Banker

DECEMBER

It made the headlines in the Sporting Life (OLIVER KNOWLES, KING OF THE SANDCASTLE) and turned up as the lead story under less fanciful banners on the racing pages of all the other dailies.
SANDCASTLE TO GO TO STUD, SANDCASTLE TO STAY IN BRITAIN, SANDCASTLE SHARES NOT FOR SALE, SANDCASTLE BOUGHT PRIVATELY FOR HUGE SUM. The story in every case was short and simple. One of the year’s top stallions had been acquired by the owner of a heretofore moderately-ranked stud farm. ‘I am very happy,’ Oliver Knowles was universally reported as saying. ‘Sandcastle is a prize for British bloodstock.’
The buying price, all the papers said, was ‘not unadjacent to five million pounds,’ and a few of them added ‘the financing was private.’
‘Well,’ Henry said at lunch, tapping the Sporting Life, ‘not many of our loans make so much splash.’
‘It’s a belly-flop,’ muttered the obstinate dissenter, who on that day happened to be sitting at my elbow.
Henry didn’t hear and was anyway in good spirits. ‘If one of the foals run in the Derby we’ll take a party from the office. What do you say, Gordon? Fifty people on open-topped buses?’
Gordon agreed with the sort of smile which hoped he wouldn’t actually be called upon to fulfil his promise.
‘Forty mares,’ Henry said musingly. ‘Forty foals. Surely one of them might be Derby material.’
‘Er,’ I said, from new-found knowledge. ‘Forty foals is stretching it. Thirty-five would be pretty good. Some mares won’t “take”, so to speak.’
Henry showed mild alarm. ‘Does that mean that five or six fees will have to be returned? Doesn’t that affect Knowles’ programme of repayment?’
I shook my head. ‘For a horse of Sandcastle’s stature the fee is all up in front. Payable for services rendered, regardless of results. That’s in Britain, of course, and Europe. In America they have the system of no foal, no fee, even for the top stallions. A live foal, that is. Alive, on its feet and suckling.’
Henry relaxed, leaning back in his chair and smiling. ‘You’ve certainly learnt a lot, Tim, since this all started.’
‘It’s absorbing.’
He nodded. ‘I know it isn’t usual, but how do you feel about keeping an eye on the bank’s money at close quarters? Would Knowles object to you dropping in from time to time?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Not out of general interest.’
‘Good. Do that, then. Bring us progress reports. I must say I’ve never been as impressed with any horse as I was that day with Sandcastle.’
Henry’s direct admiration of the colt had led in the end to Ekaterin’s advancing three of the five million to Oliver Knowles, with private individuals subscribing the other two. The fertility tests had been excellent, the owner had been paid, and Sandcastle already stood in the stallion yard in Hertforc-shire alongside Rotaboy, Diarist and Parakeet.
December was marching along towards Christmas, with trees twinkling all over London and sleet falling bleakly in the afternoons. On an impulse I sent a card embossed with tasteful robins to Calder Jackson, wishing him well, and almost by return of post received (in the office) a missive (Stubbs reproduction) thanking me sincerely and asking if I would be interested some time in looking round his place. If so, he finished, would I telephone – number supplied.
I telephoned. He was affable and far more spontaneous than usual. ‘Do come,’ he said, and we made a date for the following Sunday.
I told Gordon I was going. We were working on an interbank loan of nine and a half million for five days to a competitor, a matter of little more than a few telephone calls and a promise. My hair had almost ceased to rise at the size and speed of such deals, and with only verbal agreement from Val and Henry I had recently on my own lent seven million for forty-eight hours. The trick was never to lend for a longer time than we ourselves were able to borrow the necessary funds: if we did, we ran the risk of having to pay a higher rate of interest than we were receiving on the loan, a process which physically hurt Val Fisher. There had been a time in the past when owing to a client repaying late he had had to borrow several million for eighteen days at twenty-five per cent, and he’d never got over it.
Most of our dealings weren’t on such a heavy scale, and next on my agenda was a request for us to lend fifty-five thousand pounds to a man who had invented a waste-paper basket for use in cars and needed funds for development. I read the letter out to Gordon, who made a fast thumbs-down gesture.
‘Pity,’ I said. ‘It’s a sorely needed object.’
‘He’s asking too little.’ He put his left hand hard between his knees and clamped it there. ‘And there are far better inventions dying the death.’
I agreed with him and wrote a brief note of regret. Gordon looked up from his pages shortly after, and asked me what I’d be doing at Christmas.
‘Nothing much,’ I said.
‘Not going to your mother in Jersey?’
‘They’re cruising in the Caribbean.’
‘Judith and I wondered…’ he cleared his throat, ‘… if you’d care to stay with us. Come on Christmas Eve, stay three or four days? Just as you like, of course. I daresay you wouldn’t find us too exciting… but the offer’s there, anyway.’
Was it wise, I wondered, to spend three or four days with Judith when three or four hours at Ascot had tempted acutely? Was it wise, when the sight of her aroused so many natural urges, to sleep so long – and so near – under her roof?
Most unwise.
‘I’d like to,’ I said, ‘very much’; and I thought you’re a bloody stupid fool, Tim Ekaterin, and if you ache it’ll be your own ridiculous fault.
‘Good,’ Gordon said, looking as if he meant it. ‘Judith will be pleased. She was afraid you might have younger friends to go to.’
‘Nothing fixed.’
He nodded contentedly and went back to his work, and I thought about Judith wanting me to stay, because if she hadn’t wanted it I wouldn’t have been asked.
If I had any sense I wouldn’t go: but I knew I would.
Calder Jackson’s place at Newmarket, seen that next Sunday morning, was a gem of public relations, where everything had been done to please those visiting the sick. The yard itself, a three-sided quadrangle, had been cosmetically planted with central grass and a graceful tree, and brightly painted tubs, bare now of flowers, stood at frequent intervals outside the boxes. There were park-bench type seats here and there, and ornamental gates and railings in black iron scroll-work, and a welcoming archway labelled ‘Comfort Room This Way.’
Outside the main yard, and to one side, stood a small separate building painted glossy white. There was a large prominent red cross on the door, with, underneath it, the single word ‘Surgery’.
The yard and the surgery were what the visitor first saw: beyond and screened by trees stood Calder Jackson’s own house, more private from prying eyes than his business. I parked beside several other cars on a stretch of asphalt, and walked over to ring the bell. The front door was opened to me by a manservant in a white coat. Butler or nurse?
‘This way, sir,’ he said deferentially, when I announced my name. ‘Mr Jackson is expecting you.’
Butler.
Interesting to see the dramatic hair-cut in its home setting, which was olde-worlde cottage on a grand scale. I had an impression of a huge room, oak rafters, stone flagged floor, rugs, dark oak furniture, great brick fireplace with burning logs… and Calder advancing with a broad smile and outstretched arm.
‘Tim!’ he exclaimed, shaking hands vigorously. ‘This is a pleasure, indeed it is.’
‘Been looking forward to it,’ I said.
‘Come along to the fire. Come and warm yourself. How about a drink? And… oh… this is a friend of mine…’ he waved towards a second man already standing by the fireplace, ‘… Ian Pargetter.’
The friend and I nodded to each other and made the usual strangers-meeting signals, and the name tumbled over in my mind as something I’d heard somewhere before but couldn’t quite recall.
Calder Jackson clinked bottles and glasses and upon consultation gave me a Scotch of noble proportions.
‘And for you, Ian,’ he said. ‘A further tincture?’
Oh yes, I thought. The vet. Ian Pargetter, the vet who didn’t mind consorting with unlicensed practitioners.
Ian Pargetter hesitated but shrugged and held out his glass as one succumbing to pleasurable temptation.
‘A small one, then, Calder,’ he said. ‘I must be off.’
He was about forty, I judged; large and reliable-looking, with sandy greying hair, a heavy moustache and an air of being completely in charge of his life. Calder explained that it was I who had deflected the knife aimed at him at Ascot, and Ian Pargetter made predictable responses about luck, fast reactions and who could have wanted to kill Calder?
‘That was altogether a memorable day,’ Calder said, and I agreed with him.
‘We all won a packet on Sandcastle,’ Calder said. ‘Pity he’s going to stud so soon.’
I smiled. ‘Maybe we’ll win on his sons.’
There was no particular secret, as far as I knew, about where the finance for Sandcastle had come from, but it was up to Oliver Knowles to reveal it, not me. I thought Calder would have been interested, but bankers’ ethics as usual kept me quiet.
‘A superb horse,’ Calder said, with all the enthusiasm he’d shown in Dissdale’s box. ‘One of the greats.’
Ian Pargetter nodded agreement, then finished his drink at a gulp and said he’d be going. ‘Let me know how that pony fares, Calder.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Calder moved with his departing guest towards the door and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Thanks for dropping in, Ian. Appreciate it.’
There were sounds of Pargetter leaving by the front door, and Calder returned rubbing his hands together and saying that although it was cold outside, I might care to look round before his other guests arrived for lunch. Accordingly we walked across to the open-sided quadrangle, where Calder moved from box to box giving me a brief resumé of the illness and prospects of each patient.
‘This pony only came yesterday… it’s a prize show pony supposedly, and look at it. Dull eyes, rough coat, altogether droopy. They say it’s had diarrhoea on and off for weeks. I’m their last resort, they say.’ He smiled philosophically. ‘Can’t think why they don’t send me sick horses as a first resort. But there you are, they always try regular vets first. Can’t blame them, I suppose.’
We moved along the line. ‘This mare was coughing blood when she came three weeks ago. I was her owner’s last resort.’ He smiled again. ‘She’s doing fine now. The cough’s almost: gone. She’s eating well, putting on condition.’ The mare blinked at us lazily as we strolled away.
‘This is a two-year-old filly,’ Calder said, peering over a half-door. ‘She’d had an infected ulcer on her withers for six weeks before she came here. Antibiotics had proved useless Now the ulcer’s dry and healing. Most satisfactory.’
We went on down the row.
‘This is someone’s favourite hunter, came all the way from, Gloucestershire. I don’t know what I can do for him, though of course I’ll try. His trouble, truthfully, is just age.’
Further on: ‘Here’s a star three-day-eventer. Came to me with intermittent bleeding in the urine, intractable to antibiotics. He was clearly in great pain, and almost dangerous to deal with on account of it. But now he’s fine. He’ll be staying here for a while longer but I’m sure the trouble is cured.
‘This is a three-year-old colt who won a race back in July but then started breaking blood vessels and went on doing it despite treatment. He’s been here a fortnight. Last resort, of course!’
By the next box he said, ‘Don’t look at this one if you’re squeamish. Poor wretched little filly, she’s so weak she can’t hold her head up and all her bones are sharp under the skin. Some sort of wasting sickness. Blood tests haven’t shown what it is. I don’t know if I can heal her. I’ve laid my hands on her twice so far, but there’s been nothing. No… feeling. Sometimes it takes a long time. But I’m not giving up with her, and there’s always hope.’
He turned his curly head and pointed to another box further ahead. ‘There’s a colt along there who’s been here two months and is only just responding. His owners were in despair, and so was I, privately, but then just three days ago when I was in his box I could feel the force flowing down my arms and into him, and the next day he was mending.’
He spoke with a far more natural fluency on his home ground and less as if reciting from a script, but all the same I felt the same reservations about the healing touch as I had at Ascot. I was a doubter, I supposed. I would never in my life have put my trust in a seventh son of a seventh son, probably because the only direct knowledge I had of any human seeking out ‘the touch’ had been a close friend of mine at college who’d had hopeless cancer and had gone to a woman healer as a last resort, only to be told that he was dying because he wanted to. I could vividly remember his anger, and mine on his behalf: and standing in Calder’s yard I wondered if that same woman would also think that horses got sick to death because they wanted to.
‘Is there anything you can’t treat?’ I asked. ‘Anything you turn away?’
‘I’m afraid so, yes.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘There are some things, like advanced laminitis, with which I feel hopeless, and as for coryne…’ he shook his head,’… it’s a killer.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said.
‘So sorry. Well, laminitis is a condition of the feet where the bone eventually begins to crumble, and horses in the end can’t bear the pain of standing up. They lie down, and horses can’t live for more than a few days lying down.’ He spoke with regret. ‘And coryne,’ he went on, ‘is a frightful bacterial infection which is deadly to foals. It induces a sort of pneumonia with abcesses in the lungs. Terribly contagious. I know of one stud farm in America which lost seventy foals in one day.’
I listened in horror. ‘Do we have it in England?’ I asked.
‘Sometimes, in pockets, but not widespread. It doesn’t affect older horses. Foals of three months or over are safe.’ He paused. ‘Some very young foals do survive, of course, but they’re likely to have scar tissue in the lungs which may impair their breathing for racing purposes.’
‘Isn’t there a vaccine?’ I said.
He smiled indulgently. ‘Very little research is done into equine diseases, chiefly because of the cost but also because horses are so large, and can’t be kept in a laboratory for any controlled series of tests.’
I again had the impression that he had said all this many times before, but it was understandable and I was getting used to it. We proceeded on the hospital round (four-year-old with general debility, show-jumper with festering leg) and came at length to a box with an open door.
‘We’re giving this one sun treatment,’ Calder said, indicating that I should look; and inside the box a thin youth was adjusting the angle of an ultra-violet lamp set on a head-high, wall-mounted bracket. It wasn’t at the dappled grey that I looked, however, but at the lad, because in the first brief glimpse I thought he was the boy who had tried to attack Calder.
I opened my mouth… and shut it again.
He wasn’t the boy. He was of the same height, same build, same litheness, same general colouring, but not with the same eyes or jawline or narrow nose.
Calder saw my reaction and smiled. ‘For a split second, when I saw that boy move at Ascot, I thought it was Jason here. But it wasn’t, of course.’
I shook my head. ‘Alike but different.’
Calder nodded. ‘And Jason wouldn’t want to kill me, would you, Jason?’ He spoke with a jocularity to which Jason didn’t: respond.
‘No, sir,’ he said stolidly.
‘Jason is my right-hand man,’ said Calder heartily. ‘Indispensable.’
The right-hand man showed no satisfaction at the flattery and maintained an impassive countenance throughout. He touched the grey horse and told it to shift over a bit in the manner of one equal talking to another, and the horse obediently shifted.
‘Mind your eyes with that lamp,’ Calder said. ‘Where are your glasses?’
Jason fished into the breast pocket of his shirt and produced some ultra-dark sun-shades. Calder nodded. ‘Put them on,’ he said, and Jason complied. Where before there had already been a lack of mobility of expression, there was now, with the obscured eyes, no way at all of guessing Jason’s thoughts.
‘I’ll be finished with this one in ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Is there anything else after that, sir?’
Calder briefly pondered and shook his head. ‘Just the evening rounds at four.’
‘Your invalids get every care,’ I said, complimenting them.
Jason’s blacked-out eyes turned my way, but it was Calder who said ‘Hard work gets results.’ And you’ve said that a thousand times, I thought.
We reached the last box in the yard, the first one which was empty.
‘Emergency bed,’ Calder said, jokingly, and I smiled and asked how much he charged for his patients.
He replied easily and without explanation or apology. ‘Twice the training fees currently charged for horses in the top Newmarket stables. When their rates go up, so do mine.’
‘Twice…?’
He nodded. ‘I could charge more, you know. But if I charged less I’d be totally swamped by all those “last resort” people, and I simply haven’t the room or the time or the spiritual resources to take more cases than I do.’
I wondered how one would ever get to the essence of the man behind the temperate, considerate public face, or indeed if the public face was not a fa?ade at all but the essence itself. I looked at the physical strength of the shoulders below the helmet head and listened to the plain words describing a mystical force, considered the dominating voice and the mild manner, and still found him a man to admire rather than like.
‘The surgery,’ he said, gesturing towards it as we walked that way. ‘My drug store!’ He smiled at the joke (how often, I wondered, had he said it?) and produced a key to unlock the door. ‘There’s nothing dangerous or illegal in here, of course, but one has to protect against vandals. So sad, don’t you think?’
The surgery, which had no windows, was basically a large brick-built hut. The internal walls, like the outer, were painted white, and the floor was tiled in red. There were antiseptic-looking glass-fronted cabinets along the two end walls and a wide bench with drawers underneath along the wall facing the door. On the bench, a delicate-looking set of scales, a pestle and mortar and a pair of fine rubber gloves: behind the glass of the cabinets, rows of bottles and boxes. Everything very business-like and tidy: and along the wall which contained the doer stood three kitchen appliances, refrigerator, cooker and sink.
Calder pointed vaguely towards the cabinets. ‘In there I keep the herbs in pill and powder form. Comfrey, myrrh, sarsaparilla, golden seal, fo-ti-tieng, things like that.’
‘Er…‘I said. ‘What do they do?’
He ran through them obligingly. ‘Comfrey knits bones, and heals wounds, myrrh is antiseptic and good for diarrhoea and rheumatism, sarsaparilla contains male hormones and increases physical strength, golden seal cures eczema, improves appetite and digestion, fo-ti-tieng is a revitalising tonic second to none. Then there’s liquorice for coughs and papaya enzymes for digesting proteins and passiflora to use as a general pacifier and tranquilliser.’ He paused. ‘There’s ginseng also, of course, which is a marvellous rejuvenator and invigorator, but it’s really too expensive in the quantities needed to do a horse significant good. It has to be taken continuously, for ever.’ He sighed. ‘Excellent for humans, though.’
The air in the windowless room was fresh and smelled very faintly fragrant, and as if to account for it Calder started showing me the contents of the drawers.
‘I keep seeds in here,’ he said. ‘My patients eat them by the handful every day.’ Three or four of the drawers contained large opaque plastic bags fastened by bull-dog clips. ‘Sunflower seeds for vitamins, phosphorus and calcium, good for bones and teeth. Pumpkin seeds for vigour – they contain male hormones – and also for phosphorus and iron. Carrot seeds for calming nervous horses. Sesame seeds for general health.’
He walked along a yard or two and pulled open an extra-large deep drawer which contained larger bags; more like sacks. ‘These are hops left after beer-making. They’re packed full of all good things. A great tonic, and cheap enough to use in quantity. We have bagfuls of them over in the feed shed to grind up as chaff but I use these here as one ingredient of my special decoction, my concentrated tonic’
‘Do you make it… on the stove?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘Like a chef.’ He opened the refrigerator door. ‘I store it in here. Want to see?’
I looked inside. Nearly the whole space was taken with gallon-sized plastic containers full of brownish liquid. ‘We mix it in a bran mash, warmed of course, and the horses thrive.’
I knew nothing about the efficiency of his remedies, but I was definitely impressed.
‘How do you get the horses to take pills?’ I said.
‘In an apple, usually. We scoop out half the core, put in the tablet or capsule, or indeed just powder, and replace the plug.’
So simple.
‘And incidentally, I make most of my own pills and capsules. Some, like comfrey, are commercially available, but I prefer to buy the dried herbs in their pure form and make my own recipes.’ He pulled open one of the lower drawers under the work-bench and lifted out a heavy wooden box. ‘This,’ he said, laying it on the work surface and opening the lid, ‘contains the makings.’
I looked down at a whole array of brass dies, each a small square with a pill-sized cavity in its centre. The cavities varied from tiny to extra large, and from round to oblong.
‘It’s an antique,’ he said with a touch of pride. ‘Early Victorian. Dates from when pills were always made by hand – and it’s still viable, of course. You put the required drug in powder form into whatever sized cavity you want, and compress it with the rod which exactly fits.’ He lifted one of a series of short brass rods from its rack and fitted its end into one of the cavities, tamping it up and down; then picked the whole die out of the box and tipped it right over. ‘Hey presto,’ he said genially, catching the imaginary contents, ‘a pill!’
‘Neat,’ I said, with positive pleasure.
He nodded. ‘Capsules are quicker and more modern.’ He pulled open another drawer and briefly showed me the empty tops and bottoms of a host of gelatin capsules, again of varying sizes, though mostly a little larger than those swallowed easily by humans. ‘Veterinary size,’ he explained.
He closed his gem of a pill-making box and returned it to its drawer, straightening up afterwards and casting a caring eye around the place to make sure everything was tidy. With a nod of private satisfaction he opened the door for us to return to the outside world, switching off the fluorescent lights and locking the door behind us.
A car was just rolling to a stop on the asphalt, and presently two recognised figures emerged from it: Dissdale Smith and his delectable Bettina.
‘Hello, hello,’ said Dissdale, striding across with ready hand. ‘Calder said you were coming. Good to see you. Calder’s been showing you all his treasures, eh? The conducted tour, eh, Calder?’ I shook the hand. ‘Calder’s proud of his achievements here, aren’t you, Calder?’
‘With good reason,’ I said civilly, and Calder gave me a swift glance and a genuine-looking smile.
Bettina drifted more slowly to join us, a delight in high heeled boots and cuddling fur, a white silk scarf round her throat and smooth dark hair falling glossily to her shoulders. Her scent travelled sweetly across the quiet cold air and she laid a decorative hand on my arm in an intimate touch.
‘Tim the saviour,’ she said. ‘Calder’s hero.’
The over-packaged charm unaccountably brought the contrasting image of Ginnie sharply to my mind, and I briefly thought that the promise was more beckoning than the performance, that child more interesting than that woman.
Calder took us all soon into his maxi-cottage sitting-room and distributed more drinks. Dissdale told me that Sandcastle had almost literally saved his business and metaphorically his life, and we all drank a toast to the wonder horse. Four further guests arrived – a married couple with their two twentyish daughters – and the occasion became an ordinarily enjoyable lunch party, undemanding, unmemorable, good food handed round by the manservant, cigars offered with the coffee.
Calder at some point said he was off to America in the New Year on a short lecture tour.
‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘I’ll be talking to health clubs, not horse people. American racehorse trainers aren’t receptive to me. Or not yet. But then, it took a few years for Newmarket to decide I could make a contribution.’
Everyone smiled at the scepticism of America and Newmarket.
Calder said, ‘January is often a quiet month here. We don’t take any new admissions if I’m away, and of course my head lad just keeps the establishment routines going until I return. It works pretty well.’ He smiled. ‘If I’m lucky I’ll get some ski-ing; and to be honest, I’m looking forward to the ski-ing much more than the talks.’
Everyone left soon after three, and I drove back to London through the short darkening afternoon wondering if the herbs of antiquity held secrets we’d almost wilfully lost.
‘Caffeine,’ Calder had been saying towards the end, ‘is a get-up-and-go stimulant, tremendously useful. Found in coffee beans of course, and in tea and cocoa and in cola drinks. Good for asthma. Vigorous marvellous tonic. A life-saver after shock. And now in America, I ask you, they’re casting caffeine as a villain and are busy taking it out of everything it’s naturally in. You might as well take the alcohol out of bread.’
‘But Calder dear,’ Bettina said, ‘There’s no alcohol in bread.’
He looked at her kindly as she sat on his right. ‘Bread that is made with yeast definitely does contain alcohol before it’s cooked. If you mix yeast with water and sugar you get alcohol and carbon-dioxide, which is the gas which makes the dough rise. The air in a bakery smells of wine… simple chemistry, my dear girl, no magic in it. Bread is the staff of life and alcohol is good for you.’
There had been jokes and lifted glasses, and I could have listened to Calder for hours.
The Christmas party at Gordon Michael’s home was in a way an echo, because Judith’s apothecary friend Pen Warner was in attendance most of the time. I got to know her quite well and to like her very much, which Judith may or may not have intended. In any case, it was again the fairy-tale day at Ascot which had led on to friendly relations.
‘Do you remember Burnt Marshmallow?’ Pen said. ‘I bought a painting with my winnings.’
‘I spent mine on riotous living.’
‘Oh yes?’ She looked me up and down and shook her head. ‘You haven’t the air.’
‘What do I have the air of?’ I asked curiously, and she answered in amusement, ‘Of intelligent laziness and boring virtue.’
‘All wrong,’ I said.
‘Ho hum.’
She seemed to me to be slightly less physically solid than at Ascot, but it might have been only the change of clothes; there were still the sad eyes and the ingrained worthiness and the unexpected cast of humour. She had apparently spent twelve hours that day – it was Christmas Eve – doling out remedies to people whose illnesses showed no sense of timing, and proposed to go back at six in the morning. Meanwhile she appeared at the Michaels’ house in a long festive caftan with mood to match, and during the evening the four of us ate quails with our fingers, and roasted chestnuts, and played a board game with childish gusto.
Judith wore rose pink and pearls and looked about twenty-five. Gordon in advance had instructed me ‘Bring whatever you like as long as it’s informal’ and himself was resplendent in a plum velvet jacket and bow tie My own newly bought cream wool shirt which in the shop had looked fairly theatrical seemed in the event to be right, so that on all levels the evening proved harmonious and fun, much more rounded and easy than I’d expected.
Judith’s housekeeping throughout my stay proved a poem of invisibility. Food appeared from freezer and cupboard, remnants returned to dishwasher and dustbin. Jobs were distributed when essential but sitting and talking had priority: and nothing so smooth, I reflected, ever got done without hard work beforehand.
‘Pen will be back soon after one tomorrow,’ Judith said at midnight on that first evening. ‘We’ll have a drink then and open some presents, and have our Christmas feast at half past three. There will be breakfast in the morning, and Gordon and I will go to church.’ She left an invitation lingering in the air, but I marginally shook my head. ‘You can look after yourself, then, while we’re gone.’
She kissed me goodnight, with affection and on the cheek. Gordon gave me a smile and a wave, and I went to bed across the hall from them and spent an hour before sleep deliberately not thinking at all about Judith in or out of her nightgown – or not much.
Breakfast was taken in dressing gowns. Judith’s was red, quilted and unrevealing.
They changed and went to church. Pray for me, I said, and set out for a walk on the common.
There were brightly-wrapped gifts waiting around the base of the silver-starred Christmas tree in the Michaels’ drawing room, and a surreptitious inspection had revealed one from Pen addressed to me. I walked across the windy grass, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, wondering what to do about one for her, and as quite often happens came by chance to a solution.
A small boy was out there with his father, flying a kite, and I stopped to watch.
‘That’s fun,’ I said.
The boy took no notice but the father said, ‘There’s no satisfying the little bleeder. I give him this and he says he wants roller skates.’
The kite was a brilliant phosphorescent Chinese dragon with butterfly wings and a big frilly tail, soaring and circling like a joyful tethered spirit in the Christmas sky.
‘Will you sell it to me?’ I asked. ‘Buy the roller skates instead?’ I explained the problem, the need for an instant present.
Parent and child consulted and the deal was done. I wound up the string carefully and bore the trophy home, wondering what on earth the sober pharmacist would think of such a thing: but when she unwrapped it from gold paper (cadged from Judith for the purpose) she pronounced herself enchanted, and back we all went onto the common to watch her fly it.
The whole day was happy. I hadn’t had so good a Christmas since I was a child. I told them so, and kissed Judith un-inhibitedly under some mistletoe, which Gordon didn’t seem to mind.
‘You were born sunny,’ Judith said, briefly stroking my cheek, and Gordon, nodding, said, ‘A man without sorrows, unacquainted with grief.’
‘Grief and sorrow come with time,’ Pen said, but not as if she meant it imminently. ‘They come to us all.’
On the morning after Christmas Day I drove Judith across London to Hampstead to put flowers on her mother’s grave.
‘I know you’ll think me silly, but I always go. She died on Boxing Day when I was twelve. It’s the only way I have of remembering her… of feeling I had a mother at all. I usually go by myself. Gordon thinks I’m sentimental and doesn’t like coming.’
‘Nothing wrong with sentiment,’ I said.
Hampstead was where I lived in the upstairs half of a friend’s house. I wasn’t sure whether or not Judith knew it, and said nothing until she’d delivered the pink chrysanthemums to the square marble tablet let in flush with the grass and communed for a while with the memories floating there.
It was as we walked slowly back toward the iron gates that I neutrally said, ‘My flat’s only half a mile from here. This part of London is home ground.’
‘Is it?’
‘Mm.’
After a few steps she said, ‘I knew you lived somewhere here. If you remember, you wouldn’t let us drive you all the way home from Ascot. You said Hampstead was too far.’
‘So it was.’
‘Not for Sir Galahad that starry night.’
We reached the gates and paused for her to look back. I was infinitely conscious of her nearness and of my own stifled desire; and she looked abruptly into my eyes and said, ‘Gordon knows you live here, also.’
‘And does he know how I feel?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. He hasn’t said.’
I wanted very much to go that last half mile: that short distance on wheels, that far journey in commitment. My body tingled… rippled… from hunger, and I found myself physically clenching my back teeth.
‘What are you thinking?’ she said.
‘For God’s sake… you know damn well what I’m thinking… and we’re going back to Clapham right this minute.’
She sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose we must.’
‘What do you mean… you suppose?’
‘Well, I…’ she paused. ‘I mean, yes we must. I’m sorry… it was just that… for a moment… I was tempted.’
‘As at Ascot?’ I said.
She nodded. ‘As at Ascot.’
‘Only here and now,’ I said, ‘we have the place and the time and the opportunity to do something about it.’
‘Yes.’
‘And what we’re going to do… is… nothing.’ It came out as half a question, half a statement: wholly an impossibility.
‘Why do we care?’ she said explosively. ‘Why don’t we just get into your bed and have a happy time? Why is the whole thing so tangled up with bloody concepts like honour?’
We walked down the road to where I’d parked the car and I drove southwards with careful observance at every red light; stop signals making round eyes at me all the way to Clapham.
‘I’d have liked it,’ Judith said as we pulled up outside her house.
‘So would I.’
We went indoors in a sort of deprived companionship, and I realised only when I saw Gordon’s smiling unsuspicious face that I couldn’t have returned there if it had been in any other way.
It was at lunch that day, when Pen had again resurfaced from her stint among the pills that I told them about my visit to Calder. Pen, predictably, was acutely interested and said she’d dearly like to know what was in the decoction in the refrigerator.
‘What’s a decoction?’ Judith asked.
‘A preparation boiled with water. If you dissolve things in alcohol, that’s a tincture.’
‘One lives and bloody well learns!’
Pen laughed. ‘How about carminative, anodyne and vermifuge… effects of drugs. They simply roll off the tongue with grandeur.’
‘And what do they mean?’ Gordon asked.
‘Getting rid of gas, getting rid of pain, getting rid of worms.’
Gordon too was laughing. ‘Have some anodyne tincture of grape.’ He poured wine into our glasses. ‘Do you honestly believe, Tim, that Calder cures horses by touch?’
‘I’m sure he believes it.’ I reflected. ‘I don’t know if he will let anyone watch. And if he did, what would one see? I don’t suppose with a horse it’s a case of “take up your bed and walk.”’
Judith said in surprise, ‘You sound as if you’d like it to be true. You, that Gordon and Harry have trained to doubt!’
‘Calder’s impressive,’ I admitted. ‘So is his place. So are the fees he charges. He wouldn’t be able to set his prices so high if he didn’t get real results.’
‘Do the herbs come extra?’ Pen said.
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Would you expect them to?’ Gordon said.
‘Well…’ Pen considered. ‘Some of those that Tim mentioned are fairly exotic. Golden seal – that’s hydrastis – said in the past to cure practically anything you can mention, but mostly used nowadays in tiny amounts in eye-drops. Has to be imported from America. And fo-ti-tieng – which is Hydrocotyle asiatica minor, also called the source of the elixir of long life – that only grows as far as I know in the tropical jungles of the far east. I mean, I would have thought that giving things like that to horses would be wildly expensive.’
If I’d been impressed with Calder I was probably more so with Pen. ‘I didn’t know pharmacists were so clued up on herbs,’ I said.
‘I was just interested so I learned their properties,’ she exclaimed. ‘The age-old remedies are hardly even hinted at on the official pharmacy courses, though considering digitalis and penicillin one can’t exactly see why. A lot of chemists shops don’t sell non-prescription herbal remedies, but I do, and honestly for a stack of people they seem to work.’
‘And do you advocate garlic poultices for the feet of babies with whooping-cough?’ Gordon asked.
Pen didn’t. There was more laughter. If one believed in Calder, Judith said firmly, one believed in him, garlic poultices and all.
The four of us spent a comfortable afternoon and evening together, and when Judith and Gordon went to bed I walked along with Pen to her house, where she’d been staying each night, filling my lungs with the fresh air off the common.
‘You’re going home tomorrow, aren’t you?’ she said, fishing out her keys.
I nodded. ‘In the morning.’
‘It’s been great fun.’ She found the keys and fitted one in the lock. ‘Would you like to come in?’
‘No… I’ll just walk for a bit.’
She opened the door and paused there. ‘Thank you for the kite… it was brilliant. And goodbye for this time, though I guess if Judith can stand it I’ll be seeing you again.’
‘Stand what?’ I asked.
She kissed me on the cheek. ‘Goodnight,’ she said. ‘And believe it or not, the herb known as passion flower is good for insomnia.’
Her grin shone out like the Cheshire Cat’s as she stepped inside her, house and closed the door, and I stood hopelessly on her pathway wanting to call her back.