Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,7
and I issued popcorn money all round.
‘Horse racing is boring,’ Toby said.
‘If you can pick a winner I’ll pay you Tote odds,’ I said.
‘What about me?’ Alan said.
‘Everyone.’
Brightening, they went off to look at the next race’s runners in the parade ring, with Christopher explaining to them how to read the form line in the racecard. Neil, staying close to me, said without hesitation that he would choose number seven.
‘Why seven, then?’ I asked, looking it up. ‘It’s never won a race in its life.’
‘My peg in the cloakroom at school is number seven.’
‘I see. Well, number seven is called Clever Clogs.’
Neil beamed.
The other four returned with their choices. Christopher had picked the form horse, the favourite. Alan had singled out Jugaloo because he liked its name. Edward chose a no-hoper because it looked sad and needed encouragement. Toby’s vote went to Tough Nut because it had been ‘kicking and bucking in the ring and winding people up’.
They all wanted to know my own choice, and I ran a fast eye over the list and said randomly, ‘Grandfather’, and then wondered at the mind’s subliminal tricks and thought it perhaps not so random after all.
Slightly to my relief, Toby’s Tough Nut not only won the race but had enough energy left for a couple of vicious kicks in the unsaddling enclosure. Toby’s boredom turned to active interest and, as often happened, the rest responded to his mood. The rain stopped. The afternoon definitely improved.
I took them all down the course later to watch the fourth race, a three-mile steeplechase, from beside one of those difficult jumps, an open ditch. This one, the second to last fence on the circuit, was attended by a racecourse employee looking damp in an orange fluorescent jacket, and by a St John’s Ambulance volunteer whose job it was to give first aid to any jockeys who fell at his feet. A small crowd of about thirty racegoers had made the trek down there beside ourselves, spreading out behind the inside rails of the track, both on the take-off and the landing sides of the fence.
The ditch itself – in steeplechasing’s past history a real drainage ditch with water in it – was in modern times, as at Stratton Park, no real ditch at all but a space about four feet wide on the take-off side of the fence. There was a large pole across the course on the approach side to give an eye-line to the horses, to tell them when to jump, and the fence itself, of dark birch twigs, was four feet six inches high and at least a couple of feet thick: all in all a regular jump presenting few surprises to experienced ’chasers.
Although the boys had seen a good deal of racing on television I’d never taken them to an actual meeting before, still less down to where the rough action filled the senses. When the ten-strong field poured over the fence on the first of the race’s two circuits, the earth quivered under the thudding hooves, the black birch crackled as the half-ton ’chasers crashed through the twigs, the air parted before the straining bunch risking life and limb off the ground at thirty miles an hour: the noise stunned the ears, the jockeys’ voices cursed, the coloured shirts flashed by kaleidoscopically… and suddenly they were gone, their backs receding, silence returning, the brief violent movement over, the vigour and striving a memory.
‘Wow!’ Toby said, awestruck. ‘You didn’t say it was like that.’
‘It’s only like that when you’re close to it,’ I said.
‘But it must be always like that for the jockeys,’ Edward said thoughtfully. ‘I mean, they take the noise with them all the way.’ Edward, ten, had led the pirate ambush up the oak. Misleadingly quiet, it was always he who wondered what it would be like to be a mushroom, who talked to invisible friends, who worried most about famine-struck children. Edward invented make-believe games for his brothers and read books and lived an intense inner life, as reserved as Alan, nine, was outgoing and ebullient.
The racecourse employee walked along the fence on the landing side, putting back into place with a short-handled paddle all the dislodged chunks of birch, making the obstacle look tidy again before the second onslaught.
The five boys waited impatiently while the runners continued round the circuit and came back towards the open ditch for the second and last time before racing away to the last fence and the sprint to the winning