Storm Cone’s jockey next. Moggie the cat, second generation Irish, agile in body, clever in mind, a honey trap for good-looking women and quite likely a future ambassador for the sport.
When he’d learned and checked off all the runners, Christopher Haig stood in the parade ring for a final familiarisation and watched the jockeys go out to race; watched them — young, thin and careless of danger — and envied them sorely. What if, he thought, what if I’d gone to a racing stable at sixteen, instead of school and university? What if it’s still not too late to learn stunt flying? To try wing-walking?
But it was already too late for both.
The judge’s box at Winchester races was situated in the main part of the grandstand, a storey above the stewards’ room and (of course) directly in line with the winning post.
On some tracks, particularly minor country ones, the judge’s box was down on the grass, itself marking the finishing line, but Christopher Haig preferred the height of places like Winchester, where one could look down on the course and distinguish more easily one speeding horse from another.
He climbed to his vantage point for the Cloister Hurdle and laid out his notes on the shelf thoughtfully provided by the window for the purpose. He had binoculars for watching the more distant parts of the mile-and-a-half circuit and an assistant whose job it was to announce ‘Photograph, photograph’ over the loudspeaker if the judge told him to: and the judge told him to whenever the leading horses finished within half a length of each other. The photo-finish camera at Winchester was operated by technicians in a room above the judge’s box.
Christopher Haig counted the horses as they cantered to the start: eleven, all correct. Through his binoculars he watched the horses circle and line up for the start. Lilyglit lined up on the inside rail and, when the starting tapes flew up, was effortlessly first and fast away.
Percy Driffield with Sarah beside him watched Lilyglit from the stands. Neither Jasper Billington Innes nor Wendy had found enough courage to appear on the racecourse. Driffield hoped Moggie Reilly would prove as honest as his reputation: his daughter pledged her life on it.
Wendy sat at home in front of the television set in her small private sitting-room with her fists clenched, her hair unbrushed and tear stains on her cheeks. Jasper hadn’t telephoned her and she didn’t know where he was. She had tried the bookmakers, the gaming club and the hotel. She had tried the telephone in his car. Jasper had left no messages anywhere and his wife was becoming afraid.
Lilyglit, always a front runner, sped over the first few flights of hurdles defying gravity like an impala fleeing a lion. Storm Cone lay fifth, with Fable behind him.
On the stands the Arkwrights — trainer and owner-cousin — cheerfully watched young Vernon set off in Moggie Reilly’s shadow with the secretly stated purpose of ending Storm Cone’s chances by flipping his jockey over the rails. With Storm Cone out of the way, Lilyglit had the best chance to win. Vernon Arkwright had no intention of letting anything else interfere with Lilyglit’s progress — except that if Fable himself should take unexpected wings... well then... allegiance to the prize money began at home.
Storm Cone’s owner with John Chester, his trainer, stood on the balcony of the owner’s private box up on the same level as the stewards’ eyrie, with no one to interfere with their view. The owner, almost as rich as Jasper had been a few days earlier, had been trying for several years to buy himself into leading-owner status, but he, as so many before him, had found that if money can’t buy love, neither can it lead in the winner of the Grand National.
John Chester had put all his skill into sending Storm Cone to this test with every piston smoothly firing. If Moggie Reilly gave away an unnecessary inch, and he, John Chester, lost his best and perhaps only chance of heading the trainers’ list, he thought he would probably kill him.
Down on the turf emotions were simpler. To the champion jockey, comfortable on his regular partner, Lilyglit, it was just another race, which he would win if all went well. He liked front-runners. Lilyglit jumped the hurdles cleanly.
To Moggie Reilly also, it was just another race, though he would strain to give John Chester his championship if Lilyglit blinked. Storm Cone telegraphed vigour and good feeling through the reins, the best of signs for his rider
The eleven runners stretched out past the stands first time round, and swung round the top bend to set out on the last mile. Christopher Haig watched them, counted them, checked that Lilyglit still led on the inside.
It was on the curve at the top of the long bend, where the horses were backside-on to the stewards and half hidden by white rails, that Vernon Arkwright put his hand under Moggie Reilly’s boot and heaved upwards with all his strength.
Moggie Reilly, fiercely unbalanced, felt his foot fly out of the stirrup as his head swung inexorably over the horse’s withers and down towards the thundering shoulder and the ground below. Moggie’s fingers locked in the horse’s mane. His weight was all on one side of the great creature surging beneath him. He had dropped his whip. There was a flight of hurdles ahead, as soon as one got round the bend.
Vernon Arkwright couldn’t believe that Moggie Reilly was still technically in the saddle, even though clinging there with his fingernails and with his centre of gravity a yard off sideways. Moggie the cat let Storm Cone put himself as right as possible to jump the hurdle ahead, and fatalistically accepted that he would probably be thrown off into the path of the other half-ton runners, all striving to hold their positions at thirty miles an hour.
He said afterwards that it was an acute fear of falling among hooves that kept him bumping along round Storm Cone’s neck, hanging on literally for life, forcing every muscle he could command to avoid being trampled. Ten strides, not more, before he reached the lethal row of wood-and-birch lattice jumps ahead, a hand stretched down, grasped the bright nylon cloth of his scarlet-and-orange striped shirt, and hauled him upwards.
Moggie Reilly’s heroic saviour, partnering one of the eventual also-rans, shrugged off his action later with, ‘You’d have done it for me, mate’. What he did at the time was to give Moggie Reilly precious seconds in which to grasp the saddle-tree, throw his legs astride Storm Cone and lurch into some sort of equilibrium before his mount bunched his quarters and shot over the hazardous hurdles as if powered by rockets.
Moggie Reilly had no hands on the reins nor feet in the stirrups, but his will to win persisted. Storm Cone had lost maybe ten lengths behind Lilyglit, but both the horse and his rider, not ready for defeat, flattened their aerodynamic profile and accelerated determinedly down the far side. Moggie collected and shortened the reins, the horse grateful for the control. Round the final bend they raced resolutely into clear second place, with only Lilyglit still there to beat.
Vernon Arkwright cursed hugely, seeing no hope of catching Storm Cone again for another attack. Up in the stewards’ box, the three eminent gentlemen there were clapping each other on the shoulder and almost hopping around with joy. They had all plainly seen Vernon Arkwright’s attack on Moggie Reilly, bottom-end on or not. The patrol camera would have filmed it, and wouldn’t lie. This time, this time, they had caught out Vernon Arkwright in a thoroughly visible misdemeanor, and they would hold another enquiry, and this time shunt the villain off.
Christopher Haig, one storey above them, marvelled that Moggie Reilly, without his feet in the stirrups, was still on board at all, even though, with Lilyglit well ahead coming to the final hurdle, he had no hope of winning. Tiring, indeed, Storm Cone would find it difficult, Chris Haig thought from his long judging experience, to hang on to finish second. Two horses he had passed were closing on him again.