Bolt

TWELVE

The alley was a cobbled cul de sac about twenty feet wide and a hundred yards long, with a wider place at the far end for turning, the backs of tall buildings closing it all in like a canyon. Its sides were lined with garage doors, the wide garages themselves running in under the backs of the buildings, and unlike many other mews where the garages had originally been built as housing for coaches and horses, Falmouth Mews, as it was called, had no residential entrances.
By day, the mews was alive and busy, as a firm of motor mechanics occupied several of the garages, doing repairs for the surrounding neighbourhood. At night, when they’d gone home, the place was a shadowy lane of big closed doors, lit only from the windows of the buildings above.
The garage where Thomas kept the Rolls was further than halfway in. Next, beyond, was a garage belonging to the mechanics, which Thomas had persuaded them to rent temporarily to the princess, to accommodate Danielle’s car (now recovered from the menders by Thomas). My Mercedes, unhoused, was parked along outside Danielle’s garage doors, and other cars, here and there along the mews, were similarly placed. In a two-car family, one typically was in the generous sized lock-up, the second lengthways outside.
Around and behind these second cars there were a myriad hiding places.
I ought to have brought a torch, I thought. Tomorrow I would buy one. The mews could shelter a host of monsters … and Beatrice knew what time I set off each night to Chiswick.
I walked down the centre of the alley feeling my heart thud, yet I’d gone down there the night before without a tremor. The power of imagination, I thought wryly: and nothing rustled in the undergrowth, nothing pounced, the tiger wasn’t around for the goat.
The car looked exactly as I’d left it, but I checked the wiring under the bonnet and under the dashboard before switching on the ignition. I checked there was no oil leaking from under the engine, and that all the tyres were hard, and I tested the brakes with a sudden stop before turning out into the road.
Satisfied, I drove without trouble to Chiswick, collecting Danielle at two o’clock. She was tired from the long day and talked little, telling me only that they’d spent all evening on a story about snow and ice houses which she thought was a waste of time.
‘What snow and ice houses?’ I asked, more just to talk to her than from wanting to know.
‘Sculptures for a competition. Some of the guys had been out filming them in an exhibition. Like sandcastles, only made of snow and ice. Some of them were quite pretty and even had lights inside them. The guys said the place they were in was like filming in an igloo without a blanket. All good fun, I guess, but not world news.’
She yawned and fell silent, and in a short while we were back in the mews: it was always a quick journey at night, with no traffic.
‘You can’t keep coming to pick me up,’ she said, as we walked round into Eaton Square.
‘I like to.’
‘Litsi told me that the man in the hood was Henri Nanterre.’ She shivered. ‘I don’t know if it makes it better or worse. Anyway, I’m not working Friday nights right now, or Saturdays or Sundays, of course. You can sleep, Friday night.’
We let ourselves into the house with the new keys and said goodnight again on her landing. We never had slept in the same bed in that house, so there were no such memories or regrets to deal with, but I fiercely wished as I walked up one more flight that she would come up there with me: yet it had been no use suggesting it, because her goodnight kiss had again been a defence, not a promise, and had landed again any way but squarely.
Give her time … Time was an aching anxiety with no certainty ahead.
Breakfast, warmth and newspapers were to be found each day down in the morning room, whose door was across the hall from Litsi’s. I was in there about nine on that Thursday morning, drinking orange juice and checking on the day’s runners at Bradbury, when the intercom buzzed, and Dawson’s voice told me there was a call from Mr Harlow.
I picked up the outside receiver fearfully.
‘Wykeham?’
‘Oh, Kit. Look, I thought I’d better tell you, but don’t alarm the princess. We had a prowler last night.’
‘Are the horses all right? Kinley?’
‘Yes, yes. Nothing much happened. The man with the dog said his dog was restless, as if someone was moving about. He says his dog was very alert and whining softly for a good half hour, and that they patrolled the courtyards twice. They didn’t see anyone, though, and after a while the dog relaxed again. So … what do you think?’
‘I think it’s a bloody good job you’ve got the dog.’
‘Yes … it’s very worrying.’
‘What time was all this?’
‘About midnight. I’d gone to bed, of course, and the guard didn’t wake me, as nothing had happened. There’s no sign that anyone was here.’
‘Just keep on with the patrols,’ I said, ‘and make sure you don’t get the man that slept in the hay barn.’
‘No. I told them not to send him. They’ve all been very sharp, since that first night.’
We discussed the two horses he was sending to Bradbury, neither of them the princess’s. He sometimes sent his slowest horses to Bradbury in the belief that if they didn’t win there, they wouldn’t win anywhere, but he avoided it most of the time. It was a small country course, with a flat circuit of little more than a mile, easy to ride on if one stuck to the inside.
‘Give Mélisande a nice ride, now.’
‘Yes, Wykeham,’ I said. Mélisande had been before my time. ‘Do you mean Pinkeye?’
‘Well … of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘How long are you staying in Eaton Square?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you, though, when I leave.’
We disconnected and I put a slice of wholemeal bread in the toaster and thought about prowlers.
Litsi came in and poured himself some coffee. ‘I thought,’ he said conversationally, assembling a bowl of muesli and cream, ‘that I might go to the races today.’
‘To Bradbury?’ I was surprised. ‘It’s not like Ascot. It’s the bare bones of the industry. Not much comfort.’
‘Are you saying you don’t want to take me?’
‘No. Just warning you.’
He sat down at the table and watched me eat toast without butter or marmalade.
‘Your diet’s disgusting.’
‘I’m used to it.’
He watched me swallow a pill with black coffee. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.
‘Vitamins.’
He shook his head resignedly and dug into his own hopelessly fattening concoction, and Danielle came in looking fresh and clear-eyed in a baggy white sweater.
‘Hi!’ she said to neither of us in particular. ‘I wondered if you’d be here. What are you doing today?’
‘Going to the races,’ Litsi said.
‘Are you?’ She looked at him directly, in surprise. ‘With Kit?’
‘Certainly, with Kit.’
‘Oh. Then … er … can I come?’
She looked from one of us to the other, undoubtedly seeing double pleasure.
‘In half an hour,’ I said, smiling.
‘Easy.’
So all three of us went to Bradbury races, parting in the hall from the princess who had come down to go through some secretarial work with Mrs Jenkins and who looked wistfully at our outdoor clothes, and also from Beatrice, who had come down out of nosiness.
Her sharp round gaze fastened on me. ‘Are you coming back?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, he is,’ the princess said smoothly. ‘And tomorrow we can all go to see my two runners at Sandown, isn’t that nice?’
Beatrice looked not quite sure how the one followed on the other and, in the moment of uncertainty, Litsi, Danielle and I departed.
Bradbury racecourse, we found when we arrived, was undergoing an ambitious upgrading. There were notices everywhere apologising for the inconvenience of heaps of builders’ materials and machines. A whole new grandstand was going up inside scaffolding in the cheaper ring, and most of the top tier of the members’ stand was being turned into a glassed-in viewing room with tables, chairs and refreshments. They had made provision up there also for a backward-facing viewing gallery, from which one could see the horses walk round in the parade ring.
There was a small model on a table outside the weighing room, showing what it would all be like when finished, and the racecourse executive were going around with pleased smiles accepting compliments.
Litsi and Danielle went off in search of a drink and a sandwich in the old unrefurbished bar under the emerging dream, and I, sliding into nylon tights, breeches and boots, tried not to think about that too much. I pulled on a thin vest, and my valet neatly tied the white stock around my neck. After that, I put on the padded back-guard which saved one’s spine and kidneys from too much damage, and on top of that the first set of colours for the day. Crash helmet, goggles, whip, number cloth, weight cloth, saddle; I checked them all, weighed out, handed the necessary to Dusty to go and saddle up, put on an anorak because of the cold and went out to ride.
I wouldn’t have minded, just once, having a day when I could stand on the stands and go racing with Danielle like anyone else. Eat a sandwich, have a drink, place a bet. I saw them smiling and waving to me as I rode onto the track, and I waved back, wanting to be right there beside them on the ground.
The horse I was riding won the race, which would surprise and please Wykeham but not make up for Col’s losing the day before.
Besides Wykeham’s two runners I’d been booked for three others. I rode one of those without results in the second race and put Pinkeye’s red and blue striped colours on for the third, walking out in my warming anorak towards the parade ring to talk to the fussiest and most critical of all Wykeham’s owners.
I didn’t get as far as the parade ring. There was a cry high up, and a voice calling, ‘Help,’ and along with everyone else I twisted my head round to see what was happening.
There was a man hanging by one hand from the new viewing balcony high on the members’ stand. A big man in a dark overcoat.
Litsi.
In absolute horror, I watched him swing round until he had two hands on the top of the balcony wall, but he was too big and heavy to pull himself up, and below him there was a fifty foot drop direct to hard tarmac.
I sprinted over there, tore off my anorak and laid it on the ground directly under where Litsi hung.
‘Take off your coat,’ I said to the nearest man. ‘Lay it on the ground.’
‘Someone must go up and help him,’ he said. ‘Someone will go.’
‘Take off your coat.’ I turned to a woman. ‘Take off your coat. Lay it on the ground. Quick, quick, lay coats on the ground.’
She looked at me blindly. She was wearing a full-length expensive fur. She slid out of her coat and threw it on top of my anorak, and said fiercely to the man next to her, ‘Take off your coat, take off your coat.’
I ran from person to person, ‘Take off your coat, quick, quick … Take off your coat.’
A whole crowd had collected, staring upwards, arrested on their drift back to the stands for the next race.
‘Take off your coat,’ I could hear people saying. ‘Take off your coat.’
Dear God, Litsi, I prayed, just hang on.
There were other people yelling to him, ‘Hang on, hang on,’ and one or two foolishly screaming, and it seemed to me there was a great deal of noise, although very many were silent.
A little boy with huge eyes unzipped his tiny blue anorak and pulled off his small patterned jersey and flung them onto the growing, spreading pile, and I heard him running about in the crowd, in his bright cotton T-shirt, his high voice calling, ‘Quick, quick, take off your coats.’
It was working. The coats came off in dozens and were thrown, were passed through the crowd, were chucked higgledy-piggledy to form a mattress, until the circle on the ground was wide enough to contain him if he fell, but could be thicker, thicker.
No one had reached Litsi from the balcony side: no strong arms clutching to haul him up.
Coats were flying like leaves. The word had spread to everyone in sight. ‘Take off your coat, take off your coat, quick … quick …’
When Litsi fell, he looked like another flying overcoat, except that he came down fast, like a plummet. One second he was hanging there, the next he was down. He fell straight to begin with, then his heavy shoulders tipped his balance backwards and he landed almost flat on his back.
He bounced heavily on the coats and rolled and slid off them and ended with his head on one coat and his body on the tarmac, sprawling on his side, limp as a rag.
I sprang to kneel beside him and saw immediately that although he was dazed, he was truly alive. Hands stretched to help him up, but he wasn’t ready for that, and I said, ‘Don’t move him … let him move first … you have to be careful.’
Everyone who went racing knew about spinal injuries and not moving jockeys until it was safe, and there I was, in my jockey’s colours, to remind them. The hands were ready, but they didn’t touch.
I looked up at that crowd, all in shirt-sleeves, all shivering with cold, all saints. Some were in tears, particularly the woman who’d laid her mink on the line.
‘Litsi,’ I said, looking down and seeing some sort of order return to his eyes. ‘Litsi, how are you doing?’
‘I … Did I fall?’ He moved a hand, and then his feet, just a little, and the crowd murmured with relief.
‘Yes, you fell,’ I said. ‘Just stay there for a minute. Everything’s fine.’
Somebody above was calling down, ‘Is he all right?’ and there, up on the balcony, were the two men who’d apparently gone up to save him.
The crowd shouted, ‘Yes,’ and started clapping, and in almost gala mood began collecting their coats from the pile. There must have been almost two hundred of them, I thought, watching. Anoraks, huskies, tweeds, raincoats, furs, suit jackets, sweaters, even a horse rug. It was taking much longer to disentangle the huge heap than it had to collect it.
The little boy with big eyes picked up his blue anorak and zipped it on over his jersey, staring at me. I hugged him. ‘What’s your name?’ I said.
‘Matthew.’
‘You’re a great guy.’
‘That’s my daddy’s coat,’ he said, ‘under the man’s head.’
‘Ask him to leave it there just another minute.’
Someone had run to fetch the first-aid men, who arrived with a stretcher.
‘I’m all right,’ Litsi said weakly, but he was still winded and disorientated, and made no demur when they made preparations for transporting him.
Danielle was suddenly there beside him, her face white.
‘Litsi,’ she was saying, ‘Oh, God …’ She looked at me. ‘I was waiting for him … someone said a man fell … is he all right?’
‘He’s going to be,’ I said. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘Oh …’
I put my arms round her. ‘It’s all right. Really it is. Nothing seems to be hurting him, he’s just had his breath knocked out.’
She slowly disengaged herself and walked away beside the stretcher when they lifted it onto a rolling platform, a gurney.
‘Are you his wife?’ I heard a first-aid man say.
‘No … a friend.’
The little boy’s father picked up his coat and shook my hand. The woman picked up her squashed mink, brushed dust off it and gave me a kiss. A Steward came out and said would I now please get on my horse and go down to the start, as the race would already be off late, and I looked at the racecourse clock and saw in amazement that it was barely fifteen minutes since I’d walked out of the weighing room.
All the horses, all the owners and trainers were still in the parade ring, as if time had stopped, but now the jockeys were mounting; death had been averted, life could thankfully go on.
I picked up my anorak. All the coats had been reclaimed, and it lay there alone on the tarmac, with my whip underneath. I looked up at the balcony, so far above, so deserted and unremarkable. Nothing suddenly seemed real, yet the questions hadn’t even begun to be asked. Why had he been up there? How had he come to be clinging to life by his fingertips? In what way had he not been careful?
Litsi lay on a bed in the first-aid room until the races were over, but insisted then that he had entirely recovered and was ready to return to London.
He apologised to the racecourse executive for having been so foolish as to go up to the balcony to look at the new, much-vaunted view, and said that it was entirely his own clumsiness which had caused him to stumble over some builders’ materials and lose his balance.
When asked for his name, he’d given a shortened version of his surname without the ‘prince’ in front, and he hoped there wouldn’t be too much public fuss over his stupidity.
He was sitting in the back of the car, telling us all this, Danielle sitting beside him, as we started towards London.
‘How did you stumble?’ I asked, glancing at him from time to time in the driving mirror. ‘Was there a lot of junk up there?’
‘Planks and things.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘I don’t really know how I stumbled. I stood on something that rocked, and I put a hand out to steady myself, and it went out into space, over the wall. It happened so fast … I just lost my footing.’
‘Did anyone push you?’ I asked.
‘Kit!’ Danielle said, horrified, but it had to be considered, and Litsi, it seemed, had already done so.
‘I’ve been lying there all afternoon,’ he said slowly, ‘trying to remember exactly how it happened. I didn’t see anyone up there at all, I’m certain of that. I stood on something that rocked like a see-saw, and totally lost my balance. I wouldn’t say I was pushed.’
‘Well,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘do you mind if we go back there? I should have gone up for a look when I’d finished racing.’
‘The racecourse people went up,’ Litsi said. ‘They came and told me that there was nothing particularly dangerous, but of course I shouldn’t have gone.’
‘We’ll go back,’ I said, and although Danielle protested that she’d be late for work, back we went.
Leaving Danielle and Litsi outside in the car, I walked through the gates and up the grandstand. As with most grandstands, it was a long haul to the top, up not too generous stairways, and one could see why, with a stream of people piling up that way to the main tier to watch the race, those going up to rescue Litsi from above had been a fair time on their journey.
The broad viewing steps of the main tier led right down to the ground and were openly accessible, on the side facing the racecourse, but the upper tier could be reached only by the stairways, of which there were two, one at each end.
I went up the stairway at the end nearest the weighing room, the stairway Litsi said he had used to reach the place where he’d overbalanced. Looking up at the back of the grandstand from the ground, that place was near the end of the balcony, on the left.
The stairway led first onto the upper steps of the main tier, and then continued upwards and I climbed to the top landing, where the refreshment room was in process of construction. The whole area had been glassed in, leaving only the balcony open. The balcony ran along the back of the refreshment room which had several glass doors, now closed, to lead eventually to the sandwiches. Inside the glass and without, there were copious piles of builders’ materials, planks, drums of paint and ladders.
I went gingerly forward to the cold, open, windy balcony, towards the place where Litsi had overbalanced, and saw what had very likely happened. Planks lay side by side and several deep along all the short passage to the balcony, raising one, as one walked along them, higher than normal in proportion to the chest-high wall. When I was walking on the planks, the wall ahead seemed barely waist-high and Litsi was taller than I by three or four inches.
Whatever had rocked under Litsi’s feet was no longer rocking, but several planks by the balcony wall itself were scattered like spillikins, not lying flat as in the passage. I picked my way among them, feeling them move when I pushed, and reached the spot where Litsi had fallen.
With my feet firmly on the floor, I looked over. One could see all the parade ring area beautifully, with magnificent hills beyond. Very attractive, that balcony, and with one’s feet on the floor, very safe.
I went along its whole length intending to go down by the stairway at the other end, nearest the car park, but found I couldn’t: the stairs themselves were missing, being in the middle of reconstruction. I walked back to the end where I had come up, renegotiated the planks, and descended to ground level.
‘Well?’ Litsi asked, when I was back in the car. ‘What did you think?’
‘Those planks looked pretty unsafe.’
‘Yes,’ he said ruefully, as I started the car and drove out of the racecourse gates. ‘I thought, after I’d overbalanced, and managed somehow to catch hold of the wall, that if I just hung on, someone would come and rescue me, but you know … my fingers just gave way … I didn’t leave go consciously. When I was falling, I thought I would die … and I would have done … it’s incredible that all those people took off their coats.’ He paused, ‘I wish I could thank them,’ he said.
‘I couldn’t think where you’d got to,’ Danielle reflected. ‘I was waiting for you on the stands, where we’d arranged to meet after I’d been to the ladies room. I didn’t imagine …’
‘But,’ said Litsi, ‘I went up to that balcony because I was supposed to meet you up there, Danielle.’
I stopped the car abruptly.
‘Say that again,’ I said.