‘Just tell him how,’ Charlie said, ‘and he’ll do it. He’ll do anything for you, Nerissa.’
At that time, and in those circumstances, she was right. The finality of Nerissa’s condition made me sharply aware of how much I had always owed her: not in concrete terms as much as in the feeling that she was there, interested and caring about what I did. In my motherless teens, that had meant a lot.
She sighed. ‘I’ve been writing to my trainer out there about it, and he seems very puzzled. He doesn’t know why my horses are running badly, because all the others he trains are doing all right. But it takes so long for letters to pass... the postal services at both ends seem to be so erratic these days. And I wondered, Edward, my dear, if you could possibly... I mean, I know it’s a good deal to ask... but could you possibly give me a week of your time, and go out there and find out what’s happening?’
There was a small silence. Even Charlie did not rush to say that of course I would go, although it was clear already that it would have to be a matter of how, not of whether.
Nerissa went on persuasively, ‘You see, Edward, you do know about racing. You know what goes on in a stable, and things like that. You could see, couldn’t you, if there is something wrong with their training? And then of course you are so good at investigating things...’
‘I’m what?’ I asked. ‘I’ve never investigated anything in my life.’
She fluttered a hand. ‘You know how to find things out, and nothing ever deflects you.’
‘Nerissa,’ I said suspiciously, ‘you’ve been seeing my films.’
‘Well, of course. I’ve seen nearly all of them.’
‘Yes, but that’s not me. Those investigating supermen, they’re just acting.’
‘Don’t be silly, Edward dear. You couldn’t do all the things you do in films without being brave and determined and very clever at finding things out.’
I looked at her in a mixture of affection and exasperation. So many people mistook the image for the man, but that she should...
‘You’ve known me since I was eight,’ I protested. ‘You know I’m not brave or particularly determined. I’m ordinary. I’m me. I’m the boy you gave sweets to, when I was crying because I’d fallen off a pony, and said “never mind” to, when I didn’t have the nerve to be a jockey.’
She smiled indulgently. ‘But since then you’ve learned to fight. And look at that last picture, when you were clinging to a ledge by one hand with a thousand foot drop just below you...’
‘Nerissa, dear Nerissa,’ I interrupted her. ‘I’ll go to South Africa for you. I really will. But those fights in films... most of the time that isn’t me, it’s someone my size and shape who really does know judo. I don’t. I can’t fight at all. It’s just my face in close-ups. And those ledges I was clinging to... certainly they were on a real rock face, but I was in no danger. I wouldn’t have fallen a thousand feet, but only about ten, into one of those nets they use under trapeze acts in circuses. I did fall, two or three times. And there wasn’t really a thousand feet below me; not sheer anyway. We filmed it in the Valley of Rocks in North Devon, where there are a lot of little plateaux among the rock faces, to stand the cameras on.’
She listened with an air of being completely unconvinced. I reckoned it was useless to go on: to tell her that I was not a crack shot, couldn’t fly an aeroplane or beat Olympic skiers downhill, couldn’t speak Russian or build a radio transmitter or dismantle bombs, and would tell all at the first threat of torture. She knew different, she’d seen it with her own eyes. Her expression told me so.
‘Well, all right,’ I said, capitulating. ‘I do know what should and should not go on in a racing stable. In England, anyway.’
‘And,’ she said complacently, ‘you can’t say it wasn’t you who did all that trick riding when you first went into films.’
I couldn’t. It was. But it had been nothing unique.
‘I’ll go and look at your horses, and see what your trainer says,’ I said; and thought that if he had no reasons to offer, I would be most unlikely to find any.
‘Dear Edward, so kind...’ She seemed suddenly weaker, as if the effort of persuading me had been too much. But when she saw the alarm on Charlie’s face, and on mine, she raised a reassuring smile.
‘Not yet, my dears. Another two months, perhaps... Two months at least, I think.’
Charlie shook her head in protest, but Nerissa patted her hand. ‘It’s all right, my dear. I’ve come to terms with it. But I want to arrange things... which is why I want Edward to see about the horses, and I really ought to explain...’
‘Don’t tire yourself,’ I said.
‘I’m not... tired,’ she said, obviously untruthfully. ‘And I want to tell you. The horses used to belong to my sister, Portia, who married and went to live in South Africa thirty years ago. After she was widowed she stayed there because all her friends were there, and I’ve been out to visit her several times over the years. I know I’ve told you about her.’
We nodded.
‘She died last winter,’ I said.
‘Yes... a great sorrow.’ Nerissa looked a good deal more upset about her sister’s death than about her own. ‘She had no close relatives except me, and she left me nearly everything she had inherited from her husband. And all her horses, too.’ She paused, as much to gather her forces as her thoughts. ‘They were yearlings. Expensive ones. And her trainer wrote to me to ask if I wanted to sell them, as of course owing to the African horsesickness quarantine laws we cannot bring South African horses to England. But I thought it might be fun... interesting... to run them in South Africa, and then sell them for stud. But now... well, now I won’t be here when they are old enough for stud, and meanwhile their value has dropped disastrously.’
‘Dearest Nerissa,’ Charlie said. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Oh yes. Yes, my dear, it does,’ she said positively. ‘Because I’m leaving them to my nephew, Danilo, and I don’t like the idea of leaving him something worthless.’
She looked from one of us to the other. ‘I can’t remember — have you ever met Danilo?’
Charlie said, ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Once or twice, when he was a small boy. You used to bring him to the stables.’
‘That’s right, so I did. And then of course my brother-in-law divorced that frightful woman, Danilo’s mother, and took him to live in California with him. Well... Danilo has been back in England recently, and he has grown into such a nice young man. And isn’t that lucky, my dears? Because, you see, I have so few relatives. In fact, really, Danilo is the only one, and even he is not a blood relative, his father being dear John’s youngest brother, do you see?’
We saw. John Cavesey, dead sixteen years or more, had been a country gent with four hunters and a sense of humour. He had also had Nerissa, no children, one brother, one nephew, and five square miles of Merrie England.
After a pause Nerissa said, ‘I’ll cable to Mr Arknold... that’s my trainer... to tell him you’re coming to look into things, and to book some rooms for you.’
‘No, don’t do that. He might resent your sending anyone, and I’d get no co-operation from him at all. I’ll fix the rooms, and so on. And if you cable him, just say I might be calling in, out of interest, while I’m in South Africa on a short visit.’
She smiled slowly and sweetly, and said, ‘You see, my dear, you do know how to investigate, after all.’
Chapter Three
I flew to Johannesburg five days later, equipped with a lot of facts and no faith in my ability to disentangle them.
Charlie and I had driven home from Nerissa’s in a double state of depression. Poor Nerissa, we said. And poor us, losing her.