I knew by the second fence that whether Kemp-Lore had fed him sugar or not, Turniptop was not doped. The leaden sluggishness which had afflicted my last twenty-eight mounts and which I had been forced to believe was due to my own deficiency had lifted like a spent thunder-cloud.
Turniptop leapt and sprang and surged, pulling like a a train and doing his damnedest to run away with me. I could have shouted aloud with relief. He was an untidy jumper with more enthusiasm than judgment, a style which had brought him no especial grief over hurdles; but now, in his first steeplechase, he showed signs of treating fences with the same disrespect. It wouldn’t really do: there’s a world of difference between a single-thickness, easily-knocked-down hurdle and a three-foot-wide fence, solidly built of birch twigs, particularly when an open ditch lies in front of it. But Turniptop did not want to be steadied. He was eager. He was rash.
With things as they were, and with James to be convinced, I must admit that my mood matched Turniptop’s exactly. We infected each other with recklessness. We took some indefensible risks, and we got away with them.
I kept him continually on the rails, squeezing forward into tiny openings and letting him take all the bumps that came his way. When he met a fence dead right he gained lengths over it, and when he met one wrong he scrambled through and found a foot to land on somehow. It was more like a roller-coaster ride than the sensible, well-judged race James had indicated, but it taught the tough-minded Turniptop just as much about getting himself out of trouble as going round quietly on the outside would have done.
Coming into the second-to-last fence, I was afraid we would win. Afraid, because I knew James wanted to sell the horse, and if he had already won a novice chase he would not be as valuable as if he had not. An apparent paradox: but Turniptop, young and still green, showed great promise. Too early a win would disqualify him from entering a string of good novice ’chases in the following season.
It would be far, far better, I knew, to come second. To have shown what he could do but not actually to have won would have put hundreds on his value. But we had run too fierce a race, and at the second-last the disaster of winning seemed unavoidable. There was only one other tiring horse alongside, and I could hear no others on my tail.
Turniptop rose, or rather fell to the occasion. In spite of my urging him to put in another stride, he took off far too soon and landed with his hind feet tangled hopelessly in the birch. His forelegs buckled under the strain and he went down on to his knees, with my chin resting on his right ear and my hands touching each other round his throat. Even then his indomitable sense of balance rescued him, and he staggered back on to his feet with a terrific upthrust of his shoulders, tipping me back into the saddle, and, tossing his head as if in disgust, he set off again towards the winning-post. The horse which had been alongside was now safely ahead, and two that had been behind me had jumped past, so that we came into the last fence in fourth position.
I had lost my irons in the debacle and couldn’t get my feet into them again in time to jump, so we went over the last with them dangling and clanking in the air. I collected him together and squeezed with my legs, and Turniptop, game to the end, accelerated past two of the horses ahead and flashed into second place four strides from the post.
James waited for me to dismount in the unsaddling enclosure with a face from which all expression had studiously been wiped. Poker-faced to match, I slid from the saddle.
‘Don’t ever ride a race like that for me again,’ he said.
‘No,’ I agreed. I undid the girth buckles and took my saddle over my arm, and at last looked into his eyes.
They gleamed, narrowed and inscrutable. He said, ‘You proved your point. But you could have killed my horse doing it.’
I said nothing.
‘And yourself,’ he added, implying that that was less important.
I shook my head, smiling faintly. ‘Not a chance,’ I said.
‘Hm.’ He gave me a hard stare. ‘You’d better come up to the stable this evening,’ he said. ‘We can’t talk about... what we have to talk about... here. There are too many people about.’
As if to punctuate this remark the owner of the winner leant over the dividing rails to admire Turniptop and I had to loop up the girths and go and weigh in, still without knowing exactly what had happened in the saddling box before the race.
Tick-Tock was standing by my peg in the changing-room, one smoothly shod foot up on the bench and the Tyrolean hat pushed back on his head.
‘Before you ride like that again, you might make a will leaving me your half of the car,’ he said. ‘It would solve so many legal complications.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ I said, peeling off first the crimson and white sweater, James’s colours, and then the thin brown jersey underneath. I took a towel from the valet and went along to the wash-basin.
‘A lot of people,’ said Tick-Tock in a loud voice across the room, ‘are going to have a fine old time eating their words, and I hope it gives them indigestion.’ He followed me along and watched me wash, leaning languidly against the wall. ‘I suppose you realise that your exploits this afternoon were clearly visible to several million assorted housewives, invalids, babes in arms, and people hanging about on the pavement outside electric shops?’
‘What?’ I exclaimed.
‘It’s a fact. Didn’t you really know? The last three races are filling up the spare time between Sex for Sixth Forms and Goggle with Granny. Universal T.C. Maurice’s lot. I wonder,’ he finished more soberly, ‘what he’ll do when he knows you’ve rumbled the sugar bit?’
‘He may not know,’ I said, towelling my chest and shoulders. ‘He may think it was accidental... I haven’t heard yet from James what happened before the race.’
‘Anyway,’ said Tick-Tock confidently, ‘his campaign against you is over. He won’t risk going on with it after today.’
I agreed with him. It just shows how little either of us understood about obsession.
James was waiting for me in the office, busy with papers at his big desk. The fire blazed hotly and the light winked on the glasses standing ready beside the whisky bottle.
He stopped writing when I went in, and got up and poured our drinks, and stood towering above me as I sat in the battered armchair by the fire. His strong heavy face looked worried.
‘I apologise,’ he said abruptly.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘No need.’
‘I very nearly let Maurice give Turniptop that damned sugar,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe him capable of a scheme as fantastic as doping every horse you ride. I mean, it’s... it’s ridiculous.’
‘What happened in the saddling box?’ I asked.
He took a sip from his glass. ‘I gave Sid instructions that no one, absolutely no one, however important they were, was to give Turniptop anything to eat or drink before the race. When I reached the box with your saddle, Maurice was in the box next door and I watched him giving the horse there some sugar. Sid said no one had given Turniptop anything.’ He paused and drank again. ‘I put on your number cloth, weight pad and saddle, and began to do up with girths. Maurice came round the partition from the next box and said hello. That infectious smile of his... I found myself smiling back and thinking you were mad. He was wheezing a bit with asthma... and he put his hand in his pocket and brought out three lumps of sugar. He did it naturally, casually, and held them out to Turniptop. I had my hands full of girths and I thought you were wrong... but... I don’t know... there was something in the way he was standing, with his arm stretched out rather stiffly and the sugar flat on the palm of his hand, that didn’t look right. People who are fond of horses stroke their muzzles when they give them sugar, they don’t stand as far away as possible. And if Maurice wasn’t fond of horses, why was he giving them sugar? Anyway, I did decide suddenly that there would be no harm done if Turniptop didn’t eat that sugar, so I dropped the girths and pretended to trip, and grabbed Maurice’s arm to steady myself. The sugar fell off his hand on to the straw on the ground and I stepped on it as if by accident while I was recovering my balance.’