by Dick Francis
A firm hand came down on my shoulder. I knew it well. It belonged to Pete Gregory, racehorse trainer, a burly man nearly six feet tall, running to fat, growing bald, but in his day, I had been told, the toughest man ever to put his foot in a racing stirrup.
‘Hello, Alan me lad. I’m glad to see you’re here. I’ve already declared you for your horse in the second race.’
‘How is he?’ I asked.
‘All right. A bit thin, still.’ Forlorn Hope had only been in his stable for a month. ‘I should give him an “easy,” coming up the hill the first time, or he’ll blow up before the finish. He needs more time before we can hope for much.’
‘O.K.’ I said.
‘Come out and see what the going is like,’ said Pete. ‘I want to talk to you.’ He hitched the strap of his binoculars higher on his shoulder.
We walked down through the gate on to the course and dug our heels experimentally into the turf. They sank in an inch.
‘Not bad, considering all the snow that melted into it a fortnight ago,’ I said.
‘Nice and soft for you to fall on,’ said Pete with elementary humour.
We went up the rise to the nearest hurdle. The landing side had a little too much give in it, but we knew the ground at the other end of the course was better drained. It was all right.
Pete said abruptly, ‘Did you see Admiral fall at Maidenhead?’ He had been in Ireland buying a horse when it happened and had only just returned.
‘Yes. I was about ten lengths behind him,’ I said, looking down the course, concentrating on the hurdle track.
‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’ I said.
‘What happened? Why did he fall?’ There was some sort of urgency in his voice, more than one would expect, even in the circumstances. I looked at him. His eyes were grey, unsmiling, intent. Moved by an instinct I didn’t understand, I retreated into vagueness.
‘He just fell,’ I said. ‘When I went over the fence he was on the ground with Bill underneath him.’
‘Did Admiral meet the fence all wrong, then?’ he probed.
‘Not as far as I could see. He must have hit the top of it.’ This was near enough to the truth.
‘There wasn’t… anything else?’ Pete’s eyes were fierce, as if they would look into my brain.
‘What do you mean?’ I avoided the direct answer.
‘Nothing.’ His anxious expression relaxed. ‘If you didn’t see anything…’ We began to walk back. It troubled me that I hadn’t told Pete the truth. He had been too searching, too aware. I was certain he was not the man to risk destroying a great horse like Admiral, let alone a friend, but why was he so relieved now he believed I had noticed nothing?
I had just decided to ask him to explain his attitude, and to tell him what had really happened, when he began to speak.
‘Have you got a ride in the Amateur ’Chase, Alan?’ He was back to normal, bluff and smiling.
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said. ‘Pete, look…’
But he interrupted, ‘I had a horse arrive in my yard five or six days ago, with an engagement in today’s Amateur ’Chase. A chestnut. Good sort of animal, I should say. He seems to be fit enough—he’s come from a small stable in the West country—and his new owner is very keen to run him. I tried to ring you this morning about it, but you’d already left.’
‘What’s his name?’ I asked, for all this preamble of Pete’s was, I knew, his way of cajoling me into something I might not be too delighted to do.
‘Heavens Above.’
‘Never heard of him. What’s he done?’ I asked.
‘Well, not much. He’s young, of course…’
I interrupted. ‘What exactly has he done?’
Pete sighed and gave in. ‘He’s only had two runs, both down in Devon last autumn. He didn’t fall, but—er—he got rid of his jockey both times. But he jumped well enough over my schooling fences this morning. I don’t think you’d have any difficulty in getting him round safely, and that’s the main thing at this stage.’
‘Pete, I don’t like to say no, but…’ I began.
‘His owner is so hoping you’ll ride him. It’s her first horse, and it’s running for the first time in her brand new colours. I brought her to the races with me. She’s very excited. I said I’d ask you…’
‘I don’t think…’ I tried again.
‘Well at least meet her,’ said Pete.
‘If I meet her, you know it’ll be far more difficult for me to refuse to ride her horse.’
Pete didn’t deny it.
I went on, ‘I suppose she’s another of your dear old ladies about to go into a nursing home from which she is unlikely to return, and wants a final thrill before she meets her fate?’
This was the sad tale which Pete had used not long before to inveigle me on to a bad horse against my better judgement. And I often saw the old lady at the races afterwards. The nursing home and her fate were still presumably awaiting her.
‘This one is not,’ said Pete, ‘a dear old lady.’
We came to a stop in the paddock, and Pete looked around him and beckoned to someone. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman begin to walk towards us. It was already, without unforgivable rudeness, too late to escape. I had time for one heart-felt oath in Pete’s ear before I turned to be introduced to the new owner of the jockey-depositing Heavens Above.
‘Miss Ellery-Penn, Alan York,’ said Pete.
I was lost before she spoke a word. The first thing I said was, ‘I’ll be glad to ride your horse.’
Pete was laughing openly at me.
She was beautiful. She had clear features, wonderful skin, smiling grey eyes, dark glossy hair falling almost to her shoulders. And she was used to the effect she had on men: but how could she help it?
Pete said, ‘Right, then. I’ll declare you for the amateurs’—it’s the fourth race. I’ll give the colours to Clem.’ He went off towards the weighing room.
‘I am so glad you agreed to ride my horse,’ the girl said. Her voice was low-pitched and unhurried. ‘He’s a birthday present. Rather a problem one, don’t you think? My Uncle George, who is a dear fellow but just the slightest bit off the beat, advertised in The Times for a racehourse. My aunt says he received fifty replies and bought this horse without seeing it because he liked the name. He said it would be more amusing for me to have a horse for my birthday than the conventional string of pearls.’
‘Your Uncle George sounds fascinating,’ I said.
‘But just a little devastating to live with.’ She had a trick of lifting the last two or three words in a sentence so that they sounded like a question. As if she had added ‘Don’t you agree?’ to her remark.
‘Do you in fact live with him?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes. Parents divorced in the murky past. Scattered to the four winds, and all that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Waste no sympathy. I can’t remember either of them. They abandoned me on Uncle George’s doorstep, figuratively speaking, at the tender age of two.’
‘Uncle George has done a good job,’ I said, looking at her with the frankest admiration.
She accepted this without gaucherie, almost as a matter of course.
‘Aunt Deb, actually. She is faintly more on the ball than Uncle George. Absolute pets, the pair of them.’
‘Are they here today?’ I asked.
‘No, they aren’t,’ said Miss Ellery-Penn. ‘Uncle George remarked that having given me a passport into a new world peopled entirely by brave and charming young men, it would defeat the object if my path were cluttered up with elderly relatives.’
‘I am getting fonder of Uncle George every minute,’ I said.
Miss Ellery-Penn gave me a heavenly smile which held no promises of any sort.
‘Have you seen my horse? Isn’t he a duck?’ she said.
‘I haven’t seen him. I’m afraid I didn’t know he existed until five minutes ago. How did Uncle George happen to send him to Pete
Gregory? Did he pick the stable with a pin?’
She laughed. ‘No, I don’t think so. He had the stable all planned. He said I could get a Major Davidson to ride for me if the horse went to Mr Gregory’s.’ She reflected, wrinkling her brow. ‘He was quite upset on Monday when he read in the paper that Major Davidson had been killed.’
‘Did he know him?’ I asked idly, watching the delicious curves at the corners of her red mouth.
‘No, I’m sure he didn’t know him personally. Probably he knew his father. He seems to know most people’s fathers. He just said “Good God, Davidson’s dead” in a shocked sort of way and went on eating his toast. But he didn’t hear me or Aunt Deb until we had asked him four times for the marmalade!’
‘And that was all?’
‘Yes. Why do you ask?’ said Miss Ellery-Penn, curiously.
‘Oh, nothing special,’ I said. ‘Bill Davidson and I were good friends.’
She nodded. ‘I see.’ She dismissed the subject. ‘Now what do I have to do in my new role of racehorse owner? I don’t particularly want to make a frightful boob on my first day. Any comments and instructions from you will be welcome, Mr York.’
‘My name is Alan,’ I said.
She gave me an appraising look. It told me plainer than words that although she was young she was already experienced at fending off unwelcome attentions and not being rushed into relationships she was not prepared for.
But finally she smiled, and said, ‘Mine is Kate.’ She bestowed her name like a gift; I was pleased to receive it.
‘How much do you know about racing?’ I asked.
‘Not a thing. Never set foot on the Turf before today.’ She gave the capital letter its full value, ironically.
‘Do you ride, yourself?’
‘Positively not.’
‘Perhaps your Uncle George is fond of horses? Perhaps he hunts?’ I suggested.
‘Uncle George is the most un-addicted man to horses I have ever met. He says one end kicks and the other bites, and as for hunting, he says that he has cosier things to do than chase bushy tailed vermin in the gravest discomfort over waterlogged countryside in the depths of winter.’
I laughed. ‘Perhaps he bets. Off the course?’ I asked.
‘Uncle George has been known to ask, on Cup Final day, what has won the Derby.’
‘Then why Heavens Above?’
‘Wider horizons for me, Uncle George says. My education has been along the well-tramped lines of boarding school, finishing school and an over-chaperoned tour of Europe. I needed to get the smell of museums out of my nose, Uncle George said.’
‘So he gave you a racehorse for your twenty-first birthday,’ I stated matter-of-factly.
‘Yes,’ she said: then she looked at me sharply. I grinned. I had jumped her defences, that time.
‘There’s nothing special for you to do as an owner,’ I said, ‘except go along to those stalls over there,’ I pointed, ‘before the fourth race, to see your horse being saddled up. Then you’ll go into the parade ring with Pete, and stand around making intelligent remarks about the weather until I arrive and mount and go out for the race.’
‘What do I do if he wins?’
‘Do you expect him to win?’ I asked. I was not sure how much she really knew about her horse.
‘Mr Gregory says he won’t.’
I was relieved. I did not want to her to be disappointed.
‘We’ll all know much more about him after the race. But if he should come in the first three, he will be unsaddled down there opposite the weighing room. Otherwise, you’ll find us up here on the grass.’
It was nearly time for the first race. I took the delectable Miss Ellery-Penn on to the stands and fulfilled Unce George’s design by introducing to her several brave and charming young men. I unfortunately realised that by the time I came back from riding in the novice hurdle, I should probably be an ‘also ran’ in the race for Miss Ellery-Penn’s attentions.
I watched her captivating a group of my friends. She was a vivid, vital person. It seemed to me that she had an inexhaustible inner fire battened down tight under hatches, and only the warmth from it was allowed to escape into the amused, slow voice. Kate was going to be potently attractive even in middle age, I thought inconsequently, and it crossed my mind that had Scilla possessed this springing vitality instead of her retiring, serene passiveness, Inspector Lodge’s implications might not have been very far off the mark.
After we had watched the first race I left Kate deciding which of her new acquaintances should have the honour of taking her to coffee, and went off to weigh out for the novice hurdle. Looking back, I saw her setting off to the refreshment room with a trail of admirers, rather like a comet with a tail. A flashing, bewitching comet.
For the first time in my life I regretted that I was going to ride in a race.
FOUR
In the changing-room Sandy Mason stood with his hands on his hips and laid about him with his tongue. His red hair curled strongly, his legs, firmly planted with the feet apart, were as rigid as posts. From the top to toe he vibrated with life. He was a stocky man in his thirties, on the short side, very strong, with dark brown eyes fringed disconcertingly by pale, reddish lashes.
As a jockey, a professional, he was not among the top dozen, but he had had a good deal of success, mainly owing to his fighting spirit. Nothing ever frightened him. He would thrust his sometimes unwilling mounts into the smallest openings, even occasionally into openings which did not exist until he made them by sheer force. His aggressiveness in races had got him into hot water more than once with the Stewards, but he was not particularly unpopular with the other jockeys, owing to his irrepressible, infectious cheerfulness.
His sense of humour was as vigorous as the rest of him, and if I thought privately that some of his jokes were too unkindly practical or too revoltingly obscene, I appeared to be in a minority.
‘Which of you sods has half-inched my balancing pole?’ he roared in a voice which carried splendidly above the busy chatter to every corner of the room. To this enquiry into the whereabouts of his whip, he received no reply.
‘Why don’t you lot get up off your fannies and see if you’re hatching it,’ he said to three or four jockeys who were sitting on a bench pulling on their boots. They looked up appreciatively and waited for the rest of the tirade. Sandy kept up a flow of invective without repeating himself until one of the valets produced the missing whip.
‘Where did you find it?’ demanded Sandy. ‘Who had it? I’ll twist his bloody arm.’
‘It was on the floor under the bench, in your own place.’
Sandy was never embarrassed by his mistakes. He roared with laughter and took the whip. ‘I’ll forgive you all this time, then.’ He went out into the weighing room carrying his saddle and whacking the air with his whip as if to make sure it was as pliable as usual. He always used it a good deal in the course of a race.
As he passed me where I stood just inside the changing room door, his eyes lifted to mine with one of the darting, laughing glances which made him likeable in spite of his faults. I turned and watched him go over and sit on the scales, parking the whip on the table beside him. He said something I couldn’t hear, and both the Clerk of the Scales and the Judge, who was sitting there learning the colours so that he could distinguish them at the finish, laughed as they checked him against their lists and passed him for the race.
There had been rumours, a while back, that Sandy had ‘stopped’ a few horses and had been rewarded handsomely by bookmakers for the service. But nothing had been proved, and the official enquiry had lasted barely an hour. Those who had felt the rough edge of Sandy’s practical jokes believed him capable of anything. Everyone else pointed out that stopping a horse was entirely out of character for one who had been in trouble for trying too ruthlessly to win.
Watching the free and easy way he handled the two racing officials, I could understand that in face of that friendly, open manner, the Stewards at th
e enquiry must have found it impossible, in the absence of solidly convincing evidence, to believe him guilty. The general opinion among the jockeys was that Sandy had ‘strangled’ a couple at one stage, but not during the past few months.
‘Stopping’ a horse can be done by missing the start, setting off some lengths behind, and staying at the back. Then the crooked jockey can ride a fairly honest finish from the second last fence, when he is closely under the eyes of the crowd, secure in the knowledge that he has left his horse far too much to do and cannot possibly win. It is rare enough, because a jockey seen to do it regularly soon finds himself unemployed.
During my one and a half season’s racing I had seen it happen only twice. It was the same man both times, a fair, round-faced youth called Joe Nantwich. On the second occasion, about two months ago, he had been lucky to escape with his licence, for he had been foolish enough to try it in a race where one of the jockeys was David Stampe, the tale-bearing younger son of the Senior Steward.
Joe, and, I was sure, Sandy too, had both gone to the lengths of deliberately holding back horses which, without their interference, would have been certain to win. They had, in fact, been guilty of criminal fraud. But was I so very much better, I wondered, as I tied on my helmet and took my saddle over to the scales? For I proposed to take Forlorn Hope sensibly over the hurdles, concentrating on getting round the course; and I had no intention of riding him all out in the faint possibility that he might finish in the first three. He was not properly fit, and too hard a race would do him great harm. Of course if by some unforeseen circumstances, such as a lot of falls among the other horses, I found myself placed with a winning chance, I intended to seize it. There is a world of difference between ‘stopping’ and ‘not trying hard, but willing to win’: but the result for disgruntled backers is the same. They lose their money.
I took my saddle out to the saddling boxes, where Pete was already waiting with Forlorn Hope. He saddled up, and Rupert, the tiny stable lad, led the horse out into the parade ring. Pete and I strolled in after him, discussing the other horses in the race. There was no sign of Kate.