‘And seeing a psychiatrist was useful?’
‘Undoubtedly. He was brilliant. I saw him or a therapist every fortnight for about six months and they helped me to believe that what I was doing didn’t have to take over my life. That I could be in charge of it. But there are still certain things I won’t do because I know they are triggers. Like flying, for example. Or going too close to the horses. Any animals, for that matter. I know it’s irrational, but I’m afraid of catching germs from them.’
‘That must be difficult when your husband is a racehorse trainer.’
But it might explain why I’d never seen her in the stable yard.
‘We just about manage,’ she said. ‘As we do with most things.’
I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that last comment, but I didn’t ask. She’d told me enough, and I knew from experience that it was a considerable strain to talk about one’s own mental health.
‘Thank you for telling me of your problem. It somehow makes my situation easier to bear. To know that I’m not alone.’
She smiled at me and I could tell from her furrowed brow how difficult it had been for her to talk about it. ‘So, what shall we do today?’
‘How about Jerry?’ I asked. ‘What does he want to do?
‘He’ll do as he’s told.’ She smiled at me again. ‘Which means he’ll be watching the racing from Goodwood in the snug.’
And watch the racing from Goodwood we all did, along with that from Beverley and Yarmouth, on the two large flat-screen televisions situated one above the other on the wall. One television was permanently tuned to the Sky Sports Racing channel, for Goodwood and Beverley, and the other to Racing TV for Yarmouth. Jerry simply switched the sound from one to the other as the races started at approximately ten-minute intervals, right through from two o’clock until six, during which time he said not a word to me, although I could feel the tension in him.
I reckoned that only Sabrina’s presence kept him quiet.
It was the first time I’d ever been in their snug and it wasn’t so much snug as one huge trophy cabinet, with silver and gold cups everywhere, and racing awards and photos adorning all the available space on both the walls and the tabletops. In one corner stood Jerry’s father’s old bookmaker’s stand holding a dog-eared leather bag with ‘M.C. Dickinson, Birmingham’ painted on its white side in bold red letters.
It reminded me of Jerry’s gambling heritage, as if I needed a reminder.
As the day wore on I became more and more agitated and my hands wouldn’t stay still unless I thrust them deep into my jeans pockets. I desperately needed a drink, but I couldn’t see how I was going to get one.
Eventually, I could stand it no longer. I had to do something.
‘I’m going out for a walk,’ I said to Sabrina in the kitchen when the racing had finished and Jerry had gone out to supervise Sunday evening stables. ‘I need a breath of fresh air.’
And to get to the village convenience store before it closed.
‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you.’
That was certainly not in my plan.
‘There’s no need,’ I said, just a tad too quickly.
‘Miles,’ she said, looking straight at me, ‘if you think I’m going to let you out on your own to buy more alcohol, you’re much mistaken.’
‘But I need it,’ I whined. ‘Look at my hands.’
I took them out of my pockets and they were shaking.
She went out of the kitchen and shortly returned with a cut-glass tumbler containing about an inch depth of clear liquid.
‘Drink this,’ she ordered, handing it to me.
‘What is it?’
‘What do you think? It’s vodka.’
I knocked it back in one large gulp.
‘Take it easy. That’s all you’re getting.’
It was enough. I could feel the welcoming warmth in my throat and a sudden calmness spreading through my body. After a minute or two, even my hands stopped shaking.
‘My goodness. You really did need it,’ Sabrina said, noticing the immediate soothing effect the alcohol had on me.
‘I did. Thank you.’
‘Addiction is very powerful,’ she said slowly. ‘I was addicted once, to washing my hands. I would scrub them with a nail brush until they were red raw, even though it hurt like hell. I just couldn’t stop. Not without help. And that’s what we’ll get you, starting tomorrow.’
Was I really addicted?
Surely alcohol addiction only applied to people who drank far more than I did – bottles and bottles of the stuff every day. But my hands had definitely been shaking and I’d really needed that drink to stop them.
Perhaps I was addicted, and that frightened me, so much so that I quite wanted another drink to calm myself down.
Jerry came back from the stable yard and still he said nothing to me, but I found the atmosphere so oppressive that I decided to go to my room for a bit.
‘Supper at a quarter to eight,’ Sabrina called after me as I went up.
At twenty-five past seven my phone rang. The readout showed a mobile number I didn’t recognise.
‘Hello,’ I said, answering.
‘Is that Miles Pussett?’ asked a female voice.
‘It is.’
‘This is Rachel Valentine,’ said the voice. ‘From Lincoln County Hospital. I’m returning your call.’
For a moment I was completely tongue-tied.
‘Are you still there?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am,’ I replied quickly. ‘How lovely of you to call back.’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve only just got your message. I was off last week. But, tell me, how did the doctor’s visit go?’
‘Well. He sent me for an assessment and I’ve now been referred to see a psychiatrist.’
‘Good. I’m sure that’s the right route.’
‘But how are you?’ I asked. ‘Chickenpox all gone?’
She laughed. ‘I never caught it. All a waste of time being off work.’
‘And your kids? Are they now recovered?’
She laughed again. ‘Fully, but they’re not my kids. They’re my sister’s. I’m living with her and her husband at the moment. That’s partly why I volunteer to do nights. So as not to be in their hair all the time.’
Not her kids. Things were suddenly looking up.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘I’ve got to start my shift. I just wanted to check that you’re OK.’
‘I’m very much OK now that you’ve called. Is this your phone number?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I call you again to let you know how I get on with the psychiatrist?’
‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘Please do. I’d like that.’
30
I catch the 10:02 train from St Moritz to Chur on Wednesday morning, the same train as the Fenton three had taken two days previously.
The bed-and-breakfast owner gives me a lift in her car to the station.
‘Will I see you again next year, Mr Pussett?’ she says as she helps load my suitcase onto the train. ‘When that shoulder of yours is back to normal?’
‘Perhaps.’ And perhaps not. ‘I’ll be in touch soon.’
I stare out of the windows at the majestic Alpine peaks as the train meanders its graceful way down the Engadin Valley, through winding tunnels and across numerous bridges and viaducts. At times, the carriages seem almost to float in space, having somehow escaped the pull of the earth.
This must be one of the most beautiful railway lines in the world, especially in the winter when the sun’s rays, reflecting off the frosty surface in countless sparkles, make the snow appear as beds of diamonds.
I spend much of the journey thinking, and the magnificence of the scenery seems, for a change, to match that of my mood.
Far from my usual sadness at leaving my ice-covered refuge, this year I am relishing my return to England and the challenges ahead.
Things have clearly come a long way in my recovery,
and the time spent in St Moritz this year has been hugely instrumental in that, not least in the last forty-eight hours, when I have been doing a lot of thinking, especially about why someone might want to kill me.
This year I have been more proficient on the ice than I have ever been before, demonstrated by my performances in the Morgan Cup and the Grand National. But, somehow, I have also become more proficient at living. Quite suddenly, I am now looking ahead, towards the future, instead of always staring back at the past. And I am ready to face how things will be rather than bemoaning how they should be.
For so long I have completely and purposely shut out my previous life, that of horseracing, for fear that the night demons would return, that the feelings of failure and inadequacy would overwhelm me once more, and that I would again be driven to the very brink of suicide, or worse.
But this last week has shown me that there is a way forward that doesn’t mean I have to be quite so blinkered. That I don’t need to hide myself away on the Isle of Wight, where there are not only no racecourses but not a single licensed racehorse trainer either.
Even if it took an attempt on my life to show it to me.
Not that I have any intention of going back to riding horses in races. That is one avenue that will remain firmly closed, not least because of the weight issue and how that really would throw a fresh spanner into my mental health. And I probably won’t get involved in the training of them either, but there are definitely some questions of racing I need to ask, and some answers I expect to receive.
* * *
For my first hour-long session with the psychiatrist at the Royal Berkshire, he mostly invited me to talk while he listened. He made a few interventions but was largely silent. However, he took notes of everything I said.
Sabrina Dickinson had somehow arranged it at high-speed, taking me with her to the surgery in Lambourn first thing on Monday morning and then refusing to leave until the appointment was made. She had an ally in Dr Nixon who, I reckoned, had also pulled in a few of his own favours to get the assessment done so quickly in the first place.
So here I was, just nine days after my fiasco on the Baydon Road, sitting in an armchair in a psychiatrist’s consulting room with ‘Dr Keith Mitchell’ printed on the nameplate screwed to the door.
‘I thought you lot used couches,’ I said when I went in only to find two chairs facing each other.
‘I can get you a couch if you prefer,’ said the doctor. ‘But I find that a chair is better. Less intimidating. Now, why don’t you sit down and explain to me why you’re here?’
‘I was rather hoping that you might be able to tell me that.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s start by you describing to me exactly how you feel right now, and why. Feel free to add in anything you might think is useful, like things that have happened to you either recently, or further in the past, that have contributed to how you feel at this precise moment.’
I sat there in silence for a while before saying anything, not knowing quite where to start.
‘I suppose I feel lots of things,’ I said eventually, ‘but mostly I feel embarrassed and ashamed.’
Dr Mitchell made a note in his notebook. He didn’t say anything, he just waited patiently for me to go on.
‘But I also feel that I’m being treated like a badly behaved schoolboy who’s been caught smoking behind the cycle sheds.’
The doctor made more notes.
‘And do you resent that?’ he asked.
‘It makes me angry.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m no longer a child. I’m nearly twenty-two years old.’
‘That’s still quite young.’
‘Tony McCoy was champion jockey before he turned twenty-two.’
‘And how does that make you feel?’
I paused, thinking.
‘Aggrieved.’
‘In what way?’
I paused again. I was finding it very difficult to express myself, to put into words how I was feeling.
‘I suppose I believe that people and things are ganging up against me unfairly. Stopping me succeeding. I don’t seem to react very well when things don’t go my way, and they certainly haven’t been going my way lately.’
‘Is that your fault?’
‘Is what my fault? That things aren’t going my way or that I react badly to them?’
‘Either.’
I sat there again for several minutes before answering, searching inwards to try and see myself as others might, to determine if I was to blame for my devastating run of bad form. I thought back to my mistake on Gasfitter at the start at Market Rasen, but also to the race at Stratford when Wisden would have failed to keep up whatever I had done.
‘Perhaps I feel they are partly my fault but not entirely.’
More note-taking.
‘Tell me about your childhood. What is your earliest memory? And were you happy as a child?’
This was easier ground.
‘I can remember my mum baking bread when I was very small. It was the smell.’ I smiled at the memory. ‘I think my childhood was happy.’
‘You think?’
‘I was certainly happier than I am now, at least until I was twelve.’
‘What happened then?’
I told him all about the accident and how I felt responsible for my father’s death, and that opened the floodgates, not so much of tears but of words. They just poured out of me. All about my feelings of inadequacy and my failure to become what I had set my heart on being. And the nightmares. Everything.
‘Did you love your father when you were a child?’
That brought me up sharp.
‘I admired him. As everyone did.’
But did I love him? He hadn’t been there for me for most of the time, nor for my mother. His determination to be the best jump jockey of all time was all-consuming. He didn’t have time for anything or anybody else. Even when he broke his leg and couldn’t ride, he kept the Pussett name in the headlines by joining the TV racing team as a temporary pundit, travelling all over the country – away all day, every Saturday and most Sundays, the very times when I was home from school.
‘Do you love him now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If someone mentions your father to you, say at the races, what is your instant emotion?’
‘Hate.’
I said it without thinking – and it frightened me.
‘Why?’
‘For dying.’
‘But you told me it wasn’t his fault.’
‘Maybe it was.’ I paused. ‘But also for leaving me and my mum in dire straits financially.’
‘Is that all?’
No, it wasn’t. I also hated him for being so successful when I wasn’t, but how could I say that?
But I didn’t need to. Dr Mitchell was well ahead of me.
‘Is it not partly because you are always being unfavourably compared to him?’
I nodded without speaking – too embarrassed to put it into words.
‘How about your mother? Did you love her?’
‘Hugely when I was a young child. She was brilliant and doted on me. In fact, we doted on each other. We were always laughing.’
‘And later?’
I thought back to those dreadful times when I could hear her crying in the night and had purposely not gone to comfort her. Indeed, my mother and I had hardly spoken to each other for the last two years of her life, something I now regretted enormously.
‘I feel guilty that I wasn’t there for her more at the end, and that she killed herself without asking for my help, or at least talking to me.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And also because I didn’t love her enough to stop her from doing what she did. But, by then, we hadn’t been getting on for quite a while. She hadn’t approved of my choice of profession.’
And perhaps she’d been right. Had she known all along that emulating my father was always going to be impossible and was therefore best not att
empted in the first place?
‘I’m afraid our time’s up for today,’ the doctor said.
‘Time’s up?’ I said incredulously. ‘But that surely wasn’t an hour.’
‘More than. We’ve run over by five minutes already. But we’ll schedule another session for the same time next week.’
‘I can’t wait until next week,’ I implored.
‘You’ll have to. But, in the meantime, I’ll give you something to help you sleep.’
Vodka? Please make it vodka.
It wasn’t. And it wasn’t Temazepam either, the drug that had killed my mother. It was just some herbal sleep aids that I could have bought over the counter in any chemist.
‘These won’t help,’ I said. ‘I need something much stronger than this.’
‘Why don’t you give these a try first?’ the doctor said. ‘I don’t want to prescribe anything more potent just yet.’
Not until he knows that I’d be safe with them, I thought, and he was right. Swallowing a handful of powerful sleeping pills to make everything go away permanently sounded like a pretty good idea to me at that moment.
Sabrina was waiting for me outside.
‘Was that helpful?’ she asked as I climbed into the car.
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘It was over too quickly. But he wants me back next week. Same time.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘At least it’s a start.’
I thought about asking her if we could stop at a pub on the way home, just for a quick snifter, but I knew it would be a waste of time. My alcohol intake, while not quite reduced to zero, was being severely limited and highly policed.
Apart from when she locked me in my bedroom at night to sleep, Sabrina hadn’t let me out of her sight since she and Jerry had rescued me from the ditch, guarding me more closely than the Yeomen Warders at the Tower of London had guarded Anne Boleyn.
Perhaps I would welcome the chop.
* * *
I change trains at Chur, swapping the slow scenic one from St Moritz for a faster, ultra-sleek, two-storey affair for the onward journey to Zurich Airport. Not that the scenery is any less impressive as we skirt along the shores of the Walensee and Zurichsee.
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