Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

It took forty-five minutes to drive from the Perrysides’ village to Towcester racecourse and for half the journey I thought I was being unnecessarily fanciful.

Then abruptly I drove into the centre of the town of Bletchley and booked myself into an old and prosperous looking hotel, the Golden Lion. They took an impression of my credit card and I was shown to a pleasant room, where I hung Watts’s and Erskine’s jackets in the closet, draped my night things around the bathroom and stowed everything else in a drawer. The receptionist nodded pleasantly and impersonally when I left the key at the desk on my way out, and no one else took any notice; and with a wince at my watch but feeling decidedly safer I broke the speed limit to Towcester.

The princess’s novices were the first and last of my booked rides, with another for Wykeham and one for the Lambourn trainer in between.

The princess was waiting with her usual lambent patina in the parade ring when I went out there, and so was Danielle, dressed on that damp day in a blazing red shiny coat over the black trousers. I suppose my pleasure showed. Certainly both of them smiled down their noses in the way women do when they know they’re admired, and Danielle, instead of shaking my hand, gave me a brief peck of a kiss on the cheek, a half touch of skin to skin, unpremeditated, the sensation lingering surprisingly in my nerve endings.

She laughed. ‘How’re you doing?’ she said.

‘Fine. And you?’

‘Great.’

The princess said mildly, ‘What do we expect from Kinley, Kit?’

I had a blank second of non-comprehension before remembering that Kinley was her horse. The one I was about to ride: three years old, still entire, a dappled grey going to the starting gate as second favourite for the first race of his life. High time, I thought, that I concentrated on my job.

‘Dusty says he’s travelled well; he’s excited but not sweating,’ I said.

‘And that’s good?’ Danielle asked.

‘That’s good,’ said the princess, nodding.

‘He’s mature for three, he jumps super at home and I think he’s fast,’ I said.

‘And it all depends, I suppose, on whether he enjoys it today.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Enjoys it?’ Danielle asked, surprised.

‘Most horses enjoy it,’ I said. ‘If they don’t, they won’t race.’

‘Do you remember Snowline?’ the princess said. I nodded, and she said to Danielle, ‘Snowline was a mare I had a long time ago. She was beautiful to look at and had won two or three times on the Flat, and I bought her to be a hurdler, partly, I must confess, because of her name, but she didn’t like jumping. I kept her in training for two years because I had a soft spot for her, but it was a waste of money and hope.’ She smiled. ‘Wykeham tried other jockeys, do you remember, Kit? For the second of those she wouldn’t even start. I learned a great lesson. If a horse doesn’t like racing, cut your losses.’

‘What became of Snowline?’ Danielle said.

‘I sold her as a brood mare. Two of her foals have been winners on the Flat.’

Danielle looked from her aunt to me and hack again. ‘You both totally love it, don’t you?’

‘Totally,’ said the princess.

‘Totally,’ I agreed.

I got up on Kinley and walked him slowly up past the stands to let him take in the sounds and smells, and then down towards the start, giving him a long close look at a flight of hurdles, letting him stand chest-high, almost touching, looking out over the top. He pricked his ears and extended his nostrils, and I felt the instinct stir in him most satisfactorily, the in-bred compulsion that ran in the blood like a song, the surging will to race and win.

You, Kinley, I thought, know all I’ve been able to teach you about jumping, and if you mess it up today you’ll be wasting all those mornings I’ve spent with you on the schooling grounds this autumn.

Kinley tossed his head. I smoothed a hand down his neck and took him on to the start, mingling there with two or three other complete novices and about ten who had run at least once before but never won. The youngest a horse was allowed to go jump racing in Britain was in the August of its three-year-old year, and Kinley’s was a two-mile event for three-year-olds who hadn’t yet won.

Some jockeys avoided doing schooling sessions, but I’d never minded, on the basis that if I’d taught the horse myself I’d know what it could and wouldn’t do. Some trainers sent green horses to crash around racecourses with only the haziest idea of how to meet a jump right, but Wykeham and I were in accord: it was no good expecting virtuoso jumping in public without arpeggios at home.

Wykeham was in the habit of referring to Kinley as Kettering, a horse he’d trained in the distant past. It was amazing, I sometimes thought, that the right horses turned up at the meetings: Dusty’s doing, no doubt.

Kinley circled and lined up with only an appropriate amount of nervousness and when the tapes went up, set off with a fierce plunge of speed. Everything was new to him, everything unknown; nothing on the home gallops ever prepared a horse for the first rocketing reality. I settled him gradually with hands and mind, careful not to do it too much, not to teach him that what he was really feeling was wrong but just to control it, to keep it simmering, to wait.

He met the first hurdle perfectly and jumped it cleanly and I clearly felt his reaction of recognition, his increase in confidence. He let me shorten his stride a little approaching the second hurdle so as to meet it right and avoid slowing to jump, and at the third flight he landed so far out on the other side that my spirits rose like a bird. Kinley was going to be good. One could tell sometimes right from the beginning, like watching a great actor in his first decent role.

I let him see every obstacle clearly, mostly by keeping him to the outside. Technically the inside was the shortest way, but also the more difficult. Time for squeezing through openings when he could reliably run straight.

Just keep it going, Kinley old son, I told him; you’re doing all right. Just take a pull here, that’s right, to get set for the next jump, and now go for it, go for it... dear bloody hell, Kinley, you’ll leave me behind, jumping like that, just wait while I get up here over your shoulders, I don’t see why we can’t kick for home, first time out, why not, it’s been done, get on there, Kinley, you keep jumping like that and we’ll damned near win.

I gave him a breather on the last uphill section and he was most aggrieved at my lack of urging, but once round the last bend, with one jump left before the run-in, I shook him up and told him aloud to get on with it, squeezing him with the calves of my legs, sending him rhythmic messages through my hands, telling him OK, my son, now fly, now run, now stretch out your bloody neck, this is what it’s all about, this is your future, take it, embrace it, it’s all yours.

He was bursting with pride when I pulled him up, learning at once that he’d done right, that the many pats I gave him were approval, that the applause greeting his arrival in the winners’ enclosure was the curtain call for a smash hit. Heady stuff for a novice; and I reckoned that because of that day he would run his guts out to win all his life.

‘He enjoyed it,’ the princess said, glowing with pleasure.

‘He sure did.’

‘Those jumps...’

I unbuckled my saddle and drew it off on to my arm.

‘He’s very good,’ I said. ‘You have seriously got a good horse.’

She looked at me with speculation, and I nodded. ‘You never know. Too soon to be sure.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Danielle demanded.