‘Your diet’s disgusting.’
‘I’m used to it.’
He watched me swallow a pill with black coffee. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.
‘Vitamins.’
He shook his head resignedly and dug into his own hopelessly fattening concoction, and Danielle came in looking fresh and clear-eyed in a baggy white sweater.
‘Hi!’ she said to neither of us in particular. ‘I wondered if you’d be here. What are you doing today?’
‘Going to the races,’ Litsi said.
‘Are you?’ She looked at him directly, in surprise. ‘With Kit?’
‘Certainly, with Kit.’
‘Oh. Then... er... can I come?’
She looked from one of us to the other, undoubtedly seeing double pleasure.
‘In half an hour,’ I said, smiling.
‘Easy.’
So all three of us went to Bradbury races, parting in the hall from the princess who had come down to go through some secretarial work with Mrs Jenkins and who looked wistfully at our outdoor clothes, and also from Beatrice, who had come down out of nosiness.
Her sharp round gaze fastened on me. ‘Are you coming back?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, he is,’ the princess said smoothly. ‘And tomorrow we can all go to see my two runners at Sandown, isn’t that nice?’
Beatrice looked not quite sure how the one followed on the other and, in the moment of uncertainty, Litsi, Danielle and I departed.
Bradbury racecourse, we found when we arrived, was undergoing an ambitious upgrading. There were notices everywhere apologising for the inconvenience of heaps of builders’ materials and machines. A whole new grandstand was going up inside scaffolding in the cheaper ring, and most of the top tier of the members’ stand was being turned into a glassed-in viewing room with tables, chairs and refreshments. They had made provision up there also for a backward-facing viewing gallery, from which one could see the horses walk round in the parade ring.
There was a small model on a table outside the weighing room, showing what it would all be like when finished, and the racecourse executive were going around with pleased smiles accepting compliments.
Litsi and Danielle went off in search of a drink and a sandwich in the old unrefurbished bar under the emerging dream, and I, sliding into nylon tights, breeches and boots, tried not to think about that too much. I pulled on a thin vest, and my valet neatly tied the white stock around my neck. After that, I put on the padded back-guard which saved one’s spine and kidneys from too much damage, and on top of that the first set of colours for the day. Crash helmet, goggles, whip, number cloth, weight cloth, saddle; I checked them all, weighed out, handed the necessary to Dusty to go and saddle up, put on an anorak because of the cold and went out to ride.
I wouldn’t have minded, just once, having a day when I could stand on the stands and go racing with Danielle like anyone else. Eat a sandwich, have a drink, place a bet. I saw them smiling and waving to me as I rode onto the track, and I waved back, wanting to be right there beside them on the ground.
The horse I was riding won the race, which would surprise and please Wykeham but not make up for Col’s losing the day before.
Besides Wykeham’s two runners I’d been booked for three others. I rode one of those without results in the second race and put Pinkeye’s red and blue striped colours on for the third, walking out in my warming anorak towards the parade ring to talk to the fussiest and most critical of all Wykeham’s owners.
I didn’t get as far as the parade ring. There was a cry high up, and a voice calling, ‘Help,’ and along with everyone else I twisted my head round to see what was happening.
There was a man hanging by one hand from the new viewing balcony high on the members’ stand. A big man in a dark overcoat.
Litsi.
In absolute horror, I watched him swing round until he had two hands on the top of the balcony wall, but he was too big and heavy to pull himself up, and below him there was a fifty foot drop direct to hard tarmac.
I sprinted over there, tore off my anorak and laid it on the ground directly under where Litsi hung.
‘Take off your coat,’ I said to the nearest man. ‘Lay it on the ground.’
‘Someone must go up and help him,’ he said. ‘Someone will go.’
‘Take off your coat.’ I turned to a woman. ‘Take off your coat. Lay it on the ground. Quick, quick, lay coats on the ground.’
She looked at me blindly. She was wearing a full-length expensive fur. She slid out of her coat and threw it on top of my anorak, and said fiercely to the man next to her, ‘Take off your coat, take off your coat.’
I ran from person to person, ‘Take off your coat, quick, quick... Take off your coat.’
A whole crowd had collected, staring upwards, arrested on their drift back to the stands for the next race.
‘Take off your coat,’ I could hear people saying. ‘Take off your coat.’
Dear God, Litsi, I prayed, just hang on.
There were other people yelling to him, ‘Hang on, hang on,’ and one or two foolishly screaming, and it seemed to me there was a great deal of noise, although very many were silent.
A little boy with huge eyes unzipped his tiny blue anorak and pulled off his small patterned jersey and flung them onto the growing, spreading pile, and I heard him running about in the crowd, in his bright cotton T-shirt, his high voice calling, ‘Quick, quick, take off your coats.’
It was working. The coats came off in dozens and were thrown, were passed through the crowd, were chucked higgledy-piggledy to form a mattress, until the circle on the ground was wide enough to contain him if he fell, but could be thicker, thicker.
No one had reached Litsi from the balcony side: no strong arms clutching to haul him up.
Coats were flying like leaves. The word had spread to everyone in sight. ‘Take off your coat, take off your coat, quick... quick...’
When Litsi fell, he looked like another flying overcoat, except that he came down fast, like a plummet. One second he was hanging there, the next he was down. He fell straight to begin with, then his heavy shoulders tipped his balance backwards and he landed almost flat on his back.
He bounced heavily on the coats and rolled and slid off them and ended with his head on one coat and his body on the tarmac, sprawling on his side, limp as a rag.
I sprang to kneel beside him and saw immediately that although he was dazed, he was truly alive. Hands stretched to help him up, but he wasn’t ready for that, and I said, ‘Don’t move him... let him move first... you have to be careful.’
Everyone who went racing knew about spinal injuries and not moving jockeys until it was safe, and there I was, in my jockey’s colours, to remind them. The hands were ready, but they didn’t touch.
I looked up at that crowd, all in shirt-sleeves, all shivering with cold, all saints. Some were in tears, particularly the woman who’d laid her mink on the line.
‘Litsi,’ I said, looking down and seeing some sort of order return to his eyes. ‘Litsi, how are you doing?’
‘I... Did I fall?’ He moved a hand, and then his feet, just a little, and the crowd murmured with relief.
‘Yes, you fell,’ I said. ‘Just stay there for a minute. Everything’s fine.’
Somebody above was calling down, ‘Is he all right?’ and there, up on the balcony, were the two men who’d apparently gone up to save him.
The crowd shouted, ‘Yes,’ and started clapping, and in almost gala mood began collecting their coats from the pile. There must have been almost two hundred of them, I thought, watching. Anoraks, huskies, tweeds, raincoats, furs, suit jackets, sweaters, even a horse rug. It was taking much longer to disentangle the huge heap than it had to collect it.