Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [44]
During that week Bill Williams wrote five opinion and comment pieces and sent them all to the prestigious London broadsheets that had published him pre- Voice. They were enthusiastic on the telephone, but no one needed an editor.
During that week Dennis Kinser finally received from the syndicate fixer one half-paid for but talented hurdler complete with an entry in the Kinser Cup. Dennis the ex-stable lad did know how to train horses and turn them out looking good. When the syndicate horse paraded before the Cup, its coat shone in the sun.
Dennis Kinser spent the rest of his week borrowing money and sucking the restaurant dry.
During that week F. Harold Field visited the Lionheart Group’s managers one by one and left a pro-Williams consensus in his wake. Russell Maudsley nodded. Mrs Robin Dawkins, still believing her colleagues intended a thumbs down, said contrarily, ‘I think you’re wrong to ditch him, Harold.’
Waving his conspicuous invitation, F. Harold made his way from his (chauffeur-driven) Daimler up to the large private box where Dennis Kinser, though now running on an empty gas tank, was trying to buy himself a glittering future by the widespread indiscriminate application of champagne.
Dennis Kinser, not knowing by sight half the free-loaders guzzling his bubbles, gave F. Harold a wide hello and with an extravagant gesture put an arm familiarly round his guest’s shoulders. A hard-headed businessman impervious to soft soap, oil and honey, F. Harold Field intensely disliked the too intimate unwanted pressure of the arm, but without shaking himself free he turned his well-groomed head to look Dennis Kinser in the eye and asked him straightly what Williams, the sometime editor of the Cotswold Voice, could possibly have done to be treated so insufferably by the management and staff of Mainstream Mile.
To F. Harold Field this was no idle question: he needed to know what would stir A. E. de V. Williams to clenched fists, and, beyond that, what would stop him from using them. F. Harold regularly judged people by their rages: sought the cause and watched the performance. When not overruled by Mrs Robin Dawkins (as he had been the last time they’d chosen an editor) F. Harold Field seldom made mistakes.
Dennis Kinser removed his arm from his guest’s shoulders with sick speed. All week he’d been unable to sleep or eat with physical ease. Each day he’d expected to hear the rattlesnake and be pierced by the fangs. But this, he thought in bewilderment, this solid grey-suited taxpayer didn’t match the racing-writer’s verbal identikit. This couldn’t be the lean mean man in the punt.
F. Harold Field flatly said, ‘As Williams’ guest I was treated like dirt, and I don’t know why. Give me a reason why all the papers and periodicals I co-own in the Lionheart Group shouldn’t blow your house down.’
‘But… b-but,’ Dennis Kinser stuttered, aghast at this new abyss, ‘he came in a boat.’
‘He…what?’
Dennis Kinser abruptly left-wheeled and crashed into the gentlemen’s retreat. He had taken days of drugs to control the bacteria in his gut, but nothing it seemed could anaesthetise the cataclysm he saw ahead.
F. Harold Field, still unsatisfied, went down (on the non-reappearance of his host) to watch the horses as they plodded round the parade ring. Dennis Kinser’s extravagant Cup lay two races ahead. F. Harold Field filled in time by winning modest third-place money on the Tote.
Bill (Absalom etc.) Williams drove to Marlborough races having read far too much all week about the Kinser glories. Kinser this and Kinser that… Kinser’s horses, Kinser the trainer, Kinser on the Thames. Every racing page seemed to have paid in advance for a free lunch. The Cotswold Voice published a sunny encouragement, but the racing writer himself lounged at home to tele-watch with a couple of cans.
On the basis of ‘know thine enemy’, Bill Williams went to Marlborough races to learn what Dennis Kinser looked like. He saw the ballyhoo but not the man himself, who remained