by Dick Francis
The races came and went: first, second, third. Everyone went down each time to inspect the horses as they walked round the parade ring, returning to the box to watch the race. Orkney gambled seriously, taking his custom to the bookmakers on the rails. Isabella flourished fistfuls of Tote tickets. Flora said she couldn’t be bothered to bet but would rather check to make sure everything was all right with Breezy Palm.
I went with her to find Jack’s travelling head lad (not the unctuous Howard but a little dynamo of a man with sharp restless eyes) who said cryptically that the horse was as right as he would ever be and that Mrs Hawthorn wasn’t to worry, everything was in order.
Mrs Hawthorn naturally took no heed of his good advice and went on worrying regardless.
‘Why didn’t you tell Orkney what really happened to your arm, dear?’ she asked.
‘I’m not proud of it,’ I said prosaically. ‘Don’t want to talk about it. Just like Orkney.’
Flora the constant chatterer deeply sighed. ‘So odd, dear. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
We returned in the lift to the box where Flora wistfully eyed the still-wrapped food and asked if I’d had any lunch.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Did you?’
‘I should have remembered,’ she sighed, ‘but I didn’t,’ and she told me then about Orkney’s hate reaction to the caterers.
Orkney had invited no other guests. He appeared to expect Flora and myself to return to the box for each race but didn’t actually say so. An unsettling host, to say the least.
It was out on the balcony when we were waiting for the runners in the third race to canter down to the start that he asked Flora if Jack had found anyone else to lease his mare: he had forgotten to ask him on the hospital telephone.
‘He’ll do it as soon as he’s home, I’m sure,’ Flora said placatingly, and to me she added, ‘Orkney owns one of the horses that Larry Trent leased.’
Orkney said austerely. ‘My good filly by Fringe. A three-year-old, good deep heart room, gets that from her dam, of course.’
I thought back. ‘I must have seen her in Jack’s yard,’ I said. Four evenings in a row, to be precise.
‘Really?’ Orkney showed interest. ‘Liver chestnut, white blaze, kind eye.’
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Good bone. Nice straight hocks. And she has some cleanly healed scars on her near shoulder. Looked like barbed wire.’
Orkney looked both gratified and annoyed. ‘She got loose one day as a two-year-old. The only bit of barbed wire in Berkshire and she had to crash into it. Horses have no sense.’
‘They panic easily,’ I agreed.
Orkney’s manner to me softened perceptibly at that point, which Flora noted and glowed over.
‘Your filly did well for Larry Trent,’ I said.
‘Not bad. Won a nice handicap at Newbury and another at Kempton. Both Larry and I made a profit through the books, but I was hoping for black print, of course.’
I caught Flora starting to look anxious. ‘Of course,’ I said confidently; and she subsided. ‘Black print’ had come back just in time as an echo from childhood. Races of prestige and high prizes were printed in heavy black type in auction catalogues: black print earned by a broodmare upped the price of her foals by thousands.
‘Will you keep her in training next year?’ I asked.
‘If I can get someone else to lease her.’ He paused slightly. ‘I prefer to run two-year-olds myself, of course. I’ve had four in training with Jack this year. I sell them on if they’re any good, or lease them, especially fillies, if they’re well bred, so that I can either breed from them later or sell them as broodmares. Larry often took one of my fillies as three- or four-year-olds. Good eye for a horse, Larry had, poor fellow.’
‘Yes, so I hear.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I saw him at the party… but that was all.’ In my mind’s eye I saw him alive and also lifeless, the man whose death had started so many worms crawling.
‘I didn’t go to the party,’ Orkney said calmly. ‘Too bad he was killed.’
‘You knew him well?’ I asked.
‘Pretty well. We weren’t close friends, of course. Just had the mutual interest in horses.’
Orkney’s voice clearly announced what his lips hadn’t said: Larry Trent hadn’t been, in Orkney’s estimation, Orkney’s social equal.
‘So… er…’ I said, ‘you didn’t go to his place… the Silver Moondance?’
The faintest spasm crossed Orkney’s undemonstrative face. ‘I met him there, once, yes, in his office, to discuss business. We dined afterwards. A dinner dance, Larry said. Very loud music…’ He left the sentence hanging, criticism implied but not uttered.
‘What did you think of the wine?’ I asked.
‘Wine?’ He was surprised.
‘I’m a wine merchant,’ I said.
‘Oh, really?’ Wine merchants, it seemed, were in Orkney’s world provisionally O.K, ‘Interesting. Well, as far as I remember tt was perfectly adequate. For a dinner dance, of course.’
Perfectly adequate for a dinner dance brilliantly summed up the superior plonk in all those suspect bottles. There wasn’t any point, I thought, in asking Orkney about the scotch; he was a gin man himself.
The horses for the third race emerged onto the track and cantered past the stands. Orkney raised a massive pair of binoculars and studied his fancy, a flashy looking bay with a bounding impatient stride like an impala and sweat already on his neck.
‘Fighting his jockey,’ Orkney muttered. ‘Losing the race on the way down.’ He lowered the race-glasses and scowled.
‘Larry Trent sometimes bought horses at the sales,’ I said casually, watching the runners. ‘Not for you?’
‘No, no. For his brother.’ Orkney’s eyes and attention were anywhere but on me. ‘Horses in training. Three-year-olds, or four or five. Shipped them abroad, that sort of thing. No, no, I buy yearlings… on bloodstock agents’ advice, of course.’
Flora, listening, wore an expression that changed rapidly from surprise to comprehension. The disappearing Ramekin had been explained in the most mundane unmysterious way. She wasn’t exactly disappointed but in the comprehension there was definite anticlimax.
‘Look at that!’ Orkney exclaimed crossly. ‘The damn thing’s bolting.’
His fancy had won the battle with his jockey and was departing into the distance at a flat gallop. Orkney raised his binoculars and folded his mouth into a grim and almost spiteful line as if he would have wrung the jockey’s neck if he could have caught him.
‘Did you know Larry Trent’s brother?’ I asked.
‘What? No. No, never met him. Larry just said… Look at that! Bloody fool ought to be fined. I saw Larry buying a good horse for around fifty thousand at the sales. I said if he had that sort of money, why did he prefer leasing? It was his brother’s cash, he said. Out of his league. But he could pick horses, he said, and his brother couldn’t. The one thing his brother couldn’t do, he said. Sounded envious to me. But there you are, that’s people. Look at that bloody boy! Gone past the start. It’s too bad! It’s disgraceful!’ Ungovernable irritation rose in his voice. ‘Now they’ll be late off, and we’ll be rushed for Breezy Palm.’
THIRTEEN
He was right. They were late off. Orkney’s fancy finished dead tired and second to last and we were indeed rushed for Breezy Palm.
Orkney was seriously displeased. Orkney became coldly and selfishly unpleasant.
I dutifully walked Flora down to the saddling boxes, though more slowly than our angry host had propelled his lady. (‘You didn’t mind him calling you my walker, did you, dear?’ Flora asked anxiously. ‘Not at all. Delighted to walk you anywhere, any time.’ ‘You’re such a comfort, Tony dear.’) We reached the saddling boxes as the tiny saddle itself went on over the number cloth, elastic girths dangling.
Breezy Palm, a chestnut with three white socks, looked as if he had a certain amount of growi
ng still to do, particularly in front. Horses, like children, grew at intervals with rests in between: Breezy Palm’s forelegs hadn’t yet caught up with the last spurt in the hind.
‘Good strong rump,’ I said, in best Jimmy fashion.
The brisk travelling head lad, busy with girth buckles, glanced at me hopefully but Orkney was in no mood for flattery. ‘He’s coming to hand again at last,’ he said sourly. ‘He won twice back in July, but since then there have been several infuriating disappointments. Not Jack’s fault, of course…’ His voice all the same was loaded with criticism. ‘… jockeys’ mistakes, entered at the wrong courses, frightened in the starting gate, needed the race, always something.’
Neither the head lad nor Flora looked happy, but nor were they surprised. Orkney’s pre-race nerves, I supposed, were part of the job.
‘Couldn’t you have saddled up sooner?’ Orkney said crossly. ‘You must have known the last race was delayed.’
‘You usually like to see your horses saddled, sir.’
‘Yes, yes, but use some commonsense.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
‘Can’t you hurry that up?’ Orkney said with increasing brusqueness as the head lad began sponging the horse’s nose and mouth. ‘We’re damned late already.’
‘Just coming, sir.’ The head lad’s glance fell on the horse’s rug, still to be buckled on over the saddle for warming muscles on the October day. There was a pot of oil also for brushing gloss onto the hooves… and a prize to the lad, it said in the racecard, for the best turned-out horse.
‘It’s too bad,’ Orkney said impatiently. ‘We should be in the parade ring already.’ He turned away sharply and stalked off in that direction, leaving Isabella, Flora and me to follow as we would.
Isabella looked stoically unaffected. Flora began to scurry after Orkney but I caught her abruptly by the arm, knowing he’d think less of her for hurrying, not more.
‘Slow down, slow down, the jockeys aren’t out yet.’
‘Oh. All right, then.’ She looked guilty as much as flustered, and walked with small jerky steps between the long-legged Isabella and myself as we joined Orkney in the parade ring, no later than any other owner-trainer group.
Orkney was still in the grip of his outburst of bad temper, which failed to abate when Breezy Palm finally appeared in the ring looking polished. The jockey, approaching it seemed to me unsmilingly out of past experience, was sarcastically told not to leave his winning run as bloody late as last time and not to go to sleep in the stalls, if he didn’t mind.
The featherweight jockey listened expressionlessly, his gaze on the ground, his body relaxed. He’s heard it all before, I thought, and he simply doesn’t care. I wondered, if I’d been a jockey, whether I would have ridden my heart out for owners who spoke in that way, and concluded that possibly not. Breezy Palm’s uncertain prospects developed a certainty for me at that moment: and I wondered what Orkney would be like in defeat when he was so obnoxious in hope.
The bell rang for the jockeys to mount. Breezy Palm’s jockey nodded to Orkney and went away with Orkney still telling him that if he used his whip too much he’d have him up in front of the stewards.
Flora was standing so close to me she was virtually clinging on. When Orkney turned away and strode out of the parade ring without waiting for Isabella or to see his horse mounted she said to me shakily, ‘Jack manages him, but I can’t. Jack stops him being so rude to the jockeys. One of them refused to ride his horses… can you imagine?’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Do we have to go up to the box to watch the race ?’
‘Oh, my goodness, yes,’ she said emphatically. ‘At least… I mean… you don’t have to… I could go alone.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
I looked around for the decorative Isabella, but she too had disappeared.
‘They’ve both gone to bet,’ Flora said, sighing. ‘Jack said the opposition was stiff… I’m so afraid Breezy Palm won’t win.’
We went up in the lift to the empty box. The sandwiches and tartlets were still wrapped, but the gin level had dropped considerably since we had arrived. Gin itself, I reflected, was a notorious inducer, in some people, of catty ill-humour.
Flora and I went onto the balcony to see the runners go down to the start, and Orkney arrived breathlessly, moving in front of us without apology, raising his binoculars to see what sins his jockey might already be committing. Isabella collectedly arrived with her clutched tickets and I glanced at the flickering light of the Tote board to see Breezy Palm’s odds. Seven to one; by no means favourite but fairly well backed.
There were eighteen runners, several of them past winners. Breezy Palm, well drawn, went into the stalls quietly and showed no signs of re-assaulting the assistant starter. Orkney’s slightly frantic agitation stilled suddenly to concentration and in the six-furlong distance the dark green starting gates opened in unison and spilled out their brilliant accelerating rainbow cargo.
Flora raised her own small raceglasses but I doubted if she could see much for trembling. Three-quarter-mile straight races were in any case difficult to read in the early stages as the runners were so far away and coming straight towards one, and it took me a fair time myself to sort out Orkney’s jockey in red and grey. The commentator, rattling off names,hadn’t mentioned Breezy Palm at all by the time they reached half-way but I could see him there, bobbing along in the pack, making no move either forward or backward, proving merely at that stage that he was no better and no worse than his opponents.
Flora gave up the struggle with her raceglasses, lowered them, and watched the last two furlongs simply with anxiety. The bunch of runners which had seemed to be moving slowly was suddenly perceived to be flying, the tiny foreshortened distances from first to last stretching before one’s eyes to gaps of a length, to definite possibles and positive losers. The young colts stuck out their necks and strove to be first as they would have done in a wild herd on an unrailed plain, the primaeval instinct flashing there undiluted on the civilised track. The very essence of racing, I thought. The untamed force that made it all possible. Exciting, moving… beautiful.
Breezy Palm had the ancient instinct in full measure. Whether urged to the full by his jockey or not he was straining ahead with passion, legs angular beneath the immature body, stride hurried and scratchy, the compulsion to be first all there but the technical ability still underdeveloped.
The trick of race-riding, my father had once said, was to awaken a horse’s natural panic fear and then control it. My father, of course, had had no doubt at all that he could do both. It was I, his son, who couldn’t do either. Pity…
Breezy Palm’s natural panic, jockey controlling it to the extent of letting it have its head and keeping it running straight, was still lustily aiming a shade beyond his ability. Orkney watched in concentrated silence. Flora seemed to be holding her breath. Isabella behind me was saying ‘Come on, you bugger, come on, you bugger,’ continuously under her breath, her most human reaction to date. Breezy Palm, oblivious, had his eyes fixed on the three horses still in front of him and over the last hundred yards ran as if the great god Pan were at his very heels.
Horses can only do their best. Breezy Palm’s best on that day couldn’t overhaul the winner, who went ahead by a length, or the second, who left clear space behind him, but he flashed over the line so close to the third of the leaders that from the angle of Orkney’s box it was impossible to tell the exact placings. The judge, announced the tannoy, was calling for a photograph.
Orkney, still silent, lowered his glasses and stared up the track to where his hepped-up colt was being hauled back into the twentieth century. Then still saying nothing he turned and hurried away, again leaving his companions to fare for themselves.
‘Come on, dear,’ Flora said, tugging my sleeve. ‘We must go down too. Jack said to be sure to. Oh dear…’
The three of us consequently made the downward journey as fast as possible and arrived to find Breezy Palm stamping
around in the place allotted to the horse that finished fourth, the jockey unbuckling the girths and Orkney scowling.
‘Oh dear…’ Flora said again. ‘The jockeys always know… He must have been beaten for third after all.’
The result of the photograph, soon announced, confirmed it: Breezy Palm had finished fourth. Distances: length, two lengths, short head.
Flora, Isabella and I stood beside Orkney, looking at the sweating, tossing, skittering two-year-old and making consoling and congratulatory remarks, none of which seemed to please.
‘Ran extremely well in a strong field,’ I said.
‘The wrong race for him,’ Orkney said brusquely. ‘I’ve no idea why Jack persists in entering him in this class. Perfectly obvious they were too good for him.’
‘Only just,’ Isabella said reasonably.
‘My dear woman, you know nothing about it.’
Isabella merely smiled; fortitude of an exceptional nature.
It struck me that she herself was totally unco wed by Orkney. He treated her rudely: she ignored it, neither embarrassed nor upset. Subtly, somewhere in their relationship, she was his equal… and both of them knew it.
Flora said bravely, ‘I thought the horse ran splendidly,’ and received a pityingly glance from on high.
‘He fought to the end,’ I said admiringly. ‘Definitely not a quitter.’
‘Fourth,’ Orkney said repressively, as if fourth in itself bespoke a lack of character, and I wondered if he cared in the least how graceless he sounded.
The signal was given for the horses to be led away and Orkney made impatient movements which everyone interpreted as his own type of invitation to return to the box. There at last he busied himself with removing the wrappings from the overdue sandwiches, but without much method, finally pushing the plates towards Isabella for her to do it. Orkney himself poured fresh drinks as unstintingly as before and indicated that we might all sit down round one of the tables, if we so wished. All of us sat. All of us ate politely, hiding our hunger.