Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [104]
The judge was feeling particularly well that day. He recognised in himself the awakening of nature’s year and, as often before, but more strongly this time, decided that as he could realistically look forward to thirty more years of life, he should change direction pretty soon. The urge was clear: the destination, still a mist. He would have been astounded to learn that it was already too late.
Christopher Haig was greeted as always with a smile by the stewards, the clerk of the course, the starter, the clerk of the scales and all the passing crowd of race organisers in the weighing-room. The judge was popular, not only because he did his job without mistakes, but for his effortless generosity, his good nature, and his calmness in a crisis. Those that thought him dull had no insight into the furnace of his private landscape. What if, he thought, I joined an oil-fire fighting unit?
Before each race the judge sat at a table near the scales and learned the colours worn by each jockey as he or she weighed out. He learned also the name of each horse and made sure the jockeys carried on their number cloths the corresponding numbers on the racecard. Chris Haig, after years of practice, was good and quick.
The first three races gave him no problems. There were no finishes close enough to need to be settled by photo, and he’d been able to pronounce the winners and placed horses firmly and with confidence. He was enjoying himself.
The fourth race, the Cloister Handicap Hurdle, was the big event of the day. Chris Haig carefully made sure he could identify each of the eleven runners at a glance: it was always a shocking disgrace for a judge to hesitate.
Number 1, he noted: Lilyglit, top weight.
Number 2, Fable.
Number 3, Storm Cone.
He continued down the list. The runners’ names were all familiar to him from other days, but the first three on the card for the Cloister Handicap were woven into his short future in ways he couldn’t have imagined.
Number 1. Lilyglit
At about the time earlier on that Friday morning when Christopher Haig shaved with the help of a bathroom mirror and dreamed his dreams, Wendy Billington Innes sat on her low comfortable dressing stool and stared at her reflection in her dressing-table’s triple-section looking-glass. She saw not the pale clear skin, the straight mid-brown hair nor the darkening shadows below her grey-blue eyes; she saw only worry and a disaster she didn’t understand and couldn’t deal with. An hour ago, she thought, life had seemed simple and secure.
There were four children upstairs with a resident nanny: three daughters and a yearling son. Downstairs there was a cook, a housekeeper, a manservant and, in the gatehouse of the estate, a chauffeur-gardener with his housemaid wife and daughter. Wendy Billington Innes managed her large staff with friendly appreciation so that they all lived together without friction. Raised in similar cosseted ease, she knew to a fraction the effort one could expect from each employee and, most importantly, what request would be considered a breathtaking insult.
The house itself was a grand relic of grander times: it allowed everyone comfortable room but was terminally afflicted with dry rot. One day soon, she had thought peacefully, she would move everyone to a new home.
She had brought to her marriage a heavy portfolio of stocks and bonds and, like her mother before her, had thankfully handed it to her husband for management.
At thirty-seven she had reached serenity, if not overwhelming happiness. She could admit to herself (but to no one else) that Jasper, her husband, had been sporadically unfaithful ever since their wedding but, depending on him for friendship, she chose to ignore the true reason for the occasional one-night absences from which he always returned in great good spirits, making her laugh as he loaded her with flowers and little presents. When he came home at dawn empty-handed, as he more often did, it meant only that he’d been gambling all night in his favourite gaming club. He was a good-natured useless