The Sport of Queens

by Dick Francis

  On the ground, life was more crowded than ever. The arithmetic I had not learned at school reproached me when I attacked the problems of navigation, and I found it was not very easy to work out a route to a distant spot on an imaginary longitude, when I ran out of fingers to add up with. Every hour was filled by lectures on meteorology, signals, theory of flying, navigation, standard procedure and other mysteries, but at the end of it all a year later I was sent back to England with a certificate saying I was fit to fly fighter aircraft.

  The invasion of Europe had begun, and the big bombing raids were being launched from this country, so that at first I flew on fighter escort duty. Soon it was clear that there was very little for us to fight, and the Empire Training Scheme having trained thousands more fighter pilots than were by then needed, I was transferred from Spitfires to Bomber Command, given some minimum instructions, and sent up in a Wellington bomber. I and three others were in fact used as guinea pigs to discover how quickly a fighter pilot could be trained for bombers, but I did not like the change at all.

  Aerobatics in a single-engined aircraft had been an essential part of our fighter training, and I had always enjoyed the easy lift and the quick manoeuvrability of the little machines in rolls and spins and side-slips. There could be no such fun with a Wellington. They seemed heavy and sluggish to me, and the simplest turn took three times as much time and effort. Even in very cold weather I was always sweating from exertion by the time I had got my Wellington home.

  In later years some weary old three-mile steeplechasers hung on my arms in much the same way; and the likeness of different types of horses to aircraft is not as unnoticed by the R.A.F. as one might think. When I had finished my first hour’s flying lesson, the instructor asked me what my civilian job had been. I explained that I had done little but ride horses.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘We always find that people who can ride learn to fly easily. Something to do with having good hands, and you need light hands on a fighter aircraft. Treat the Tiger Moth like a horse with a tender mouth, and you won’t go far wrong.’

  The Wellingtons from the station I was on were making diversionary air attacks on Europe to cover the real aim of the main bombing forces, and although we did not know it until the next day, we were doing that for the Dam-Busters too, on the night they breached the Mohne and Eder dams.

  During the coldest part of the winter I was sent on a short course to learn how to fly the heavy troop-carrying gliders that were to take our army across the Rhine. In between wrestling with landing these cumbersome engineless craft, we were given an intensive infantry assault training on the freezing wastes of Salisbury Plain, for after we had landed our load of soldiers the glider pilots were to get out and fight with the army. We were chivvied and chased through the course by a tough and disillusioned sergeant-major, who could often be heard yelling with sadistic pleasure:

  ‘Lie down on your stomachs in the snow. Now wriggle forward a hundred yards. The enemy is looking at you. Keep your flaming head down… sir.’ And he gloomily foretold that not only would we all kill ourselves by our own stupidity, but that we would be a nuisance and a risk to all ‘proper’ soldiers.

  I was not at all looking forward to marching across Germany on my stomach, but the Rhine was crossed with less trouble than had been expected. Only twenty courses of glider-trained pilots were needed, and I was on course twenty-two.

  It was a great relief to me to be back in my heavy Wellington; at least I had the comfort of knowing that it would go up as well as down.

  As the war drew to its close in Europe we had less and less to do, until my crew and I were transferred to Coastal Command to help in the escorting into British ports of surrendering German warships and merchantmen. We acted almost as air policemen on traffic duty, partly making sure that the vessels were not heading for trouble in mine-fields, and partly seeing that they continued on the course which had been given them, and did not change their minds about turning themselves in. It meant long hours of flying over the sea and very little for the crew to do. The bomb-aimer and the air-gunner read Men Only, the navigator and the radio-operator checked the ships and our position and reported back to base, and they all called me ‘the chauffeur’ and made disparaging remarks about the hours of sun-bathing I was putting in in the cockpit. I used to lie back in my seat, flying on course by the instruments, with nothing to do but look at the sky above and the occasional ship below. But one day as I sat there relaxing comfortably another aircraft flew over the top of us so close that if it had lowered its undercarriage it would have landed on us, and after that I always sat up and looked where I was going.

  When all the escort duty was done we were still flying daily over the North Sea, but now with navigators who had just finished their lessons on the ground, and were in need of practice in the air. My job was to fly them out over the sea and let them direct me home. If they made a mistake I had to remember what it was and also know how to get back to our own airfield should we arrive in error at John o’ Groats; and as a good deal of this navigator training was at night, and I had learned my navigation by the Southern Cross, I was sometimes a bit lost myself. Luckily, however, I had been stationed at almost every airfield in Great Britain, and knew the ground plan of most of them from the air, so I never actually made the awful blunder of landing at the wrong one.

  If it had not been for radio communication from aircraft to base, and the ‘beam’ system which guided us in to the runways, the enormous amount of night flying done by the R.A.F. would have been quite impossible, for without such help it is a hopeless task to find one particular square mile in a moonless blacked-out country.

  With the ending of the Far Eastern war the slow business of demobilisation began, but Father wanted me home to help him as soon as it could be managed, so I applied for a compassionate release.

  Meanwhile, to keep us occupied, the R.A.F. went on sending pilots and crews to learn to fly the heavy four-engined Lancaster bombers. I sat in the co-pilot’s seat beside the instructor, helplessly looking at the banks and banks of round instrument faces, control buttons, and fuel gauges, wishing I could spend my last weeks in the air flying my first loves, the superb Spitfires. But Lancasters it was, and I flew them until I left.

  From Tiger Moths to Lancasters, I never lost a deep feeling of pleasure when the nose of an aircraft came up as we were airborne, the satisfaction of nursing an engine to its highest efficiency, or the buoyancy and freedom of the long hours in the sky.

  In the late autumn of 1945 I went to the wedding of my cousin Nesta.

  I had promised to be best man if I could get leave, and everything being well, I set off with Mother on the train to Weston-super-Mare, I with my mind back in my Wellington cockpit at Silverstone, and Mother chatting about which of our relations were going to the wedding too. Nothing warned me, as we trundled through Somerset in the peaceful October sunshine, of the emotional whirlwind that was waiting for me.

  Mother and I were greeted and fussed over by my aunt and cousins and a large contingent of relatives, so that it was some time before I noticed a stranger standing back a little shyly from our family reunion. A girl in a brown dress, with pale gold hair.

  My aunt said, ‘Dick, I don’t think you have ever met Mary? She is a friend of Nesta’s who has come for the wedding.’

  Mary and I smiled at each other and to my astonishment, before we had even spoken, I found myself thinking ‘This is my wife.’

  I had never believed in love at first sight, and it still seems to me an unreasonable way of choosing a companion for life, but there it was in a flash between us, and our future was pledged in a glance.

  3

  Under Starter’s Orders

  THE WAR had changed me.

  I made this not very original but personally disturbing discovery during the first few months after my return home.

  Through all the difficult years, with only one groom to help him, and struggling to feed the horses properly on poor and hardly o
btained fodder, Father had kept his business going with the sole idea that I should have something to come home to. He and Mother certainly had every reason to believe that I would take over from them, and with the return of more normal conditions, rebuild their once flourishing concern. For years I had not referred to my old desire to be a jockey, and I had even half convinced myself that hunting and showing were satisfying occupations after all.

  I worked very hard for Father, glad that he could at last have some rest. Our Irish groom, the only one left, had too much work to manage by himself, so I often found myself cleaning out the stables, sweeping the yard, and cleaning the tack, as well as my intended job of riding and training the horses which Father bought and sold for the hunting field and the show ring. Father had also acquired two or three horses at livery, which had to be groomed and saddled ready for their owners’ visits, and several child pupils who came regularly for riding lessons.

  Mary came down to stay with us for the week-end every two or three weeks. Later she said to some friends ‘My courtship was spent leaning over the bottom halves of stable doors while Dick mucked out an endless row of horses.

  ‘And,’ she added with a grin, ‘on Sunday afternoons we sat in the tack-room while he washed a mountain of dirty leather.’

  Whenever I had a week-end free I went up to Denbighshire to see Douglas, who was then estate manager to Mr Victor Dyke Dennis, and to my great delight Douglas’s father-in-law, Bob Thelwell, let me ride his horse in two local point-to-points.

  Although these efforts were not spectacularly successful, Douglas persuaded Mr Dennis to let me ride one of his horses also, in a point-to-point, and I later rode the same horse in a hunter ’chase at Bangor-on-Dee. My first appearance on a real racecourse passed unnoticed by the general public, I am glad to say. It was not a very distinguished performance, but we finished the course and I went back to the daily routine at home with something to think about while I carried the hay and cut the chaff.

  I did not in the least mind being kept continually busy, because I have always found idleness very hard to bear, but my troubles started with the showing season. Before the war I had always enjoyed the enormous amount of showing which came my way on account of Father’s occupation, but now I found I disliked it.

  The change was in me. After six years of an existence when on occasions even life itself was from minute to minute uncertain, the opinion of two men on which of six horses was the best shape seemed to me to be so unimportant as to be ridiculous.

  Where once I had felt friendly rivalry and good-humoured competition, I now saw vanity, malice, and jealousy; and as the long summer programme wore on, from Hunter Trials to the big County Shows, I became more and more convinced that I could not spend the rest of my life in the showing and horse-dealing world.

  Now that I am securely outside that world, and untouched by its politics and prejudices, I enjoy meeting old friends on the few occasions that I go back. At Finmere, for the last few years, there has been a Jockey’s Speed Jumping Competition, which we all enjoy and look forward to. It is a light-hearted affair which causes great amusement to the crowd, who sense that it is a holiday performance, and expect all the jockeys to make fools of themselves in their strange environment.

  Usually, we oblige.

  One year I was mounted on a horse that suffered from a chronic inability to lift its hind legs, so that we left a trail of fallen gates, bars and bricks behind us, and scored a record number of faults for the course. Another year, I fell off and dislocated my shoulder: an embarrassment to me, and the cause of much ribald comment from everybody. Any poor jockey mounted on a green horse or a bad jumper is greeted with yells of laughter and derision as he makes his disastrous way round from jump to jump, losing his hat, whip, balance, reputation and composure as he goes.

  Several times, in the last few years, I have been asked to judge some hunter classes, and I always enjoy this, feeling safe from accusations of favouritism, as nearly always the horses and riders are unknown to me. My ability as a judge may be reasonably doubted, but at least no one can say:

  ‘Oh, of course he has put Mr So-and-so’s horse first. After all, he sold it to him.’ Or:

  ‘He has only given Such-and-such first prize because it was put first at Blank Show, and he wants to flatter the judge there.’

  Remarks like these, unjust and prompted by jealousy and disappointment though they were, were so common in my ears during that first summer after the war, that I was sickened and stifled by the whole atmosphere.

  I began to feel that the only satisfactory judge of a horse was the winning post. First there, I thought, and no arguments.

  The old impulse to be a jockey grew stronger. As the months went by, it became irresistible. Space, I said to myself as I cantered round in small circles; speed, I whispered, as I slowly popped over the jumps; stamina, I thought, as I eyed the fat nags lined up beside me.

  Although I had, I suppose, a somewhat romantic idea of racing, leaving the rails of the show ring for those of the paddock was for me a liberation and a fulfilment. As I have grown older I have discovered, of course, that in every profession one has to bear public humiliations and private heartaches, and that no competitive job is free of some wry and wistful regret for lost opportunities. Nevertheless, I have always been glad that I did at last become a jockey, and I can truthfully say that there was nothing else on earth I would rather have done.

  In the summer of 1946, however, I still had to find some way of putting into practice my strengthening resolve to ride in races, and I could remember only too well the lack of success I had had before the war when I had tried to get myself adopted by a trainer.

  Again I wrote to every trainer I had ever met, or who had ever met my parents, and on more distant acquaintanceship even than that, but all I had back were polite letters saying that no one had a post suitable for a totally inexperienced amateur jockey. One could hardly blame them.

  Mother and Father were equally discouraging, but from different motives. Mother frankly said that she would always be worrying about my safety, that I had no idea how ruthless the racing world is, and that she wished I would be content to carry on with Father’s business.

  Father said that being a jockey was a very uncertain occupation, that the chances of making a good living at it were small, and I would altogether do much better to stick to what I was doing. All their advice was good, but I could not take it, even though I was aware of several more difficulties besides inexperience which would have to be overcome.

  I was already twenty-five, almost too old to start a job which inevitably retires one at forty, when the body can no longer easily stand the constant strain and injury; and I needed a salary, however small, so that I could use my small capital for my racing expenses, and remain an amateur jockey for some time.

  There were so many advantages in starting as an amateur that I did not even consider taking out a licence, getting a stable job, and hoping for a few chance rides to come my way. It is easy to get a job like that, but the chance rides are few and far apart, and the proportion of successful jockeys who have started in that way is very small. Many jockeys were apprenticed as boys in flat racing stables, and turned to hurdling and steeplechasing when they grew too heavy for the flat, and many others started as amateurs, as I was hoping to do.

  After months of alternate hope and depression, I heard one day from Douglas, who had been doing his best for me in the north, that George Owen would take me on as his secretary. George, who had been a first-rank jockey, and had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1939, was farming and training a few horses, and the two jobs between them left him very little time for all the office work which had to be done.

  ‘Dick,’ he said to Douglas, ‘can come and sort this lot out if he likes.’ And he pointed to a heap of bills, forms, racing calendars and unopened letters.

  Dick was absolutely delighted to be given the chance.

  I had only met George once, when he stayed with us before t
he war for a night between race meetings, but I had often seen him racing and had always admired his horsemanship. I was sure, though, that he could not remember me, and was only taking me on Douglas’s account, so I was doubly keen not to disgrace myself either as a secretary, or as a jockey, when I rode one of his horses in a race.

  He had agreed to pay me a few pounds a week for my services, and I was to live in his house as one of the family. With everything settled at last, I parted from my still faintly disapproving parents, and in October set off on the train for Cheshire and the unknown future, feeling like a small boy going to a new school.

  The warmth of the welcome that George and his wife Margot gave me at once dispelled my feelings of strangeness, and their family of small girls soon made me feel at home. At that time George had a dairy farm a few miles from Chester, and his hospitality and the bustle of the farm kitchen reminded me vividly of my childhood at Coedcanlas.

  George’s parents and brothers and sisters all lived fairly near, and Margot’s large family were not much further away, and they and their friends were constantly visiting each other’s houses for company or to play cards. All these people seemed to accept as a matter of course that I, as a part of George’s household, should be invited too, so in a very few weeks I had become part of the social landscape, and had made several lasting friendships. Cheshire must surely be among the friendliest of counties, for although I only lived there for three years in all, I know more people there than in any other place, when I go there now to race meetings, it is like going home.

  George had not exaggerated when he told me that his racing accounts were not in order. As I settled down to his desk, I discovered that he had not sent out a single bill for training fees for almost six months. He had paid all the bills which corn merchants, horse-box hire firms, black-smiths and saddlers had sent him, but had not kept any record of them, and when I sorted out the large pile of receipts it became clear that many of them were missing.