by Joe McNally
In Kim’s bumping run I caught flashes of outbuildings and vehicles and glints of sunlight. Kim shouted, ‘I’ll climb up on this bench!’ And, seconds later, I was looking at an ocean of wool. Kim shouted, ‘Brian’s got a picture on the wall, taken from a plane. They all look like a million maggots!’ He laughed.
Kim was my nephew. Brian was his biological father, lately tracked down by my sister Marie to this outback sheep station. Her last sight of Brian had come when she was fifteen, pregnant, and watching him being banished by father in a blitz of yelling.
Kim and I talked for a long time as he moved around what seemed a huge ranch showing me everything that excited his teenage mind.
I said, ‘Watch this,’ and I carried the laptop to the picture window and turned the webcam.
‘Is that snow?’
‘Tearing down the valley. Take a good look. You won’t see much of it over there.’
‘There’ll be plenty next winter when I’m home. We’ll get the horses back and go out riding every day.’
‘We will. Now you go and get yourself a suntan. I’ll speak to you again soon. Give our love to your Mum and to Sonny.’
‘And Brian,’ Mave prompted.
‘And to Brian’ I said.
‘And give our love to the farm,’ Kim said, ‘and leave a light on there so the mice don’t feel lonely.’
‘The light’s on, Kim, and it’ll stay on until you’re home.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Off you go. There’s a full day ahead for you because it’s tomorrow where you are.’
‘I know! Strange, isn’t it?’
I said, ‘If you get to hear tomorrow’s racing results in England, let me know, and we’ll make a fortune.’
‘Ha! I wish tomorrow worked that way.’
‘Me too.’
‘See ya…Oh, is Mave okay?’
’She’s fine. Sitting watching the snow with me. She sends her love.’
‘Me too. Us, too, I should say.’
‘Off you go.’
‘Byyyeee!’
Mave watched me as I walked back toward her, ‘Feel better?’ she said.
‘Much better. He looks great. I’ll have a whiskey to celebrate. Want one?’
‘Please.’
I brought two glasses from the kitchen.
Mave said, ‘Do we get to put the lights back on now?’
I flicked the switch, and took my drink and stood by the stove.
Mave said, ‘Let them settle, Eddie. We need to get on with our own lives at this end of the world.’
I nodded, gazing down at the embers.
‘Come and sit with me,’ she said, ‘Relax. Watch the snow.’
I looked through the picture window. ‘It’s lost its beauty under the lights.’
Mave smiled. ‘I know the feeling.’
6
Mave and I met Ben Searcey and his daughter Alice outside the Chambers in Liverpool. Ben’s gibbering nervousness proved ill-founded, as the children’s panel hearing was a short one, thanks to Sir Monty Bearak. The three women and two men holding the power to release Alice Searcey into the care of her father seemed awed by Monty’s title, and stunned by his mangled face. Outside, on the steps between the sandstone pillars, Monty’s face in the winter sunlight, fascinated Alice, and Mave, too.
If you didn’t know about his car crash history, or the plastic surgery ops, Monty wouldn’t tell you. I think he enjoyed the startling gargoyle effect he had on people. The only flaw hidden was his missing right eye. A perfect glass eye had replaced it.
His smile reinforced the starkness, for his teeth were a perfect glittering line in the mashed up flesh around them. But, nobody shied from his hugs on those cold steps, and none refused his invitation to an early lunch.
Face-watchers in the restaurant could switch to Ben if they tired of Monty. Ben’s sharp cheekbones and pointed chin beneath that pale papery skin held his face up like a badly pitched tent.
Ben was so ravaged, there was no way of telling if Alice had inherited any of his looks. When I saw Alice, I remembered her mother much more clearly, and could see her in Alice: the fair hair, and springy ears and the flint-grey eyes. The fire in those eyes, and the constant wariness hardened her thin face, stopping her just short of pretty.
Monty was first to leave after lunch, his chauffeur reminding him of a business appointment. He shook hands with all and made Ben and Alice promise to join him at Aintree in April, ‘Eddie will come to the box and give us a few winners before racing, I’m sure.’
‘Be a first,’ I said.
‘When do you expect to be back riding?’ Monty asked.
‘I’m seeing the BHA doc tomorrow for a preliminary.’
‘You’ll be okay for Cheltenham, won’t you?’
I nodded, ‘Even if they have to tie me on.’
‘I believe you!’
When he’d gone, there was silence. The elephant that was Monty’s face had left the room and still no one could talk about it. I watched Ben and Alice, sensing tension. Her jaw was set. Those grey eyes gleamed. Ben put an arm around her shoulder. She didn’t move away, nor did she acknowledge anything. She stared through the window, looking at the past, or the future; maybe a fragment of each.
‘Can we give you a lift home?’ I said.
Ben smiled, ‘Nope. Thank you, but no. We’re going to walk through the city together. I’ll buy two train tickets, and we will sit side by side and count down the stations from Central to Aintree on the Ormskirk line. Then we will gird our loins and conquer Deadwood.’
Alice turned slowly to smile at her father. ‘Gird your own loins’, she said, ‘I’m not even sure women have loins.’
Mave chuckled and turned to me, ‘Eddie, do they?’
‘How would I know?’
‘You’re the loin king,’ Mave said, and Alice smiled at her and I saw two wits connect. That moment flushed away all my frustration at being absent from racing and I laughed.
Ben laughed, too. He was the oldest there, but when he laughed, he became the youngest.
I said, ‘Enjoy your train trip, then. We’ll see you at Aintree.’
‘I doubt we’ll make it, Eddie, but I’ll let Monty know in good time. I’d love for us to go, but I swapped my tux a long time ago for a gallon of cider.’
I smiled, ‘You’ll find the dress code’s nowhere near as strict as it used to be.’
Alice said, ‘Dad wouldn’t pass the dress code for Night of the Living Dead, never mind the Grand National.’
Ben laughed again in that open childlike, infectious way. I said, ‘Would you like to go, Alice?’
‘I’d love to. We’ll find something for him, don’t worry.’
I nodded, ‘I remember you in your Yeehaa days.’
She cupped her hands on her face, ‘Oh, don’t!’
Ben pushed her playfully, ‘I told you you were famous on the racecourse!’
Mave said, ‘Have you been racing since then, Alice?’
She looked from above her fingers, ‘No. And if Eddie really does remember that, I’ll never be going again!’
‘You into horses?’ I asked.
‘I love watching them, but they’re a bit scary. The main thing I remember from going with dad, was that they were like big monsters, all shiny muscles and huge teeth.’
‘Yep, they kick at one end and bite at the other, but so long as you know that, you’re usually safe. Why don’t you come up and see us in the Lakes sometime?’
She said, ‘Thanks. Maybe once we’ve done what we have to do, we will.’
I looked at Ben. He was smiling at her, deferring to her. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Your dad’s got my number.’
Mave said, ‘We could time it for when Kim comes home. Kim would love to meet you.’
‘How old is she?’ Alice asked.
‘She’s a he,’ Mave said, ‘and he’s fourteen.’ She pointed at me, ‘If you can picture a much younger version of him, unbattered, finer-featured, som
eone who smiles much more often, which would not be hard, that’s what Kim looks like.’
Alice gazed at me, wrinkling her nose, tilting her head, sizing me up, then, with great comic timing said, ‘Nah…I’ll pass.’
We didn’t need Ben’s laugh to set us all off, and everyone in the restaurant stared.
We said goodbye and Mave and I sat smiling as we watched father and daughter walk toward the railway station. Mave said to me, ‘A happy day.’
‘A rare thing for them.’ I said.
‘Eddie?’ I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw Calum Crampsey in an immaculate dark suit. Calum had worked for the main racecourse caterers for years and it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen him on the track. I stood up and shook his hand, ‘Calum! How’s it going? Haven’t seen you for a long time. Sit down.’
He drew back a chair and eased himself down. His brown hair was greyer and his pleasant face more lined since last I’d seen him. I introduced Mave and he rose again to shake her hand, then settled. He said, ‘I saw you from the kitchen. I’m working here now.’
I said, ‘You should have come and said hello. You know Ben Searcey, don’t you? And Sir Monty?’
Calum said, ‘I know Sir Monty, and I remember Ben well.’
Some vague strand of gossip came to mind. I said, ‘Did something happen with you and Sir Monty?’
‘He got me sacked. Said I’d brought the wrong bottle to his box and caused him great embarrassment, oddly enough with Ben. National day, five years ago.’
I said, ‘It’s coming back to me now, though I didn’t know who was involved.’
‘Couldn’t get another job in racing after that,’ Calum said, ’never a day goes past I don’t miss it.’ His head went down. I glanced at Mave then said to Calum, ‘Want me to have a word with Monty?’
‘Would you? If I’m honest, that’s why I came over. I was going to ask. I hate to beg, and I’m sure I didn’t do anything wrong, but Sir Monty obviously thought I did.’
I didn’t know whether to explain what had happened with Ben that day, and how embarrassed he was about it. I said, ‘Let me have a word.’
‘Thanks, Eddie, though I feel a bit of a hypocrite because I wrote to Sir Monty about a month after it, apologizing. Then I felt bad for doing that because I knew it wasn’t my fault, but it was the only way I could think of to try and get my job back.’
‘Did he reply?’
Calum shook his head and was quiet for a few moments, then said, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t even asked how you are? I still keep up with all the racing news. That was a hell of a fall you took a couple of weeks back.’
I smiled, ‘Had a week’s holiday in Bangor hospital, now Mave’s helping try to piece my brain back together.’
‘Mission impossible,’ Mave said, and we smiled.
‘Never saw anything like that,’ Calum said, ‘what happened?’
Once more I launched into trying to explain the unexplainable.
At home that evening, I rang Sir Monty and thanked him for his hospitality. ‘Not at all,’ he said, ’it was a pleasure, and a lovely change from dining with a bunch of stuffed shirts.’
I laughed, ‘After you’d gone, I saw Calum Crampsey. He’s working as a wine waiter in that restaurant now’
‘Calum?’
‘He worked on course for years for Selby and Sampson. He was very apologetic about the last time he saw you, that day at Aintree, the National, five years ago…’
The pause was so long I thought he’d gone… ’Eddie, I don’t want to be rude, but I’ll say this, I rarely get angry, very rarely, but that man caused me huge embarrassment and left me with a heavy conscience over Ben. Ben Searcey was my responsibility that day. I’d had to talk him into accepting my invitation. He was my guest. He was in my care, and I should have looked after his welfare. I failed. And the reason I failed was the incompetence of Crampsey. Ben’s had to live with the consequences, and I have had to live with the guilt. There’s nothing more I want to say on the subject of Mister Crampsey.’
After we’d said goodbye I looked at Mave, ‘He couldn’t have made that any clearer,’ I said.
‘Well, at least we know now why our knight was so eager to help a beat-up alcoholic.’
‘You’re being awful harsh, Mave.’
She shrugged, ‘It’s the truth. I like Ben, and I like Alice, but it’s the truth. Still, Ben got what he needed and old Monty salved his conscience.’
‘And Calum carried the can,’ I said.
‘It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure and the poor wot gets the pain, Edward.’
I reached for my phone, ‘I’d best call Calum with the bad news.’
7
I was back in the saddle in time for the Cheltenham Festival, the Olympics of National Hunt racing. It had taken a week’s race riding to reach full fitness, and I’d had two winners since my return. Good rides at Cheltenham were awful hard to come by. The four-day event was dominated by three trainers, each with big money owners behind them, and, frustratingly, their own jockeys.
Dil’s recently acquired owner, Vita Brodie, could have mustered a few hundred million. Vita had a string of racehorses in America and she had already bought a dozen for Dil to train. One of those was Stevedore in the Supreme Novices Hurdle, a race with a history of huge gambles by the Irish on their ‘banker’. Today their big hope was Spalpeen, a stunning black beast who looked so superior in the paddock you got the impression the other horses dared not glance his way.
Spalpeen was odds on. My horse, Stevedore, was twenty-to-one.
We walked round in the holding ring at the start, each small circuit increasing the tension, as though we had banded together to wind up some huge mechanism.
From the packed stands in the distance, the sun flashed glints from raised binoculars held by those with tensions of their own: gamblers, owners, trainers, breeders and bookmakers.
Among us, the chatter levels were unpredictable. It seemed everyone was speaking, or no one. Whatever was being said, nobody was taking it in. Nothing mattered but the race.
We were called, and we filed out, pulling down goggles, jostling for starting positions while trying to keep the horses calm.
‘Walk up!’ the starter called.
We restrained our mounts as their mouths opened and ears went back and their adrenaline surged and their muscles bunched…‘Come on!’ the starter called, and the tapes shot up, and we were away, and the customary “Supreme roar” from the stands to mark the first race of the Festival eventually reached us as a whisper below the thunder of hooves as we raced to the first.
Stevedore was unbeaten. But he’d run just once when we had easily won a small race at Doncaster. This was a much hotter contest, but after three jumps, he was moving nicely with the fast pace, easily holding his position and that told me an awful lot about his talent. Had it not been for the cruising Spalpeen travelling so sweetly three in front of me, I’d have been hopeful of my first Festival winner for a long time.
As we galloped toward the top of the hill, three hurdles from home, the brutal pace gutted the weak, the underdogs, the ones who could not respond to desperate urgings from their jockeys as they fell away on this bulletless battlefield, and Stevedore moved easily beneath me, faltering for just a stride or two as we turned downhill and he took the chance to fill his lungs, before resuming his strong, rhythmical gallop.
Whatever the outcome, Vita and Dil had themselves a bloody good horse. On landing over the third last, we’d moved into fourth. I glanced to my left…where was Spalpeen?
Then I spotted him.
He was in sixth. His motionless jockey, Vince McCrory saw me and he smiled the smile of the quiet assassin, killing my hopes in an instant.
But I might finish in the first three.
I concentrated on getting my approach right as we headed downhill to the second last…then Spalpeen passed me so quickly I imagined I could feel the air move in his wake. Seconds later, the Irish favourite was ten l
engths clear and my heart rose, and I smiled, then I forced myself to be more sombre because Vince McCrory was in serious danger. His mount was doing exactly what Montego Moon had done at Bangor and I feared the big horse would smash through the next hurdle and come down, and at that storming, headlong, panicked pace, Vince would be lucky to survive.
I should have been concentrating on the stride pattern of my horse as we got within a hundred yards of the second last, but Spalpeen’s wild gallop was all I could watch. Vince stood straight-legged, wrestling with the horse, and I felt like crying out to him that it was useless and that he should stay low and hold tight.
Then Spalpeen veered left and my admiration for Vince McCrory went up ten notches because he stayed in the saddle. At Bangor, Montego Moon had simply lost it and lowered her head and galloped until a fence stopped her. Spalpeen had changed course.
At that crazy speed, one jockey in a hundred would have stayed aboard as the horse veered sharply. Vince did it. And Spalpeen ran past the wing of the hurdle and I felt a mixture of relief for him and elation for us.
By missing out that jump, Spalpeen had disqualified himself.
We flew the next hurdle and Stevedore hit the front, shifting into grafting mode like the professional racehorse he was. I could hear the others, the hoofbeats, snorting nostrils sucking hard, then, as we rounded the bend into the straight, I saw the grey head of the second-favourite, Tomorrowland on my outside, at the flanks of Stevedore, at his ribs, his shoulders, and we went to the last neck and neck. Bomber Harries, a good friend, was riding the grey and I could hear him too, breathing hard as we moved across the track to jump the last.
Bomber got the rail. That would help him. We were close…bumping…Bomber cried, ‘Eddie!’ I pulled Stevedore away to get a clean jump, hoping Bomber’s would stumble, but the horses rose together, a moment’s suspension of the sound of galloping as we flew.
Then on the ground again. The noise of fifty thousand people, the screams, the yells and cries were softly there at the edge of my consciousness and they seemed to suck and blow at us as we ran nose to nose, drifting out for a few strides, then back in, heads down, whips flailing, as we fought to raise one more ounce of effort from these brave, battling thoroughbreds whose sweat exploded in micro-drops at each whip strike, whose mouths spumed foam that splatted on our knees and hands, whose courage could not be broken as we passed the winning post inseparable, to a final crescendo before the huge balloon of noise burst, leaving only sighs in the air…