For Kicks.
by d.i.c.k FRANCIS.
Chapter 1.
The Earl of October drove into my life in a pale blue Holden which had seen better days, and danger and death tagged along for the ride.
I noticed the car turn in through the gateposts as I walked across the little paddock towards the house, and I watched its progress up our short private road with a jaundiced eye. Salesmen, I thought, I can do without. The blue car rolled to a gentle halt between me and my own front door.
The man who climbed out looked about forty-five and was of medium height and solid build, with a large well-shaped head and smoothly brushed brown hair. He wore grey trousers, a fine wool shirt, and a dark, discreet tie, and he carried the inevitable brief case. I sighed, bent through the paddock rails, and went over to send him packing.
"Where can I find Mr Daniel Roke?" he asked. An English voice, which even to my untuned ear evoked expensive public schools; and he had a subtle air of authority inconsistent with the opening patter of representatives. I looked at him more attentively, and decided after all not to say I was out. He might even, in spite of the car, be a prospective customer.
"I," I said, without too much joy in the announcement, "am Daniel Roke."
His eyelids flickered in surprise.
"Oh," he said blankly.
I was used to this reaction. I was no one"s idea of the owner of a prosperous stud-farm. I looked, for a start, too young, though I didn"t feel it; and my sister Belinda says you don"t often meet a business man you can mistake for an Italian peasant. Sweet girl, my sister. It is only that my skin is sallow and tans easily, and I have black hair and brown eyes. Also I was that day wearing the oldest, most tattered pair of jeans I possessed, with unpolished jodhpur boots, and nothing else.
I had been helping a mare who always had difficulty in foaling: a messy job, and I had dressed for it. The result of my and the mare"s labours was a weedy filly with a contracted tendon in the near fore and a suspicion of one in the off fore too, which meant an operation, and more expense than she was likely to be worth.
My visitor stood for a while looking about him at the neat white-railed paddocks, the L-shaped stable-yard away ahead, and the row of cedar-shingled foaling boxes off to the right, where my poor little newcomer lay in the straw. The whole spread looked substantial and well maintained, which it was; I worked very hard to keep it that way, so that I could reasonably ask good prices for my horses.
The visitor turned to gaze at the big blue-green lagoon to the left, with the snow-capped mountains rising steeply in rocky beauty along the far side of it. Puffs of cloud like plumes crowned the peaks. Grand and glorious scenery it was, to his fresh eyes.
But to me, walls.
"Breathtaking," he said appreciatively. Then turning to me briskly, but with some hesitation in his speech, he said, "I... er... I heard in Perlooma that you have... er... an English stable hand who... er... wants to go back home..." He broke off, and started again. "I suppose it may sound surprising, but in certain circ.u.mstances, and if he is suitable, I am willing to pay his fare and give him a job at the other end..." He tailed off again.
There couldn"t, I thought, be such an acute shortage of stable boys in England that they needed to be recruited from Australia.
"Will you come into the house?" I said. "And explain?"
I led the way into the living-room, and heard his exclamation as he stepped behind me. All our visitors were impressed by the room. Across the far end a great expanse of window framed the most spectacular part of the lagoon and mountains, making them seem even closer and, to me, more overwhelming than ever. I sat down in an old bent-wood rocker with my back to them, and gestured him into a comfortable arm-chair facing the view.
"Now, Mr... er?" I began.
"October," he said easily. "Not Mister. Earl."
"October... as the month?" It was October at the time.
"As the month," he a.s.sented.
I looked at him curiously. He was not my idea of an earl. He looked like a hard-headed company chairman on holiday. Then it occurred to me that there was no bar to an earl being a company chairman as well, and that quite probably some of them needed to be.
"I have acted on impulse, coming here," he said more coherently. "And I am not sure that it is ever a good thing to do." He paused, took out a machine-turned gold cigarette case, and gained time for thought while he flicked his lighter. I waited.
He smiled briefly. "Perhaps I had better start by saying that I am in Australia on business I have interests in Sydney but that I came down here to the Snowies as the last part of a private tour I have been making of your main racing and breeding centres. I am a member of the body which governs National Hunt racing that is to say, steeplechasing, jump racing in England, and naturally your horses interest me enormously... Well, I was lunching in Perlooma" he went on, referring to our nearest township, fifteen miles away, "and I got talking to a man who remarked on my English accent and said that the only other pommie he knew was a stable-hand here who was fool enough to want to go back home."
"Yes," I agreed. "Simmons."
"Arthur Simmons," he said, nodding. "What sort of man is he?"
"Very good with horses," I said. "But he only wants to go back to England when he"s drunk. And he only gets drunk in Perlooma. Never here."
"Oh," he said. "Then wouldn"t he go, if he were given the chance?"
"I don"t know. It depends what you want him for."
He drew on his cigarette, and tapped the ash off, and looked out of the window.
"A year or two ago we had a great deal of trouble with the doping of racehorses," he said abruptly. "A very great deal of trouble. There were trials and prison sentences, and stringent all-round tightening of stable security, and a stepping-up of regular saliva and urine tests. We began to test the first four horses in many races, to stop doping-to-win, and we tested every suspiciously beaten favourite for doping-to-lose. Nearly all the results since the new regulations came into force have been negative."
"How satisfactory," I said, not desperately interested.
"No. It isn"t. Someone has discovered a drug which our a.n.a.lysts cannot identify."
"That doesn"t sound possible," I said politely. The afternoon was slipping away unprofitably, I felt, and I still had a lot to do.
He sensed my lack of enthusiasm. "There have been ten cases, all winners. Ten that we are sure of. The horses apparently look conspicuously stimulated I haven"t myself actually seen one but nothing shows up in the tests." He paused. "Doping is nearly always an inside job," he said, transferring his gaze back to me. "That is to say, stable lads are nearly always involved somehow, even if it is only to point out to someone else which horse is in which box." I nodded. Australia had had her troubles, too.
"We, that is to say, the other two Stewards of the National Hunt Committee, and myself, have once or twice discussed trying to find out about the doping from the inside, so to speak..."
"By getting a stable lad to spy for you?" I said.
He winced slightly. "You Australians are so direct," he murmured. "But that was the general idea, yes. We didn"t do anything more than talk about it, though, because there are many difficulties to such a plan and frankly we didn"t see how we could positively guarantee that any lad we approached was not already working for... er... the other side."
I grinned. "And Arthur Simmons has that guarantee?"
"Yes. And as he"s English, he would fade indistinguishably into the racing scene. It occurred to me as I was paying my bill after lunch. So I asked the way here and drove straight up, to see what he was like."
"You can talk to him, certainly," I said, standing up. "But I don"t think it will be any good."
"He would be paid far in excess of the normal rate," he said, misunderstanding me.
"I didn"t mean that he couldn"t be tempted to go," I said, "but he just hasn"t the brain for anything like that."
He followed me back out into the spring sunshine. The air at that alt.i.tude was still chilly and I saw him shiver as he left the warmth of the house. He glanced appraisingly at my still bare chest.
"If you"ll wait a moment, I"ll fetch him," I said, and, walking round the corner of the house, whistled shrilly with my fingers in my teeth towards the small bunk-house across the yard. A head poked enquiringly out of a window, and I shouted "I want Arthur."
The head nodded, withdrew, and presently Arthur Simmons, elderly, small, bow-legged and of an endearing simplicity of mind, made his crab-like way towards me. I left him and Lord October together, and went over to see if the new filly had taken a firm hold on life. She had, though her efforts to stand on her poor misshapen foreleg were pathetic to see.
I left her with her mother, and went back towards Lord October, watching him from a distance taking a note from his wallet and offering it to Arthur. Arthur wouldn"t accept it, even though he was English. He"s been here so long, I thought, that he"s as Australian as anyone. He"d hate to go back to Britain, whatever he says when he"s drunk.
"You were right," October said. "He"s a splendid chap, but no good for what I want. I didn"t even suggest it."
"Isn"t it expecting a great deal of any stable lad, however bright, to uncover something which has got men like you up a gum-tree?"
He grimaced. "Yes. That is one of the difficulties I mentioned. We"re sc.r.a.ping the bottom of the barrel, though. Any idea is worth trying. Any. You can"t realise how serious the situation is."
We walked over to his car, and he opened the door.
"Well, thank you for your patience, Mr Roke. As I said, it was an impulse, coming here. I hope I haven"t wasted too much of your afternoon?" He smiled, still looking slightly hesitant and disconcerted.
I shook my head and smiled back and he started the car, turned it, and drove off down the road. He was out of my thoughts before he was through the gate-posts.
Out of my thoughts; but not by a long way out of my life.
He came back again the next day at sundown. I found him sitting patiently smoking in the small blue car, having no doubt discovered that there was no one in the house. I walked back towards him from the stable block where I had been doing my share of the evening"s ch.o.r.es, and reflected idly that he had again caught me at my dirtiest.
He got out of the car when he saw me coming, and stamped on his cigarette.
"Mr Roke." He held out his hand, and I shook it.
This time he made no attempt to rush into speech. This time he had not come on impulse. There was absolutely no hesitation in his manner: instead, his natural air of authority was much more p.r.o.nounced, and it struck me that it was with this power that he set out to persuade a boardroom full of hard directors to agree to an unpopular proposal.
I knew instantly, then, why he had come back.
I looked at him warily for a moment: then gestured towards the house, and led him again into the living-room.
"A drink?" I asked. "Whisky?"
"Thank you." He took the gla.s.s.
"If you don"t mind," I said, "I will go and change." And think, I added privately.
Along in my room I showered and put on some decent trousers, socks and house-shoes, and a white poplin shirt with a navy blue silk tie. I brushed back my damp hair carefully in front of the mirror, and made sure my nails were clean. There was no point in entering an argument at a social disadvantage. Particularly with an earl as determined as this.
He stood up when I went back, and took in my changed appearance with one smooth glance.
I smiled fleetingly, and poured myself a drink, and another for him.
"I think," he said, "that you may have guessed why I am here."
"Perhaps."
"To persuade you to take the job I had in mind for Simmons," he said without preamble, and without haste.
"Yes," I said. I sipped my drink. "And I can"t do it."
We stood there eyeing each other. I knew that what he was seeing was a good deal different from the Daniel Roke he had met before. More substantial. More the sort of person he would have expected to find, perhaps. Clothes maketh man, I thought wryly.
The day was fading, and I switched on the lights. The mountains outside the window retreated into darkness; just as well, as I judged I would need all my resolution, and they were both literally and figuratively ranged behind October. The trouble was, of course, that with more than half my mind I wanted to take a crack at his fantastic job. And I knew it was madness. I couldn"t afford it, for one thing.
"I"ve learned a good deal about you now," he said slowly. "On my way from here yesterday it crossed my mind that it was a pity you were not Arthur Simmons; you would have been perfect. You did, if you will forgive me saying so, look the part." He sounded apologetic.
"But not now?"
"You know you don"t. You changed so that you wouldn"t, I imagine. But you could again. Oh, I"ve no doubt that if I"d met you yesterday inside this house looking as civilised as you do at this moment, the thought would never have occurred to me. But when I saw you first, walking across the paddock very tattered and half bare and looking like a gipsy, I did in fact take you for the hired help... I"m sorry."
I grinned faintly. "It happens often, and I don"t mind."
"And there"s your voice," he said. "That Australian accent of yours... I know it"s not as strong as many I"ve heard, but it"s as near to c.o.c.kney as dammit, and I expect you could broaden it a bit. You see," he went on firmly, as he saw I was about to interrupt, "if you put an educated Englishman into a stable as a lad, the chances are the others would know at once by his voice that he wasn"t genuine. But they couldn"t tell, with you. You look right, and you sound right. You seem to me the perfect answer to all our problems. A better answer than I could have dreamt of finding."
"Physically," I commented dryly.
He drank, and looked at me thoughtfully.
"In every way. You forget, I told you I know a good deal about you now. By the time I reached Perlooma yesterday afternoon I had decided to... er... investigate you, one might say, to find out what sort of man you really were... to see if there were the slightest chance of your being attracted by such a... a job." He drank again, and paused, waiting.
"I can"t take on anything like that," I said. "I have enough to do here." The understatement of the month, I thought.
"Could you take on twenty thousand pounds?" He said it casually, conversationally.
The short answer to that was "Yes"; but instead, after a moment"s stillness, I said "Australian, or English?"
His mouth curled down at the corners and his eyes narrowed. He was amused.
"English. Of course," he said ironically.
I said nothing. I simply looked at him. As if reading my thoughts he sat down in an arm-chair, crossed his legs comfortably, and said "I"ll tell you what you would do with it, if you like. You would pay the fees of the medical school your sister Belinda has set her heart on. You would send your younger sister Helen to art school, as she wants. You would put enough aside for your thirteen-year-old brother Philip to become a lawyer, if he is still of the same mind when he grows up. You could employ more labour here, instead of working yourself into an early grave feeding, clothing, and paying school fees for your family."
I suppose I should have been prepared for him to be thorough, but I felt a surge of anger that he should have pried so very intimately into my affairs. However, since the time when an angry retort had cost me the sale of a yearling who broke his leg the following week, I had learned to keep my tongue still whatever the provocation.
"I also have had two girls and a boy to educate," he said. "I know what it is costing you. My elder daughter is at university, and the twin boy and girl have recently left school."
When I again said nothing, he continued, "You were born in England, and were brought to Australia when you were a child. Your father, Howard Roke, was a barrister, a good one. He and your mother were drowned together in a sailing accident when you were eighteen. Since then you have supported yourself and your sisters and brother by horse dealing and breeding. I understand that you had intended to follow your father into the law, but instead used the money he left to set up business here, in what had been your holiday house. You have done well at it. The horses you sell have a reputation for being well broken in and beautifully mannered. You are thorough, and you are respected."
He looked up at me, smiling. I stood stiffly. I could see there was still more to come.
He said "Your headmaster at Geelong says you had a brain and are wasting it. Your bank manager says you spend little on yourself. Your doctor says you haven"t had a holiday since you settled here nine years ago except for a month you spent in hospital once with a broken leg. Your pastor says you never go to church, and he takes a poor view of it." He drank slowly.
Many doors, it seemed, were open to determined earls.
"And finally," he added, with a lop-sided smile, "the bar keeper of the Golden Platypus in Perlooma says he"d trust you with his sister, in spite of your good looks."