Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,4
on the edge of rudeness, never quite tumbling over, and I put up with it equably because he was in fact good at his job, and right about the lads, and besides that I hadn’t much choice. Since Wykeham had stopped coming to the races, the horses’ welfare away from home depended entirely upon Dusty, and the welfare of the horses was very basically my concern.
‘Cascade,’ Dusty said, glowering, ‘can hardly put one foot in front of the other.’
‘He’s not lame,’ I said mildly.
‘He’ll take weeks to get over it.’
I didn’t answer. I looked around for the princess, who still hadn’t appeared. I’d wanted particularly to hear what Maynard had said to her, but it looked as if I would have to wait. And it was extraordinary that she hadn’t come into the ring. Almost all owners liked to be in the parade ring before a race, and for the princess especially it was an unvarying routine. Moreover, she was particularly proud and fond of Cotopaxi and had been talking all winter about his chances in the National.
The minutes ticked away, the signal was given for jockeys to mount, and Dusty gave me his usual adroit leg-up into the saddle. I rode out onto the course hoping nothing serious had happened, and had time, cantering down to the start, to look up to where the princess’s private box was located, high on the stands, expecting anyway to see her there, watching with her friends.
The balcony was however deserted, and I felt the first twinge of real concern. If she’d had to leave the racecourse suddenly, I was sure she would have sent me a message, and I hadn’t been exactly hard to find, standing there in the paddock. Messages, though, could go astray, and as messages went, ‘tell Kit Fielding that Princess Casilia is going home’ wouldn’t have rated as emergency material.
I went on down to the start thinking that no doubt I would find out in time, and hoping that there hadn’t been sudden bad news about the frail old chairbound husband she travelled home to every evening.
Cotopaxi, unlike Cascade, was positively bombarding me with information, mostly to the effect that he was feeling good, he didn’t mind the cold weather, and he was glad to be back on a racecourse for the first time since Christmas. January had been snowy and the first part of February freezing, and keen racers like Cotopaxi got easily bored by long spells in the stables.
Wykeham, unlike most of the daily press, didn’t expect Cotopaxi to win at Newbury.
‘He’s not fully fit,’ he’d said on the telephone the previous evening. ‘He won’t be wound up tight until Grand National day. Look after him, now, Kit, won’t you?’
I’d said I would, and after Cascade, I’d doubly meant it. Look after Cotopaxi, look out for Maynard Allardeck, bury Prince Litsi under the turf. Cotopaxi and I went round circumspectly, collectedly, setting ourselves right at every fence, jumping them all cleanly, enjoying the precision and wasting no time. I did enough stick-waving to give an impression of riding a flat-out finish, and we finished in undisgraced third place, close enough to the winner to be encouraging. A good work-out for Cotopaxi, a reassurance for Wykeham and a tremor of promise for the princess.
She hadn’t been on her balcony during the race and she didn’t appear in the unsaddling enclosure. Dusty muttered obscurely about her absence and I asked around in the weighing room for any message from her, with no results. I changed again to ride in the fifth race, and after that, in street clothes, decided to go up to her box anyway, as I did at the end of every racing afternoon, to see if the waitress who served there might know what had happened.
The princess rented a private box at several racecourses and had had them all decorated alike with colours of cream, coffee and peach. In each was a dining table with chairs for lunch, with, beyond, glass doors to the viewing balcony. She entertained groups of friends regularly, but on that day even the friends had vanished.
I knocked briefly on the box door and, without waiting for any answer, turned the handle and walked in.
The table as usual had been pushed back against a wall after lunch to allow more space, and was familiarly set with the paraphernalia of tea: small sandwiches, small cakes, cups and saucers, alcohol to hand, boxes of cigars. That day, they were all untouched, and there