Twice Shy

'Don't be,' I said. 'You've saved my life.' Quite literally, probably, I thought. 'Everything,' I said, 'will be all right.'

One shouldn't say such things. One really shouldn't.

CHAPTER 20

Cassie came with me in the early morning to see the horses work on the Heath, shivering a little in boots, trousers and padded husky jacket, but glad, she said, to be alive in the free air and the wide spaces. Her breath, like mine, like that of all the horses, spurted out in lung-shaped plumes of condensing vapour, chilled and gone in a second and quickly renewed, cold transformed to heat within the miracle of bodies.

We had already in a preliminary fashion left the cottage, having packed clothes and necessaries and stowed the suitcases in my car. I had also brought along a briefcase containing the precious tapes and a lot of Luke's paperwork and had re-routed my telephone calls by a message on the answer-system, and it remained only to make a quick return trip to pick up the day's mail and arrange for future postal deliveries to be left at the pub.

We hadn't actually decided where we would sleep that night or for many nights to come, but we did between us have a great many friends who might be cajoled, and if the traditional open-house generosity of the racing world failed us, we could for a while afford a hotel. I felt freer and more light-hearted than I had for weeks.

Sim was positively welcoming on the gallops and Mort asked us to breakfast. We shivered gratefully into his house and warmed up with him on toast and coffee while he slit open his letters with a paper-knife and made comments on what he was at the same time reading in the Sporting Life. Mort never did one thing at a time if he could do three.

'I've re-routed my telephone messages to you,' I told him. 'Do you mind?'

'Have you? No, of course not. Why?'

'The cottage,' I said, 'is at the moment uninhabitable.'

'Decorators?' He sounded sympathetic and it seemed simplest to say yes.

'There won't be many calls,' I promised. 'Just Luke's business.'

'Sure,' he said. He sucked in a boiled egg in two scoops of a spoon. 'More coffee?'

'How are the yearlings settling?' I asked.

'Come and see them. Come this afternoon, we'll be lungeing them in the paddock.'

'What's lungeing?' Cassie said.

Mort gave her a fast forgiving smile and snapped his fingers a few times. 'Letting them run round in a big circle on the end of a long rein. Gives them exercise. No one rides them yet. They've never been saddled. Too young.'

'I'd like that,' Cassie said, looking thoughtfully at the plaster and clearly wondering about the timing.

'Where are you staying?' Mort asked me. 'Where can I find you?'

'Don't know yet,' I said.

'Really? What about here? There's a bed here, if you like.' He crunched his teeth across half a piece of toast and ate it in one gulp. 'You could answer your own phone calls. Makes sense.'

'Well,' I said. 'For a night or two… very grateful.'

'Settled then.' He grinned cheerfully at Cassie. 'My daughter will be pleased. Got no wife, you know. She scarpered. Miranda gets bored, that's my daughter. Sixteen, needs a girl's company. Stay for a week. How long do you need?'

'We don't know,' Cassie said.

He nodded briskly. 'Take things as they come. Very sensible.' He casually picked up the paperknife and began cleaning his nails with it, reminding me irresistibly of Jonathan who throughout my childhood had done his with the point of a rifle bullet.

'I thought I'd go to Ireland at the weekend,' I said, 'and try to make peace with Donavan.'

Mort gave me a blinding grin, 'I hear you're a turd and an ignorant bastard, and should be dragged six times round the Curragh by your heels. At the least.'

The telephone standing on the table by his elbow rang only once, sharply, before Mort was shouting 'Hullo?' down the receiver. 'Oh,' he said, 'Hullo, Luke.' He made signalling messages to me with his eyebrows. 'Yes, he's here right now, having breakfast.' He handed over the receiver, saying, 'Luke rang your number first, he says.'

'William,' Luke said, sounding relaxed and undemanding. 'How are the new yearlings?'

'Fine. No bad reports.'

Thought I'd come over to see them. See what you've gotten me. I feel like a trip. Listen fella, do me a favour, make me some reservations at the Bedford Arms for two nights, fourteenth and fifteenth October?'

'Right' I said.

'Best to Cassie,' he said. 'Bring her to dinner at the Bedford on the fourteenth, OK? I'd sure like to meet her. And fella, I'll be going on to Dublin. You aiming to go to the Ballsbridge Sales?'

'Yeah, I thought to. Ralph Finnigan died… they're selling all his string.'

Luke sounded appreciative. 'What would you pick, fella? What's the best?'

'Oxidise. Two years old, well bred, fast, a prospect for next June's Derby and bound to be expensive.'

Luke gave a sort of rumbling grunt. 'You'd send it to Donavan?'

'I sure would.'

The grunt became a chuckle. 'See you, fella, on the fourteenth.'