by Dick Francis
“Who are you?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
He smiled and said merely, “Come on.”
He led the way out of the hotel and around a few comers, fetching up beside a dusty dented red car that contained torn magazines, screwed-up sandwich papers, coffee-stained polystyrene cups and a mixed-parentage dog introduced as Bert.
“Disregard the mess,” Jim said cheerfully, sweeping crumpled newspapers off the front passenger seat onto the floor. “Happy birthday, by the way.”
“Uh ... thanks.”
He drove the way I’d been taught not to; jerking acceleration and sudden brakes. Start and stop. Impulse and caution. I would have gone a long way with Jim.
It turned out to be only eight miles westward, as far as I could judge. Out of the city, past a signpost to Exeter University’s Streatham Campus (home among much else of the department of mathematics), deep into rural Devon, with heavy thatched roofs frowning over tiny-windowed cottages.
Jim jerked to a halt in front of a larger example of the basic pattern and pointed to a heavy wooden front door.
“Go in there,” he instructed. “Down the passage, last room on the left.” He grinned. “And good luck.”
I was quite glad to be getting out of his car, even if only to stop the polymorphous Bert from licking my neck.
“Who lives here?” I asked.
“You’ll find out.”
He left me with a simple choice: to do as I’d been told or find a way of returning to Exeter. Alice down the bleeding rabbit hole, I thought.
I opened the heavy door and went along the passage to the last room on the left.
Eight
In the last room on the left a man sat behind a desk, and at first I thought with an unwelcome skipped heartbeat that he was Vivian Durridge, intent on sacking me all over again.
He looked up from his paperwork as I went in and I saw that though he wasn’t Vivian Durridge himself, he was of the same generation and of the same severe cast of mind.
He gave me no warm greeting, but looked me slowly up and down.
“Your father has gone to a great deal of trouble for you,” he said. “I hope you’re worth it.”
No reply seemed suitable, so I didn’t make one.
“Do you know who I am?” he demanded.
“I’m afraid not ... sir.”
“Stallworthy.”
He waited for the name to trickle through my brain, which it did pretty fast. It was the implication of his name that slowed my reply. Too much hope was bad for the pulse.
“Er ... do you mean Spencer Stallworthy, the racehorse trainer?”
“I do.” He paused. “Your father telephoned me. He wants to buy a horse and put it in training here with me, so that you can bicycle over from the university to ride it out at exercise. He asked me to enter it in amateur events so that you can ride it in races.”
He studied my face. I must have looked pretty ecstatic because a slow wintry smile lightened his heavy expression.
“I just hope,” he said, “that you can ride well enough not to disgrace my stable.”
I just hoped he hadn’t been talking to Vivian Durridge.
“Your father asked me to find a suitable horse. We discussed price, of course. I told him I train forty or so horses, and one or two of them are always for sale. I have two here at present which might fit the bill. Your father and I agreed that you should come here today and have a ride on both. You are to choose which of them you prefer. He wanted it to be a surprise for your birthday ... and I see it is.”
I breathlessly nodded.
“Right. Then go out of the back door. My assistant, Jim, who brought you here, he’ll drive you along to the stables, where the horses are ready for you. So off you go, then.”
“Er ...,” I said. “Thank you ... very much.”
He nodded and bent his head to his paperwork, and Jim, grinning widely, drove half a mile to the stable yard that was old, needed paint and had sent out winners by the dozen over the years to small races on west-country courses. Stallworthy didn’t aim for Cheltenham, Sandown or Aintree. He trained for local farmers and businessmen and ran their horses near home.
Jim stood in the yard and laconically pointed. “Tack room there.” He half turned. “Horse in number twenty-seven. OK?”
“OK.”
I took a look at the occupant of box 27 and found a heavily muscled chestnut gelding standing there, anxious it seemed to be out on the gallops. He had nice short legs, with hocks not too angular and a broad chest capable of pushing his way over or through any obstacle that came his way. More the type of a tough hardy steeplechaser than an ex-flat racer graduating to jumps.
I guessed at stamina and an unexcitability that might take a tiring amateur steadfastly towards the finish line, and if there were anything against him at first sight it was, perhaps, that he was a bit short in the neck.
Jim whistled up a groom to saddle and bridle the chestnut, though I had the impression that he had at first intended that I should do it myself.
Jim had considered me a sort of a joke. Perhaps my actual presence in the yard had converted me from joke to customer. In any case, neither Jim nor the groom saw anything but ordinary sense when I asked if I could see the chestnut being led around the yard at a walk. Somewhere along the way in my scrappy racing education I’d been told and shown by an avuncular old pro jockey that a horse that walked well galloped well. A long, slow stride bode well for long-distance ’chases. A tittupping scratchy little walker meant a nervous, scratchy little galloper.
The stride of the chestnut’s walk was long enough and slow enough to suggest a temperament that would plod forever. When he and his groom had completed two circuits of the yard I stopped him and felt his legs (no bumps from past tendon trouble) and looked in his mouth (which perhaps one shouldn’t do to a gift horse) and estimated him to be about seven years old, a good solid age for a steeplechaser.
“Where do I ride him?” I asked Jim, and he pointed to a way out of the yard that led to a gate into a vast field that proved to be the chief training ground for the whole stable. There were no wide-open downland gallops, it seemed, in that cozy part of Devon.
“You can trot or canter down to the far end,” Jim said, “and come back at a half-speed gallop. He ... the chestnut ... knows the way.”
I swung onto the chestnut’s back and put the toes of my unsuitable running shoes into the stirrups, lengthening the leathers while getting to know the “feel” of the big creature who would give me half speed and at least an illusion of being where I belonged.
I might never be a great jockey, and I might at times be clumsy and uncoordinated owing to growing in spurts and changing shape myself, but I’d ridden a great many different horses in my school holidays by working for people who wanted a few horses cared for while they went away on trips. I’d begged racehorse experience from trainers, and for the past two years had ridden in any race offered: twenty-six outings to date, with three wins, two thirds and three falls.
The Stallworthy chestnut was in a good mood and let me know it by standing still patiently through the stirrup-leather lengthening and the pause while Jim sorted out a helmet in the tack room, insisting that I wear it even though it was a size too small.
The chestnut’s back was broad with muscles and I hadn’t sat on a horse for three and a half weeks; and if he’d been mean-spirited that morning he could have run away with me and made a fool of my deficient strength, but in fact he went out onto the exercise ground as quietly as an old hack.
I didn’t enjoy his trot, which was lumpy and threw me about, but his canter was like an armchair. We went in harmony down to the far end of the exercise field where the land dropped away a bit, so that the first part of the gallop home was uphill, good for strengthening legs.
At a half-speed gallop, riding the chestnut was a bit like sitting astride a launched rocket: powerful, purposeful, difficult to deflect. I reined to a slightly breathless walk and went
over to where Jim waited beside the gate. “Right,” he said noncommittally, “now try the other one.”
The other horse, a bay gelding with a black mane, was of a leaner type and struck me as being more of a speed merchant than the one I’d just ridden. He carried his head higher and was more frisky and eager to set off and get into his stride. Whether that stride would last out over a distance of ground was, perhaps, doubtful.
I stood with my toes in the irons all the way down the field, letting the trot and canter flow beneath me. This was not a horse schooled to give his rider a peaceful look at the countryside; this was a fellow bred to race, for whom nothing else was of interest. At the far end of the field, instead of turning quietly, he did one of those swerving pirouettes with a dropped shoulder, a maneuver guaranteed to fling an unwary jockey off sideways. I’d seen many horses do that. I’d been flung off myself. But I was ready for Stallworthy’s bay to try it; on his part more from eagerness to gallop than from spite.
His half-speed gallop home was a battle against my arms all the way: he wanted to go much faster. Thoughtfully I slid off his back and led him to Jim at the gate.
“Right,” Jim said. “Which do you want?”
“Er ...” I patted the bay’s neck. He shook his head vigorously, not in disapproval, I gathered, but in satisfaction.
“How about,” I suggested, “a look at the form books and the breeding over a sandwich in a pub?”
I was quite good at pub life after three and a half weeks with my father.
Jim briefly laughed. “I was told I was to fetch a schoolkid. You’re some schoolkid.”
“I left school last month.”
“Yeah. Makes a difference!”
With good-natured irony he collected the necessary records from inside Stallworthy’s house and drove us to a local pub where he was greeted as a friendly regular. We sat on a high-backed wooden settle and he put the form books on the table beside the beer (him) and the Diet Coke (me).
In steeplechase breeding it’s the dams that matter. A dam who breeds one winner will most likely breed others. The chestnut’s dam had never herself won, though two of her progeny had. The chestnut so far hadn’t finished nearer than second.
The bay’s dam had never even raced, but all of her progeny, except the first foal, had won. The bay had won twice.
Both horses were eight.
“Tell me about them,” I said to Jim. “What ought I to know?”
There was no way he was going to tell me the absolute truth if he had any commission coming from the sale. Horse traders were as notorious as car salesmen for filling the gearbox with chaff.
“Why are they for sale?” I asked.
“Their owners are short of money.”
“My father would need a vet’s certificate.”
“I’ll see to it. Which horse do you want?”
“I’ll talk to my father and let you know.”
Jim gave me a twisted smile. He had white eyebrows as well as white lashes. I needed to make a friend of him if I were to come often to ride exercise, so regrettably, with all my father’s wily political sense, I deliberately set about canvassing Jim’s pro-Ben vote, and thought that maybe I’d learned a few reprehensible techniques, while being willing to listen to people’s troubles and desires.
Jim told me, laughing, that he’d hitched himself to Stallworthy because he hadn’t been able to find a comparable trainer with a marriageable daughter. A good job I wasn’t Usher Rudd, I thought.
Spencer Stallworthy apparently slept on Sunday afternoons, so I didn’t see him again that day. Jim (and Bert) drove me back to Exeter by three o’clock and with a grin and a warm slap on the back he handed me over to the black car with the silent chauffeur.
“See you, then,” Jim said.
“I can hardly wait.”
. The future had spectacularly clarified. My father, instead of giving me a monthly allowance, had through my teens sent me one lump sum at Christmas to last me for the year: consequently I had enough saved away both to find myself a temporary lodging within cycling distance of Spencer Stallworthy and to immerse my brain in the racing press.
The chauffeur took me not to the headquarters from where he’d collected me, but to a playing field on the edge of Hoopwestern, where, it appeared, an afternoon amalgam of fete and political rally was drawing to a close. Balloons, bouncy castle, bright plastic chutes and roundabouts had drawn children (and therefore voting parents) and car-trunk sale-type stalls seemed to have sold out of all but hideous vases.
Painted banners promised Grand Opening by Mrs. Orinda Nagle at 3:00 and George Juliard, 3:15. Both were still present at 5:30, shaking hands all around.
Dearest Polly saw the black car stop at the gate and hurried across dry dusty grass to greet me.
“Happy birthday, Benedict. Did you choose a horse?”
“So he told you?” I looked across the field to where he stood on the soapbox, surrounded by autograph books.
“He’s been high as a kite all day.” Polly’s own smile stretched inches. “He told me he’d brought you here to Hoopwestern originally as window dressing for the campaign, and he’d got to know you for the first time ever, and he’d wanted to give you something you would like, to thank you for all you’ve done here....”
“Polly!”
“He told me he hadn’t realized how much he’d asked you to give up, with going to university instead of racing, and that you hadn’t rebelled or walked out or cursed him ... He wanted to give you the best he could.”
I swallowed.
He saw me from across the field and waved, and Polly and I walked over and stopped just outside the hedge of autograph seekers.
“Well?” he said over their heads. “Did you like one?”
I couldn’t think of adequate words. He looked, however, at my face, and smiled at what he saw there, and seemed content with my speechlessness. He stepped off the soapbox and made his way through the offered books, signing left and right, until he was within touching distance, and there he stopped.
We looked at each other in great accord.
“Well, go on,” Polly said to me impatiently, “hug him.”
But my father shook his head and I didn’t touch him, and I realized we had no tradition between us of how to express greeting or emotion, and that until that moment there had never been much intense mutual emotion to express. Far from hugging, we had never shaken hands.
“Thanks,” I said to him.
It sounded inadequate, but he nodded: it was enough.
“I want to tell you about it,” I said.
“Did you choose one?”
“More or less, but I want to talk to you first.”
“At dinner, then.”
“Perfect.”
Orinda was smiling warmly at me, fully recovered, makeup hiding any residual marks, all traces of the shaking frightened woman in blood-spattered clothes overlaid by Constituency Wife, Mark I, the opener of fetes and natural hogger of cameras.
“Benedict daaahling!” She at least had no inhibitions about hugging and embraced me soundly for public consumption. She smelled sweetly of scent. She wore a copper-colored dress with green embroidery to match her eyes, and Polly beside me stiffened with the prehistoric reaction of Martha to butterfly.
Dearest Polly. Dearest Polly. I was far too young externally to show I understood her, let alone insult her by offering comforts. Dearest Polly wore remnants of the awful lipstick, a chunky necklace of amber beads and heavily strapped sandals below a muddy green dress. I liked both women, but on the evidence of their clothes, they would never equally like each other.
Instinctively I looked over Orinda’s shoulder, expecting the everlasting Anonymous Lover to be back at his post, but Wyvern had once and for all abandoned Hoopwestern as his path to influence. In his place behind Orinda loomed Leonard Kitchens with a soppy grin below his out-of-control mustache. Close on his heels came Mrs. Kitchens, looking grim.
Usher Rudd was wande
ring about with his intrusive malice trying to catch people photographically at a disadvantage, but interestingly when he caught my eye he pretended he hadn’t, and veered away. I had no illusions that he wished me well.
Mervyn Teck and a retinue of dedicated volunteers, stoutly declaring the afternoon a success, drove my father and me back to The Sleeping Dragon. Four days to polling day, I thought: eternity.
Over dinner in the hotel dining room I told my father about the two Stallworthy horses. A phlegmatic chestnut stayer and a sprinting excitable bay with a black mane.
“Well ...,” he said, frowning, “you love speed. You’ll take the bay. What makes you hesitate?”
“The horse I want has a name that might disturb you. I can’t change his name: one isn’t allowed to after a Thoroughbred has raced. I won’t have that horse unless it’s OK with you.”
He stared. “What name could possibly disturb me so much?”
After a pause I said flatly, “Sarah’s Future.”
“Ben!”
“His dam was Sarah Jones; his sire Bright Future. It’s good breeding for a jumper.”
“The bay ...?”
“No,” I said. “The chestnut. He’s the one I want. He’s never won yet, though he’s been second. A novice has a wider—a better—choice of a race. Apart from that, he felt right. He’d look after me.”
My father absentmindedly crumbled a bread roll to pieces.
“You,” he said eventually, “you are literally Sarah’s future. Let’s say she would be pleased. I’ll phone Stallworthy in the morning.”
Far from slackening off during the run-up to polling day, the Juliard camp spent the last three days in a nonstop whirl.
I drove the Range Rover from breakfast to bedtime. I drove to Quindle three times, and all around the villages. I screwed together and unclipped the soapbox until I could do it in my sleep. I loaded and unloaded boxes of leaflets. I made cooing noises at babies and played ball games with kids and shook uncountable hands and smiled and smiled and smiled.
I thought of Sarah’s Future, and was content.
On the last evening, Wednesday, my father invited all his helpers and volunteers to The Sleeping Dragon for a thank-you supper. Along in a room off the Town Hall, Paul Bethune was doing the same.