Dick Francis - 10 lb Penalty

He studied my face. I must have looked pretty ecstatic because a slow wintry smile lightened his heavy expression.

“I just hope,” he said, “that you can ride well enough not to disgrace my stable.”

I just hoped he hadn’t been talking to Vivian Durridge.

“Your father asked me to find a suitable horse. We discussed price, of course. I told him I train forty or so horses, and one or two of them are always for sale. I have two here at present which might fit the bill. Your father and I agreed that you should come here today and have a ride on both. You are to choose which of them you prefer. He wanted it to be a surprise for your birthday... and I see it is.”

I breathlessly nodded.

“Right. Then go out of the back door. My assistant, Jim, who brought you here, he’ll drive you along to the stables, where the horses are ready for you. So off you go, then.”

“Er...” I said. “Thank you... very much.”

He nodded and bent his head to his paperwork, and Jim, grinning widely, drove half a mile to the stable yard that was old, needed paint and had sent out winners by the dozen over the years to small races on west-country courses. Stallworthy didn’t aim for Cheltenham, Sandown or Aintree. He trained for local farmers and businessmen and ran their horses near home.

Jim stood in the yard and laconically pointed. “Tack room there.” He half turned. “Horse in number twenty-seven. OK?”

“OK.”

I took a look at the occupant of box 27 and found a heavily muscled chestnut gelding standing there, anxious it seemed to be out on the gallops. He had nice short legs, with hocks not too angular and a broad chest capable of pushing his way over or through any obstacle that came his way. More the type of a tough hardy steeplechaser than an ex-flat racer graduating to jumps.

I guessed at stamina and an unexcitability that might take a tiring amateur steadfastly towards the finish line, and if there were anything against him at first sight it was, perhaps, that he was a bit short in the neck.

Jim whistled up a groom to saddle and bridle the chestnut, though I had the impression that he had at first intended that I should do it myself.

Jim had considered me a sort of a joke. Perhaps my actual presence in the yard had converted me from joke to customer. In any case, neither Jim nor the groom saw anything but ordinary sense when I asked if I could see the chestnut being led around the yard at a walk. Somewhere along the way in my scrappy racing education I’d been told and shown by an avuncular old pro jockey that a horse that walked well galloped well. A long, slow stride bode well for long-distance ’chases. A tittupping scratchy little walker meant a nervous, scratchy little galloper.

The stride of the chestnut’s walk was long enough and slow enough to suggest a temperament that would plod forever. When he and his groom had completed two circuits of the yard I stopped him and felt his legs (no bumps from past tendon trouble) and looked in his mouth (which perhaps one shouldn’t do to a gift horse) and estimated him to be about seven years old, a good solid age for a steeplechaser.

“Where do I ride him?” I asked Jim, and he pointed to a way out of the yard that led to a gate into a vast field that proved to be the chief training ground for the whole stable. There were no wide-open downland gallops, it seemed, in that cozy part of Devon.

“You can trot or canter down to the far end,” Jim said, “and come back at a half-speed gallop. He... the chestnut... knows the way.”

I swung onto the chestnut’s back and put the toes of my unsuitable running shoes into the stirrups, lengthening the leathers while getting to know the “feel” of the big creature who would give me half speed and at least an illusion of being where I belonged.

I might never be a great jockey, and I might at times be clumsy and uncoordinated owing to growing in spurts and changing shape myself, but I’d ridden a great many different horses in my school holidays by working for people who wanted a few horses cared for while they went away on trips. I’d begged racehorse experience from trainers, and for the past two years had ridden in any race offered: twenty-six outings to date, with three wins, two thirds and three falls.

The Stallworthy chestnut was in a good mood and let me know it by standing still patiently through the stirrup-leather lengthening and the pause while Jim sorted out a helmet in the tack room, insisting that I wear it even though it was a size too small.

The chestnut’s back was broad with muscles and I hadn’t sat on a horse for three and a half weeks; and if he’d been mean-spirited that morning he could have run away with me and made a fool of my deficient strength, but in fact he went out onto the exercise ground as quietly as an old hack.

I didn’t enjoy his trot, which was lumpy and threw me about, but his canter was like an armchair. We went in harmony down to the far end of the exercise field where the land dropped away a bit, so that the first part of the gallop home was uphill, good for strengthening legs.

At a half-speed gallop, riding the chestnut was a bit like sitting astride a launched rocket: powerful, purposeful, difficult to deflect. I reined to a slightly breathless walk and went over to where Jim waited beside the gate. “Right,” he said noncommittally, “now try the other one.”

The other horse, a bay gelding with a black mane, was of a leaner type and struck me as being more of a speed merchant than the one I’d just ridden. He carried his head higher and was more frisky and eager to set off and get into his stride. Whether that stride would last out over a distance of ground was, perhaps, doubtful.

I stood with my toes in the irons all the way down the field, letting the trot and canter flow beneath me. This was not a horse schooled to give his rider a peaceful look at the countryside; this was a fellow bred to race, for whom nothing else was of interest. At the far end of the field, instead of turning quietly, he did one of those swerving pirouettes with a dropped shoulder, a maneuver guaranteed to fling an unwary jockey off sideways. I’d seen many horses do that. I’d been flung off myself. But I was ready for Stallworthy’s bay to try it; on his part more from eagerness to gallop than from spite.

His half-speed gallop home was a battle against my arms all the way: he wanted to go much faster. Thoughtfully I slid off his back and led him to Jim at the gate.

“Right,” Jim said. “Which do you want?”

“Er...” I patted the bay’s neck. He shook his head vigorously, not in disapproval, I gathered, but in satisfaction.

“How about,” I suggested, “a look at the form books and the breeding over a sandwich in a pub?”

I was quite good at pub life after three and a half weeks with my father.

Jim briefly laughed. “I was told I was to fetch a schoolkid. You’re some schoolkid.”

“I left school last month.”

“Yeah. Makes a difference!”

With good-natured irony he collected the necessary records from inside Stallworthy’s house and drove us to a local pub where he was greeted as a friendly regular. We sat on a high-backed wooden settle and he put the form books on the table beside the beer (him) and the Diet Coke (me).

In steeplechase breeding it’s the dams that matter. A dam who breeds one winner will most likely breed others. The chestnut’s dam had never herself won, though two of her progeny had. The chestnut so far hadn’t finished nearer than second.

The bay’s dam had never even raced, but all of her progeny, except the first foal, had won. The bay had won twice.

Both horses were eight.

“Tell me about them,” I said to Jim. “What ought I to know?”

There was no way he was going to tell me the absolute truth if he had any commission coming from the sale. Horse traders were as notorious as car salesmen for filling the gearbox with chaff.