short head,’ I agreed. All the same if it had been ten lengths[7], I thought sourly. You got no present for losing, whatever the margin.
‘My uncle had a fiver on you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said formally.
Christopher pivoted on one toe and let go: the cricket ball crashed into the wall, leaving a mark. He saw me frowning at it and laughed. He had come straight into the office from Cambridge two months before, robbed of a cricket blue[8] through deteriorating eyesight and having failed his finals into the bargain. He remained always in better spirits than I, who had suffered no similar reverses. We tolerated each other. I found it difficult, as always, to make friends, and he had given up trying.
Maggie came back from the pantry, sat down at her desk, took her nail varnish out of the stationery drawer and began brushing on the silvery pink. She was a large assured girl from Surbiton with a naturally unkind tongue and a suspect talent for registering remorse immediately after the barbs were securely in[9].
The cricket ball slipped out of Christopher’s hand and rolled across Maggie’s desk. Lunging after it, he brushed one of his heaps of letters into a fluttering muddle on the floor, and the ball knocked over Maggie’s bottle of varnish, which scattered pretty pink viscous blobs all over the ‘We have received yours of the fourteenth ult[10].’
‘Goddamn,’ said Christopher with feeling.
Old Cooper who dealt with insurance came into the room at his doddery pace and looked at the mess with cross disgust and pinched nostrils. He held out to me the sheaf of papers he had brought.
‘Your pigeon[11], Henry. Fix it up for the earliest possible’.
‘Right.’
As he turned to go he said to Christopher and Maggie in a complaining voice certain to annoy them, ‘Why can’t you two be as efficient as Henry? He’s never late, he’s never untidy, his work is always correct and always done on time. Why don’t you try to be more like him?’
I winced inwardly and waited for Maggie’s inevitable retaliation. She would be in good form: it was Monday morning.
‘I wouldn’t want to be like Henry in a thousand years,’ she said sharply. ‘He’s a prim, dim, sexless nothing[12]. He’s not alive.’
Not my day[13], definitely.
‘He rides those races, though,’ said Christopher in mild defence.
‘And if he fell off and broke both his legs, all he’d care about would be seeing they got the bandages straight.’
‘The bones,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The bones straight.’
Christopher blinked and laughed. ‘Well, well, what do you know? The still waters of Henry might just possibly be running deep.’
‘Deep, nothing,’ said Maggie. ‘A stagnant pond, more like.’
‘Slimy and smelly?’ I suggested.
‘No… oh dear… I mean, I’m sorry…’
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Never mind.’ I looked at the paper in my hand and picked up the telephone.
‘Henry…’ said Maggie desperately. ‘I didn’t mean it.’
Old Cooper tut-tutted and doddered away along the passage, and Christopher began sorting his varnished letters. I got through to Yardman Transport and asked for Simon Searle.
‘Four yearlings from the Newmarket sales to go to Buenos Aires as soon as possible,’ I said.
‘There might be a delay.’
‘Why?’
‘We’ve lost Peters.’
‘Careless,’ I remarked.
‘Oh ha-ha.’
‘Has he left?’
Simon hesitated perceptibly. ‘It looks like it.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He didn’t come back from one of the trips. Last Monday. Just never turned up for the flight back, and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.’
‘Hospitals?[14]’ I said.
‘We checked those, of course. And the morgue, and the jail. Nothing. He just vanished. And as he hasn’t done anything wrong the police aren’t interested in finding him. No police would be, it isn’t criminal to leave your job without notice. They say he fell for a girl, very likely, and decided not to go home.’
‘Is he married?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I’ll get on with your yearlings, but I can’t give you even an approximate date.’
‘Simon,’ I said slowly. ‘Didn’t something like this happen before?’
‘Er… do you mean Ballard?’
‘One of your liaison men,’ I said.
‘Yes. Well… I suppose so.’
‘In Italy?’ I suggested gently.
There was a short silence the other end. ‘I hadn’t thought of it,’ he said. ‘Funny coincidence. Well… I’ll let you know about the yearlings.’
‘I’ll have to get on to Clarksons if you can’t manage it.’
He sighed. ‘I’ll do my best. I’ll ring you back tomorrow.’
I put down the receiver and started on a large batch of customs declarations, and the long morning disintegrated towards the lunch hour. Maggie and I said nothing at all to each other and Christopher cursed steadily over his letters. At one sharp I beat even Maggie in the rush to the door.
Outside, the December sun was shining. On impulse I jumped on to a passing bus, got off at Marble Arch, and walked slowly through the park to the Serpentine[15]. I was still there, sitting on a bench, watching the sun ripple on the water, when the hands on my watch read two o’clock. I was still there at half past. At a quarter to three I threw some stones with force into the lake, and a park keeper told me not to.
A spoilt bad-tempered bastard. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she had been used to saying things like that, but she was a gentle see-no-evil person who had been made to wash her mouth out with soap for swearing as a child and had never taken the risk again. She was my youngest sister, fifteen years my elder, unmarried, plain, and quietly intelligent. She had reversed roles with our parents: she ran the house and managed
All the same if it had been ten lengths – (
robbed of a cricket blue – (
the barbs were securely in – (
Your pigeon – (
a prim, dim, sexless nothing – (
Not my day – (
Hospitals? – (
the Serpentine – (
