A Fine Place to Daydream

by Bill Barich

  “And if they’re not well-bred?”

  Hourigan laughed. “My friend Mick Easterby says, ‘I’ll gallop some pedigree into the fucker!’”

  The break from work and the generous serving of bread and jam had boosted Michael’s energy, and he was firing on all cylinders again. “Five o’clock I must have got in,” he moaned, amused by his own antics. Ordinarily, he’s out in the yard by six-thirty or seven, but he’d stayed in bed this morning to nurse his head. “The stable lads notice those things. They’ll be gossiping about me, saying I was out on the town, same as I did when Charlie Weld was late. You have to show your face at the regular hour,” he confided, “and then you can go back to bed. Only if you do, you must keep the bedroom curtains open. Very important! That stops the lads from yappin.”

  Around noon, some visitors from Canada arrived. They were touring Irish yards, doing some hunting, and thinking about buying a horse or two, and that was enough for Hourigan to start pitching his wares, but the bloodstock agent in the party had also been at the hotel bar until the wee hours and looked so green around the gills that he probably couldn’t have ordered lunch, much less handle a business deal. When Michael saw the writing on the wall, he showed them around his yard instead, while I tagged along. We saw his three gallops first—a four-to-five-furlong gallop of wood chips, a three-furlong circular gallop, and a new all-weather gallop of sand.

  “I can do anything with it,” he said, snatching up a handful and sifting it between his fingers. “I can make it fast or soft, and the only tending it needs is some harrowing.”

  Next, he moved us along to a seedy two-story building. “There’s my hotel,” he said cheerfully, ignoring its decrepit condition. “Some good jockeys have come out of there—Timmy Murphy, Adrian Maguire, Shane Broderick, Willie Supple. Course, it wasn’t such a nice place in the old days. The rain would come down the walls at night, and the lads would wake up and shove their beds away from the wet. It’s dry now, though, and it has central heating. Well, I did all right by them, anyway. When I see potential, I encourage it. What a good jockey needs is an old head on a young body.”

  Soon we were in the barn area, with horses all around us, either starting for the gallops or just coming back from them. Grooms were bathing those who’d finished their exercise, and the crisp air was pungent with the smells of soap and manure, each sharply defined. We were in a vibrant, tactile, physical world constructed out of dedicated daily labor. Its constants were fixed, and that had the effect of banishing confusion. Everyone knew exactly what was required of them. Certainly, Hourigan was a model of clarity in his role as our tour guide, walking us to a little stream overhung with sheltering trees.

  “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done, without a doubt!” he crowed. He’d poured some concrete to form a dam and create a deep pool, where up to six horses at a time can have a soak. The gently flowing water cools their hot legs and shins, and they can have a drink at their leisure. “Sometimes I leave them in overnight and collect them in the morning.”

  The last item on the tour was an indoor swimming pool comprising two concrete rectangles, one inside the other, to make a four-sided lap pool. A horse was in for a swim, and blowing hard. He had two longish ropes attached to his bridle, one for each of the grooms who tugged him along, treading on the concrete. “Go, boy!” they encouraged the struggling horse. The swim was equal to a good gallop, Hourigan said, and especially helpful for horses who have bum legs. “I used to be the only private trainer in Ireland to have a pool.” he told me. “I spent fifty-odd grand on it, when I should have spent the money on a new house. That’s what my wife wanted, anyway, but she never protested.” He grabbed my elbow and whispered an aside. “When you’re young and ambitious, you do some stupid things.”

  ON THE FIRST SATURDAY in December, I bellied up to the bar at O’Herlihy’s to watch Moscow Flyer in the Tingle Creek Steeplechase at Sandown Park in Surrey. Tingle Creek—the horse, that is—was a foot-perfect jumper, who never fell in a race. My friend Reilly supplied this bit of trivia, proud of his expertise. He scoured Dublin’s back streets for his racing collectibles, and when I told him I was going to Punchestown on Sunday for the Durkan Chase, he quoted four lines of an old poem from memory. “A loud hurrah for Ireland, boys/And louder for Kildare/And loudest of all for Punchestown/For I know you all are there.” What a show-off, I thought, but I was impressed.

  “Very strong performance, T.P. And will you not join me tomorrow?” I asked, in my newly adopted indirect style.

  But Reilly had no interest in Punchestown. It’s too big and roomy for him, and he feels lost, a stranger in a strange land. “You go out there,” he griped, “and your cousin will be there, and you’ll never meet unless you have a map. Or one of those mobile phones!” He prefers the urban confines of Leopardstown, where no family link goes unforged. “So what grave secrets did you pry out of your man Hourigan?” he asked.

  “Beef Or Salmon’s in the Durkan, for sure,” I said. “But he’s got to jump quicker if he expects to win.”

  “That’s the whole of it?”

  I shrugged it off. “When you’re old and ambitious, you do some stupid things.”

  He hit the volume button on the TV clicker, so we could hear Jessie Harrington being interviewed at Sandown. Ever good sports, the British were praising her for sending Moscow to England to battle Paul Nicholls’s Azertyuiop, his main rival in the Queen Mother, rather than taking an easier road at home. The Irish purse money would be as good, if not better, and the competition softer. “Horses are there to be raced, and for the public to see,” Jessie said, earning an A-plus in media relations.

  By coincidence, Henrietta Knight had just earned a D-minus. She had let it drop that she might ship Best Mate to Leopardstown—in Ireland!—for the Ericsson Chase over Christmas and pass up the illustrious King George VI at Kempton, in England. Was she taking an easier road? I was suspicious, but Reilly thought Knight was being clever. “Best Mate never liked the going at Kempton,” he said. In any event, the mere mention of the potential trip—a desertion, an outrage, even a betrayal—already had angry Brits writing carefully reasoned (though mildly threatening) letters to the Post that read like legal briefs.

  At Sandown, Moscow Flyer went off at 6–4, but I’d backed him earlier at 13–8 and counted it as money in the bank despite Azertyuiop’s presence—and it was, although the pace was too slow to bring out Moscow’s best. He took the lead at the head of the stretch and soon had the others beaten, although he got a little lazy and needed a couple of cracks from Geraghty to wake him up. The horse would run next at Leopardstown’s Christmas meeting, then rest up for Cheltenham, Jessie said, and I wanted to shout, “Don’t do it, Jessie,” still superstitious about Moscow’s indelible pattern of three wins and then a loss. The Queen Mother would be his dread fourth race.

  On Sunday, I did go to Punchestown for the Durkan Chase. Originally developed by the Kildare Hunt Club, the racecourse held its first recorded meeting in 1824. Punchestown is roomy, but that pleased me, maybe because I had no cousins to find. As at Cheltenham, the setting was pastoral with sheep on the hillsides. I’d seen an old engraving that showed several tiny black-clad figures perched on such a hill. They were priests stealing a glance at the races. A diocesan statute prevented them from attending in person, and it wasn’t rescinded until the 1970s. The only other notable thing I knew about Punchestown was that Harry Beasley, a famous jockey, rode a winner there at the age of seventy-two.

  Vowing not to bet on Beef Or Salmon just because Hourigan had charmed me, I adopted a trick from Reilly and judged the six horses on parade by their looks. Only three spoke to me. Knife Edge was handsome, but he was probably outclassed. Tiutchev, the sole English horse, deserved respect because he was from Martin Pipe’s yard, and Pipe seldom bothered with Ireland. An old-timer of ten, Tiutchev was as buffed up as a bodybuilder with perfect pecs and abs, but Beef Or Salmon acted goofy again, all gangly and teenaged, too distracted for his own good
. His speed alone wouldn’t win him a Gold Cup. He had to jump as well as run.

  Still, the crowd backed him heavily. Their intuition proved correct, largely because of Hourigan’s advance preparation. With Timmy Murphy, he had walked the course before the race and found it so chopped up on the inside he opted to keep his horse off the rail. From three fences out, the Durkan was between Tiutchev and Beef Or Salmon, who needed reminders with the whip. Tiutchev made a hash of the last fence, so Beef Or Salmon’s triumph wasn’t clear-cut, but Hourigan didn’t object, not even to the man in a Santa Claus costume, who insisted on hugging him a good three weeks before the gesture would be appropriate, and maybe even fun.

  THE IRISH ARE FOND of launches, so whenever a new play, art exhibition, restaurant, hair salon, auto parts store, tire center, or whatever opens, you can count on a cheerful party with a dignitary present to extoll its virtues and wish it Godspeed. When I heard that Paul Carberry and Barry Geraghty were going to launch a refurbished Bambury Bookmakers shop in Ashbourne, in County Meath, I put the date on my calendar. Though Geraghty currently had the hot hand, Carberry is reputed to be the best natural horseman in Ireland, and I hoped to meet him and have a talk.

  Traffic strangled the main road in Ashbourne. Blocks of housing covered the fields where crops once grew, another country town tipping over into suburbia. The Bambury shop had a piece of hand-lettered cardboard in the front window, half-collapsed and folded in on itself, to advertise the launch. That gave me pause, but the shop looked jaunty inside with new TVs and carpeting and a new wood floor agleam with fresh possibilities. About twenty gents, most of them elderly, were waiting for the festivities to begin, but I had a feeling they would have been there anyway, like potted plants, without any eminent jockeys to entice them.

  Carberry was the first to arrive, his right thumb in a bulky cast. He’d fractured it in a recent fall at Fairyhouse when his whip banged into it, a freak injury. He hated to lose any rides, but he’d be on the sidelines for a couple of weeks. Soon to turn thirty, he was about to enter the danger zone for jump jockeys, where each new blow takes an increasing toll. His weight wasn’t a problem, and his job as a stable jock for Noel Meade was secure, so he had no reason to be alarmed yet. In fact, he was as relaxed as a college kid in jeans and an Izod sweater, and I assumed Geraghty must go to the same school because he was dressed almost identically, right down to the shiny black loafers with silver buckles.

  Seeing them up close, I realized how tall Geraghty is for a jockey at five feet nine inches, and how strong in the upper body. He rides at 147 pounds and can starve and sweat off three of those, but his normal weight is around 154. Where Carberry seemed at ease and agreed to have a drink afterward, Barry was anxious to complete the gig and hop on a plane to England to ride. He was even toting a set of silks on a hanger. Fame had Geraghty in its grip, but he deserved the recognition. The Irish had six winners at the Cheltenham Festival last year, and he’d been on five of them.

  Jimmy Findlay, the shop’s owner, had married into the Bambury family. He was bustling about and urging his clients to hit the buffet. “Come on, lads, don’t be shy, help yourselves, I’m not going to bring it ‘round to you,” he scolded, but the lads held back, maybe suspecting a previously unknown bookies’ trick that would cost them some money. The launch itself was short and sweet. A “personality” I didn’t recognize contributed some patter, and the jockeys answered a few questions without revealing anything of value to a punter. Geraghty was awarded two hundred euros for a charity bet and selected Keen Leader in the Ericsson, a horse of Jonjo O’Neill’s he’d just won on at Haydock.

  That was about it, except for the obligatory photo op and Findlay’s introduction of a potted plant named Frank (“I inherited him when we bought the shop in 1990”), who was the oldest codger in the room by a decade, no mean feat. Frank stepped brazenly into the picture, as if he were the jockeys’ patron saint. While Carberry schmoozed with the crowd, Jimmy introduced me to another old guy and said, “Any idea who this is? Arkle’s groom! Isn’t that right, Joe?” But it wasn’t right. “I was never Arkle’s groom,” Joe sputtered, “but I worked for the Dreapers for fifty-two years.” He was upset that Arkle always got all the glory and started listing some other good horses from the yard, but the din in the shop drowned him out.

  After a while, Carberry and I left for the Ashbourne Hotel next door. The quiet bar features portraits of horses etched in glass—Prince Regent, Mill House, and yes, Arkle, no doubt to poor Joe’s dismay. I felt a little relieved to be gone from the launch, and I imagine Paul did, too. He can act the part at such dog-and-ponies, but it doesn’t come easily or naturally. There’s something of the loner about him. He ordered a Bulmers cider and tapped out a cigarette with his bandaged hand. His thumb was healing fine, he told me, and he would be back in time for the important Leopardstown meeting at Christmas.

  “I can still hunt, anyway,” he said, with a grin. He loves hunting, even more than riding a race. He keeps eight hunters at his home place and rides out with the Ward Union Hunt Club, established in 1854, twice a week. Between sixty and eighty of the club’s one hundred or so members follow the hounds across the rolling countryside of Meath, tracking a stag that’s been given a twelve-minute head start. The stag is never killed, only cornered and returned to the club’s park, where it joins in the Ward Union’s breeding program. “I like the speed, the unpredictability,” Paul said, plus there are so many different obstacles to be jumped—hedges, walls, ditches—and so many instant decisions to be made. The journey is slightly mysterious, too, with the destination not plotted in advance. “You don’t know where you’ll wind up,” he added, “except it’s usually by a pub.” He was the club’s honorary whip, who assists the huntsman in controlling the hounds, and as puffed-up about it as any of his big-race wins.

  Glancing at his thumb, I asked about his injuries. I was becoming a collector of griefs, fascinated by the inventory of pain a jump jockey endures. “Do you have all day?” he replied, with a smile. He’d broken a leg three times, his ribs, and both his wrists. The docs removed his spleen after a horse kicked him in the back, but those were just the most severe damages in a list he could, but wouldn’t, elaborate on. He felt it would be dishonorable, I think. Honor was a concept you could truly apply to Carberry. He has the bearing of a shy, laconic sheriff in an old western, the man of principle who runs the black hats out of town.

  Like most riders, Carberry started early, still in his teens. His father, Tommy, a great jockey who later became a trainer, won the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times and lost a fourth through disqualification, and also won a Grand National. (Paul won his own Grand National in 1999 on BobbyJo, trained by his dad.) Tommy arranged for his son to be apprenticed to Jim Bolger, a flat trainer known for being tough on his apprentices. Bolger’s lads aren’t allowed to drink or smoke, and they go to church on Sunday or else. “Your daddy definitely doesn’t like you,” Bolger warned his new arrival, but Carberry survived the regimen and even managed to sneak in a cider or two.

  Though Paul was light enough for the flat, he found the races too boring and preferred the jumps. At the age of twenty, he tried riding for Sir Robert Ogden in England for a time, but that didn’t suit him, either, not with all the commuting around the country and racing almost every day, as the English do. (In Ireland, there are races four days a week, at most.) “I missed my hunting,” he said, implying that he missed his home and family, as well—he has a brother and a sister who are both jockeys, one a pro and the other an amateur—so when Noel Meade offered him a job, he settled for a lower profile and a slower pace of life.

  The move didn’t hurt him financially. Both he and Geraghty were about to pass the million-dollar mark in prize money. The standard fee for an Irish jockey is about $140 a ride, plus eight percent of the purse should he win or place. (There is no show betting, but two, three, or four horses can place depending on the size of the field.) Carberry’s agent carves off ten percent, and he pays a valet
to care for his silks and his tack. As much as he loves to ride, he admitted it can be difficult to climb aboard a horse who’s a poor jumper. Maiden races also spook him a little because the horses are so green, but he tends to worry most about dodgy jockeys. “Plenty of those around,” he said.

  “Any jockeys you admire?”

  “A few.”

  “Want to name them?”

  Reluctantly, as if the subject were as undignified as his list of injuries, he cited Ruby Walsh. “Ruby knows where to be in a race, the best possible position, and how to save ground. And how to keep out of trouble.” Trouble can lead to a fall.

  “Can you tell when a fall is coming?” I asked. “Any signal from the horse?”

  “None. It’s always unexpected,” he said. “There’s never any time to think. All you can do is cover up and protect yourself.”

  Carberry only travels to England for the major races these days, so his work schedule is fairly routine. He does a bit of schooling for his boss, rides out on the gallops some mornings, and goes racing on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. “That leaves you a lot of free time.”

  Another smile. “Not enough.”

  “What’s the downside of the job?” I watched him take a slow sip of his cider, still closemouthed as the seconds ticked by. He couldn’t find a downside, really. “I guess that’s the answer, then,” I said, and he nodded.

  Outside, the afternoon had turned balmy, with just a few high clouds in a bright blue sky. It was so pleasant Paul thought he’d go for a ride on one of his hunters. I was curious why he was so attached to them, what made them so special, and he considered for a moment and replied, “Guts. They’re bold and fearless,” the very qualities that separate a jump jockey such as Carberry from the rest of the pack.