I knew no other skill but riding, nor had ever wanted any. I felt more than whole on horseback: I felt extended. Four extra limbs and a second brain. More speed, more strength, more courage... I winced at the word... and quicker reactions. A saddle was to me as the sea to a fish, natural and easy. Home. And a racing saddle? I drew in a breath, shivering. For a racing saddle, I thought bleakly, I am not sufficient.
It wasn’t enough after all to want to race as well as anybody, one had to have the talent and the staying power as well; and I was face to face with the conviction that I was not good enough, that I was never going to be good enough, to take firm hold of the position which had been so nearly in my grasp. I had thought myself capable of seizing the incredible opportunity I had been given. The mess I had made of it, the weak degrading retreat from the brink of success, was tearing to shreds all I had known or believed about myself.
I picked up the whisky bottle and held it on my chest. It was all the company I had, and it offered sleep, at least. But I suppose old habits cling hard: I held the bottle to my chest like a life-jacket to a drowning man and knew I wouldn’t pull the cork out again. Not for a while. Not that night, anyway.
And what of the future? I could return during the next week and race on one or two of James’s horses, if he would still let me, and perhaps even on Template in the Midwinter. But I no longer either expected or hoped to do well, and I could feel myself shrink at the prospect of going back to a racecourse to face all those stares and insults again. Better to start a new life at once, perhaps. But a new life doing what?
It couldn’t be the old life. Being a stockman might have suited me at twenty, but it was not what I would want at thirty, nor at forty, nor fifty. And whatever I did, wherever I went now, I would drag around with me the knowledge that I had totally failed at what I had tried hardest to do.
After a long time I stood up and put the bottle back in the cupboard.
It was then a good twenty-six hours since I had eaten, and despite everything my stomach was beginning its squeezing routine. On a second inspection the kitchen revealed only some assorted tins of escargots, cheese straws and marrons glacés; so I went out and along the streets until I came to a decent-looking pub where I was sure I was not known by sight. I didn’t want to have to talk.
I ordered ham sandwiches and a glass of beer, but when it came the thick new white bread stuck tastelessly in my mouth and my throat kept closing convulsively against all attempts to swallow. This can’t go on, I thought. I’ve got to eat. If I can’t get drunk and I can’t have Joanna and I can’t... I can’t be a jockey any more... at least I can eat now as much as I like, without worrying about gaining a pound or two... but after ten minutes trying I had swallowed only two mouthfuls, and I couldn’t manage another bite.
The fact that it was Friday had meant nothing to me all evening, and the approach of 9 o’clock went unnoticed. But just when I pushed away the sandwiches and was eyeing the beer with the beginnings of nausea, someone turned up the volume of the television set which stood at one end of the bar, and the opening bars of the ‘Galloping Major’ suddenly blared out across the tinkling glasses and the buzzing voices. A large bunch of devotees who had settled themselves with full pint pots in front of the set made shooshing noises to those nearest to them, and by the time Maurice Kemp-Lore’s tidy features materialised there was a more or less attentive audience to receive him. My little glass-topped table was as far as it could be from the door, so that it was more because leaving meant weaving my way through the sprawling silent crowd, than from a positive desire to watch, that I stayed where I was.
‘Good evening,’ Maurice said, the spellbinding smile in place. ‘This evening we are going to talk about handicapping, and I have here to meet you two well-informed men who look at weights and measures from opposing angles. The first is Mr. Charles Jenkinson, who has been an official handicapper for several years.’ Mr. Jenkinson’s selfconscious face appeared briefly on the screen. ‘And the other is the well-known trainer, Corin Kellar.’
Corin’s thin face glowed with satisfaction. We’ll never hear the last of this, I thought; and then with a stab remembered that I wouldn’t be there to hear any of it anyway.
‘Mr. Jenkinson,’ said Maurice, ‘will explain how he builds a handicap. And Mr. Kellar will tell you how he tries to avoid having his horses defeated by their weights. The battle between handicappers and trainers is none the less fierce for being conducted in gentlemanly and largely uncomplaining reticence, and perhaps tonight you will capture a whiff of that unrelenting struggle.’ He smiled engagingly. ‘A handicapper’s pinnacle of success is for every single runner in a race to pass the winning post in a straight line abreast — a multiple dead-heat — since it is his aim to give each horse an exactly equal chance. It never actually happens, but handicappers dream about it in their softer moments.” He grinned sideways in a friendly fashion towards his guests, and when Mr. Jenkinson appeared on the screen one could almost see the self-confidence begin to flow in him as he started to talk about his job.
I listened with only half my mind, the rest being submerged in persistent misery, and Corin had been speaking for some moments before I paid much attention to him. He was being of necessity less than frank, since the bald truth would have lost him his licence very smartly. In practice he felt no qualms at all when giving his jockey orders to start at the back and stay there, but in theory, I was sardonically amused to see, he was righteously on the side of the angels.
‘Horses from my stable are always doing their best to win,’ he said, lying without a tremor.
‘But surely you don’t insist on them being ridden hard at the end when they’ve no chance at all?’ said Maurice, reasonably.
‘As hard as necessary, yes,’ Corin asserted. ‘I hate to see jockeys easing up too soon, even if they are beaten. I dismissed a jockey a short while ago for not riding hard enough at the end. He could have come third if he had ridden the horse out...’ his voice droned on, pious and petulant, and I thought of Tick-Tock, thrown to the stewards for obeying his orders too conscientiously and now having trouble getting other trainers to trust him. I thought of Art, nagged and contradicted and driven to death; and the active dislike I already felt for Corin Kellar sharpened in that dim pub corner into hatred.
Maurice dragged him back to handicapping and finally wrung from him a grudging admission that from the point of view of the weight he would be allotted in future, it was better for a horse to win by one length than by ten. Maurice would have done better, I thought, to have chosen almost anyone else to show how to dodge the handicapper: or perhaps he did not know Corin well enough to expect him hypocritically to deny in public what he had said in private. Every jockey who had ridden the Kellar horses had learned it the hard way.
‘One is always in the hands of one’s jockey,’ Corin was saying.
‘Go on,’ said Maurice encouragingly, leaning forward. A light somewhere in the studio lent his eyes a momentary shimmer as he moved. Corin said, ‘You can slave away for weeks preparing a horse for a race and then a jockey can undo it all with one stupid mistake.’
‘It does the handicap good though,’ Maurice interrupted, laughing. The pub audience laughed too.
‘Well...’ agreed Corin, nonplussed.
‘If you look at it that way,’ Maurice continued, ‘there is always some compensation for a jockey not getting the most out of a horse. Whatever the reason, trivial, like a mistake, or more serious, like a failure of resolution at a crucial point...’