by Dick Francis
‘Why seven, then?’ I asked, looking it up. ‘It’s never won a race in its life.’
‘My peg in the cloakroom at school is number seven.’
‘I see. Well, number seven is called Clever Clogs.’
Neil beamed.
The other four returned with their choices. Christopher had picked the form horse, the favourite. Alan had singled out Jugaloo because he liked its name. Edward chose a no-hoper because it looked sad and needed encouragement. Toby’s vote went to Tough Nut because it had been ‘kicking and bucking in the ring and winding people up’.
They all wanted to know my own choice, and I ran a fast eye over the list and said randomly, ‘Grandfather’, and then wondered at the mind’s subliminal tricks and thought it perhaps not so random after all.
Slightly to my relief, Toby’s Tough Nut not only won the race but had enough energy left for a couple of vicious kicks in the unsaddling enclosure. Toby’s boredom turned to active interest and, as often happened, the rest responded to his mood. The rain stopped. The afternoon definitely improved.
I took them all down the course later to watch the fourth race, a three-mile steeplechase, from beside one of those difficult jumps, an open ditch. This one, the second to last fence on the circuit, was attended by a racecourse employee looking damp in an orange fluorescent jacket, and by a St John’s Ambulance volunteer whose job it was to give first aid to any jockeys who fell at his feet. A small crowd of about thirty racegoers had made the trek down there beside ourselves, spreading out behind the inside rails of the track, both on the take-off and the landing sides of the fence.
The ditch itself – in steeplechasing’s past history a real drainage ditch with water in it – was in modern times, as at Stratton Park, no real ditch at all but a space about four feet wide on the take-off side of the fence. There was a large pole across the course on the approach side to give an eye-line to the horses, to tell them when to jump, and the fence itself, of dark birch twigs, was four feet six inches high and at least a couple of feet thick: all in all a regular jump presenting few surprises to experienced ’chasers.
Although the boys had seen a good deal of racing on television I’d never taken them to an actual meeting before, still less down to where the rough action filled the senses. When the ten-strong field poured over the fence on the first of the race’s two circuits, the earth quivered under the thudding hooves, the black birch crackled as the half-ton ’chasers crashed through the twigs, the air parted before the straining bunch risking life and limb off the ground at thirty miles an hour: the noise stunned the ears, the jockeys’ voices cursed, the coloured shirts flashed by kaleidoscopically… and suddenly they were gone, their backs receding, silence returning, the brief violent movement over, the vigour and striving a memory.
‘Wow!’ Toby said, awestruck. ‘You didn’t say it was like that.’
‘It’s only like that when you’re close to it,’ I said.
‘But it must be always like that for the jockeys,’ Edward said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, they take the noise with them all the way.’ Edward, ten, had led the pirate ambush up the oak. Misleadingly quiet, it was always he who wondered what it would be like to be a mushroom, who talked to invisible friends, who worried most about famine-struck children. Edward invented make-believe games for his brothers and read books and lived an intense inner life, as reserved as Alan, nine, was outgoing and ebullient.
The racecourse employee walked along the fence on the landing side, putting back into place with a short-handled paddle all the dislodged chunks of birch, making the obstacle look tidy again before the second onslaught.
The five boys waited impatiently while the runners continued round the circuit and came back towards the open ditch for the second and last time before racing away to the last fence and the sprint to the winning post. Each boy had picked his choice of winner and had registered it with me, and when people around us began yelling for their fancy the boys yelled also, Neil jumping up and down in excitement and screaming ‘Come on seven, come on seven, come on peg.’
I had put my own trust on Rebecca Stratton who was this time partnering a grey mare called Carnival Joy, and as they neared the fence she seemed to be lying second, to my mild surprise, my own expertise at picking winners being zero.
At the last minute the horse in front of her wavered out of a straight line, and I glimpsed the strain on the jockey’s face as he hauled on a rein to get himself out of trouble, but he was meeting the fence all wrong. His mount took off a stride too soon and landed right in the space between take-off pole and fence, where, frightened, it dumped its jockey and veered across into the path not only of Carnival Joy, but of all the runners behind.
Things happen fast at thirty miles an hour. Carnival Joy, unable to see a clear path ahead, attempted to jump both the fence and the horse on the take-off side, a near-impossible task. The grey’s hooves caught the loose horse so that its whole weight crashed chest first into the fence. Its jockey willynilly flew caterpaulting out forwards over the birch and in a flurry of arms and legs thudded onto the turf. Carnival Joy fell over the fence onto its head, somersaulted, came down on its side and lay there winded, lethally kicking in an attempt to get up.
The rest of the field, some trying to stop, some unaware of the mêlée, some trying to go round it, compounded the débâcle like cars crashing in a fog. One of the horses, going too fast, too late, with no chance of safety, took what must have seemed to him a possible way out and tried to jump right off the course through the nearside wing.
Wings, on the take-off side of each fence, were located there precisely to stop horses running out at the last moment and, to be effective, needed to be too high to jump. Trying to escape trouble by jumping the wings was therefore always a disaster, though not so bad as in the old days when all wings had been made of wood, which splintered and ripped into flesh. Wings at Stratton Park, conforming to the current norm, were made of plastic, which bent and gave way without injuring, but this particular horse, having crashed through unscathed, then collided with the bunch of onlookers, who had tried to scatter too late.
One minute, a smooth race. In five seconds, carnage. I was peripherally aware that three more horses had come to grief on the landing side of the fence with their jockeys either unconscious or sitting up cursing, but I had eyes only for the knocked down clutch of spectators and chiefly, and I confess frantically, I was counting young figures in blue anoraks, and feeling almost sick with relief to find them all upright and unscathed. The horror on their faces I could deal with later.
Alan, born seemingly without an understanding of danger, suddenly darted out onto the course, ducking under the rails, intent on helping the fallen jockeys.
I yelled at him urgently to come back, but there was too much noise all around us and, powerfully aware of all the loose horses charging about in scared bewilderment, I bent under the rails myself and hurried to retrieve him. Neil, little Neil, scrambled after me.
Terrified for him also, I hoisted him up and ran to fetch Alan who, seemingly oblivious to Carnival Joy’s thrashing legs, was doing his best to help a dazed Rebecca Stratton to her feet. In something near despair I found that Christopher too was out on the course, coming to her aid.
Rebecca Stratton returned to full consciousness, brushed crossly at the small hands stretched to help her and in a sharp voice said to no one in particular, ‘Get these brats out of my way. I’ve enough to contend with without that.’
She stood up furiously, stalked over to the jockey whose mount had caused the whole pile-up and who was now standing forlornly beside the fence, and uttered loud and uncomplimentary opinions about his lack of horsemanship. Her hands clenched and unclenched as if, given half a chance, she would hit him.
My brats predictably detested her immediately. I hustled them with their wounded feelings off the course and out of further trouble, but as we passed near to the lady jockey Neil said, suddenly and distinctly, ‘Torpid stumblebum.’
‘What?’ Rebecca’s head snapped round, but I’d whirled my small son hastily away from her and she seemed more disconcerted than actively directing fire at anyone except the other unfortunate rider.
Toby and Edward, impervious to her, were more concerned with the mown down spectators, two of whom looked badly hurt. People were in tears, people were stunned, people were awakening to anger. Somewhere in the distance, people were cheering. One of the few horses that had side stepped the calamity had gone on to win the race.
As on most racecourses, the runners had been followed all the way round by an ambulance driven along on a narrow private roadway on the inner side of the track, so that help was at hand. The racecourse official had unfurled and urgently waved two flags, one red and white, one orange, signalling to the doctor and the vet sitting in a car out in the middle of the course that they were both needed at once.
I collected the boys together and we stood in a group watching the ambulance men and the doctor, in an identifying arm band, kneeling beside the fallen, fetching stretchers, conferring, dealing as best they could with broken bones and blood and worse. It was too late to worry about what the boys were seeing: they resisted my suggestion that we should go back to the stands, so we remained with most of the spectators already there, and were joined by the steady stream of new spectators ghoulishly attracted down the course by chaos and disaster.
The ambulance drove off slowly with the two racegoers who’d been felled by the crash through the wing. ‘The horse jumped on one man’s face,’ Toby told me matter-of-factly. ‘I think he’s dead.’
‘Shut up,’ Edward protested.
‘It’s the real world,’ Toby said.
One of the horses couldn’t be saved. Screens were erected round him, which they hadn’t been for the kicked-in-the-face man.
Two cars and a second ambulance swept up fast from the direction of the stands and out leapt another doctor, another vet, and racecourse authority in the shape of the Clerk of the Course, Oliver Wells, one of my visitors from Sunday. Hurrying from clump to clump, Oliver checked with the doctors, checked with the vets behind the screens, checked with first-aid men tending a flat-out jockey, listened to a horse-battered spectator sitting on the ground with his head between his knees and finally paid attention to Rebecca Stratton, whose brief spell of daze was still resulting in hyperactivity and a het-up stream of complaints.
‘Pay attention, Oliver.’ Her voice rose imperiously. ‘This little shit caused the whole thing. I’m reporting him to the Stewards. Careless riding! A fine. Suspension, at least.’
Oliver Wells merely nodded and went to have a word with one of the doctors, who looked across at Rebecca and, leaving his unconscious patient, attempted to feel the all-too-conscious lady’s pulse.
She pulled her wrist away brusquely. ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she insisted. ‘You stupid little man.’
The doctor narrowed his eyes at her and took his skills elsewhere, and across Oliver Wells’s bony features flitted an expression that could only be described as glee.
He caught me looking at him before he’d rearranged his expression, and changed the direction of his thoughts with a jolt.
‘Lee Morris,’ he exclaimed, ‘isn’t it?’ He looked at the children. ‘What are they all doing here?’
‘Day at the races,’ I said dryly.
‘I mean…’ He glanced at his watch and at the clearing up going on around us. ‘When you go back up the course, will you call in at my office before you go home. It’s right beside the weighing room. Er… please?
‘OK,’ I agreed easily, ‘if you like.’
‘Great.’ He gave me a half-puzzled final glance and dived back into his duties and, with things improving on the turf and slowly losing their first intense drama, the five boys at length unglued their feet and their eyes and walked back with me towards the stands.
‘That man came to our house last Sunday,’ Toby told me. ‘He’s got a long nose and sticking-out ears.’
‘So he has.’
‘The sun was making shadows of them.’
Children were observant in an uncomplicated way. I’d been too concerned with why the man was there to notice shadows on his face.
‘He’s the man who mostly organises the races here,’ I said. ‘He runs things on race days. He’s called the Clerk of the Course.’
‘A sort of Field Marshal?’
‘Quite like that.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Alan said, quickly bored.
Neil said ‘Torpid stumblebum’ twice, as if the words themselves pleased his lips.
‘What are you talking about?’ Christopher demanded, and I explained.
‘We were only trying to help her,’ he protested. ‘She’s a cow.’
‘Cows are nice,’ Alan said.
By the time we reached the stands, the fifth race, over hurdles, was already being run, but none of my five much cared about the result, not having had a chance to pick their fancy.
No one had won on the fourth race. Everyone’s hopes had ended at the ditch. Edward’s choice was the horse that died.
I gave them all tea in the tea-room: ruinously expensive but a necessary antidote to shock. Toby drowned his brush with the real world in four cups of hot sweet milky pick-you-up and every cake he could cajole from the waitress.
They ate through the sixth race. They all went to the gents. The crowds were pouring homewards out of the gates when we made our way to the Clerk of the Course’s office beside the weighing room.
The boys entered quietly behind me, unusually subdued and giving a misleading impression of habitual good behaviour. Oliver Wells, sitting at a busy-looking desk, eyed the children vaguely and went on speaking into a walkie-talkie. Roger Gardner, racecourse manager, was also in attendance, sitting with one hip on the desk, one foot swinging. The colonel’s worry-level had if anything intensified during the week, lines having deepened across his forehead. Civilised habits of behaviour would see him through, though, I thought, even if he rose to full height at our entrance, looking as if he had expected Lee Morris but not five smaller clones.
‘Come in,’ Oliver said, putting down his instrument. ‘Now, what shall we do with these boys?’ The question seemed to be merely rhetorical as he had recourse again to his walkie-talkie, pressing buttons. ‘Jenkins? To my office, please.’ He switched off again. ‘Jenkins will see to them.’
An official knocked briefly on an inner door and came in without waiting for a summons: a middle-aged messenger in a belted navy raincoat, with a slightly stodgy expression and slow-moving reassuring bulk.
‘Jenkins,’ Oliver said, ‘take these boys into the jockeys’ changing rooms and let them collect autographs.’
‘Won’t they be a nuisance?’ I asked, as parents do.
‘Jockeys are quite good with children,’ Oliver said, making shooing motions to my sons. ‘Go with Jenkins, boys, I want to talk to your father.’
‘Take them, Christopher,’ I encouraged, and all five of them went cheerfully with the safe escort.
‘Sit down,’ Oliver invited, and I pulled up a chair and sat round the desk with the two of them. ‘We’re not going to get five minutes without interruptions,’ Oliver said, ‘so we’ll come straight to the point.’ The walkie-talkie crackled. Oliver picked it up, pressed a switch and listened.
A voice said brusquely, ‘Oliver, get up here, pronto. The sponsors want a word.’
Oliver said reasonably, ‘I’m writing my report of the fourth race.’
‘Now, Oliver.’ The domineering voice switched itself off, severing argument.
Oliver groaned. ‘Mr Morris… can you wait?’ He rose and departed, whether I could wait or not.
‘That,’ Roger explained neutrally, ‘was a summons from Conrad Darlington Stratton, the fourth baron.’
I made no comment.
‘Things have changed since we saw you on Sunday,’ Roger said. ‘For the worse, if possible. I wanted to go and see you again, but Oliver thought i
t useless. And now… well, here you are! Why are you here?’
‘Curiosity. But with what the boys saw at that fence today, I shouldn’t have come.’
‘Terrible mix up.’ He nodded. ‘A horse killed. It does racing no good.’
‘What about the spectators? My son Toby thought one of them, too, was dead.’
Roger said disgustedly, ‘A hundred dead spectators wouldn’t raise marches against cruel sports. The stands could collapse and kill a hundred, but racing would go on. Dead people are irrelevant, don’t you know.’
‘So… the man was dead?’
‘Did you see him?’
‘Only with a dressing covering his face.’
Roger said gloomily, ‘It’ll be in the papers. The horse came through the wing into him and slashed him across the eyes with a foreleg – those racing plates on their hooves cut like swords – it was gruesome, Oliver said. But the man died of a snapped neck. Died instantly under half a ton of horse. Best that can be said.’
‘My son Toby saw the man’s face,’ I said.
Roger looked at me. ‘Which is Toby?’
‘The second one. He’s twelve. The boy who rode his bike into the house.’
‘I remember. Poor little bugger. Nightmares ahead, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Toby was anyway the one I most worried about, and this wouldn’t help. He’d been born rebellious, grown into a cantankerous toddler and had never since been easy to persuade. I had a sad feeling that in four years’ time he would develop, despite my best efforts, into a sullen world-hating youth, alienated and miserable. I could sense that it would happen and I ached for it not to, but I’d seen too many other suffering families where a much loved son or daughter had grown destructively angry in the mid-teens, despising attempts to help.
Rebecca Stratton, I surmised, might have been like that, ten years earlier. She came into Oliver’s office now like a whirlwind, smashing the door open until it hit the wall, bringing in with her a swirl of cold outside air and a towering attack of fury.