I told her all about the intense pain in my chest and my inability to move. I also told her about my fear, not only of the attack but of the headlights, and why. I told her of my thoughts about killing myself and I explained to her what had happened at Market Rasen races, and why I would now lose my job, and my home.
In all, I must have spoken to her for almost an hour, but she didn’t hurry me to finish, or say that she had something more important to attend to.
When I’d run out of things to say, Rachel stood up.
‘How about a cup of tea?’ she said. ‘And some toast?’
‘That sounds wonderful.’
She disappeared and, presently, returned with a tray holding a cup of tea and a plate of buttered toast. I tucked in eagerly.
‘You need to see our specialist mental health team,’ Rachel said.
‘Mental health?’ I said, surprised. ‘But I’m not crazy.’
She smiled at me again. ‘Of course not. But there is definitely something not quite right and it might be useful for you to see someone, to talk things through, just like we have done tonight.’
Maybe she had a point. Having someone to talk to did seem to have unburdened much of the stress I was carrying. I had felt it gradually lift off my aching shoulders, as if my heavy load was now being shared.
‘I’m training to be a psychiatric nurse myself,’ Rachel said. ‘And I think it would be a good idea.’
‘OK,’ I said. After her kindness, and the toast, how could I refuse? ‘Wheel them in.’
‘They’re not on duty right now. But they’ll be here at seven in the morning.’
Seven in the morning.
My stress levels began to rise again as I thought of Jerry’s reaction I failed to turn up at that exact time for first lot.
‘I can’t wait until then. I need to get to Lambourn tonight.’
‘You’re not going anywhere tonight,’ Rachel said decisively. ‘You need to stay right here.’
‘But I can’t.’ My stress levels went higher still.
‘Yes, you can. I will telephone your employer before I go off-duty to tell him you have been detained here in hospital. I’m sure he’ll understand.’
She obviously didn’t know Jerry Dickinson.
‘What time do you go off-duty?’ I asked.
‘Seven-thirty.’
‘So what do I do now?’
‘You stay here. We’re not very busy now so you can either stay right here in the department on a trolley, or I can see if I can find you a bed on a ward.’
‘Here is perfectly fine by me.’
Anywhere close to her would be perfectly fine by me, but I didn’t say so.
She made up a bed for me on a trolley and I lay down.
‘Please come and see me before you go off-duty,’ I said.
‘Sure will.’ She smiled at me once more.
I was almost asleep before she was out of sight… not completely, but almost.
* * *
I make it through Shuttlecock with no problems on my first run of the day, partly because I have heeded my own advice at the top and have taken it fairly easy, raking hard into the turn.
‘Pussett down in five-three point four-one,’ says Tower.
Not bad. Slower than my two completed runs in the Grand National, but it’s still not bad. I’ll try and go faster next time.
I lift my toboggan from the track and load it onto the camion for the ride back to Top. With luck I’ll get in a couple of runs before the control tower decides to switch the start point to Junction for the beginners’ first attempts.
The camion waits for a couple more riders and then we are off, negotiating the 514ft change in altitude between Top and the finish, a vertical separation of more than three times the drop over Niagara Falls.
I sit on a bench in the waiting hut until it is my turn.
‘Miles Pussett to the box,’ comes the call.
It’s pulse-racing time once more – and how I love it.
Shuttlecock spares me again, but only just.
I am beginning to master the line I should take at these speeds – surprisingly starting the turn slightly higher on the wall so that I can use gravity to steer left and down as it tightens.
I am laughing out loud as I speed down Bledisloe Straight, streaking under the road bridge and on towards the finish.
At long last, I am beginning to understand this ice.
This time the camion takes me back to the clubhouse – my fun temporarily on hold as the start switches for the next hour from Top to Junction.
Time for a coffee.
Sitting in the clubhouse bar is David Maitland-Butler.
‘Hello, Colonel, what brings you here?’
He seems as surprised to see me as I him. ‘I’m a member.’
‘Really? Since when?’
‘Since before you were born.’ He says it in a manner that is designed to make me feel foolish. ‘I used to be a regular here. I was in the Army team that won the Inter-Services Cup back in the eighties.’
‘Has it changed much?’
‘We never had any of these fancy sliding suits or full-face helmets they use now. Just a pair of coveralls and an old motorcycle dispatch rider’s helmet with leather sides. That was good enough for us.’
He makes it sound like the change to more modern and safer equipment is definitely for the worse.
‘I thought you’d be supervising the loading of your horse.’
‘Not leaving now until tomorrow. Dickinson told me he has some trouble with his staff. Damned nuisance. Something to do with a broken ankle.’
‘How’s Jerry doing?’
‘It’s not he who has the broken ankle.’
‘I know. But he also had a fall on the ice yesterday. He hurt his face and spent last night in the local clinic.’
‘Did he? How strange. He didn’t mention it to me.’
I wonder why I don’t tell the colonel the truth, that Jerry was beaten up by the Fenton twins. Maybe it is out of loyalty to my former employer and the knowledge that the colonel would think it funny. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned anything in the first place.
‘Did you actually see him?’ I ask.
‘We spoke on the phone. Last night. He asked if I could provide a lad to look after his two on the way home. I said no. I’ve only one boy here and he’s quite busy enough with mine.’
So Jerry had called the colonel after all – and with the predicted outcome.
‘He’s arranging for someone to fly out today to take his home tomorrow.’ He smiles. ‘But it’s actually quite fortuitous. My horsebox has developed an engine fault that won’t be fixed until tomorrow anyway.’
‘Does Jerry Dickinson know that?’
He doesn’t answer, but the supercilious smirk on his face tells me everything. If I know the colonel, which I do, he’ll have made Jerry pay for the extra night’s accommodation for his horse, plus for him and the stable lad.
It’s not that the colonel couldn’t afford it – he could easily. But it’s one more example of racing’s competitive nature. The colonel simply looks upon it as an opportunity to get one over another trainer – similar to beating him on the track.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Jerry would have done exactly the same to him if the roles had been reversed.
‘So, are you here to ride the ice?’ I ask, changing the subject.
‘I think I’m too old for that now, don’t you?’
‘Nonsense. You’re what, in your mid-sixties? Lord Brabazon won the Coronation Cup here when he was seventy-one. And the oldest person ever to complete the course was a sprightly ninety-year-old.’
‘You seem to know a lot,’ the colonel says, dryly.
‘I’m just fascinated by the history of the run, that’s all.’
Why wouldn’t I be? The Cresta has been my saviour.
‘Well, I’m still not going down,’ the colonel says emphatically. ‘I value my health too much these days. As someone o
nce said: When the exhilaration is worth the fright, then you must ride the Cresta. But when the exhilaration is not worth the fright, then you must give it up. Well, the fright for me is far too much these days, so I’ve given it up.’
He clears his throat as if he has become somewhat emotional.
‘But I thought I’d pop along for a Bullshot, just for old time’s sake. I still pay my club dues every year, so I might as well make some use of the place.’ He raises a glass of brown liquid towards his lips. ‘Fancy one?’
‘No, thanks.’ A Bullshot is a mixture of beef stock and vodka, a Cresta classic, but not my tipple. Not any more. ‘I’ll just have a coffee.’
‘As you like.’ He takes a large swig of his drink and stares at my own fancy sliding suit visible beneath my open anorak. ‘Have you been down today?’
‘I certainly have. Twice from Top already this morning, and I’ll be going down again later.’
‘Oh, the joy of being young and fearless,’ quips the colonel. ‘But you’ll learn.’
I hope not.
21
True to her word, Nurse Rachel came to see me before she went off-duty at seven-thirty, and she brought more tea and toast with her.
I was still in the A & E department at Lincoln County Hospital, having spent the remainder of the night on a trolley in one of their cubicles, fast asleep with neither a brick lorry nor a pair of headlights to be found anywhere in my dreams.
‘I phoned Mr Dickinson,’ she said.
‘And?’
‘He seemed quite angry at first, told me to tell you not to bother coming back.’
‘At first?’
‘Yes, well, I can get angry too, and I gave him a right earful about how employers could get into serious trouble for bullying their employees.’
‘I bet that didn’t go down well.’
‘No, it didn’t, but then I explained that you had wanted to leave in order to get back to work on time this morning, but we insisted you should remain here to see our specialist team.’
‘Did he ask why?’
‘He certainly did.’
‘And what did you say?’
She looked a bit sheepish. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything, not without your permission.’
‘But you did.’
She nodded.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘I give you my permission now.’
She looked relieved.
‘What did you actually say to him?’
‘I really shouldn’t have said anything at all, but he kept going on and on at me about how you had simply not done as you were told and it was all your own fault. He was being quite nasty so, in the end, I told him you had to see the specialist mental-health team because we were worried about you. I’m so sorry. It just slipped out. It was so unprofessional of me.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said again, smiling at her.
Now give me your phone number. I didn’t actually say it but I so wanted to.
‘What did he say then?’ I asked instead.
‘He just suddenly shut up. He then wanted to know when you would be ready to come home. He said he’d send a car for you.’
Blimey!
‘And what time will I be ready to go home?’
‘You can go any time you want. Irrespective of what I told Mr Dickinson, we are not forcing you to stay here, just advising it. The mental-health team are here now and they will come and see you shortly. You should be able to go home by eleven o’clock at the very latest. I can’t think they’ll want to keep you in. That’s what I told Mr Dickinson.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘I’m off home myself now. Good luck.’
She smiled at me once again and made my heart rate rise in delight.
‘How do I contact you?’ I said, just a tad too eagerly as she started to leave the cubicle. ‘To let you know how I get on.’
And do you have a boyfriend? Or are you married? With kids?
There was no ring on her wedding finger but that meant nothing. Rings might not be allowed because they were a potential infection risk.
‘I’m here four nights a week. Seven-thirty pm to seven-thirty am, Sunday through to Thursday morning,’ she said, smiling. ‘You can always call the department.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I will.’
* * *
The mental health team consisted of a doctor and a clinical psychologist – at least, they were the two that came to see me.
I had been shifted off my comfortable A&E trolley and into a small windowless room containing four typical hospital armchairs, with bright-green, faux-leather upholstery, plus a small oval coffee table.
I sat down facing them both.
‘Now tell us,’ said the doctor, ‘what is it that you think brings on these attacks you’ve been having?’
‘I’ve only had two of them,’ I said. ‘But they have both been rather intense. I really thought I was dying last night.’
‘In what way?’
I gave them the details of the attacks and how headlights seemed to have been the trigger in both cases, and why that was. I told them of the brick lorry and how I had been in my father’s car when he’d been killed, and also how I had found my mother dead and stiff on her bed from an overdose of sleeping pills.
Somehow it was easier telling it for a second time after having already told the whole story to Rachel.
They sat patiently and listened, not interrupting or asking any questions, until I finally stopped.
‘And how do you feel about your life in general, during those times when you are not having an attack?’ asked the doctor.
‘Depressed,’ I said. ‘Especially recently.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
I spoke about the bad run of form I’d been having at the track and how, when I did get the chance to win, my confidence was so low that I often made a hash of it. I told him about the race at Market Rasen the previous day and how it was my fault that I hadn’t won it, and how angry my employer had been.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard all about his anger from Nurse Valentine.’
‘Nurse Valentine?’
‘Rachel Valentine,’ he replied. ‘I think you spoke to her last night.’
Valentine! Oh, Rachel, please be my valentine.
‘And having to control my weight so much doesn’t help either.’
‘In what way?’
‘Yesterday I had to ride at ten stone two pounds and that includes five pounds for my clothes, my boots and my saddle. So I had to be nine-stone-ten stripped. I stand five foot nine inches in my socks, that’s tall for a jockey, which means that my body mass index is about twenty.
‘You may think that sounds pretty healthy, but I have to be strong to be able to control a horse over fences at thirty miles per hour, so I have big muscles. Hence, I have no fat on me and, in order to keep it that way, I scarcely eat anything at all.
‘My whole life is governed, controlled and determined by my bathroom scales. I stand on them every morning in trepidation, terrified that I will have put on a pound since yesterday.
‘And, if I have to do really light, say at nine-five body weight, I have to waste, rapidly losing even more weight by eating absolutely nothing and getting rid of body fluid by long hours of sweating in a sauna, and then not drinking anything to replace it. That can also make you pretty miserable.’
It can also directly affect the balance of your mind. Fred Archer, champion jockey for thirteen consecutive years and perhaps the most successful jockey of all time with a career win percentage of an incredible 33 per cent, shot himself dead at the height of his considerable fame, still aged only twenty-nine, while delirious from having wasted for three whole days to ride at an unnaturally low weight, even for him.
‘Have you spoken to your own doctor about how you feel?’
‘I don’t have my own doctor.’
‘You must be registered with the health service.’
<
br /> ‘I was with a surgery in Yorkshire but never changed it when I moved back to Lambourn. I suppose that technically makes the Malton doctor still mine. But I see doctors all the time, mind. Every time I have a fall, I have to pass a doctor in order to ride again. That’s about once a fortnight on average over the past year. I’d speak to one of them about something if I needed to.’
But maybe not about my mental health, I thought. I wouldn’t want any busybody racecourse doctor telling the authorities I wasn’t fit to ride because I was going crazy.
‘Well,’ said this doctor, half-turning towards the psychologist as if seeking her approval, ‘we think that you should register with a GP near where you live now and ask for an appointment. You need some help. Panic attacks can be very debilitating, as well as potentially dangerous, and yours may be as a consequence of some other underlying psychological problem, possibly PTSD.’
‘PTSD?’ I asked.
‘Post-traumatic stress disorder.’
‘Isn’t that what soldiers get?’
‘Others can suffer from it too. It’s brought on by traumatic events. It’s best known for affecting the military but it’s also quite common elsewhere. In your own case, it may be a response to what happened when your parents died, and your current depressive state has made things come to a head. Only a full psychiatric assessment will determine if PTSD is the cause of these attacks, or if there’s some other reason. And, for that, you’ll need to be referred by your GP.’
I didn’t particularly like the sound of a full psychiatric assessment.
‘And what if I do have this PTSD thing? What then? Can it be cured?’
‘Psychotherapy and medication can alleviate most of the symptoms and make things easier to bear. You should be able to return to a normal productive life.’
I took that to mean, ‘No, it can’t be cured.’
‘And what if I tell you that I’m perfectly fine and I don’t need some quack messing about inside my head?’
He smiled at me in a kindly manner. ‘It is often the patient who is the last to realise that something is wrong, when all around them can see it clearly. I hope that you agree that it’s better to find out for sure. If you do indeed have PTSD, research shows that without treatment, attacks like you had last night are likely to get more frequent and more severe.’
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