Field of 13

Carrot for a Chestnut

Out of the blue in 1970 I was invited by the prestigious American magazine Sports Illustrated to write a short story for them — length and subject matter to be my own choice. I hadn’t at that time ever attempted a short story but the result, Carrot for a Chestnut, must have seemed OK to their editors, because they invited me to stay in Lexington with the Sports Illustrated team assembled there to cover the 1972 Kentucky Derby. I was commissioned to write a Derby-day story for the Kentucky Derby issue the following year.

Chick stood and sweated with the carrot in his hand. His head seemed-to be floating and he couldn’t feel his feet on the ground, and the pulse thudded massively in his ear. A clammy green pain shivered in his gut.

Treachery was making him sick.

The time: fifty minutes before sunrise. The morning: cold. The raw swirling wind was clearing its throat for a fiercer blow, and a heavy layer of nimbo-stratus was fighting every inch of the way against the hint of light. In the neat box stalls round the stable-yard the dozing horses struck a random hoof against a wooden wall, rattled a tethering chain, sneezed the hay dust out of a moist black nostril.

Chick was late. Two hours late. He’d been told to give the carrot to the lanky chestnut at four o’clock in the morning, but at four o’clock in the morning it had been pouring with rain — hard, slanting rain that soaked a man to the skin in one minute flat, and Chick had reckoned it would be too difficult explaining away a soaking at four o’clock in the morning. Chick had reckoned it would be better to wait until the rain stopped, it couldn’t make any difference. Four o’clock, six o’clock, what the hell. Chick always knew better than anyone else.

Chick was a thin, disgruntled nineteen-year-old who always felt the world owed him more than he got. He had been a bad-tempered, argumentative child and an aggressively rebellious adolescent. The resulting snarling habit of mind was precisely what was now hindering his success as an adult. Not that Chick would have agreed, of course. Chick never agreed with anyone if he could help it. Always knew better, did Chick.

He was unprepared for the severity of the physical symptoms of fear. His usual attitude towards any form of authority was scorn (and authority had not so far actually belted him one across his sulky mouth). Horses had never scared him because he had been born to the saddle and had grown up mastering everything on four legs with contemptuous ease. He believed in his heart that no one could really ride better than he could. He was wrong.

He looked apprehensively over his shoulder, and the shifting pain in his stomach sharply intensified. He had a fierce urge to defecate. That simply couldn’t happen, he thought wildly. He’d heard about people’s bowels getting loose with fear. He hadn’t believed it. It couldn’t happen. Now, all of a sudden, he feared it could. He tightened all his muscles desperately, and the spasm slowly passed. It left fresh sweat standing out all over his skin and no saliva in his mouth.

The house was dark. Upstairs, behind the black open window with the pale curtain flapping in the spartan air, slept Arthur Morrison, trainer of the forty-three racehorses in the stables below. Morrison habitually slept lightly. His ears were sharper than half a dozen guard dogs’, his stable-hands said.

Chick forced himself to turn his head away, to walk in view of that window, to take the ten exposed steps down to the chestnut’s stall.

If the guv’nor woke up and saw him... Gawd, he thought furiously, he hadn’t expected it to be like this. Just a lousy walk down the yard to give a carrot to the gangly chestnut. Guilt and fear and treachery. They bypassed his sneering mind and erupted through his nerves instead.

He couldn’t see anything wrong with the carrot. It hadn’t been cut in half and hollowed out and packed with drugs and tied together again. He’d tried pulling the thick end out like a plug, and that hadn’t worked either. The carrot just looked like any old carrot, any old carrot you’d watch your Ma chop up to put in a stew. Any old carrot you’d give to any old horse. Not a very young, succulent carrot or a very aged carrot, knotted and woody. Just any old ordinary carrot.

But strangers didn’t proposition you to give any old carrot to one special horse in the middle of the night. They didn’t give you more than you earned in half a year when you said you’d do it. Any old carrot didn’t come wrapped carefully alone in a polythene bag inside an empty cheese-biscuit packet, given to you by a stranger in a car park after dark in a town six miles from the stables. You didn’t give any old carrot in the middle of the night to a chestnut who was due to start favourite in a high-class steeplechase eleven hours later.

Chick was getting dizzy with holding his breath by the time he’d completed the ten tiptoed steps to the chestnut’s stall. Trying not to cough, not to groan, not to let out the strangling tension in a sob, he curled his sweating fingers around the bolt and began the job of easing it out, inch by frightening inch, from its socket.

By day, he slammed the bolts open and shut with a smart practised flick. His body shook in the darkness with the strain of moving by fractions.

The bolt came free with the tiniest of grating noises, and the top half of the split door swung slowly outwards. No squeaks from the hinges, only the whisper of metal on metal. Chick drew in a long breath like a painful, trickling, smothered gasp and let it out between clamped teeth. His stomach lurched again, threateningly. He took another quick, appalled grip on himself and thrust his arm in a panic through the dark, open space.

Inside the stall, the chestnut was asleep, dozing on his feet. The changing swirl of air from the opening door moved the sensitive hairs around his muzzle and raised his mental state from semiconsciousness to inquisitiveness. He could smell the carrot. He could also smell the man: smell the fear in the man’s sweat.

‘Come on,’ Chick whispered desperately. ‘Come on, then, boy.’

The horse moved his nose around towards the carrot and finally, reluctantly, his feet. He took the carrot indifferently from the man’s trembling palm, whiffling it in with his black mobile lips, scrunching it languidly with large rotations of jaw. When he had swallowed all the pulped-up bits, he poked his muzzle forward for more. But there was no more, just the lighter square of sky darkening again as the door swung shut, just the faint sounds of the bolt going back, just the fading smell of the man and the passing taste of carrot. Presently he forgot about it and turned slowly round again so that his hindquarters were towards the door, because he usually stood that way, and after a minute or two he blinked slowly, rested his near hind leg lazily on the point of the hoof and lapsed back into twilight mindlessness.

Down in his stomach the liquid narcotic compound with which the carrot had been injected to saturation gradually filtered out of the digesting carrot cells and began to be absorbed into the bloodstream. The process was slow and progressive. And it had started two hours late.

Arthur Morrison stood in his stable-yard watching his men load the chestnut into the motor horsebox that was to take him to the races. He was eyeing the proceedings with an expression that was critical from habit and bore little relation to the satisfaction in his mind. The chestnut was the best horse in his stable: a frequent winner, popular with the public, a source of prestige as well as revenue. The big steeplechase at Cheltenham had been tailor-made for him from the day its conditions had been published, and Morrison was adept at producing a horse in peak condition for a particular race. No one seriously considered that the chestnut would be beaten. The newspapers had tipped it to a man and the bookmakers were fighting shy at 6–4 on. Morrison allowed himself a glimmer of warmth in the eyes and a twitch of smile to the lips as the men clipped shut the heavy doors of the horsebox and drove it out of the yard.

These physical signs were unusual. The face he normally wore was a compound of concentration and disapproval in roughly equal proportions. Both qualities contributed considerably to his success as a racehorse trainer and to his unpopularity as a person, a fact Morrison himself was well aware of. He didn’t in the least care that almost no one liked him. He valued success and respect much more highly than love and held in incredulous contempt all those who did not.

Across the yard Chick was watching the horsebox drive away, his usual scowl in place. Morrison frowned irritably. The boy was a pest, he thought. Always grousing, always impertinent, always trying to scrounge up more money. Morrison didn’t believe in boys having life made too easy: a little hardship was good for the soul. Where Morrison and Chick radically differed was the point at which each thought hardship began.

Chick spotted the frown and watched Morrison fearfully, his guilt pressing on him like a rock. He couldn’t know, he thought frantically. He couldn’t even suspect there was anything wrong with the horse or he wouldn’t have let him go off to the races. The horse had looked all right, too. Absolutely his normal self. Perhaps there had been nothing wrong with the carrot... Perhaps it had been the wrong carrot, even... Chick glanced around uneasily and knew very well he was fooling himself. The horse might look all right but he wasn’t.

Arthur Morrison saddled up his horse at the races, and Chick watched him from ten nervous paces away, trying to hide in the eager crowd that pushed forward for a close view of the favourite. There was a larger admiring crowd outside the chestnut’s saddling stall than for any of the other seven runners, and the bookmakers had shortened their odds. Behind Morrison’s concentrated expression an itch of worry was growing insistent. He pulled the girth tight and adjusted the buckles automatically, acknowledging to himself that his former satisfaction had changed to anxiety. The horse was not himself. There were no lively stamping feet, no playful nips from the teeth, no response to the crowd; this was a horse that usually played to the public like a film star. He couldn’t be feeling well, and if he wasn’t feeling well he wouldn’t win. Morrison tightened his mouth. If the horse were not well enough to win, he would prefer him not to run at all. To be beaten at odds-on would be a disgrace. A defeat on too large a scale. A loss of face. Particularly as Morrison’s own eldest son Toddy was to be the jockey. The newspapers would tear them both to pieces.

Morrison came to a decision and sent for the vet.

The rules of jump racing in England stated quite clearly that if a horse had been declared a runner in a race, only the say-so of a veterinary surgeon was sufficient grounds for withdrawing him during the last three-quarters of an hour before post time. The Cheltenham racecourse veterinary surgeon came and looked at the chestnut and, after consulting with Morrison, led it off to a more private stall and took its temperature.

‘His temperature’s normal,’ the vet assured Morrison.

‘I don’t like the look of him.’

‘I can’t find anything wrong.’

‘He’s not well,’ Morrison insisted.

The vet pursed his lips and shook his head. There was nothing obviously wrong with the horse, and he knew he would be in trouble himself if he allowed Morrison to withdraw so hot a favourite on such slender grounds. Not only that, this was the third application for withdrawal he’d had to consider that afternoon. He had refused both the others, and the chestnut was certainly in no worse a state.

‘He’ll have to run,’ the vet said positively, making up his mind.

Morrison was furious and went raging off to find a steward, who came and looked at the chestnut and listened to the vet and confirmed that the horse would have to run whether Morrison liked it or not. Unless, that was, Morrison cared to involve the horse’s absent owner in paying a heavy fine?

With a face of granite Morrison resaddled the chestnut, and a stable-lad led him out into the parade ring, where most of the waiting public cheered and a few wiser ones looked closely and hurried off to hedge their bets.

With a shiver of dismay, Chick saw the horse reappear and for the first time regretted what he’d done. That stupid vet, he thought violently. He can’t see what’s under his bloody nose, he couldn’t see a barn at ten paces. Anything that happened from then on was the vet’s fault, Chick thought. The vet’s responsibility, absolutely. The man was a criminal menace, letting a horse run in a steeplechase with dope coming out of its eyeballs.

Toddy Morrison had joined his father in the parade ring and together they were watching with worried expressions as the chestnut plodded lethargically around the oval walking track. Toddy was a strong, stocky professional jockey in his late twenties with an infectious grin and a generous view of life that represented a direct rejection of his father’s. He had inherited the same strength of mind but had used it to leave home at eighteen to ride races for other trainers, and had only consented to ride for his father when he could dictate his own terms. Arthur Morrison, in consequence, respected him deeply. Between them they had won a lot of races.

Chick didn’t actually dislike Toddy Morrison, even though, as he saw it, Toddy stood in his way. Occasionally Arthur let Chick ride a race if Toddy had something better or couldn’t make the weight. Chick had to share these scraps from Toddy’s table with two or three other lads in the yard who were, though he didn’t believe it, as good as he was in the saddle. But though the envy curdled around inside him and the snide remarks came out sharp and sour as vinegar, he had never actually come to hate Toddy. There was something about Toddy that you couldn’t hate, however good the reason. Chick hadn’t given thought to the fact that it would be Toddy who would have to deal with the effects of the carrot. He had seen no further than his own pocket. He wished now that it had been some other jockey. Anyone but Toddy.

The conviction suddenly crystallised in Chick’s mind as he looked at Toddy and Morrison standing there worried in the parade ring that he had never believed the chestnut would actually start in the race. The stranger, Chick said to himself, had distinctly told him the horse would be too sick to start. I wouldn’t have done it, else, Chick thought virtuously. I wouldn’t have done it. It’s bloody dangerous, riding a doped steeplechaser. I wouldn’t have done that to Toddy. It’s not my fault he’s going to ride a doped steeplechaser, it’s that vet’s fault for not seeing. It’s that stranger’s fault, he told me distinctly the horse wouldn’t be fit to start...

Chick remembered with an unpleasant jerk that he’d been two hours late with the carrot. Maybe if he’d been on time the drug would have come out more and the vet would have seen...

Chick jettisoned this unbearable theory instantly on the grounds that no one can tell how seriously any particular horse will react to a drug or how quickly it will work, and he repeated to himself the comforting self-delusion that the stranger had promised him the horse wouldn’t even start — though the stranger had not in fact said any such thing. The stranger, who was at the races, was entirely satisfied with the way things were going and was on the point of making a great deal of money.

The bell rang for the jockeys to mount. Chick bunched his hands in his pockets and tried not to visualise what could happen to a rider going over jumps at thirty miles an hour on a doped horse. Chick’s body began playing him tricks again: he could feel the sweat trickling down his back and the pulse had come back in his ears.

Supposing he told them, he thought. Supposing he just ran out there into the ring and told Toddy not to ride the horse, it hadn’t a chance of jumping properly, it was certain to fall, it could kill him bloody easily because its reactions would be all shot to bits.

Supposing he did. The way they’d look at him. His imagination blew a fuse and blanked out on that picture because such a blast of contempt didn’t fit in with his overgrown self-esteem. He could not, could not face the fury they would feel. And it might not end there. Even if he told them and saved Toddy’s life, they might tell the police. He wouldn’t put it past them. And he could end up in the dock. Even in jail. They weren’t going to do that to him, not to him. He wasn’t going to give them the chance. He should have been paid more. Paid more because he was worth more. If he’d been paid more, he wouldn’t have needed to take the stranger’s money. Arthur Morrison had only himself to blame.

Toddy would have to risk it. After all, the horse didn’t look too bad, and the vet had passed it, hadn’t he, and maybe the carrot being two hours late was all to the good and it wouldn’t have done its work properly yet, and in fact it was really thanks to Chick if it hadn’t; only thanks to him that the drug was two hours late and that nothing much would happen, really, anyway. Nothing much would happen. Maybe the chestnut wouldn’t actually win, but Toddy would come through all right. Of course he would.

The jockeys swung up into their saddles, Toddy among them. He saw Chick in the crowd, watching, and sketched an acknowledging wave. The urge to tell and the fear of telling tore Chick apart like the Chinese trees.

Toddy gathered up the reins and clicked his tongue and steered the chestnut indecisively out on to the track. He was disappointed that the horse wasn’t feeling well but not in the least apprehensive. It hadn’t occurred to him, or to Arthur Morrison, that the horse might be doped. He cantered down to the post standing in his stirrups, replanning his tactics mentally now that he couldn’t rely on reserves in his mount. It would be a difficult race now to win. Pity.

Chick watched him go. He hadn’t come to his decision, to tell or not to tell. The moment simply passed him by. When Toddy had gone, he unstuck his leaden feet and plodded off to the stands to watch the race, and in every corner of his mind little self-justifications sprang up like nettles. A feeling of shame tried to creep in round the edges, but he kicked it out smartly. They should have paid him more. It was their fault, not his.

He thought about the wad of notes the stranger had given him with the carrot. Money in advance. The stranger had trusted him, which was more than most people seemed to. He’d locked himself into the bathroom and counted the notes, counted them twice, and they were all there, just as the stranger had promised. He had never had so much money all at once in his life before... Perhaps he never would again, he thought. And if he’d told Arthur Morrison and Toddy about the dope, he would have to give up that money, give up the money and more...

Finding somewhere to hide the money had been difficult. The bundle of used notes had turned out to be quite bulky, and he didn’t want to risk his Ma poking around among his things, like she did, and coming across them. He’d solved the problem temporarily by rolling them up and putting them in a brightly coloured round tin which once held toffees but which he used for years for storing brushes and polish for cleaning his shoes. He had covered the money with a duster and jammed the tin back on the shelf in his bedroom where it always stood. He thought he would probably have to find somewhere safer, in the end. And he’d have to be careful how he spent the money — there would be too many questions asked if he just went out and bought a car. He’d always wanted a car... and now he had the money for one... and he still couldn’t get the car. It wasn’t fair. Not fair at all. If they’d paid him more... Enough for a car...

Up on the well-positioned area of stands set aside for trainers and jockeys, a small man with hot dark eyes put his hand on Chick’s arm and spoke to him, though it was several seconds before Chick started to listen.

‘...I see you are here, and you’re free, will you ride it?’

‘What?’ said Chick vaguely.

‘My horse in the Novice Hurdle,’ said the little man impatiently. ‘Of course, if you don’t want to...’

‘Didn’t say that,’ Chick mumbled. ‘Ask the guv’nor. If he says I can, well, I can.’

The small trainer walked across the stand to where Arthur Morrison was watching the chestnut intently through the race glasses and asked the same question he’d put to Chick.

‘Chick? Yes, he can ride it for you, if you want him.’ Morrison gave the other trainer two full seconds of his attention and glued himself back on to his race glasses.

‘My jockey was hurt in a fall in the first race,’ explained the small man. ‘There are so many runners in the Novice Hurdle that there’s a shortage of jockeys. I just saw that boy of yours, so I asked him on the spur of the moment, see?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Morrison, ninety per cent uninterested. ‘He’s moderately capable, but don’t expect too much of him.’ There was no spring in the chestnut’s stride. Morrison wondered in depression if he was sickening for the cough.

‘My horse won’t win. Just out for experience you might say.’

‘Yes. Well, fix it with Chick.’ Several other stables had the coughing epidemic, Morrison thought. The chestnut couldn’t have picked a worse day to catch it.

Chick, who would normally have welcomed the offer of a ride with condescending complacency, was so preoccupied that the small trainer regretted having asked him. Chick’s whole attention was riveted on the chestnut which seemed to be lining up satisfactorily at the starting tape. Nothing wrong, Chick assured himself. Everything was going to be all right. Of course, it was. Stupid getting into such a state.

The start was down the track to the left, with two fences to be jumped before the horses came past the stands and swung away again on the left-hand circuit. As it was a jumping race, they were using tapes instead of stalls, and as there was no draw either, Toddy had lined up against the inside rails, ready to take the shortest way home.

Down in the bookmakers’ enclosure they were offering more generous odds now and some had gone boldly to evens. The chestnut had cantered past them on his way to the start looking not his brightest and best. The bookmakers in consequence were feeling more hopeful. They had expected a bad day, but if the chestnut lost, they would profit. One of them would profit terrifically — just as he would lose terrifically if the chestnut won.

Alexander McGrant (Est. 1898), real name Harry Buskins, had done this sort of thing once or twice before. He spread out his fingers and looked at them admiringly. Not a tremble in sight. And there was always a risk in these things that the boy he’d bribed would get cold feet at the last minute and not go through with the job. Always a gamble, it was. But this time, this boy, he was pretty sure of. You couldn’t go wrong if you sorted out a vain little so-and-so with a big grudge. Knockovers, that sort were. Every time.

Harry Buskins was a shrewd middle-aged East End Londoner for whom there had never been any clear demarcation between right and wrong, and a man who thought that if you could rig a nice little swindle now and then, well, why not? Tax was killing betting, you had to make a quick buck where you could, and there was nothing quite so sure or quick as raking in the dough on a red-hot favourite and knowing for certain that you weren’t going to have to pay out.

Down at the post the starter put his hand on the lever and the tapes went up with a rush. Toddy kicked his chestnut smartly in the ribs. From his eyrie on top of the stand the commentator moved smartly into his spiel. ‘They’re off, and the first to show is the grey...’ Arthur Morrison and Chick watched with hearts thumping from different sorts of anxiety, and Harry Buskins shut his eyes and prayed.

Toddy drove forward at once into the first three, the chestnut beneath him galloping strongly, pulling at the bit, thudding his hooves into the ground. He seemed to be going well enough, Toddy thought. Strong. Like a train.

The first fence lay only one hundred yards ahead now, coming nearer. With a practised eye Toddy measured the distance, knew the chestnut’s stride would meet it right, collected himself for the spring and gave the horse the signal to take off. There was no response. Nothing. The chestnut made no attempt to bunch his muscles, no attempt to gather himself on to his haunches, no attempt to waver or slow down or take any avoiding action whatsoever. For one incredulous second Toddy knew he was facing complete and imminent disaster.

The chestnut galloped straight into the three-foot thick, chest-high solid birch fence with an impact that brought a groan of horror from the stands. He turned a somersault over the fence with a flurry of thrashing legs, threw Toddy off in front of him and fell down on top and rolled over him.

Chick felt as if the world were turning grey. The colours drained out of everything and he was halfway to fainting. Oh God, he thought. Oh God. Toddy.

The chestnut scrambled to his feet and galloped away. He followed the other horses towards the second fence, stretching out into a relentless stride, into a full-fledged thundering racing pace.

He hit the second fence as straight and hard as the first. The crowd gasped and cried out. Again the somersault, the spread-eagled legs, the crashing fall, the instant recovery. The chestnut surged up again and galloped on.

He came up past the stands, moving inexorably, the stirrups swinging out from the empty saddle, flecks of foam flying back now from his mouth, great dark patches of sweat staining his flanks. Where the track curved round to the left, the chestnut raced straight on. Straight on across the curve, to crash into the rail around the outside of the track. He took the solid timber across the chest and broke it in two. Again he fell in a thrashing heap and again he rocketed to his feet. But this time not to gallop away. This time he took three painful limping steps and stood still.

Back at the fence Toddy lay on the ground with first-aid men bending over him anxiously. Arthur Morrison ran down from the stands towards the track and didn’t know which way to turn first, to his son or his horse. Chick’s legs gave way and he sagged down in a daze on to the concrete steps. And down in the bookmakers’ enclosure Harry Buskins’ first reaction of delight was soured by wondering whether, if Toddy Morrison were badly injured, that stupid boy Chick would be scared enough to keep his mouth shut.

Arthur Morrison turned towards his son. Toddy had been knocked unconscious by the fall and had had all the breath squeezed out of him by the chestnut’s weight, but by the time his father was within one hundred yards he was beginning to come round. As soon as Arthur saw the supine figure move, he turned brusquely round and hurried off towards the horse: it would never do to show Toddy the concern he felt. Toddy would not respect him for it, he thought.

The chestnut stood patiently by the smashed rail, only dimly aware of the dull discomfort in the foreleg that wouldn’t take his weight. Arthur Morrison and the veterinary surgeon arrived beside him at the same time, and Arthur Morrison glared at the vet.

‘You said he was fit to run. The owner is going to hit the roof when he hears about it.’ Morrison tried to keep a grip on a growing internal fury at the injustice of fate. The chestnut wasn’t just any horse — it was the best he’d ever trained, had hoisted him higher up the stakes-won list than he was ever likely to go again.

‘Well, he seemed all right,’ said the vet defensively.

‘I want a dope test done,’ Morrison said truculently.

‘He’s broken his shoulder. He’ll have to be put down.’

‘I know. I’ve got eyes. All the same, I want a dope test first. Just being ill wouldn’t have made him act like that.’

The vet reluctantly agreed to take a blood sample, and after that he fitted the bolt into the humane killer and shot it into the chestnut’s drug-crazed brain. The best horse in Arthur Morrison’s stable became only a name in the record books. The digested carrot was dragged away with the carcass but its damage was by no means spent.

It took Chick fifteen minutes to realise that it was Toddy who was alive and the horse that was dead, during which time he felt physically ill and mentally pulverised. It had seemed so small a thing, in the beginning, to give a carrot to the chestnut. He hadn’t thought of it affecting him much. He’d never dreamed anything like that could make you really sick.

Once he found that Toddy had broken no bones, had recovered consciousness and would be on his feet in an hour or two, the bulk of his physical symptoms receded. When the small trainer appeared at his elbow to remind him sharply that he should be inside changing into colours to ride in the Novice Hurdle race, he felt fit enough to go and do it, though he wished in a way that he hadn’t said he would.

In the changing-room he forgot to tell his valet he needed a lightweight saddle and that the trainer had asked for a breast girth. He forgot to tie the stock round his neck and would have gone out to ride with the ends flapping. He forgot to take his watch off. His valet pointed everything out and thought that the jockey looked drunk.

The novice hurdler Chick was to ride wouldn’t have finished within a mile of the chestnut if he’d started the day before. Young, green, sketchily schooled, he hadn’t even the virtue of a gold streak waiting to be mined: this was one destined to run in the ruck until the owner tired of trying. Chick hadn’t bothered to find out. He’d been much too preoccupied to look in the form book, where a consistent row of noughts might have made him cautious. As it was, he mounted the horse without attention and didn’t listen to the riding orders the small trainer insistently gave him. As usual, he thought he knew better. Play it off the cuff, he thought scrappily. Play it off the cuff. How could he listen to fussy little instructions with all that he had on his mind?

On his way out from the weighing-room he passed Arthur Morrison, who cast an inattentive eye over his racing colours and said, ‘Oh yes... well, don’t make too much of a mess of it.’

Morrison was still thinking about the difference the chestnut’s death was going to make to his fortunes and he didn’t notice the spasm of irritation that twisted Chick’s petulant face.

There he goes, Chick thought. That’s typical. Typical. Never thinks I can do a bloody thing. If he’d given me more chances... and more money... I wouldn’t have given... Well, I wouldn’t have. He cantered down to the post, concentrating on resenting that remark, ‘don’t make too much of a mess of it,’ because it made him feel justified, obscurely, for having done what he’d done. The abyss of remorse opening beneath him was too painful. He clutched at every lie to keep himself out.

Harry Buskins had noticed that Chick had an unexpected mount in the Novice Hurdle and concluded that he himself was safe, the boy wasn’t going to crack. All the same, he had shut his bag over its swollen takings and left his pitch for the day and gone home, explaining to his colleagues that he didn’t feel well. And in truth he didn’t. He couldn’t get out of his mind the sight of the chestnut charging at those fences as if he couldn’t see. Blind, the horse had been. A great racer who knew he was on a racetrack starting a race. Didn’t understand there was anything wrong with him. Galloped because he was asked to gallop, because he knew it was the right place for it. A great horse, with a great racing heart.

Harry Buskins mopped the sweat off his forehead. They were bound to have tested the horse for dope, he thought, after something like that. None of the others he’d done in the past had reacted that way. Maybe he’d got the dose wrong or the timing wrong. You never knew how individual horses would be affected. Doping was always a bit unpredictable.

He poured himself half a tumbler of whisky with fingers that were shaking after all, and when he felt calmer he decided that if he got away with it this time he would be satisfied with the clean-up he’d made, and he wouldn’t fool around with any more carrots. He just wouldn’t risk it again.

At the starting post Chick lined up in the centre of the field, ever though the trainer had advised him to start on the outside to give the inexperienced horse an easy passage over the first few hurdles. Chick didn’t remember this instruction because he hadn’t listened, and even if he had listened he would have done the same, driven by his habitual compulsion to disagree. He was thinking about Toddy lining up on this spot an hour ago, not knowing that his horse wouldn’t see the jumps. Chick hadn’t known dope could make a horse blind. How could anyone expect that? It didn’t make sense. Perhaps it was just that the dope had confused the chestnut so much that although its eyes saw the fence, the message didn’t get through that he was supposed to jump over it. The chestnut couldn’t have been really blind.

Chick sweated at the thought and forgot to check that the girths were still tight after cantering down to the post. His mind was still on the inward horror when the starter let the tapes up, so that he was caught unawares and flat-footed and got away slowly. The small trainer on the stand clicked his mouth in annoyance, and Arthur Morrison raised his eyes to heaven.

The first hurdle lay side-by-side with the first fence, and all the way to it Chick was illogically scared that his horse wouldn’t rise to it. He spent the attention he should have given to setting his horse right in desperately trying to convince himself that no one could have given it a carrot. He couldn’t be riding a doped horse himself... it wouldn’t be fair. Why wouldn’t it be fair? Because... because...

The hurdler scrambled over the jump, knocked himself hard on the timber frame, and landed almost at a standstill. The small trainer began to curse.

Chick tightened one loose rein and then the other, and the hurdler swung to and fro in wavering indecision. He needed to be ridden with care and confidence and to be taught balance and rhythm. He needed to be set right before the jumps and to be collected quickly afterwards. He lacked experience, he lacked judgement and he badly needed a jockey who could contribute both.

Chick could have made a reasonable job of it if he’d been trying. Instead, with nausea and mental exhaustion draining what skill he had out of his muscles, he was busy proving that he’d never be much good.

At the second jump he saw in his mind’s eye the chestnut somersaulting through the air, and going round the bend his gaze wavered across to the broken rail and the scuffed-up patches of turf in front of it. The chestnut had died there. Everyone in the stable would be poorer for it. He had killed the chestnut, there was no avoiding it any more, he’d killed it with that carrot as surely as if he’d shot the bolt himself. Chick sobbed suddenly, and his eyes filled with tears.

He didn’t see the next two hurdles. They passed beneath him in a flying blur. He stayed on his horse by instinct, and the tears ran down and were swept away as they trickled under the edge of his jockey’s goggles.

The green hurdler was frightened and rudderless. Another jump lay close ahead, and the horses in front went clattering through it, knocking one section half over and leaving it there at an angle. The hurdler waited until the last minute for help or instructions from the man on his back and then in a muddled way dived for the leaning section, which looked lower to him and easier to jump than the other end.

Prom the stands it was clear to both the small trainer and Arthur Morrison that Chick had made no attempt to keep straight or to tell the horse when to take off. It landed with its forefeet tangled up in the sloping hurdle and catapulted Chick off over its head.

The instinct of self-preservation which should have made Chick curl into a rolling ball wasn’t working. He fell through the air flat and straight, and his last thought before he hit was that that stupid little sod of a trainer hadn’t schooled his horse properly. The animal hadn’t a clue how to jump.

He woke up a long time later in a high bed in a small room. There was a dim light burning somewhere. He could feel no pain. He could feel nothing at all. His mind seemed to be floating in his head and his head was floating in space.

After a long time he began to believe that he was dead. He took the thought calmly and was proud of himself for his calm. A long time after that he began to realise that he wasn’t dead. There was some sort of casing round his head, holding it cushioned. He couldn’t move.

He blinked his eyes consciously and licked his lips to make sure that they at least were working. He couldn’t think what had happened. His thoughts were a confused but peaceful fog.

Finally he remembered the carrot, and the whole complicated agony washed back into his consciousness. He cried out in protest and tried to move, to get up and away, to escape the impossible, unbearable guilt. People heard his voice and came into the room and stood around him. He looked at them uncomprehendingly. They were dressed in white.

‘You’re all right, now,’ they said. ‘Don’t worry, young man, you’re going to be all right.’

‘I can’t move,’ he protested.

‘You will,’ they said soothingly.

‘I can’t feel... anything. I can’t feel my feet.’ The panic rose suddenly in his voice. ‘I can’t feel my hands. I can’t... move... my hands.’ He was shouting, frightened, his eyes wide and stretched.

‘Don’t worry,’ they said. ‘You will in time. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.’

He didn’t believe them, and they pumped a sedative into his arm to quiet him. He couldn’t feel the prick of the needle. He heard himself screaming because he could feel no pain.

When he woke up again he knew for certain that he’d broken his neck.

After four days Arthur Morrison came to see him, bringing six new-laid eggs and a bottle of fresh orange juice. He stood looking down at the immobile body with the plaster cast round its shoulders and head.

‘Well, Chick,’ he said awkwardly, ‘it’s not as bad as it could have been, eh?’

Chick said rudely, ‘I’m glad you think so.’

‘They say your spinal cord isn’t severed, it’s just crushed. They say in a year or so you’ll get a lot of movement back. And they say you’ll begin to feel things any day now.’

‘They say,’ said Chick sneeringly. ‘I don’t believe them.’

‘You’ll have to, in time,’ said Morrison impatiently.

Chick didn’t answer, and Arthur Morrison cast uncomfortably around in his mind for something to say to pass away the minutes until he could decently leave. He couldn’t visit the boy and just stand there in silence. He had to say something. So he began to talk about what was uppermost in his mind.

‘We had the result of the dope test this morning. Did you know we had the chestnut tested? Well, you know we had to have it put down, anyway. The results came this morning. They were positive...Positive. The chestnut was full of some sort of narcotic drug, some long name. The owner is kicking up hell about it and so is the insurance company. They’re trying to say it’s my fault. My security arrangements aren’t tight enough. It’s ridiculous. And all this on top of losing the horse itself, losing that really great horse. I questioned everyone in the stable this morning as soon as I knew about the dope, but of course no one knew anything. God, if I knew who did it I’d strangle him myself.’ His voice shook with the fury which had been consuming him all day.

It occurred to him at this point that Chick being Chick, he would be exclusively concerned with his own state and wouldn’t care a damn for anyone else’s troubles. Arthur Morrison sighed deeply. Chick did have his own troubles now, right enough. He couldn’t be expected to care all that much about the chestnut. And he was looking very weak, very pale.

The doctor who checked on Chick’s condition ten times a day came quietly into the small room and shook hands with Morrison.

‘He’s doing well,’ he said. ‘Getting on splendidly.’

‘Nuts,’ Chick said.

The doctor twisted his lips. He didn’t say he had found Chick the worst-tempered patient in the hospital. He said, ‘Of course, it’s hard on him. But it could have been worse. It’ll take time, he’ll need to learn everything again, you see. It’ll take time.’

‘Like a bloody baby,’ Chick said violently.

Arthur Morrison thought, a baby again. Well, perhaps second time around they could make a better job of him.

‘He’s lucky he’s got good parents to look after him once he goes home,’ the doctor said.

Chick thought of his mother, forever chopping up carrots to put in the stew. He’d have to eat them. His throat closed convulsively. He knew he couldn’t.

And then there was the money, rolled up in the shoe-cleaning tin on the shelf in his bedroom. He would be able to see the tin all the time when he was lying in his own bed. He would never be able to forget. Never. And there was always the danger his Ma would look inside it. He couldn’t face going home. He couldn’t face it. And he knew he would have to. He had no choice. He wished he were dead.

Arthur Morrison sighed heavily and shouldered his new burden with his accustomed strength of mind. ‘Yes, he can come home to his mother and me as soon as he’s well enough. He’ll always have us to rely on.’

Chick Morrison winced with despair and shut his eyes. His father tried to stifle a surge of irritation, and the doctor thought the boy an ungrateful little beast.