Field of 13

Haig’s Death

What if? is the beginning of fiction. What if Haig died when he shouldn’t?

There could be a hundred intertwined ripples but, anyway, here there are three.

Unaware that it was for the last time, Christopher Haig steered his buzzing electric razor over the contours of his chin and watched its progress impersonally in the bathroom mirror.

Christopher Haig’s beard grew strong and black; unfairly virile, he considered, when his crown was mercilessly thinning. Sighing, he straightened the transition line between beard and hair beside each ear, and blew the shaved-off ends of whiskers carefully into a plastic bag always ready for the purpose.

As middle-age and a gentle paunch had crept up and overtaken him, Christopher Haig had begun at forty-two to wish that he had dared more, had crazily set off to fly round the world in a hot air balloon or spent a summer photographing penguins in Antarctica or had canoed up the Orinoco river to the Angel Falls. Instead, he had worked reliably day by day as an animal-feed consultant and, as the pinnacle of his suppressed urge to adventure, acted as the judge at race meetings.

He looked forward, on that particular Friday morning, to the bustle of the first half of the two-day Winchester Spring Meeting. He savoured his drive to Winchester racecourse from his home (an empty-feeling home now that his wife had run off with a raggle-taggle TV repair man), taking pleasure in the sunshine sparkling on the fresh green buds of regenerate trees. Happy enough without his wife (relieved, if the truth were told), he wondered how one actually set about dog-sledding in Alaska or driving across the vast red-dust wastes of Australia: could one’s every-day travel agent arrange it?

Meticulous by nature, he packed imaginary suitcases for his fantasy journeys, wondering if snow-shoes would glide over both powdery surfaces, and choosing audio books for the long nights. Dreams and daydreams plugged the empty spaces of a worthy working life.

He was one of the fifteen judges regularly called to decide the winner and placed horses of the races. As there were fifteen judges but not fifteen race meetings every day (there were seldom more than four except on public holidays), acting as judge was to Chris Haig a sporadic and unpredictable pleasure more than an occupation. He never knew long in advance to which meeting he might be sent: none of the judges officiated always on the same course.

Christopher Haig regretted the passing of the old days when the word of the judge was law: if the judge said ‘So and so’ had won the race, then he darned well had won it, even if halt the racegoers put ‘What d’ya macall’ in front. Nowadays the photo-finish camera gave unarguable short-head verdicts, which the judge did little more than announce. Fairer, Chris Haig acknowledged, but not much fun.

The photo-finish camera at Winchester races had been on the blink last time out, though the trouble (more pompously classified as a malfunction) had happened to another judge, not Christopher Haig. It had now not only reportedly been fixed but exhaustively tested. A pity, Haig reprehensibly thought.

Chris Haig parked his car (for the last time) in the ‘Officials only’ car park and made his way jauntily towards the weighing-room (the centre of officialdom), scattering ‘good mornings’ to gatemen and arriving jockeys as he passed.

The judge was feeling particularly well that day. He recognised in himself the awakening of nature’s year and, as often before, but more strongly this time, decided that as he could realistically look forward to thirty more years of life, he should change direction pretty soon. The urge was clear: the destination, still a mist. He would have been astounded to learn that it was already too late.

Christopher Haig was greeted as always with a smile by the stewards, the clerk of the course, the starter, the clerk of the scales and all the passing crowd of race organisers in the weighing-room. The judge was popular, not only because he did his job without mistakes, but for his effortless generosity, his good nature, and his calmness in a crisis. Those that thought him dull had no insight into the furnace of his private landscape. What if, he thought, I joined an oil-fire fighting unit?

Before each race the judge sat at a table near the scales and learned the colours worn by each jockey as he or she weighed out. He learned also the name of each horse and made sure the jockeys carried on their number cloths the corresponding numbers on the racecard. Chris Haig, after years of practice, was good and quick.

The first three races gave him no problems. There were no finishes close enough to need to be settled by photo, and he’d been able to pronounce the winners and placed horses firmly and with confidence. He was enjoying himself.

The fourth race, the Cloister Handicap Hurdle, was the big event of the day. Chris Haig carefully made sure he could identify each of the eleven runners at a glance: it was always a shocking disgrace for a judge to hesitate.

Number 1, he noted: Lilyglit, top weight.

Number 2, Fable.

Number 3, Storm Cone.

He continued down the list. The runners’ names were all familiar to him from other days, but the first three on the card for the Cloister Handicap were woven into his short future in ways he couldn’t have imagined.

Number 1. Lilyglit

At about the time earlier on that Friday morning when Christopher Haig shaved with the help of a bathroom mirror and dreamed his dreams, Wendy Billington Innes sat on her low comfortable dressing stool and stared at her reflection in her dressing-table’s triple-section looking-glass. She saw not the pale clear skin, the straight mid-brown hair nor the darkening shadows below her grey-blue eyes; she saw only worry and a disaster she didn’t understand and couldn’t deal with. An hour ago, she thought, life had seemed simple and secure.

There were four children upstairs with a resident nanny: three daughters and a yearling son. Downstairs there was a cook, a housekeeper, a manservant and, in the gatehouse of the estate, a chauffeur-gardener with his housemaid wife and daughter. Wendy Billington Innes managed her large staff with friendly appreciation so that they all lived together without friction. Raised in similar cosseted ease, she knew to a fraction the effort one could expect from each employee and, most importantly, what request would be considered a breathtaking insult.

The house itself was a grand relic of grander times: it allowed everyone comfortable room but was terminally afflicted with dry rot. One day soon, she had thought peacefully, she would move everyone to a new home.

She had brought to her marriage a heavy portfolio of stocks and bonds and, like her mother before her, had thankfully handed it to her husband for management.

At thirty-seven she had reached serenity, if not overwhelming happiness. She could admit to herself (but to no one else) that Jasper, her husband, had been sporadically unfaithful ever since their wedding but, depending on him for friendship, she chose to ignore the true reason for the occasional one-night absences from which he always returned in great good spirits, making her laugh as he loaded her with flowers and little presents. When he came home at dawn empty-handed, as he more often did, it meant only that he’d been gambling all night in his favourite gaming club. He was a good-natured useless man, almost universally liked.

At seven-forty five in the morning on the Friday of Winchester races, as she lay cosily awake, planning her day ahead, Wendy Billington Innes answered her bedside telephone and listened to the voice of the family’s accountant asking urgently to speak to Jasper.

Jasper’s side of the big four-poster bed was uninhabited but, as he often slept in his dressing-room next door when he came home late, his wife went unworriedly to wake him.

Flat sheets; no Jasper.

‘He isn’t here,’ his wife reported, returning to the phone. ‘He didn’t come home last night. You know what he’s like when he’s playing backgammon or blackjack. He’ll play all night.’ She excused his absence lightly, as she always did. ‘When he gets home, do you want me to give him a message?’

The accountant asked weakly, knowing the reply in advance, if Wendy — Mrs Innes — had read today’s financial columns in the newspapers. No, Mrs Innes had not.

Alarmed by then, Wendy Billington Innes demanded to know what was the matter and wished, when she heard the answer, that she hadn’t.

‘Basically,’ the accountant said with regret, ‘the firm of Stemmer Peabody has gone into receivership, which means... I find it difficult to tell you... but it means that Jasper’s fortune — and that of several other people — is, shall we say, severely compromised.’

Wendy said numbly, ‘What does “severely compromised” mean, exactly?’

‘It means that the financial manager to whom Jasper and others entrusted their affairs has pledged all their money as security for an enterprise and... er... has lost it.’

‘That can’t happen!’ Wendy protested.

‘I did warn him,’ the accountant said sadly, ‘but Jasper trusted the manager and signed papers giving him too much power.’

‘But there’s my money,’ Wendy exclaimed. ‘Even if Jasper has lost some of his, we can live on my money perfectly well.’

After an appalling pause, the bad news paralysed her.

‘Mrs Innes... Wendy... you gave Jasper total control of your affairs. You too, perhaps, signed away too much power. Your money has gone with his. I do hope we may be able to salvage enough so that you can live fairly comfortably, though not, of course, as you do now. There are the children’s trusts, things like that. I need to talk to him about his plans.’

When she could get her tongue to speak, Wendy asked, ‘Does Jasper know about this?’

‘He found out yesterday, when the news broke in the City. He is an honourable man. I’m told he’s been trying to raise money ever since, to pay off gambling debts. I know, for example, that he’s trying to sell his racehorse, Lilyglit.’

‘Lilyglit! He’d never do that! He worships that horse. He’s running today at Winchester.’

‘I’m afraid... in the future, Jasper won’t be able to afford to keep racehorses in training.’

Wendy Billington Innes couldn’t bear to ask what else he wouldn’t be able to afford.

Jasper Billington Innes had already been told. Like many in the past who had been dreadfully impoverished by their blameless involvement in the collapse of insurance syndicates at Lloyd’s of London, he was unable at first to understand the reason for, or the extent of, his losses.

He wasn’t stupid, though not very bright either. He had inherited significant wealth, but no brain for business. He had left ‘all that’ to the trusted fellow at Stemmer Peabody, a course of action that had led, the evening before, to an emergency meeting of others facing the same depth of Stemmer Peabody ruin. Women had been furious and weeping: men shouting or pale. Jasper Billington Innes had felt sick.

Honourable in most things, even in the avalanche of calamity, he saw it as an obligation to pay his private debts at once. He wrote cheques to his tailor and his wine-merchant, and to his plumber — not quite enough to clear the whole outstanding sum in each case, but more than enough to prove intent. He could afford his usual household expenses for one more month if he gave all the domestic staff notice at once. That left his heavy debts to his bookmaker and his gaming club proprietors, whose present relaxed behaviour patterns would fly out of the window on hearing the bad news.

All that remained to him of real value, he thought miserably, was his splendid fast hurdler, Lilyglit. His other three jumpers were old now, and worth little.

By midnight on Thursday, he had lost another mini-fortune at the tables, trying lucklessly to play his way out of catastrophe. At four o’clock in the morning, having won back some of his losses, he struck Lilyglit bargains with his gaming creditors that even they recognised as unwise panic measures. They had learned by then of his extreme adversity. They accepted his signature gravely though, and, as they liked him, sincerely wished him well.

Number 2. Fable

While Christopher Haig was shaving on Friday morning, the brothers Arkwright were out in their stable yard, seventy miles to the north, working on Fable, their runner in the Cloister Handicap Hurdle.

In the strengthening light of dawn they tidily plaited the horse’s mane and brushed out his tail, wrapping it tightly in a bandage so that it would look neat and tidy when let free. They painted his hooves with oil (cosmetically pleasing) and fed him a bowl of oats to give him stamina and warmth on the horsebox journey south.

Vernon Arkwright, jockey, and his ten-year older brother, Villiers, trainer, welcomed the farrier who came to change Fable’s all-purpose horseshoes to thin fast racing plates. The farrier took care that his nails didn’t prick the hooves: the Arkwrights had a known talent for retaliating with practical jokes.

The Arkwright brothers, Vernon and Villiers, were as bent as right angles: everyone knew it, but proof proved a vanishing commodity. Fable had reached number 2 in the handicap for the Cloister Hurdle by a zig-zag path of winning and losing as suspect as a ghost’s footprints. Both brothers had been hauled before the stewards to explain ‘discrepancies in running’. Both, with angelic hands on hearts, had declared horses not to be machines. On suspicion rather than evidence Villiers had been fined and Vernon given a short compulsory holiday. Both had publicly protested injured innocence and privately jumped with gleeful relief. The stewards longed to catch them properly and warn them off.

The horse’s owner, an Arkwright cousin, had confused the enquiry by backing his horse every time — win or lose — with the same amount of money. The horse’s owner had asked his jockey and trainer not to tell him what outcome to expect so that his joy or disappointment would be — and look — genuine.

Over the years, mostly with lesser horses than Fable, the conspiring trio of owner, trainer and jockey had salted away substantial tax-free harvests.

On the Friday of the Winchester Spring Meeting they were as a team still open to suggestions. They hadn’t decided whether Fable was out to win or lose. They doubted he was fast enough ever to beat Lilyglit, but, annoyingly, no one had so far bribed them to let him prove it. It looked disappointingly to the Ark-wrights as if Fable would have to perform to the best of his ability and try for second or third place money.

Such honesty ran against all the Arkwright instincts.

Number 3. Storm Cone

On the Friday morning of the Winchester Spring Meeting, two hours at least before Christopher Haig began shaving with concentration and dreaming his dreams in his bathroom, Moggie Reilly slid away from the sweat-slippery nakedness of the young woman in his embrace and put a hand palm downwards on his alarm clock to cut off its clamour.

Moggie Reilly’s head throbbed with hangover, his mouth dry and sticky in the aftermath of too carefree a mixture of drinks. Moggie Reilly, jump jockey, was due to perform at his athletic peak that afternoon at Winchester racecourse in two hurdle races and one three-mile steeplechase but, meanwhile, the trainer he rode for — John Chester — was expecting him to turn out for morning exercise at least sober enough to sit upright in his saddle.

Friday morning was work day, meaning that horses strengthened their muscles at a full training gallop. Old hands like Moggie Reilly — as lithe as a cat and all of twenty-four — could ride work half asleep. That Friday he squinted into his own bathroom mirror as he sought to revive his gums with a toothbrush and summoned up at least an echo of the lighthearted grin that had enticed a young woman between his sheets when she should have been safe in her own bed on the other side of the racing town of Lambourn.

Sarah Driffield: now there was a girl. There was Sarah Drif-field, undeniably in his bed. Undeniably, also, he hadn’t spent the few horizontal hours of his night in total inactivity. What a waste, he thought regretfully, that he could remember so little of it clearly.

When he’d pulled on his riding clothes and made a pot of strong coffee, Sarah Driffield was on her feet, dressed and saying, ‘Tell me I didn’t do this. My father will kill me. How the hell do I get home unseen?’

The inquisitive eyes of Lambourn awoke with the dawn. The tongues wagged universally by evening. Sarah Driffield, daughter of the reigning champion trainer, did not seek publicity concerning her unplanned escapade with the wickedly persuasive jockey who rode for John Chester, her father’s most threatening rival.

Grinning but awake to the problem, Moggie Reilly handed her the keys to his car with instructions not to move out until the horse population had trotted off to the training grounds. He told her where to leave the car and where to hide its key, and he himself jogged on foot through the town to John Chester’s stable, which did his hovering hangover minor good.

Sarah Driffield! His whole mind laughed.

It had all been due to a birthday party they had both attended the evening before in The Stag, one of the Lambourn area’s best pubs. It had been due basically to the happy-go-lucky atmosphere throughout and specifically to the last round of drinks ordered by the host, that had mixed disastrously with earlier lager and whisky.

Tequila Slammers.

Never again, Moggie Reilly vowed. He seldom got drunk and hated hangovers. He remembered offering Sarah Driffield a lift home, but wasn’t clear how they had ended at his home, three and a half miles from The Stag, and not hers, barely one. In view of his alcoholic intake, Sarah Driffield had been driving.

Moggie Reilly, though within the top ten of jump jockeys, wouldn’t normally have looked on Sarah Driffield as possible kiss-and-cuddle material, admittedly on account of her father’s power, status and legendary fists. Percy Driffield’s well-known views on suitable company for his carefully educated nineteen-year-old only child excluded anybody who might hope to inherit his stable by marrying her. He was reported to have already frightened off shoals of minnows, and his daughter, no fool, used his universal disapproval as her umbrella against unwelcome advances. Which being so, jogged Moggie incredulously, which being so, how come the gorgeous Miss Driffield, the unofficial tiara-chosen Miss Lambourn, had climbed the Reilly stairs without protest?

John Chester observed the wince behind each step of his jockey’s arrival but did no more than shrug. The fast gallops got done to his satisfaction (all that mattered) and he offered a tactics-planning breakfast on his Winchester runners.

At shortly after eight-thirty, while Wendy Billington Innes, twenty miles away, still sat in frozen and helpless disbelief on her dressing stool, John Chester, bulky and aggressive, told his jockey that Storm Cone was to win the fourth race, the Cloister Hurdle, at all costs. Moggie must somehow achieve it.

John Chester had been doing his sums, and the prize money of the Cloister Hurdle would put him into leading position on the stakes-won trainers’ list. The big prizes were sparse at that time of year, as the main part of the jumping season was over: the very last was on the following day, Saturday, but Percy Driffield had no suitable runners. With luck John Chester could win the Cloister and stay ahead of Percy Driffield for the few weeks that were left.

John Chester ached to be leading trainer, and to humble Percy Driffield.

‘Find a way,’ he told his jockey, ‘of beating that bugger Lilyglit. He must have a weak spot somewhere.’

Moggie Reilly knew all about Lilyglit, having followed the bright chestnut twice past the winning post on other occasions. He doubted that Storm Cone would ever beat Lilyglit, but had more tact than to say so. He ate dry toast to keep his weight down and let John Chester’s wishful thinking roll over his head.

Sarah Driffield drove Moggie Reilly’s car back to park it outside The Stag, as he’d asked, and hid its key out of sight in a magnetic box.

As it was daylight she took the shorter path home across fields that she had shunned the previous midnight, and was sitting in the kitchen, showered, changed and eating breakfast when her father returned from seeing his horses gallop.

Percy Driffield, shedding jacket and helmet, merely asked if she’d had a good time at the birthday party.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she answered. ‘Moggie Reilly very kindly-drove me home.’

Her father frowned. ‘Don’t encourage him.’

‘No.’

Tequila Slammer, she thought. A pinch of salt on the tongue, toss back a jigger of neat tequila, suck a slice of lime. She had felt liberated. Sleeping with Moggie Reilly had become a fun and ‘why not?’ thing to do. She searched her conscience for guilt and came up with only a smile.

Percy Driffield talked compulsively about Lilyglit. ‘Damn fool owner wants to sell him. I’ve told him he needs to insure him, but he keeps putting it off. Why don’t very rich people insure things? Valuations invite crooks, he says. Jasper Billington Innes, nice enough, but daft. You’ve met him often, of course. I told him Lilyglit is a Champion Hurdle prospect, given another year. I can’t think what’s got into the man. He sounded panic-stricken on the phone yesterday evening, telling me to find a buyer at once. At least wait until after he wins the Cloister Hurdle, I said, but he’s afraid of Storm Cone, at better weights in the handicap. He seemed to think I could make some sort of suggestion to Storm Cone’s jockey. Not a chance. I told him to try it himself.’

His daughter raised her eyebrows over her cornflakes. If Moggie took a bribe she had finished with him, she thought.

Moggie ‘the cat’ Reilly, like many other jockeys, kept fit by regular running, and many, also, left their cars outside the pubs at night rather than be done for drink-driving, so no one paid any attention when Moggie jogged to The Stag, plucked his keys from their magnetic box and drove himself home.

When he walked through his door, the telephone began ringing: he picked up the receiver hoping the call would be short. He felt chilled, the warm jog ebbing. He wanted a hot shower and to sit in a warm woollen lumberjack sweater while he drank more coffee and read the newspapers.

A. high nervous hurried voice in his ear said, ‘I want to speak to Reilly. It’s Billington Innes here. Jasper... er... Billington Innes. I own Lilyglit... er... do you know who I mean?’

Moggie Reilly knew well. He said he was Reilly.

Yes. Well... er... I’m selling my horse.’ Billington Innes took a slow deep breath and tried to speak more slowly. ‘I’ve arranged a sale... top price of course... really an excellent sale...’

Moggie Reilly said briefly, ‘Congratulations.’

‘Yes, but, well, do you see, it’s a conditional sale.’

‘Mm?’ Moggie Reilly murmured, ‘Conditional on what?’

‘Well... actually, conditional on his winning this afternoon. Winning the Cloister Hurdle, to be precise...’

‘I see,’ Moggie said with calm, and indeed he did see.

Yes... well, Percy Driffield refused to approach you with this proposition, but...’ he spoke faster, ‘this is not a bribe I’m offering you, not at all. I wouldn’t do that, absolutely not.’

‘No,’ Moggie said.

‘What I’m offering, do you see,’ Jasper Billington Innes continued, coming awkwardly to the point, ‘is in the nature of commission. If my horse Lilyglit wins the Cloister Hurdle, I can finalise the sale on better terms, and... er, well, if you and Storm Cone could have assisted the result in any way, then you would have earned a commission, don’t you see?’

What I see, Moggie Reilly thought to himself, is a quick way to lose my licence. To Jasper Billington Innes he replied reassuringly, ‘Your horse Lilyglit is good enough to win without help.’

‘But think of the handicap. It alters everything. And last time out Lilyglit at level weights beat Storm Cone by only two lengths...’ The voice rose in worry.

‘Mr Billington Innes,’ Moggie Reilly said patiently, near to shivering, ‘there are eleven runners in the Cloister. Theoretically it’s anybody’s race because of the handicap, and if Storm Cone makes his way to the front, I shan’t stop him.’

‘Are you saying you won’t help me?’

‘I’m saying good luck.’

The phone went dead abruptly. Jasper Billington Innes, thought Moggie Reilly, as he headed, undressing, for the shower, was one of the last people he’d have expected to aim to win by flim-flam.

Moggie didn’t know, of course, about the manager at Stemmer Peabody.

Jasper Billington Innes sat beside the telephone, staring unseeingly at the carpet of a small hotel bedroom next door to his gaming club. The deal he had made with his bookmaker and the club proprietors no longer seemed so brilliant as at four in the morning, but he had to admit that they’d been fair and even kind. He’d realised too late, though, that Lilyglit had to win the Cloister Hurdle for him to be left with enough to hold up his head around town. In effect, if Lilyglit won, the prize money would go a long way towards paying his gambling debts. Lilyglit’s value would have risen and his sale would leave a useful surplus. If Lilyglit lost, his sale proceeds would be swallowed by debt. If he lost the race he would be worth less than he would fetch at that moment. His hard-pressed owner had agreed that the horse’s value should decline slightly with every length he was beaten.

Jasper saw betting on Lilyglit to win as a way out, but his bookmaker had shaken his head and refused to increase his debt.

Jasper Innes made a hopeless list of his other saleable assets, none of which were unentailed antiques or portraits. He and Wendy had both from childhood lived among precious objects that belonged for ever to the next generation. Even his old house, dying of rot, belonged to his son and his son and his son, for ever.

Jasper Billington Innes, until that morning, would never have tried to bribe a jockey. He was only vaguely aware of the graceful manner of Moggie’s refusal, and he could think of nothing except his own desolation.

He read again the newspaper assessment of the Cloister Hurdle that lay before him on his room-service breakfast tray.

Jasper swallowed hard and telephoned a friend who would know how to get in touch with the Arkwrights. He then reached and talked to Vernon Arkwright, who listened without excitement.

Jasper found it easier, the second time, to offer a ‘commission’. He almost believed in it himself.

‘What you want me to do,’ Vernon said, clarifying things baldly, ‘is to prevent Storm Cone from beating Lilyglit.’

‘Er...’

‘And I don’t get paid unless Lilyglit wins and I’ve in some way helped to bring that about. Is that right?’

‘Er... yes.’

Vernon Arkwright sighed. It wasn’t much of a proposition, but the only one they’d been offered.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it. But if you default on the agreement, I’ll report your offer to the stewards.’

Jasper wasn’t used to threats. Vernon Arkwright’s bluntness forced him to understand how far he’d travelled towards plain dishonesty. He felt humiliated and wretched. He wavered. He didn’t turn back.

He telephoned Percy Driffield and asked him to place a big bet for him on Lilyglit to win. Driffield, who had done this before, agreed without protest and telephoned his own bookmaker, who accepted the wager.

Christopher Haig, sitting at his table in the weighing-room, smiled at each jockey as he checked colours and number cloth.

Lilyglit, the favourite, was to be ridden as usual by the longtime champion steeplechase jockey: married, three children, a face well known to the public. Trainer Percy Driffield stood by, alert in case of trouble.

Next on the judge’s list came Vernon Arkwright, partner of Fable. Vernon Arkwright, though a villain from eyeballs to spleen, nevertheless amused Christopher Haig who fought to keep his grin within officially suitable limits. The stewards in Christopher Haig’s hearing had sworn to follow Fable every step of the way in the Cloister Hurdle with sword-sharp patrol camera lenses, trying to catch him in crime. Chris Haig thought of warning the jockey but, looking at Arkwright’s cheeky confidence, thought he probably knew.

Storm Cone’s jockey next. Moggie the cat, second generation Irish, agile in body, clever in mind, a honey trap for good-looking women and quite likely a future ambassador for the sport.

When he’d learned and checked off all the runners, Christopher Haig stood in the parade ring for a final familiarisation and watched the jockeys go out to race; watched them — young, thin and careless of danger — and envied them sorely. What if, he thought, what if I’d gone to a racing stable at sixteen, instead of school and university? What if it’s still not too late to learn stunt flying? To try wing-walking?

But it was already too late for both.

The judge’s box at Winchester races was situated in the main part of the grandstand, a storey above the stewards’ room and (of course) directly in line with the winning post.

On some tracks, particularly minor country ones, the judge’s box was down on the grass, itself marking the finishing line, but Christopher Haig preferred the height of places like Winchester, where one could look down on the course and distinguish more easily one speeding horse from another.

He climbed to his vantage point for the Cloister Hurdle and laid out his notes on the shelf thoughtfully provided by the window for the purpose. He had binoculars for watching the more distant parts of the mile-and-a-half circuit and an assistant whose job it was to announce ‘Photograph, photograph’ over the loudspeaker if the judge told him to: and the judge told him to whenever the leading horses finished within half a length of each other. The photo-finish camera at Winchester was operated by technicians in a room above the judge’s box.

Christopher Haig counted the horses as they cantered to the start: eleven, all correct. Through his binoculars he watched the horses circle and line up for the start. Lilyglit lined up on the inside rail and, when the starting tapes flew up, was effortlessly first and fast away.

Percy Driffield with Sarah beside him watched Lilyglit from the stands. Neither Jasper Billington Innes nor Wendy had found enough courage to appear on the racecourse. Driffield hoped Moggie Reilly would prove as honest as his reputation: his daughter pledged her life on it.

Wendy sat at home in front of the television set in her small private sitting-room with her fists clenched, her hair unbrushed and tear stains on her cheeks. Jasper hadn’t telephoned her and she didn’t know where he was. She had tried the bookmakers, the gaming club and the hotel. She had tried the telephone in his car. Jasper had left no messages anywhere and his wife was becoming afraid.

Lilyglit, always a front runner, sped over the first few flights of hurdles defying gravity like an impala fleeing a lion. Storm Cone lay fifth, with Fable behind him.

On the stands the Arkwrights — trainer and owner-cousin — cheerfully watched young Vernon set off in Moggie Reilly’s shadow with the secretly stated purpose of ending Storm Cone’s chances by flipping his jockey over the rails. With Storm Cone out of the way, Lilyglit had the best chance to win. Vernon Arkwright had no intention of letting anything else interfere with Lilyglit’s progress — except that if Fable himself should take unexpected wings... well then... allegiance to the prize money began at home.

Storm Cone’s owner with John Chester, his trainer, stood on the balcony of the owner’s private box up on the same level as the stewards’ eyrie, with no one to interfere with their view. The owner, almost as rich as Jasper had been a few days earlier, had been trying for several years to buy himself into leading-owner status, but he, as so many before him, had found that if money can’t buy love, neither can it lead in the winner of the Grand National.

John Chester had put all his skill into sending Storm Cone to this test with every piston smoothly firing. If Moggie Reilly gave away an unnecessary inch, and he, John Chester, lost his best and perhaps only chance of heading the trainers’ list, he thought he would probably kill him.

Down on the turf emotions were simpler. To the champion jockey, comfortable on his regular partner, Lilyglit, it was just another race, which he would win if all went well. He liked front-runners. Lilyglit jumped the hurdles cleanly.

To Moggie Reilly also, it was just another race, though he would strain to give John Chester his championship if Lilyglit blinked. Storm Cone telegraphed vigour and good feeling through the reins, the best of signs for his rider

The eleven runners stretched out past the stands first time round, and swung round the top bend to set out on the last mile. Christopher Haig watched them, counted them, checked that Lilyglit still led on the inside.

It was on the curve at the top of the long bend, where the horses were backside-on to the stewards and half hidden by white rails, that Vernon Arkwright put his hand under Moggie Reilly’s boot and heaved upwards with all his strength.

Moggie Reilly, fiercely unbalanced, felt his foot fly out of the stirrup as his head swung inexorably over the horse’s withers and down towards the thundering shoulder and the ground below. Moggie’s fingers locked in the horse’s mane. His weight was all on one side of the great creature surging beneath him. He had dropped his whip. There was a flight of hurdles ahead, as soon as one got round the bend.

Vernon Arkwright couldn’t believe that Moggie Reilly was still technically in the saddle, even though clinging there with his fingernails and with his centre of gravity a yard off sideways. Moggie the cat let Storm Cone put himself as right as possible to jump the hurdle ahead, and fatalistically accepted that he would probably be thrown off into the path of the other half-ton runners, all striving to hold their positions at thirty miles an hour.

He said afterwards that it was an acute fear of falling among hooves that kept him bumping along round Storm Cone’s neck, hanging on literally for life, forcing every muscle he could command to avoid being trampled. Ten strides, not more, before he reached the lethal row of wood-and-birch lattice jumps ahead, a hand stretched down, grasped the bright nylon cloth of his scarlet-and-orange striped shirt, and hauled him upwards.

Moggie Reilly’s heroic saviour, partnering one of the eventual also-rans, shrugged off his action later with, ‘You’d have done it for me, mate’. What he did at the time was to give Moggie Reilly precious seconds in which to grasp the saddle-tree, throw his legs astride Storm Cone and lurch into some sort of equilibrium before his mount bunched his quarters and shot over the hazardous hurdles as if powered by rockets.

Moggie Reilly had no hands on the reins nor feet in the stirrups, but his will to win persisted. Storm Cone had lost maybe ten lengths behind Lilyglit, but both the horse and his rider, not ready for defeat, flattened their aerodynamic profile and accelerated determinedly down the far side. Moggie collected and shortened the reins, the horse grateful for the control. Round the final bend they raced resolutely into clear second place, with only Lilyglit still there to beat.

Vernon Arkwright cursed hugely, seeing no hope of catching Storm Cone again for another attack. Up in the stewards’ box, the three eminent gentlemen there were clapping each other on the shoulder and almost hopping around with joy. They had all plainly seen Vernon Arkwright’s attack on Moggie Reilly, bottom-end on or not. The patrol camera would have filmed it, and wouldn’t lie. This time, this time, they had caught out Vernon Arkwright in a thoroughly visible misdemeanor, and they would hold another enquiry, and this time shunt the villain off.

Christopher Haig, one storey above them, marvelled that Moggie Reilly, without his feet in the stirrups, was still on board at all, even though, with Lilyglit well ahead coming to the final hurdle, he had no hope of winning. Tiring, indeed, Storm Cone would find it difficult, Chris Haig thought from his long judging experience, to hang on to finish second. Two horses he had passed were closing on him again.

That clear assessment was Christopher Haig’s last coherent thought.

He saw Lilyglit approach the final flight of hurdles. He saw the horse make a rare mistake in taking off too soon to reach the far side without stumbling. He saw Lilyglit’s nose go down in the classic pattern of fallers... and before Lilyglit had crashed to the ground at high speed, his own heart had stopped.

The judge’s assistant had no medical knowledge and was hardly a fast thinker on his feet. When Christopher Haig collapsed beside him into a graceless sprawled-leg heap on the floor, the assistant bent over him in horror and didn’t know what to do.

He’d heard Chris Haig’s head crunch onto the floorboards of the judge’s box, and he heard also the brief rattle of the last lungful of air escaping. He saw Chris Haig’s face flush suddenly to a greyish dark blue. He saw the dark colour vanish and the skin fade to white. He loosened Christopher Haig’s adventurous tie in shaking shock and several times called his name.

Christopher Haig’s eyelids were partly open, but neither he nor his devastated assistant witnessed the close finish of the Cloister Hurdle. No one called ‘Photograph, photograph’ over the loudspeaker. No one announced the winner.

One of the stewards with presence of mind ran up the stairs to the judge’s box to complain crossly about the silence. The sight of Chris Haig’s immobile body temporarily clogged his own tongue instead. A man of experience, he knew irreversible death when he saw it and, having conclusively checked on the absence of pulse in the Haig neck, he sent the assistant to fetch the doctor and hurried downstairs again with the unthinkable news.

‘We, as stewards,’ he told his fellows, ‘will have to determine the winner from the photo-finish recording. As you know, it’s in the basic rules.’ He called on the intercom for the technicians to furnish a print of the moment when the leading horses crossed the line, saying he needed it quickly.

A. technician appeared fast, but red faced and empty handed. In deep embarrassment he explained that the former trouble had re-surfaced, and the photo system had scrambled itself just when Lilyglit lay in front, before the last hurdle, two furlongs from home.

The stewards, dumbfounded, were advised by the Stipendiary Steward — the official interpreter at the meeting of all Rules of Racing- that in the absence of the judge (and Christopher Haig, being dead, could be classed as absent) and in the absence of photo-finish evidence (the equipment having malfunctioned) the stewards themselves could announce who had won.

The stewards looked at each other. One of them was certain Storm Cone had won by a nose. One thought Moggie Reilly had tired and had let Storm Cone fall back in the last two strides. One of them had been looking down the course to see if the motionless Lilyglit had broken his neck.

In confusion they announced over the broadcasting system that there would be a Stewards’ Enquiry.

The Tote, in the absence of an announced winner, had refused to pay out at all. Bookmakers were shouting odds on every outcome but the right one. Media people scurried round with microphones at the ready.

Television cameras, perched near the roof of the stands, favoured a slightly blurred dead-heat.

The two other jockeys involved in the close finish believed that Storm Cone had beaten them by an inch, but their opinion wasn’t required.

Moggie had ridden most of the race without his feet in the stirrups (as Tim Brookshaw once did in the Grand National). He’d knelt on Storm Cone’s withers and squeezed with the calves of his legs and kept his balance precariously over the hurdles. It had been a great feat of riding and he deserved the cheers that greeted his return. He was sure he had won despite everything, and he would personally get even one day, he thought, with that crazy dangerous Arkwright.

John Chester, Storm Cone’s trainer, who couldn’t imagine why the judge hadn’t called for a photograph, had no doubt at all that his horse had won. The owner, with pride, led his excited winner and his exhausted jockey into the enclosure allocated to the victor and received provisional compliments. John Chester savoured the exquisite joy of for once, and at last, dislodging Percy Driffield from his arrogant pinnacle as top trainer. John Chester preened.

Percy Driffield himself cared not a peanut at that moment for John Chester or the trainers’ championship. His dazed jockey had been collected uninjured by ambulance, but Lilyglit still lay ominously flat on the landing side of the last flight of hurdles, and as he ran down the course towards him the trainer’s mind was filled only with grief. Lilyglit, fast and handsome, was the horse he loved most in his stable.

On the stands, his daughter Sarah stood watching her father’s terrible urgency and was torn between pity for him and admiration for Moggie’s skill. Along with all the knowledgeable race crowd, she’d seen the empty stirrups swinging wildly as Storm Cone had jumped the hurdles and sped to the finish.

Percy Driffield reached the prostrate Lilyglit and went down on his knees beside him. His own breath shortened and practically deserted him when he found the brilliant chestnut still alive, and realised that the crash to the ground had been so fast and hard that it had literally knocked all the air out of the horse’s lungs. The term ‘winded’ sounded relatively minor: the reality could be frightening. Lilyglit needed time for his shocked chest muscles to regain a breathing rhythm and, while Percy Driffield stroked his neck, the horse suddenly heaved in a gust of air, and in a moment more had staggered to his feet, unharmed.

There was a cheer from the distant stands. Lilyglit was near to an idol.

Wendy Billington Innes, clutching a wet handkerchief in her sitting-room, had believed Lilyglit had died, even though the television race commentator, still stalwartly filling up air-time for viewers, had discussed ‘winded’ as a cause for hope. When Lilyglit stood up, Wendy Billington Innes wept again, this time with relief. Jasper, wherever he was — and she still hadn’t reached him — would rejoice that the hurdler he worshipped had survived.

Back on the racecourse Vernon Arkwright, disgruntled, reckoned the whole Cloister enterprise had been a waste of time. True, he had stopped Storm Cone from beating Lilyglit, but Lilyglit hadn’t won anyway. Vernon thought his chances of being paid his ‘commission’ by Jasper Billington Innes were slim to nowhere, which was unfair when one took into account the risk involved.

Vernon had chosen the top bend on the course for his attack because the curve of the rail and the horses bunched end-on behind him there would hide his swift move on Moggie. He didn’t know and couldn’t expect that the runners to his rear would unexpectedly part like curtains, revealing him nakedly to the patrol camera’s busy lens.

The racing authorities had for several years yearned for damningly clear evidence of Arkwright skulduggery. Now they had almost enough for attempted manslaughter. They couldn’t believe their luck.

In the stewards’ room, film from various other patrol cameras flickered on the screen. Hurriedly the officials viewed the head-on pictures that would reveal bumping incidents during the finishing furlong. In this case there weren’t any, but neither was there any firm indication as to which horse had crossed the line first.

The side-on patrol camera nearest to the winning post showed Storm Cone probably a short head in front, but that particular camera was positioned a few yards short of the finishing line and couldn’t be relied on for last-second decisions.

It seemed there was nothing in the rule book giving the incident-gathering patrol cameras ultimate authority in proclaiming the winner.

The doctor, summoned to the stewards’ anxious enquiry, confirmed that Christopher Haig was dead and had died, according to the judge’s assistant, well before Storm Cone or any other horse had reached the finishing line. The actual cause of death would depend on post-mortem findings.

The Stipendiary Steward, having consulted the Jockey Club big-wigs in London as well as his own soul, told the three officiating stewards that they would have to declare the race void.

Void.

It was announced that the race had been declared void primarily because of the death of the judge. All bets were off. Money staked would be repaid.

The word ‘void’ reverberated round the racecourse, and John Chester in a fury barged into the weighing-room like a tank, insisting his horse had won, demanding to be credited with Storm Cone’s prize money, dogmatically asserting that he had dislodged Driffield at the top of the trainers’ list.

Sorry, sorry, he was told. Void meant void. Void meant that the race was judged not to have taken place. No one had won any prize money, which meant that Percy Driffield was still ahead on the list.

John Chester lost control and yelled with rage.

Moggie Reilly, who believed that he and Storm Cone had certainly won on the line, shrugged philosophically over the loss of his percentage of the winner’s prize. Poor old Christopher Haig, he thought; and couldn’t know on that Friday that his own exalted riding and his trustworthiness had won him both huge upward moves in his career and also the lasting devotion of the divine Sarah Driffield, the toast of all Lambourn; his future wife.

The worst gnashing of teeth came from the stewards themselves. They could hardly believe it! They had in their hands and before their mesmerised eyes a clear sharp film showing Vernon Arkwright stretching his hand out under the heel of Moggie Reilly’s boot and jerking upwards with all his strength. They could see the force. They could see Moggie Reilly rise in the air and then plunge down over his horse’s shoulder, clinging on for life with only taut-pulled tendons to save himself.

They could see it all... and now the Stipendiary Steward — the uncontestable interpreter of the Rules of Racing — now he was telling these three in-charge stewards that they couldn’t use either the patrol camera film or the evidence of their own eyes. They couldn’t accuse Vernon Arkwright of any sort of misdeed, because the Cloister Handicap Hurdle was deemed never to have taken place. If the race was void, so were its sins.

Void meant void in all respects.

Too bad. Couldn’t be helped. Rules were rules.

‘Dear God, Christopher,’ the competent steward thought, calling on his friend the judge, ‘why didn’t your heart beat just five minutes longer?’

Haig’s death prevented John Chester from becoming top trainer (ever).

Haig’s death saved Vernon Arkwright (that spring) from being warned-off. Amazed by his luck he prudently ‘forgot’ the reason for his (now voided) assault on Moggie. It was definitely not the moment to say he’d agreed to be bribed.

Christopher Haig’s death, in keeping Vernon Arkwright quiet, saved Jasper Billington Innes his untainted reputation.

Jasper himself, grindingly unhappy, watched Winchester’s fourth race on banks of rectangular screens in a shop selling television sets. Large and small, the sets showed identical action, but all were silent. The shop favoured pop music to bring in trade: loud music, throbbing with a heavy bass beat, wholly at odds with the cool pictures of horses and riders moving round the parade ring, anonymous in their absence of commentary.

Jasper asked a shop helper for sound with the races. Sure, he was told, but the music continued unabated.

With a feeling of unreality, Jasper watched the runners go down to the start for the Cloister Handicap Hurdle. His own beautiful Lilyglit moved fluidly, packed with power. Jasper’s jumbled feelings tore him apart. However could he have doubted his horse would win? However could he have been ready to let him win dishonestly? Jasper wanted to believe that his telephone call to Vernon Arkwright hadn’t happened. He tried to convince himself that Arkwright wouldn’t be able to do anything anyway to impede Storm Cone. Not Storm Cone or any other horse. Lilyglit would win without help... he had to win to pay the debts... but the weights favoured Storm Cone... and if Moggie Reilly couldn’t be bought, he had to be stopped...

Jasper’s thoughts pendulumed from self-loathing to self-justification, from belief in Lilyglit to a vision of poverty. He’d never in his life earned even a bus fare — he rarely went on a bus — and he’d had no training in anything. How could he provide for a wife and four children? And how deep ran his belief in his own honour when at the first test it had crumbled? When his first solution to financial heartbreak had been to bribe a jockey?

On the multiple silent screens the Cloister runners lined up and set off, with Lilyglit fast away and setting the pace as usual.

Nothing bad would happen, Jasper told himself. Lilyglit would stay in front all the way. He watched the close-up of his favourite crossing the winning line first time round, and saw him set off round the top bend, only his rump-end clearly showing.

The television camera operator, focusing on Lilyglit, missed Vernon Arkwright’s swerve towards Storm Cone but, with a wild swing of his lens caught the moment when Moggie Reilly, unbalanced, flew out of his saddle. Mostly hidden though he was by white rails, by Storm Cone himself, and by other horses, Moggie Reilly, in his scarlet and orange silks, could be glimpsed struggling, and finally with help, winning his fight against gravity. The banks of screens showed him jumping the next flight of hurdles without control of reins or stirrups and then, immediate story over, swung back to the leader, to Lilyglit, now far and by many lengths established in the lead.

Jasper’s whole body went cold with sweat. His mind refused to accept what his eyes had seen. He couldn’t... he couldn’t have offered to pay to have Moggie Reilly put in danger of hideous injury... it was impossible.

And Moggie Reilly was still there, on his horse, without his feet in the stirrups, but still trying to make up lost ground, still trying to catch the five or six runners ahead, but with no hope of winning.

Vernon Arkwright had dropped back out of television sight, his task accomplished. The screens all switched to Lilyglit galloping alone, uncatchable now and stretching with long sweeping strides towards the last hurdle.

I’ve won, Jasper thought, and felt little joy in it.

Lilyglit fell.

Lilyglit lay inert on the green turf.

The television picture switched to the finish. Storm Cone’s violent colours flashed there inconclusively, and after a moment the focus was back on Lilyglit, still unmoving, looking dead.

Jasper Billington Innes all but fainted in the shop

Somewhere in the depth of the store a control button, pressed, changed the racing programme to a children’s tea-time frolic. Three walls full of identical cartoon characters wobbled about simultaneously, uttering unheard squeaks and platitudes. They drew in a laughing audience (which the racing had not) but the thump-thump deafening background music drummed on and on.

Jasper walked dizzily out of the store and on jerky uncoordinated legs made his way back towards the multi-storey park where he’d left his car when he’d decided where to go to watch the Cloister.

He unlocked the car door and in mental agony sat in the driver’s seat listing again his dreadful woes.

Lilyglit — he couldn’t bear it — was dead. Dead, uninsured, worth nothing: and he was now heavily in debt to Percy Driffield for his last desperate bet.

Vernon Arkwright, hauled before the stewards, would testify that Jasper had bribed him to put Moggie Reilly’s life in danger.

Jasper realised that he might himself be warned-off. Might suffer that ultimate disgrace. He was drowning in unpayable debt, and he had lost his wife’s fortune. But it was his inner awareness of dishonour that had most shattered his self-respect.

Not for the first time, he thought of killing himself.

Wendy Billington Innes had dried her tears and stiffened her backbone at the sight of Lilyglit walking safely back unhurt, and a short time later she listened half in relief and half in horror to a trainer-to-owner telephone call from Percy Driffield.

‘You do understand, don’t you?’ he asked, as she fell silent.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

‘Tell Jasper that everything about that race is void. Everything. Including his bet.’

‘All right.’

‘A void race shouldn’t detract very much from Lilyglit’s value... and tell Jasper I’ve a buyer for him in my own yard. I frankly don’t want to lose that horse.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Wendy said, disconnecting, and started again for the third time trying everywhere she could think of to find her husband.

No one had seen him since breakfast. The fear she’d been smothering all day rose sharply and prodded her towards panic.

She knew that Jasper had unbending pride. Below the sweet-natured exterior lived a man of serious honour, and it was this uprightness that had attracted her years ago.

Stemmer Peabody had smashed Jasper’s pride. He would hate ruin as if it were despicable. He might find it too much to bear.

She had twice phoned Jasper’s car, but he hadn’t answered. The car phone service was rigged to speak messages aloud when the ignition was switched on, but her pleas to Jasper to phone her back had gone unanswered. That didn’t mean he hadn’t heard them. She feared he’d ignored them and wiped them off.

With nowhere else offering the slightest hope she tried his car again.

‘Leave a message...’

She cursed the disembodied voice and spoke from her heart.

‘Jasper, if you can hear me, listen... Listen. Lilyglit is alive, he fell, but he was only winded. He’s unharmed... listen... and Percy Driffield has a buyer. And that whole race was declared void because the judge died before the finish. Nothing that happened in the race counts. Nothing, do you understand? Percy Driffield told me to tell you particularly. All bets are void. So Jasper... my dear, my dear, come home... We’ll get by... I quite like cooking and looking after the children... but we all need you... Come home... please come home...’ She stopped abruptly, feeling that she’d been talking to the empty air, pointlessly.

Jasper, indeed, didn’t hear her. With the car’s ignition still turned off, the message machine remained silent.

Jasper in black humour couldn’t decide how to kill himself. He had no piece of tubing for carbon monoxide. He knew of no cliffs to jump over. He had no knife for his wrists. Dying didn’t seem easy. Never a handyman, he sat uselessly trying to work it out. Meanwhile, he found an old envelope in a door pocket and in total despair but no haste wrote a farewell note.

After that he decided to find a good solid tree somewhere and accelerate head-on into a killing crash.

He slotted the car key into the ignition to start the engine...and the car phone message service spoke Wendy’s words aloud, as if she were there by his side.

Utterly stunned, Jasper Billington Innes played his wife’s message three times.

Gradually he understood that Lilyglit lived, that his bet with Percy Driffield was void, and that neither he nor Vernon Arkwright would be charged with breaking racing law.

He trembled for long unwinding minutes.

He realised he was undeservedly being given a second chance and would never get a third.

He tore up the envelope, and drove slowly home.

Officially, nothing that had happened in the Cloister Handicap Hurdle was deemed to have happened.

Nothing... except the death of Christopher Haig.