Blind Beauty

by K. M. Peyton

  “Tom, you must!”

  “Are you riding? Racing, I mean?”

  “On Saturday. For Peter.”

  “Win, Tessa, For me. If you win… it’ll work out.”

  “It’s on the television. You can watch it.”

  “Every move. I’ll watch.”

  “I’ll ride for you, Tom. I’ll try as hard as you. I’ll win for you.”

  “Winning is tough.”

  She thought he was talking about what he had to win – his life again. She could see, now, what it took. It was what separated the winners from the losers – luck apart. Never give in. It made her see what she had to do, to get what she wanted, fight them all. She would be a jockey. No more doubts. Tom was her inspiration.

  “You’ll win, Tom! We both will.”

  She told him about Buffoon, but he drifted away into sleep, as if the effort of exhorting her had been too much. She knew that, in those words, he had put his whole strength. She felt tired too, washed out by emotion. It all mattered so much!

  “Oh Tom, I love you! Live, for God’s sake!”

  She bent down and kissed his face, laying her cheek on his for a moment.

  When his mother came back she was standing by the window looking out, pretending to be cool.

  “Oh dear, I hope your visit hasn’t been a waste of time! He does fall asleep in the middle of a sentence sometimes.”

  “No, we had a good conversation.”

  “He’s very ill, of course, but the doctors are optimistic. As far as they can tell, the operation is successful. We’re all very hopeful.”

  “He will get better. I know he will.”

  Mrs Bryant was surprised by the conviction in Tessa’s voice. “We didn’t want him to have this operation, my husband and I. We tried to talk him out of it. I suppose we were wrong. But caution comes with age.”

  Tessa found her way out and went back to Sarah in the car park. She tried to pretend it had just been an ordinary visit, but inside she felt that Tom’s few words had sorted out all the muddle in her head, about the future. Failure wasn’t on the cards.

  When Tessa was legged up on to Summer Sky in the Sandown paddock the following Saturday, her mind was only on Tom. She wasn’t nervous this time. She wasn’t wondering what other people thought, she didn’t see the curious eyes noting that she was that hapless thing, a girl wanting to be a jockey.

  “OK?” Peter asked, nervous of her steeliness.

  She did not answer him. He thought she was on another planet.

  “Has she taken anything?” he asked Sarah nervously as she departed down the course.

  Sarah laughed. “Frightened she’ll be dope-tested?”

  “Sometimes I can’t fathom that girl.”

  “Join the club.”

  Sandown was a class course and Summer Sky was only moderately fancied. Her price was ten-to-one. It was a sharp, cold day and the going was good, which suited the filly. She was very fit. She knew Tessa, and she was eager to run, and she felt an electricity from her rider which excited her. To many of the jockeys the race was a minor hurdle on a tough course, not anything to get too steamed up about, nice to win but of no great account. To Tessa it was the test of everything that mattered. It was for Tom. Herself. Buffoon. Sky did not know this, but she sensed it.

  It was a fast-run race, and Tessa did not know if Sky’s stamina would hold out. The run-in from the last at Sandown is famously gruelling, long and uphill all the way to the line. She kept Sky in mid-division, steadying her tearaway spirit, but not enough to discourage her. Her mind was cool compared with her first race – what a lot she had learned in so short a time! – and her concentration was deadly. She kept an eye on every competitor in sight, and found a good stride at every jump. Sky felt full of running, enjoying herself, in the mood to try her heart out. Tessa knew she was no faintheart. And it mattered – how it mattered!

  Coming up towards the stands, hearing the crowd’s roar, Tessa had four horses in front of her, and the rest of the field beaten. Perhaps the crowd thought she was beaten. But Tessa could feel Sky’s courage responding to her urging, getting to the point of pain but battling still, because of the others in front of her. The others were tired, as tired as Sky, but the two in front thought they had done enough and the two behind them knew it, fading fast.

  “Come on, Sky!” Tessa muttered, and rode with all her heart, sinew and muscle agonizing, breath searing in her throat. Sky flew, past the two in front and up to the quarters of the other pair. There was barely fifty metres to go. The nearest horse cracked, rolled sideways and lost a length and Sky’s nose went up to the favourite’s girth. No, she couldn’t lose by a head! Tessa drove the filly with all her failing strength and was past hearing the roaring crowd, drowned out by her own pounding bloodstream. Her knee touched the favourite’s jockey and they passed the post locked together.

  “Photograph. Photograph,” came over the loudspeaker.

  The other jockey put out a hand in congratulation. “Great riding,” he said, but not patronizingly. “I think you got it.”

  Tessa was past talking. When Sky at last pulled up, she had to rest, lying over the horse’s withers, trying not to fall off. She was shattered, the blood pounding in her ears. She could not speak. Is this what it took to win a race? She felt it had been the Grand National at least, yet it was only a potty two-mile hurdle. She had so far to go! She took in great lungfuls of air as they walked slowly back, not wanting to face the winning enclosure in a state of collapse. Congratulations buzzed in her ears from her fellow jockeys: they were taking it in remarkably good part, being beaten by a girl.

  Peter and Sarah came running up, alight with excitement. Peter looked like a boy, flushed red, reaching up to take her hand.

  “You were brilliant, Tessa – to get up like that! You rode like a champion!”

  “Like Tom,” Tessa said. “For Tom.”

  If only he hadn’t fallen asleep when the television was playing!

  “You’ll get asked to ride, after that, I’ll put my shirt on it. I knew you could do it. But none of us expected to win!”

  The owners kissed her and kissed Sky and the press gathered round, camera lights flashing. The television commentator bustled in. What rubbish she told him Tessa never remembered. It was all she could do to speak at all. She wanted to say something to Tom, but her Tom thing was private, not to be aired to the public. Tom would know. He would know why she had ridden so well.

  She went home in the horsebox in an exhausted dream. She thought she was in cloud cuckoo land – what she had done. She knew it was her riding that had got the filly up, game as the filly was. Good jockeys won races that poorer jockeys lost. That was why they were asked to ride more often than the others. But girls… she knew, because of the state of her, that she would have to work on getting stronger.

  But Peter said, “Riding in races will make you stronger. You will get the races after this.”

  But Sarah said, “Only from trainers who’ve got brains. Lots will still say a girl can’t do it.”

  “She’ll get enough.” Peter was convinced.

  In the evening Tessa went out to Buffoon. At the sound of her voice he turned his poor grey eyes towards her and pricked his ears. A soft knuckering in his throat, almost inaudible, told her he was pleased. She put her arms round his neck and laid her face in his scraggy yellow mane. She was so tired!

  “You will be cured, Buffy my beauty, and come back, and I will ride you.”

  That was her dream, more impossible than any of her others. But today she had made one step towards it, proving she was a jockey. Tomorrow she would ring up the vet in Newmarket and take the second step: ask him to see Buffoon, get his opinion.

  But when she did so, the first question was, “Is the horse insured?”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Ah.”

&
nbsp; “I know it’s very expensive, but I have the money,” she lied. “I want him cured, even if you don’t think it’s worth it.”

  “Ah.”

  But then he said, “I’ll have to see him first to make an assessment. The operation isn’t always advisable. But make a date with my secretary and we’ll go from there.”

  Tessa made a date for a fortnight away.

  When she rang off she was shaking all over. She daren’t tell the others. She knew what they would say. She scouted round Goldlands in her spare time to see when Maurice’s car had departed, and then she went in and told her mother what she had done.

  “You’ve got to lend me the money! Don’t you see – I will pay you back easily! You saw me at Sandown? Well, people want me now. There’s no risk at all. But I need it soon!”

  Her mother complained bitterly at Tessa’s insistence, but promised to do her best. Tessa thought Myra was fast becoming a nervous wreck and feared for her future, but this worry was of no account compared with her others. She had to tell the others of her plans because she needed the horsebox to transport Buffoon to Newmarket. Peter was aghast at the news.

  “Who’s going to pay? It’ll cost an arm and a leg!”

  “My mother’s going to pay for it.”

  “Does Morrison know?” Sarah asked curiously. “I bet he doesn’t!”

  “My mother has her own money,” Tessa said stiffly.

  “It’s what Morrison gives her though, isn’t it? He’ll go mad if he finds out!”

  “He won’t find out.”

  “Tessa, you’re taking a risk, aren’t you?”

  Tessa didn’t reply.

  Jimmy said, gently, “You know the operation is a risk too? It’s not always successful. And a big horse like Buffoon – he might die under the anaesthetic.”

  Tessa could not accept this. Nobody died in her book. Tom didn’t die. Tom was getting better. Buffoon would get better.

  “He won’t! He won’t die!”

  They all looked at each other over her head, the same dubious expression in their faces. Even Jimmy.

  When Tessa was alone with Jimmy she said, desperately, “It’s not a bad idea, surely? To make him see again?”

  “No. He deserves it. But what for,Tessa? He’ll never race again. He’ll be too old by the time he comes back. All that bad treatment, starvation – you don’t expect him to be the same horse as he was? I think you think he’ll race again.”

  Tessa was silent. Jimmy was right.

  “To be a hack, perhaps. Because you dote on him so. Fair enough if you’ve got the money. He’ll be at the vet’s for at least a fortnight, could be a month. It’s really going to cost you – so many drugs, alone. And then the anaesthetic, not only to lay the horse out, but to immobilize the eye – imagine!”

  He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket.

  “I looked it up, photocopied it for you. Read it.”

  Tessa took the sheet reluctantly. The words ran together as she read: “A two-millimetre stab incision is made into the cornea, near the limbus… the cystotome inserted through the incision is used to tear and remove the majority of the anterior lens capsule… ultrasonic waves break up the lens into particles which are aspirated from the eye… The major problem associated with intra-ocular surgery in the horse is post-operative inflammation… the act of incising the eye causes a cascade of events that, if not modified, can end in…”

  Tessa moaned.

  “You just want to put me off!”

  “You’re not easily put off when you want something, are you?” Jimmy shrugged. “You would get over it, if he was put down. He’s had a fair life, after all. The operation is so risky, and you have to pay, even if it fails.”

  All good arguments. Tessa dismissed them instantly.

  “It’s what I want. Above everything.”

  Save Tom. And Tom was getting better. His mother had rung and told her he watched her win on Summer Sky. And then he “turned the corner” his mother said. “It was odd,” she said. “As if your winning did it for him. When you came to see him I didn’t tell you, but we were all very anxious. He was so ill. He had no other visitors, only you. And then–” On the phone her laugh sounded carefree, like that of a girl. “Yes, the operation is successful. After all our doubts and worries!”

  Peter grudgingly gave Tessa permission to hijack the horsebox to take Buffoon to Newmarket. Jimmy offered to drive. Tessa had made sure the date wasn’t one of their racing days. Or her racing days. She had three rides booked for trainers whom she had impressed at Sandown. And in spite of all the doubts she was as happy and excited as the horsebox purred along the motorway as if she were going on a good day out. Not a hospital appointment. She had got things moving: she was a jockey, Tom was getting better, Buffoon was going to be cured. And her mother had promised to pay.

  “It will work, I know it will,” she said to Jimmy.

  “It’s only the start of your master plan,” Jimmy pointed out. “You’ve set yourself some mountains to climb, gel.”

  Tessa gazed out of the window at the rolling Essex countryside, green now with winter corn, and wondered what it would be like to have no mountains to climb: she could just be a stable-lad, after all, with blind Buffoon at grass, a comfortable berth in her caravan, nothing to worry about. A happy life, with people she liked. She had come a long way since coming to Goldlands, but she was never satisfied. Was something wrong with her?

  She asked Jimmy.

  He grinned. “I’ll make a list. Remind me tonight.”

  He told her to leave the chat to him at Newmarket. “They’ll put you down as unhinged, the way you carry on.”

  “You are so kind,” Tessa said, and laughed.

  But when it came to the point she was glad. She stayed in the lorry while Buffoon was unboxed with his friend Lucky and put into a stable. She was shaking, and nobody had said anything yet. This was the state-of-the-art horse hospital where millions of pounds were spent on horse health, because the horse in Newmarket was big business. If Buffoon was found to be a lost cause here, there was no hope for him. If he was considered fit to operate on, he would be booked in to return later. Today they took him home. Suppose, the next time, he didn’t come home? Tessa was seized with a fit of the shivers. She remembered Tom… Tom came home. Tom was out of hospital now and on the road to full recovery. He was even setting himself a date to ride. If Tom could make it, so could Buffoon. Why did they laugh at her dreams?

  It seemed an age before Jimmy returned.

  He gave her a nod and said a groom was bringing Buffoon back. He was going to make a date for the operation with the secretary. He disappeared. In a few minutes a girl came round the corner leading Buffoon and Lucky, one on each side. Tessa leapt out of the cab to help her.

  Buffoon had a way of walking now, when he was in a strange place, holding his head high and to one side, ears tightly pricked so that they almost touched each other. When Tessa saw him, hesitant with a strange person, she felt sick with love and anxiety for him. He was so utterly dependent now, trusting, lost. She ran to take him. The girl smiled.

  “Funny, with this littl’un… I remember…”

  Tessa knew she was thinking: this is the girl that stabbed Mr Morrison-Pleydell. It always brought her goodwill.

  They boxed the two animals and closed the ramp and the girl went away. Tessa went and talked to Buffoon, who was now pulling at his haynet, content.

  He had always like travelling. The noisy interior of the lorry held no horrors for him. He turned his head towards the sound of her voice and his nostrils rippled with the familiar greeting.

  “Next time you come out of here, you’ll see where you’re going,” Tessa said.

  But her eyes pricked with fear. If he comes out of here, seeing, she thought… whatever happens afterwards is of no consequence. I shall have what I wa
nt most in the world. Now, after Tom.

  Jimmy came back and climbed in the cab.

  “Well, you’ve done it now, for better or for worse. He’ll do the operation next month. I just hope you’ll get the money OK.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s only an advance, after all. I’ll pay Mum back.”

  Jimmy grimaced at her confidence, but said no more. They drove home, not saying much, the windscreen wipers moving hypnotically across the view in front of them.

  Tessa did not win her three booked rides, nor was she placed. She was paid her fee for riding, but there was no ten per cent for winning, and the fees looked small beside the cost of Buffoon’s operation.

  Jimmy said, each time, “You rode well. Money’s not everything.”

  “It is!”

  “Those horses weren’t expected to win. You won’t be offered winners very often, Tessa, let’s face it. There’s too many guys out there after the winners.”

  Owners and trainers had been pleased enough, treated her kindly, and she knew in each case she had ridden well. So much depended on it! And with each race her strength had increased. But her impatience, her ambition outstripped any feeling of satisfaction. Thank God her mother had promised the money!

  Myra rang Sarah one night. Sarah called Tessa to take the call.

  “I’ve got it out of the bank,” Myra said. “It’s in an envelope behind the hot water tank in the bathroom.”

  “Oh Mum, you are marvellous!”

  “When the coast’s clear, you must come and collect it.”