Дик Фрэнсис: Decider

The rest of the field, some trying to stop, some unaware of the mêlée, some trying to go round it, compounded the débâcle like cars crashing in a fog. One of the horses, going too fast, too late, with no chance of safety, took what must have seemed to him a possible way out and tried to jump right off the course through the nearside wing.

Wings, on the take-off side of each fence, were located there precisely to stop horses running out at the last moment and, to be effective, needed to be too high to jump. Trying to escape trouble by jumping the wings was therefore always a disaster, though not so bad as in the old days when all wings had been made of wood, which splintered and ripped into flesh. Wings at Stratton Park, conforming to the current norm, were made of plastic, which bent and gave way without injuring, but this particular horse, having crashed through unscathed, then collided with the bunch of onlookers, who had tried to scatter too late.

One minute, a smooth race. In five seconds, carnage. I was peripherally aware that three more horses had come to grief on the landing side of the fence with their jockeys either unconscious or sitting up cursing, but I had eyes only for the knocked down clutch of spectators and chiefly, and I confess frantically, I was counting young figures in blue anoraks, and feeling almost sick with relief to find them all upright and unscathed. The horror on their faces I could deal with later.

Alan, born seemingly without an understanding of danger, suddenly darted out onto the course, ducking under the rails, intent on helping the fallen jockeys.

I yelled at him urgently to come back, but there was too much noise all around us and, powerfully aware of all the loose horses charging about in scared bewilderment, I bent under the rails myself and hurried to retrieve him. Neil, little Neil, scrambled after me.

Terrified for him also, I hoisted him up and ran to fetch Alan who, seemingly oblivious to Carnival Joy’s thrashing legs, was doing his best to help a dazed Rebecca Stratton to her feet. In something near despair I found that Christopher too was out on the course, coming to her aid.

Rebecca Stratton returned to full consciousness, brushed crossly at the small hands stretched to help her and in a sharp voice said to no one in particular, ‘Get these brats out of my way. I’ve enough to contend with without that.’

She stood up furiously, stalked over to the jockey whose mount had caused the whole pile-up and who was now standing forlornly beside the fence, and uttered loud and uncomplimentary opinions about his lack of horsemanship. Her hands clenched and unclenched as if, given half a chance, she would hit him.

My brats predictably detested her immediately. I hustled them with their wounded feelings off the course and out of further trouble, but as we passed near to the lady jockey Neil said, suddenly and distinctly, ‘Torpid stumblebum.’

‘ What ?’ Rebecca’s head snapped round, but I’d whirled my small son hastily away from her and she seemed more disconcerted than actively directing fire at anyone except the other unfortunate rider.

Toby and Edward, impervious to her, were more concerned with the mown down spectators, two of whom looked badly hurt. People were in tears, people were stunned, people were awakening to anger. Somewhere in the distance, people were cheering. One of the few horses that had side stepped the calamity had gone on to win the race.

As on most racecourses, the runners had been followed all the way round by an ambulance driven along on a narrow private roadway on the inner side of the track, so that help was at hand. The racecourse official had unfurled and urgently waved two flags, one red and white, one orange, signalling to the doctor and the vet sitting in a car out in the middle of the course that they were both needed at once.

I collected the boys together and we stood in a group watching the ambulance men and the doctor, in an identifying arm band, kneeling beside the fallen, fetching stretchers, conferring, dealing as best they could with broken bones and blood and worse. It was too late to worry about what the boys were seeing: they resisted my suggestion that we should go back to the stands, so we remained with most of the spectators already there, and were joined by the steady stream of new spectators ghoulishly attracted down the course by chaos and disaster.

The ambulance drove off slowly with the two racegoers who’d been felled by the crash through the wing. ‘The horse jumped on one man’s face,’ Toby told me matter-of-factly. ‘I think he’s dead.’

‘Shut up,’ Edward protested.

‘It’s the real world,’ Toby said.

One of the horses couldn’t be saved. Screens were erected round him, which they hadn’t been for the kicked-in-the-face man.

Two cars and a second ambulance swept up fast from the direction of the stands and out leapt another doctor, another vet, and racecourse authority in the shape of the Clerk of the Course, Oliver Wells, one of my visitors from Sunday. Hurrying from clump to clump, Oliver checked with the doctors, checked with the vets behind the screens, checked with first-aid men tending a flat-out jockey, listened to a horse-battered spectator sitting on the ground with his head between his knees and finally paid attention to Rebecca Stratton, whose brief spell of daze was still resulting in hyperactivity and a het-up stream of complaints.

‘Pay attention , Oliver.’ Her voice rose imperiously. ‘This little shit caused the whole thing. I’m reporting him to the Stewards. Careless riding! A fine. Suspension, at least.’

Oliver Wells merely nodded and went to have a word with one of the doctors, who looked across at Rebecca and, leaving his unconscious patient, attempted to feel the all-too-conscious lady’s pulse.

She pulled her wrist away brusquely. ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she insisted. ‘You stupid little man.’

The doctor narrowed his eyes at her and took his skills elsewhere, and across Oliver Wells’s bony features flitted an expression that could only be described as glee.

He caught me looking at him before he’d rearranged his expression, and changed the direction of his thoughts with a jolt.

‘Lee Morris,’ he exclaimed, ‘isn’t it?’ He looked at the children. ‘What are they all doing here?’

‘Day at the races,’ I said dryly.

‘I mean...’ He glanced at his watch and at the clearing up going on around us. ‘When you go back up the course, will you call in at my office before you go home. It’s right beside the weighing room. Er... please?

‘OK,’ I agreed easily, ‘if you like.’

‘Great.’ He gave me a half-puzzled final glance and dived back into his duties and, with things improving on the turf and slowly losing their first intense drama, the five boys at length unglued their feet and their eyes and walked back with me towards the stands.

‘That man came to our house last Sunday,’ Toby told me. ‘He’s got a long nose and sticking-out ears.’

‘So he has.’

‘The sun was making shadows of them.’

Children were observant in an uncomplicated way. I’d been too concerned with why the man was there to notice shadows on his face.

‘He’s the man who mostly organises the races here,’ I said. ‘He runs things on race days. He’s called the Clerk of the Course.’

‘A sort of Field Marshal?’

‘Quite like that.’

‘I’m hungry,’ Alan said, quickly bored.

Neil said ‘Torpid stumblebum’ twice, as if the words themselves pleased his lips.

‘What are you talking about?’ Christopher demanded, and I explained.

‘We were only trying to help her,’ he protested. ‘She’s a cow.’

‘Cows are nice,’ Alan said.