Handicap horse races are just not fair.
The poor animal in front was carrying twenty pounds more than mine, and surging so fast up that hill with all that extra weight had sapped his energy and drained his spirit. The jockey was doing his best but it was not enough.
Just yards short of the finish line, I swept past him as if he was going backwards, to snatch the victory.
The crowd cheered the favourite home, and I was applauded back to the unsaddling enclosure to be met by a beaming owner who hadn’t, after all, lost his shirt.
‘Champion,’ he said. ‘Champion.’ He repeated it over and over again, the huge relief obvious in his demeanour. He slapped me on the back as I removed the saddle. ‘But bloody hell, boy, you nearly gave me a heart attack. I really thought you’d left it too late.’
I didn’t enlighten him that I’d thought the same.
‘What part of “take it easy from the start” didn’t you understand?’ asked the trainer seriously. Then he smiled. ‘But you did the right thing to make the running. Well done, lad, well ridden. Congratulations on your first winner as a professional jockey.’
My first winner as a professional jockey. Just how good did that sound?
A few journalists from the northern newspapers were on hand and they were eager to ask me questions or get a quote as I walked towards the weighing room. In fact, I had quite a scrum chasing me, each of them pushing a mini tape recorder towards my face.
‘Did you mean to leave your run so late?’ one asked.
‘Did you learn that technique from your dad?’ shouted another.
‘It’s in his genes,’ quipped a third. ‘Chip off the old block.’
I suddenly longed so much that the old block himself had been there to see it. I pushed past the throng to weigh in and change, hoping they hadn’t spotted the tears welling in my eyes.
8
Susi Ashcroft is already waiting for me in the lobby of the Kulm Hotel when I arrive wearing the smartest clothes I can muster – no suit, but I do have a blazer and a tie.
It is Saturday evening and all the town hostelries are doing good après-ski business with customers still in bright multicoloured padded jackets, ski boots and woolly hats, spilling out across the pavements.
How I wish I could stay with them rather than going to this party. But I was brought up by my mother to be polite, especially to a woman, and I decided I couldn’t just not turn up and leave Susi waiting for me forlornly on her own.
‘Ah, there you are, Miles. Where have you been?’
‘You said to meet you here at six,’ I reply in my best pained voice.
‘Did I? But the party starts at six. The concierge said he can’t find your room number. Claims he’s never heard of you.’
‘That’s because I’m not staying here.’
‘Why on earth not? Surely you’re not with Brenda at Badrutt’s Palace?’
‘Not there either. I’m staying down in the town.’ I decide not to give too many details. Susi doesn’t do budgets.
‘Well, you’re here now. Come on, let’s go.’
Susi picks up her coat from a chair, a knee-length white fur coat with black specks, and I hold it for her as she puts it on over her little black dress and bright diamond necklace.
‘Nice coat.’
‘Thank you.’ She smiles. ‘It’s lynx. Thank goodness Switzerland is one place you can still wear real fur and not get shouted at. I’d never wear this at home, not these days.’
I cynically wonder if the fur and the diamonds are all about trying to outdo Brenda.
We go out of the lobby and the hotel courtesy car is there, waiting with the driver holding open the door for Susi.
‘But it’s only next door,’ I say. ‘A hundred yards at most.’
‘I’m not walking anywhere in these heels. Get in.’
The driver seems unperturbed that his journey is so short and within a few seconds we are drawing up at the entrance to the Country Club, where there is a line of people outside waiting to go in, some of whom I recognise from racing and a few from the tobogganing club who have obviously been invited, including the man I had spoken with earlier on the Kulm Hotel terrace.
‘There’s Brenda,’ Susi says with irritation. ‘Talking to Jerry.’
I look over to where my former employer is standing in line chatting with a lady and a couple of young men as they wait to go in.
Brenda is obviously playing the same game as Susi. She has on a full-length fur coat that reaches almost to the ground.
‘Is that a mink she’s wearing?’ I ask.
‘Probably sable, knowing her.’
‘Is that better than mink?’ I am not very au fait with the niceties of fur coats. I’m not even sure I know what type of animal a sable is.
‘It’s the most expensive fur of them all,’ Susi says, clearly not liking to be upstaged. ‘Brenda loves her clothes. She used to be an artist illustrating fashion in those old-fashioned newspaper adverts.’
‘Is there a Mr Fenton?’
‘There used to be, years ago. Made an absolute fortune from property and owning most of London’s casinos and bingo halls. Brenda is his merry widow and she’s now spending it. Those young men she’s with are her twin grandsons. They’re a right dodgy pair too, I can tell you.’
The driver gets out and opens the door for Susi.
‘Not yet,’ she snaps at him. ‘Wait for them to go in first.’
So we sit in the car for a few minutes more, until the line has diminished and all is clear.
Finally, Susi says it’s OK and we climb out.
The party is taking place on the first floor of a traditional Swiss ice pavilion that dates from 1905, from when the winter-sport business was in its infancy.
Hanging from the ceiling are old bobsleds and toboggans, and the walls are adorned with scores of framed photographs chronicling the history of the place.
And what a history.
The pavilion overlooks a natural ice rink where, in both 1928 and 1948, the opening ceremonies of two separate Winter Olympic Games took place, and on which many of the gold medals were won and lost.
But tonight, all the action is inside.
The regular restaurant tables have been moved aside and the space is occupied by a hundred and fifty or so guests, mostly sipping champagne and nibbling on canapés, although I choose a sparkling water from the offered tray.
Jerry Dickinson is one of the first to notice my arrival, and he makes a beeline straight across the room towards me. He has put on a few pounds since I last saw him and he has to squeeze his increased bulk through the throng.
‘Bloody hell, Miles!’ he exclaims when he finally makes it. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
It is a typical Jerry welcome.
I haven’t seen him for almost seven years – and we didn’t part on the best of terms. Hence, I am not quite sure how he feels towards me now.
‘Like everyone else, I’m here for the champagne,’ I reply, even though I’m not actually drinking it.
‘I mean in St Moritz,’ he says with slight irritation.
‘I spend several weeks here every winter.’
I instantly regret telling him that.
‘Doing what?’ he asks in astonishment.
‘Oh, various things,’ I say. ‘It’s good for my health.’
There is something that stops me telling him that I am here to ride the ice of the Cresta Run. My life is totally different now and, somehow, I want to keep it secret from those who still inhabit my former one.
He clearly thinks I’m crazy, which is not far from the truth. Last time he saw me I was crazy – undeniably certifiable.
* * *
It had been Jerry Dickinson who had enticed me to leave Malton and go back south, to return to my childhood home of Lambourn, in the year in which I turned twenty-one.
That winner at Hexham in early November, while not exactly kick-starting my career as a professional jockey, certainly gav
e it a boost and I was soon being offered rides by other trainers, as well as riding more of those sent to post by my actual employer.
By Christmas I had more than three dozen races under my belt, and I’d won five of them. When the jump season finished in late April, I’d ridden 13 winners from nearly a hundred rides and I was beginning to make a bit of a name for myself among the local racegoers, so much so that I was becoming recognised around the town.
‘Ey up, lad!’ said the man who ran the newsagents when I popped in to buy a copy of the Racing Post that mentioned me in an article. ‘You’re a reet good ’un, you are. Made some brass on yer last Wednesday at Wetherby, so ’ave that on me.’
I smiled at him. ‘Thanks.’
And my flag continued to fly high as the new season progressed through the summer and autumn such that I was being offered more and more rides. But all of them were at the northern tracks and mostly for other Malton trainers.
I needed to extend my field further than that if I was to become a champion jockey, and it was a ride I was offered at Cheltenham the following spring that gave me the perfect opportunity to attract the attention of the trainers in the south.
Named in honour of the most successful jump trainer of all time, who saddled more than four thousand winners in a career that saw him become leading trainer of the year on no fewer than fifteen occasions, the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle was the very last of the twenty-eight races of the annual Cheltenham steeplechasing festival.
Held at 5.30pm on the fourth and final day, when some of the seventy thousand spectators were already making their way out to the car parks in a futile attempt to avoid the inevitable traffic jams, it was the highlight of the meeting for me.
I was engaged to ride the same horse that I had won on at Wetherby just after Christmas and the fact that we had both made the journey all the way to Gloucestershire from North Yorkshire had not gone unnoticed by those remaining to watch. Hence, and in spite of going up in the weights due to that win, we were the second favourite in the betting.
The maximum permitted number of twenty-four runners lined up at the two-and-a-half-mile start in the gathering gloom of a cloudy late afternoon in mid-March. Some of the crowd may have already departed but most had remained – the grandstands were packed, and there was scarcely any available standing space on the members’ lawn.
‘This is it,’ I said to myself. ‘Your chance to shine in front of those that matter.’
The horse’s owner and trainer had stood together in the parade ring, both of them hopping from foot to foot with nerves. Having a fancied runner at the Cheltenham Festival was a far cry from a midweek race at a sparsely populated northern track in December, and this was a big deal for them too.
Both the horse and I were all set to go when the starter dropped his flag, and we were away at a good pace as we ran towards the first of nine flights of hurdles.
I had come first to Cheltenham as a babe in arms at a time when my mother was still attending race meetings. Almost as soon as I could walk, I had accompanied my father round the course on his many visits, and I knew every blade of grass. So, in spite of this being my first ride here, it felt like home, and I was relaxed and comfortable as the field negotiated the initial loop and the first three flights of hurdles up to and past the packed enclosures for the first time.
By the time we reached the end of the back straight, I knew we were going to win. As we passed the highest point of the course and swung left-handed down the hill, I had what in racing parlance is known as a ‘double handful’, the true origin of which is as obscure as the saying itself. Suffice to say that it meant that my horse was going exceptionally well, full of running and still on a tight rein, while those around me were beginning to labour.
I kicked on hard down the slope and we flew the second last, gaining lengths in the air over our rivals.
We jumped the last hurdle well clear of the field and, although my horse began to tie up slightly with tiredness on the climb to the finish line, he won easily by six lengths.
I remember standing tall in the stirrups and saluting the crowd as they cheered our success. Looking back, I believe that that particular moment was the happiest I have ever been, either before or since.
* * *
‘Can I introduce Brenda Fenton?’ Jerry says, bringing me back from my daydreaming. ‘Brenda, this is Miles Pussett.’
Brenda is flanked on either side by her attentive grandsons, who I take to be in their early twenties – identical. I dutifully shake her hand and decide that she must be in her eighties, but age has been kind to her. She’s also wearing large diamond earrings and I wonder somewhat unkindly if, rather than to compete with Susi Ashcroft, they are there to distract the eye from an aging face.
‘Pussett?’ she says in a no-nonsense tone. ‘Are you related to that jockey?’
Jerry laughs. ‘He is that jockey.’
‘No, he’s not,’ Brenda says, turning to him, unamused. ‘The Pussett I know of is dead. I’m eighty-nine, you know. I go back a long way.’
‘Ah, you mean Jim Pussett,’ I say. ‘He was my father. But I was a jockey too.’
‘So, what do you do now?’ Brenda asks, almost accusingly.
‘Oh, this and that. I run a holiday business.’
She looks at me quizzically but I don’t elaborate, so she quickly loses interest in me and goes in search of more riveting conversation elsewhere.
My ‘holiday business’ is actually renting out deck chairs on one of the beaches of the Isle of Wight. I also have a sideline selling windbreaks and the wooden mallets needed to bash their poles into the sand. It may not be glamorous and, in truth, it’s not particularly lucrative, but it does keep me busy and provides just enough income during the few busy summer months to allow me to spend some of the winter ones in St Moritz.
It is also relatively stress-free and that helps to keep me sane.
OK, so I’ve met Brenda, Susi is happily talking to others, and Jerry is chatting to the former racehorse owner who is also a fellow member of the tobogganing club. It’s time for me to go. I can’t think why I agreed to come in the first place.
But escape is not that easy.
Word is spreading that I’m here and, as Susi had said, there are a few from England at the party – people that I once knew quite well, and some who know me rather too well, even now.
‘So, Pussett, how are you keeping?’ asks one of those, coming up to me as I’m trying to make my way to the exit.
David Maitland-Butler is another racehorse trainer for whom I rode a couple of times, and one of those who had been fully aware of my problems as things went amiss in my head.
The Honourable Colonel David Maitland-Butler, OBE, to give him his full title, son of a lord and ex-commanding officer of the Coldstream Guards, who only became a racehorse trainer in his late forties, after retirement from the army.
‘Fine, thank you, Colonel.’
‘Are you fully recovered from your mental troubles?’ he asks bluntly.
‘Much improved, thank you.’
I try hard not to show any emotion in my voice. I might have once worn my heart on my sleeve but nowadays I keep a tight control on my feelings.
I have learned that it is usually easier that way.
And I am not sure that one is ever ‘fully recovered’ when it comes to mental illness. You just have to live the best you can – from day to day and week to week – clinging on to reality by your fingernails, not letting go even for a split second, or else your life will collapse around you like a house of cards.
‘Do you have a runner here tomorrow?’ I ask, changing the subject.
‘I certainly do. In the big race. And I’m not here just for the view. I intend to take home the trophy.’
No one could ever accuse Colonel Maitland-Butler of lacking confidence in his own ability. Not that anyone would, especially to his face. At least, not without receiving some abuse in return. He has a well-deserved repu
tation for being a bit of a bully towards his staff, his owners and their horses, treating them all as if they were raw recruits to his regiment. But it seems to work. He has twice recently been leading jump trainer in the UK and his yard is always overflowing with equine talent. Maybe his owners don’t mind being bullied or perhaps they are prepared to put up with it to win.
‘How is it,’ I ask him, ‘that both you and Jerry Dickinson, known mostly for jump racing, have horses running here on the flat?’
‘Primarily because of the time of year. The majority of those flat horses running at home on the all-weather in February are aged two or three, but the race here is for horses four and over. Many are older than that. Mine’s a five-year-old gelding. It’s good experience for a young hurdler who can no longer run in bumpers.’
I remember that bumper is the nickname for a National Hunt flat race, run under jumping rules for young horses who are yet to graduate to racing over hurdles. The term stems from the early days when only amateurs could ride in them and they were thought to bump along in the saddle in a rather ungainly manner.
The Colonel laughs. ‘Plus, of course, we receive generous help with our expenses from the organisers. In the end, it’s all to do with money, and the purse is also much bigger here than for a novice hurdle at Fontwell.’
He drifts away to speak to someone else while I make for the exit. But Jerry is having none of that. He intercepts me as I sidle towards the door.
‘Come on,’ he says, taking me by the arm. ‘There’s plenty more people wanting to speak to you.’
Short of physically fighting him off, I have no choice.
Once upon a time, and mostly because of who my father had been, I had some minor celebrity status in racing, and Jerry is doing his best to resurrect it, telling everyone what a great jockey I was.
His memory must be failing.
Over the next half-hour, he brings a stream of people over to be introduced to me, some I know vaguely and some I’ve never seen in my life before. One of those is the boss of White Turf’s main sponsor, a Swiss luxury watch company. This is his party.
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