'Young Higgins is jumping out of his skin,' Jo said.
Young Higgins was the name of that day's horse. Young Higgins was thirteen, a venerable gentleman out to disprove rumours of retirement. We all interpreted 'jumping out of his skin' as meaning fit, sound and pricking his ears with enthusiasm, and at his age one couldn't ask for much more. Older horses than he had won the Grand National, but Young Higgins and I had fallen in the great race the only time we'd tried it, and to my regret Jo had decided on no more attempts.
'We'll see you in the parade ring, then, Ian, before the race,' George said, and Jo added, 'And give the old boy a good time.'
I nodded, smiling. Giving all of us a good time was the point of the proceedings. Young Higgins was definitely included.
The minute George and Jo turned away to go off towards the grandstands, someone tapped me on the back of the shoulder. I turned round to see who it was and to my total astonishment found myself face to face with Lucy's older brother, Malcolm's first child, my half-brother Donald.
'Good heavens,' I said. 'You've never been to the races in your life.'
He often told me he hadn't, saying rather superciliously that he didn't approve of the sordid gambling.
'I haven't come for the races,' he said crossly. 'I've come to see you about Malcolm's taking leave of his senses.'
'How… er…?' I stopped. 'Did Joyce send you?' I said.
'What if she did? We are all concerned. She told us where to find you, certainly.'
'Did she tell the whole family?' I asked blankly.
'How do I know? She telephoned us. I daresay she telephoned everyone she could get hold of. You know what she's like. She's your mother after all.'
Even so late in his life he couldn't keep out of his voice the old resentments, and perhaps also, I reflected, they were intensifying with age. My mother had supplanted his, he was saying, and any indiscretion my mother ever committed was in some way my fault. He had thought in that illogical way for as long as I'd been aware of him, and nothing had changed.
Donald was, in the family's opinion, the brother nearest in looks to myself, and I wasn't sure I liked it. Irrefutably, he was the same height and had blue eyes less intense in colour than Malcolm's. Agreed, Donald had middling brown curly hair and shoulders wider than his hips. I didn't wear a bushy moustache though, and I just hoped I didn't walk with what I thought of as a self-important strut; and I sometimes tried to make sure, after I'd been in Donald's company, that I absolutely didn't.
Donald's life had been so disrupted when Malcolm had ousted Vivien, Donald always told us, that he had never been able to decide properly on a career. It couldn't have been easy, I knew, to survive such an upheaval, but Donald had only been nine at the time, a bit early for life decisions. In any event, as an adult he had drifted from job to job in hotels, coming to harbour at length as secretary of a prestigious golf club near Henley-on-Thames, a post which I gathered had proved ultimately satisfactory in social standing, which was very important to his self- esteem.
I didn't either like or dislike Donald particularly. He was eleven years older than I was. He was there.
'Everyone insists you stop Malcolm squandering the family money,' he said, predictably.
'It's HIS money, not the family's,' I said.
'What?' Donald found the idea ridiculous. 'What you've got to do is explain that he owes it to us to keep the family fortune intact until we inherit it. Unfortunately we know he won't listen to any of us except you, and now that you appear to have made up your quarrel with him, you are elected to be our spokesman. Joyce thinks we have to convince you first of the need to stop Malcolm, but I told her it was ridiculous. You don't need convincing, you want to be well off one day just the same as the rest of us, of course you do, it's only natural.'
I was saved from both soul-searching and untrue disclaimers by the arrival of Helen, Donald's wife, who had apparently been buying a race card
'We're not staying,' Donald said disapprovingly, eyeing it.
She gave him a vague smile. 'You never know,' she said.
Beautiful and brainless, Malcolm had said of he rand perhaps he was right. Tall and thin, she moved with natural Style and made cheap clothes look expensive: I knew they were cheap because she had a habit of saying where they'd come from and how much she'd paid for them, inviting admiration of her thriftiness. Donald always tried to shut her up.
'Do tell us where to watch the races from,' she said.
'We're not here for that,' Donald said.
'No, dear, we're here because we need money now that the boys have started at Eton.'
'No, dear,' Donald said sharply.
'But you know we can't afford…'
'Do be quiet, dear,' Donald said.
' Eton costs a bomb,' I said mildly, knowing that Donald's income would hardly stretch to one son there, let alone two. Donald had twin boys, which seemed to run in the family.
'Of course it does,' Helen said, 'but Donald puts such store by it. 'My sons are at Eton,' that sort of thing. Gives him standing with the people he deals with in the golf club.'
'Helen, dear, do be quiet.' Donald's embarrassment showed, but she was undoubtedly right.
'We thought Donald might have inherited before the boys reached thirteen,' she said intensely. 'As he hasn't, we're borrowing every penny we can to pay the fees, the same as we borrowed for the prep school and a lot of other things. But we've borrowed against Donald's expectations… so you see it's essential for us that there really is plenty to inherit, as there are so many people to share it with. We'll be literally bankrupt if Malcolm throws too much away… and I don't think Donald could face it.'
I opened my mouth to answer her but no sound came out. I felt as if I'd been thrust into a farce over which I had no control. Walking purposefully to join us came Serena, Ferdinand and Debs.
CHAPTER SIX
'Stay right here,' I said to all of them. 'I have to go into the weighing-room to deal with a technicality. Stay right here until I come out.'
They nodded with various frowns, and I dived into privacy in a desperate search for a sheet of paper and an envelope.
I wrote to Malcolm:
Half the family have turned up here, sent by Joyce. For God's sake stay where you are, keep out of sight and wait until I come to fetch you.
I stuck the note into the envelope, wrote Malcolm's name on the outside, and sought out an official who had enough rank to send someone to deliver it.
'My father is lunching in the Directors' dining-room,' I said. 'And it's essential that he gets this note immediately.'
The official was obliging. He was going up to the Stewards' room anyway, he said, and he would take it himself. With gratitude and only a minor lessening of despair – because it would be just like Malcolm to come down contrarily to confront the whole bunch – I went out again into the sunlight and found the five of them still faithfully waiting exactly where I'd left them.
'I say,' Debs said, half mocking, 'you do look dashing in all that kit.'
Donald looked at her in surprise, and I had a vivid impression of his saying soon in his golf club, 'My brother, the amateur jockey…', knowing that if I'd been a professional he would have hushed it up if he could. A real snob, Donald: but there were worse sins.
Debs, Ferdinand's second wife, had come to the races in a black leather coat belted at the waist, with shoulder-length blond hair above and long black boots below. Her eyelids were purple, like her fingernails. The innocence I'd photographed in her a year ago was in danger of disappearing.
Ferdinand, shorter than Debs and more like Malcolm than ever, appeared to be in his usual indecision over
