Дик Фрэнсис - Reflex

On that afternoon at Sandown I completed the novice hurdle in an uneventful way (‘useful but uninspired’), finishing fifth out of eighteen runners. Not too bad. Just the best that I and the horse could do on the day, same as usual.

I changed into Daylight’s colours and in due course walked out to the parade ring, feeling nothing but pleasure for the coming race. Daylight’s trainer, for whom I rode regularly, was waiting there, and also Daylight’s owner.

Daylight’s owner waved away my cheerful opener about it being splendid the drizzle had stopped and said without preamble, ‘You’ll lose this one today, Philip.’

I smiled. ‘Not if I can help it.’

‘Indeed you will,’ he said sharply. ‘Lose it. My money’s on the other way.’

I don’t suppose I kept much of the dismay and anger out of my face. He had done this sort of thing before, but not for about three years, and he knew I didn’t like it.

Victor Briggs, Daylight’s owner, was a sturdily built man in his forties, about whose job and background I knew almost nothing. Unsociable, secretive, he came to the races with a closed unsmiling face, and never talked to me much. He wore always a heavy navy-blue overcoat, a black broad-brimmed hat, and thick black leather gloves. He had been, in the past, an aggressive gambler, and in riding for him I had had the choice of doing what he said or losing my job with the stable. Harold Osborne, the trainer, had said to me plainly, soon after I’d joined him, that if I wouldn’t do what Victor Briggs wanted, I was out.

I had lost races for Victor Briggs that I might have won. It was a fact of life. I needed to eat and to pay off the mortgage on the cottage. For that I needed a good big stable to ride for, and if I had walked out of the one that was giving me a chance I might easily not have found another. There weren’t so very many of them, and apart from Victor Briggs the Osborne set-up was just right. So, like many another rider in a like fix, I had done what I was told, and kept quiet.

Back at the beginning Victor Briggs had offered me a fairsized cash present for losing. I’d said I didn’t want it: I would lose if I had to, but I wouldn’t be paid. He said I was a pompous young fool, but after I’d refused his offer a second time he’d kept his bribes in his pocket and his opinion of me to himself.

‘Why don’t you take it?’ Harold Osborne had said. ‘Don’t forget you’re passing up the ten per cent you’d get for winning. Mr Briggs is making it up to you, that’s all.’

I’d shaken my head, and he hadn’t persevered. I thought that probably I was indeed a fool, but somewhere along the line it seemed that Samantha or Chloe or the others had given me this unwelcome uncomfortable conviction that one should pay for one’s sins. As for three years or more I’d been let off the dilemma it was all the more infuriating to be faced with it again.

‘I can’t lose,’ I protested. ‘Daylight’s the best of the bunch. Far and away. You know he is.’

‘Just do it,’ Victor Briggs said. ‘And lower your voice, unless you want the Stewards to hear you.’

I looked at Harold Osborne. He was busy watching the horses plod round the ring and pretending not to listen to what Victor Briggs was saying.

‘Harold,’ I said.

He gave me a brief unemotional glance. ‘Victor’s right. The money’s on the other way. You’ll cost us a packet if you win, so don’t.’

‘Us?’

He nodded. ‘Us. That’s right. Fall off, if you have to. Come in second, if you like. But not first. Understood?’

I nodded. I understood. Back in the old pincers, three years on.

I cantered Daylight down to the start with reality winning out over rebellion, as before. If I hadn’t been able to afford to lose the job at twenty-three, still less could I at thirty. I was known as Osborne’s jockey. I’d been with him seven years. If he chucked me out, all I’d get would be other stables’ odds and ends; ride second string to other jockeys; be on a one-way track to oblivion. He wouldn’t say to the Press that he’d got rid of me because I wouldn’t any longer lose to order. He would tell them (regretfully, of course) that he was looking for someone younger... had to do what was best for the owners... terribly sad, but an end came to every jockey’s career... naturally sorry, and all that, but time marches on, don’t you know?

God damn it, I thought. I didn’t want to lose that race. I hated to be dishonest... and the ten per cent I would lose this time was big enough to make me even angrier. Why the bloody hell had Briggs gone back to this caper, after this long time? I’d thought that he’d stopped it because I’d got just far enough as a jockey for him to think it likely I would refuse. A jockey who got high enough on the winners’ list was safe from that sort of pressure, because if his own stable was silly enough to give him the kick, another would welcome him in. And maybe he thought I’d gone past that stage now that I was older, and was back again in the danger area: and he was right.

We circled around while the starter called the roll, and I looked apprehensively at the four horses ranged against Daylight. There wasn’t a good one among them. Nothing that on paper could defeat my own powerful gelding; which was why people were at that moment staking four pounds on Daylight to win one.

Four to one on...

Far from risking his own money at those odds, Victor Briggs in some subterranean way had taken bets from other people, and would have to pay out if his horse won. And so, it seemed, would Harold also: and however I might feel I did owe Harold some allegiance.

After seven years of a working relationship that had a firmer base than many a trainer-jockey alliance, I had come to regard him if not with close personal warmth at least with active friendship. He was a man of rages and charms, of black moods and boisterous highs, of tyrannical decisions and generous gifts. His voice could out-shout and out-curse any other on the Berkshire Downs, and stable lads with delicate sensibilities left his employ in droves. On the first day that I rode work for him his blistering opinion of my riding could be heard fortissimo from Wantage to Swindon, and, in his house immediately afterwards, at ten in the morning, he had opened a bottle of champagne, and we had drunk to our forthcoming collaboration.

He had trusted me always and entirely, and had defended me against criticism where many a trainer would not. Every jockey, he had said robustly, had bad patches; and he had employed me steadily through mine. He assumed that I would be, for my part, totally committed to himself and his stable, and for the past three years that had been easy.

The starter called the horses into line, and I wheeled Daylight round to point his nose in the right direction.

No starting stalls. They were never used for jump racing. A gate of elastic tapes instead.

In cold angry misery I decided that the race, from Daylight’s point of view, would have to be over as near the start as possible. With thousands of pairs of binoculars trained my way, with television eyes and patrol cameras and perceptive pressmen acutely focussed, losing would be hard enough anyway, and practically suicidal if I left it until it was clear that Daylight would win. Then, if I just fell off in the last half mile for not much reason, there would be an enquiry and I might lose my licence; and it would be no comfort to know that I deserved to.

The starter put his hand on the lever and the tapes flew up, and I kicked Daylight forward into his business. None of the other jockeys wanted to make the running, and we set off in consequence at a slow pace, which compounded my troubles. Daylight, with all the time in the world, wouldn’t stumble at any fence. A fluent jumper always, he hardly ever fell. Some horses couldn’t be put right on the approach to a fence: Daylight couldn’t be put wrong. All he accepted were the smallest indications from his jockey, and he would do the rest himself. I had ridden him many times. Won six races on him. Knew him well.