Coming to the second last fence, Ironclad was leading Squelch by three lengths which could have been ten, and he set himself right with all the time in the world. Squelch followed him over, and four lengths behind Breadwinner strained forward to be third.
Between the last two fences the status quo was unchanged, Breadwinner making no impression on Squelch, nor Squelch on Ironclad. Oh well, I thought resignedly. Third. That wasn’t really too bad for such a young horse. One couldn’t have everything. And there was always Pound Postage in the Grand National, two weeks on Saturday...
Ironclad set himself right for the last fence, launched himself muscularly into the air, crossed the birch with a good foot of air beneath him... and pitched forward on to his nose on landing.
I couldn’t believe it. Shook up Breadwinner with a bang of renewed hope and drove him into the last fence for the jump of his young life.
Squelch was over it first, of course. Squelch the sure-footed trained-to-the-minute familiar old rascal... Irony of ironies, to be beaten to the Gold Cup by Squelch.
Breadwinner did the best he could to catch him, and I saw that as in the Lemonfizz, Squelch was dying from tiredness. Length by length my gangling chestnut pegged back the gap, straining, stretching, quivering to get past... but the winning post was too near... it was no good... there wasn’t time...
Al Roach looked round to see who was pressing him. Saw me. Knew that Breadwinner was of all others the one he had to beat. Was seized with panic. If he had sat still, he would have won by two lengths. Instead, he picked up his whip and hit Squelch twice down the flank.
You stupid ass, I thought breathlessly. He hates that. He’ll stop. He always stops if you hit him...
Squelch’s tail swished in fury. His rhythmic stride broke up into bumps. He shook his head violently from side to side.
I saw Al’s desperate face as Breadwinner caught him... and the winning post was there and gone in a flash... and neither of us knew even then which had won.
The photograph gave it to Breadwinner by a nostril. And if I got booed by the crowd after the Lemonfizz they made up for it after the Gold Cup.
Kessel, predictably, was purple with fury, and he seemed on the brink of explosion when someone remarked loudly that Squelch would have won if Hughes had been riding him. I laughed. Kessel looked almost as murderous as Grace.
Old Strepson was pale with emotion but even the Gold Cup did not raise much observable joy in Cranfield; and I found out later that Edwin Byler had just told him he wouldn’t be sending him his horses after all. Grace’s psychiatrist had written to say that Grace’s ultimate sanity might depend on Cranfield not having the horses, and Byler said he felt he owed the Roxfords something... sorry and all that, but there it was.
Roberta with her mother had been there patting Breadwinner in the winner’s enclosure, and when I came out of the weighing room twenty minutes later after changing into street clothes, she was leaning against the rails there, waiting.
‘You’re limping,’ she said calmly.
‘Unfit, that’s all.’
‘Coffee?’ she suggested.
‘Yes,’ I said.
She walked sedately ahead of me into the coffee room. Her copper hair still shone after she’d stepped out of the sunshine, and I liked the simple string-coloured coat which went underneath it.
I bought her some coffee and we sat at a little plastic topped table and looked at the Utter left by the last occupants; empty coffee cups, plates with crumbs, cigarette butts, and a froth-lined beer glass. Roberta packed them coolly to one side and ignored them.
‘Winning and losing,’ she said. ‘That’s what it’s all about.’
‘Racing?’
‘Life.’
I looked at her.
She said, ‘Today is marvellous, and being warned off was terrible. I suppose everything goes on like that... up and down... always.’
‘I suppose so,’ I agreed.
‘I’ve learned a lot, since the Enquiry.’
‘So have I... about you.’
‘Father says I must remember your background...’
‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘You must.’
‘Father’s mind has chains on. Iron bars in his soul. His head’s chock-a-block with ideas half a century out of date.’ She mimicked my own words with pompous mischief.
I laughed. ‘Roberta...’
‘Please tell me...’ She hesitated. ‘... At the level crossing... when you called me Rosalind... was it her you wanted?’
‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘It was you... In her place.’
She sighed contentedly.
‘That’s all right, then,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it?’