He took me at some length through my finances, which didn’t sound too good when dissected into travelling expenses, valets’ fees, replacement of kit, and so on. It emerged quite clearly that my net income over the last two years was less than I could have earned driving a delivery van, and that my future prospects were not demonstrably much better. I could almost feel the thought clicking into the viewers’ heads that I was a fool.
Kemp-Lore turned deferentially to Ballerton. ‘John, have you any comment to make on what we have been hearing from Rob?’
A trace of purely malicious pleasure crept into Ballerton’s man-of-authority smile.
‘All these young jockeys complain too much,’ he stated in his harsh voice, ignoring the fact that I had not complained at all. ‘If they aren’t very good at their job they shouldn’t expect to be highly paid. Racehorse owners don’t want to waste their money and their horses’ chances by putting up jockeys in whom they have no confidence. I speak as an owner myself, of course.’
‘Eh... of course,’ said Kemp-Lore. ‘But surely every jockey has to make a start? And there must always be large numbers of jockeys who never quite reach the top grade, but who have a living to make, and families to support.’
‘They’d be better off in a factory, earning a fair wage on a production line,’ said Ballerton, with heavy, reasonable-sounding humour. ‘If they can’t endure the fact that they are unsuccessful without snivelling about how poor they are, they ought to get out of racing altogether. Not many of them do,’ he added with an unkind chuckle, ‘because they like wearing those bright silks. People turn to look at them as they go by, and it flatters their little egos.’
There was a gasp somewhere out in the dark studio at this ungentlemanly blow below the belt, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that the red spot on the camera pointing at me was glowing. What expression it had initially caught on my face I did not know, but I raised a smile for Mr. Ballerton then, as sweet and cheerful and forgiving a smile as ever turned the other cheek. It was made easier by the certain knowledge that wearing bright shirts was if anything an embarrassment to me, not a gratification.
Kemp-Lore’s head switched to me. ‘And what do you say to that, Rob?’
I spoke truthfully, vehemently, and straight from the heart, ‘Give me a horse and a race to ride it in, and I don’t care if I wear silks or... or... pyjamas. I don’t care if there’s anyone watching or not. I don’t care if I don’t earn much money, or if I break my bones, or if I have to starve to keep my weight down. All I care about is racing... racing... and winning, if I can.’
There was a small silence.
‘I can’t explain it,’ I said.
Both of them were staring at me. John Ballerton looked as if a squashed wasp had revived and stung him, and his earlier animosity settled and deepened into a scowl. And Kemp-Lore? There was an expression on his face that I could not read at all. There were only a few empty seconds before he turned smoothly back to his camera and slid the familiar smile into place, but I felt irrationally that something important had taken place in them. I found it oddly disturbing not to have the slightest clue to what it was.
Kemp-Lore launched into his usual review of the following week’s racing, and was very soon closing the programme with the customary words, ‘See you all next week at the same time...’
The image on the monitor faded on Kemp-Lore’s smile and changed to another soap advertisement. The hot spotlight flicked off and my eyes began to get used to not being dazzled.
Gordon strode up beaming. ‘A very good programme. It came over well. Just what they like, an argument with an edge to it. Well done, well done, Mr. Ballerton, Mr. Finn. Splendid.’ He shook us both by the hand.
Kemp-Lore stood up and stretched and grinned around at us all. ‘Well, John. Well, Rob. Thank you both very much.’ He bent down, picked up my brandy glass and handed it to me. ‘Drink it,’ he said, ‘you deserve it.’ He smiled warmly. He crackled with released tension.
I smiled back and drank the brandy, and reflected again how superlative he was at his job. By encouraging Ballerton to needle me he had drawn from me, for the ears of a few million strangers, a more soul-baring statement than I would ever have made privately to a close friend.
A good deal of back-slapping followed, and more plates of sandwiches were dealt with downstairs in the reception room before I left the television building and went back to Kensington. In view of the approval which had been generously, if undeservedly heaped upon Ballerton and me after the show, I wondered why it was that I felt more apprehensive than I had before it started.
Six
Three weeks and a day after the broadcast, Pip Pankhurst broke his leg. His horse, falling with him and on him at the last hurdle of the second race on a dreary, drizzly mid-November Saturday afternoon, made a thorough job of putting the champion jockey out of action for the bulk of the ’chasing season.
The first-aid men beside the hurdle were slow to move him into the ambulance for the good reason that a sharp arrow of shin bone was sticking out at a crazy angle through a tear in the thin leather racing boot; and they finally managed to lift him on to a stretcher, one of them told me later, only because Pip slid off into a dead faint.
From the stands I saw only the white flag waving, the ambulance creeping down over the bumpy ground, and the flat, ominously unmoving figure of Pip on the ground. It would be untrue to say that I went down the stairs to the weighing-room with a calm heart. However sincere my pity for his plight might be, the faint chance that I might take his place in the following race was playing hop, skip and jump with my pulse.
It was the big race of the day, the big race of the week, a three-mile chase with a substantial prize put up by a firm of brewers. It had attracted a good number of top horses and had been well discussed on the sports pages of all the day’s papers. Pip’s mount, which belonged to Lord Tirrold, was the rising star of the Axminster stable; a stringy six-year-old brown gelding with nothing much to recommend him at first sight, but intelligent, fast, and a battler. He had all the qualities of a world beater, and his best years lay ahead. At present he was still reckoned ‘promising.’ He was called Template.
Stifling hope is a hopeless business. As I went into the weighing-room I saw James Axminster talking to Pip’s close friend, another leading jockey. The jockey shook his head, and across the room I watched his lips say, ‘No, I can’t.’
Axminster turned slowly round looking at faces. I stood still and waited. Gradually his head came round and he saw me. He looked at me steadily, pondering, unsmiling. Then his eyes went past me and focused on someone to my left. He came to a decision and walked briskly past me.
Well, what did I expect? I had ridden for him for only four weeks. Three winners. A dozen also-rans. During the past fortnight I had taken digs in the village near his stable and ridden out at exercise on his horses every morning; but I was still the new boy, the unknown, unsuccessful jockey of the television programme. I began to walk disconsolately over to the changing-room door.
‘Rob,’ he said in my ear. ‘Lord Tirrold says you can ride his horse. You’d better tell Pip’s valet; he has the colours.’
I half-turned towards them. They stood together, the two tall men, looking at me appraisingly, knowing they were giving me the chance of a lifetime, but not sure that I was up to it.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said; and I went on into the changing-room, queerly steadied by having believed that I had been passed over.
I rode better than I had ever done before, but that was probably because Template was the best horse I had ever ridden. He was smooth and steely, and his rocketing spring over the first fence had me gasping; but I was ready for it at the second, and exulted in it at the third; and by the fourth I knew I had entered a new dimension of racing.