Odds against

TWELVE

Chico and I sat huddled together for warmth in some gorse bushes and watched the sun rise over Seabury Racecourse. It had been a cold clear night with a tingle of nought degrees centigrade about it, and we were both shivering.

Behind us, among the bushes and out of sight, Revelation, one-time winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup, was breakfasting on meagre patches of grass. We could hear the scrunch when he bit down close to the roots, and the faint chink of the bridle as he ate. For some time Chico and I had been resisting the temptation to relieve him of his nice warm rug.

‘They might try something now,’ said Chico hopefully. ‘First light, before anyone’s up.’

Nothing had moved in the night, we were certain of that. Every hour I had ridden Revelation at a careful walk round the whole of the track itself, and Chico had made a plimsole-shod inspection of the stands, at one with the shadows. There had been no one about. Not a sound but the stirring breeze, not a glimmer of light but from the stars and a waning moon.

Our present spot, chosen as the sky lightened and some concealment became necessary, lay at the furthest spot from the stands, at the bottom of the semi-circle of track cut off by the road which ran across the course. Scattered bushes and scrub filled the space between the track and boundary fence, enough to shield us from all but closely prying eyes. Behind the boundary fence were the little back gardens of the first row of bungalows. The sun rose bright and yellow away to our left and the birds sang around us. It was half past seven.

‘It’s going to be a lovely day,’ said Chico.

At ten past nine there was some activity up by the stands and the tractor rolled on to the course pulling a trailer. I unshipped my race glasses, balanced them on my bent up knees, and took a look. The trailer was loaded with what I guessed were hurdles, and was accompanied by three men on foot.

I handed the glasses to Chico without comment, and yawned.

‘Lawful occasions,’ he remarked, bored.

We watched the tractor and trailer lumber slowly round the far end of the course, pause to unload, and return for a refill. On its second trip it came close enough for us to confirm that it was in fact the spare hurdles that were being dumped into position, four or five at each flight, ready to be used if any were splintered in the races. We watched for a while in silence. Then I said slowly, ‘Chico, I’ve been blind.’

‘Huh?’

‘The tractor,’ I said. ‘The tractor. Under our noses all the time.’

‘So?’

‘So the sulphuric acid tanker was pulled over by a tractor. No complicated lifting gear necessary. Just a couple of ropes or chains slung over the top of the tanker and fastened round the axles. Then you unscrew the hatches and stand well clear. Someone drives the tractor at full power up the course, over goes the tanker and out pours the juice. And Bob’s your uncle!’

‘Every racecourse has a tractor,’ said Chico thoughtfully.

‘That’s right.’

‘So no one would look twice at a tractor on a racecourse. Quite. No one would remark on any tracks it left. No one would mention seeing one on the road. So if you’re right, and I’d say you certainly are, it wouldn’t necessarily have been that tractor, the racecourse tractor, which was used.’

‘I’ll bet it was, though.’ I told Chico about the photographed initials and payments. ‘Tomorrow I’ll check the initials of all the workmen here from Ted Wilkins downwards against that list. Any one of them might have been paid just to leave the tractor on the course, lying handy. The tanker went over on the evening before the meeting, like today. The tractor would have been in use then too. Warm and full of fuel. Nothing easier. And afterwards, straight on up the racecourse, and out of sight.’

‘It was dusk,’ agreed Chico. ‘As long as no one came along the road in the minutes it took to unhitch the ropes or chains afterwards, they were clear. No traffic diversions, no detours, nothing.’

We sat watching the tractor lumbering about, gloomily realising we couldn’t prove a word of it.

‘We’ll have to move,’ I said presently. ‘There’s a hurdle just along there, about fifty yards away, where those wings are. They’ll be down here over the road soon.’

We adjourned with Revelation back to the horse box half a mile away down the road to the west and took the opportunity to eat our own breakfast. When we had finished Chico went back first, strolling along confidently in my jodphurs, boots and polo-necked jersey, the complete horseman from head to foot. He had never actually sat on a horse in his life.

After a while I followed on Revelation. The men had brought the hurdles down into the semi-circular piece of track and had laid them in place. They were now moving further away up the course, unloading the next lot. Unremarked, I rode back to the bushes and dismounted. Of Chico there was no sign for another half hour, and then he came whistling across from the road with his hands in his pockets.

When he reached me he said, ‘I had another look round the stands. Rotten security, here. No one asked me what I was doing. There are some women cleaning here and there, and some are working in the stable block, getting the lads’ hostel ready, things like that. I said good morning to them, and they said good morning back.’ He was disgusted.

‘Not much scope for saboteurs,’ I said morosely. ‘Cleaners in the stands and workmen on the course.’

‘Dusk tonight,’ nodded Chico. ‘That’s the most likely time now.’

The morning ticked slowly away. The sun rose to its low November zenith and shone straight into our eyes. I passed the time by taking a photograph of Revelation and another of Chico. He was fascinated by the tiny camera and said he couldn’t wait to get one like it. Eventually I put it back into my breeches pocket, and shading my eyes against the sun took my hundredth look up the course.

Nothing. No men, no tractor. I looked at my watch. One o’clock. Lunch hour. More time passed.

Chico picked up the race-glasses and swept the course.

‘Be careful,’ I said idly. ‘Don’t look at the sun with those. You’ll hurt your eyes.’

‘Do me a favour.’

I yawned, feeling the sleepless night catch up.

‘There’s a man on the course,’ he said. ‘One. Just walking.’

He handed me the glasses and I took a look. He was right. One man was walking alone across the racecourse; not round the track but straight across the rough grass in the middle. He was too far away for his features to be distinguishable and in any case he was wearing a fawn duffle coat with the hood up. I shrugged and lowered the glasses. He looked harmless enough.

With nothing better to do we watched him reach the far side, duck under the rails, and move along until he was standing behind one of the fences with only his head and shoulders in our sight.

Chico remarked that he should have attended to nature in the gents before he left the stands. I yawned again, smiling at the same time. The man went on standing behind the fence.

‘What on earth is he doing?’ said Chico, after about five minutes.

‘He isn’t doing anything,’ I said, watching through the glasses. ‘He’s just standing there looking this way.’

‘Do you think he’s spotted us?’

‘No, he couldn’t. He hasn’t any binocs, and we are in the bushes.’

Another five minutes passed in inactivity.

‘He must be doing something,’ said Chico, exasperated.

‘Well, he isn’t,’ I said.

Chico took a turn with the glasses. ‘You can’t see a damn thing against the sun,’ he complained. ‘We should have camped up the other end.’

‘In the car park?’ I suggested mildly. ‘The road to the stables and the main gates runs along the other end. There isn’t a scrap of cover.’

‘He’s got a flag,’ said Chico suddenly. ‘Two flags. One in each hand. White on the left, orange on the right. He seems to be waving them alternately. He’s just some silly nit of a racecourse attendant practising calling up the ambulance and the vet.’ He was disappointed.

I watched the flags waving, first white, then orange, then white, then orange, with a gap of a second or two between each wave. It certainly wasn’t any form of recognisable signalling: nothing like semaphore. They were, as Chico had said, quite simply the flags used after a fall in a race: white to summon the ambulance for the jockey, orange to get attention for a horse. He didn’t keep it up very long. After about eight waves altogether he stopped, and in a moment or two began to walk back across the course to the stands.

‘Now what,’ said Chico, ‘do you think all that was in aid of?’

He swept the glasses all round the whole racecourse yet again. ‘There isn’t a soul about except him and us.’

‘He’s probably been standing by a fence for months waiting for a chance to wave his flags, and no one has been injured anywhere near him. In the end, the temptation proved too much.’

I stood up and stretched, went through the bushes to Revelation, undid the head collar with which he was tethered to the bushes, unbuckled the surcingle and pulled off his rug.

‘What are you doing?’ said Chico.

The same as the man with the flags. Succumbing to an intolerable temptation. Give me a leg up.’ He did what I asked, but hung on to the reins.

‘You’re mad. You said in the night that they might let you do it after this meeting, but they’d never agree to it before. Suppose you smash the fences?’

Then I’ll be in almighty trouble,’ I agreed. ‘But here I am on a super jumper looking at a heavenly course on a perfect day, with everyone away at lunch.’ I grinned. ‘Leave go.’

Chico took his hand away. ‘It’s not like you,’ he said doubtfully.

‘Don’t take it to heart,’ I said flippantly, and touched Revelation into a walk.

At this innocuous pace the horse and I went out on to the track and proceeded in the direction of the stands. Anti-clockwise, the way the races were run. Still at a walk we reached the road and went across its uncovered tarmac surface. On the far side of the road lay the enormous dark brown patch of tan, spread thick and firm where the burnt turf had been bulldozed away. Horses would have no difficulty in racing over it.

Once on the other side, on the turf again, Revelation broke into a trot. He knew where he was. Even with no crowds and no noise the fact of being on a familiar racecourse was exciting him. His ears were pricked, his step springy. At fourteen he had been already a year in retirement, but he moved beneath me like a four-year-old. He too, I guessed fancifully, was feeling the satanic tug of pleasure about to be illicitly snatched.

Chico was right, of course. I had no business at all to be riding on the course so soon before a meeting. It was indefensible. I ought to know better. I did know better. I eased Revelation gently into a canter.

There were three flights of hurdles and three fences more or less side by side up the straight, and the water jump beyond that. As I wasn’t sure that Revelation would jump the fences in cold blood on his own (many horses won’t), I set him at the hurdles.

Once he had seen these and guessed my intention I doubt if I could have stopped him, even if I’d wanted to. He fairly ate up the first flight and stretched out eagerly for the second. After that I gave him a choice, and of the two obstacles lying ahead, he opted for the fence. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was on his own. They were excellent fences and he was a Gold Cup winner, born and bred for the job and being given an unexpected, much missed treat. He flew the fence with all his former dash and skill.

As for me, my feelings were indescribable. I’d sat on a horse a few times since I’d given up racing, but never found an opportunity of doing more than riding out quietly at morning exercise with Mark’s string. And here I was, back in my old place, doing again what I’d ached for in two and a half years. I grinned with irrepressible joy and got Revelation to lengthen his stride for the water jump.

He took it with feet to spare. Perfect. There were no irate shouts from the stands on my right, and we swept away on round the top bend of the course, fast and free. Another fence at the end of the bend — Revelation floated it-and five more stretching away down the far side. It was at the third of these, the open ditch, that the man had been standing and waving the flags.

It’s an undoubted fact that emotions pass from rider to horse, and Revelation was behaving with the same reckless exhilaration which gripped me: so after two spectacular leaps over the next two fences we both sped onwards with arms open to fate. There ahead was the guard rail, the four foot wide open ditch and the four foot six fence rising on the far side of it. Revelation, knowing all about it, automatically put himself right to jump.

It came, the blinding flash in the eyes, as we soared into the air. White, dazzling, brain shattering light, splintering the day into a million fragments and blotting out the world in a blaze as searing as the sun.

I felt Revelation falling beneath me and rolled instinctively, my eyes open and quite unable to see. Then there was the rough crash on the turf and the return of vision from light to blackness and up through grey to normal sight.

I was on my feet before Revelation, and I still had hold of the reins. He struggled up, bewildered and staggering, but apparently unhurt. I pulled him forward into an unwilling trot to make sure of his legs, and was relieved to find them whole and sound. It only remained to remount as quickly as possible, and this was infuriatingly difficult. With two hands I could have jumped up easily: as it was I scrambled untidily back into the saddle at the third attempt, having lost the reins altogether and bashed my stomach on the pommel of the saddle into the bargain. Revelation behaved very well, all things considered. He trotted only fifty yards or so in the wrong direction before I collected myself and the reins into a working position and turned him round. This time we by-passed the fence and all subsequent ones: I cantered him first down the side of the track, slowed to a trot to cross the road, and steered then not on round the bottom semi-circle but off to the right, heading for where the boundary fence met the main London road.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chico running in my direction across the rough grass. I waved him towards me with a sweep of the arm and reined in and waited for him where our paths converged.

‘I thought you said you could bloody well ride,’ he said, scarcely out of breath from the run.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I thought so once.’

He looked at me sharply. ‘You fell off. I was watching. You fell off like a baby.’

‘If you were watching… the horse fell, if you don’t mind. There’s a distinction. Very important to jockeys.’

‘Nuts,’ he said. ‘You fell off.’

‘Come on,’ I said, walking Revelation towards the boundary fence. ‘There’s something to find.’ I told Chico what. ‘In one of those bungalows, I should think. At a window or on the roof, or in a garden.’

‘Sods,’ said Chico forcefully. ‘The dirty sods.’

I agreed with him.

It wasn’t very difficult, because it had to be within a stretch of only a hundred yards or so. We went methodically along the boundary fence towards the London road, stopping to look carefully into every separate little garden, and at every separate little house. A fair number of inquisitive faces looked back.

Chico saw it first, propped into a high leafless branch of a tree growing well back in the second to last garden. Traffic whizzed along the London road only ten yards ahead, and Revelation showed signs of wanting to retreat.

‘Look,’ said Chico, pointing upwards.

I looked, fighting a mild battle against the horse. It was five feet high, three feet wide, and polished to a spotless brilliance. A mirror.

‘Sods,’ said Chico again.

I nodded, dismounted, led Revelation back to where the traffic no longer fretted him, and tied the reins to the fence. Then Chico and I walked along to the London road and round into the road of bungalows. Napoleon Close, it said. Napoleon wasn’t that close, I reflected, amused.

We rang the door of the second bungalow. A man and a woman both came to the door to open it, elderly, gentle, inoffensive and enquiring.

I came straight to the point, courteously. ‘Do you know you have a mirror in your tree?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said the woman, smiling as at an idiot. She had flat wavy grey hair and was wearing a sloppy black cardigan over a brown wool dress. No colour sense, I thought.

‘You’d better take a look,’ I suggested.

‘It’s not a mirror, you know,’ said the husband, puzzled. ‘It’s a placard. One of those advertisement things.’

‘That’s right,’ said his wife contrapuntally. ‘A placard.’

‘We agreed to lend our tree…’

‘For a small sum, really… only our pension…’

‘A man put up the framework…’

‘He said he would be back soon with the poster…’

‘A religious one, I believe. A good cause…’

‘We wouldn’t have done it otherwise…’

Chico interrupted. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was a good place for a poster. Your tree stands further back than the others. It isn’t conspicuous.’

‘I did think…’ began the man doubtfully, shuffling in his checked woolly bedroom slippers.

‘But if he was willing to pay rent for your particular tree, you didn’t want to put him off,’ I finished. ‘An extra quid or two isn’t something you want to pass on next door.’

They wouldn’t have put it so bluntly, but they didn’t demur.

‘Come and look,’ I said.

They followed me round along the narrow path beside their bungalow wall and into their own back garden. The tree stood half way to the racecourse boundary fence, the sun slanting down through the leafless branches. We could see the wooden back of the mirror, and the ropes which fastened it to the tree trunk. The man and his wife walked round to the front, and their puzzlement increased.

‘He said it was for a poster,’ repeated the man.

‘Well,’ I said as matter of factly as I could, ‘I expect it is for a poster, as he said. But at the moment, you see, it is a mirror. And it’s pointing straight out over the racecourse; and you know how mirrors reflect the sunlight? We just thought it might not be too safe, you know, if anyone got dazzled, so we wondered if you would mind us moving it?’

‘Why, goodness,’ agreed the woman, looking with more awareness at our riding clothes, ‘no one could see the racing with light shining in their eyes.’

‘Quite. So would you mind if we turned the mirror round a bit?’

‘I can’t see that it would hurt, Dad,’ she said doubtfully.

He made a nondescript assenting movement with his hand, and Chico asked how the mirror had been put up in the tree in the first place. The man had brought a ladder with him, they said, and no, they hadn’t one themselves. Chico shrugged, placed me beside the tree, put one foot on my thigh, one on my shoulder, and was up in the bare branches like a squirrel. The elderly couple’s mouths sagged open.

‘How long ago?’ I asked. ‘When did the man put up the mirror?’

‘This morning,’ said the woman, getting over the shock. ‘He came back just now, too, with another rope or something. That’s when he said he’d be back with the poster.’

So the mirror had been hauled up into the tree while Chico and I had been obliviously sitting in the bushes, and adjusted later when the sun was at the right angle in the sky. At two o’clock. The time, the next day, of the third race, the handicap steeplechase. Some handicap, I thought, a smash of light in the eyes.

White flag: a little bit to the left. Orange flag: a little bit to the right. No flag: dead on target.

Come back tomorrow afternoon and clap a religious poster over the glass as soon as the damage was done, so that even the quickest search wouldn’t reveal a mirror. Just another jinx on Seabury racecourse. Dead horses, crushed and trampled jockeys. A jinx. Send my horses somewhere else, Mr Witney, something always goes wrong at Seabury.

I was way out in one respect. The religious poster was not due to be put in place the following day.