‘Yes,’ I said.
He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘I thought you’d think so.’ He retraced his steps to the door.‘Right, then, a horse.’
Just like old times, I thought with half-forgotten pleasure. The sudden impulses which might or might not turn out to be thoroughly sensible, the intemperate enthusiasms needing instant gratification… and sometimes, afterwards, the abandoning of a debacle as if it didn’t exist. The Coochie Pembroke Memorial Challenge Trophy might achieve world-wide stature in competition or tarnish un-presented in an attic: with Malcolm it was always a toss-up.
I called him Malcolm, as all his children did, on his own instructions, and had grown up thinking it natural. Other boys might have Dad: I had my father, Malcolm.
Outside Ebury’s room, he said, ‘What’s the procedure, then? How do we set about it?’
‘Er …’ I said. ‘This is the first day of the Highflyer Sales.’
‘Well?’ he demanded as I paused. ‘Go on.’
I just thought you ought to know… the minimum opening bid today is twenty thousand guineas.’
It rocked him only slightly. ‘Opening bid? What do they sell them for?’
‘Anything from a hundred thousand up. You’ll be lucky today to get a top-class yearling for under a quarter of a million. This is generally the most expensive day of the year.’
He wasn’t noticeably deterred. He smiled. ‘Come on, then,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and start bidding.’
‘You need to look up the breeding first,’ I said. ‘And then look at the animals, to see if you like them, and then get the help and advice of an agent…’
‘Ian,’ he said with mock sorrow, ‘I don’t know anything about the breeding, I can just about tell if a thing’s got four legs, and I don’t trust agents. So let’s get on and bid.’
It sounded crazy to me, but it was his money. We went into the sale-ring itself where the auction was already in progress, and Malcolm asked me where the richest bidders could be found, the ones that really meant business.
‘In those banks of seats on the left of the auctioneers, or here, in the entrance, or just round there to the left…’
He looked and listened and then led the way up to a section of seats from where we could watch the places I’d pointed out. The amphitheatre was already more than three-quarters full, and would later at times be crammed, especially whenever a tip-top lot came next.
‘The very highest prices will probably be bid this evening,’ I said, half teasing him, but all he said was, ‘Perhaps we should wait, then.’
‘If you buy ten yearlings,’ I said,‘six might get to a racecourse, three might win a race and one might be pretty good. If you’re lucky.’
‘Cautious Ian.’
‘You,’ I said,‘are cautious with gold.’
He looked at me with half-shut eyes. ‘Not many people say that.’
‘You’re fast and flamboyant,’ I said,‘but you sit and wait for the moment.’
He merely grunted and began paying attention to the matter in hand, intently focusing not on the merchandise but on the bidders on the far side of the ring. The auctioneers in the box to our left were relaxed and polished, the one currently at the microphone elaborately unimpressed by the fortunes passing.‘Fifty thousand, thank you, sir; sixty thousand, seventy… eighty? Shall I say eighty? Eighty, thank you, sir. Against you, sir. Ninety? Ninety. One hundred thousand. Selling now. I’m selling now. Against you, sir? No? All done? All done?’ A pause for a sweep round to make sure no new bidder was frantically waving. ‘Done, then. Sold to Mr Siddons. One hundred thousand guineas. The next lot…’
‘Selling now,’ Malcolm said. ‘I suppose that means there was a reserve on it?’
I nodded.
‘So until the fellow says “selling now”, it’s safe to bid, knowing you won’t have to buy?’
‘Yours might be the bid that reaches the reserve.’
He nodded. ‘Russian roulette.’
We watched the sales for the rest of the afternoon, but he aimed no bullets at his own head. He asked who people were. ‘Who is that Mr Siddons? That’s the fourth horse he’s bought.’
‘He works for a bloodstock agency. He’s buying for other people.’
‘And that man in navy, scowling. Who’s he?’
‘Max Jones. He owns a lot of horses.’
‘Every time that old woman bids, he bids against her.’
‘It’s a well-known feud.’
He sniffed. ‘It must cost them fortunes.’ He looked around the amphitheatre at the constantly changing audience of breeders, trainers, owners and the simply interested. ‘Whose judgement would you trust most?’
I mentioned several trainers and the agents who might be acting on their behalf, and he told me to tell him when someone with good judgement was bidding, and to point them out. I did so many times, and he listened and passed no comment.
After a while, we went out for a break, an Ebury scotch, a sandwich and fresh air.
‘I suppose you know,’ Malcolm said casually, watching yearlings skittering past in the grasp of their handlers,‘that Moira and I were divorcing?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘And that she was demanding the house and half my possessions?’
‘Mm.’
‘And half my future earnings?’
‘Could she?’
‘She was going to fight for it.’
I refrained from saying that whoever had murdered Moira had done Malcolm a big favour, but I’d thought it several times.
I said instead, ‘Still no dues?’
‘No, nothing new.’
He spoke without regret. His disenchantment with Moira, according to his acid second wife, my own mother Joyce, had begun as soon as he’d stopped missing Coochie; and as Joyce was as percipient as she was catty, I believed it.
‘The police tried damned hard to prove I did it,’ Malcolm said.
‘Yes, so I heard.’
‘Who from? Who’s your grapevine?’
‘All of them,’ I said.
‘The three witches?’
I couldn’t help smiling. He meant his three living ex-wives, Vivien, Joyce and Alicia.
‘Yes, them. And all of the family.’
He shrugged.
‘They were all worried that you might have,’ I said.
‘And were you worried?’ he asked.
‘I was glad you weren’t arrested.’
He grunted noncommittally. ‘I suppose you do know that most of your brothers and sisters, not to mention the witches, told the police you hated Moira?’
‘They told me they’d told,’ I agreed. ‘But then, I did.’
‘Lot of stinkers I’ve fathered,’ he said gloomily.
Malcolm’s personal alibi for Moira’s death had been as unassailable as my own, as he’d been in Paris for the day when someone had pushed Moira’s retrousse little nose into a bag of potting compost and held it there until it was certain she would take no more geranium cuttings. I could have wished her a better death, but it had been quick, everyone said. The police still clung to the belief that Malcolm had arranged for an assassin, but even Joyce knew that that was nonsense. Malcolm was a creature of tempest and volatility, but he’d never been calculatingly cruel.
His lack of interest in the horses themselves didn’t extend to anything else at the sales: inside the sale-ring he had been particularly attentive to the flickering electronic board which lit up with the amount as each bid was made, and lit up not only in English currency but in dollars, yen, francs, lire and Irish punts at the current exchange rates. He’d always been fascinated by the workings of money, and had once far more than doubled a million pounds simply by banking it in the United States at two dollars forty cents to the pound, waiting five years, and bringing it back when the rate stood at one dollar twenty cents, which neatly gave him twice the capital he’d started with and the interest besides. He thought of the money market, after gold, as a sort of help-yours
elf cornucopia.
None of his children had inherited his instinct for timing and trends, a lack he couldn’t understand. He’d told me directly once or twice to buy this or sell that, and he’d been right, but I couldn’t make money the way he did without his guidance.
He considered that the best years of his talent had been wasted: all the years when, for political reasons, the free movement of capital had been restricted and when gold bullion couldn’t be bought by private Britons. Always large, Malcolm’s income, once the controls were lifted, went up like a hot air balloon, and it was at the beginning of that period, when he’d woken to the possibilities and bought his first crock of gold for sixty pounds an ounce to sell it presently for over a hundred, that he’d first been called Midas.
Since then, he’d ridden the yellow roller-coaster several times, unerringly buying when the price sank ever lower, selling as it soared, but before the bubble burst, always seeming to spot the wobbling moment when the market approached trough or peak.
Coochie had appeared wearing ever larger diamonds. The three witches, Vivien, Joyce and Alicia, each with a nice divorce settlement agreed in less sparkling days, unavailingly consulted their lawyers.
There was a second electronic board outside the sale-ring showing the state of the sale inside. Malcolm concentrated on the flickering figures until they began to shine more brightly in the fading daylight, but he still paid no close attention to the merchandise itself.
‘They all look very small,’ he said reprovingly, watching a narrow colt pass on its way from stable to sale-ring.
‘Well, they’re yearlings.’
‘One year old, literally?’
‘Eighteen months, twenty months: about that. They race next year, when they’re two.’
He nodded and decided to return to the scene of the action, and again found us seats opposite the big-money crowd. The amphitheatre had filled almost to capacity while we’d been outside, and soon, with every seat taken, people shoved close-packed into the entrance and the standing-room sections: the blood of Northern Dancer and Nijinsky and of Secretariat and Lyphard was on its regal way to the ring.
A hush fell in the building at the entrance of the first of the legend-bred youngsters, the breath-held expectant hush of the knowledgeable awaiting a battle among financial giants. A fat cheque on this sales evening could secure a Derby winner and found a dynasty, and it happened often enough to tempt belief each time that this… this… was the one.
The auctioneer cleared his throat and managed the introduction without a quiver. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we now have Lot No 76, a bay colt by Nijinsky …’ He recited the magical breeding as if bored, and asked for an opening bid.
Malcolm sat quiet and watched while the numbers flew high on the Scoreboard, the price rising in jumps of fifty thousand; watched while the auctioneer scanned the bidding faces for the drop of an eyelid, the twitch of a head, the tiny acknowledgements of intent.
‘… against you, sir. No more, then? All done?’ The auctioneer’s eyebrows rose with his gavel, remained poised in elevation, came smoothly, conclusively down. ‘Sold for one million seven hundred thousand guineas to Mr Siddons …’
The crowd sighed, expelling collective breath like a single organism. Then came rustling of catalogues, movement, murmuring and rewound expectation.
Malcolm said, it’s a spectator sport.’
‘Addictive,’ I agreed.
He glanced at me sideways. ‘For one million… five million… there’s no guarantee the colt will ever race, isn’t that what you said? One could be throwing one’s cash down the drain?’
‘That’s right.’
It’s a perfectly blameless way of getting rid of a lot of money very fast, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Well …’ I said slowly,‘is that what you’re at?’
‘Do you disapprove?’
‘It’s your money. You made it. You spend it.’
He smiled almost secretively at his catalogue and said, ‘I can hear the “but” ‘in your voice.’
‘Mm. If you want to enjoy yourself, buy ten next-best horses instead of one super-colt, and get interested in them.’
‘And pay ten training fees instead of one?’
I nodded. ‘Ten would drain the exchequer nicely.’
He laughed in his throat and watched the next half-grown blue-blood reach three million guineas before Mr Siddons shook his head.‘… sold for three million and fifty thousand guineas to Mrs Terazzini…’
‘Who’s she?’ Malcolm asked.
‘She owns a world-wide bloodstock empire.’
He reflected. ‘Like Robert Sangster?’
‘Yep. Like him.’
He made a noise of understanding. ‘An industry.’
‘Yes.’
The following lot, a filly, fetched a more moderate sum, but the hush of expectancy returned for the next offering. Malcolm, keenly tuned by now to the atmosphere, watched the bidders as usual, not the nervous chestnut colt.
The upward impetus stopped at a fraction over two million and the auctioneer’s eyebrows and gavel rose. ‘All done?’
Malcolm raised his catalogue.
The movement caught the eye of the auctioneer, who paused with the gavel raised, using his eyebrows as a question, looking at Malcolm with surprise. Malcolm sat in what could be called the audience, not with the usual actors.
‘You want to bid, sir?’ asked the auctioneer.
‘And fifty,’ Malcolm said clearly, nodding.
There was a fluttering in the dovecot of auctioneers as head bent to head among themselves, consulting. All round the ring, necks stretched to see who had spoken, and down in the entrance-way the man who’d bid last before Malcolm shrugged, shook his head and turned his back to the auctioneer. His last increase had been for twenty thousand only: a last small raise over two million, which appeared to have been his intended limit.
The auctioneer himself seemed less than happy. ‘All done, then?’ he asked again, and with no further replies, said,‘Done then. Sold for two million and seventy thousand guineas to… er… the bidder opposite.’
The auctioneer consulted with his colleagues again and one of them left the box, carrying a clipboard. He hurried down and round the ring to join a minion on our side, both of them with their gaze fastened on Malcolm.
‘Those two auctioneers won’t let you out of their sight,’ I observed. ‘They suffered badly from a vanishing bidder not so long ago.’
‘They look as if they’re coming to arrest me,’ Malcolm said cheerfully; and both of the auctioneers indeed made their way right to his sides, handing him the clipboard and politely requiring him to sign their bill of sale, in triplicate and without delay. They retired to ground level but were still waiting for us with steely intent when, after three further sales had gone through as expected, we made our way down.
They invited Malcolm civilly to the quieter end of their large office, and we went. They computed what he owed and deferentially presented the total. Malcolm wrote them a cheque.
They politely suggested proof of identity and a reference. Malcolm gave them an American Express card and the telephone number of his bank manager. They took the cheque gingerly and said that although Mr… er… Pembroke should if he wished arrange insurance on his purchase at once, the colt would not be available for removal until… er… tomorrow.
Malcolm took no offence. He wouldn’t have let anyone he didn’t know drive off with a horsebox full of gold. He said tomorrow would be fine, and in high good spirits told me I could ferry him back to his Cambridge hotel, from where he’d come that morning in a taxi, and we would have dinner together.
After we’d called in at an insurance agent’s office and he’d signed some more papers and another cheque, we accordingly walked together to the car-park from where people were beginning to drift home. Night had fallen, but there were lights enough to see which car was which, and as we went I pointed out the row ahead where my wheels stood.
&nb
sp; ‘Where are you going to send your colt?’ I asked, walking.
‘Where would you say?’
‘I should think,’ I said… but I never finished the answer, or not at that actual moment.
A car coming towards us between two rows of parked cars suddenly emitted two headlight beams, blinding us; and at the same moment it seemed to accelerate fiercely, swerving straight towards Malcolm.
I leaped … flung myself… at my father, my flying weight spinning him off balance, carrying him off his feet, knocking him down. I fell on top of him, knowing that the pale speeding bulk of the car had caught me, but not sure to what extent. There was just a bang and a lot of lights curving like arcs, and a whirling view of gleams on metal, and a fast crunch into darkness.
We were on the ground then between two silent parked cars, our bodies heavy with shock and disorientation, in a sort of inertia.
After a moment, Malcolm began struggling to free himself from under my weight, and I rolled awkwardly onto my knees and thankfully thought of little but bruises. Malcolm pushed himself up until he was sitting with his back against a car’s wheel, collecting his wits but looking as shaken as I felt.
‘That car,’ he said eventually, between deep breaths,‘was aiming… to kill me.’
I nodded speechlessly. My trousers were torn, thigh grazed and bleeding.
‘You always had… quick reactions,’ he said. ‘So now… now you know… why I want you beside me… all the time.’
Two
It was the second time someone had tried to kill him, he said.
I was driving towards Cambridge a shade more slowly than usual, searching anxiously in the rear-view mirrors for satanically-minded followers but so far thankfully without success. My right leg was stiffening depressingly from the impact of twenty minutes ago, but I was in truth fairly used to that level of buffet through having ridden over the years in three or four hundred jump races, incurring consequent collisions with the ground.
Malcolm didn’t like driving for reasons Coochie had deftly diagnosed as impatience. Coochie hadn’t liked his driving either, for reasons (she said) of plain fear, and had taken over as family chauffeur. I too had been used to driving Malcolm from the day I gained my licence: I would need to have been delirious to ask him to take the wheel just because of some grazed skin.