Part 18 (1/2)

Clarissa Williams was Lord Knightwood's wife.

CHAPTER TEN.

She had known I would be there, it was clear, and if she hadn't wanted me to find out who she was she could have developed a strategic illness in plenty of time.

She was saying graciously, 'Didn't I see you on television winning the Gold Cup?' and I thought of her speed with that frightful kiyoga and the tumult of her feelings on TUesday, four days ago. She seemed to have no fear that I would give her away, and indeed, what could I say? Lord Knightwood, my brother was your wife's lover? Just the right sort of thing to get the happy party off to a good start.

The said Lord was introducing the Ostermeyers to a professor of physics who with twinkles said that as he was the only true aficionado of horse-racing among the teaching academics he had been pressed into service to carry the flag, although there were about fifty undergraduates out on the course ready to bet their socks off in the cause.

'Derek has a degree,' Martha said brightly, making conversation.

The professorial eyeb.a.l.l.s swivelled my way speculatively. '

What university?'

'Lancaster,' I said dryly, which raised a laugh. Lancaster and York had fought battles of the red and white roses for many a long year.

'And subject?'

'Independent Studies.'

His desultory attention sharpened-abruptly.

'What are Independent Studies?' Harley asked, seeing his interest.

'The student designs his own course and invents his own final subject,' the professor said. 'Lancaster is the only university offering such a course and they let only about eight students a year do it. It's not for the weakwilled or the feeble-minded.'

The Knightwoods and the Ostermeyers listened in silence and I felt embarra.s.sed. I had been young then, I thought.

'What did you choose as your subject?' asked the professor, intent now on an answer. 'Horses? in some way?'

I shook my head. 'No. . . en . . ”Roots and Results of War”.'

'My dear chap,' Lord Knightwood said heartily, 'sit next to the professor at lunch.' He moved away benignly, taking his wife and the Ostermeyers with him, and the professor, left behind, asked what I fancied for the races.

Clarissa, by accident or design, remained out of talking distance throughout the meal and I didn't try to approach her. The party broke up during and after the first race, although everyone was invited to return for tea, and I spent most of the afternoon, as I'd spent so many others, watching horses stretch and surge and run as their individual natures dictated. The will to win was born and bred in them all, but some cared more than others: it was those with the implacable impulse to lead a wild herd who fought hardest and oftenest won.

Sports writers tended to call it courage but it went deeper than that, right down into the gene pool, into instinct, into the primordial soup on the same evolutionary level as the belligerence so easily aroused in h.o.m.o sapiens, that was the taproot of water.

I was no stranger to the thought that I sought battle on the turf because, though the instinct to fight and conquer ran strong, I was averse to guns. Sublimation.

the pundits would no doubt call it. Datepalm and I both, on the same primitive plane, wanted to win.

'What are you thinking'?' someone asked at my shoulder.

I would have known her voice anywhere, I thought. I turned to see her half-calm half-anxious expression, the Lady Knightwood social poise exPlicit in the smooth hair, the patrician bones and the tailoring of her clothes, the pa.s.sionate woman merely a hint in the eyes.

'Thinking about horses,' I said.

'I suppose you're wondering why I came today, after I learned last night that you'd not only be at the races, which I expected you might be anyway because of Dozen Roses, but actually be coming to our lunch. . .'

She stopped, sounding uncertain.

'I'm not Greville,' I said. 'Don't think of me as Greville.'

Her eyelids flickered. 'You're too d.a.m.ned perceptive.'

She did a bit of introspection. 'Yes, all right, I wanted to be near you. It's a sort of comfort.'

We were standing by the rails of the parade ring watching the runners for the next race walk round, led by their lads. It was the race before the University Trophy, two races before that of Dozen Roses, a period without urgency for either of us. There were crowd noises all around and the clip-crop of horses walking by, and we could speak quietly as in an oasis of private s.p.a.ce without being overheard.

'Are you still angry with me for hitting you?' she said a shade bitterly, as I'd made no comment after her last remark.

I half smiled. 'No.'

'I did think you were a burglar.'

'And what would you have explained to the police, if they'd come?'

She said ruefully, 'I hope I would have come to my senses and done a bunk before they got there.' She sighed. 'Greville said if I ever had to use the kiyoga in earnest to escape at once and not worry what I'd done to my attacker, but he never thought of a burglar in his own house.'

'I'm surprised he gave you a weapon like that,' I said mildly. 'Aren't they illegal? And him a magistrate.'

'I'm a magistrate too,' she said unexpectedly. 'That's how we originally met, at a magistrates' conference.

I've not enquired into the legality of kiyogas. If I were prosecuted for carrying and using an offensive weapon, well; that would be much preferable to being a victim of the appalling a.s.saults that come before us every week.'

'Where did he get it?' I asked curiously.

'America.'

'Do you have it with you here?'

She nodded and touched her handbag. 'It's second nature, now.'

She must have been thirty years younger than her husband, I thought inconsequentially, and I knew what she felt about him. I didn't know whether or not I liked her, but I did recognize there was a weird sort of intimacy between us and that I didn't resent it.

The jockeys came out and stood around the owners in little groups. Nicholas Loder was there with the man he'd come in with, a thickset powerful-looking man in a dark suit, the pink cardboard Club badge fluttering from his lapel.

'Dozen Roses,' I said, watching Loder talking to the owner and his jockey, 'was he named for you?'

'Oh, G.o.d,' she said, disconcerted. 'How ever . . .?'

I said, 'I put your roses on the coffin for the service.'