Iced

by Felix Francis

  The jockey takes himself and his saddle to the weighing-in tent, leaving me holding the horse, plus the leaden breast girth.

  A breast girth is part of the ‘excluded equipment’, the things that are not weighed with the jockey. They also include the bridle and anything that the animal is wearing on its head or legs such as blinkers, horseshoes and leg bandages.

  I hang the offending item over the horse’s withers and then put the thick warm rug over the top of it. No one else has seen or noticed. I decide that it is better if it remains that way – at least until Jerry has a chance to explain.

  I look around to see if I can spot him anywhere, but he is still occupied in the winner’s enclosure, no doubt collecting his prize for having trained the winner, something that was clearly as much of a surprise for him as it was for Susi.

  I decide to take Cliveden Proposal back to the racecourse stables on the far side of the lake rather than waiting out here in the cold breeze. Jerry can find me there.

  But at the stables, I discover that the weighted breast girth is not the only strange thing about Cliveden’s tack.

  First, I take off his bridle and apply a head collar. The bridle is similar to the one I put on Foscote Boy earlier but with one major difference. Whereas Fossy’s bridle has a hollow, lightweight racing bit attached, this one is big, solid and heavy, more in keeping with those normally used for dressage, when running fast is not the aim.

  And there is more.

  The horse is wearing leather boots surrounding a cotton pad on both his fore legs. But these boots don’t actually cover the horse’s foot. Instead they wrap around the cannon bone between the knee and fetlock joints to provide support and protection for the bone and also for the tendon that runs down its back. A racehorse wearing such boots in a race is not uncommon, especially if they have a tendency to strike into their front legs with their rear when galloping. However, in this case, I find that there is something else hidden between the boots and the cotton pads. Something that certainly shouldn’t be there.

  Chain-mail.

  Strips of it, about four inches wide and eighteen inches long, carefully wound round each leg.

  Heavy and invisible.

  In all, what with the lead-filled breast girth, the heavy bridle bit and now this, I estimate that the horse has carried at least a stone over and above what it needed to, probably more.

  No wonder it didn’t win. It was like asking Usain Bolt to run the Olympic 100m final wearing water-filled wellingtons and with a ten-pin bowling ball hanging round his neck.

  And Jerry had to have put it all on the poor animal.

  But why didn’t he want it to win?

  I sit on a bail of bedding outside Cliveden’s box, staring at the evidence laid out on the floor in front of me, and wait for Jerry to appear with his explanation.

  To be honest, I don’t know whether he has actually broken any regulation. Certainly in Great Britain there are very strict rules of racing that ensure that a horse must run on its merits and be given every opportunity to achieve the best possible placing, but those rules specifically refer to the manner in which it is ridden in a race rather than to what it is wearing.

  I still know the rules pretty well – all jockeys would as their livelihoods depend on them – and I cannot think of anything in them that states a trainer must use the lightest possible equipment that’s available.

  I remain sitting there for quite a while, mulling over the questions in my head, before I hear horseshoes clattering on the ground outside. Jerry must be back with Foscote Boy.

  But he isn’t. Foscote Boy has arrived by himself.

  The horse walks right past me and into his open stable, wearing his thick rug and another one over it with ‘Winner Grand Prix St Moritz’ printed large on each side. He is still wearing his bridle and seems unconcerned, pulling the few remaining strands of hay from his net on the wall.

  I know that Jerry won’t want to speak to me but this is ridiculous. He surely can’t have simply let the horse loose to make its own way back. He must be here somewhere, hiding from the inevitable.

  I close the stable door – before the horse bolts – and go outside to look for him.

  ‘Jerry,’ I call. ‘Jerry, where are you? We need to talk.’

  But there is no reply.

  I walk down towards the frozen lake and find him there, on the edge of the ice. He is face down with his left arm outstretched to the side, and he is not moving. For a dreadful moment, I have the vision in my head of finding my mother lying in a similar fashion, dead and cold to the touch.

  I hang back, afraid, but then Jerry emits a groan and moves his arm.

  ‘Come on, you silly sod,’ I say. ‘Had too many celebratory schnapps?’

  I try and help him up but I only manage to turn him over onto his back.

  A surfeit of alcohol is not his problem.

  The surface beneath his head is red with his blood, the warm liquid turning the snow mushy. Fleetingly, it reminds me of that strawberry-flavoured iced-sugar drink served from churning machines in petrol stations.

  At first I think Jerry must have slipped and fallen, and his nose bleed is from hitting the ice, but closer inspection also reveals a nasty cut above his left eye, with general bruising and puffiness all over his face.

  Jerry has been mugged.

  15

  ‘No police,’ Jerry mumbles through his ever-swelling lips.

  ‘For God’s sake, man,’ I say. ‘You’ve been attacked. We must call the police.’

  ‘No!’ He is adamant.

  I have helped him back to the stables and he is now sitting on the bale of bedding outside Cliveden Proposal’s stall.

  ‘An ambulance, then?’

  ‘You have to pay for an ambulance in Switzerland. And, anyway, the paramedics might call the police.’

  ‘But that cut will need stitches.’

  ‘Then call me a taxi,’ Jerry orders. ‘I’ll go to a hospital in that. I’ll tell them I was bashed by a horse.’

  ‘And were you?’

  He looks up at me but doesn’t answer. I take that to mean, ‘No, it wasn’t the horse.’

  ‘So who did do this to you?’

  He again doesn’t answer but simply drops his head.

  Laid out on the floor in front of him are the two strips of chain-mail and the weighted breast girth. He stares at them.

  ‘Jerry,’ I say, ‘what the hell is going on?’

  ‘Just get me that fucking taxi.’

  * * *

  The dope test on Wisden after the win at Huntingdon was negative, just as Jerry had predicted it would be. And he was smug about it, refusing to give me any reasons why Wisden had so suddenly improved his form.

  But he had much else to talk to me about.

  The win on Wisden had been my first for more than a month, since before my panic attack on my journey to Newton Abbot and, that win apart, Jerry was not at all happy with my form, which did not improve as the summer progressed.

  ‘What has got into you?’ he said one morning when I’d badly misjudged a work gallop on the Downs.

  Alcohol, I thought, but decided not to say so. That, and lack of sleep.

  I was increasingly troubled by the nightmares and, if anything, they were getting worse. Almost every night, they woke me multiple times, and tiredness was affecting my judgement, both on and off a horse.

  And Jerry wasn’t the only one who had noticed.

  The racing press had turned against me too, or at least that was how it seemed.

  ‘PUSSETT LOSES AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN,’ read one headline in the Racing Post after a particularly bad afternoon at Uttoxeter in mid-June, when I’d ridden three of Jerry’s fancied horses and failed to convert any of them into a place, let alone a win. The article beneath had pulled no punches either, with the journalist referring to me, as they always did, as the son of a former multi-times champion jockey, before going on to give his opinion that I wasn’t nearly as good as my fathe
r had been.

  It was like a knife thrust between my ribs.

  I suppose it is the price a son must sometimes pay for following in his father’s profession, especially if the father had been exceptional and the son less so.

  My childhood plan to become a living memorial to my dad was beginning to unravel, with some people even tweeting that it was a good thing the father hadn’t lived long enough to see how badly the son was now performing.

  And with it all came the abuse, especially from those who blamed me entirely for them losing money on a horse they had backed, even if, as in one case, the horse in question had been brought down by another falling right in front of us.

  I am sure that social media does have the ability to do some good, but it can also do so much harm, with some people clearly believing that sending abusive comments, and even death threats, is totally acceptable behaviour, without any consideration for the damage they might be doing to the recipient.

  And damage me they did.

  Any residual confidence I might have had drained away under the onslaught. My loneliness and unhappiness deepened sharply into depression, and worries about my future escalated into a full-scale anxiety disorder.

  Part of the problem was that I had no one I could talk to. Perhaps I should have gone to see a doctor but, above all else, I was ashamed of what I had become – a reclusive drunk – and the thought of having to expose my most intimate thoughts and actions to a stranger was anathema to me.

  Previously, my success as an up-and-coming jockey had kept the worst of the effects at bay but now, with my current loss of riding form, I felt I was being overwhelmed by a gigantic wave of hopelessness, made even worse by the continued success of the stable’s horses when ridden by others.

  Several times I tried to speak to Jerry about my issues, but he couldn’t really comprehend what was happening to me, and it seemed to make things worse.

  ‘Just pull yourself together, boy, for goodness’ sake,’ he would say unhelpfully. ‘Get back to how you were.’

  But that was much easier said than done, and I didn’t know where else to turn for help.

  I asked Jerry for some time off work to go and speak to my grandparents, but he wasn’t keen as many of the other stable staff were away on their summer holidays and it would leave him short-handed. In the end, he begrudgingly allowed me a long weekend in late July to go to Yorkshire, but in the event that wasn’t any use anyway as my grandfather was taken seriously ill on my first evening at the farm, and was rushed to hospital in Scarborough with a suspected stroke.

  The doctor there tut-tutted and kept going on about my grandfather’s advanced years. Eventually, he bluntly told my grandmother to prepare for the worst, as he considered that it wasn’t in the patient’s best interest to treat someone that old, and that she should agree to his no-resuscitation order. I, meanwhile, wondered if the young doctor would think the same way if and when he reached such an age himself.

  My own troubles seemed minor compared to my grandfather’s, so I just kept quiet about them and tried to support my grandmother, who was confused and severely distressed at the thought of losing her husband of nearly sixty years.

  My uncle was equally useless. He was only interested in securing the farm for himself. He claimed it was ridiculous that, as things stood, half of it would come to me after his parents died.

  I told him that he could always buy out my share, but that didn’t go down at all well. He claimed he couldn’t afford to, and it would be solely my fault if the farm was lost after six generations in the same family.

  It did absolutely nothing to reduce my anxiety level.

  My grandfather was still just hanging on to life when I climbed into my Golf on Monday morning for the drive south, and I had spoken not a word to anyone about my own problems. The whole trip had been a waste of time and had made me feel so much worse.

  I found myself on the M1 near Sheffield wondering whether I would experience any pain if I removed my seatbelt and simply drove my Golf straight into a concrete motorway bridge support at seventy miles per hour.

  No one would mourn me much. I was twenty-one years old, with no friends and precious little family. Indeed, my uncle might have been delighted.

  I’d not had a girlfriend since those heady pubescent days when I’d sneaked a kiss and a cuddle in the hayloft with the daughter of the riding-school owner in Malton, and there seemed little or no prospect of me acquiring any romantic liaisons in the immediate future. I was too damn busy with the horses for that.

  Maybe my mother had shown me the only way out of the ongoing misery of loneliness and despair.

  But I couldn’t find a bridge support without a crash barrier in the way protecting it, and the prospect of ending up still alive but paralysed frightened me far more than dying.

  An hour and a half later, when I left the motorway at Northampton, that day’s particular urge to kill myself had receded, although it was to return often in the months ahead.

  * * *

  I go with Jerry in the taxi to the emergency private medical clinic in St Moritz town centre, but he remains reluctant to talk about anything, and especially not about who has attacked him and why, or the reasons why he made Cliveden Proposal carry so much extra weight in the race. Or, indeed, whether the two are connected.

  ‘That’s my business,’ is all he will say.

  I personally think that, as an accessory after the fact, it is my business too, but decide to keep quiet, at least until the stitches are inserted in his head wound.

  But it is not just stitches.

  A doctor at the clinic is concerned that Jerry has concussion and that he is internally bleeding into his left eye, which has gone bright red where it should have been white. The doctor wants to keep Jerry in overnight for observation in case treatment is needed to reduce any increased pressure in his eye. However, the patient is not at all keen.

  ‘It’s just a way of increasing their bill,’ he says to me when the doctor goes out of the room.

  ‘But you must have travel insurance,’ I point out. ‘They will surely pay.’

  Jerry looks at me with his one good eye and I realise that not having travel insurance is another of his cost-saving initiatives, except that this one is not going to be cost-saving in the long run.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ he says to the returning doctor. ‘Just put some stitches in the cut and I’ll be off.’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ replies the doctor in perfect English, ‘but you have what we call a hyphema in that eye. It is a serious condition, so don’t blame me if you go blind.’

  ‘Blind?’ Jerry is clearly shaken.

  ‘Yes, blind. At least in your right eye, maybe both.’

  Jerry goes silent for a moment, then looks at me. ‘I think I’d better stay here after all, don’t you? You’ll look after the horses for me?’

  Why on earth did I go to that drinks party?

  16

  My grandfather died five days after having had the stroke – that’s if you count dying as the moment when his heart stopped.

  The doctors at Scarborough Hospital had performed lots of tests and had determined that he was already brain-dead due to the stroke having caused a blockage in the artery that should deliver oxygenated blood to the brain. However, and in spite of the initial doctor’s do-not-resuscitate order, he had been placed on a life-support machine that continued his breathing, and his heartbeat.

  My uncle called to give me the bad news and also to tell me that it was planned to turn off the life support on the following morning, and would I be coming to the hospital to join him and my grandmother at the bedside?

  I was badly torn.

  My love for my grandparents was absolute, but I felt that the stress of watching yet another of my close relatives die would simply be too much for me to bear, especially in my already vulnerable condition.

  So I didn’t go, but part of me regretted it. The more so when my uncle called the following afternoon to berate
me for not being there to support my grandmother.

  ‘Was it very bad?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think?’ he retorted. ‘They turned off the machine and he never breathed again.’ He was choking back tears. ‘You should have been there.’

  No, I shouldn’t, I thought. My anxiety levels were quite high enough already.

  ‘When’s the funeral?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometime next week. I’ll let you know when it’s finalised.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll get time off from work.’

  It shouldn’t be too much of a problem. My rides for other trainers had almost completely dried up and even Jerry was using me less and less, but he hadn’t quite deserted me altogether.

  ‘I’ve declared you to ride Gasfitter at Market Rasen on Sunday in the two-mile-seven-furlong handicap hurdle,’ Jerry told me two days after my grandfather died.

  ‘Market Rasen? That’s a long way north for you.’

  Market Rasen is a small town on the edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds, not far south of the Yorkshire border. Almost back in my old stamping ground.

  ‘It’s the last jump meeting before the two-week August break and he’s ready now, so I don’t want to wait.’

  Gasfitter was one of the three horses I’d ridden at Uttoxeter on that disastrous afternoon in June. Then I’d pulled him up before the last.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘What weight has he got?’

  ‘After his last poor run, he’s fairly well handicapped at ten-stone-five.’

  With my three-pound allowance that meant ten-two. I could just about do that all right, with a day’s wasting and some time in the sauna.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  And so I went north again just six days after coming south, but this time with Jerry in his Mercedes because I was short of both petrol and the money to buy some, not least because most of my spare cash was going on booze.

  This was my first ride at Market Rasen and, although Gasfitter’s race wasn’t until four o’clock, Jerry and I left Lambourn early enough so we could walk the course together before racing started at two.