Squelch hated to be ridden any other way. Squelch was, on his day, good enough. It just hadn’t been his day.
The film showed Squelch taking the lead coming into the second last fence. He rolled a bit on landing, a sure sign of tiredness. I’d had to pick him up and urge him into the last, and it was obvious on the film. Away from the last, towards the winning post, he’d floundered about beneath me and if I hadn’t been ruthless he’d have slowed to a trot. Cherry Pie, at the finish, came up surprisingly fast and passed him as if he’d been standing still.
The film flicked off abruptly and someone put the lights on again. I thought that the film was conclusive and that that would be the end of it.
‘You didn’t use your whip,’ Lord Gowery said accusingly.
‘No, sir,’ I agreed. ‘Squelch shies away from the whip. He has to be ridden with the hands.’
‘You were making no effort to ride him out.’
‘Indeed I was, sir. He was dead tired, you can see on the film.’
‘All I can see on the film is that you were making absolutely no effort to win. You were sitting there with your arms still, making no effort whatsoever.’
I stared at him. ‘Squelch isn’t an easy horse to ride sir. He’ll always do his best but only if he isn’t upset. He has to be ridden quietly. He stops if he’s hit. He’ll only respond to being squeezed, and to small flicks on the reins, and to his jockey’s voice.’
‘That’s quite right,’ said Cranfield piously. ‘I always give Hughes orders not to treat the horse roughly.’
As if he hadn’t heard a word, Lord Gowery said, ‘Hughes didn’t pick up his whip.’
He looked enquiringly at the two Stewards flanking him, as if to collect their opinions. The one on his left, a youngish man who had ridden as an amateur, nodded non-committally. The other one was asleep.
I suspected Gowery kicked him under the table. He woke up with a jerk, said ‘Eh? Yes, definitely,’ and eyed me suspiciously.
It’s a farce, I thought incredulously. The whole thing’s a bloody farce.
Gowery nodded, satisfied,. ‘Hughes never picked up his whip.’
The fat bullying Stipe was oozing smugness. ‘I am sure you will find this next film relevant, sir.’
‘Quite,’ agreed Gowery. ‘Show it now.’
‘Which film is this?’ Cranfield enquired.
Gowery said, ‘This film shows Squelch winning at Reading on 3rd January.’
Cranfield reflected. ‘I was not at Reading on that day.’
‘No,’ agreed Gowery. ‘We understand you went to the Worcester meeting instead.’ He made it sound suspicious instead of perfectly normal. Cranfield had run a hot young hurdler at Worcester and had wanted to see how he shaped. Squelch, the established star, needed no supervision.
The lights went out again. The Stipe used his baton to point out Kelly Hughes riding a race in Squelch’s distinctive colours of black and white chevrons and a black cap. Not at all the same sort of race as the Lemonfizz Crystal Cup. I’d gone to the front early to give myself a clear view of the fences, pulled back to about third place for a breather at midway, and forced to the front again only after the last fence, swinging my whip energetically down the horse’s shoulder and urging him vigorously with my arms.
The film stopped, the lights went on, and there was a heavy accusing silence. Cranfield turned towards me, frowning.
‘You will agree,’ said Gowery ironically, ‘That you used your whip, Hughes.’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘Which race did you say that was?’
‘The last race at Reading,’ he said irritably. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’
‘I agree that the film you’ve just shown was the last race at Reading, sir. But Squelch didn’t run in the last race at Reading. The horse in that film is Wanderlust. He belongs to Mr Kessel, like Squelch does, so the colours are the same, and both horses are by the same sire, which accounts for them looking similar, but the horse you’ve just shown is Wanderlust. Who does, as you saw, respond well if you wave a whip at him.’
There was dead silence. It was Cranfield who broke it, clearing his throat.
‘Hughes is quite right. That is Wanderlust.’
He hadn’t realised it, I thought in amusement, until I’d pointed it out. It’s all too easy for people to believe what they’re told.
There was a certain amount of hurried whispering going on. I didn’t help them. They could sort it out for themselves.
Eventually Lord Gowery said, ‘Has anyone got a form book?’ and an official near the door went out to fetch one. Gowery opened it and took a long look at the Reading results.
‘It seems,’ he said heavily, ‘That we have the wrong film. Squelch ran in the sixth race at Reading, which is of course usually the last. However, it now appears that on that day there were seven races, the Novice Chase having been divided and run in two halves, at the beginning and end of the day. Wanderlust won the seventh race. A perfectly understandable mix-up, I am afraid.’
I didn’t think I would help my cause by saying that I thought it a disgraceful mix-up, if not criminal.
‘Could we now, sir,’ I asked politely, ‘See the right film? The one that Squelch won.’
Lord Gowery cleared his throat. ‘I don’t, er, think we have it here. However,’ he recovered fast, ‘We don’t need it. It is immaterial. We are not considering the Reading result, but that at Oxford.’
I gasped. I was truly astounded. ‘But sir, if you watch Squelch’s race, you will see that I rode him at Reading exactly as I did at Oxford, without using the whip.’
‘That is beside the point, Hughes, because Squelch may not have needed the whip at Reading, but at Oxford he did.’
‘Sir, it is the point,’ I protested. ‘I rode Squelch at Oxford in exactly the same manner as when he won at Reading, only at Oxford he tired.’
Lord Gowery absolutely ignored this. Instead he looked left and right to his Stewards alongside and remarked, ‘We must waste no more time. We have three or four witnesses to call before lunch.’
The sleepy eldest Steward nodded and looked at his watch. The younger one nodded and avoided meeting my eyes. I knew him quite well from his amateur jockey days, and had often ridden against him. We had all been pleased when he had been made a Steward, because he knew at first-hand the sort of odd circumstances which cropped up in racing to make a fool of the brightest, and we had thought that he would always put forward or explain our point of view. From his downcast semi-apologetic face I now gathered that we had hoped too much. He had not so far contributed one single word to the proceedings, and he looked, though it seemed extraordinary, intimidated.
As plain Andrew Tring he had been lighthearted, amusing, and almost reckless over fences. His recently inherited baronetcy and his even more recently acquired Stewardship seemed on the present showing to have hammered him into the ground.
Of Lord Plimborne, the elderly sleepyhead, I knew very little except his name. He seemed to be in his seventies and there was a faint tremble about many of his movements as if old age were shaking at his foundations and would soon have him down. He had not, I thought, clearly heard or understood more than a quarter of what had been said.
An Enquiry was usually conducted by three Stewards, but on this day there were four. The fourth, who sat on the left of Andrew Tring, was not, as far as I knew, even on the Disciplinary Committee, let alone a Disciplinary Steward. But he had in front of him a pile of notes as large if not larger than the others, and he was following every word with sharp hot eyes. Exactly where his involvement lay I couldn’t work out, but there was no doubt that Wykeham, second Baron Ferth, cared about the outcome.
He alone of the four seemed really disturbed that they should have shown the wrong film, and he said quietly but forcefully enough for it to carry across to Cranfield and me, ‘I did advise against showing the Reading race, if you remember.’
Gowery gave him an icelance of a look which would have slaughtered th
inner skinned men, but against Ferth’s inner furnace it melted impotently.
‘You agreed to say nothing,’ Gowery said in the same piercing undertone. ‘I would be obliged if you would keep to that.’
Cranfield had stirred beside me in astonishment, and now, thinking about it on the following day, the venomous little exchange seemed even more incredible. What, I now wondered, had Ferth been doing there, where he didn’t really belong and was clearly not appreciated.
The telephone bell broke up my thoughts. I went into the sitting-room to answer it and found it was a jockey colleague ringing up to commiserate. He himself, he reminded me, had had his licence suspended for a while three or four years back, and he knew how I must be feeling.
‘It’s good of you, Jim, to take the trouble.’
‘No trouble, mate. Stick together, and all that. How did it go?’
‘Lousy,’ I said. ‘They didn’t listen to a word either Cranfield or I said. They’d made up their minds we were guilty before we ever went there.’
Jim Enders laughed. ‘I’m not surprised. You know what happened to me?’
‘No. What?’
‘Well, when they gave me my licence back, they’d called the Enquiry for the Tuesday, see, and then for some reason they had to postpone it until the Thursday afternoon. So along I went on Thursday afternoon and they hummed and hahed and warned me as to my future conduct and kept me in suspense for a bit before they said I could have my licence back. Well, I thought I might as well collect a Racing Calendar and take it home with me, to keep abreast of the times and all that, so, anyway, I collected my Racing Calendar which is published at twelve o’clock on Thursdays, twelve o’clock mind you, and I opened it, and what is the first thing I see but the notice saying my licence has been restored. So how about that? They’d published the result of that meeting two hours before it had even begun.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ I said.
‘Quite true,’ he said. ‘Mind you, that time they were giving my licence back, not taking it away. But even so, it shows they’d made up their minds. I’ve always wondered why they bothered to hold that second enquiry at all. Waste of everyone’s time, mate.’
‘It’s incredible,’ I said. But I did believe him: which before my own Enquiry I would not have done.
‘When are they giving you your licence back?’ Jim asked.
‘They didn’t say.’
‘Didn’t they tell you when you could apply?’
‘No.’
Jim shoved one very rude word down the wires. ‘And that’s another thing, mate, you want to pick your moment right when you do apply.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘When I applied for mine, on the dot of when they told me I could, they said the only Steward who had authority to give it back had gone on a cruise to Madeira and I would have to wait until he turned up again.’
CHAPTER TWO
When the horses came back from second exercise at midday my cousin Tony stomped up the stairs and trod muck and straw into my carpet. It was his stable, not Cranfield’s, that I lived in. He had thirty boxes, thirty-two horses, one house, one wife, four children and an overdraft. Ten more boxes were being built, the fifth child was four months off and the overdraft was turning puce. I lived alone in the flat over the yard and rode everything which came along.
All very normal. And, in the three years since we had moved in, increasingly successful. My suspension meant that Tony and the owners were going to have to find another jockey.
He flopped down gloomily in a green velvet armchair.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Give me a drink, for God’s sake.’
I poured half a cupful of J and B into a chunky tumbler.
‘Ice?’
‘As it is.’
I handed him the glass and he made inroads. Restoration began to take place.
Our mothers had been Welsh girls, sisters. Mine had married a local boy, so that I had come out wholly Celt, shortish, dark, compact. My aunt had hightailed off with a six foot four languid blond giant from Wyoming who had endowed Tony with most of his physique and double his brain. Out of U.S.A.A.F. uniform, Tony’s father had reverted to ranch-hand, not ranch owner, as he had led his in-laws to believe, and he’d considered it more important for his only child to get to ride well than to acquire any of that there fancy book learning.
Tony therefore played truant for years with enthusiasm, and had never regretted it. I met him for the first time when he was twenty-five, when his Pa’s heart had packed up and he had escorted his sincerely weeping Mum back to Wales. In the seven years since then he had acquired with some speed an English wife, a semi-English accent, an unimpassioned knowledge of English racing, a job as assistant trainer, and a stable of his own. And also, somewhere along the way, an unquenchable English thirst. For Scotch.
He said, looking down at the diminished drink, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know, exactly.’
‘Will you go back home?’
‘Not to live,’ I said. ‘I’ve come too far.’
He raised his head a little and looked round the room, smiling. Plain white walls, thick brown carpet, velvet chairs in two or three greens, antique furniture, pink and orange striped curtains, heavy and rich. ‘I’ll say you have,’ he agreed. ‘A big long way from Coedlant Farm, boyo.’
‘No further than your prairie.’
He shook his head. ‘I still have grass roots. You’ve pulled yours up.’
Penetrating fellow, Tony. An extraordinary mixture of raw intelligence and straws in the hair. He was right; I’d shaken the straws out of mine. We got on very well.
‘I want to talk to someone who has been to a recent Enquiry,’ I said, abruptly.
‘You want to just put it behind you and forget it,’ he advised. ‘No percentage in comparing hysterectomies.’
I laughed, which was truly something in the circumstances. ‘Not on a pain for pain basis,’ I explained. ‘It’s just that I want to know if what happened yesterday was… well, unusual. The procedure, that is. The form of the thing. Quite apart from the fact that most of the evidence was rigged.’
‘Is that what you were mumbling about on the way home? Those few words you uttered in a wilderness of silence?’
‘Those,’ I said, ‘Were mostly “they didn’t believe a word we said”.’
‘So who rigged what?’
‘That’s the question.’
He held out his empty glass and I poured some more into it.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes. Starting from point A, which is that I rode Squelch to win, we arrive at point B, which is that the Stewards are convinced I didn’t. Along the way were three or four litttle birdies all twittering their heads off and lying in their bloody teeth.’
‘I detect,’ he said, ‘That something is stirring in yesterday’s ruins.’
‘What ruins?’
‘You.’
‘Oh.’
‘You should drink more,’ he said. ‘Make an effort. Start now.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Do that.’ He wallowed to his feet. ‘Time for lunch. Time to go back to the little nestlings with their mouths wide open for worms.’
‘Is it worms, today?’
‘God knows. Poppy said to come, if you want.’
I shook my head.
‘You must eat,’ he protested.
‘Yes.’
He looked at me consideringly. ‘I guess,’ he said, ‘That you’ll manage.’ He put down his empty glass. ‘We’re here, you know, if you want anything. Company. Food. Dancing girls. Trifles like that.’
I nodded my thanks, and he clomped away down the stairs. He hadn’t mentioned his horses, their races, or the other jockeys he would have to engage. He hadn’t said that my staying in the flat would be an embarrassment to him.
I didn’t know what to do about that. The flat was my home. My onl
y home. Designed, converted, furnished by me. I liked it, and I didn’t want to leave.
I wandered into the bedroom.
A double bed, but pillows for one.
On the dressing chest, in a silver frame, a photograph of Rosalind. We had been married for two years when she went to spend a routine week-end with her parents. I’d been busy riding five races at Market Rasen on the Saturday, and a policeman had come into the weighing-room at the end of the afternoon and told me unemotionally that my father-in-law had set off with his wife and mine to visit friends and had misjudged his overtaking distance in heavy rain and had driven head on into a lorry and killed all three of them instantly.
It was four years since it had happened. Quite often I could no longer remember her voice. Other times she seemed to be in the next room. I had loved her passionately, but she no longer hurt. Four years was a long time.
I wished she had been there, with her tempestuous nature and fierce loyalty, so that I could have told her about the Enquiry, and shared the wretchedness, and been comforted.
That Enquiry…
Gowery’s first witness had been the jockey who had finished third in the Lemonfizz, two or three lengths behind Squelch. About twenty, round faced and immature, Master Charlie West was a boy with a lot of natural talent but too little self-discipline. He had a great opinion of himself, and was in danger of throwing away his future through an apparent belief that rules only applied to everyone else.
The grandeur of Portman Square and the trappings of the Enquiry seemed to have subdued him. He came into the room nervously and stood where he was told, at one end of the Stewards’ table: on their left, and to our right. He looked down at the table and raised his eyes only once or twice during his whole testimony. He didn’t look across to Cranfield and me at all.
Gowery asked him if he remembered the race.
‘Yes, sir.’ It was a low mumble, barely audible.