“What’s the matter?” Orinda said.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She had given me a perfect opening for what I wanted to say to her, but I miserably shrank from it. I hadn’t expected to feel so grindingly forlorn: an exile looking through a glass barrier at a life denied him.
I found a place.for us to stand against the rails of the parade ring, and I gave her my race card, as she had left her own upstairs. She needed spectacles from her handbag to see small print with, and help in identifying the runners from their number cloths.
“What do all these figures mean?” she asked, scratchily pointing to the card. “It’s double Dutch to me.”
“They tell you the horse’s age and how much weight he’s carrying in the race. Those very small figures tell you his results in the last races he’s run in.” I pointed. “F means fell, and P means he pulled up and didn’t finish.”
“Oh.” She studied the card and read aloud the conditions of entry to the first race, a two-and-a-half-mile hurdle race for novices.
“A race for four-year-olds and upwards, which at the start of the season have not won a hurdle race... but if they have won a hurdle race since the start of the season, they are to carry a 7-lb. penalty.” She looked up, disliking me. “What’s a 7-lb. penalty?”
“Extra weight. Most often flat thin sheets of lead carried in pockets in the weight cloth which lies over the horse’s back under the number cloth and saddle.” I explained that a jockey had to carry the weight allotted to his horse. “You get weighed before and after a race...”
“Yes, yes, I’m not totally ignorant.”
“Sorry.”
She studied the race card. “There’s only one horse in this race carrying a 7-lb. penalty,” she announced. “Will he win?”
“He might if he’s very good.”
She turned the pages of the card, looking forward. “In almost every race a horse carries a penalty if it’s won recently.”
“Mm.”
“What’s the heaviest penalty you can get?”
I said, “I don’t think there’s any set limit, but in practice a 10-lb. penalty is the most a horse will be faced with. If he had to carry more than ten pounds extra in a handicap he almost certainly wouldn’t win, so the trainer wouldn’t run him.”
“But you could win with a 10-lb. penalty?”
“Yes, just about.”
“A lot to ask?”
“It depends how strong the horse is.”
She put her glasses away and wanted me to go with her to the Tote, where she backed the horse that had won on the first day of the season and earned himself an extra seven pounds of lead. “He must be the best,” she said.
Almost as tall as I was, Orinda walked always a pace ahead of me as if it were natural to her to have her escort in attendance to her rear. She was used to being looked at, and I did see that her clothes drew admiration, even if more geared to Ascot than a country meeting in the boondocks of rural far-from-all-crowds Dorset.
We stood on the steps of the grandstand to watch the race. Orinda’s choice finished fourth.
“Now what?” she said.
“Same thing all over again.”
“Don’t you get bored with it?”
“No.”
She tore her Tote ticket across and let the pieces flutter to the ground like a seasoned loser.
“I don’t see much fun in this.” She looked around at a host of people studying race cards. “What do you do if it rains?”
The simple answer was “get wet,” but it would hardly have pleased her.
“People come to see the horses as much as to gamble,” I said. “I mean, horses are marvelous.”
She gave me a pitying stare and said that after the following race she would return to the stewards’ room to thank the duke for his hospitality, and then she would leave. She couldn’t see the fascination that jump racing held for everyone.
I said, “I can’t see what fascination politics has for my father, but for him now it’s his whole life.”
We were walking back towards the parade ring, where the horses were beginning to appear for the second race. She stopped abruptly from one stride to the next and faced me with frank hostility.
“Your father,” she said acidly, biting off each word as if she could crunch them to splinters of glass, “has stolen my purpose in life. It is I who should represent Hoopwestern in Parliament. It was I who was supposed to be fighting this election, and I’d have won it, too, which is more than your precious father will do for all his machismo.”
“He didn’t know you existed,” I said. “He was sent by the central party in Westminster to fight the by-election, if he could get selected. He didn’t set out to replace you personally.”
She demanded, “How do you know?”
“He told me. He’s been giving me a condensed course in politics since last Wednesday, when he brought me here as window dressing. He respects the way you feel. And, actually, if he had you on his side, and if because of that he did get elected, then maybe you could be as good a team with him as you were with Mr. Nagle.”
“You’re a child, ” she said.
“Yes... sorry. But everyone here says how outstanding you are at work in the constituency.”
She made no comment, angry or otherwise, but began as before to study her race card, leaning on the parade ring rails as if at home.
After a bit she said, “What your father wants is power.”
“Yes.” I paused. “Do you?”
“Of course.”
Power stalked past us in the muscular rumps of fully grown steeplechasers, animals capable of covering ground at thirty miles an hour or more for distances of from four and a half miles: the length and speed of the Grand National. No animal on earth could better a racehorse for stamina and speed. That power... that was power for me. To share it, guide it, jump with it... oh, dear God, give me that power.
“Usher Rudd,” Orinda said, “do you know who I mean?”
“Yes.”
“Usher Rudd told my friend Alderney Wyvern — um, do you know who I mean by Alderney Wyvern?”
“Yes again.”
“Usher Rudd says George Juliard is not only lying about your being his legitimate son but maintains you are his catamite.”
“His what?” If I sounded bewildered, it was because I was. “What’s a... a cat of mice?”
“You don’t know what he means?”
“No.”
“A catamite is a boy... a prostitute boy lover.”
I wasn’t so much outraged as astonished. In fact, I laughed.
“Usher Rudd,” Orinda said warningly, “is a tireless researcher. Don’t take him lightly.”
“But I thought Paul Bethune was his sleaze target.”
“Anyone is,” Orinda said. “He makes up lies. He likes to destroy people. He’ll do it for money if he can, but if there’s no money in it he’ll do it for pleasure. He’s a butterfly-wing puller. Are you George Juliard’s legitimate son?”
“I look like him, a bit.”
She nodded.
“And he did marry my mother — in front of a lot of witnesses.” (Disapproving witnesses, but never mind.)
The news seemed not to please her.
“I suppose,” I said, “that you would prefer Usher Rudd to be right? Then you could have got rid of my father?”
“Alderney Wyvern says it will take more than an Usher Rudd fabrication. It’s a matter of finding a strong lever.”