The Silver Falcon (9 page)

The festival came and passed; she survived the Communion Service, sitting in the pew reserved for Charles, which he had occupied only at Christmas and Easter out of consideration for the minister. It was painful and yet it heartened her. She felt that he was very close during that time; the friendship and good wishes of their neighbours were a comfort. And there was Tim Ryan, solicitous, reliable, never obtrusive but always at hand. With the first biting January days, she prepared for the trip to Barbados. At first she had hesitated; it was Tim who insisted that she should go. The holiday would do her good; they could spend a lazy three weeks in the sun, while the Falcon settled into his new quarters at Lambourn. He was going to Nigel Foster, top of the Flat trainers' league for the third year running, an old friend of Charles, and responsible for his string in England. The Derby was the objective; everything was being carried out exactly as if Charles Schriber were alive and in command. As the winter gripped them, and the anti-climax of Christmas made her feel even lonelier, the prospect of escape into the Caribbean became ever more attractive.

Three days before they left, a cable arrived from Richard. He had cancelled their reservations at the Sandy Lane Hotel. They were staying with him at the house of an amusing friend, Roy Farrant. The name was familiar, and Ryan filled in the details. ‘Farrant,' Tim said. ‘He's quite a figure in English racing. I'm surprised you haven't met him.'

‘I may have done,' she said. ‘But there were always such crowds of people when Charles and I were over. Doesn't he own Rocket Man?'

‘He does,' Harry Grogan said. ‘And Trembler and Harrabin. He's one of the most successful owners in England. But he's a bit
persona non grata
, if you know what I mean. They don't like them larger than life in the Jockey Club.' Grogan didn't like the English racing establishment and he never missed an opportunity to criticize.

‘He had a Derby hope last year,' Tim said. ‘As usual. He's been trying to win the race for years. It's as big an obsession with him as it was with Charles. He's spent a fortune trying. And he's going to lose to us this time!'

‘Funny Richard being such a friend,' Grogan remarked. He hadn't forgiven Charles's son for telling him how much he disliked racing. ‘Considering he hates horses.'

‘I'll be interested to meet him,' Tim remarked. ‘I've heard a story or two about him … they say he's a real character.' He smiled at Isabel. ‘I bet he's anxious to meet you too,' he said. ‘And find out all he can about the Falcon. I think we're going to enjoy ourselves.' Isabel smiled back at him.

‘You can talk horses to your heart's content. I'm going to swim and lie in the sun. And I'm sure he's nice, or Richard wouldn't have invited us to stay with him.'

She had put the gold box in her bedroom; the room where Charles had died was kept shut up and she had moved permanently into the green room suite. His letter was folded up inside it. ‘To say thank you for the fatted calf. And to make sure I see you again.' To lie in the sun, to swim in the warm West Indian sea, to live for a while in a different environment, where there was no Beaumont, no role to fill as Charles's widow. No feeling of guilt because she was beginning to feel stifled. She hadn't admitted to herself until that night, sitting with Tim and the Grogans, talking about the Falcon and Roy Farrant, just how much she was looking forward to seeing Richard Schriber again.

3

‘God, it's hot!' Patsy Farrant dipped her feet into the swimming pool and splashed the blue water. Just behind her, stretched out on a canvas bed, her husband opened his eyes.

‘What do you expect, for Christ's sake? Snow?' He had long accepted the fact that when she wasn't making love to him, his wife was the most irritating and stupid human being he knew. Behind his dark glasses he looked with dislike at the perfect shape of her brown back, narrowing into hips and buttocks like a pair of peaches. She had a marvellous body; it had brought her into the top-earning bracket as an international model, and she had a face of such exquisite beauty that he supposed it was asking too much to expect her to have intelligence as well. He had married her after living with her for two years, and two years was a very long time for Roy Farrant to remain interested in any woman. But she had a God-given talent for sex, and she bore his rudeness and irritability with smiling calm. He had married her because another rich man was sniffing round, and he knew Patsy well enough to realize that she would simply move out on him and move on.

Four years later he was still as dependent upon her sexually; when he had been particularly unpleasant to her, he gave her an expensive piece of jewellery or a new fur coat. She accepted the presents and the bullying with equal calm. When he first moved her into his Eaton Square flat, she had been sent to an elocution teacher to remove a grating Cockney accent. The same woman had smoothed away his broad Yorkshire vowels into the classless diction known as Middle English by those disposed to be unkind. He had no real social pretensions, but he refused to be laughed at by people he regarded as quite inferior in intellect and achievement, just because they went to certain public schools and had a different background.

Roy had grown up in Barnsley, where his father kept a pub. He had worked hard at school and got himself to university, where he took a degree in economics. An academic career, or a job in the Civil Service was his expected choice, but he had borrowed five hundred pounds from his parents and made a down payment on a local ironmonger's shop that was going broke. Within two months he had sold off the stock and the lease for three times the purchasing price. He was twenty-three and he had made himself a working capital of five thousand pounds. By the time he was forty, and sunning himself by his swimming pool in one of the most expensive residential areas in the West Indies, he was the chairman of Farrant Investment Brokers, the major stock-holder in a company owning a chain of luxury hotels, and his estimated fortune topped eighteen million pounds. He had also netted another million out of racing since he took it up ten years before. Everything he touched made money; he knew this himself, and in all his business calculations, he left a place for luck.

It was a glorious morning, and in spite of hearing Patsy make the same remark about the heat, every day for the past three weeks, he felt in a good mood. After a time inactivity bored him; he couldn't help doing business even when he was supposed to be on holiday. He kept in constant touch by telephone and cable with his investment brokers, and he flew his trainers and his jockeys out to make their plans for the coming Flat season. That was another thing that annoyed him about his wife. She didn't like horses, and in spite of living in constant touch with the racing community since she first met him, she had never quite mastered the simplest facts connected with running a horse in a Flat race. He had fallen into the habit of discussing some of his most delicate business and gambling propositions in front of her, on the assumption that if she heard him plotting murder, she was too stupid to understand.

His trainer Gerry Garvin was staying with them. He had a young and pretty wife, who got on well with everybody. She was ideal for the job, and Roy liked her. She could contribute something sensible to the discussion about his various horses, but didn't push herself.

Patsy turned round from the pool; she had taken off her bikini top and her breasts were a beautiful golden brown.

‘Come in the pool, darling,' she said.

‘No,' Roy answered. ‘Gerry'll be down in a minute. Cover your boobs up for Christ's sake!'

She giggled. ‘All right. Hook me up at the back, will you, please?' She always said please and thank you, like a polite child. The elocutionist had struggled hard to stop her saying, ‘Ta'. Very occasionally it still slipped out.

‘What time are they coming?'

‘I told you. Lunchtime.' He sat up and clasped his legs round the knees. He had muscular arms and a broad, hairy chest. He wore a gold chain round his neck with his Zodiac sign on it. Scorpio. Patsy had given it to him one Christmas. He had been very touched, although he knew she had charged it to his account at the best jeweller's in London. Nobody gave him anything. He was the one who did the giving. And the paying. He never took the medal off. ‘I wonder how the hell he's brought it off,' he said.

‘Brought off what?' she asked. She had long silky dark hair; she tossed it back over her shoulder.

‘Getting her to come out here,' he said. ‘He must have worked pretty fast! For ten bloody years he's not allowed inside the place – I always said if he got an inch he'd grab a mile!'

‘I wonder what she's like,' Patsy said. ‘Some old bag, I suppose.'

‘Oh Jesus,' Roy got up. ‘Don't you ever read a newspaper? She's younger than Richard. She married the old man for his money – she's no bag! If she was clever enough to hook Schriber, Richard'll have his work cut out.'

‘Not necessarily, darling,' his wife said. Her deep blue eyes were wide and innocent. ‘If she's been tied to an old goat for all this time she's probably dying for a good bang. Why is she coming over otherwise?'

He reached out and pulled a strand of her hair. ‘Sometimes,' he said, ‘you almost make sense. Hullo there, Gerry. Slept well?' Gerry Garvin was in his middle thirties. He had a 108 horses in training in his Newmarket yard, and twenty-two of them belonged to Roy Farrant. He was a keen, ambitious man, a fine horsemaster and one of the most astute trainers in the business. He had a reputation for gambling heavily on his own horses.

‘Slept like the dead,' he said. ‘What a gorgeous morning – Susan is still asleep. I'm going to have a swim.'

‘I'll join you,' Farrant said. They dived together into the pool. They swam a length at some speed, and then slowed down, swimming together. Farrant turned on his back.

‘Do you want me to come and meet Isabel Schriber with you?' Garvin asked.

‘No,' Roy answered. ‘Richard's coming with me. I don't want Patsy opening her big mouth as soon as they arrive. I want to get a good look at her first. Get a line on her.'

‘I must say,' Garvin slipped round onto his back and floated. ‘It's going to be a fascinating visit. But I don't see exactly how it's going to help us.'

‘I don't either,' Farrant admitted. ‘But I'll bet Richard does. He's persuaded her to bring the bloody racing manager as well.'

‘Well,' Gerry Garvin said, climbing onto the edge of the pool. ‘Mrs Schriber won't need an enemy if she has Richard as a friend.'

‘I want to make them very welcome,' Roy Farrant said. ‘I want her and this fellow Ryan to enjoy themselves and feel they're right at home. Whatever you think about Richard, Gerry, you'd better hide it!'

‘Don't worry, Roy.' The trainer shrugged. ‘I'm as anxious to take full advantage as you are. Susan and I will play along.' He picked up a towel, threw it round his shoulders and went back to the terrace to eat his breakfast. Whatever Roy Farrant and his friend Richard Schriber were planning, it was none of his business. In his two-year association with Farrant, he had learned not to ask questions.

‘It's not as beautiful as Jamaica,' Isabel said. She had spent a holiday there with Charles. ‘But it's more serene; there's a lovely, gentle atmosphere.' She turned to Tim Ryan. ‘I'm so glad we came. I want you to enjoy it too.'

‘It's a real busman's holiday,' he grinned at her. ‘Farrant and the Garvins. He tells me Barry Lawrence is coming out the day after tomorrow.' Lawrence was one of the most successful jockeys in the world; he was a personal friend of Roy Farrant's and often rode for him.

‘I've only seen him on the track,' she said.

‘I knew him in Ireland,' Tim said. ‘He's full of charm and one of the biggest shits in racing. I wouldn't trust him an inch.'

They were sitting on the terrace above the swimming pool; it was dusk but no one else had come down from their afternoon rest. It had become uncomfortably hot during the afternoon, and after a long lunch with endless bottles of champagne appearing, Farrant had led his guests upstairs. Isabel had tried to sleep, but she was too hot and she passed the hours lying on her back, watching the big electric fan turning above her head, trying to sort out her impressions of the day. It had been a stimulating but exhausting day, the culmination of a short flight from Kentucky to Kennedy airport, and then the long trip to Bridgetown. Farrant had met them at the airport, driving a huge open Rolls-Royce. Richard had brought her forward by the arm and said solemnly, ‘This is my stepmother, Isabel.' Farrant had shaken hands with her. ‘Some stepmother!' They all started to laugh and hurried into the gleaming, car to drive up the coastline to Sandy Lane.

She thought Roy Farrant was a good-looking man, full of vitality; tough and obviously self-made, but his welcome disarmed criticism and she was determined not to make any. The house was faultless; a long white bungalow built round a small central courtyard; in the middle a glorious jacaranda tree grew up between the four blocks of the building. The effect was like living in a garden. There was nothing in poor taste; it was luxurious and yet simple. She wondered whether his wife or a decorator were responsible. Tim had relaxed as soon as he arrived. There was an instant camaraderie between the racing professionals. He was soon deep in discussion with Gerry Garvin.

Richard seemed very much at home, stretching himself in the hot sun. He talked to Roy Farrant about things and people unknown to her, and then suddenly threw a question at Patsy, who responded with a beautiful vacant stare. It was amusing, but unkind. He had this trick of disconcerting people; but to her he was solicitous and charming; once he leaned across the table where they were lunching in the shade and raised his glass to her. She saw Farrant watching them. ‘As Roy said, with his usual tact – you're some stepmother!' There was nothing she could do but raise hers in reply. When she came downstairs there was no sign of him. She had found Tim sitting on the terrace. They watched the sun set together. It was an impressive view; the terrace was built out from the first floor, and it overlooked the island down to the sea. As it grew dark and the sun began slipping lower towards the level of the ocean, lights were coming on like fireflies in the distance. The evening air was soft and full of tropical scents, unrecognizable but distinctive. Jamaica had been the same; the same smooth transition from the burning heat to the caressing warmth of the night. It made her think of Charles. A steward in a white linen jacket had offered them a choice of drinks. Ryan had chosen a planter's punch and so had she.