Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,20

was Maynard Allardeck, sitting at a table with two others, looking as impartial and reasonable as a saint. The Stewards said they wanted to know why my well-backed mount had run so badly. They said they were of the opinion that I hadn’t ridden the horse out fully or attempted to win, and would I please give them an explanation.

Maynard was almost certainly the instigator, but not the spokesman. One of the others, a man I respected, had said for openers, ‘Mr Fielding, explain the poor showing of Hillsborough.’

He had himself ridden as an amateur in days gone by, and I told him straightforwardly that my horse had seemed not to be feeling well and hadn’t been enjoying himself. He had been flat-footed even going down to the start and during the race I’d thought once or twice of pulling him up altogether.

The Steward glanced at Allardeck, and said to me, ‘Why didn’t you use your whip after the last fence?’

The phrase ‘flogging a dead horse’ drifted almost irresistibly into my mind but I said only, ‘I gave him a lot of signals to quicken, but he couldn’t. Beating him wouldn’t have made any difference.’

‘You appeared to be giving him an easy ride,’ he said, but without the aggression of conviction. ‘What’s your explanation?’

Giving a horse an easy ride was an euphemism for ‘not trying to win’, or, even worse, for ‘trying not to win’, a loss-of-licence matter. I said with some force, ‘Princess Casilia’s horses, Mr Harlow’s horses, are always doing their best. Hillsborough was doing his best, but he was having an off day.’

There was a shade of amusement in the Steward’s eyes. He knew, as everyone in racing knew, how things stood between Allardecks and Fieldings; Stewards’ enquiries had for half a century sorted out the fiery accusations flung at Maynard’s father by my grandfather, and at my grandfather by Maynard’s father, both of them training Flat racers in Newmarket. The only new twist to the old battle was the recent Allardeck presence on the power side of the table, no doubt highly funny to all but myself.

‘We note your explanation,’ the Steward said dryly, and told me I could go.

I went without looking directly at Maynard. Twice in two days I’d wriggled off his hooks, and I didn’t want him to think I was gloating. I went back fast to the changing room to exchange the princess’s colours for those of another owner and to weigh out, but even so I was late into the parade ring for the next race (and one could be fined for that also).

I walked in hurriedly to join the one hopeful little group without a jockey, and saw, thirty feet away, Henri Nanterre.

FIVE

He was standing in another group of owners, trainer and jockey, and was looking my way as if he’d been watching my arrival.

Unwelcome as he was, however, I had to postpone thoughts of him on account of the excited questions of the tubby enthusiastic couple whose dreams I was supposed to make come true within the next ten minutes; and anyway, the princess, I hoped, was safely surrounded upstairs.

The Dream, so named, had been a winner on the Flat and was having his first run over hurdles. He proved to be fast, all right, but he hadn’t learned the knack of jumping: he rattled the first three flights ominously and put his feet straight through the fourth, and that was as far as we went. The Dream galloped away loose in fright, I picked myself up undamaged from the grass and waited resignedly for wheels to roll along to pick me up. One had to expect a fall every ten or eleven rides, and mostly they were easy, like that, producing a bruise at worst. The bad ones turned up perhaps twice a year, always unexpected.

I checked in with the doctor, as one had to after every fall, and while changing for the next race made time to talk to the jockey from the group with Nanterre: Jamie Fingall, long a colleague, one of the crowd.

‘French guy with the beaky nose? Yeah, well, the guvnor introduced him but I didn’t pay much attention. He owns horses in France, something like that.’

‘Um … Was he with your guvnor, or with the owners?’

‘With the owners, but it sounded to me like the guvnor was trying to sweet talk the Frenchie into sending him a horse over here.’

‘Thanks, then.’

‘Be my guest.’

Jamie Fingall’s guvnor, Basil Clutter, trained in Lambourn about a mile