Racing Manhattan

by Terence Blacker

  We say goodnight. I switch off the light, and in the darkness thoughts of my mother crowd in. I could do without Michaela investigating our family past right now but I begin to wonder about my father – where he is, what he is like, whether he ever thinks of me, if he even knows I exist.

  Locked.

  Door.

  Opened.

  GOOD GIRL

  IN JUNE, SOMETHING unexpected happens.

  Prince Muqrin’s three-year-old Ishtagah runs a brilliant race in the Derby at Epsom.

  In the Wilkinson yard we thought the colt was in with a chance. He had come on since he ran well in the 2000 Guineas, and the longer trip – the Derby is half a mile further – would suit him.

  The experts, on TV and in the press, disagreed. A brilliant Irish horse, Mountain High, unbeaten both as a two-year-old and this year, started hot favourite, while a French-trained runner Positano was also fancied.

  Ishtagah, they said, had ‘something about him’, and was ‘as game as the day is long’, but lacked the class. One journalist mentioned that the Wilkinson yard had not had a Group One winner since the last century.

  I watch the race in the packed bar at the Racing Centre with a few of the other lads from the yard – Amit, Laura, Tommy and Liam.

  There is a strong pace, which suits Ishtagah, and as the field sweeps round Tattenham Corner, he is about eighth or ninth but hopelessly placed on the inside rail.

  O’Brian is waiting for the gaps to open up as they enter the straight and horses begin to tire.

  They do, but too late for Ishtagah. Three furlongs from home, the Derby has become a two-horse race, with Mountain High and Positano going six, seven, eight lengths clear from the rest of the field.

  Watching as O’Brian tries to find a way through the pack, we curse the bad draw our horse has been given.

  Then, a furlong and a half from home, he sees daylight and bursts his way to freedom.

  Now the bar is roaring him on, the horse from Newmarket challenging the best from Ireland and from France. With Mountain High and Positano locked together on the rails, the Wilkinson horse is storming up the centre of the track, with O’Brian riding a wild, showy finish.

  As the three horses flash past the winning post, it is impossible to separate them, but the TV replay calls it before the official result of the photo-finish has been announced.

  Positano has won by a short head from Mountain High. Ishtagah is a neck away in third place.

  After the race, Prince Muqrin is asked by a TV interviewer if this is the best horse he has ever owned.

  He thinks for a moment. ‘Certainly one of the best.’ There is laughter in the winners’ enclosure.

  I glance at Laura, and we both smile. We know the prince was not joking.

  The next morning, after second lot, I am in Manhattan’s stable when Mr Wilkinson pays an unscheduled visit.

  ‘The mare. How is she?’ he says, looking over the stable door.

  ‘She’s full of it, sir. Can’t wait to get back on the racecourse.’

  The trainer opens the door, glancing behind him as he does so. I know Mr Wilkinson well enough by now. He has something to tell me. He sniffs. ‘Other horse going to run in the King George,’ he says. ‘Ishtagah. Time to take on the older horses.’

  I must have gone pale because the trainer watches me for a moment through his hooded eyes.

  ‘Sporting owner. The prince.’ He speaks even more softly than usual. ‘Wants to run both horses. Pat’s made his choice.’ He actually smiles, a rare and slightly worrying event. ‘You still up to ride the mare?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I’ll announce it tomorrow.’

  He walks to the stable door and lets himself out.

  ‘We’ve been thinking about her shoes,’ he says, peering over the stable door. ‘Can’t run in a big race without plates.’

  ‘She’ll sulk if Ivor does them.’

  Mr Wilkinson shakes his head. ‘Mare doesn’t like men. Mrs Wilkinson had an idea. Woman farrier. She found one. Jean. Coming tomorrow. By the time of the race they’ll know each other.’

  He is about to go when he remembers something else.

  ‘Journalists. Don’t talk to them. Understood? Think they know best. They’ll look at the field. See Ishtagah’s in with a chance. Manhattan? Never won a race. She must be running as Ishtagah’s pacemaker.’

  ‘Pacemaker? You mean she would just be there to make sure the race is run fast enough to suit Ishtagah?’

  He silences me with an odd twitch of his facial muscles.

  ‘Might tell Angus same thing. Mare’s in the race to help Ishtagah, I’ll say. Word spreads in the yard. Grey mare’s a pacemaker for the colt. Confuse our spy. He’ll leak the wrong information.’

  ‘So she’s not just a pacemaker? We’re in the race to win it.’

  ‘Too right we are. Secret between us. Not even Mr Bucknall will know. So keep your bloomin’ mouth shut. Understood?’

  The next day, when the newspapers report that Prince Muqrin will have two horses in the big Ascot race, every single one of them assumes that Manhattan is only there to make the pace for her brilliant stable-mate Ishtagah.

  The lads are excited too. There is a plan. Manhattan will take the King George field at a brisk pace. Ishtagah will stay on as she fades. In the string, there’s talk of teamwork, tactics.

  They watch Manhattan with more interest now – her springy step, her grey coat which in high summer seems to glow like hot metal, the way she looks about her. As if she can sense that a great test is ahead of her, she is more of a handful when we work, and now and then I have difficulty pulling her up.

  ‘There’s a skill to making the running,’ Angus tells me as we take the horses home one morning after second lot. ‘Too fast, and they’ll all ignore you, let you run your own race. Too slow, and you’re not doing your job.’ He manages a craggy smile. ‘But she’ll be a great pacemaker, the mare.’

  I say nothing, hating the secret I have to keep. It feels as if I’m betraying the brilliant, bright horse beneath me. Even at a walk, she is telling the world that that she is not the type to fade at the end of a race in order to help another horse to victory.

  She is a winner and always will be, whatever games the humans may be playing.

  I concentrate on the big race. I ride out three lots. Manhattan does her work once a week in the afternoon. Most evenings I am in the gym, working on my strength and fitness.

  Then I stop taking Uncle Bill’s calls. I stay strong, as Michaela has told me. This turns out to be a mistake.

  Outside the Racing Museum. 2.50 pm tomorrow. Be there or you’ll regret it. This text from my uncle arrives late one night, and I know that a no-show tomorrow is not an option. Uncle Bill is not someone you can ignore and hope will go away.

  When he arrives, I notice that his small car has a few more dents than it had the last time I saw it. When I get into the passenger seat, I almost gag at the sour smell of stale tobacco and human sweat.

  ‘Hullo, Uncle Bill.’

  Without looking at me, he accelerates away from the kerb.

  ‘I have to be back by four,’ I say. ‘Evening stables.’

  He reaches into the top pocket of his shirt and takes out a cigar, smaller and thinner than the ones he used to smoke. He lights up. As the inside of the car fills with smoke, I open the tinted window.

  ‘Keep it shut.’ The voice is low, threatening. ‘Security.’ He inhales deeply on his cigar, then breathes out.

  I cough, my eyes water.

  As we leave the town, he looks at me for the first time. His eyes are red. There is a cut on his cheekbone. A bit of tobacco sticks to his lower lip. ‘Michaela thinks you’re going bonkers,’ he says. ‘All you can talk about is that Manhattan thing.’

  ‘That’s not true. I also talk to her about her family heritage project.’

  Driving fast, he turns on to a smaller road. ‘Yeah, don’t know what that’s all about.’

 
‘She’s interested in finding out more about my father.’

  He looks across at me, frowning. ‘The less you know about him, the better.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  He takes the corner of the small country lane rather too fast, and swears quietly to himself. ‘Are you?’ he asks. ‘Going bonkers?’

  ‘No.’ I look at the countryside through the darkened window. ‘No more than usual anyway.’

  ‘Not taking my calls. People don’t do that to me. You’d have to be bonkers to even think of it.’

  ‘I’ve got a ride coming up quite soon. I’m concentrating on that.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He looks across, and I see rage in his eyes. ‘Well, you’re going to have to do a bit of multi-tasking then.’ He glances in his mirror, then swerves into a gateway leading to a field. There is not a house in sight. He switches off the engine and turns towards me. ‘Remember what I said about being a good girl? Doing what you’re told? Do you recall what I said would happen if you didn’t?’

  ‘Dusty?’

  ‘Nah. I gave that nag to a local farmer to run with his sheep. Michaela got all emotional about him being sold for dog meat. I worry about that girl sometimes.’

  ‘You said you’d tell Mr Wilkinson.’

  ‘That’s right. And now you’re not doing what you’re told.’

  I turn towards him. ‘Please, Uncle Bill.’

  ‘I need money. And for money I need tips. If you don’t give some information now, I’ll send the recordings of you talking to me by email in the morning. You’ll be out so fast your little feet won’t touch the ground.’ He puffs on his cigar, and blows smoke in my face.

  Blinking, I hold his stare.

  ‘Believe me,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m a man of my word.’

  And I do believe him. Sooner or later, my uncle will send the tapes to the Wilkinsons. They’ll know me for the traitor I am.

  ‘Manhattan’s running in the King George at Ascot.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Uncle Bill is unimpressed by this information.

  ‘She’s not the pacemaker.’

  He looks away. ‘That’s not what the press is saying.’

  ‘She’s there to win.’

  Uncle Bill turns towards me. A spark of curiosity is in his bloodshot eyes. ‘But she’s the outsider of the field. Something like eighteen-to-one. Are you telling me she’s got a chance of winning?’

  I hesitate. Then say the words.

  Very.

  Good.

  Chance.

  LIFE’S NOT RACING

  THERE IS A whole chapter in Great Ladies about how Petite Etoile got beaten in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes of 1960.

  She was a hot 5-2 on favourite but failed to get up to beat the 2000 Guineas winner Aggressor. At the time, some experts said that she lacked the stamina. Others thought that Lester Piggott had ridden an over-confident race on her and had left her with too much ground to make up. There was a rumour that one of Lester’s great rivals Scobie Breasley, who was riding one of the less-fancied horses in the race, had boxed him in as an act of revenge.

  One thing was sure. After being beaten in the King George, Petite Etoile was never quite the same.

  Now, as this race approaches, I notice that Manhattan has become calmer, as if she can sense that the days and weeks of waiting will soon be over. She has even relaxed about her feet being touched since Jean, the farrier, visits her once a week.

  The racing press says that this will be one of the greatest King Georges of modern times. The first three horses involved in an epic finish for the Derby – Positano, Mountain High and Ishtagah – are to meet again. Against them will be the winner of last year’s Arc de Triomphe, a brilliant French-trained four-year-old called Sweet Dreamer, two other winners of French classics, Mon Desir and Tartuffe, and an unbeaten colt from Japan called Rock Island. Then there is that rank outsider in the race, Ishtagah’s stable-mate Manhattan.

  We are the curiosity of the race. Journalists write about Manhattan’s ‘sporting owner Prince Muqrin’ – it’s their way of saying he doesn’t know what he is doing. Then there’s ‘Magic’ Wilkinson ‘the wily old-timer’ – which means he’s past it. As for Manhattan, the words they use are always the same. She’s ‘moody Manhattan’, ‘mercurial Manhattan’, ‘the mare with a suspect temperament’.

  Of course, there is a bit of curiosity about the ‘pint-sized girl jockey’ who will be riding the ‘giant mare’. One newspaper – strangely, it seems to me at the time – writes about ‘the growing controversy in the Arab world of a Saudi prince using a girl jockey’.

  Noise. Rumour. Gossip.

  The best advice Mr Wilkinson has given me is to avoid talking to anyone of the press. In the days before the race, I get used to strangers calling out my name as I ride past with the string, or even on the street.

  Two days before the race, I am collecting my tack for second lot when I find a copy of a trashy tabloid in the tack room. It has been left open on the show-business page.

  There is a photograph of me, riding Manhattan on the way to the heath. I must have been surprised by the camera, and I’m looking at the photographer with a scowl on my face. The caption beneath the picture reads:

  TENSION GETTING TO YOU, BUG?

  Riding the mercurial mare Manhattan in Saturday’s clash of champions at Ascot, girl apprentice Jay ‘Bug’ Barton, 16, seems to have been taking lessons from her horse. Sources at racing HQ say that the teenager refuses to talk about the race and has taken to snubbing the ordinary folk of Newmarket.

  ‘She acts like she’s a celebrity these days,’ a former friend has revealed. ‘Just because her name is in the papers now and then, she seems to think she’s too good for the rest of us.’

  And what exactly are the chances of the tetchy teen winning tomorrow? Bookmakers are quoting 18-1!

  I shake my head, reading this nonsense. There is a world out there, looking for exciting, entertaining stories about fame and happiness and heartbreak. Almost always, the stories are lies.

  It is evening stables the day before the big race. When Mr Wilkinson visits Manhattan’s stable, he is grumpier than usual. I have stripped the mare down and she seems to fill the stable, big, strong and arrogant. The trainer gives her no more than a glance, then nods. ‘Put her rug on and let her down. Need to talk, Jay. Now.’

  He walks out of the box without another word.

  He knows. That is my first thought. He has discovered that I am the stable spy. It is the end.

  With a sick feeling in my stomach, I throw a rug over Manhattan’s back and fasten the straps. I give her a pat, and leave the stable to face my fate.

  Mr Wilkinson is standing on the green in the middle of the yard. He is gazing downwards at the grass, deep in thought, his hands in his pockets. As I approach, he looks up at me. To my surprise, it is not anger I see in his eyes, but sadness, maybe even embarrassment.

  ‘Jay. Wanted to talk to you,’ he says. ‘Disappointing news.’

  ‘News, sir?’

  He clears his throat and sniffs. ‘Change of plan tomorrow. Putting Dermot Brogan on Manhattan.’

  The words are muttered hurriedly in a matter-of-fact voice, and at first I think I must have misheard.

  ‘Not my decision,’ he says. ‘Owner’s.’

  ‘Are you saying I’m being jocked off? The day before the race?’

  ‘Prince Muqrin. Problems back home.’ Mr Wilkinson seems to be talking to himself. ‘Crisis. Got enemies. Religious stuff. Demonstrations. Death threats. Big fuss. They’re saying member of royal family? Putting up a girl jockey? Not right? Bloomin’ sinful.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Read the papers, girl! Get off the blinkin’ racing page now and then. Saudi Arabia. Funny sort of place. Women should stay at home. Marry. Bring up children. Know their place.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Life’s not racing, Bug.’ He sighs. ‘More’s the pity. My view.’ He tries for a smile, but manage
s no more than a wince. ‘Your time will come. Mr Webber rang this afternoon. Lucky for us Brogan’s available. Former champion jockey. Couldn’t ask for better.’

  ‘But—’ I’m feeling so sick in my stomach that for a moment I’m afraid that I might throw up right there, in the middle of the yard. I try to think of something to say, but the only words I can think of – ‘It’s not fair’, ‘You promised’, ‘Please please please’ – seem pathetic and childish.

  ‘Nothing more to say. Announcement’s been made. Don’t talk to the press.’ He looks at me, and I can see the sorrow in his face. ‘You be all right to lead her up at Ascot?’

  I nod.

  ‘Good girl.’ He walks away, across the yard, leaving me standing there.

  Never.

  More.

  Alone.

  KING GEORGE

  I FEEL THE eyes of the crowd on me as I lead Manhattan around the paddock at Ascot, before one of the biggest races of the season. Now and then I hear what is being said.

  That’s her. That’s the girl in the papers. Poor kid. She must be so disappointed. Looks like she should be at school.

  I stare ahead. The world has gone slightly mad since the announcement was made yesterday that Dermot Brogan was going to replace an unknown girl apprentice on Manhattan.

  Last night, as I walked through the door at my digs, the phone was ringing. It continued until Auntie took it off the hook. Anyone could guess that I was upset but the papers seemed to want know exactly how upset. They needed a taste of my misery to share with their readers.

  Looking through the racing pages as we travelled to the races in the horsebox this morning, Deej told me a few of the experts had decided that, if the great Dermot Brogan was riding Manhattan, she may be a bit more than a pacemaker. One or two of them suspect a clever, tactical plan by cunning old fox ‘Magic’ Wilkinson.

  In the paddock, Manhattan is striding out so fast that sometimes I have to stop her in order to avoid walking into Positano in front of us. She loves a crowd, and is picking up on the excitement of the moment.