Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931)

by Francis, Felix

  Riding had been my passion, and I had soon discovered that driving a Land Rover up onto the Berkshire Downs each day to watch the horses at work was not what I’d had in mind as my future. I missed the adrenaline rush of riding a Thoroughbred racehorse at high speed, with the wind and rain stinging my face, and watching others do what I craved somehow made the agony all the worse.

  Strange, then, that I had ended up as a race caller doing just that, but the adrenaline rush was back, in particular on big race days when my audience could be millions.

  “Hello, Mark,” a voice said behind me. “Are you rooted to that spot?”

  I recognized the voice and turned around, smiling. “Hi, Harry,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

  “Dangerous stuff, thinking.”

  As far as I could tell, Harry Jacobs was a man of leisure. Only twice over the years had I asked him what he did for a living and both times he’d replied in the same way: “Nothing, if I can manage it.” He was too young to be of retirement age. I estimated him to be in his late fifties, but he would’ve hardly had time for any paid employment as he seemed to spend every day of his life satisfying his passion for racing.

  I’d first met him when I’d been an eighteen-year-old budding amateur jockey and he had agreed to me riding one of his horses in my first-ever race. I hadn’t expected it to be the beginning of a firm friendship, especially as I’d missed the start, never recovered my position, and finished tailed-off last. But Harry hadn’t appeared to mind, and he had slapped me reassuringly on the back. We’d been firm “racetrack” friends ever since, although I’d no idea where he lived and, I suspect, he had no idea where I did either.

  “Fancy a drink?” he asked.

  “Harry, I would have loved to, but I’m commentating, and they’re almost on their way out of the paddock. Some other time.”

  “You workers.” He laughed. “No sense of priority.”

  I wondered again where his money came from. He had a sizable string of racehorses, both jumpers and flat, and there was no shortage of readies available for entertaining in private boxes around the country’s racetracks.

  I made it back into the commentary booth just in time to describe the horses for the fourth race as they emerged onto the course and made their way to the one-mile start.

  “First going down is Jetstar, in the red jacket with the white crossbelts. Next is Superjumbo, in white with a red circle and black cap.” I looked down at my notes and also at my folded copy of the Racing Post with its diagrams of the jockeys’ silks. “Rogerly comes next, in the blue and white quarters and hooped cap, followed by Scusami, the favorite, in the yellow jacket with the light blue stars and cap.” I watched Clare cantering Scusami down the course and wondered again what was going on in that head of hers underneath the light blue cap. “Lounge Lizard is next, in the green and white stripes, with Tournado—in the pink with dark green epaulettes and cap—completing the lineup for the John Holmes Construction Limited Stakes over a mile, the big race of the day here at Lingfield.”

  I clicked off my microphone.

  Six runners over a mile on the round track. Easy-peasy.

  I pushed a button on my control box and the latest betting odds for the race came up on my monitor.

  “Scusami is still the favorite, and his price has shortened to five-to-four. Superjumbo is at threes, as is Rogerly. It’s five-to-one for Tournado, sixes Lounge Lizard, with Jetstar the rank outsider at twenty-five-to-one.”

  I turned off my mike and switched the monitor to show the horses as they circled at the start.

  For a race with a very large field, like the Grand National, I would have spent some time the previous evening studying the colors, but mostly I learned them in the last few minutes before the off. If I tried absorbing six or seven races’ worth all together, I would simply get them confused in my head.

  So I learned them race by race and probably couldn’t describe them ten minutes after it had finished. I started each race with a clear mind, and describing the silks as the horses cantered to the start was as much part of my learning routine as it was for the benefit of the racegoers in the grandstands. Now I watched the horses circle on the monitor and put my finger on the image of each animal in turn while saying its name out loud. With more runners I might have gone to see them in the parade ring to give me more time, but with six . . . piece of cake.

  “Going behind the gate,” I told the crowd. “Scusami is still the favorite at five-to-four, Rogerly now clear second at three-to-one, with Superjumbo at seven-to-two; five-to-one, bar those.”

  I flicked the monitor back to the horses and went on, putting my finger on their images and saying aloud each horse’s name.

  “Now loading,” I said.

  Derek spoke into my ear. “Mark, coming to you in five seconds. Four. Three. Two . . .” He counted down to zero while I described the horses as they were being loaded into the starting gate. As he reached zero, I paused fractionally so that I wasn’t actually speaking as the satellite viewers came online.

  “Just two to go now,” I said. I briefly flicked back to the odds on my monitor. “Scusami is still favorite but has drifted slightly to six-to-four, with Rogerly still at threes. Just Superjumbo now still to be loaded.”

  I took a small sip of water from my bottle.

  “Right, they’re all in. Ready. They’re off!”

  Easy-peasy indeed. Even my grandmother could have called this race.

  Scusami jumped out of the gate first and, as an established front-runner, he never relinquished the position. He was only briefly challenged in the home stretch by Superjumbo, but when Clare asked him for a response it was instant and dramatic. She raised her whip only once, riding the horse out mostly with hands and heels, to a comfortable three-length victory, with the others trailing past the winning post in line astern.

  “I’ll make you a copy of that one too,” said Derek into my ears. “What a great horse. Must be a good bet for the Guineas.”

  “The opposition may have made him look better than he really is,” I replied. But I did agree with Derek. Perhaps I’d make a small investment in the ante-post market. The 2,000 Guineas was not until May, and a lot could happen in the next eight months.

  Indeed, much would happen in the next eight hours.

  —

  LINGFIELD WAS my local course, and I was home by half past six, even though the last race didn’t start until five twenty-five. And I had remembered to collect the DVD from Derek with the two recordings on it.

  I sat on my sofa and played them back over and over.

  The difference between a moderate jockey and a great one is all about weight management and timing. All jockeys stand in their stirrup irons and lean forward, placing their weight over the horse’s shoulders, and all jockeys move their weight back and forth slightly with the horse’s action, but the greats are those who use this movement to bring the most out of their mounts. They dictate to, rather than just follow, the horse beneath them.

  Riding a finish with “hands and heels” has far more to do with the positioning of weight than anything actually done to the horse with the hands or the heels. Most jockeys, especially those on the flat, ride far too short to be able to give the animal a decent kick with their heels anyway, and the hands on the reins move back and forth with the horse’s head.

  I watched again the recording of Clare riding Scusami to win that afternoon’s fourth race. As Superjumbo came to challenge, Clare gave her mount a single smack with her whip down its flank, then she rode out a classic finish, lowering her back and pushing her hands back and forth along the horse’s neck and moving her weight rhythmically to encourage it to lengthen its stride, which it duly did to win easily.

  I compared that with her riding of Bangkok Flyer in the first when she was beaten by a neck by Sudoku.

  In the f
inal eighth of a mile she appeared to give the horse three heavy backhanded smacks with the whip, but the head-on camera showed that these strikes were, in fact, “air shots,” or superficial hits at best, with her hand slowing dramatically before the whip made any contact with the flesh. As on Scusami, she had lowered her back, and there had also been plenty of elbow motion, but little of this had actually transmitted to her hands, the elbows going up and down rather than back and forth.

  But the most telling thing was what had caused me to question her riding in the first place. Clare’s body movement had been all wrong. Instead of encouraging the horse to lengthen its stride as she had done on Scusami, her actions had had the opposite effect. It was like in a car engine: if the combustion in the cylinder occurred when the piston was moving up and not down, the effect would be to slow the engine rather than to speed it up.

  So it had been with Clare’s riding, and hence Bangkok Flyer had been easily caught and passed by Sudoku.

  But she had been very clever. It was a real art to make it appear that she was riding out a finish for all she was worth while actually doing the opposite.

  Indeed, the only reason I had been suspicious was because of a game we had loved to play when riding our ponies as kids.

  The “Race Fixing Game,” we had called it—pulling up our ponies to a halt while looking like we were riding a tight finish. We had practiced for days and days so that even our aged great-uncle couldn’t tell what we were doing, and he’d been a regular steward for decades at racetracks all over the country.

  There had been no inquiry, so the Lingfield stewards obviously hadn’t spotted it. And the racing press clearly hadn’t noticed anything either, as there had been no difficult questions asked of me in the press room when I’d visited there after the fifth race.

  But I could see only too clearly that Clare had definitely been playing the Race Fixing Game on Bangkok Flyer.

  2

  I was at Haxted Mill on time, at eight, and I chose a quiet corner table inside the restaurant, although they were still serving dinner on the terrace alongside the River Eden. The day may have been unseasonably warm for September, but the temperature was dropping fast with the setting sun.

  Clare arrived at ten past in faded blue jeans and a pink polo shirt.

  “Sorry I’m late, Marky,” she said, sitting down opposite me.

  “No problem. What would you like to drink?”

  “Fizzy water.”

  “You can have a bed for the night if you want to drink.”

  “No, thanks,” she replied. “I have to get back. I’m riding work in the morning, then racing.”

  “Newmarket?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I’ve got three rides including one in the Cesarewitch Trial.”

  “I’ll be at Newbury so I’ll watch you on the television.”

  A waitress arrived with the menus, and I ordered a large bottle of sparkling mineral water.

  “Don’t let me stop you from having something stronger,” Clare said.

  “You won’t. I’ll have some wine with my dinner.”

  We perused the menus in silence for a while.

  “How are Mom and Dad?” I asked.

  “Oh, god-awful as always. They’re getting so old.”

  The waitress returned with the water and poured two glasses.

  “Are you ready to order?” she asked.

  “Just the haddock for me,” Clare said. “And without the mashed potato.”

  “No appetizer?” I asked.

  “No, thanks. I’m riding at one hundred and ten pounds tomorrow.”

  “My,” I said. “That is light.”

  “Too bloody light.”

  “I’ll have the steak,” I said to the patient waitress. “Medium rare, but no fries.” I could hardly eat fries with Clare watching enviously. “And a glass of the red Bordeaux, please.”

  The waitress took our menus and left us.

  “I found it really depressing going home,” Clare said.

  “Why?”

  “Dad’s lost all his sparkle, and Mom’s not much better. I swear Dad gets more grumpy every day.”

  “But, as you said, they’re getting old. Dad will be seventy-eight next month, and Mom’s only a couple of years behind him.”

  Both our parents had been in their mid-forties when we had unexpectedly come along. We had three much older siblings.

  “Getting old’s a real bugger,” Clare said. “I’ve decided I’m never getting old.”

  “It’s better than the alternative.”

  “Is it?” Clare replied. “I can’t imagine a time when I couldn’t ride anymore. I wouldn’t want to go on living.”

  “Willie Shoemaker was nearly sixty when he stopped riding.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said. “And he was fifty-four when he won the Kentucky Derby for the fourth time. I looked it up.”

  My, I thought, she’s really worried about retirement and she’s only thirty-one. In my experience, when jockeys started thinking about it, they usually retired pretty quickly. Lots of them would say they would in five years and then stop in about five months, some in five weeks or even less.

  The waitress brought me my glass of wine and offered us bread, which we both declined.

  “And the house is looking old too,” Clare said.

  “Well, it would, wouldn’t it?” I said. According to the datestone on one of the gables, it had been built in 1607.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “It needs some TLC.”

  “A lick of paint on the windows,” I agreed, nodding. “But Dad’s a bit too old to do that himself. He may be quite fit, but I don’t think ladders are a good idea anymore, not at his age.”

  “I think they should move,” she said decisively. “Into somewhere smaller, or into an old folk’s home. I told them so.”

  “I bet that didn’t go down too well.”

  “No,” she agreed. “Dad was angry—as usual. But they have to be practical. That house is too big. I think they should go into a home now while they still can.”

  “Don’t be daft,” I said. “They don’t need to yet. And where would they put all their stuff?”

  “What worries me is what the one will do when the other dies. That place is far too big for both of them, let alone just one. The one left will have to move, then.”

  “I hope that’ll be years away. Anyway, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “That’s typical of you,” Clare said, pointing her slender left forefinger at my chest. “Always burying your head in the sand and doing nothing.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “Yes, it is,” she said defiantly. “You always put things off. That’s why you still live in that dreadful rented apartment in Edenbridge.”

  “You liked it, once,” I whined.

  “I did when I was nineteen, but life moves on. You should have bought yourself a house years ago. You must be earning enough by now.”

  She was right. She usually was.

  Our meals arrived, and we ate for a while in silence.

  “How’s your love life?” Clare asked finally.

  “None of your business,” I replied, laughing. “How’s yours?”

  “Absolutely wonderful. I have a new man. Three months now. What a lover!” She grinned and then laughed. He clearly made her happy.

  “Who is it?” I asked, leaning forward.

  “Now, that’s none of your business,” she said.

  “Come on, Clare. Who is it?”

  “I’m not saying,” she said seriously, drawing a finger across her mouth as if zipping it shut. She opened it, however, to pop in a bite of her haddock. “Are you still seeing Sarah?”

  “Yes,” I said.


  She looked down at her plate and shook her head.

  “And what’s that meant to mean?” I asked.

  “Mark, it’s high time you had a proper girlfriend.”

  “I do.”

  “Sarah is not a proper girlfriend. She’s someone else’s wife.”

  “She’s working on it,” I said defensively.

  “She’s been working on it for five years. When are you going to realize she won’t ever leave Mitchell? She can’t afford to.”

  “Give her time.”

  “God, Mark, you’re so weak. For once, do something about it. Tell her it’s now or never and you’re fed up waiting. You’re wasting your life.”

  “You should talk,” I said. “Your love life has hardly been a Hallmark Romance.” Clare had dated a string of what my father had rather generously called “unsuitable young men,” and not all of them had been that young either. “Which misfit is it you’re seeing now anyway?”

  “I told you, that’s none of your bloody business,” she replied curtly, and without the humor that had been there earlier. “But at least I’m not living a lie.”

  “Aren’t you?” I said.

  “And what is that meant to mean?” she asked belligerently.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  We ate again in silence.

  Why did we always seem to fight these days? When we were kids, we had been so close that we didn’t even need to speak to know what the other was thinking. But recently our twin-intuition had waned and faded away, at least for me. I wondered if she could still read my mind. If so, she probably wouldn’t like it.

  The waitress reappeared to collect our plates.

  “Dessert?” she asked.

  “Just coffee,” Clare said. “Black.”

  “Same for me, please.”

  The waitress went away, and we sat there awkwardly once more.

  “Good win on Scusami,” I said.

  “Yes,” Clare replied, keeping her eyes on the table.