Part 4 (1/2)

'As I told you the other day,' he said when I'd finished, 'you've fractured the lower end of the fibula, and where the tibia and fibula should be joined, they've sprung apart. Today, they are further apart. They're now providing no support at all for the talus, the heel bone.

You've now completely ripped the lateral ligament which normally binds the ankle together. The whole joint is insecure and coming apart inside, like a mortise joint in a piece of furniture when the glue's given way.'

'So how long will it take?' I asked.

He smiled briefly. 'In a crepe bandage it will hurt for about another ten days, and after that you can walk on it. You could be back on a horse in three weeks from now, if you don't mind the stirrup hurting you, which it will. About another three weeks after that, the ankle might be strong enough for racing.'

'Good,' I said, relieved. 'Not much worse than before, then.'

'It's worse, but it won't take much longer to mend.'

'Fine.'

He looked down at the depressing sight. 'If you're going to be doing all this travelling about, you'd be much more comfortable in a rigid cast. You could put your weight on it in a couple of days. You'd have almost no pain.'

'And wear it for six weeks? And get atrophied muscles?' r 'Atrophy is a strong word.' He knew all the same that jump jockeys needed strong leg muscles above all else, and the way to keep them strong was to keep them moving. Inside plaster they couldn't move at all and weakened rapidly. If movement cost a few twinges, it was worth it.

'Delta-cast is lightweight,' he said persuasively. 'It's a polymer, not like the old plaster of Paris. It's porous, so air circulates, and you don't get skin problems. It's good.

And I could make you a cast with a zip in it so you could take it off for physiotherapy.'

'How long before I was racing?'

'Nine or ten weeks.'

I didn't say anything for a moment or two and he looked up fast, his eyes bright and quizzical.

'A cast, thee?' he said.

'No.'

He smiled and picked up a roll of crepe bandage. 'Don't fall on it again in the next month, or you'll be back to square one.'

'I'll try not to.'

He bandaged it all tight again from just below the knee down to my toes and back, and gave me another prescription for Distalgesic. 'No more than eight tablets in twenty-four hours and not with alcohol.' He said it every time.

'Right.'

He considered me thoughtfully for a moment and then rose and went over to a cabinet where he kept packets and bottles of drugs. He came back tucking a small plastic bag into an envelope which he held out to me.

'I'm giving you something known as DF 1-1 - s. Rather appropriate, as they're your own initials! I've given you three of them. They are serious painkillers, and I don't want you to use them unless something like yesterday happens again.'

OK,' I said, putting the envelope in my pocket. 'Thanks.'

'If you take one, you won't feel a thing.' He smiled. 'If you take two at once, you'll be s.p.a.ced out, high as a kite. If you take all three at once, you'll be unconscious. So be warned.'

He paused. 'They are a last resort.'

'I won't forget,' I said, 'and I truly am grateful.'

Brad drove to a chemist's, took my prescription in, waited for it to be dispensed, and finished the ten miles home, parking outside my door.

'Same time tomorrow morning?' I asked. 'Back to London.'

'Yerss.'

'I'd be in trouble without you,' I said, climbing out with his help. He gave me a brief haunted glance and handed me the crutches 'You drive great,' I said.

He was embarra.s.sed, but also pleased. Nowhere near a smile, of course, but a definite twitch in the cheeks. He turned away, ducking my gaze, and set off doggedly towards his mother.

I let myself into the house and regretted the embargo on a large scotch. Instead, with June's lunchtime sandwich a distant memory, I refuelled with sardines on toast and icecream after, which more or less reflected my habitual laziness about cooking.

Then, aligned with icepacks along the sofa, I telephoned the man in Newmarket who trained Greville's two racehorses.

He picked up the receiver as if he'd been waiting for it to ring.

'Yes?' he said. 'What are they offering?'

'I've no idea,' I said. 'Is that Nicholas Loder?'

'What? Who are you?' He was brusque and impatient, then took a second look at things and with more honey said, 'I beg your pardon, I was expecting someone else. I'm Loder, yes, who am I talking to?'

'Greville Franklin's brother.'

'Oh yes?'

It meant nothing to him immediately. I pictured him as I knew him, more by sight than face to face, a big light-haired man in his forties with enormous presence and self-esteem to match. Undoubtedly a good-to-great trainer, but in television interviews occasionally overbearing and condescending to the interviewer, as I'd heard he could be also to his owners. Greville kept his horses with him because the original horse he'd taken as a bad debt had been in that stable. Nicholas Loder had bought Greville all his subsequent horses and done notably well with them, and Greville had a.s.sured me that he got on well with the man by telephone, and that he was perfectly friendly.

The last time I'd spoken to Greville myself on the telephone he'd been talking of buying another twoyear- old, saying that Loder would get him one at the October sales, perhaps.

I explained to Loder that Greville had died and after the first sympathetic exclamations of dismay he reacted as I would have expected, not as if missing a close friend but on a practical business level.

'It won't affect the running of his horses,' he said.

'They're owned in any case by the Saxony Franklin company, not by Greville himself. I can run the horses still in the company name. I have the company's Authority to Act. There should be no problem.'

'I'm afraid there may be,' I began.

'No, no. Dozen Roses runs on Sat.u.r.day at York. In with a great chance. I informed Greville of it only a few days ago. He always wanted to know when they were running, though he never went to see them.'

'The problem is,' I said, 'about my being his brother.

He has left the Saxony Franklin company to me.'

The size of the problem suddenly revealed itself to him forcibly. 'You're not his brother Derek Franklin?