Dead Weight

by John Francome

  There was also the wing of the fence to think about. If a horse decided to run out or got pushed out by another horse the result was guaranteed to be painful; even though most of the wings were now made of plastic. Phil had been through one at Hereford and the wing had shattered and carved through his boot and calf muscle. He remembered hooking the last piece of plastic out with a needle while staying in a hotel before riding in the Swedish National. That had been almost a year later.

  As they galloped flat out towards the first fence, Wolf Patrol was swiftly into his stride but Phil was a complete passenger. He felt as if they were going a million miles an hour, but in reality they were only holding their position at the back of the pack, where they had started. He held his breath as the fence rushed towards them and prayed Wolf Patrol would get over safely. The big horse launched himself and Phil threw his weight back in the saddle ready for the fall, but Wolf Patrol

  landed cleanly on the other side, unaware of his rider’s terror.

  It took an entire circuit before Phil finally believed that his mount was not going to fall. Only then did he begin to relax and give the horse a ride.

  At last Phil and Wolf Patrol were in harmony, eating up the ground and devouring the fences. The field had strung out and it was as if he were hacking the horse round on his own. Now the fear had passed, Phil could feel his breathing return to a more even pattern. He began to think about winning instead of his own safety.

  He was on the right-hand curve leading into the home straight for the second time when he saw the leader begin to falter. With the gale now blowing directly into his face, it looked as though he were running through treacle. The lead he had enjoyed for so long was shrinking fast. The horse struck the top of the first fence in the home straight and veered right on landing, close to the rail on the inside of the circuit. The wall of wind had hit him and Wolf Patrol too, but Phil’s horse was still full of running. With his head down he took the fence cleanly and quickly put some distance between himself and the rest of the field. He popped over the last and came home hard held.

  As they walked back, Phil felt ashamed. Wolf Patrol had won despite him. He didn’t know why his nerve had suddenly failed. This morning he’d almost believed he was over it - now he seemed worse than ever. He acknowledged the small crowd who came over to applaud his return but couldn’t look any of them in the eye.

  `Hey, maestro!’ The shout came from the other side of the unsaddling enclosure, where Phil had just led Wolf Patrol to the berth reserved for the winner.

  He forced a smile on to his face as a large bespectacled fellow picked his way across the boggy ground. It wasn’t that he disliked Hugh Pimlott but the journalist’s appearance was a reminder that he hadn’t given a thought to his column for the Racing Beacon and his deadline was that afternoon. Still, that was where Hugh came in. Despite looking like a sixth-former on a skive, Hugh was adept at conjuring copy out of nothing. Phil preferred to write his column himself but sometimes the scruffy journalist was a saviour.

  `Sorry, Pim. I haven’t done it yet.’

  Hugh was unperturbed. He pulled a notebook from the depths of his

  baggy overcoat. `No sweat. Gimme an idea or two and I’ll see what I can cobble together.’

  `Well …’ Phil’s mind was suddenly blank.

  `How about your return to winning ways? Great horses, great rides, great to be first past the post after a long lay-off.’

  `It’s a bit boring, isn’t it? It’s what you’d expect me to say.’

  Hugh chewed on his pencil. `What about commenting on the last at Wincanton yesterday? Adrian Moore dropping his hands and getting the bird. Enraged punters crying for his head.’

  `I felt sorry for him. He was trying to save the horse and didn’t see me coming. It could have happened to any of us.’

  Hugh was scribbling. `So it’s “lay off the honest jock, he was only thinking of his horse and there but for the grace of God go the rest of us, I myself did something similar in the previous race” - that’s right, isn’t it?’

  Phil nodded.

  Hugh continued writing. `I’ll work in the stuff about Snowflake and Wolf Patrol, got to say something about them. You’re feeling top of the world and back in the swing of things now the season’s really hotting up and lots more winners to come. How’s that?’His eyes looked huge, magnified in his smudgy spectacles.

  `Don’t make me sound too big headed, Pim.’

  `Why not?’ The journalist put away his notebook and laid a porky hand on Phil’s arm. `You’re back on the victory trail, mate. Let’s crow about it.’

  The horse ambled slowly round the boggy paddock, familiarising himself with his new surroundings. He was big - some 17.1 hands tall - and he moved stiffly, as if testing the ground before he put his full weight on it. He favoured his left side, dragging his offhind leg. He took no notice of the two people by the gate closely watching his every move. Even when his perambulation took him close up to the watchers he gave no sign that he saw them at all.

  `What do you think, Ted?’ said Julia. When she’d asked permission to stable another horse at her father-in-law’s farm she’d not told him anything about her latest patient.

  Phil’s dad considered the matter as he dragged on his cigarette. Julia had deliberately placed herself upwind of him, terrified that her recent

  cravings would lead her to another lapse. Funnily enough, watching the big horse shuffle disdainfully around the paddock made her feel better about everything. She waited on Ted’s words.

  `Hmm,’ he said at last, `he’s a bit grand, isn’t he? Underneath all that muck.’

  The horse’s flanks were caked with mud, and there were brambles and dead bracken tangled in his black tail hair.

  `He was clean enough when he arrived. When I let him out here he went for a bit of a roll.’

  Ted laughed. `I can see that.’ `Can you see anything else?’

  Julia valued the farmer’s judgement. He’d worked with horses all his life, some of them pretty good. He’d once run a medium-sized training operation, but the death of Phil’s brother had changed everything. Julia knew the history. She also knew that sometimes you had to dig to get at what Ted had to say.

  He turned to look at her. `You’re being deliberately mysterious, aren’t you, young lady?’

  She grinned. She liked Ted such a lot. He was better than all the dads shed ever had.

  `Something tells me I’ve seen this horse before.’ Ted stamped out his cigarette. `I reckon he used to be a top performer. It’s the size of him.’ He took the animal by the head-collar and scrutinised his face. `I’ve seen you in the ring at Cheltenham, haven’t I? Named after one of the planets - Saturn? Pluto?’

  ‘Callisto,’ said Julia. `One of the moons of Jupiter.’

  Ted looked at her. `Not a bad guess, eh? And I suppose you’ve got to get him fit enough to get back to Cheltenham?’

  `Anywhere will do, they say.’

  Ted scratched the horse behind his ear. `What does Phil reckon?’ ‘He doesn’t know about Callisto yet. It all happened rather suddenly.’ Ted looked at Julia gravely. `I saw that fall on TV’

  They all had, it had been shown dozens of times - the horse losing his footing as he tried to fly the fence and landing with a sickening crunch to lie in a lifeless heap.

  `You’ve got your work cut out,’ the farmer said. `Two years out of training is a long time.’

  `But it can happen - horses do come back.’

  `Give or take the odd miracle, they don’t. It’s the same in any sport. Gazza after his knee injury wasn’t the player he was before. The same goes for any athlete. Horses are no different.’

  Julia’s spirits plummeted. She could tell this was a special horse and Yvonne Mitton’s enthusiasm had been infectious.

  `Cheer up,’ said Ted. `You don’t want to look down in the mouth when the conquering hero returns.’

  Her bewilderment must have been obvious.

  `Phil’s had a couple of winners t
his afternoon. Didn’t you know?’ `Has he?’ In her excitement at receiving Callisto she’d forgotten about Phil’s rides at Folkestone. `On Wolf Patrol?’

  `That’s right. And a two-mile hurdle on Stanley Spencer. So there’s no call to look gloomy.’

  Julia felt like pointing out that Phil was coming back from injury too, and he was doing all right, but she decided to hold her tongue. Callisto was studying her, probably wondering whether she had anything tasty tucked away in her pocket. No chance of that, she thought. He was already carrying too much weight for an athlete on the comeback trail.

  It was a tedious drive back to the West Country from Folkestone. As a rule Phil found some radio show to listen to, just to occupy his thoughts. Today he drove in silence - his thoughts were already occupied.

  Notwithstanding the wind and the heavy going he’d had an easy ride on Stanley Spencer. The favourite had led on the first circuit and then, unaccountably, fallen. Since the other runners weren’t in Stanley’s class that had handed him the race on a plate. Phil had hunted round to the rear of a group of four then put his foot down with a hurdle left to jump, leaving the other horses gasping in his wake.

  The result should have been thoroughly satisfying. In his last four races he’d had three wins and a close second - good going in anybody’s book. Hugh Pimlott had certainly thought so.

  `Fantastic, mate. I’ll tweak the old copy so the punters know you’re really firing now. And don’t worry, I’ll keep it humble.’

  Phil watched Hugh shamble off. Little did he know that, whatever the outward appearance of things, the champion jockey was far from back to his best.

  An old jockey had once said to Phil that the moment your imagination joins you out on the course you’ve had it. At the time he hadn’t understood what the other fellow meant. Now he did.

  As he drove silently cross-country Phil was glad he had not cancelled his appointment with Simone after all.

  Chapter Three

  Hugh Pimlott dumped his bulging briefcase on the floor next to his desk and, in a well-practised movement, flicked on his computer. Click, click, click - printer, terminal and screen. He kicked back his chair with one foot, stood his double-strength cappuccino on the mouse mat, shrugged his coat from his shoulders and slung it on top of the filing cabinet. With his left hand he seized the almond croissant protruding from his mouth, biting off a soggy chunk as he did so, and walked his right hand across the keyboard, inputting his log-in codes and password. Within sixty seconds of shouldering his way through the door, he was poised to begin work. At school he may not have been much of a sportsman but on the office playing-field Hugh was a world-beater.

  It was 8.30 in the offices of the Racing Beacon and Hugh had the place to himself. His co-workers would not be seen for at least an hour, which suited Hugh down to the ground - he had a load of stuff to get through. Since his colleague Bernard’s sudden retirement - a thinly disguised culling by the new management - certain tasks had been dumped on him which only a quiet hour of slog could resolve. Like trawling through the readers’ letters.

  Bernard used to have the letters page down to a fine art. He could sniff through a pile of illiterate Basildon Bond, simultaneously scanning the latest batch of e-mails, and come up with a balanced and entertaining page of precisely the right length in the half-hour between elevenses and opening time. This responsibility had now been handed to Hugh, and it took him a darn sight longer than that.

  A backlog of epistles from Joe Public were piled haphazardly in a red wire basket - at least Hugh didn’t have to open the envelopes. He began to flick through them. This morning he needed only a couple of `unknowns’ as a trainer had buttonholed him at Newton Abbot the day before. After bending Hugh’s ear about his pet scheme for revising the handicap system, the trainer had pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and pressed it into Hugh’s hand.

  `It took me bloody hours to work out so make sure you print it,’ he said.

  Hugh intended to. Dropping a horse’s handicap mark by seven pounds if the animal finished unplaced in three consecutive races made sense to him.

  He’d also received an e-mail from a former groom who recalled a trainer showing a horse to his owner during an evening tour of stables. The owner had been thrilled by how much the horse had improved since it had left his farm and had said so at length. The trainer was basking in the owner’s praise until a sixteen-year-old lad piped up. Not only were they looking at the wrong horse, but it wasn’t even the right sex. It was a bit of an old chestnut but usable just the same.

  What he needed now, he decided, was a relatively literate offering from a reader with a topical point to make. Soon he thought he’d found it, buried halfway down.

  But as Hugh read the neatly printed page he realised that the writer was not someone whose opinions could be given licence in the pages of the country’s top-selling racing paper - or any paper, for that matter. A smile spread across his face as he reached the end. `YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.’ Oh yeah? One of his father’s sayings sprang to mind - ‘They’re not all locked up, son.’

  He chucked the page into the wastepaper basket, then changed his mind. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a scuffed old folder packed with stray bits of paper. This had been one of Bernard’s prized possessions - a collection of bizarre and silly letters from the public amassed over the years. Hugh had been quite touched when the old journalist had handed it over with mock ceremony and told him he was now the keeper of the flame.

  Hugh retrieved the letter from the bin and added it to the office Loony Letters file. Really, it was too good to chuck out.

  Phil took his seat in Simone’s reception room, torn by doubt. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He felt so foolish, sneaking off to see some shrink, asking for help like a little boy. Please, miss, I’m a

  professional jump jockey but I’m worried I might fall off my horse and hurt myself.

  If any of the other jockeys got to hear about him seeing a psychiatrist they would rip the mickey out of him for months. He thought about getting up and leaving, but suddenly the door opened.

  He was summoned into Simone’s office: beige carpet and curtains, framed seascapes on the walls - decor designed to soothe. Simone looked completely different from the last time he’d seen her. She wore a dark-patterned suit, small tortoiseshell spectacles and no discernible make-up. The glamorous dinner companion was well disguised.

  `Hello, Phil.’ She smiled and indicated the seat facing her desk. `I’ve decided not to go on with this.’ The words came out in a rush. `Really?’ Her expression did not change.

  `The riding’s going OK now so …’ He paused, anticipating some kind of objection, but she said nothing. `So there’s not much point in me coming here, is there?’ he added.

  `Not if the symptoms you were complaining of last week have disappeared.’

  `I’ve had a few winners since then.’

  `So you’re no longer suffering from flashbacks to your accident? You’re not waking in the night with chest palpitations and tingling in your arms and legs?’ She dropped her eyes to the folder open on her desk. `And at crucial moments during a race you no longer turn rigid with fear?’

  Phil felt a flash of resentment at hearing his words quoted back at him. It was as if the bloody woman had caught him in a lie.

  `It’s been going better,’ he said. `Honest.’ `Phil.’ Her voice softened. `Sit down. Please.’ He did as he was told.

  Keith gunned the quad bike up the hill along the edge of a ploughed field, drenching the hedgerow to his right with muddy puddle-water. The four-wheeled motorbike ate up the terrain in pursuit of the hounds, who were on the scent of a fox over the brow of the hill. Keith cut off the corner of the field, careering across the ruts, exhilarated by the power of the hungry vehicle. He’d ignored Fred, his helper’s, request to cadge a ride, pretending he hadn’t heard as he’d zoomed away from the knot of hunters edging their Land Rovers along the lane. He’d buy the old fellow a pint later.
Today he didn’t want any kind of company.

  At the top of the hill he spotted the pack behind a group of farm buildings where they must have cornered the fox. The hunt itself was spread out across the fields and paddocks below him, most of the riders way out of touch with the action. Not for the first time Keith wondered exactly what they got out of it. His own horse-riding days were behind him.

  He’d been a keen rider once, when he was fifteen and chafing at the bit to get out of school for good. His mum had an old flame with contacts at a yard in Gloucestershire, and he’d got taken on as a lad. He’d fancied being a jockey, of course, even when it was obvious he’d end up the size of his father. So that hadn’t worked out. And after he’d knocked the number-two jockey’s teeth down his throat at chucking-out time it had been adios, Gloucestershire.

  To his mind these days there was nothing to beat mechanical horsepower.

  He shot full throttle down the rutted gravel track to the farm. He guessed the hounds would have killed the fox by now, and it was his job to retrieve the corpse. At moments like this he felt truly alive. Even his misfortunes were fuel to his fire. He abandoned the quad bike by the farm gate and grabbed his sack. As he strode across the muddy yard, the excited yapping of the hounds was loud in his ears. Three fields off, on the downslope of the hill, he could see the leading horses of the hunt. They’d be too late for the action.

  Those bastards at the Racing Beacon hadn’t printed his letter. It didn’t surprise him - he’d expected as much. They probably thought it was the work of some nutter, someone who got their rocks off on a bit of paper, some toothless twit you could safely ignore. Well, they weren’t going to ignore him.

  He found the pack milling around the remains of a stone barn. The fox was long dead, and Keith grabbed the bedraggled corpse from a pair of boisterous hounds.

  He’d get cracking tomorrow. The day after a hunt was a good day to do a little hunting of his own. He hefted the sack, now weighed down with the disembowelled fox, on his back. Its end would have been quick and he doubted it had suffered. Not like someone else was going to suffer tomorrow.