Trial Run

2

The Prince lived in a modest house only a shade larger than my own, but a hundred years older, and he opened his door to me himself, although he did have living-in staff, which I did not. But then, he also had a wife, three children, and, apparently, six dogs. A dalmatian and a whippet oozed between his legs and the doorposts and bowled over to give me a good sniffing as I climbed out of my Mercedes, with a yapping collection of terriers cantering along in their wake.

‘Kick ’em out of your way,’ advised the Prince loudly, waiting on his doorstep. ‘Get down, Fingers, you spotted oaf.’

The dalmatian paid little attention, but I reached the door unchewed. Shook the Prince’s hand. Made the small bow. Followed him across the rugs of his pillared hall into an ample sort of study. Leather-bound books in tidy rows lined two of the walls, with windows, doors, portraits and fireplace leaving small surrounds of pale green emulsion on the others. On his big cluttered desk stood ranks of photographs in silver frames, and in one corner a huge white cyclamen in a copper bowl drooped its pale heads in the greyish light.

I knew, and the Prince knew I knew, that his act in opening his door to me himself was a very unusual token of appreciation. He really must have been quite extraordinarily relieved, I thought, that I had agreed to take even the partial step I had: and I wondered a bit uneasily about the size of the pitfalls which he knew would lie ahead.

‘Good of you, Randall,’ he said, waving me to a black leather armchair. ‘Did you have a good drive? We’ll rustle up some coffee in a minute...’

He sat in a comfortable swivel beside his desk and kept up the flow of courteous chatter. Johnny Farringford, he said, had promised to be there by ten-thirty: he took a quick look at his watch and no doubt found it was roughly fifteen minutes after that already. It was good of me to come, he said again. It was probably better, he said, that I shouldn’t be tied in too closely with Johnny at this stage, so it was perhaps wiser we should meet at the Prince’s house, and not at Johnny’s, if I saw what he meant.

He was strongly built, fairly tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with the easy good looks of youth beginning to firm into the settled character of coming middle age. The eyebrows were bushier than five years earlier, the nose more pronounced, and the neck a little thicker. Time was turning him from an athlete into a figurehead, and giving me unwanted insights into mortality on a Monday morning.

Another quick look at his watch, this time accompanied by a frown. I thought hopefully that perhaps the precious Johnny wouldn’t turn up at all, and I could go contentedly back home and forget the whole thing.

The two tall windows of the study looked out to the sweep of drive in front of the house, in the same way as those of my own sitting-room. Perhaps the Prince, too, found it useful to have early warning of people calling: time to dodge, if he wanted.

My Mercedes was clearly in view on the wide expanse of raked gravel, standing alone, bluish-grey and quiet. While I idly watched, a white Rover suddenly travelled like an arrow across the uncluttered area, making straight for my car’s back. As if in horrorstruck inevitable slow-motion I waited helplessly for the crash.

There was a noise like the emptying of ten metal dustbins into a pulverising plant, followed by the uninterrupted blowing of the horn, as the unconscious driver of the Rover slumped over the steering wheel.

‘Christ!’ said the Prince, appalled and leaping to his feet. ‘Johnny!’

‘My car!’ I said, involuntarily betraying my regrettable priorities.

The Prince was fortunately already on his way to the study door, and I followed on his heels across the hall, bursting into the fresh air after him at a run.

The reverberating crunch and the wailing horn had brought an assortment of horrified faces to the windows and to the fringe of the scene, but it was the Prince and I who reached the tangle first.

The front of the Rover had half mounted the back of my car in a sort of monstrous mechanical mating, so that the Rover’s wheels were slightly off the ground. The whole arrangement looked most precarious, and an assaulting smell of petrol brought one face to face with possibilities.

‘Get him out,’ said the Prince urgently, tugging at the handle of the driver’s door. ‘God...’

The door had buckled under the impact, and was wedged shut. I raced round to the far side, and tried the passenger door. Same thing. If he’d tried, Johnny Farringford couldn’t have hit my Mercedes any straighter.

The rear doors were locked. The hatchback also. The horn blew on, urgent and disturbing.

‘Jesus,’ shouted the Prince frantically. ‘Get him out.’

I climbed up on to the concertina’d mess between the two vehicles and slithered through the space where the windscreen had been, carrying with me a shower of crumbling glass. Knelt on the passenger seat, and hauled the unconscious man off the horn button. The sudden quiet was a blessing, but there was nothing reassuring about Johnny Farringford’s face.

I didn’t wait to look beneath the blood. I stretched across behind him, supporting his lolling head, and pulled up the locking catch on the offside rear door. The Prince worked at it feverishly from the outside, but it took a contortionist manoeuvre from me and a fierce stamp from my heel to spring it open: the thought of sparks from the scraping metal was a vivid horror, as I could now hear as well as scarcely breathe from the flood of escaping petrol.

It didn’t make it any better that it was the petrol from my own car, or that I’d filled the capacious tank that very morning.

The Prince put his head and shoulders into the Rover and thrust his wrists under his brother-in-law’s armpits. I squirmed back into the buckled front space and disengaged the flopping feet from the clutter of clutch, brake and accelerator pedals. The Prince heaved with his considerable strength and I lifted the lower part of the inert body as best I could, and, between us, we shifted him over the back of his seat and out through the rear door. I let go of his legs as the Prince tugged him backwards, and he flopped out free on to the gravel like a calf from a cow.

God help him, I thought, if we’ve made any broken bones worse by our rough handling, but anything on the whole was better than incineration. I scrambled along Johnny Farringford’s escape route with no signs of calm unhurried nonchalance.

Assistance had arrived in a houseman’s coat and in gardening clothes, and the victim was carried more carefully from then on.

‘Take him away from the car,’ the Prince was saying to them while turning back towards me. ‘The petrol... Randall, get out, man.’

Superfluous advice. I’d never felt so slow, so awkward, so over-equipped with knees and elbows and ankle joints.

Whether the balance of one vehicle on the other was in any case unstable, or whether my far from delicate movements rocked it over the brink, the effect was the same: the Rover began to move while I was still inside it.

I could hear the Prince’s voice, rising with apprehension, ‘Randall...’

I got one foot out free: began to put my weight on it, and the Rover shifted further. I stumbled, hung on to the door frame, and pulled myself out by force of arms. Landed sideways on hip and elbow, sprawling and ungainly.

I rolled and put my feet where they ought to be, with my hands on the ground like a runner, to get a bit of purchase. Behind me the Rover’s heavy weight crunched backwards and tore itself off my Mercedes with metal screeching violently on metal, but I dare say it was some form of electrical short-circuiting which let go with a shower of sparks like a hundred cigarette lighters in chorus.

The explosion threw the two cars apart and left both of them burning like mini infernos. There was a hissing noise in the air as the expanding vapour flashed into a second’s flame, and a positive roaring gust of hot wind, which helped me onwards.

‘Your hair’s on fire,’ observed the Prince, as I reached him.

I rubbed a hand over it, and so it was. Rubbed with both hands rather wildly, and put the conflagration out.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘Not at all.’

He grinned at me in an un-Princely and most human fashion. ‘And your glasses, I see, haven’t shifted an inch.’

A doctor and a private ambulance arrived in due course for Johnny Farringford, but long before that he had woken up and looked around him in bewilderment. He was lying, by that time, on the long comfortable sofa in the family sitting-room, attended by the Princess, his sister, who was taking things matter-of-factly and mopping his wounds with impressive efficiency.

‘What happened?’ Farringford said, opening dazed eyes.

Bit by bit they told him: he had driven his car across a space as big as a tennis court, straight into the back of my Mercedes. Nothing else in sight.

‘Randall Drew,’ added the Prince, making the introduction.

‘Oh.’

‘Damn silly thing to do,’ said the Princess disparagingly, but in her concerned face I read the lifelong protectiveness of older sister to little brother.

‘I don’t... remember.’

He looked at the red stains on the swabs which were piling up on a tray beside him, at the blood dripping from a cut on one finger, and appeared to be going to be sick.

‘He used to pass out at the sight of blood,’ said his sister. ‘A good job he’s grown out of it.’

Johnny Farringford’s injuries had resolved themselves into numerous cuts to the face but no obviously broken bones. However, he winced every time he moved, pressing his arm across his waist as if to hold himself together, which spoke to me rather reminiscently of cracked ribs.

He was a willowy, fairly tall young man with a great deal of crinkly reddish hair extending into tufty bits of beard down the outer sides of his jaw. His nose looked thin and sharp, and an out-of-door tan sat oddly on his skin over the pallor of shock.

‘Creeping... shit,’ he said suddenly.

‘It could have been worse,’ said the Prince, dubiously.

‘No...’ Farringford said. ‘They hit me.’

‘Who did?’ The Prince mopped a bleeding cut and clearly thought the remark was the rambling of concussion.

‘Those men... I...’ He broke off and focused his dazed eyes with great deliberation on the Prince’s face, as if the act of keeping his glance steady was also helping to reorganise his thoughts.

‘I drove here... after. I felt... I was sweating. I remember turning in through the gates... and seeing the house...’

‘Which men?’ said the Prince.

‘The ones you sent... about the horse.’

‘I didn’t send any men.’

Farringford blinked slowly and re-established the concentrating stare.

‘They came... to the stable. Just when I was thinking... time to come here... see this fellow... someone... you want me to...’

The Prince nodded. ‘That’s right. Randall Drew, here.’

‘Yeah... well... Higgins had got my car out... the Rover... said I wanted the Porsche but something about new tyres... so I just went into the yard... to see if Groucho’s legs OK... which Lakeland said they were, but wanted to look myself, you know... So there they were, saying could they have a word... you’d sent them. I said I was in a hurry... got into the Rover ... they just crowded in after me... punched me... one of them drove down the road, past the village... then they stopped... and the sods knocked me about... gave them as good as I got... but two to one... no good, you know.’

‘They robbed you?’ the Prince said. ‘We’ll have to consider the police.’ He looked worried. Police meant publicity, and unfavourable publicity was anathema to the Prince.

‘No...’ Farringford closed his eyes. ‘They said... to keep away... from Alyosha.’

‘They what?’ The Prince jerked as if he too had been hit.

‘That’s right... knew you wouldn’t like it...’

‘What else did they say?’

‘Nothing. Bloody ironic...’ said Farringford rather faintly. It’s you... who wants Alyosha... found... Far as I’m concerned... whole thing can stay... buried.’

‘Just rest,’ said the Princess anxiously, wiping red oozing drops from his grazed forehead. ‘Don’t talk any more, Johnny, there’s a lamb.’ She looked up at the two of us, standing at the sofa’s foot. ‘What will you do about the cars?’

The Prince stared morosely at the two burnt-out wrecks and at five empty extinguishers which lay around like scarlet torpedoes. An acrid smell in the November air was all that was left of the thick column of smoke and flame which had risen higher than the rooftops. The firemen, still in the shape of houseman and gardener, stood in the background, looking smugly at their handiwork and waiting for the next gripping instalment.

‘Do you suppose he fainted?’ said the Prince.

‘It sounds like it, sir,’ I said. ‘He said he was sweating. Not much fun being beaten up like that.’

‘And he never could stand the sight of blood.’

The Prince traced with his eye the path the Rover would have taken with an unconscious driver had not my car been parked slap in the way.

‘He’d’ve crashed into one of those beeches,’ said the Prince. ‘And his foot was on the accelerator...’

Across the lawn a double row of stately, mature trees stretched away from the house, thick with criss-crossing branches, and bare except for a last dusting of dried brown leaves. They had been planted, one would guess, as a break against the north-east winds, in an age when sculpture of the land was designed to delight the eye of future generations, and their sturdy trunks would have stopped a tank, let alone a Rover. They were lucky, I thought, to have survived where so many had fallen to drought, fungus and gales.

‘I’m glad he didn’t hit the beeches,’ said the Prince, and left me unsure whether it was for Johnny’s sake or theirs. ‘Sorry about your car, of course. I hope it was insured, and all that? Better just tell the insurers it was a parking accident. Keep it simple. Cars get written off so easily, these days. You don’t want to claim against Johnny, or anything like that, do you?’

I shook my head reassuringly. The Prince smiled faintly with relief and relaxed several notches.

‘We don’t want the place crawling with Press, do you see? Telephoto lenses... Any sniff of this and they’d be down here in droves.’

‘But too late for the action,’ I said.

He looked at me in alarm. ‘You won’t say anything about us hauling Johnny out, will you? Not to anyone. I don’t want the Press getting hold of a story like that. It really doesn’t do.’

‘Would you mind people knowing you would take a slight risk to rescue your wife’s brother, sir?’

‘Yes, I should,’ he said positively. ‘Don’t you say a word, there’s a good chap.’ He cast a glance at my singed hair. ‘And not so much of the “slight”, come to that.’ He put his head on one side. ‘We could say you did it yourself, if you like.’

‘No, sir, I don’t like.’

‘Didn’t think you would. You wouldn’t want them crawling all over you with their notebooks any more than I should.’

He turned away and with a movement of his hand that was more a suggestion than a command, he called over the hovering gardener.

‘What do we do about all this, Bob?’ he said.

The gardener was knowledgeable about breakdown trucks and suitable garages, and said he would fix it. His manner with the Prince was comfortable and spoke of long term mutual respect, which would have irritated the anti-royalists no end.

‘Don’t know what I’d do without Bob,’ confirmed the Prince as we walked back towards the house. ‘If I ring up shops or garages and say who I am they either don’t believe it and say yes, they’re the Queen of Sheba, or else they’re so fussed they don’t listen properly and get everything wrong. Bob will get those cars shifted without any trouble, but if I tried to arrange it myself the first people to arrive would be the reporters.’

He stopped on the doorstep and looked back at the skeleton of what had been my favourite vehicle.

‘We’ll have to fix you a car to get home in,’ he said. ‘Lend you one.’

‘Sir,’ I said. ‘Who or what is Alyosha?’

‘Ha!’ he said explosively, his head turning to me sharply, his eyes suddenly shining. ‘That’s the first bit of interest you’ve shown without me actually forcing you into it.’

‘I did say I would see what I could do.’

‘Meaning to do as precious little as possible.’

‘Well, I...’

‘And looking as if you’d been offered rotting fish.’

‘Er...’ I said. ‘Well... what about Alyosha?’

‘That’s just the point,’ the Prince said. ‘We don’t know about Alyosha. That’s just what I want you to find out.’

Johnny Farringford got himself out of hospital and back home pretty fast, and I drove over to see him three days after the accident.

‘Sorry about your car,’ he said, looking at the Range-Rover in which I had arrived. ‘Bit of a buggers’ muddle, what?’

He was slightly nervous, and still pale. The numerous facial cuts were healing with the quick crusts of youth and looked unlikely to leave permanent scars; and he moved as if the soreness still in his body was after all more a matter of muscle than bone. Nothing, I thought a shade ruefully, that would stop him training hard for the Olympics.

‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Coffee, and all that.’

He led the way into a thatched cottage and we stepped straight into a room that deserved a magazine article on traditional country living. Stone flagged floors, good rugs, heavy supporting beams, inglenook fire-place, exposed old bricks, and masses of sagging sofas and chairs in faded chintzy covers.

‘This place isn’t mine,’ he said, sensing my inspection. ‘It’s rented. I’ll get the coffee.’

He headed towards a door at the far end, and I slowly followed. The kitchen, where he was pouring boiling water into a filter pot, was as modern as money could make it.

‘Sugar? Milk?’ he said. ‘Would you rather have tea?’

‘Milk, please. Coffee’s fine.’

He carried the loaded tray back into the living-room and put it on a low table in front of the fire-place. Logs were stacked there ready on a heap of old dead ash, but the fire, like the cottage itself, was cold. I coughed a couple of times and drank the hot liquid gratefully, warmed inside if not out.

‘How are you feeling now?’ I asked.

‘Oh... all right.’

‘Still shaken, I should imagine.’

He shivered. ‘I understand I’m lucky to be alive. Good of you to dig me out, and all that.’

‘It was your brother-in-law, as much as me.’

‘Beyond the call of duty, one might say.’

He fidgeted with the sugar bowl and his spoon, making small movements for their own sake.

‘Tell me about Alyosha,’ I said.

He flicked a quick glance at my face and looked away, leaving me the certainty that what he mainly felt at that moment was depression.

‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he said tiredly. ‘Alyosha is just a name which cropped up in the summer. One of the German team died at Burghley in September, and someone said it was because of Alyosha who came from Moscow. Of course there were enquiries and so on, but I never heard the results because I wasn’t directly involved, do you see?’

‘But... indirectly?’ I suggested.

He gave me another quick glance and a faint smile.

‘I knew him quite well. The German chap. One does, do you see? One meets all the same people everywhere, at every international event.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well... I went out with him one evening, to a club in London. I was stupid, I admit it, but I thought it was just a gambling club. He played backgammon, as I do. I had taken him to my club a few days earlier, you know, so I thought he was just repaying my, er, hospitality.’

‘But it wasn’t just a gambling club?’ I said, prompting him as he lapsed into gloomy silence.

‘No.’ He sighed. ‘It was full of, well... transvestites.’ His depression increased. ‘I didn’t realise, at first. No one would have done. They all looked like women. Attractive. Pretty, even, some of them. We were shown to a table. It was dark. And there was this girl, in the spotlight, doing a striptease, taking off a lot of cloudy gold scarf things. She was beautiful... dark-skinned, but not black... marvellous dark eyes... the most stunning little breasts. She undressed right down to the skin and then did a sort of dance with a bright pink feathery boa thing... it was brilliant, really. One would see her backview totally naked, but when she turned round there was always the boa falling in the... er... strategic place. When it was over, and I was applauding, Hans leant across grinning like a monkey and said into my ear, that she was a boy.’ He grimaced. ‘I felt a complete fool. I mean... one doesn’t mind seeing performances like that if one knows. But to be taken in...’

‘Embarrassing,’ I said, agreeing.

‘I laughed it off,’ he said. ‘I mean, one has to, doesn’t one? And there was sort of weird fascination, of course. Hans said he had seen the boy in a nightclub in West Berlin, and he had thought it might amuse me. He seemed to be enjoying my discomfiture. Thought it a huge joke. I had to pretend to take it well, do you see, because he was my host, but to be honest, I thought it a bit off.’

A spot of dented pride, I thought.

‘The Event started two days after that,’ he said, ‘and Hans died the day after, after the cross-country.’

‘How?’ I asked. ‘How did he die?’

‘Heart attack.’

I was surprised. ‘Wasn’t he a bit young?’

‘Yes,’ Johnny said. ‘Only thirty-six. Makes one think, doesn’t it?’

‘And then what happened?’ I said.

‘Oh... nothing, really. Nothing one could put one’s finger on. But there were these rumours flying about, and I expect I was the last to hear them, that there was something queer about Hans, and about me as well. That we were, in fact, gay, if you see what I mean? And that a certain Alyosha from Moscow was jealous and had made a fuss with Hans, and because of it all he had a heart attack. And there was a message, do you see, that if I ever went to Moscow, Alyosha would be waiting.’

‘What sort of message? I mean, in what form was it delivered?’ I said.

He looked frustrated. ‘But that’s just it, the message itself was only a rumour. Everyone seemed to know it. I was told it by several people. I just don’t know who started it.’

‘Did you take it seriously?’ I asked.

‘No, of course I didn’t. It’s all rubbish. No one would have the slightest reason to be jealous of me when it came to Hans Kramer. In fact, you know, I more or less avoided him after that evening, as much as one could do without being positively boorish, do you see?’

I put my empty cup on the tray and wished I had worn a second sweater. Johnny himself seemed totally impervious to cold.

‘But your brother-in-law,’ I said, ‘takes it very seriously indeed.’

He made a face. ‘He’s paranoid about the Press. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘He certainly doesn’t seem to like them.’

‘They persecuted him when he was trying to keep them off the scent of his romance with my sister. I thought it a bit of a laugh, really, but I suppose it wasn’t to him. And then there was a lot of brouhaha, if you remember, because a fortnight after the engagement our mama upped and scarpered with her hairdresser.’

‘I’d forgotten that,’ I said.

‘Just before I went to Eton,’ Johnny said. ‘It slightly deflated my confidence, do you see, at a point when a fellow needs all he can get.’ He spoke flippantly, but the echo of a desperate hurt was clearly there. ‘So they couldn’t get married for months, and when they did, the papers raked up my mama’s sex-life practically every day. And any time there’s any real news story about any of us, up it pops again. Which is why HRH has this thing.’

‘I can see,’ I said soberly, ‘why he wouldn’t want you mixed up in a murky scandal at the Olympics with the eyes of the gossip columns swivelling your way like searchlights. Particularly with transvestite overtones.’

The Prince’s alarm, indeed, seemed to me now to be entirely justified, but Johnny disagreed.

‘There can’t be any scandal, because there isn’t any,’ he said. ‘The whole thing is absolutely stupid.’

‘I think that’s what your brother-in-law wants to prove, and the Foreign Office also, because anyone going to Russia is vulnerable, but anyone with a reputation for homosexual behaviour is a positive political risk, as it is still very much against the law there. They do want you to take part in the Olympics. They’re trying to get me to investigate the rumours entirely for your sake.’

He compressed his mouth obstinately. ‘But there isn’t any need.’

‘What about the men?’ I said.

‘What men?’

‘The men who attacked you and warned you off Alyosha.’

‘Oh.’ He looked blank. ‘Well... I should think it’s obvious that whoever Alyosha is, she doesn’t want an investigation any more than I do. It will probably do her a lot of harm... did you think of that?’

He stood up restlessly, picked up the tray, and carried it out to the kitchen. He rattled the cups out there for a bit and when he came back showed no inclination to sit down again.

‘Come out and see the horses,’ he said.

‘Tell me about the men first,’ I said persuasively.

‘What about them?’

He put a foot on a pile of logs beside the fire and fiddled unnecessarily with the fire tongs.

‘Were they English?’

He looked up in surprise. ‘Well, I suppose so.’

‘You heard them speak. What sort of accents did they have?’

‘Ordinary. I mean... well, you know... ordinary working-class accents.’

‘But they differ,’ I said. He shook his head, but all accents differed, to my mind, to an infinitely variable degree.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘were they Irish? Scots? Geordies? London? Birmingham? Liverpool? West Country? All those are easy.’

‘London, then,’ he said.

‘Not foreign? Not Russian, for example?’

‘No.’ He seemed to see the point for the first time. ‘They had a rough, sloppy way of speaking, swallowing all the consonants. Southern England. London or the South-East, I should think, or Berkshire.’

‘The accent you hear around here, every day?’

‘I suppose so, yes. Anyway, I didn’t notice anything special about it.’

‘What did they look like?’

‘They were both big.’ He arranged the fire irons finally in a tidy row and straightened to his full height. ‘Taller than I am. They were just men. Nothing remarkable. No beards or limps or scars down the cheek. I’m awfully sorry to be so useless, but honestly I don’t think I’d know them again if I passed them in the street.’

‘But you would,’ I guessed, ‘if they walked into this room.’

‘You mean I’d feel it was them?’

‘I mean I expect you remember more than you think, and if your memory were jogged it would all come rushing back.’

He looked doubtful, but he said, ‘If I do see them again, I’ll certainly let you know.’

‘They might of course return with another, er, warning,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘If you can’t persuade your brother-in-law to drop the whole affair.’

‘Christ, do you think so?’ He swung his thin beaky nose towards the door as if expecting instant attack. ‘You do say the most bloody comforting things, don’t you?’

‘The crude deterrent,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Biff bang.’

‘Oh... yes.’

‘Cheap and often effective,’ I said.

‘Yes, well. I mean... so what?’

‘So who was it meant to deter? You, me, or your brother-in-law?’

He gave me a slow look behind which the alternatives seemed to be being inspected for the first time.

‘See what you mean,’ he said. ‘But it’s too subtle for me by half. Come out and see the horses. Now those I do understand. Even if they kill you, there’s no malice.’

He shed a good deal of his nervousness and most of his depression as we walked the fifty yards across the country road to the stables. Horses were his natural element, and being among them obviously gave him comfort and confidence. I wondered whether his half-controlled jitters with me were simply because I was human, and not because of my errand.

The stable yard was a small quadrangle of elderly wooden boxes round an area of impacted clay and gravel. There were clipped patches of grass, a straggling tree, and empty tubs for flowers. Green paint, nearing the end of its life. A feeling that weeds would grow in the spring.

‘When I inherit the lolly, I’ll buy a better yard,’ Johnny said, uncannily picking up my thoughts again. ‘This is rented. Trustees, do you see.’

‘It’s a friendly place,’ I said mildly.

‘Unsuitable.’

The trustees however had put the money where it mattered, which was in four legs, head and tail. Although it was then the comparative rest period of their annual cycle, the five resident horses looked well-muscled and fit. For the most part bred by thoroughbred stallions out of hunter mares, they had looks as well as performance, and Johnny told me the history of each with a decisive and far from casual pride. I saw come alive in him for the first time the single-minded, driving fanaticism which had to be there: the essential fuel for Olympic fire.

Even the crinkly red hair seemed to crisp into tighter curls, though I dare say this was due to the dampness in the air. But there was nothing climatic about the zeal in the eye, the tautness of the jaw, or the intensity of his manner. Enthusiasm of that order was bound to be infectious. I found myself responding to it easily, and understood why everyone was so anxious to make his Russian journey possible.

‘I’ve an outside chance for the British team with this fellow,’ he said, briskly slapping the rounded quarters of a long-backed chestnut, and reeling off the fullest list of successes. ‘But he’s not top world class. I know that. I need something better. The German horse. I’ve seen him. I really covet that horse.’ He let out his breath abruptly and gave a small laugh, as if hearing his own obsession and wanting to disguise it. ‘I do go on a bit.’

The self-deprecation in his voice showed nowhere in his healing face.

‘I want a Gold,’ he said.