by Dick Francis
The first three fences were the worst, as far as my comfort was concerned. By the time we had jumped the fourth – the water – I had felt the thinly healed crusts on my back tear open, had thought my arms and shoulders would split apart with the strain of controlling Template’s eagerness, had found just how much my wrists and hands had to stand from the tug of the reins.
My chief feeling, as we landed over the water, was one of relief. It was all bearable; I could contain it and ignore it, and get on with the job.
The pattern of the race was simple from my point of view, because from start to finish I saw only three other horses, Emerald and the two lightly-weighted animals whom I had allowed to go on and set the pace. The jockeys of this pair, racing ahead of me nose for nose, consistently left a two-foot gap between themselves and the rails, and I reckoned that if they were still there by the time we reached the second last fence in the straight, they would veer very slightly towards the stands, as horses usually do at Ascot, and widen the gap enough for me to get through.
My main task until then was keeping Emerald from cutting across to the rails in front of me and being able to take the opening instead of Template. I left just too little room between me and the front pair for Emerald to get in, forcing the mare to race all the way on my outside. It didn’t matter that she was two or three feet in front: I could see her better there, and Template was too clever a jumper to be brought down by the half-length trick – riding into a fence half a length in front of an opponent, causing him to take off at the same moment as oneself and land on top of the fence instead of safely on the ground the other side.
With the order unchanged we completed the whole of the first circuit and swept out to the country again. Template jumped the four fences down to Swinley Bottom so brilliantly that I kept finding myself crowding the tails of the pacemakers as we landed, and had to ease him back on the flat each time to avoid taking the lead too soon, and yet not ease him so much that Emerald could squeeze into the space between us.
From time to time I caught a glimpse of the grimness on Emerald’s jockey’s face. He knew perfectly well what I was doing to him, and if I hadn’t beaten him to the rails and made a flying start, he would have done the same to me. Perhaps I had Kemp-Lore to thank that he hadn’t even tried, I thought fleetingly; if the bonfire Kemp-Lore had made of my reputation had led the Irishman to mis-judge what I would do, so much the better.
For another half-mile the two horses in front kept going splendidly, but one of the jockeys picked up his whip at the third last fence, and the other was already busy with his hands. They were dead ducks, and because of that they swung a little wide going round the last bend into the straight. The Irishman must have had his usual bend tactics too fixed in his mind, for he chose that exact moment to go to the front. It was not a good occasion for that manoeuvre. I saw him spurt forward from beside me and accelerate, but he had to go round on the outside of the two front horses who were themselves swinging wide, and he was wasting lengths in the process. The mare carried seven pounds less weight than Template, and on that bend she lost the advantage they should have given her.
After the bend, tackling the straight for the last time, with the second last fence just ahead, Emerald was in the lead on the outside, then the two tiring horses, then me.
There was a three foot gap then between the innermost pacemaker and the rails. I squeezed Template. He pricked his ears and bunched his colossal muscles and thrust himself forward into the narrow opening. He took off at the second last fence half a length behind and landed a length in front of the tiring horse, jumping so close to him on one side and to the wings on the other that I heard the other jockey cry out in surprise as I passed.
One of Template’s great advantages was his speed away from a fence. With no check in his stride he sped smoothly on, still hugging the rails, with Emerald only a length in front on our left. I urged him a fraction forward to prevent the mare from swinging over to the rails and blocking me at the last fence. She needed two lengths’ lead to do it safely, and I had no intention of letting her have it.
The utter joy of riding Template lay in the feeling of immense power which he generated. There was no need to make the best of things, on his back; to fiddle and scramble, and hope for others to blunder, and find nothing to spare for a finish. He had enough reserve strength for his jockey to be able to carve up the race as he wished, and there was nothing in racing, I thought, more ecstatic than that.
I knew, as we galloped towards the last fence, that Template would beat Emerald if he jumped it in anything like his usual style. She was a length ahead and showing no sign of flagging, but I was still holding Template on a tight rein. Ten yards from the fence, I let him go. I kicked his flanks and squeezed with the calves of my legs and he went over the birch like an angel, smooth, surging, the nearest to flying one can get.
He gained nearly half a length on the mare, but she didn’t give up easily. I sat down and rode Template for my life, and he stretched himself into his flat-looking stride. He came level with Emerald half-way along the run in. She hung on grimly for a short distance, but Template would have none of it. He floated past her with an incredible increase of speed, and he won, in the end, by two clear lengths.
There are times beyond words, and that was one of them. I patted Template’s sweating neck over and over. I could have kissed him. I would have given him anything. How does one thank a horse? How could one ever repay him, in terms he would understand, for giving one such a victory?
The two tall men were pleased all right. They stood side by side, waiting for us in the unsaddling enclosure, the same elated expression on both their faces. I smiled at them, and shook my feet out of the irons and slid off on to the ground. On to the ground: down to earth. The end of an unforgettable experience.
‘Rob,’ said James, shaking his big head. ‘Rob.’ He slapped Template’s steaming shoulder and watched me struggle to undo the girth buckles with fingers shaking from both weakness and excitement.
‘I knew he’d do it,’ Lord Tirrold said. ‘What a horse! What a race!’
I had got the buckles undone at last and had pulled the saddle off over my arm when an official came over and asked Lord Tirrold not to go away, as the Cup was to be presented to him in a few minutes. To me, he said, ‘Will you come straight out again after you have weighed in? There’s a trophy for the winning jockey as well.’
I nodded, and went in to sit on the scales. Now that the concentration of the race was over, I began to be aware of the extra damage it had done. Across the back of my shoulders and down my arms to the fingertips every muscle felt like lead, draggingly heavy, shot with stabbing and burning sensations. I was appallingly weak and tired, and the pain in my wrists had increased to the point where I was finding it very difficult to keep it all out of my face. A quick look revealed that the bandages were red again, and so were the cuffs of the silk gloves and parts of the fawn under-jersey. But if the blood had soaked through the black jersey as well, at least it didn’t show.
With a broad smile Mike took my saddle from me in the changing-room and unbuckled my helmet and pulled if off my head.
‘They are wanting you outside, did you know?’ he said.
I nodded. He held out a comb. ‘Better smarten your hair a bit. You can’t let the side down.’
I obediently took the comb and tidied my hair, and went back outside.
The horses had been led away and in their place stood a table bearing the Midwinter Cup and other trophies, with a bunch of racecourse directors and stewards beside it.
And Maurice Kemp-Lore as well.
It was lucky I saw him before he saw me. I felt my scalp contract at the sight of him and an unexpectedly strong shock of revulsion ran right down my body. He couldn’t have failed to understand it, if he had seen it.
I found James at my elbow. He followed my gaze.
‘Why are you looking so grim?’ he said. ‘He didn’t even try to dope Template.’
&n
bsp; ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘I expect he was too tied up with his television work to be sure of having time to do it.’
‘He has given up the whole idea,’ said James confidently. ‘He must have seen there was no chance any more of persuading anyone you had lost your nerve. Not after the way you rode on Thursday.’
It was the reckless way I had ridden on Thursday that had infuriated Kemp-Lore into delivering the packet I had taken on Friday. I understood that very well.
‘Have you told anyone about the sugar?’ I asked James.
‘No, since you asked me not to. But I think something must be done. Slander or no slander, evidence or not …’
‘Will you wait,’ I asked, ‘until next Saturday? A week today? Then you can tell whoever you like.’
‘Very well,’ he said slowly. ‘But I still think …’
He was interrupted by the arrival at the trophy table of the day’s V.I.P., a pretty Duchess, who with a few well-chosen words and a genuinely friendly smile presented the Midwinter Cup to Lord Tirrold, a silver tray to James, and a cigarette box to me. An enterprising press photographer let off a flash bulb as the three of us stood together admiring our prizes, and after that we gave them back again to the clerk of the course, for him to have them engraved with Template’s name and our own.
I heard Kemp-Lore’s voice behind me as I handed over the cigarette box, and it gave me time to arrange my face into a mildly smiling blankness before turning round. Even so, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to look at him without showing my feelings.
I pivoted slowly on my heels and met his eyes. They were piercingly blue and very cold, and they didn’t blink or alter in any way as I looked back at them. I relaxed a little, inwardly, thankful that the first difficult hurdle was crossed. He had searched, but had not read in my face that I knew it was he who had abducted me the evening before.
‘Rob Finn,’ he said in his charming television voice, ‘is the jockey you just watched being carried to victory by this wonder horse, Template.’ He was speaking into a hand microphone from which trailed yards of black flex and looking alternately at me and at a camera on a scaffolding tower near by. The camera’s red eye glowed. I mentally girded up my loins and prepared to forestall every disparaging opinion he might utter.
He said, ‘I expect you enjoyed being his passenger?’
‘It was marvellous,’ I said emphatically, smiling a smile to outdazzle his. ‘It is a great thrill for any jockey to ride a horse as superb as Template. Of course,’ I went on amiably, before he had time to speak, ‘I am lucky to have had the opportunity. As you know, I have been taking Pip Pankhurst’s place all these months, while his leg has been mending, and today’s win should have been his. He is much better now, I’m glad to say, and we are all delighted that it won’t be long before he is riding again.’ I spoke truthfully: whatever it meant to me in fewer rides, it would benefit the sport as a whole to have its champion back in action.
A slight chill crept into the corner of Kemp-Lore’s mouth.
‘You haven’t been doing as well, lately …’ he began.
‘No,’ I interrupted warmly. ‘Aren’t they extraordinary, those runs of atrocious luck in racing? Did you know that Doug Smith once rode ninety-nine losers in succession? How terrible he must have felt. It makes my twenty or so seem quite paltry.’
‘You weren’t worried, then, by … er … by such a bad patch as you’ve been going through?’ His smile was slipping.
‘Worried?’ I repeated lightheartedly. ‘Well, naturally I wasn’t exactly delighted, but these runs of bad luck happen to everyone in racing, once in a while, and one just has to live through them until another winner comes along. Like today’s,’ I finished with a grin at the camera.
‘Most people understood it was more than bad luck,’ he said sharply. There was a definite crack in his jolly-chums manner, and for an instant I saw in his eyes a flash of the fury he was controlling. It gave me great satisfaction, and because of it I smiled at him more vividly.
I said, ‘People will believe anything when their pockets are touched. I’m afraid a lot of people lost their money backing my mounts … it’s only natural to blame the jockey … nearly everyone does, when they lose.’
He listened to me mending the holes he had torn in my life and he couldn’t stop me without giving an impression of being a bad sport: and nothing kills the popularity of a television commentator quicker than obvious bad-sportsmanship.
He had been standing at right-angles to me with his profile to the camera, but now he took a step towards me and turned so that he stood beside me on my left side. As he moved there was a fleeting set to his mouth that looked like cruelty to me, and it prepared me in some measure for what he did next.
With a large gesture which must have appeared as genuine friendship on the television screen, he dropped his right arm heavily across my shoulders, with his right thumb lying forward on my collar bone and his fingers spread out on my back.
I stood still, and turned my head slowly towards him, and smiled sweetly. Few things have ever cost me more effort.
‘Tell us a bit about the race, then, Rob,’ he said, advancing the microphone in his left hand. ‘When did you begin to think you might win?’
His arm felt like a ton weight, an almost unsupportable burden on my aching muscles. I gathered my straying wits.
‘Oh … I thought, coming into the last fence,’ I said, ‘that Template might have the speed to beat Emerald on the flat. He can produce such a sprint at the end, you know.’
‘Yes, of course.’ He pressed his fingers more firmly into the back of my shoulder and gave me what passed for a friendly shake. My head began to spin. Everything on the edge of my vision became blurred. I went on smiling, concentrating desperately on the fair, good-looking face so close to mine, and was rewarded by the expression of puzzlement and disappointment in his eyes. He knew that under his fingers, beneath two thin jerseys, were patches which must be sore if touched, but he didn’t know how much or how little trouble I had had in freeing myself in the tack-room. I wanted him to believe it had been none at all, that the ropes had slipped undone or the hook fallen easily out of the ceiling. I wanted to deny him even the consolation of knowing how nearly he had succeeded in preventing me from riding Template.
‘And what are Template’s plans for the future?’ He strove to be conversational, normal. The television interview was progressing along well-trodden ways.
‘There’s the Gold Cup at Cheltenham,’ I said. I was past telling whether I sounded equally unruffled, but there was still no leap of triumph in his face, so I went on, ‘I expect he will run there, in three weeks’ time. All being well, of course.’
‘And do you hope to ride him again in that?’ he asked. There was an edge to his voice which just stopped short of offensiveness. He was finding it as nearly impossible to put on an appearance of affection for me as I for him.
‘It depends,’ I said, ‘on whether or not Pip is fit in time … and on whether Lord Tirrold and Mr Axminster want me to, if he isn’t. But of course I’d like to, if I get the chance.’
‘You’ve never yet managed to ride in the Gold Cup, I believe?’ He made it sound as if I had been trying unsuccessfully for years to beg a mount.
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘But it has only been run twice since I came into racing, so if I get a ride in it so soon in my career I’ll count myself very lucky.’
His nostrils flared and I thought in satisfaction, ‘That got you squarely in the guts, my friend. You’d forgotten how short a time I’ve been a jockey.’
He turned his head away from me towards the camera and I saw the rigidity in his neck and jaw and the pulse which beat visibly in his temple. I imagined he would willingly have seen me dead; yet he was enough in command of himself to realise that if he pressed my shoulder any harder I would be likely to guess it was not accidental.
Perhaps if he had been less controlled at that moment I would have been more merciful to him later. If
his professionally pleasant expression had exploded into the rage he was feeling, or if he had openly dug his nails with ungovernable vindictiveness into my back, I could perhaps have believed him more mad than wicked, after all. But he knew too well where to stop; and since I could not equate madness with such self-discipline, by my standards he was sane; sane and controlled, and therefore unlikely to destroy himself from within. I threw Claudius Mellit’s plea for kid gloves finally overboard.
Kemp-Lore was speaking calmly towards the camera, finishing off his broadcast. He gave me a last, natural-looking little squeezing shake, and let his arm drop away from my shoulders. Slowly and methodically I silently repeated to myself the ten most obscene words I knew, and after that Ascot racecourse stopped attempting to whirl round and settled down again into bricks and mortar and grass and people, all sharp and perpendicular.
The man behind the camera on the tower held up his thumb and the red eye blinked out.
Kemp-Lore turned directly to me again and said, ‘Well, that’s it. We’re off the air now.’
‘Thank you, Maurice,’ I said, carefully constructing one last warm smile. ‘That was just what I needed to set me back on top of the world. A big race win and a television interview with you to clinch it. Thank you very much.’ I could rub my fingers in his wounds, too.
He gave me a look in which the cultivated habit of charm struggled for supremacy over spite, and still won. Then he turned on his heel and walked away, pulling his black microphone lead along the ground after him.
It is impossible to say which of us loathed the other more.
Fifteen
I spent most of the next day in Joanna’s bed. Alone, unfortunately.
She gave me a cup of coffee for breakfast, a cosy grin, and instructions to sleep. So I lazily went on snoozing in the pyjamas she had bought me, dreaming about her on her own pillow, doing nothing more energetic than occasionally raise my blood pressure by thinking about Kemp-Lore.
I had arrived in a shaky condition on her doorstep the evening before, having first taken Tick-Tock and his space-age girlfriend by taxi to the boring White Bear at Uxbridge where, as I had imagined, the Mini-Cooper stood abandoned in the car park. It had seemed to me certain that Kemp-Lore had driven to the White Bear in his own car, had used the Mini-Cooper for his excursion to the abandoned stables, and had changed back again to his own car on the return journey. His route, checked on the map, was simple: direct almost. All the same I was relieved to find the little Mini safe and sound.