Knock Down

Начало книги

Mrs Kerry Sanders looked like no Angel of Death.

Mrs Kerry Sanders looked like a rich cross American lady opening a transparent umbrella against a spatter of cold rain.

‘This,’ she said in disbelief, ‘Is Ascot goddam Sales?’

She was small and exquisitely packaged in suede with mink trimmings. Her skin put peaches to rout and her scent easily prevailed over British October weather and a hundred nearby horses. With forty years behind her she wore assurance as naturally as diamonds; and she wore diamonds like crusty knuckle-dusters across the base of all her fingers.

‘Ascot?’ she said, her voice brimming with overtones of silk hats, champagne and Royal Lawns, ‘This depressing dump?’

‘I did try to warn you,’ I said with mild apology.

She gave me a sharp unfriendly glance. ‘You didn’t say it was like something out of Dickens.’

I looked across at the primitive sale ring: eight metres in diameter, open to the skies. A patch of rough field grass in the centre encircled by an asphalt path for the horses to walk on, and surrounding that, for the comfort of the customers, an elementary wooden shelter, backed and roofed with planks.

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