Mount! (21 page)

But now Lion was out of action, who was going to ride Quickly
and other star two-year-olds in their first races? Cathal, Walter, Gav and Rupert, when he was at home, spent hours pondering over the possibilities.

A very promising apprentice was Jemmy Carter. He had been put into care at five because his drug addict Welsh mother couldn’t cope, and then moved from foster family to foster family until, just before his fourteenth birthday, he’d been settled in with a Gloucester family, whom he loved. Having got a part-time job as a stable lad at Penscombe, Jemmy was devastated when the foster family chucked him out the moment he was sixteen, because they would no longer be remunerated for his upkeep.

Too proud to tell the other lads he was homeless, Jemmy had shacked up in one of the barns, sleeping rough and turning up for work. Then one day, after he had fainted and crashed to the ground on the gallops, he was followed back to the barn and rumbled by Gav and Gee Gee. Happily, everyone loved Jemmy, who was such a natural rider and had huge potential as a jockey. Rupert, who’d reached the bit in
King Lear
about ‘poor naked wretches’ being pelted by the ‘pitiless storm’, and urged by Taggie and Gav, had taken him in as an apprentice.

He now lived in one of the staff hostels, next to Lou-easy and Marketa, who adored and fussed over him. Despite his skill as a rider he had little ambition and spent his wages on betting or in the Dog and Trumpet at the weekends.

Jemmy’s best friend was Rupert’s second jockey, Stevie O’Dell. He was known as ‘Meerkat’ because he was very short with huge hazel eyes, and when someone announced that a pretty girl had come into the pub, Meerkat would bob up and down, calling, ‘Where, where?’ Meerkat supplemented his income by modelling sofas in television commercials. He was so little, he made the sofas look huge. Brave as a lion despite his size, unlike Eddie he had no weight problems.

Celeste, meanwhile, was livid when Rupert stopped her riding out because her lousy seat was giving the horses sore backs and because she was constantly defying him by talking on her mobile. If it hadn’t been for Gavin reluctantly defending her, she would have been fired long ago. She was so lazy and
bitchy, still reserving her venom for Gala who, despite being much larger than Celeste, was allowed to ride out – when she could be freed up from taking care of Old Eddie.

Gala, despite Celeste’s constant jibes about ‘barrels of lard’, had, in fact, shed most of her spare tyres. Eddie, nearly down to the required 120 lbs to ride on the flat, looked so infinitely touching with his blond curls and bright-blue eyes dominating his thin face, that everyone, especially Lark and Gala, wanted to mother him.

Lark didn’t think Trixie, who had been taking her A-levels again, cherished Eddie nearly enough, and every week in Penscombe church she prayed: ‘If You think it’s right, Lord, please let Eddie ride Master Quickly.’

Then she would dream of leading them in after Quickly won the 2000 Guineas, because after big races, they included the names of stable lasses and lads in the
Racing Post
, so hers, Lark Tolland, would lie beneath the jockey, Eddie Alderton.

Rupert was still away a lot, but put everyone on the jump when he came home, invariably on fault-finding missions. He was not a great one for early-morning chat, but out on the gallops, riding Safety Car, his narrowed eyes missed nothing.

On one lovely June morning, Second Lot, which included Quickly and Dave, had just reached the start of the two-mile grass gallop when Eddie erupted out of the house, whooping with joy, leaping over fences and running towards them wearing nothing but jeans to show off his emaciated six-pack and his new beautiful body.

‘I’m down to 122 pounds, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Oh my goodness,’ breathed Lark.

Meerkat and Jemmy were already up on Touchy Filly and Dave. Gav was about to mount Quickly, but Eddie was too fast for him, vaulting into the saddle and giving Quickly’s flanks a whack with his hand.

Despite Lark trying to hang on to him, Quickly took off, with Eddie encouraging him, whooping louder and louder, faster and faster, off the end of the gallop and into rough grass and the buttercups, nearly over the horizon, but still near enough
to show how dazzlingly he could ride at speed. He only managed to pull Quickly up when they were blocked by a barn, crammed full of hay in black plastic bags.

Quickly’s inflamed nostrils were as big as side-plates, his heaving flanks a snaking mass of veins, but he was still leaping around as, bare-chested and bare-footed, Eddie rode him back into the yard.

‘This is the fastest horse I have ever ridden. He cannot be beat,’ he ecstatically told Rupert and Gav. ‘He is the fastest horse anyone has
ever
ridden. Can I have him for my birthday?’

A for-once speechless Rupert was poised to yell at him when the normally quiet Gavin, who’d devoted nine months to settling Quickly, asked Eddie if he really wanted to fuck up a great horse? And, pulling him to the ground, hit him across the yard.

‘And you’ve just lost the chance to ride Quickly in his first race,’ roared Rupert. ‘I’m bloody putting up Meerkat.’

‘That’s cool,’ piped up Meerkat. ‘Quickly’s so little he’ll make me look huge.’

Despite spats, everyone was looking forward to Quickly’s first race. He still had a tendency to plant himself on the gallops or refuse to go into the starting stalls, but once off, he let no one overtake him and was effortlessly beating even the best three- and four-year-olds on the gallops with New Year’s Dave not far behind.

Dora Belvedon, thrilled with a new star to promote, had great plans.

‘Just think, if Mrs Wilkinson could accompany Quickly to all his races, it would give her adoring public a chance to see her again. She could become a cult – or, ha ha, colt – figure, like Andy Murray’s mother.’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snarled Rupert, who wanted Quickly out of the limelight. Nothing was more alarming for a young colt in his first race than screaming crowds and cameras flashing. He refused even to let Ed Whitaker, the
Racing Post
’s star photographer, take any pictures of Quickly.

The press, however, revved up by Dora and remembering Mrs Wilkinson’s Grand National and Love Rat’s sprinting glories, were already flagging up Quickly’s date with destiny, and training their long lenses on the gallops.

Quickly’s first race, so he wouldn’t be stressed by a long journey, was a six-furlong sprint at nearby Rutminster, where back in the eighteenth century Rupert Black had triumphed on Sweet Azure.

Since then, relations between the Campbell-Blacks and the Northfields had never been cordial. Lord Rutshire, who owned Rutminster Racecourse, was, for example, continually outraged that any attempt to cover parts of the land in houses had been blocked by action groups, their websites invariably adorned by words of support accompanied by a photograph of an arrogantly handsome Rupert Campbell-Black.

This particularly infuriated Lord Rutshire’s younger brother Roddy Northfield, reminding him that forty years ago, his fiancée, now wife, Enid, had been seduced by Rupert at a hunt ball in a blue and green William Morris-curtained four-poster.

Enid, although thoroughly taken in both senses, had been wise enough to appreciate no future lay with rackety Rupert, but her eyes softened at the mention of his name and she still dressed up more and attended meetings when Rupert’s horses were known to be running.

Rupert had always pushed every rule to the limit, whether it was running a half-fit horse to keep its handicap down or applying team tactics to rein in an opponent, or even secretly
persuading a clerk of the course to water it, if one of his horses needed less quick ground.

Roddy, a keen horseman, had started life as a steward before rising to the position of Stipendiary Steward. These were paid professionals who moved around different enquiries, advising the resident stewards what to do.

This invariably involved giving Rupert Campbell-Black and his jockeys a hard time. Recently Roddy had been appointed to the board of the British Racing Association, laughingly known as BRA, the governing body who attempted the almost impossible task of keeping a vast multi-faceted sport clean and in order, a sport that was, in addition, chronically underfunded and resistant to change.

Neither Rupert nor Roddy missed an opportunity to take a swipe at one another. Rupert, taking delight in winning at Rutminster, felt it would be the ideal spot for Quickly to make a not too public debut.

Having been abroad chasing winners, what he’d forgotten was that during an awards ceremony at Rutminster Racecourse three years ago, Quickly’s mother Mrs Wilkinson, nominated for Sports Personality of the Year, had been believed to have been killed when a bomb went off in the stable block. In fact, Mrs Wilkinson had been whisked away to a safe haven just beforehand, returning in glory to dry the tears on the faces of thousands of mourners at her memorial service in Rutminster Cathedral.

The publicity team at Rutminster, aided by Dora, felt it would really pull in the crowds if Quickly’s first race coincided with his mother’s return to the racecourse to open the rebuilt stable block. Dora then wrote glowing press releases about the Debut of the Decade and Quickly combining Love Rat’s sprinting glory with Mrs Wilkinson’s stamina.

Returning from America and discovering in addition that Cosmo’s star two-year-old I Will Repay had been entered in the same race, a furious Rupert ordered that Quickly be scratched.

‘Far too public, it’ll freak him out – and Touchy Filly,’ who was making her debut in an earlier race. Gav, however, talked him round.

‘He’s ready, Rupert. He really needs the race and Roddy Northfield will accuse you of being chicken.’

‘If you pull out,’ begged Dora, ‘think of the disappointment of people who’ve come miles to see him and Mrs Wilkinson, and how reassuring for Quickly to have a family member present.’

‘Don’t use that ghastly expression,’ snapped back Rupert.

It was on an intensely cold June day, grey, foggy, with torrential rain and a vicious wind turning Rutminster’s lowering woods inside out, that Cosmo’s helicopter, bringing Tarqui McGall from Ireland to ride I Will Repay, was nearly blown off-course.

Stalking the course with Gavin, and a furiously striding Rupert, poor little Meerkat had to run to keep up, and was further humiliated when Roddy Northfield ordered him out of the weighing room because: ‘Children aren’t allowed in here.’

Lark, who hadn’t slept, had spent yesterday’s break praying for Quickly to win. Her heart beat faster as the horseboxes of the great trainers, Isa Lovell, Tommy Westerham, Charles Norville and horrible Brute Barraclough, rolled into the lorry park. Quickly looked wonderful; a few new dapples had enabled her to get a shine on his silver coat. But to avoid stress, she’d forborne to plait his mane or stencil patterns on his quarters.

Despite the vile weather, the crowds had turned out to see Mrs Wilkinson open the stable block and cheered tumultuously when she did a lap of honour with Chisolm at her heels. People were also fascinated to see how Quickly would respond to meeting his long-lost family again – with rapture like that programme about humans on television? But predictably when led out, Quickly flattened his ears and took a bite out of Mrs Wilkinson and lashed out with both barrels at Chisolm. So Lark and Dora hastily whisked them apart.

Valent and Etta, in a stylish periwinkle-blue coat, had been asked to lunch in the Northfield Suite, which lay at the end of the stands.

Roddy Northfield, despite a port-wine face and the bulging eyes and pouting lips of a predatory turbot, fancied himself
with the ladies. He also regarded himself as a bit of a character, encouraging privileged acquaintances to call him ‘Rodders’ and celebrating his penchant for wearing too-tight red trousers.

‘So clever to match them to his face,’ bitched Rupert.

Having heard rumours that Rupert and Etta were not bosom friends (and what a pretty bosom she had), ‘Rodders’ set out to charm her and Valent, who would make the ideal sponsor.

‘We’re thinking of naming a new race the Mrs Wilkinson Cup next year over our jumps course – wondered if you’d be interested in sponsoring it?’

‘Oh Valent, wouldn’t that be lovely?’ said Etta who, despite being sick with nerves about Quickly’s debut, was being cheered by several glasses of champagne.

Looking out of the window, she could see Mrs Wilkinson, with Chisolm and Dora, going walkabout in the crowd and shaking hooves with her fans.

‘She does love these outings,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if she ought to race again?’

‘Why not let her have another foal,’ suggested Roddy, ‘and send her to Roberto’s Revenge. He loves greys.’

‘Rupert would have a coronary,’ muttered Valent.

‘Rupert not here?’ said a disappointed Enid Northfield, who was wearing a lot of scent and a willow-green wool dress with a label saying £350 still attached.

‘I think he’s walking the course,’ said Etta.

Enid, who had put on weight and would have taken up most of the William Morris-curtained four-poster, if she and Rupert had re-enacted any romping, was also nicknamed ‘Damsire’ because she was always rabbiting on about horses’ pedigrees.

In the same race as Quickly, she and Roddy had a two-year-old called Red Trousers, and she went into a long preamble tracing his genealogy back to the Ark.

‘He’s out of Scarlet Woman and by Happy Hipsters,’ she told Etta, ‘and has an excellent page.’

‘Like Good King Wenceslas,’ giggled Etta.

‘I actually think I Will Repay will walk it,’ said Roddy. ‘Isa Lovell is such a good trainer, much more thorough than Rupert
C-B.’ That should please Etta if she weren’t too keen on Rupert.

Pretty woman, he couldn’t resist whisking her next door to the Royal Box where, amidst the portraits of famous horses was an oil painting of a man with dark red hair, fox-brown eyes slightly too close together, and a thin clever face. He was seated at a desk holding a book on painting. At his feet lay a white mastiff.

‘Who was he?’ asked Etta. ‘Lovely face, sweet dog.’

‘An elder son, James Northfield,’ said Roddy, ‘who was killed in a race back in the eighteenth century. The title passed to my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Rufus Northfield, who became Lord Rutshire; the title has now been handed down to my elder brother, Rufus. That’s his portrait over there.’