Crossfire - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,4
knew there wasn’t.
My only friends were in the army, mostly in my regiment, and they were still out in Afghanistan for another five weeks. And, anyway, I wasn’t ready to see them. Not yet. They would remind me too much of what I was no longer – and I wouldn’t be able to stand their pity.
I suppose I could have booked myself into an army officers’ mess. No doubt I would have been made welcome at Wellington Barracks, the Grenadiers’ home base in London. But what would I have done there?
What could I do anywhere?
Once again I thought it might have been better if the IED explosion, or the pneumonia, had completed the task: Union Flag-draped coffin, firing of volleys in salute, and I’d be six feet under by now and be done with it all. Instead, I was outside my mother’s back door struggling with a damned artificial foot to get down low enough to find the key that she habitually left under a stone in the flower bed.
And for what?
To get into a house I hated; to stay with a parent I despised. To say nothing of my stepfather, to whom I had hardly spoken a civil word since I had walked out of here, aged seventeen.
I couldn’t find the damn key. Perhaps my mother had become more security minded over the years. There had been a time when she would have left the house unlocked completely. I tried the handle. Not any more.
I sat down on the doorstep and leaned back against the locked door.
My mother would be home later.
I knew where she was. She was at the races; Cheltenham races, to be precise. I had looked up the runners in the morning paper, as I always did. She had four horses declared, including the favourite in the big race, and my mother would never miss a day at her beloved Cheltenham, the scene of her greatest triumphs. And, while today’s might be a smaller meeting than the steeplechase Festival in March, I could visualize her holding court in the parade ring before the races, and welcoming the winner back after them. I had seen it so often. It had been my childhood.
The sun had long before given up trying to break through the veil of cloud, and it was beginning to get cold. I sighed. At least the toes on my right foot wouldn’t get chilblains. I put my head back against the wood and rested my eyes.
‘Can I help you?’ said a voice.
I reopened my eyes. A short man in his mid-thirties wearing faded jeans and a puffy anorak stood on the gravel in front of me. I silently remonstrated with myself. I must have briefly drifted off to sleep because I hadn’t heard him coming. What would my sergeant have said?
‘I’m waiting for Mrs Kauri,’ I said.
Mrs Kauri was my mother, Mrs Josephine Kauri, although Josephine had not been the name with which she had been christened. It was her name of choice. Sometime back, long before I was born, she had obviously decided that Jane, her real name, was not classy enough for her. Kauri was not her proper name either. It had been the surname of her first husband, and she was now on her third.
‘Mrs Kauri is at the races,’ replied the man.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ll just wait for her here.’
‘She won’t be back for hours, not until after dark.’
‘I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘I’m her son.’
‘The soldier?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, somewhat surprised that he would know.
But he did know. It was only fleeting but I didn’t miss his glance down at my right foot. He knew only too well.
‘I’m Mrs Kauri’s head lad,’ he said. ‘Ian Norland.’
He held out a hand and I used it to help me up.
‘Tom,’ I said. ‘Tom Forsyth. What happened to old Basil?’
‘He retired. I’ve been here three years now.’
‘It’s been a while longer than that since I’ve been here,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I saw you from the window of my flat,’ Ian said pointing to a row of windows above the stable boxes. ‘Would you like to come in and watch the racing on the telly? It’s too bloody cold to wait out here.’
‘I’d love to.’
We climbed the stairs to what I remembered had once been a storage loft over the stables.
‘The horses provide great central heating,’ Ian said over his shoulder as he led the way. ‘I never have to turn the boiler on until it actually freezes outside.’