knees on the saddle, and Ferdinand, the specialist, standing briefly on his head. The ponies had been docile and no doubt tired to death, but for two or three years we had been circus virtuosi: and Malcolm had paid the bills uncomplainingly, but had never come to watch us. Then Gervase and Ferdinand had been whisked away by Alicia, and in the lonely vacuum afterwards I’d ridden almost every possible morning, laying down a skill without meaning it seriously, not realising, in the flurry of academic school examinations, that it was the holiday pastime that would beckon me for life.
Blue Clancy looked as well as any of the others, I thought, watching the runners walk round, and the trainer was displaying more confidence than uncertainty. He thanked me for fixing the sale (from which he’d made a commission) and assured me that the two-million-guinea yearling was now settled snugly in a prime box in his yard. He’d known me vaguely until then as another trainer’s assistant, a dogsbody, but as son and go-between of a new owner showing all signs of being severely hooked by the sport, I was now worth cultivation.
I was amused and far from minding. Life was like that. I might as well make the most of Malcolm’s coat-tails while I was on them, I thought. I asked if I could see round the trainer’s yard next time I was in Newmarket, and he said sure, he’d like it, and almost seemed to mean it.
‘I’m sometimes there with George and Jo,’ I said. ‘Schooling their few jumpers. I ride them in amateur’chases.’ Everyone in Newmarket knew who George and Jo were: they were the equivalent of minor royalty.
‘Oh, that’s you, is it?’ He put a few things together. ‘Didn’t realise that was you.’
‘Mm.’
‘Then come any time.’ He sounded warmer, more positive. ‘I mean it,’ he said.
The way upwards in racing, I thought, ironic at myself, could lead along devious paths. I thanked him without effusiveness, and said ‘Soon.’
Blue Clancy went out to the parade and the rest of us moved to the owners’ and trainers’ stand, which was near the core of things and buzzing with other similar groups locked in identical tensions.
‘What chance has he got?’ Malcolm demanded of me. ‘Seriously.’ His eyes searched my face as if for truth, which wasn’t what I thought he wanted to hear.
‘A bit better than he had on Thursday, since the second favourite has been scratched.’ He wanted me to tell him more, however unrealistic, so I said, ‘He’s got a good chance of being placed. Anything can happen. He could win.’
Malcolm nodded, not knowing whether or not to believe me, but wanting to. Well and truly hooked, I thought, and felt fond of him.
I thought in my heart of hearts that the horse would finish sixth or seventh, not disgraced but not in the money. I’d backed him on the pari-mutuel but only out of loyalty: I’d backed the French horse Meilleurs Voeux out of conviction.
Blue Clancy moved well going down to the start. This was always the best time for owners, I thought, while the heart beat with expectation and while the excuses, explanations, disappointments were still ten minutes away. Malcolm lifted my binoculars to his eyes with hands that were actually trembling.
The trainer himself was strung up, I saw, however he might try to disguise it. There was only one‘Arc’ in a year, of course, and too few years in a lifetime.
The horses seemed to circle for an interminable time at the gate but were finally fed into the slots to everyone’s satisfaction. The gates crashed open, the thundering rainbow poured out, and twenty-six of Europe’s best thoroughbreds were out on the right-hand circuit straining to be the fastest, strongest, bravest over one and a half miles of grass.
‘Do you want your binoculars?’ Malcolm said, hoping not.
‘No. Keep them, I can see.’
I could see Ramsey Osborn’s colours on the rails halfway back in the field, the horse moving easily, as were all the others at that point of the race. In the‘Arc’, the essentials were simple: to be in the first ten coming round the last long right-hand bend, not to swing too wide into the straight and, according to the horse’s stamina, pile on the pressure and head for home. Sometimes in a slow-starting‘Arc’, one jockey would slip the field on the bend and hang on to his lead; in others, there would be war throughout to a whisker verdict. Blue Clancy’s ‘Arc’ seemed to