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S white paint glimmered against scintil-lant grass as he had always remembered, and the bookmakers' shouts came on lulls of the wind, exactly like listening to a sea shell. He could hear his father's voice saying Always come here when you can. It's a very good thing to get away sometimes, and it's been the greatest possible help to me. I've often looked at this and thought to myself if my father hadn't been such a harebrained ass I'd own my estates in China and Ceylon, my plantations in Darjeeling, my shipping line, my London house, the place in Scotland, and that very nice acreage in Kent, and doubtless a good deal more beside. And I'd have my racing stable. But here we stand. I haven't exactly been a slacker, Hamish. To think I paid off all his debts twenty shillings in the pound, idiot that I was. What else could I have done? Tell me. That's why your mother's never had a decent piece of jewellery to her name. Hang it, the only time we were ever able to afford anything in the way of a holiday abroad was in 1913. Just getting on my feet. Then the war. It wasn't gambling, it wasn't anything of the sort that broke me. Do try to remember that. It was simply the sort of filthy luck that dogged your grandfather. What a different life we all might have had. Damn him. I really don't mean that, of course. But damn him just the same. Wicked old fool he was. Really, wicked. What?
That weary voice in its always-bitter rind of affectionate hatred seemed to have paused there over the years, real as a statue. It was odd and rather sad to think both Mummy and Father gone. He often wondered what sort of a show the pair of them had managed to get into Up There. Stupid to think like that, but there it was. If there was anything in it, of course. Theology and that sort of thing
Epsom
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had always been rather beyond him. He liked to think of there being some sort of Bourne and so forth for the real triers. They both had been all that, every scrap. Even his school fees had come off their table and their backs. He knew it too well. But—his father's voice again—damn it, the fellow's got to have it. We produced him, and he mustn't disgrace us. He can't go to Eton. Which infuriates me to intoxication. But if we can't, we can't. He'll have to pig it somewhere else. Poor wretch.
The breeze cut between the knees and navel and around the neck as he remembered it had on the first and last time they stood there. A starched collar gave the breeze plenty of play almost to the point of producing a piped note. But—Father again—I simply will not wear an overcoat. I don't care what the weather's like. I'd rather freeze. And as for those brutes and their damned mackintoshes, great God. Never have been thought of in my day. Sign of the times, I suppose. Mackintoshes. A fine name. Always reminds me of the moors. Grouse. You've never—well, there it is.
He had since, though. But going up as a guest was different from owning a shoot. Grandfather's had been among the largest. That thought rather saved the day. The feeling was much too much that of a poor relation. But he was used to it. He remembered poor old Fatty Mantell bursting out of a blind and running over to Geordie Kelsoe, almost purple in the face and tears streaming from his little blue eyes and screaming Damn you, you shot me. If you do it again, I'll bloody well shoot you. And of course he would. And poor Geordie standing there wondering whethere to be horribly rude or gustily apologetic or a little of both. A few years later and they were both under the same pile of stones in Tunisia, well shot by somebody else. Ironic, really.
But there it was.
The usual perfect summer weather almost occluded everything. Rainy skies drooped mist into the hollow, and a puddle or two shone here and there, almost a balance for the periodic golden gleam of horseflesh turning in the paddock. He preferred this height, to look down and see what might have been the scene, if not of annual triumph, then at least of a day to be wished for, as it were, with a horse carrying the Gleave colours (Sangue de Boeuf, gold hoops,