However, we’d been beaten not by just seven lengths, more like twenty-seven. But at least it hadn’t been my fault, and Jerry seemed quite happy, even if I wasn’t. All that pre-race confidence, which I had worked so hard to generate, had evaporated almost as quickly as the sweat off Wisden’s back in the August sunshine.
* * *
You might have thought I was a ghost, if the reaction I receive is anything to go by when I walk into the Cresta club bar at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning.
‘Good God, Miles, what are you doing here?’ says the club manager. He stands up from behind his desk in the corner and comes over. ‘I thought you’d be in hospital for much longer.’
‘They’ve just let me out. Walking wounded.’
I wave the empty sleeve of the doctor’s anorak in his direction.
‘So I see.’
‘Is the run open?’ I ask.
‘You’re surely not wanting to ride?’
‘No.’ I laugh that he would even suggest it. ‘My ice riding is sadly over for this year.’
‘The run’s not open, anyway. The police are still investigating down at the bridge and, with all the bloody media speculation going on, we thought it best to cancel all practice for today.’
‘What media speculation?’
‘Crackpot theories, more like.’
‘Such as?’
‘Anti-British sentiment, what with the Union Jack flying on the roof and such. Some idiot politician even went on the local TV station last night and said it was obviously done by someone who was angry with the British for having left the European Union. What a load of bollocks. Switzerland isn’t even a member of the EU.’
‘What are the police saying?’ I ask.
‘Not much. At least, not much to us.’
I wonder if they have spoken to the Fenton twins yet.
‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ asks the club manager.
‘I’ve come to collect my stuff from my locker. I’ll be going home tomorrow or the next day. Depends on when I can get a flight. You don’t happen to know if anyone brought my anorak down from Top?’
‘Everything left at Top was hung up downstairs in the changing room, as usual.’
‘Great. Thanks.’
‘I’m just catching up on some paperwork and then I’m off myself. Thought I might go skiing for a change. The club bar won’t be opening today either. We thought it was inappropriate under the circumstances.’
But nobody had died.
Not quite, and I intended to make sure it stayed that way.
27
Saturday at Newton Abbot was a marginal improvement on Thursday at Stratford, but only just.
The thought of driving all the way to Devon on the last Saturday in August just for one solitary ride didn’t fill me with any joy. Traffic on a bank holiday weekend would make the journey a nightmare, and I was having quite enough of those already.
So I drove the twenty miles to Pewsey, parked the Golf in the station car park, and took the train to Newton Abbot, via Exeter. But even the train was packed to the gunwales, crammed full of families off to the seaside for one final outing of the school summer holidays. So I sat on my holdall in the vestibule at the end of one carriage, and thought about the race ahead.
I found it a huge relief that Jerry was 250 miles away in Chester, but I knew that Norman would relate to him all that went on.
I’d seen Norman earlier, when he’d been loading Gasfitter into the stable’s small horsebox and setting off south before seven o’clock, hoping to beat the holiday traffic through the major congestion points near Bristol.
‘Don’t be late,’ he’d said to me. ‘Our race is the fifth on the card, at four-fifteen.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll be there.’
He had offered to take me with him in the horsebox, but my mental state was far too fragile to even consider going along the stretch of the M5 motorway south of Taunton. With or without the headlights being on.
The train pulled into Newton Abbot just after one-thirty, and I walked the last mile from the railway station to the racecourse.
The first race of the afternoon was in progress as I used my jockey’s pass to gain access to the enclosures. Only five months ago, I would have arrived at least an hour before the first, hanging around the weighing room hoping that a trainer might offer me a spare ride if his declared jockey was stuck in traffic and had failed to appear in time.
But not any more. With my recent poor form and lack of confidence, even I wouldn’t have asked me to ride. Indeed, I would be quite happy to forget about Gasfitter all together and climb back on the train home right then, just to save further embarrassment later.
I sat on a bench in the jockeys’ changing room through the second and third races before pulling on my britches and silks that had been laid out by the valets.
Gasfitter had been handicapped with a slightly higher rating after his close-run thing at Market Rasen and I even had to have a weight cloth with a couple of pounds of lead inserted to make me up to the right amount.
I weighed out and gave my saddle and the weight cloth to Norman.
‘See you in the parade ring,’ he said.
When the call came, I moved very slowly, reluctant to leave the safety of the changing room, to again put myself in a situation where I knew I would fail.
In the event, Gasfitter ran reasonably well and, coming to the last flight, I even thought we might have an outside chance of winning, or at least of getting into the first three, but he clipped the top of a hurdle with his front feet and sprawled on landing, sending both of us face down onto the turf.
As racing falls go, it was pretty easy. The horse stood up, uninjured, and galloped away while I just lay there, slightly winded by the impact, but mostly because I didn’t want to have to face the music from Norman.
He would know that I could have made Gasfitter lift his feet a little more to clear the obstacle. Perhaps I was not concentrating enough, thinking instead of taking my place in the winner’s spot of the unsaddling enclosure. But maybe Norman would also realise that, if I had asked the horse to jump a little higher, we would have likely missed our chance of victory anyway.
It had been a no-win situation either way. And what was new in that?
‘Are you OK?’ said one of the racecourse doctors, who came running over, going down on his knees next to me with concern on his face.
‘Think so, Doc,’ I said. ‘Just a touch winded, plus a bruise or two.’
‘Are you sure? Any pain in your back or neck?’
‘None,’ I assured him.
I sat up, slowly.
‘Careful now,’ said the doctor. He helped me to my feet. ‘Still feel OK?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
But I wasn’t really. Not mentally. I had a combination of PTSD and a psychotic depressive disorder.
Charlotte Le Grand had said so in her letter.
* * *
I switch the thin surgical boots for my much warmer snow ones, collect my things into a plastic carrier bag I find in the club changing room, and make my way back through the centre of St Moritz towards the Gasthaus, all the while keeping my eyes peeled for anyone suspicious, and especially for the Fenton twins.
Down on the lake, work is well advanced dismantling the White Turf racetrack, with many of the tents already packed away and the temporary grandstand in a partial state of deconstruction.
For some reason, I make a detour via the stables, but the horses have all gone and only empty stalls remain where Foscote Boy and Cliveden Proposal once stood.
They must have left early.
The storeroom that Jerry had used is also open and emptied, no weighted breast girth or chain-mail boots to be seen, just a few feed nuts spread across the floor and a half-eaten bale of hay lying, Mary Celeste-like, in the far corner.
Suddenly, I am overcome with the feeling that it is indeed time to go home, and not just because of my shoulder injury. Maybe it
is also time to move on in my life, to finally settle down, and I even wonder whether this will be the last winter I spend here riding the ice.
I will be thirty next birthday and I need to decide what to do for the rest of the time I have available. Hiring out deck chairs on a rainy beach on the Isle of Wight may be a job, but it is hardly a career.
As I arrive at my lodgings, the lady who owns the place, and also cooks the breakfasts, comes dashing out from the kitchen to see me.
‘Mr Pussett, I was so worried when you didn’t come back last night. Then I heard of your accident and I was even more worried.’
It wasn’t an accident, but I don’t mention that.
‘Thank you, Frau Muller. I am fine now but I will be leaving to go home in a day or so.’
‘Of course.’
I go up the stairs.
‘Wait,’ she calls up after me, as if just remembering. ‘I have a message for you. A policeman called here just now but you were out. He asked me to tell you he will come back at eleven o’clock to see you. Is that OK?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Fine. Thank you. Please show him up when he arrives.’
I go to my room and attempt to remove Dr Kaufmann’s clothes and replace them with my own.
Only when you lose the use of one hand do you appreciate the difficulties people must have if they only have one in the first place. Buttons are fiddly to undo, and almost impossible to do up again, especially when you are using your weaker, non-dominant hand, as I am.
Even using the phone is a bit of a challenge, but I eventually manage to log into the budget airline’s website and convert my flexible return fare into a specific seat on tomorrow afternoon’s flight from Zurich to London.
The policeman arrives promptly at eleven o’clock and, as instructed, Frau Muller shows him up to my room. It is the same officer who interviewed me at the hospital yesterday.
He finds me in a state of near total undress.
‘I’m so very sorry,’ I say. ‘But I find I can’t dress myself.’
He smiles and helps me into trousers, shirt and a pullover.
‘Thank you.’
I sit down on the side of the bed while the officer remains standing.
‘So, what have you found out?’ I ask him. ‘Have you arrested the Fenton boys yet?’
‘I have not,’ he says. ‘When I first went to find them at the Badrutt’s Palace, they had already checked out. I put out an alert and they were intercepted attempting to board a plane for London at Zurich.’
‘So you have got them?’
He shakes his head. ‘They were released. We are able to prove that they had left St Moritz by train at two minutes past ten yesterday morning. Approximately forty minutes before the incident on the Cresta Run.’
‘But that’s impossible. How could you?’
‘Closed-circuit television footage from St Moritz Station clearly shows them boarding the train for Chur at five to ten with their grandmother. They are not seen to get off again before the train departs at two minutes past.’
‘But I know that train. It stops in Samedan after just a few minutes. They could have got off there and easily been on the bridge in time. Have you checked the CCTV from there?’
‘We have not, and we don’t need to. CCTV from Chur clearly shows them disembarking the same train they boarded at St Moritz. Mr Pussett, I am totally satisfied that neither Declan nor Justin Fenton dropped the bag of cement onto the Cresta Run for you to crash into.’
Could they have arranged for someone else to have done it?
But, if so, who?
* * *
My journey back from Newton Abbot races was not without incident, to put it mildly.
I rushed to catch the five-thirty train direct to Pewsey but missed it by a whisker due to having to be cleared by a racecourse doctor in the jockeys’ medical room after my fall on Gasfitter.
I yelled angrily at the rear of the departing train as I ran onto the platform.
‘Bloody doctor.’
I threw down my kit bag and kicked it. I now had an hour and a half to wait for the next train and, of course, I ended up in the station café.
They served cans of lager. No vodka, but lager would do.
Just one, I thought, to ease the aches and pains from a rough-and-tumble afternoon of eating grass at thirty miles per hour. So I popped a can and enjoyed the cool, refreshing taste as the amber nectar slipped all too easily down my throat.
I thought back over the afternoon’s proceedings.
After the race, Norman had actually been quite sympathetic about my fall.
‘Hard luck,’ he’d said. ‘But well done for giving it a go. At one point, I really thought you might win.’
Understandably, Norman was far more concerned about the welfare of the horse than of its rider – after all, they don’t shoot the jockey if he is the one who breaks a leg – but, nevertheless, I was fairly confident that his report to Jerry wouldn’t be too damning of my performance. Not on this particular occasion.
And, not for the first time, and in spite of my fall at the last hurdle, I had done rather better without Jerry being there to watch me. Perhaps it was because of an unconscious nervous tension that appeared whenever he was present. I couldn’t think of any other reason. As far as I was concerned, I was always doing the same thing, which was the best I could.
I’ll have just one more can.
It would be hours before I had to drive my Golf and the first one had made me feel so much better.
The train was fifteen minutes late arriving and, by then, I’d drunk four strong lagers. As a result, I almost missed the connection at Exeter through dilly-dallying on the wrong platform.
One of the problems I was having with alcohol was that it created its own destructive positive-feedback loop: the more I drank, the greater it reduced both my inhibitions and my reasoning, so the more I drank… ad infinitum until I fell over.
And fall over I did, in the car park at Pewsey station.
It had actually been close to a miracle that I’d got off the train at Pewsey in the first place, and not ended up at Paddington, or in some dark siding somewhere after that. The guard, who’d previously checked my ticket, just happened to be walking past and woke me to tell me we were arriving at my stop. It was time to get off.
And, by that time, I’d also consumed one – or was it two – of the small bottles of wine for sale from the refreshment trolley.
I picked myself up off the ground and weaved a meandering path towards my Golf.
‘Come on,’ I said to myself out loud. ‘Stop being such an idiot.’
I sat in the car as the last of the daylight faded into darkness, wishing myself sober, but with no success.
‘Come on,’ I shouted to myself again, banging my fists angrily on the steering wheel. ‘You can do this.’
But I couldn’t.
I almost made it, but some tight bends on the last bit down into Lambourn village on the Baydon Road proved to be my undoing. A sharp left was followed by an even tighter right and, whereas I made the first one, I came upon the second rather too fast and slid off the road and into a deep ditch with a dreadful bang. And all the lights went out.
I sat there in the dark for quite a while, waiting for my mind to clear.
When it didn’t, I tried to open the car door next to me, but it wouldn’t budge. Next I leaned across but the passenger one wouldn’t open either. Nor would the electric windows.
In the end, I decided that I would simply stay there all night and sort out the problem in the morning, when I could see what I was doing. However, this cunning plan was interrupted when my phone rang.
‘Miles,’ said a familiar female voice. ‘It’s Sabrina. Where are you?’
‘I’m right here,’ I replied, trying my best to sound lucid and as sober as a judge, but without much success.
‘Where’s here?’ she asked. ‘You should be home by now.’
‘I had a fall,’ I said.
‘Yes, I know, but Norman said you were OK. And he’s been back here for hours.’
‘Good for Norman.’
‘Miles, have you been drinking?’ she asked sharply.
‘Just a bit,’ I said. I couldn’t keep a slight titter out of my voice. ‘I’m afraid I’ve had a slight accident.’
‘You’re surely not driving?’ She sounded slightly horrified.
‘Not any more.’ I was now laughing fully.
It wasn’t amusing but if I hadn’t laughed, I’d have cried. Nevertheless, it was a mistake. Sabrina became very angry.
‘It’s not bloody funny,’ she shouted down the phone. ‘Where are you right now?’
‘In a ditch.’
‘Which ditch?’ she demanded.
‘The ditch on the Baydon Road.’
‘What, here, in Lambourn?’
‘Just short.’
‘Stay right where you are. I’ll come and get you.’
She hung up.
I used the flashlight feature on my phone to try and find a way out of the car but without success. So, in the end, just as Sabrina had instructed, I decided to stay right where I was.
I had no choice anyway.
28
For my last night in St Moritz, I decide to splash out and go for supper at the Kulm Hotel, in the Sunny Bar, the spiritual home of the Cresta Run, where sleek toboggans adorn the ceiling as if defying gravity, and the St Moritz Tobogganing Club’s race trophies are kept on permanent display.
Supper in the Sunny Bar is an extravagance I can’t really afford, but this place has a special memory for me. It was here, less than three weeks ago, that I was presented with a gold and burgundy tie as a new holder of the coveted Club colours. I had earned them by finishing in the top eight of the Morgan Cup, a feat that also qualified me to ride the ice in the Grand National.
If this is to be my last ever evening in this town, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather spend it.
And I am not spending it alone.
I had called the hotel earlier to speak to my ‘mother’, Susi Ashcroft, to ask her to join me as a payback for the gourmet dinner at The K on Sunday.
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