His half-speed gallop home was a battle against my arms all the way: he wanted to go much faster. Thoughtfully I slid off his back and led him to Jim at the gate.
“Right,” Jim said. “Which do you want?”
“Er...” I patted the bay’s neck. He shook his head vigorously, not in disapproval, I gathered, but in satisfaction.
“How about,” I suggested, “a look at the form books and the breeding over a sandwich in a pub?”
I was quite good at pub life after three and a half weeks with my father.
Jim briefly laughed. “I was told I was to fetch a schoolkid. You’re some schoolkid.”
“I left school last month.”
“Yeah. Makes a difference!”
With good-natured irony he collected the necessary records from inside Stallworthy’s house and drove us to a local pub where he was greeted as a friendly regular. We sat on a high-backed wooden settle and he put the form books on the table beside the beer (him) and the Diet Coke (me).
In steeplechase breeding it’s the dams that matter. A dam who breeds one winner will most likely breed others. The chestnut’s dam had never herself won, though two of her progeny had. The chestnut so far hadn’t finished nearer than second.
The bay’s dam had never even raced, but all of her progeny, except the first foal, had won. The bay had won twice.
Both horses were eight.
“Tell me about them,” I said to Jim. “What ought I to know?”
There was no way he was going to tell me the absolute truth if he had any commission coming from the sale. Horse traders were as notorious as car salesmen for filling the gearbox with chaff.
“Why are they for sale?” I asked.
“Their owners are short of money.”
“My father would need a vet’s certificate.”
“I’ll see to it. Which horse do you want?”
“I’ll talk to my father and let you know.”
Jim gave me a twisted smile. He had white eyebrows as well as white lashes. I needed to make a friend of him if I were to come often to ride exercise, so regrettably, with all my father’s wily political sense, I deliberately set about canvassing Jim’s pro-Ben vote, and thought that maybe I’d learned a few reprehensible techniques, while being willing to listen to people’s troubles and desires.
Jim told me, laughing, that he’d hitched himself to Stallworthy because he hadn’t been able to find a comparable trainer with a marriageable daughter. A good job I wasn’t Usher Rudd, I thought.
Spencer Stallworthy apparently slept on Sunday afternoons, so I didn’t see him again that day. Jim (and Bert) drove me back to Exeter by three o’clock and with a grin and a warm slap on the back he handed me over to the black car with the silent chauffeur.
“See you, then,” Jim said.
“I can hardly wait.”
The future had spectacularly clarified. My father, instead of giving me a monthly allowance, had through my teens sent me one lump sum at Christmas to last me for the year: consequently I had enough saved away both to find myself a temporary lodging within cycling distance of Spencer Stallworthy and to immerse my brain in the racing press.
The chauffeur took me not to the headquarters from where he’d collected me, but to a playing field on the edge of Hoopwestern, where, it appeared, an afternoon amalgam of fete and political rally was drawing to a close. Balloons, bouncy castle, bright plastic chutes and roundabouts had drawn children (and therefore voting parents) and car-trunk sale-type stalls seemed to have sold out of all but hideous vases.
Painted banners promised Grand Opening by Mrs. Orinda Nagle at 3:00 and George Juliard, 3:15. Both were still present at 5:30, shaking hands all around.
Dearest Polly saw the black car stop at the gate and hurried across dry dusty grass to greet me.
“Happy birthday, Benedict. Did you choose a horse?”
“So he told you?” I looked across the field to where he stood on the soapbox, surrounded by autograph books.
“He’s been high as a kite all day.” Polly’s own smile stretched inches. “He told me he’d brought you here to Hoopwestern originally as window dressing for the campaign, and he’d got to know you for the first time ever, and he’d wanted to give you something you would like, to thank you for all you’ve done here...”
“Polly!”
“He told me he hadn’t realized how much he’d asked you to give up, with going to university instead of racing, and that you hadn’t rebelled or walked out or cursed him... He wanted to give you the best he could.”
I swallowed.
He saw me from across the field and waved, and Polly and I walked over and stopped just outside the hedge of autograph seekers.
“Well?” he said over their heads. “Did you like one?”
I couldn’t think of adequate words. He looked, however, at my face, and smiled at what he saw there, and seemed content with my speechlessness. He stepped off the soapbox and made his way through the offered books, signing left and right, until he was within touching distance, and there he stopped.
We looked at each other in great accord.
“Well, go on,” Polly said to me impatiently, “hug him.”
But my father shook his head and I didn’t touch him, and I realized we had no tradition between us of how to express greeting or emotion, and that until that moment there had never been much intense mutual emotion to express. Far from hugging, we had never shaken hands.
“Thanks,” I said to him.
It sounded inadequate, but he nodded: it was enough.
“I want to tell you about it,” I said.
“Did you choose one?”
“More or less, but I want to talk to you first.”
“At dinner, then.”
“Perfect.”
Orinda was smiling warmly at me, fully recovered, makeup hiding any residual marks, all traces of the shaking frightened woman in blood-spattered clothes overlaid by Constituency Wife, Mark I, the opener of fetes and natural hogger of cameras.
“Benedict daaahling!” She at least had no inhibitions about hugging and embraced me soundly for public consumption. She smelled sweetly of scent. She wore a copper-colored dress with green embroidery to match her eyes, and Polly beside me stiffened with the prehistoric reaction of Martha to butterfly.
Dearest Polly. Dearest Polly. I was far too young externally to show I understood her, let alone insult her by offering comforts. Dearest Polly wore remnants of the awful lipstick, a chunky necklace of amber beads and heavily strapped sandals below a muddy green dress. I liked both women, but on the evidence of their clothes, they would never equally like each other.
Instinctively I looked over Orinda’s shoulder, expecting the everlasting Anonymous Lover to be back at his post, but Wyvern had once and for all abandoned Hoopwestern as his path to influence. In his place behind Orinda loomed Leonard Kitchens with a soppy grin below his out-of-control mustache. Close on his heels came Mrs. Kitchens, looking grim.
Usher Rudd was wandering about with his intrusive malice trying to catch people photographically at a disadvantage, but interestingly when he caught my eye he pretended he hadn’t, and veered away. I had no illusions that he wished me well.
Mervyn Teck and a retinue of dedicated volunteers, stoutly declaring the afternoon a success, drove my father and me back to The Sleeping Dragon. Four days to polling day, I thought: eternity.
Over dinner in the hotel dining room I told my father about the two Stallworthy horses. A phlegmatic chestnut stayer and a sprinting excitable bay with a black mane.
“Well...” he said, frowning, “you love speed. You’ll take the bay. What makes you hesitate?”
“The horse I want has a name that might disturb you. I can’t change his name: one isn’t allowed to after a Thoroughbred has raced. I won’t have that horse unless it’s OK with you.”