‘I walked from the top of the drive,’ Constance said, in a forlorn voice, standing with her back to the Aga. ‘I got utterly lost twice.’
‘You poor thing,’ Rory said, putting a cup of tea in front of her. ‘Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to get to Lynne’s today and I doubt very much if you’ll make it tomorrow either. In fact, according to the forecast, we could be snowed up here for a good few days. So I hope you’ve brought your toothbrush.’
‘I’ve just been reading all about you in the papers,’ Anthony told Constance when Rory took her through to the drawing room, once she had defrosted.
‘Oh, please, don’t,’ Constance groaned, putting her hands to her face and sinking into an armchair by the fire. ‘The very reason for my flight.’
‘Nonsense.’ Anthony laughed. ‘Water under the bridge. Besides, you don’t want to take any notice of these gossip columnists. No way to earn a living, I always say. Not what I’d call a proper job, more an improper job.’
‘Can I know what you’re both talking about?’ Rory asked, throwing some more logs on the fire and earning himself a hard stare from the dormant Dunkum in return. ‘What exactly was in the papers?’
‘Here,’ Anthony said, fishing out from under himself a well-squashed tabloid. ‘In the diary.’
‘You really don’t have to,’ Constance muttered. ‘I would much rather you didn’t.’
‘Nice picture of you, though,’ Anthony said in admiration. ‘You know, I think I probably saw all your films.’
‘They were hardly my films, Mr Rawlins,’ Constance replied. ‘You mean the films I passed through.’
‘Far too modest, Lady Frimley.’
‘Do call me Constance.’
‘You’re far too modest. The Lady Returns, for instance. You had a very decent part in that and gave a very decent performance, too. Saw it again only the other day.’
‘Did I?’ Constance frowned. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘I was madly in love with you, I have to tell you.’
‘Do you know, I watched some old film or other I was in on the television recently, and do you know, I don’t even remember making it. That’s how memorable most of my films were.’
‘All At Sea? I bet you remember making that one. You had a smashing love scene with that rather dishy dark-haired bloke.’
‘Who would have been a great deal happier kissing the actor who played my fiancé, I can assure you.’
‘Yes, I have to say we were all in love with you, my friends and I.’ Anthony sighed. ‘Before I was married, of course.’
‘I don’t think you need get upset about this, Connie,’ Rory said, having finished reading the item in the paper.
‘And then when I married it turned out that my darling wife said she’d modelled herself on you.’
‘I shall certainly look forward to meeting your wife, then.’
‘Alas not,’ Anthony said with a sad shake of his head, turning to look at his late wife’s photograph in her Court presentation dress. ‘I lost her some years ago now.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘Thank you, Constance. She was a wonderful woman.’
‘Then that makes it all the sadder.’
‘No, this is all water under the bridge, Connie.’ Rory threw the paper into the log basket, and shrugged. ‘I don’t see the point in bringing it all up again.’ He sat down on the sofa beside Constance. ‘Although I agree with my father – smashing photo.’
‘Once upon a long time ago.’ It was Constance’s turn to shrug her shoulders. ‘Yes, indeed a long, long time ago. But this.’ She pointed at the crumpled newspaper. ‘This is ridiculous, this piece. Hardly one word of truth in it. For a start I most certainly did not have an affair with that awful blackshirt Bolton. I hardly even knew the fellow. And I did not flee abroad. I said at the time I was determined to stay here and prove my innocence—’
‘Which you did?’
‘Yes, and when I did go abroad it was only on the advice of the Home Office. The way that horrid little gossip merchant, that peddler of the misery of others has written it up, it makes it sound as though I vanished at the same time as my wretch of a husband, when in fact it was a long time after. Ages after, in fact.’
‘They shouldn’t publish such an inaccurate piece.’ Anthony frowned. ‘Like me to do something about it?’
‘I would love it, of course,’ Constance said. ‘But what can you do?’
‘The chap who’s the editor,’ Anthony told her, reaching for his telephone book. ‘When he was something else – features editor, I think – he had a horse with me. He’d had it with someone else who shall be nameless, but he got fed up and sent it to me – and he won a couple of races while he was here. Three, in fact. He’s always said if there was anything he could do in return, so now seems to be a very good time to call in the favour.’
Anthony excused himself and took himself off to his study to telephone his journalistic contact.
‘This is very good of your father, Rory,’ Constance said. ‘He doesn’t have to do this, you know.’
‘That’s my father. A friend of his told him the reason he’d had a heart attack was that his heart was too big.’
‘How is he now? He looks very well.’
‘He’s much better; be even more so if we could find some way of getting him to America. According to his specialist, they have a procedure there which would be just the job. But it’s very expensive and Dad thinks he isn’t worth it.’
‘While you obviously think he is.’
‘Of course. But try telling him that. Besides, we’re a bit short of beans at the moment.’
‘I know it’s really none of my business,’ Constance said after a moment, ‘but what if he doesn’t have the operation?’
Rory pulled a wry face. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘All done and dusted,’ Anthony told them on his return. ‘Apology in tomorrow, and he’s promised it won’t be hidden down the bottom of page two either. They wanted to ring you for a quote but I said I didn’t know where you were.’
‘I very much appreciate that, Anthony. Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing. Glad to be able to help. So …’ He looked at the snowscape outside the drawing-room window, and then at Constance. ‘It looks as though we shall be having the pleasure of your company for a day or so.’
‘Afraid so,’ Constance said, fishing in her bag for her cheroots. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘I dare say we’ll manage,’ Anthony replied. ‘Long as we don’t run out of Scotch.’
It turned out they were snowed in for six days. The weather was so bad they were unable to do anything with the horses other than walk them round a track they had cleared and kept having to clear round the yard. After the initial two days of heavy snow the blizzard stopped, but then it froze, which made any horse exercise impossible. So the string were confined to their boxes and their diet changed from a full training and heating one to half-rations supplemented by plenty of fresh, damp hay.
‘If this goes on, Pop,’ Rory said to his father, ‘if we have another week of this, it’ll be the equivalent of losing a month’s work. And you know what that means better than I. If the owners are even vaguely thinking of Cheltenham we’ve got to get another run into the horse, but to get him fit enough for that would take at least three weeks’ full work. So suppose the weather doesn’t relent until late January? We wouldn’t be able to run him till near the end of February, which would only leave us about a fortnight to the race itself. And I don’t think that would be enough.’
‘You’re talking in ifs and ands here, old chap,’ his father replied. ‘It all depends when the thaw comes and how hard it thaws when it does come.’
Having talked to his owners and made sure they had all seen a recording of the big Kempton race so they knew exactly the sort of opposition they might face at Cheltenham, Rory had done as requested and at least made an initial entry for The Enchanted in the big ra
ce, feeling a little happier to do so since the handicapper had raised the little horse’s rating another five points. Rory knew a lot could happen between early January and the second week of March, so while not particularly happy about entering the horse he knew that so far there was no commitment other than the financial one the owners had been prepared to shoulder when they requested the entry in the first place. When the list of first entries was duly published, as far as non-combatants went there were no surprises. All the top cup horses had been entered, as had the top half a dozen or so handicappers, while there were only two novices in the list, a little heard of Irish horse and The Enchanted. But as the weather showed no signs of breaking, Rory began to feel that time might be on his side, since the longer it froze the less time he would have to prepare such a young and inexperienced horse, which would give him every reason to opt the horse out and save both his own and his father’s faces, convinced as he was that the whole professional racing world would be laughing at him.
The only other good thing to come out of the freeze was Kathleen’s continued presence at the yard. When she was unable to make the journey back to Ireland on the day she had planned to do so, Rory had been only too happy to agree to her staying on.
‘Not that I ever wanted you to go in the first place,’ he’d told her.
‘You did not?’ Kathleen had replied with a frown. ‘You said there was nothing left for me to do here.’
‘No. No, you said that, Kathleen. I didn’t say anything.’
‘Comes to the same thing though, does it not?’ she had asked in return, turning a pair of large green eyes on him. ‘Your saying nothing told me there was no point in staying.’
‘Don’t let’s start all that business up again, shall we?’
‘I’m not starting anything up, Mr Rawlins,’ Kathleen had replied, walking away from him, before calling back over her shoulder, ‘You were the one who said nothing!’
Afraid to go up that particular dark alley again, Rory had given her best, just happy that she wasn’t leaving.
Then the thaw came, and when it did, it did so as dramatically as it had snowed. Just six nights after the first blizzard, they all went to bed in sub-zero temperatures and woke in the morning to find water everywhere. Thawed snow was pouring in wide rivulets off the stables roofs into gutters quite unable to cope with the torrent. The yard was ankle deep in slush, and the paddocks themselves were beginning to resemble small lakes.
‘At least the gallops will be rideable,’ Rory observed as he lent a hand sweeping water into the yard drains. ‘Although judging from the amount of slush we’re facing we’ll probably have to swim up there.’
But in another two days the last of the snow and slush had completely disappeared, the yard was back in business, and Constance was on a train to London, her newly formed friendship with Anthony foremost in her mind.
First thing every morning for three days the horses were walked for five miles on the roads before breakfast and then another five miles in the early afternoon, before anyone was allowed near the gallops, and when they were finally allowed up the hill it was only for a couple of long steady canters. After such a long lay-off the last thing anyone wanted was to have a horse pulling a muscle or doing a leg, so caution was the byword.
‘Slow and steady!’ Rory would remind his work riders as they left the yard. ‘I don’t want anyone going on. I just want to see you all swing up and by. OK?’
Blaze, who had returned from hospital and was now completely recovered from his fall, thanks largely to Kathleen’s tender care, was given the leg up on Boyo and rode him exactly to orders. As far as anyone could tell the horse was as fit as he had been before the snow arrived. Every morning he would appear at the crest of the gallops cantering over his stablemates, only to thunder past Rory with his head in his chest and his big ears pricked, full of premature joys of spring, a season which to judge from the bitter winds on the downland was still a long way off.
‘I’m entering him at Devon and Exeter, Ludlow and Towcester, all three-mile races, and since all the races have good prize money and everyone with a decent horse is looking for at least one more run before March, we can expect good fields everywhere – which is what we want if we’re all being serious about this.’
Rory had called a meeting of the owners to discuss their strategy, and now it was Alice who spoke up. ‘I don’t understand why we shouldn’t be being serious about it,’ she said. ‘We all think – no, sorry. We all know Boyo is special and we all of us believe he deserves to run in one of the special races, if not the most special race.’
‘I know, Alice. And I’m not trying to talk any of you out of it.’
‘Oh, but you are, Rory. Of course you are. Millie said you would, because trainers are infinitely more sensible than owners, she said.’
‘I’m not sure I want to be remembered for being sensible.’
‘Very well, more knowledgeable then. More pragmatic, if you like.’
‘I don’t think I want to be remembered for being either of those either.’
‘It’s your job to be realistic,’ Alice persisted. ‘Not ours. Our job is to dream, and we all dream the same, the four of us. We all dream of The Enchanted winning at Cheltenham.’
‘You wouldn’t prefer to put it on hold for say another year? Just to see how right or how wrong we all are? Another year on the horse could make a whole lot of difference.’
‘Another year on the horse could see him injured or worse,’ Grenville said. ‘There’s nothing to say he’ll be any better next year than he is now. He’s six. Six-year-olds often win these sorts of races.’
‘But he’s not very big, Grenville. He’s not really built for this.’
‘He’s not going to get any bigger in a year, Rory. Who knows? He might be at his very best now, and if he is, there’s nothing to stop us running him.’
‘As long as he’s qualified.’
‘He’s practically qualified already, and anyway—’
‘Grenville—’
‘No, seriously, old man, do hear me out on this,’ Grenville insisted. ‘A chum of mine who was at school with the handicapper had a private word on our behalf. It’s all right, it won’t go any further. The handicapper’s also married to my chum’s sister, if you get my drift. Anyway, he had a word in the old ear, and el handicapper said that even if the little horse’s rating stayed the same – which it will not – but even if it does, and we want to run him, he would let us do so, which he can if he thinks the horse jumps and races well enough.’
‘As long as you all know what it means.’ Rory sighed, finally getting the feeling that he was being strong-armed into doing what they all wanted. ‘We could be a laughing stock, you know that?’
‘You mustn’t mind what people might say,’ Lynne said. ‘Grenville says you’re worried because people are already saying novices have no place in Gold Cups.’
‘It could well be so, Lynne. It’s not really a race designed for novices.’
‘Not novice novices, it isn’t,’ Lynne agreed. ‘Sorry – I mean, that is according to Grenville. I’m only quoting Grenville here. But since we all of us think that The Enchanted isn’t a novice novice, that answers that, really.’
‘And I’ve just had a long talk with your father,’ Constance chimed in. ‘Because frankly I wouldn’t know one race from another. As far as I’m concerned they go hoppity-hoppity-hoppity for a few miles while Alice and I close our eyes—’
‘You don’t close your eyes, Connie. You watched every inch of the race at Huntingdon, when we all thought Eddie Rampton was going to murder you.’
‘That wasn’t Boyo’s race, clever dick. That was another race, the race I had a bet on. Ever since he won his first race at wherever it was I haven’t been able to watch a thing. Anyway, beside the point, I fear – all I want to say is that I listened to what your dear father had to say.’
‘And?’
‘And I didn’t understand a word of it. But I do so love talk
ing to your father. He’s a very good listener, and he has such a lovely voice.’
Rory smiled and left it at that. As far as he was concerned the little horse was entered up but no decisions were to be made until it was seen how he ran in his next contest. As for other matters at Fulford Farm, another decision seemed already to have been made concerning Constance, for it now appeared that although the brief freeze was over and the brouhaha in the newspapers concerning her had quickly and completely died down, at the express invitation of Anthony, Constance was back at Fulford Farm not just for a meeting, but to take up residence in one of the farm cottages, where she said she would be out of everyone’s way, everyone, that was, other than Anthony, who judging from the increasing amount of time he spent with Constance in the cottage seemed also to be changing his place of residence.
But of course, as Rory well knew, there was a downside to the change in the weather. Now that the freeze was over and road and rail were all but back to normal, there really was nothing to keep Kathleen at the yard any more – nothing, that was, except the horse.
Chapter Twenty-three
Re-enter My Pal Joey
The horse hadn’t run as planned in the big race on Boxing Day, the King George VI Gold Cup, even though he had been the firm co-favourite in all the ante-post betting lists and in spite of Eddie Rampton and his connections maintaining he would. Instead he was withdrawn on the morning of the race, the veterinary certificate stating that a foreign body had been found under a shoe, the result being an infection. Naturally the punters who had taken the price on offer ante-post were not best pleased, although the majority of them, as they tore up their vouchers, might have been heard to mutter a more colourful version of that’s racing.
The truth of the matter was that the trainer liked to play the waiting game to unsettle the opposition. He was also a gambler who liked to take the odds ante-post, and he also particularly enjoyed winning valuable races for his owners, most of whom also enjoyed a tilt at the ring. But what really rocked Eddie Rampton’s boat was beating those trainers whom he perceived as belonging to the Smart Set, the loud-talking, party-going, arrogant young men most of whom had inherited the family stables and whom, Rampton had long ago decided, looked down their noses at the likes of him, and him in particular. So he derived a peculiar pleasure from rattling their cages. And, it had to be faced, having the favourite for the Gold Cup offered him ample opportunity to indulge his chip. He knew most of his rivals preferred to avoid taking on any of his good horses before the big Cheltenham meeting in March so he took great delight in spreading as much misinformation about intended and non-intended runners as possible, after which he would sit back to watch his rivals getting into flat spins as they tried to decide whether or not to run their own charges.
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