The Enchanted

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘After my mother died, and not that long after – because my dad went completely to pieces and people do the strangest things when they’re like that, you know – when they’re deep in their grief. Anyway, the long and short of it is, he and this woman … Da had a child be her, and of course he couldn’t – not that he would have anyway – he couldn’t marry her because of the way he is and the way my mother and he were … and the result was Blaze. Blaze grew up in a village not far away with this woman and her brother, and everyone thought they were man and wife, but that was only because they pretended to be, for Blaze. Then one day Da told me. He said you have another brother, or should we say half-brother, and it was Blaze. And young Blaze be then was making a bit of a name for himself – even though he was still a nipper – pony racing. On the strands. He went on doing just that for a while, then he started riding points – then he came over here.’

  ‘At your instigation.’

  ‘I admit that quite readily. Yes.’

  ‘So why didn’t you say? Why the need for subterfuge?’

  ‘Now we didn’t know how you’d take it,’ Kathleen argued. ‘How could we? I’d been as bold as brass anyway, the way I came here, the way I just elbowed me way in. So can you imagine? Imagine if I said Oh and by the way, here’s a relative of mine. I want him riding for you as well. No, I don’t think so, Rory. I don’t think that would have been the best way at all.’

  ‘So you pretended he was your boyfriend instead.’

  ‘I never did! Didn’t I say we’d never met before?’

  ‘And weren’t you off with him the very next minute? Do you think I never smelt the tiniest bit of rat there?’

  ‘I’m devoted to Blaze,’ Kathleen said quietly. ‘He’s a very special boy.’

  ‘He’s certainly a very talented one.’

  ‘Anyway. Enough of that,’ Kathleen decided. ‘As I said earlier, what’s the fuss? Why should it matter?’

  ‘Oh, because it does,’ Rory groaned. ‘Because it does matter. What do you think? Why do you think it matters? Of course it matters.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why it should.’

  ‘Are you fishing? Because of course that’s something else the Irish are dab hands at.’

  ‘Fishing for what, pray?’

  ‘Fishing to find out why it matters!’ Rory mock-glared at her, then groaned again. ‘Why do you think it matters? One person being – well. One person minding that another person seems to be – seems to be – well. Attached to another person.’

  ‘You were … jealous?’ Kathleen finally asked, visibly amazed. ‘You?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rory insisted. ‘Yes, all right. Yes I was jealous. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why should it surprise you? You’re surprised that I – that I was jealous about you and Blaze?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Dumbfounded, for once Kathleen found herself all but speechless.

  ‘Kathleen?’ Rory prompted her.

  ‘Because never for one moment did I imagine that someone like you could possibly be in the slightest bit interested in someone like me, that’s why,’ she finally replied in a near whisper. ‘That’s why.’

  ‘Someone like me?’

  ‘Yes! And do stop repeating everything I say! Yes, someone like you!’

  Rory stared at her. ‘I don’t know what someone like me seems like. Not to someone like you.’

  ‘Different. Rich. Sophisticated. Successful. And now, as we gather, a brilliant artist.’

  ‘While you, of course – and by the way you can forget the rich bit – in fact you can forget all the other bits too because it’s complete nonsense, your assessment of me – particularly when compared to you.’

  ‘Me as?’

  ‘Well,’ Rory said, shrugging hopelessly. ‘You as in by far and away the most beautiful girl I have ever seen—’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Don’t start that. You’re doing it again. Yes, you. You are … you are beautiful. In fact I would go so far as to say ravishingly – no, that’s a terrible word. What’s wrong with just beautiful? You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, as well as the liveliest, the most warm-hearted and just about the sweetest and funniest—’

  ‘Funny? I’m not at all funny.’

  ‘Ah, but you agree with the rest of it, right?’ Rory teased her.

  ‘I most certainly do not. It’s a load of cod.’

  ‘No, it is not. You’re all of those things and more – and you’re a brilliant horsewoman as well as everything else.’

  Kathleen just looked at him, at an utter loss for words.

  ‘And do you want to know something else, Kathleen Flanagan?’

  ‘If it’s worth hearing,’ Kathleen replied, tongue in cheek, ‘then certainly.’

  ‘I’m very glad you didn’t get on that train,’ Rory said. ‘I really am.’

  ‘And do you want to hear something as well, Rory Rawlins?’ she asked in return.

  ‘If it’s worth hearing, then certainly.’

  ‘I’m very glad I didn’t get on that train as well,’ Kathleen said. ‘Sure as eggs.’

  But all the time they were beginning to declare their true feelings for each other, and explore their hopes for the future, in the yard outside – so very close to where they were standing – there were others who knew exactly what they hoped for the future and were in the process of making sure it happened.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that everyone found out how close they had been to disaster. No one knew when it had happened exactly, nor at first did anyone know how. Teddy was the first to blame himself, but it was no fault of his. He was just finishing his watch, dawn was breaking, and even though it had been yet another quiet night he thought he would check all the boxes once more before the stable woke up and clicked into its normal routine.

  As always Teddy went straight to Boyo’s box. This morning he found the horse standing on three legs. Initially he thought the animal was still half asleep and only resting a leg, until he picked up the limb in question, looked at the hoof and found a rusty two-inch nail driven into the sole of the horse’s foot.

  ‘Mother of God,’ Kathleen sighed when she arrived and saw the damage. ‘He never stepped on that, so he didn’t. As sure as anything that nail was driven in.’

  ‘And no one heard anything,’ Rory repeated, just in case any of his team had overlooked or forgotten anything. ‘No one dropped off, or went to spend a penny or anything? So they could have missed something?’

  But no one had, and Teddy insisted on blaming himself because according to both Rory and Kathleen, when they had checked the horses at the end of their respective watches, all were apparently sound and healthy.

  ‘But whoever it was would have had to get through the stable door, which is right slap bang in front of the office window,’ Rory said. ‘Yet nobody saw or heard anything.’

  ‘Boss?’ Teddy called from the back of the stable. ‘Look.’ He pointed up to the roof above him. ‘That’s how they got in. They lifted the sheeting on the back of the roof. They must have climbed across the other stable roofs and dropped down into this one.’

  ‘OK,’ Rory said, having eased the nail out of the horse’s hoof as carefully as he could. ‘I’m going to call the vet, and Kathleen’s going to poultice this hoof, and we’re all going to thank our stars and Kathleen here that it wasn’t Boyo’s hoof they nailed, but dear old Flibberty Gibbet’s.’

  He shook his head and went off to telephone for the vet.

  It had been as easy as that.

  After the first suspicion that they were going to attract the wrong kind of attention from intruders, Kathleen had suggested stabling Boyo somewhere anonymous, which was where Rory’s friend and neighbour Henry Carmichael had come in. Henry rented Fulford Farm gallops, so the morning after their first nocturnal alarm, once Boyo had finished his piece of work, Rory and
Kathleen boxed him up in Henry’s horsebox and Henry took him down to his own modest yard, along with the couple of hunter chasers he had been exercising.

  Since it was a matter of only a few miles away, Kathleen could easily commute between the two yards to feed, look after and ride the horse in his road work which, aside from one last long easy canter before the race, was all that was planned.

  And no one suspected a thing.

  The only ongoing argument that still remained unsolved was who was to ride the horse in the race, the diehards insisting that the best and most experienced jockey should be put up, while the owners lobbied insistently for their own so far faultless rider. Rory, who was still keen to listen to both sides, once again consulted his father.

  ‘Look, Rory, this is a case for common sense. If you could utilise the boy’s weight claim then I could see why you would still be considering it, but since that doesn’t come into the equation, what’s the point in risking using someone who after all is nothing more than an apprentice? He’s ridden once round Cheltenham in a hunter chase, which to my mind is not enough. Nor is it the same thing as the hottest Group One race in the calendar, and you know as well as I do that Cheltenham takes all the riding there is, and then some more. You have the breakneck pace of the race to contend with, you have to be able to deal with the tactics of the best and the toughest jockeys in the land, you have to be able to handle that terrible downhill run, keeping your horse balanced at all times so he doesn’t take those two fences by their roots, and then you have to know how to ride a finish up that heartbreaking final hill. Now if you think young Molloy is up to that, fine, but if I were you – and the boy will understand it, sooner or later – you’ll offer one of the top lads the mount. I see there are quite a few without rides still, and if I really was you, old boy—’

  ‘Which at this very moment you are.’

  ‘—I’d offer the ride to Richard Durden. His intended has just been withdrawn with a leg.’

  ‘I already did, Dad.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said he wanted to sit on him first.’

  Since Rory had given the horse his last piece of fast work at the weekend, before this final argument had really come to a head, all he could offer Richard Durden was the chance to ride the horse in an exercise canter. However since Boyo was the type of horse who told you as soon as you sat on him exactly what you had in your hands and under you, Rory was confident that a horseman as skilled and as experienced as Durden would be happy enough just to work the horse at half-speed. Boyo had other ideas.

  As soon as he was saddled up and brought out of his box it seemed he knew something was afoot, and laying his ears flat he began to swish his tail ominously. Having walked round the horse a couple of times to get his measure, Richard Durden then asked for a leg up from Rory, and as soon as he was in the saddle he was out of it again, decanted summarily.

  Kathleen got a firm hold of the horse’s bridle and they tried again. They tried twice more, but Boyo was having none of it.

  ‘Bad-tempered bugger, isn’t he?’ Durden said, dusting himself down grimly. ‘Well, we’ll have to show him who’s boss then.’

  And he promptly vaulted up unaided on to the horse and raised his whip, but it got no further than shoulder height before Boyo bucked him off again, this time so hard that the jockey was flung far further, into the muck heap.

  ‘This horse got a cold back or something? Or is he just some sort of nutcase?’

  ‘There’s really nothing the matter with the horse, Mr Durden,’ Kathleen informed him.

  ‘Then let’s see you sit him,’ the jockey said, handing Kathleen the reins.

  ‘Sure thing,’ Kathleen said, and vaulted up herself. As soon as he saw who was about to mount him, Boyo had pricked his ears and stopped swishing his tail.

  ‘Fine,’ Durden said, staring. ‘Obviously a cold back.’

  Next time Rory tried to leg Durden into the plate, the horse simply stepped smartly away and swung himself round, leaving his would-be rider with nowhere to go but the ground.

  ‘Thank you,’ Durden said, picking himself up for the last time. ‘I hope you all enjoyed that. I’d say this horse is unfit for anything except a tin.’

  ‘You got a fan there all right, Guv,’ Kathleen laughed as they watched the stained and furious figure disappearing into his car and driving off. ‘He’ll ride for you any time.’

  ‘I think that certainly answers the question as to who’s going to be riding. By the time this gets round the weighing room there won’t be a fee big enough to tempt anyone. Anyone good, that is.’

  The decision reached, Blaze was informed he had the ride. There was a long silence at the other end of the telephone, broken finally by a quiet voice in Rory’s ear.

  ‘You’ll not regret it, boss,’ he said.

  ‘God bless you.’ Everything was set fair until the next morning, when they all woke up and found everything outside once more frozen hard.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Come the Hour

  The freeze continued into the weekend, giving the racing Jeremiahs endless pleasure as they all prophesied the cancellation of the great National Hunt meeting scheduled to open on the Tuesday, and when by Monday morning the course was still frozen there was every indication that at the very best they would have to forfeit the opening day and hope to fit in and run all the cancelled races on the next two days, weather permitting.

  But then, shortly after seven thirty that very morning, it being the fickle and changeable month of March, the temperature suddenly rose and the heavens opened, deluging the whole of the south of England in thunderous showers followed by an afternoon of strong wind and spasmodic March sunshine. By eight o’clock that evening, Edwin Armstrong, the diligent and urbane clerk of the course, announced that subject to a 6.30 a.m. inspection the following morning the meeting would go ahead, and with Tuesday dawning dry, bright and blustery every road to Cheltenham was choked with traffic and every train headed west was packed with punters.

  With no other runners at the meeting, Rory and his staff stayed at Fulford Farm for both the Tuesday and the Wednesday, not taking their eye off the ball for a moment. The little horse was still at Henry Carmichael’s, eating and looking as well as ever, and yet in spite of a total shut-down on any information coming from the stables, a rumour – among many rumours that week – began to circulate that The Enchanted had met with a setback. His price began to drift, the ante-post market showing twenty-five to one across the board by midday.

  ‘If you ask me,’ an ex-jockey who was one of the experts on one of the preview programmes opined, ‘horses such as The Enchanted have no real place in a Gold Cup line-up. Rumour has it that Dick Durden went down to have a look-see after he’d lost the ride on Sportsmaster, and that he said not only is the horse a pony, but he’s got several screws loose.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Grenville had remarked when he had watched the programme with Lynne before setting off for the course. ‘Another little soul off the Christmas card list.’

  Having never been to Cheltenham before, when she got her first proper view of the wonderful Cotswolds racecourse set in the bowl of Prestbury Park, Alice was impressed. In spite of the vagaries of the weather the track looked in superb condition. It was as if the grass had just been planted and grown for this one occasion. The sun was shining with the particular March light that brings hope and spiritual refreshment to the long wintered soul, the sky was blue, the clouds were high, and the place was packed.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Grenville assured them as he led Alice, Constance and Lynne along a concourse thronged with racegoers and past packed bars. ‘Rory’s got a box for us all – belongs to a friend of his old man. The box’s owner can’t be here today which is tough on him, but lovely for some, namely us.’

  Once they were safely ensconced in their private box, which directly overlooked the home straight and from which they could see the whole of the racecourse, the party began to try
to relax a little, but the atmosphere was far from the seemingly light-hearted ones that had accompanied their horse’s previous appearances. Although naturally nervous on those occasions, they had had nothing to lose. Boyo was unknown, nobody was risking real money on him, the pundits had little or no interest in him and their ambitions had consisted of little more than seeing the horse get round and come home safely. The fact that he had won his first race and then his second was nothing short of miraculous, and at that point they might perhaps all quite happily have drawn a line under it and called it a day. Only their wildest dreams had brought them this far, to have their horse running in the most prestigious National Hunt race not just in the country but in the world.

  ‘If anyone’s nursing any second thoughts,’ Grenville said as he handed out the racecards, ‘I’m afraid it’s way too late now. Here are the runners for the Gold Cup,’ he explained, opening the card, ‘and here is our horse.’

  ‘Isn’t this odd?’ Alice stared at the details of their horse and the colours he would be carrying. ‘What is it – a bit less than six months ago? About six months ago we didn’t even know each other, and yet here we all are.’

  ‘And what a thing, too,’ Millie remarked, her invitation earned by the fact that if it hadn’t been for Millie in the first place none of this would have happened.

  ‘But it is extraordinary, really, when you think about it,’ Alice continued. ‘And never mind what happens or doesn’t happen, because rather like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, we shall always have this. Always.’

  ‘I’ll certainly drink to that,’ Grenville said, handing round the champagne. ‘Mind you, today I shall drink to most things, but first to what Alice has just said. To The Enchanted Partnership.’

  They all raised their glasses to make the toast. ‘The Enchanted Partnership.’

  ‘And may the best horse win,’ Grenville added.

  ‘And let that one be ours,’ Constance said firmly. ‘I need the money.’

  ‘Don’t say you still haven’t paid for your share, Constance,’ Grenville teased her.