Dick Francis - Straight

Down at the start there was some sort of fracas involving Dozen Roses. I rewound the tape and played it through in slow motion and couldn’t help laughing. Dozen Roses, his mind far from racing, had been showing unseemly interest in a mare.

I remembered Greville saying once that he thought it a shame and unfair to curb a colt’s enthusiasm: no horse of his would ever be gelded. I remembered him vividly leaning across a small table and saying it over a glass of brandy with a gleam in which I’d seen his own enjoyment of sex. So many glimpses of him in my mind, I thought. Too few, also. I couldn’t really believe I would never eat with him again, whatever my senses said.

Trainers didn’t normally run mares that had come into season, but sometimes one couldn’t tell early on. Horses knew, though. Dozen Roses had been aroused. The mare was loaded into the stalls in a hurry and Dozen Roses had been walked around until the last minute to cool his ardor. After that, he had run without sparkle and finished midfield, the mare to the rear of him trailing in last. Loder’s other runner, the favorite, had won by a length.

Too bad, I thought, smiling, and watched Dozen Roses’ next attempt three weeks later.

No distracting attractions, this time. The horse had behaved quietly, sleepily almost, and had turned in the sort of moderate performance which set owners wondering if the game was worth it. The next race was much the same, and if I’d been Greville I would have decided it was time to sell.

Greville, it seemed, had had more faith. After seven weeks’ rest Dozen Roses had gone bouncing down to the start, raced full of zest and zoomed over the finishing line in front, netting 14/1 for anyone ignorant enough to have backed him. Like Greville, of course.

Watching the sequence of tapes I did indeed wonder why the Stewards hadn’t made a fuss, but Greville hadn’t mentioned anything except his pleasure in the horse’s return to his three-year-old form.

Dozen Roses had next produced two further copybook performances of stamina and determination which brought us up to date. I rewound and removed the last tape and could see why Loder thought it would be another trot-up on Saturday.

Gemstones’ tapes weren’t as interesting. Despite his name he wasn’t of much value, and the one race he’d won looked more like a fluke than constructive engineering. I would sell them both, I decided, as Loder wanted.

Brad came early on Wednesday and drove me to Lambourn. The ankle was sore in spite of Distalgesic but less of a constant drag that morning and I could have driven the car myself if I’d put my mind to it. Having Brad around, I reflected on the way, was a luxury I was all too easily getting used to.

Clarissa Williams’s attentions had worn off completely except for a little stiffness and a blackening bruise like a bar midway between shoulder and elbow. That didn’t matter. For much of the year I had bruises somewhere or other, result of the law of averages operating in steeplechasing. Falls occurred about once every fourteen races, sometimes oftener, and while a few of the jockeys had bodies that hardly seemed to bruise at all, mine always did. On the other hand I healed everywhere fast, bones, skin and optimism.

Milo Shandy, striding about in his stable yard as if incapable of standing still, came over to my car as it rolled to a stop and yanked open the driver’s door. The words he was about to say didn’t come out as he stared first at Brad, then at me on the back seat, and what he eventually said was, “A chauffeur, by God. Coddling yourself, aren’t you?”

Brad got out of the car, gave Milo a Neanderthal look and handed me the crutches as usual.

Milo, dark, short and squarely built, watched the proceedings with disgust.

“I want you to ride Datepalm,” he said.

“Well, I can’t.”

“The Ostermeyers will want it. I told them you’d be here.”

“Gerry rides Datepalm perfectly well,” I said, Gerry being the lad who rode the horse at exercise as a matter of course most days of the week.

“Gerry isn’t you.”

“He’s better than me with a groggy ankle.”

Milo glared. “Do you want to keep the horse here or don’t you?”

I did.

Milo and I spent a fair amount of time arguing at the best of times. He was pugnacious by nature, mercurial by temperament, full of instant opinions that could be reversed the next day, didactic, dynamic and outspoken. He believed absolutely in his own judgment and was sure that everything would turn out all right in the end. He was moderately tactful to the owners, hard on his work force and full of swearwords for his horses, which he produced as winners by the dozen.

I’d been outraged by the way he’d often spoken to me when I first started to ride for him three years earlier, but one day I lost my temper and yelled back at him and he burst out laughing and told me we would get along just fine, which in fact we did, though seldom on the surface.

I knew people thought ours an unlikely alliance, I neat and quiet, he restless and flamboyant, but in fact I liked the way he trained horses and they seemed to run well for him, and we had both prospered.

The Ostermeyers arrived at that point and they too had a chauffeur, which Milo took for granted. The bullishness at once disappeared from his manner to be replaced by the jocular charm that had owners regularly mesmerized, that morning being no exception. The Ostermeyers responded immediately, she with a roguish wiggle of the hips, he with a big handshake and a wide smile.

They were not so delighted about my crutches.

“Oh dear,” Martha Ostermeyer exclaimed in dismay. “What have you done? Don’t say you can’t ride Datepalm. We only came, you know, because dear Milo said you’d be here to ride it.”

“He’ll ride it,” Milo said before I had a chance of answering, and Martha Ostermeyer clapped her small gloved hands with relief.

“If we’re going to buy him,” she said, smiling, “we want to see him with his real jockey up, not some exercise rider.”

Harley Ostermeyer nodded in agreement, benignly.

Not really my week, I thought.

The Ostermeyers were all sweetness and light while people were pleasing them, and I’d never had any trouble liking them, but I’d also seen Harley Ostermeyer’s underlying streak of ruthless viciousness once in a racecourse car-park where he’d verbally reduced to rubble an attendant who had allowed someone to park behind him, closing him in. He had had to wait half an hour. The attendant had looked genuinely scared. “Goodnight, Derek,” he’d croaked as I went past, and Ostermeyer had whirled round and cooled his temper fifty percent, inviting my sympathy in his trouble. Harley Ostermeyer liked to be thought a good guy, most of the time. He was the boss, as I understood it, of a giant supermarket chain. Martha Ostermeyer was also rich, a fourth-generation multimillionaire in banking. I’d ridden for them often in the past years and been well rewarded, because generosity was one of their pleasures.

Milo drove them and me up to the Downs where Datepalm and the other horses were already circling, having walked up earlier. The day was bright and chilly, the Downs rolling away to the horizon, the sky clear, the horses’ coats glossy in the sun. A perfect day for buying a champion ‘chaser.

Milo sent three other horses down to the bottom of the gallop to work fast so that the Ostermeyers would know where to look and what to expect when Datepalm came up and passed them. They stood out on the grass, looking where Milo pointed, intent and happy.

Milo had brought a spare helmet with us in the big-wheeled vehicle that rolled over the mud and ruts on the Downs, and with an inward sigh I put it on. The enterprise was stupid really, as my leg wasn’t strong enough and if anything wild happened to upset Datepalm, he might get loose and injure himself and we’d lose him surely one way or another.