Caspar Harvey had stopped his car beside Quigley’s and made no more reference to his daughter’s feelings for Kris.
There was a notable smartening of body language among the lads at the sight of the two most powerful men in their lives, Oliver Quigley the trainer (and never mind his self-conscious fluttering, it was he who paid the wages), and Caspar Harvey, owner of four superstars that gave kudos not only to Quigley’s stable, but to the whole sport of racing.
The filly who might run on Friday was to be found, it seemed, behind one of the closed doors, not yet put right for the night.
Caspar Harvey with pleased anticipation strode over to a row of six boxes separated from the others on one side by the path leading out from the yard and down towards the Warren Hill gallops, and on the other side by a path giving on to the large house where it seemed Quigley lived.
‘This is the filly’s box,’ he said, beckoning to me to come as he unlatched the bolts of the top half of the split stable door. ‘She’s in here.’
And so she was. But she wouldn’t race on Friday.
I watched Harvey’s face change from pride to horror. I saw his throat constrict as he groped for air. His treasure, the Friday filly, the two-year-old preparing to take the females’ crown, the possible over-winter favourite for the following year’s 1,000 Guineas and Oaks, the future dam of champions, the golden chestnut with a single small white star on her forehead, this fast and famous athlete was down on her knees and groaning, sweat darkening her flanks.
While Harvey, Quigley and I watched in long stunned seconds she toppled over onto her side, laboured breath wheezing, her pain obvious.
She looked on the point of death, but she didn’t die.
Chapter 2
Deeply upset on many levels, Caspar Harvey took charge, and it was he who sent for the vet, brushing Quigley out of the way and offering the vet, whom he knew well, twice his normal fee if he abandoned his Sunday afternoon rest and appeared in Quigley’s yard immediately.
There was nothing he could physically do for his filly because he didn’t know what was wrong with her: he understood the power of money, though, and he would spend it lavishly if it would get useful results.
‘Colic?’ He speculated. ‘Oliver, shouldn’t you be walking her round? Surely walking is what you do for colic?’
Oliver Quigley squatted down beside his horse’s head and stroked her nose. He said he thought walking might do more harm than good, even if he could get the filly to stand up again, and that he would wait for the vet. And it was noticeable, I thought, that, faced with a real and disastrous-looking crisis with his horses, his constant anxiety shivers abated and almost died away.
Caspar Harvey stifled his emotions and thought of the future. ‘You...’ he said to me. ‘I mean you, Stuart, do you still have that camera?’
I produced it from my trousers pocket.
He nodded. ‘Take the filly, for the insurance. Pictures. Stronger than words.’
I did his bidding, the flash bright inside the darkening box.
‘Send them to me,’ he said, and I assured him I would.
Belladonna, driving Kris into the yard in the Land Rover, reacted to the filly’s plight with loving distress and absolute priority, and Kris infuriated her by saying his and my departure time was more important than waiting around for the vet, because we couldn’t navigate or land safely at White Waltham in fading light. Filly or no filly we needed to be off the ground by half past four, he said. Bell argued sharply that half past five would do. Kris said if she wouldn’t take us to the plane when he wanted to go, he would phone for a taxi. It seemed to me, listening to the vinegary exchange, that Caspar Harvey had no immediate worry about a son-in-law.
The vet earned his double fee with screeching tyres and, while listening through his stethoscope, metaphorically scratched his head over the filly.
‘I don’t think she has colic,’ he said. ‘What has she been eating?’
The head-lad and all the others were immediately insulted at the slur on their care.
The filly had eaten nothing that day, they swore, except oats and bran and hay.
Kris argued insistently with Bell, who finally in a rage told her father she would be away for a while delivering the infuriating Kris to his transport. Her father nodded absentmindedly, his attention all now on his suffering animal, and he looked vague also when, on the point of leaving, I thanked him for the lunch and repeated that I would send the snaps.
Bell, braking with a jerk beside the Cherokee after a bad-tempered ride through the town, listened with a frown while Kris tried to explain yet again that as we were both on duty that evening it was essential to return in time. It was true that we were on duty but it wasn’t strictly necessary for us to leave Newmarket by half past four. A long established loyalty, however, tied my tongue.
She watched Kris walk round the Cherokee doing the ever-necessary checks.
‘He makes me lose my temper,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘I’ll look after him. You go back to your father.’
She stared at me concentratedly with the blue eyes.
She said, ‘I don’t mean to be a bitch.’
I thought that as she was dealing with two strong-willed men and was hardly pliant herself, she was not, even with the winsomely blinking eyelids, going to activate any sort of three-way equilibrium without a maybe volcanic show of strength first.
Kris finished his checks, and Bell and I both stood up out of the Land Rover. Bell and Kris stood looking at each other in a silence that crackled as if electric.
Bell said finally, ‘I’ve got a job as assistant trainer to George Loricroft. I’ll be staying in Newmarket from now on.’
Loricroft had been at the lunch table where I sat with Evelyn (pearls) and Robin (glasses) Darcy.
Kris considered it, scowling.
‘I’ve a month’s leave coming up,’ he said. ‘I’m going to Florida for part of it.’
‘Nice for you.’
‘You could come.’
‘No.’
Kris turned his back abruptly and climbed into his flying machine, anything but, I thought wryly, a magnificent man as in the song.
I said goodbye awkwardly to Bell and said I hoped for the best with the filly.
‘Give me your phone number, and I’ll tell you.’
I had a pen but no paper. She took the pen and wrote the number on her left-hand palm.
‘Get in, get in, Perry,’ Kris shouted, ‘or I’ll go without you.’
‘He’s a shit,’ Bell said.
‘He loves you,’ I commented.
‘Like a tornado tears you apart.’
Kris started the engine and, not wanting to risk being actually abandoned, I climbed into the Cherokee, closed the door, fastened its hatch and buckled on my seat-belt. Bell gave a vestige of a wave in return for my more vigorous farewell through the window, but Kris stared unforgivingly ahead until it was too late even for courtesy. When we were airborne, though, and while Bell still stood by the Land Rover watching us depart, Kris made a ceremonial pass in front of her and waggled his wings as we flew away.
Newmarket to White Waltham wasn’t really very far. We had plenty of time and plenty of light when we landed, and the good spirits of the morning had returned to the pilot.
The cold wind blew until Friday, its Sunday sunshine fading to a depressing iron-grey. Caspar Harvey’s filly clung onto life, her symptoms and progress delivered to me literally at first hand by Bell who had at the last minute, she said, remembered to write my phone number onto something more lasting than skin only when she’d already squeezed liquid soap onto her hands.