I had smiled to hear these fighting words from one whose chief asset was his lightness of touch, but was relieved too, that he was intact in spirits. No suicides, no mental breakdowns for him.
Shantytown, when it came to the race, was not what I had been led to expect. The damp raw January afternoon had drawn only a small crowd of stalwarts to watch a second-class programme at a minor meeting, and as I watched the big chestnut plod round the parade ring I thought how well he matched the circumstances. Uninspiring.
But far from pulling my arms out of their sockets, Shantytown seemed to me to be in danger of falling asleep. The start caught him flat-footed, so little interest was he taking in it, and I had to boot him into the first fence. He rose to it fairly well, but was slow in his recovery, and it was the same at every jump. It was puzzling, after what Tick-Tock had said, but horses do have their off-days for no discernible reason, and I could only suppose that this was one of them.
We trailed round the entire three miles in the rear of the field, and finished ingloriously last. All my efforts to get him to quicken up the straight met with no response. Shantytown hadn’t taken hold of his bit from the beginning and at the end he seemed to be dead beat.
A hostile reception met us on our return. John Ballerton, with whom I had exchanged coldly polite ‘Good afternoons’ in the parade ring before the race, now glowered like a July thunderstorm. Corin, standing on one leg and wearing an anxious, placatory expression, was obviously going to use me as the scapegoat for the horse’s failure, to save his face as its trainer. That was always one of the hazards to be run in riding Corin’s horses.
‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ Ballerton said aggressively, as I slid off on to the ground and began to unbuckle the saddle girths.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t go any faster.’
‘Don’t talk such bloody rubbish,’ he said, ‘he always goes faster than that. I’ve never seen a more disgusting display of incompetence... you couldn’t ride in a cart with a pig net over it. If you ask me, the horse wasn’t given a chance. You missed the start and couldn’t be bothered to make it up.’
‘I did say,’ said Corin to me reproachfully, ‘not to let him run away with you, and to keep tucked in behind for the first two miles. But I do think you carried my orders a bit too far...’
‘A bit too far!’ interrupted Ballerton furiously. ‘Were you afraid to let him go, or something? If you can’t manage to ride a decent race on a horse which pulls, why the hell do you try to? Why not say straight out that you can’t? Save us all a lot of time and money.’
I said, ‘The horse didn’t pull. There was no life in him.’
‘Kellar,’ Ballerton was nearly shouting. ‘Is my horse a puller, or is he not?’
‘He is,’ said Corin, not meeting my eyes.
‘And you told me he was fit. On his toes.’
‘Yes,’ said Corin. ‘I thought he’d win.’
They looked at me accusingly. Corin must have known that the horse had run listlessly because he had seen the race with experienced eyes, but he was not going to admit it. If I had to ride often for Corin, I thought wryly, I would soon have as many rows with him as Art had had.
Ballerton narrowed his eyes and said to me, ‘I asked you to ride Shantytown against my better judgment and only because Maurice Kemp-Lore insisted I had been misjudging you and that you were really a reliable man who would ride a genuine race. Well, I’m going to tell him he is wrong. Very wrong. You’ll never ride another horse of mine, I promise you that.’
He turned on his heel and stalked off, followed by Corin. My chief feeling, as I went back to the weighing-room, was of irritation that I hadn’t relied on instinct and refused to ride for him in the first place.
By the end of the afternoon the puzzlement I had felt over Shantytown’s dead running had changed to a vague uneasiness, for neither of the other two horses I rode afterwards did anything like as well as had been expected. Both were well backed, and both finished nearly last, and although their owners were a great deal nicer about it than Ballerton had been, their disappointment was obvious.
On the following day, still at Dunstable, the run of flops continued. I had been booked for three horses, and they all ran badly. I spent the whole depressing afternoon apologetically explaining to owner after owner that I had not been able to make their horse go faster. The third horse, in fact, went so badly that I had to pull him up half way round. He was a slow jumper on the best of days, but on that particular one he took so long putting himself right and so long starting off again when he landed, that the rest of the field were a whole fence ahead by the time we had gone a mile. It was hopeless. When I reined him in he slowed from a reluctant gallop to a walk in a couple of strides, sure sign of a very tired horse. I thought as he was trained by a farmer-owner who might not know better, that he must have been given too stiff a training gallop on the previous day, but the farmer said he was sure he had not.
Runs of bad luck are commoner in racing than good ones, and the fact that six of my mounts in a row had made a showing far below their usual capabilities would not have attracted much notice had it not been for John Ballerton.
I changed into street clothes after the fifth race and strolled out of the weighing-room to find him standing close by with a small circle of cronies. All the heads turned towards me with that sideways, assessing look which meant they had been talking about me, and Ballerton said something forceful to them, of which the word ‘disgrace’ floated across clearly.
Jockeys being as accustomed as politicians to abuse I gave no sign of having heard what had obviously been intended for my ears, and walked casually off to the stands to watch the last race; but I did wonder how long and how maliciously Ballerton would hold Shantytown’s failure against me, and what effect his complaints would have on the number of horses I was asked to ride. He was not a man to keep his grudges to himself, and as a National Hunt Committee member he was not without influence either.
Up on the stands Maurice Kemp-Lore came across to talk to me. We had met briefly on racecourses several times now, and were on superficially friendly terms, but in spite of his charm, or perhaps because it sometimes seemed too polished, I felt his friendship came strictly into the professional, ‘might be useful’ category. I did not believe that he liked me for my own sake.
He smiled vividly, the charm turned on to full wattage, his slim figure radiating health and confidence and his blue eyes achieving the near impossible of twinkling on a grey January afternoon. I smiled back automatically: one couldn’t help it. All his impressive success stemmed from the instantaneous, irresistible feeling of well-being he inspired in whomever he talked to, and there was no one from the Senior Steward downwards who did not enjoy his company, even if, like me, one suspected his unfailing motive was the gathering of material for his programme.
‘What bad luck, Rob,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I hear the good word I put in for you with John Ballerton has gone awry.’
‘You can say that again,’ I agreed. ‘But thanks for trying, anyway.’
The blue eyes glimmered. ‘Anything to help,’ he said.
I could hear distinctly a faint high-pitched wheeze as he drew breath into his lungs, and I realised it was the first time I had encountered him in an asthmatic attack. I was vaguely sorry for him.
The horses for the sixth race cantered past, going down to the start.