Free Longshot by Dick Francis Page B

acknowledgment and sat half on a chair as if temporarily, as if about to retreat.
    “Phone up a few people to see if they’ve lost a horse,” Tremayne told her. “If anyone’s panicking, he’s here. Unhurt. We’ve given him water and feed. He was out all night on the Downs, it seems. Someone’s in for a bollocking.”
    Dee-Dee nodded.
    “The jeep’s in a ditch on the south road to the A34. Skidded last evening with Mackie. No one hurt. Get the garage to fish it out.”
    Dee-Dee nodded.
    “John, here, will be working in the dining room. Anything he wants, give it to him. Anything he wants to know, tell him.”
    Dee-Dee nodded.
    “Get the blacksmith over for two of the string who lost shoes on the gallop this morning. The lads found the shoes, we don’t need new ones.”
    Dee-Dee nodded.
    “If I’m not here when the vet comes, ask him to take a look at Waterbourne after he’s cut the colt. She’s got some heat in her near-fore fetlock.”
    Dee-Dee nodded.
    “Check that the haulage people will be on time delivering the hay. We’re running low. Don’t take snow for an answer.”
    Dee-Dee smiled, which in a triangular way looked feline also, although far from kittenish. I wondered fleetingly about claws.
    Tremayne ate his toast and went on giving sporadic instructions which Dee-Dee seemed to have no trouble remembering. When the spate slowed she stood, picked up her mug and said she would finish her coffee in the office while she got on with things.
    “Utterly reliable,” Tremayne remarked to her departing back. “There’s always ten damned trainers trying to poach her.” He lowered his voice. “A shit of an amateur jockey treated her like muck. She’s not over it yet. I make allowances. If you find her crying, that’s it.”
    I was amazed by his compassion and felt I should have recognized earlier how many unexpected layers there were to Tremayne below the loud executive exterior: not just his love of horses, not just his need to be recorded, not even just his disguised delight in Gareth, but other, secret, unrevealed privacies which maybe I would come to in time, and maybe not.
    He spent the next half hour on the telephone both making and receiving calls: it was the time of day, I later discovered, when trainers could most reliably be found at home. Toast eaten, coffee drunk, he reached for a cigarette from a packet on the table and brought a throwaway lighter out of his pocket.
    “Do you smoke?” he asked, pushing the pack my way.
    “Never started,” I said.
    “Good for the nerves,” he commented, inhaling deeply. “I hope you’re not an anti fanatic.”
    “I quite like the smell.”
    “Good.” He seemed pleased enough. “We’ll get on well.”
    He told me that at ten o’clock, by which time the first lot would have been given hay and water and the lads would have had their own breakfasts, he would drive the tractor back to the gallops to watch his second lot work. He said I needn’t bother with that: I could set things up in the dining room, arrange things however I liked working. As all racing was off from frost, he could, if I agreed, spend the afternoon telling me about his childhood. When racing began again, he wouldn’t have so much time.
    “Good idea,” I said.
    He nodded. “Come along, then, and I’ll show you where things are.”
    We went out into the carpeted hall and he pointed to the doorway opposite.
    “That’s the family room, as you know. Next to the kitchen ...” he walked along and opened a closed door, “... is my dining room. We don’t use it much. You’ll have to turn the heating up, I dare say.”
    I looked into the room I was to get to know well: a spacious room with mahogany furniture, swagged crimson curtains, formal cream-and-gold-striped walls and a plain dark-green carpet. Not Tremayne’s own choice, I thought. Much too coordinated.
    “That’ll be great,” I said obligingly.
    “Good.” He closed the door again and looked up the stairs we had