I’d spent that afternoon in a second session with Dr Mitchell, exploring over and over again the childhood relationships I’d had with my parents.
‘It was not in my childhood that I had the problem,’ I’d said to him with irritation. ‘It’s now.’
‘It has been clearly shown that early-years adversity is a major risk factor in the development of psychological problems later in life,’ he’d replied. ‘Especially childhood neglect and abuse.’
‘I didn’t feel neglected and I’m certain I wasn’t abused.’
‘But you said your father wasn’t there for you most of the time.’
‘My mother was.’
‘Boys need father figures and his absence could be considered as both neglect and abuse.’
I had thought he was taking things a bit too far, but he was the expert.
‘And you witnessed your father’s death. That must have been very traumatic.’
‘But you can hardly claim that that was abuse.’
‘I certainly would. Abuse doesn’t always have to be intentional and deliberate. The very fact that you were there and saw it abused your young developing mind.’
‘That’s all well and good,’ I’d said. ‘But is dragging all these dreadful memories up again and again actually helping me to get better?’
‘From your history, I can tell that a major contributor to your present condition is your response to the deaths of both your parents. I believe it is the primary cause of your nightmares and the panic attacks. I know it might seem strange but, to move forward, we need to look back, to reconfigure how the brain deals with former events and emotions in life and, in your case, to expunge the guilt you feel over their deaths.’
I suppose it made some sense, so we had agreed to meet again the following week.
‘Worcester, you say.’
Jerry nodded. ‘Nice flat track with easy turns. Just what’s needed.’
For both horse and rider, I thought.
‘Not too light, I hope.’
‘The weights won’t be announced until tomorrow, but he hasn’t moved in this week’s ratings after that fall, so he’ll be in the mid-range.’
Good. I didn’t think I could cope with five days of wasting to get down under ten stone.
‘Will you be going?’ I asked, half-hoping that I’d be left to Norman again.
‘I certainly will,’ Jerry replied. ‘I like Worcester. I’ll give you a lift if you like.’
Jerry shot a glance at Sabrina.
I wasn’t sure which was worse – being driven by Jerry, which would involve a journey home with him if – when – things went horribly wrong, or driving myself with all the hang-overs from my trip to Newton Abbot.
‘Thanks for the offer. I’ll decide closer to the day.’
I went up to my room and bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t call Rachel as she would be working the night shift at the hospital.
We’d spoken at length, and often, since my trip to see her on the previous Saturday. Thank goodness for free internet calling or my phone bill would be going through the roof.
That day in Lincoln had been magical and we had spent the afternoon walking through the city centre, hand in hand, there having been no adverse reaction to my audacious declaration of love. Quite the opposite, in fact.
She had shown me both the tall cathedral and the well-preserved castle, and we even drove to see the grandstand with no racecourse.
‘What happened to your window?’ Rachel asked on the way.
‘It’s a long story,’ I said. ‘Suffice to say it isn’t a good one.’
She sat there expectantly.
This gave me a dilemma.
Did I tell her and risk putting her off me because I’d been a fool who should have known better than to get drunk, and then drive in that condition? Or did I make up a story and then lose her for ever later on if, and when, she found out that I had lied to her? Or did I say nothing, which might alienate her anyway?
Caught between a rock and two hard places, I weighed up the options and then, with my heart in my mouth, I chose the rock.
I told her the whole truth.
She didn’t remonstrate or tell me off, she just put her hand on my arm and stroked it.
‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said.
How could I not?
Fortunately, at that point, we arrived at the grandstand, which, as she had said, looked at nothing, other than the main A57 road towards Worksop that ran right across the front of it, with open land beyond where the racecourse had once been laid out.
‘I suppose the racecourse was closed to build the road,’ I said.
‘Oh, no. The road was here all the time. They simply closed it to traffic during the race meetings.’
The old metal number-board frame was also still standing there forlornly, holding adverts rather than the horse numbers and jockeys’ names that it once had.
‘Seems a shame,’ I said. ‘Bit like a ghost town.’
But it wasn’t alone. Over sixty racecourses in Great Britain had been closed during the twentieth century. That’s more than currently remain.
In the early evening, I had taken Rachel back to her sister’s place on the eastern edge of the city. We sat outside the house in the car for a long while, talking, neither of us wanting the day to finish.
‘You’d better get going,’ she said eventually. ‘You’ve a long way to go.’
I felt like saying that we could go and find a hotel to spend a night of passion together, but it was too soon, too forward. And I had promised Sabrina that I would be back in Lambourn at a decent hour, and sober.
I leant over and kissed Rachel. No peck on the cheek this time – full-blooded on the lips, with a return just as eager.
‘I’m so sorry I have to go,’ I said unnecessarily.
‘Then come back again soon,’ she said.
I walked her to her sister’s front door and we kissed again, hugging our bodies together as if trying to merge our souls.
There were tears in my eyes as I drove away, leaving Rachel standing on the doorstep, waving at me until I finally went out of sight round a corner, still with my right hand out through the broken window to wave back. It was almost as much as I could do not to turn the car round and go back to her.
It really felt like the start of something special, and in more ways than one.
I hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol all day, nor wanted to.
* * *
Very reluctantly, I went to the races on Monday in Jerry’s car because mine was in the local Lambourn garage having its window fixed.
The racecourse at Worcester is very picturesque, situated as it is on the Pitchcroft, a floodplain meadow next to the River Severn, which runs alongside the western edge.
‘Nowadays they only race here in the summer,’ Jerry said as we walked the course together. ‘They used to lose so many of their winter meetings due to flooding that they don’t bother with them any more. There are even photographs in the weighing room of members of the Worcester Rowing Club rowing up the straight past the winning post on the floodwater.’ He laughed.
‘You’d think they’d move to somewhere a bit drier.’
‘No chance,’ Jerry said. ‘Worcester is one of the oldest racecourses in the country. They’ve been racing on this particular patch of land for more than three hundred years and probably will for another three hundred.’
The two-mile handicap hurdle was the first race of the afternoon and I was changed, weighed and ready in good time. Gasfitter, while not actually the betting favourite, was well fancied, which hardly helped my state of mind.
This was my first ride in any race since my fall at Newton Abbot more than three weeks before. One of the other jockeys had even asked if I was recovered and I realised that he must have thought my prolonged absence from the changing rooms was due to me having been injured in that fall.
‘Fine now, thanks,’ I’d replied.
But I was anxious. Not b
ecause we had fallen last time out, or even that Gasfitter might fall again this time. I was anxious in case it was me who made a mess of things. So much so, in fact, that my hands were shaking as I waited.
What would I give now for a shot of vodka to calm me down?
‘Jockeys out,’ came the call, which raised my anxiety level even higher.
I dragged myself unenthusiastically outside to meet Jerry in the parade ring.
‘Just remember,’ he said. ‘This race is only over two miles when he’s more used to three, so this is a sprint in jumping terms. The others will be at it straight from the off, so be ready and keep up.’
Was he alluding to my blunder at Market Rasen?
There were ten runners in total and we circled at the two-mile start while the girths were tightened.
‘OK, jockeys,’ shouted the starter, climbing up onto his rostrum and raising his flag. ‘Walk in.’
We were all still some twenty yards back from the tape, jig-jogging forward in a reasonable line, when he dropped his flag, released the tape and shouted, ‘Off you go, then.’
And we did, with two of the others taking us towards the first flight of hurdles at a great speed.
‘Be ready and keep up,’ Jerry had said, so I’d kicked Gasfitter in the belly just as the flag dropped and he responded with a surge forward, enabling us to jump the first hurdle only half a length or so behind the two leaders.
As we passed the winning post for the first time, still with another full circuit to complete, Gasfitter was running in fourth but, at this breakneck pace, he seemed to be making heavy weather of things, and he hit the tops of all three hurdles down the back straight.
‘Come on, boy,’ I shouted in his ear. ‘Pick your bloody feet up.’
As we galloped around the final sweeping bend, we had dropped to sixth and, in the long home straight, over the last three obstacles, we went even further back, finishing a poor eighth out of the ten.
I felt sick, and was hugely worried about what Jerry would say.
Somewhat surprisingly, however, he didn’t seem in the least upset when I returned to the also-ran unsaddling area. ‘Never mind,’ he said philosophically. ‘He obviously needed a run after that fall, but the pace today was too fast for him. We’ll put him back to three miles next time.’
But some of the local gambling public were not quite so forgiving.
‘Pussett,’ one of them shouted loudly at me as I walked past him towards the weighing room, ‘you’re a fucking disgrace. You should be banned for cheating like that. You didn’t even try to win.’
I tried to ignore him but other disgruntled punters also took up the chant, such that I had to run their verbal gauntlet all the way back to the weighing room.
And the stewards must have heard them too because, before long, I was invited into their room to explain why Gasfitter had performed so much below his expectations. Jerry was there ahead of me but now they wanted my version.
‘Well?’ the chairman said to me. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ I replied. ‘As far as I am concerned, Gasfitter did his very best today. I gave him every chance but the pace of the race was so strong that he tired down the back straight and had no realistic opportunity of finishing in a higher position.’
‘Humph!’ the chairman exclaimed. ‘Some members of our race-going public seem to disagree with you.’
‘Then they are mistaken,’ I replied calmly.
I didn’t say what I really felt, which was that the particular race-going members of the public he was referring to were all interfering simpletons who were just trying to get me into trouble. They clearly wanted someone else to blame for their own stupidity, having lost their money by backing a horse that was running in a race of the wrong distance.
And whose fault was that, I thought, looking at Jerry.
The stewards told us that they noted our explanations and ordered that Gasfitter be routinely dope-tested.
‘What did you tell them?’ I asked Jerry, as we left the room.
‘The truth. Same as you.’ But he was smiling as if there was something else he hadn’t told them. Or me.
33
I woke in a sweat, breathing hard, with my heart thumping fast and forcefully in my chest.
Where was I?
I reached out and grabbed my phone. The screen lit up, showing me that I was in my room in the Dickinsons’ house, and the time readout showed 02:13.
It was only a dream.
A really bad dream. That was all.
I lay back on the pillow in relief and my heart rate began to decrease a little, heading back towards normal.
But it had been so real. I was running between two lines of people and they were all shouting at me, just like at Worcester races. My mother and my father were in the line and they were shouting too: ‘Fucking disgrace, you’re a fucking disgrace.’ When I looked closer, all the people were my mother and father, like clones, and their shouting became louder and louder until…
I must have woken up.
Just a nightmare, I told myself, trying to smile in the dark. Nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.
But the nightmare came again.
My mother and father were there once more, right in front of me, shouting with angry faces: ‘Fucking disgrace.’ I tried to run but every way I turned, my mother and father would appear to block my escape. ‘You’re a fucking disgrace, fucking disgrace.’ Their chant went on and on, and their arms beat at my head, forcing me down and down into the darkness, and then I was falling, tumbling over and over towards the turf at Newton Abbot, but never getting there.
I suddenly woke up again and I was shaking.
I turned on the bedside light but, even so, I couldn’t get the awful images out of my mind, so much so that I was afraid of even turning the light out again, let alone going back to sleep.
What I desperately needed was a drink.
I knew there was no alcohol in my room. I’d searched for hours before now, hoping that Sabrina had missed something.
I kept thinking about the bottles standing to attention on the drinks trolley in the dining room, until it became an obsession.
I got up and went over to my bedroom door.
Surprisingly, it opened. Sabrina must have decided there was no point in locking it any more, not after I had been all the way to Lincoln on my own without any problems.
I crept silently down the stairs in my boxer shorts and bare feet.
Just one, I told myself. Just to help me sleep without these dreadful visions reappearing in my head. Just one.
But just one was never enough.
* * *
Sabrina found me when she came downstairs to make some tea at six o’clock.
I was lying in a pool of my own vomit on the parquet flooring in her hallway.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I slurred at her as I cried. ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry.’
There was no shouting, no histrionics of any kind.
‘Come on,’ she simply said. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up.’
She tried to help me up but my legs refused to work.
‘Just lie there, then,’ Sabrina said dismissively. ‘But Jerry will be down in a few minutes. He’s in the shower.’
Somehow the thought of my employer finding me in such a desperate state on his hall floor galvanised me into at least crawling on my hands and knees into the kitchen and hauling myself into a vertical position via one of the chairs around the table.
I wobbled a bit as Sabrina wiped me down with a damp towel.
‘Do you think you can make it to the dining room?’ Sabrina asked.
The dining room had been the epicentre of this particular earthquake, in particular its drinks trolley, which was now much depleted.
‘I could try,’ I said, trying to focus my eyes on her face.
‘Right, let’s do it. But, if you throw up onto my carpet, I’ll bloody kill you myself.’
I almost laughed.
/>
She took my arm and together we tacked our way back and forth across the hall, avoiding the vomit, into the dining room, and then on into the dark recesses on the far side.
‘Sit there,’ Sabrina ordered, putting another towel over one of her best dining-room chairs to protect it. She placed a plastic washing-up bowl onto my knees. ‘If you’re going to be sick again, do it into that. But don’t make a sound. I’ll clear up the hall and tell Jerry you’re not feeling very well and that you’ll not be riding out today.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again.
‘Don’t just sit there being sorry,’ she said sternly. ‘Enough is enough. This has got to stop. So let’s bloody do something about it.’
* * *
‘My name’s Miles, and I’m an alcoholic.’
I was in my first group therapy session at the Granby Manor Rehabilitation Centre near the small town of Didcot in Oxfordshire.
‘Thank you, Miles,’ said the group facilitator. ‘Now, can you tell us all something about yourself, and why you are here?’
I looked round at my fellow group members, all men, sitting in a circle on high-backed wooden chairs, just as I was. There were ten of us in total and nine sets of eyes stared expectantly in my direction. I could feel the panic begin to rise in my throat.
The facilitator spotted it. ‘We’re all friends together here, Miles. Every one of us has his own personal demons. I promise it will help to share them. You will find you are not alone in your distress.’
I looked down at my hands and they were shaking.
I could do with a drink but there was no chance of that, not here.
Drinking was what had brought me here in the first place and that admission – I’m an alcoholic – had been the most difficult thing I’d ever said in my whole life.
Even now, part of my brain disagreed.
Don’t be daft, it said. Alcoholics are other people, those who lie unwashed in subways or on park benches, with bottles of spirits wrapped in brown paper bags. You just like the odd drink or two, to steady your nerves. What’s wrong with that?
‘I’m a jockey,’ I said. ‘A steeplechase jockey.’
‘Good,’ said the leader. ‘And what brings you here?’
Iced Page 24