High Stakes

In the evening I telephoned three different racehorse trainers and offered them three horses each. They all accepted, but with the reservations blowing cool in their voices. None actually asked why I had split with Jody though all had obviously read the papers.

One, a blunt north countryman, said, ‘I’ll want a guarantee you’ll leave them with me for at least six months, so long as they don’t go lame or something.’

‘All right.’

‘In writing.’

‘If you like.’

‘Ay, I do like. You send’ em up with a guarantee and I’ll take’ em.’

For Energise I picked a large yard in Sussex where hurdlers did especially well, and under the guarded tones of the trainer Rupert Ramsey I could hear that he thought almost as much of the horse as I did.

For the last three I chose Newmarket, a middle-sized stable of average achievement. No single basket would ever again contain all the Scott eggs.

Finally with a grimace I picked up the receiver and dialled Jody’s familiar number. It was not he who answered, however, but Felicity, his wife.

Her voice was sharp and bitter. ‘What do you want?’

I pictured her in their luxuriously furnished drawing-room, a thin positive blonde girl, every bit as competent and hard-working as Jody. She would be wearing tight blue jeans and an expensive shirt, there would be six gold bracelets jingling on her wrist and she would smell of a musk-based scent. She held intolerant views on most things and stated them forthrightly, but she had never, before that evening, unleashed on me personally the scratchy side of her mind.

‘To talk about transport,’ I said.

‘So you really are kicking our props away.’

‘You’ll survive.’

‘That’s bloody complacent claptrap,’ she said angrily. ‘I could kill you. After all Jody’s done for you.’

I paused. ‘Did he tell you why I’m breaking with him?’

‘Some stupid little quarrel about ten quid on a bill.’

‘It’s a great deal more than that,’ I said.

‘Rubbish.’

‘Ask him,’ I said. ‘In any case, three horseboxes will collect my horses on Thursday morning. The drivers will know which ones each of them has to take and where to take them. You tell Jody that if he mixes them up he can pay the bills for sorting them out.’

The names she called me would have shaken Jody’s father to the roots.

‘Thursday,’ I said. ‘Three horseboxes, different destinations. And goodbye.’

No pleasure in it. None at all.

I sat gloomily watching a play on television and hearing hardly a word. At nine forty-five the telephone interrupted and I switched off.

‘... Just want to know, sir, where I stand.’

Raymond Child. Jump jockey. Middle-ranker, thirty years old, short on personality. He rode competently enough, but the longer I went racing and the more I learned, the more I could see his short-comings. I was certain also that Jody could not have manipulated my horses quite so thoroughly without help at the wheel.

‘I’ll send you an extra present for Energise,’ I said. Jockeys were paid an official percentage of the winning prize money through a central system, but especially grateful owners occasionally came across with more.

‘Thank you, sir.’ He sounded surprised.

‘I had a good bet on him.’

‘Did you, sir?’ The surprise was extreme. ‘But Jody said...’ He stopped dead.

‘I backed him on the Tote.’

‘Oh.’

The silence lengthened. He cleared his throat. I waited.

‘Well, sir. Er... about the future...’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, half meaning it. ‘I’m grateful for the winners you’ve ridden. I’ll send you the present for Energise. But in the future he’ll be ridden by the jockey attached to his new stable.’

This time there was no tirade of bad language. This time, just a slow defeated sigh and the next best thing to an admission.

‘Can’t really blame you, I suppose.’

He disconnected before I could reply.