Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,75

relief, and Danielle, her eyes stretched wide said, ‘But that’s … just like me. Is her husband … hurt badly?’

‘It’s too soon to tell, I think.’

‘How can she stand it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know. It’s much simpler from Joe’s side … and mine.’

‘I’ll go and see if she needs help,’ Danielle said abruptly, and, leaving Litsi’s shelter, set off after Joe’s wife.

‘Seriously,’ Litsi said, watching her go, ‘how can you joke?’

‘Seriously? Seriously not about Joe, nor about his wife, but about myself, why not?’

‘But… is it worth it?’

I said, ‘If you could paint as you’d like to, would you put up with a bit of discomfort?’

He smiled, his eyebrows rising. ‘Yes, I would.’

‘Much the same thing,’ I said. ‘Fulfilment.’

We stood in a backwater of the racecourse, with the stands and bustle out in the mainstream, gradually moving towards the next race. Dusty arrived at a rush, his eyes searching, suspicious.

‘I’ve wrenched my ankle,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to get Jamie for the fifth race, I know he’s free. But I’m cleared for Monday. Is Helikon all right?’

He nodded briskly a couple of times and departed, wasting no words.

Litsi said, ‘It’s a wonder you’re not worse. It looked atrocious. Aunt Casilia was watching through binoculars, and she was very concerned until she saw you stand up. She said then that you accepted the risks and one had to expect these things from time to time.’

‘She’s right,’ I said.

He, in the sober suiting of civilisation, looked at the marks of the earth on the princess’s colours, looked at my torn green-stained breeches, and at the leg I was putting no weight on.

‘How do you face it, over and over again?’ he said. He saw my lips twitch and added, ‘Easily or with difficulty, whichever is funnier.’

I laughed. ‘I never expect it, for a start. It’s always an unpleasant surprise.’

‘And now that it’s happened, how do you deal with it?’

‘Think about something else,’ I said. Take a lot of aspirins and concentrate on getting back as soon as possible. I don’t like other jockeys loose on my horses, like now. I want to be on them. When I’ve taught them and know them, they’re mine.’

‘And you like winning.’

‘Yes, I like winning.’

The hospital ambulance arrived only moments before Danielle and Joe’s wife returned, and Litsi, Danielle and I stood with Joe’s wife while Joe was transferred. He was still half-conscious, still groaning, looking grey. The ambulance men helped his wife into the interior in his wake, and we had a final view of her face, young and frightened, looking back at us, before they closed the doors and drove slowly away.

Litsi and Danielle looked at me, and I looked at them; and there was nothing to say, really.

Litsi put his arm again round Danielle’s shoulders, and they turned and walked away; and I hobbled off and showered and changed my clothes after just another fall, in just a day in a working life.

When I went out of the weighing room to go to the princess’s box, Maynard Allardeck stepped into my way. He was looking, as always, splendidly tailored, the total English gentleman from Lock’s hat to hand-sewn shoes. He wore a silk striped tie and pigskin gloves, and his eyes were as near madness as I’d ever seen them.

I stopped, my spirits sinking.

Outside the weighing room, where we stood, there was a covered verandah with three wide steps leading down to the area used for unsaddling the first four in every race. There was a tarmac path across the grass there, giving access to the rest of the paddock.

The horses from the fifth race had been unsaddled and led away, and there was a scatter of people about, but not a crowd.

Maynard stood between me and the steps, and to avoid him I would have to edge sideways and round him.

‘Fielding,’ he said with intensity; and he wasn’t simply addressing me by name, he was using the word as a curse, in the way the Allardecks had used it for vengeful generations. He was cursing my ancestry and my existence, the feudal spite like bile in his mouth, the irrational side of his hatred for me well in command.

He overtopped me by about four inches and outweighed me by fifty pounds, but he was twenty years older and unfit. Without the complication of a sprained ankle, I could have dodged him easily, but as it was, when I took a step sideways, so did he.

‘Mr Allardeck,’ I said neutrally,