almost two whole circuits, twenty-two jumps and an uphill run to the winning post.
The aunt’s horse, too strong for her, took hold of the proceedings and opened up an emphatic lead, which no one else bothered to cut down. The aunt’s horse rushed into the difficult downhill first fence and blundered over it, which taught him a lesson and let his rider recover control, and for about a mile after that there were no dramatic excitements. The first race I’d ever ridden in had seemed to pass in a whirling heaving flurry leaving me breathless and exhausted, but time had stretched out with experience until one could watch and think and even talk.
‘Give me room, blast you,’ shouted the lieutenant-colonel on one side of me.
‘Nice day,’ said the earl’s son chattily on the other, always a clown who enlivened his surroundings.
‘Shift your arse! yelled the mother to her horse, giving him a crack round that part of his anatomy. She was a good rider, hated slow horses, hated not to win, weighed a muscular ten stone and was scornful of the show-jumper, whom she had accused often of incompetence.
The show-jumper, it was true, liked to set his horse right carefully before jumps, as in the show-ring, and hadn’t managed to speed up in the several steeplechase races he’d ridden so far. He wasn’t in consequence someone to follow into a fence and I avoided him whenever possible.
The journalist was the best jockey in the race, a professional in all but status, and the grandfather was the worst but full of splendid reckless courage. More or less in a bunch, the whole lot of us came round the bottom bend and tackled the last three jumps of the first circuit. The aunt was still in front, then came the lieutenant-colonel, myself and the earl’s son in a row, then the mother just behind, with the show-jumper and the grand-father beside her. I couldn’t see the journalist: somewhere in the rear, no doubt, biding his wily time.
The lieutenant-colonel’s mount made a proper hash of the last of the three fences, jogging both of his rider’s feet out of the irons and tipping the military backside into the air somewhere in the region of the horse’s mane. Landing alongside and gathering my reins, I saw that the lieutenant-colonel’s balance was hopelessly progressing down the horse’s galloping shoulder as he fought without success to pull himself back into the saddle.
I put out an arm, grasped his jersey and yanked him upwards and backwards, shifting his disastrous centre of gravity into a more manageable place and leaving him slowing and bumping in my wake as he sat down solidly in the saddle, trying to put his feet back into his flying stirrups, which was never very easy at thirty miles an hour.
He had breathing space to collect things going up the hill, though, as we all did, and we swept round the top bend and down to the difficult fence again with not much change in order from the first time.
Someone had once long ago pulled me back into the saddle in that same way: it was fairly common in jump racing. Someone had also once tipped me straight into the air with an upward wrench of my heel, but that was another story. The lieutenant-colonel was saying ‘Thanks’ and also ‘Move over, you’re crowding me,’ more or less in the same breath.
After crossing the water jump for the second time over on the far side of the track, the show-jumper made a spurt to the front and then slowed almost to a standstill on landing over the next fence, having jumped especially pedantically, and the aunt crashed into the back of him with some singularly un-aunt-like language.
‘Lovely lady,’ said the earl’s son, appreciatively, as we passed the debacle. ‘How are you going yourself?’
‘Not bad,’ 1 said. ‘How are you?’
We jumped the last of the seven far-side fences together and in front, and put all our energies into staying there round the long last bend and over the three last fences. I could hear horses thudding behind me and the mother’s voice exhorting her slowcoach. Approaching the Pond fence, I could sense the earl’s son’s horse beginning to tire, I could see that precious winning post far ahead and the way to it clear, and for at least a few moments I thought I might win. But then the lieutenant-colonel reappeared fast at my elbow, still shouting for room, and between the last two fences,