Straight (14 page)

Brad had picked up the six most recent outings of Dozen Roses, interspersed by four of Gemstones’. I played all six of Dozen Roses first, starting with the earliest, back in May, checking the details with what Greville had written in his diary.

On the screen there were shots of the runners walking round the parade ring and going down to the start, with Greville’s pink and orange colors bright and easy to see. The May race was a ten-furlong handicap for three-yearolds and upward, run at Newmarket on a Friday. Eighteen runners. Dozen Roses ridden by a second-string jockey because Loder’s chief retained jockey was riding the stable’s other runner, which started favorite.

Down at the start there was some sort of fracas involving Dozen Roses. I rewound the tape and played it through in slow motion and couldn’t help laughing. Dozen Roses, his mind far from racing, had been showing unseemly interest in a mare.

I remembered Greville saying once that he thought it a shame and unfair to curb a colt’s enthusiasm: no horse of his would ever be gelded. I remembered him vividly leaning across a small table and saying it over a glass of brandy with a gleam in which I’d seen his own enjoyment of sex. So many glimpses of him in my mind, I thought. Too few, also. I couldn’t really believe I would never eat with him again, whatever my senses said.

Trainers didn’t normally run mares that had come into season, but sometimes one couldn’t tell early on. Horses knew, though. Dozen Roses had been aroused. The mare was loaded into the stalls in a hurry and Dozen Roses had been walked around until the last minute to cool his ardor. After that, he had run without sparkle and finished midfield, the mare to the rear of him trailing in last. Loder’s other runner, the favorite, had won by a length.

Too bad, I thought, smiling, and watched Dozen Roses’ next attempt three weeks later.

No distracting attractions, this time. The horse had behaved quietly, sleepily almost, and had turned in the sort of moderate performance which set owners wondering if the game was worth it. The next race was much the same, and if I’d been Greville I would have decided it was time to sell.

Greville, it seemed, had had more faith. After seven weeks’ rest Dozen Roses had gone bouncing down to the start, raced full of zest and zoomed over the finishing line in front, netting 14/1 for anyone ignorant enough to have backed him. Like Greville, of course.

Watching the sequence of tapes I did indeed wonder why the Stewards hadn’t made a fuss, but Greville hadn’t mentioned anything except his pleasure in the horse’s return to his three-year-old form.

Dozen Roses had next produced two further copybook performances of stamina and determination which brought us up to date. I rewound and removed the last tape and could see why Loder thought it would be another trot-up on Saturday.

Gemstones’ tapes weren’t as interesting. Despite his name he wasn’t of much value, and the one race he’d won looked more like a fluke than constructive engineering. I would sell them both, I decided, as Loder wanted.

B
rad came early on Wednesday and drove me to Lambourn. The ankle was sore in spite of Distalgesic but less of a constant drag that morning and I could have driven the car myself if I’d put my mind to it. Having Brad around, I reflected on the way, was a luxury I was all too easily getting used to.

Clarissa Williams’s attentions had worn off completely except for a little stiffness and a blackening bruise like a bar midway between shoulder and elbow. That didn’t matter. For much of the year I had bruises somewhere or other, result of the law of averages operating in steeplechasing. Falls occurred about once every fourteen races, sometimes oftener, and while a few of the jockeys had bodies that hardly seemed to bruise at all, mine always did. On the other hand I healed everywhere fast, bones, skin and optimism.

Milo Shandy, striding about in his stable yard as if incapable of standing still, came over to my car as it rolled to a stop and yanked open the driver’s door. The words he was about to say didn’t come out as he stared first at Brad, then at me on the back seat, and what he eventually said was, “A chauffeur, by God. Coddling yourself, aren’t you?”

Brad got out of the car, gave Milo a Neanderthal look and handed me the crutches as usual.

Milo, dark, short and squarely built, watched the proceedings with disgust.

“I want you to ride Datepalm,” he said.

“Well, I can’t.”

“The Ostermeyers will want it. I told them you’d be here.”

“Gerry rides Datepalm perfectly well,” I said, Gerry being the lad who rode the horse at exercise as a matter of course most days of the week.

“Gerry isn’t you.”

“He’s better than me with a groggy ankle.”

Milo glared. “Do you want to keep the horse here or don’t you?”

I did.

Milo and I spent a fair amount of time arguing at the best of times. He was pugnacious by nature, mercurial by temperament, full of instant opinions that could be reversed the next day, didactic, dynamic and outspoken. He believed absolutely in his own judgment and was sure that everything would turn out all right in the end. He was moderately tactful to the owners, hard on his work force and full of swearwords for his horses, which he produced as winners by the dozen.

I’d been outraged by the way he’d often spoken to me when I first started to ride for him three years earlier, but one day I lost my temper and yelled back at him and he burst out laughing and told me we would get along just fine, which in fact we did, though seldom on the surface.

I knew people thought ours an unlikely alliance, I neat and quiet, he restless and flamboyant, but in fact I liked the way he trained horses and they seemed to run well for him, and we had both prospered.

The Ostermeyers arrived at that point and they too had a chauffeur, which Milo took for granted. The bullishness at once disappeared from his manner to be replaced by the jocular charm that had owners regularly mesmerized, that morning being no exception. The Ostermeyers responded immediately, she with a roguish wiggle of the hips, he with a big handshake and a wide smile.

They were not so delighted about my crutches.

“Oh dear,” Martha Ostermeyer exclaimed in dismay. “What have you done? Don’t say you can’t ride Datepalm. We only came, you know, because dear Milo said you’d be here to ride it.”

“He’ll ride it,” Milo said before I had a chance of answering, and Martha Ostermeyer clapped her small gloved hands with relief.

“If we’re going to buy him,” she said, smiling, “we want to see him with his real jockey up, not some exercise rider.”

Harley Ostermeyer nodded in agreement, benignly.

Not really my week, I thought.

The Ostermeyers were all sweetness and light while people were pleasing them, and I’d never had any trouble liking them, but I’d also seen Harley Ostermeyer’s underlying streak of ruthless viciousness once in a racecourse car-park where he’d verbally reduced to rubble an attendant who had allowed someone to park behind him, closing him in. He had had to wait half an hour. The attendant had looked genuinely scared. “Goodnight, Derek,” he’d croaked as I went past, and Ostermeyer had whirled round and cooled his temper fifty percent, inviting my sympathy in his trouble. Harley Ostermeyer liked to be thought a good guy, most of the time. He was the boss, as I understood it, of a giant supermarket chain. Martha Ostermeyer was also rich, a fourth-generation multimillionaire in banking. I’d ridden for them often in the past years and been well rewarded, because generosity was one of their pleasures.

Milo drove them and me up to the Downs where Datepalm and the other horses were already circling, having walked up earlier. The day was bright and chilly, the Downs rolling away to the horizon, the sky clear, the horses’ coats glossy in the sun. A perfect day for buying a champion ‘chaser.

Milo sent three other horses down to the bottom of the gallop to work fast so that the Ostermeyers would know where to look and what to expect when Datepalm came up and passed them. They stood out on the grass, looking where Milo pointed, intent and happy.

Milo had brought a spare helmet with us in the big-wheeled vehicle that rolled over the mud and ruts on the Downs, and with an inward sigh I put it on. The enterprise was stupid really, as my leg wasn’t strong enough and if anything wild happened to upset Datepalm, he might get loose and injure himself and we’d lose him surely one way or another.

On the other hand, I’d ridden races now and then with cracked bones, not just exercise gallops, and I knew one jockey who in the past had broken three bones in his foot and won races with it, sitting with it in an ice bucket in the changing room between times and literally hopping out to the parade ring, supported by friends. The authorities had later brought in strict medical rules to stop that sort of thing as being unfair to the betting public, but one could still get away with it sometimes.

Milo saw me slide out of the vehicle with the helmet on and came over happily and said, “I knew you would.”

“Mm,” I said. “When you give me a leg up, put both hands round my knee and be careful, because if you twist my foot there’ll be no sale.”

“You’re such a wimp,” he said.

Nevertheless he was circumspect and I landed in the saddle with little trouble. I was wearing jeans, and that morning for the first time I’d managed to get a shoe on, or rather one of the wide soft black leather moccasins I used as bedroom slippers. Milo threaded the stirrup over the moccasin with unexpected gentleness and I wondered if he were having last-minute doubts about the wisdom of all this.

One look at the Ostermeyers’ faces dispelled both his doubts and mine. They were beaming at Datepalm already with proprietary pride.

Certainly he looked good. He filled the eye, as they say. A bay with black points, excellent head, short sturdy legs with plenty of bone. The Ostermeyers always preferred handsome animals, perhaps because they were handsome themselves, and Datepalm was well-mannered besides, which made him a peach of a ride.

He and I and two others from the rest of the string set off at a walk toward the far end of the gallop but were presently trotting, which I achieved by standing in the stirrups with all my weight on my right foot while cursing Milo imaginatively for the sensations in my left. Datepalm, who knew how horses should be ridden, which was not lopsided like this, did a good deal of head and tail shaking but otherwise seemed willing to trust me. He and I knew each other well as I’d ridden him in all his races for the past three years. Horses had no direct way of expressing recognition, but occasionally he would turn his head to look at me when he heard my voice, and I also thought he might know me by scent as he would put his muzzle against my neck sometimes and make small whiffling movements of his nostrils. In any case we did have a definite rapport and that morning it stood us in good stead.

At the far end the two lads and I sorted out our three horses ready to set off at a working gallop back toward Milo and the Ostermeyers, a pace fast enough to be interesting but not flat out like racing.

There wasn’t much finesse in riding a gallop to please customers, one simply saw to it that one was on their side of the accompanying horses, to give them a clear view of the merchandise, and that one finished in front to persuade them that that’s what would happen in the future.

Walking him around to get in position, I chatted quietly as I often did to Datepalm, because in common with many racehorses he was always reassured by a calm human voice, sensing from one’s tone that all was well. Maybe horses heard the lower resonances: one never knew.

“Just go up there like a pro,” I told him, “because I don’t want to lose you, you old bugger. I want us to win the National one day, so shine, boy. Dazzle. Do your bloody best.”

I shook up the reins as we got the horses going, and in fact Datepalm put up one of his smoothest performances, staying with his companions for most of the journey, lengthening his stride when I gave him the signal, coming away alone and then sweeping collectedly past the Ostermeyers with fluid power; and if the jockey found it an acutely stabbing discomfort all the way, it was a fair price for the result. Even before I’d pulled up, the Ostermeyers had bought the horse and shaken hands on the deal.

“Subject to a veterinarian’s report, of course,” Harley was saying as I walked Datepalm back to join them. “Otherwise, he’s superb.”

Milo’s smile looked as if it would split his face. He held the reins while Martha excitedly patted the new acquisition, and went on holding them while I took my feet out of the stirrups and lowered myself very carefully to the ground, hopping a couple of steps to where the crutches lay on the grass.

“What did you do to your foot?” Martha asked unworriedly.

“Wrenched it,” I said, slipping the arm cuffs on with relief. “Very boring.”

She smiled, nodded and patted my arm. “Milo said it was nothing much.”

Milo gave me a gruesome look, handed Datepalm back to his lad, Gerry, and helped the Ostermeyers into the big-wheeled vehicle for the drive home. We bumped down the tracks and I took off the helmet and ran my fingers through my hair, reflecting that although I wouldn’t care to ride gallops like that every day of the week, I would do it again for as good an outcome.

We all went into Milo’s house for breakfast, a ritual there as in many other racing stables, and over coffee, toast and scrambled eggs Milo and the Ostermeyers planned Datepalm’s future program, including all the top races with of course another crack at the Gold Cup.

“What about the Grand National?” Martha said, her eyes like stars.

“Well, now, we’ll have to see,” Milo said, but his dreams too were as visible as searchlights. First thing on our return, he’d telephoned to Datepalm’s former owner and got confirmation that she agreed to the sale and was pleased by it, and since then one had almost needed to pull him down from the ceiling with a string, like a helium-filled balloon. My own feelings weren’t actually much lower. Datepalm really was a horse to build dreams on.