falls are easy ones; you only get a bruise, if that. Sometimes when the horse goes right down you almost step off.’
‘And sometimes you break your bones,’ Kyle said dryly.
I shook my head. ‘Not often.’
Patrick laughed. I passed him the butter for his roll, looked at my watch, and said, ‘I’ll have to go and change soon. Do you think we could talk about the day you took Simon Searle to Milan?’
‘Shoot,’ said Kyle. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Everything you can think of that happened on the way there and after you landed.’
‘I don’t suppose I’ll be much help,’ he said apologetically. ‘I was in the cockpit most of the time, and I hardly spoke to him at all. I went aft to the karzy once, and he was sitting in one of those three pairs of seats that were bolted on at the back.’
I nodded. I’d bolted the seats on to the anchorages myself, after we had loaded all the horses. There was usually room for a few seats, and they made a change from hay bales.
‘Was he alone?’
‘No, there was a young fellow beside him. Your friend Searle was on the inside by the window, I remember, because this young chap had his legs sprawled out in the gangway and I had to step over them. He didn’t move.’