We had met from time to time on indoor social occasions, but we were not close private personal friends, and before that day he had not been to my house, nor I to his.
‘My wife’s brother,’ he said. ‘Johnny Farringford. You know him, don’t you?’
‘We’ve met,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know him.’
‘He wants to ride in the next Olympics. In Moscow.’
‘Yes, sir. So Mr Hughes-Beckett said.’
‘In the Three-Day-Event.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, Randall, there’s this problem... what you might call, a question-mark... We can’t let him go to Russia unless it’s cleared up. We simply can’t... or at least, I simply won’t... have him going there if the whole thing is going to blow up in our faces. I am not, positively not, going to let him go if there is any chance of an... incident... which would be in a way embarrassing to... er... other members of my family. Or to the British nation as a whole.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now I know Johnny is not in line to the throne or anything like that, but he is after all an earl and my brother-in-law, and as far as the Press of the world is concerned, that’s fair game.’
‘But, sir,’ I said, protesting mildly. ‘The Olympics are still some way off. I know Lord Farringford is good, but he might not be selected, and then there would be no problem at all.’
The Prince shook his head. ‘If the problem isn’t dealt with, however good Johnny is, even if he’s the best we’ve got, he will not be selected.’
I looked at him speculatively. ‘You would prevent it?’
‘Yes, I should.’ His voice was positive. ‘It would no doubt cause a great deal of friction in my own home, as both Johnny and my wife have set their hearts on his getting a place in the team. He has a real chance, too, I admit. He won several Events during the summer and he’s been working hard at improving his dressage to international standards. I don’t want to stand in his way... In fact, that’s why I’m here, asking you to be a good chap and find out what, if anything, there is to make it risky for him to go to Russia.’
‘Sir,’ I said. ‘Why me? Why not the diplomats?’
‘They’ve passed the buck. They think, and I must say I agree, that a private individual is the best bet. If there is... anything... we don’t want it in official records.’
I said nothing, but my disinclination must have been obvious.
‘Look,’ the Prince said, ‘we’ve known each other a long time. You’ve twice the brains I have, and I trust you. I’m damned sorry about your eyesight, and all that, but you’ve got a lot of empty time to fill now, and if your agent can run your estate like clockwork while you chunter round Cheltenham and Aintree, he can do it while you go to Moscow.’
I said, ‘I suppose you didn’t get the no-glasses rule passed just so that I’d have time to go on your errand?’
He listened to the bitterness in my voice, and chuckled in his throat. ‘Most likely it was all the other amateurs, who wanted you out of their daylight.’
‘A couple have already sworn it wasn’t.’
‘Will you go, then?’ he said.
I looked at my hands and bit my fingernails and took my glasses off and put them on again.
‘I know you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know who else to ask.’
‘Sir... well... can we leave it until the spring? I mean... you might think of someone better...’
‘It’s got to be now, Randall. Right this minute, in fact. We’ve got the chance of buying one of the top young German horses, a real cracker, for Johnny. We... that is, his trustees... I suppose I should explain... His money is in trust until he is twenty-five, which is still three years ahead, and although of course he has a generous living allowance, a big item like an Olympic-type horse needs to come out of the capital. Anyway, we will be happy to buy this horse, and we have an option on it, but they are pressing for a reply. We must say yes or no by Christmas. It is too expensive except for an all-out attempt at the Olympics, and we are damned lucky to have been given the few weeks’ option. They’ve got other buyers practically queueing for it.’
I stood up restlessly, went to the window, and looked out at the cold November sky. Winter in Moscow, chasing someone’s possible indiscretion, maybe digging up a lot of private dirt, was an absolutely revolting prospect.
‘Please, Randall,’ said the Prince. ‘Please go. Just give it a try.’
Emma was standing by the sitting-room window watching the Daimler roll away down the drive. She glanced assessingly at my face.
‘I see he suckered you,’ she said.
‘I’m still fighting a rearguard action.’
‘You haven’t a chance.’
She walked across the panelled room and sat on the long stool in front of the fire, stretching out her hands to the warmth. ‘It’s too ingrained in you. Service to the sovereign, and all that. Grandfather an equerry, aunt a lady-in-waiting. Stacks like them in your family for generations back. What hope have you got? When a Prince says jump, all your ancestors’ genes spring to attention and salute.’
2
The Prince lived in a modest house only a shade larger than my own, but a hundred years older, and he opened his door to me himself, although he did have living-in staff, which I did not. But then, he also had a wife, three children, and, apparently, six dogs. A dalmatian and a whippet oozed between his legs and the doorposts and bowled over to give me a good sniffing as I climbed out of my Mercedes, with a yapping collection of terriers cantering along in their wake.
‘Kick ’em out of your way,’ advised the Prince loudly, waiting on his doorstep. ‘Get down, Fingers, you spotted oaf.’
The dalmatian paid little attention, but I reached the door unchewed. Shook the Prince’s hand. Made the small bow. Followed him across the rugs of his pillared hall into an ample sort of study. Leather-bound books in tidy rows lined two of the walls, with windows, doors, portraits and fireplace leaving small surrounds of pale green emulsion on the others. On his big cluttered desk stood ranks of photographs in silver frames, and in one corner a huge white cyclamen in a copper bowl drooped its pale heads in the greyish light.
I knew, and the Prince knew I knew, that his act in opening his door to me himself was a very unusual token of appreciation. He really must have been quite extraordinarily relieved, I thought, that I had agreed to take even the partial step I had: and I wondered a bit uneasily about the size of the pitfalls which he knew would lie ahead.
‘Good of you, Randall,’ he said, waving me to a black leather armchair. ‘Did you have a good drive? We’ll rustle up some coffee in a minute...’
He sat in a comfortable swivel beside his desk and kept up the flow of courteous chatter. Johnny Farringford, he said, had promised to be there by ten-thirty: he took a quick look at his watch and no doubt found it was roughly fifteen minutes after that already. It was good of me to come, he said again. It was probably better, he said, that I shouldn’t be tied in too closely with Johnny at this stage, so it was perhaps wiser we should meet at the Prince’s house, and not at Johnny’s, if I saw what he meant.
He was strongly built, fairly tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with the easy good looks of youth beginning to firm into the settled character of coming middle age. The eyebrows were bushier than five years earlier, the nose more pronounced, and the neck a little thicker. Time was turning him from an athlete into a figurehead, and giving me unwanted insights into mortality on a Monday morning.