Mr Woodcock caught sight of us as he was leading the horse away afterwards and called out g’day, and then it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to follow them back to the stables where Phar Lap would be rubbed down and fed and rested after his effort. Lizzie was so excited she kept clutching at me and saying, ‘Pinch me, pinch me, I think I’m dreaming.’
Tommy Woodcock allowed us to stroke Phar Lap’s nose and I whispered to him, ‘Well done, oh, well done, mate, you’re the best.’ He flicked his ear at me and looked at me with his dark eyes and I knew, I just knew he’d understood every word. Then Dad was telling Mr Woodcock all about the poem I’d written and how it had won a prize, and Mrs Davis, who was coming up just then (she’s a very pretty lady, young, and very nice), heard that too. Mr Woodcock introduced us to her, and she wanted to know all about my poem and even made me recite it to her (yes, I do know it by heart!). She said it was wonderful and so did Mr Woodcock. Mrs Davis asked if I’d send a copy, she said she’d love to have it for her Phar Lap scrapbook. Of course I said yes! She then turned to Dad and said she understood he was a private detective, and had investigated the attempts on Phar Lap for a client.
‘Why, yes, ma’am,’ Dad said, ‘I was hired to do so.’
She paused, then asked, ‘Did you come to a different conclusion from … from what we’ve been told?’
Dad said, ‘No, ma’am, I don’t believe I did.’
‘Then you too think Phar Lap is safe now?’ she asked.
Dad nodded and said he thought so, at least in present circumstances.
‘Yes, she said, that’s what I thought, but … if circumstances change, it could be different.’
‘I really couldn’t say, Mrs Davis,’ said Dad and she sighed and said she supposed not. Then she asked if Dad worked for an agency and Dad told her he worked for Mr Kane.
Mr Davis came up then with Mr Telford, and they changed the subject. It was the first time I had met them. Mr Telford is just as Dad had described him, craggy-faced and rather gruff, and Mr Davis has bright eyes behind round glasses and talks a lot, and fast, in his American accent. They talked about what Phar Lap was doing next—he is going back to Melbourne in a few days’ time for their racing season there—and Mr Davis hinted that soon he might be going to America too, though he didn’t say so straight out. Dad said later he didn’t think Mr Telford looked very happy about it. ‘But maybe he won’t have much of a choice,’ he said.
The way Mr Davis talks about Phar Lap, you can tell he does not feel the same way about him as the others. It’s not that he doesn’t like Phar Lap or anything like that, though. Dad says the truth is he sees Phar Lap first and foremost as a money-spinner. A surprise one, because at the beginning Mr Davis was convinced Phar Lap was no good. He wanted Mr Telford to get rid of him. He didn’t believe in his potential. That’s why he leased him to Mr Telford for three years. But after Phar Lap started winning—and winning—and winning—it was a different story. Phar Lap is not only a winner, he is a real star. Millions of Australians love him. But that’s not enough for Mr Davis. He wants to make Big Red into a world star.
October 16
This afternoon I was writing a letter to Miss O’Brien, telling her about everything that had happened, when Dad came home unexpectedly early. I was going to hide the letter, but it was too late, he saw who I was writing to. But he didn’t get angry or go quiet. Instead he said, ‘Leave me some space down the bottom, won’t you, Sal?’ and smiled. Well of course I did leave him space—a lot of space. I was itching to know what he was going to write, but he didn’t show me. He sealed up the letter in the envelope, which I had already addressed, and took it to the post office himself! I wonder what Miss O’Brien’s going to think when she opens that envelope and sees it’s not just me who’s written.
We sent my poem off to Mrs Davis the other day and got a box of the most lovely (and expensive!) iced cakes as a thank-you present! She is such a nice lady. We had the Walters over for dinner that night and had the cakes for dessert, they were very popular with everyone. Dad and Mr and Mrs Walters discussed Phar Lap’s prospects for the Melbourne Cup (which is in about three weeks’ time). They seemed to think he’s going to be so heavily handicapped this time that it will be a big struggle for him and could even do him harm. Poor Bobby, it’s so unfair.
Billy wrote again to say he’s going to watch Phar Lap race in the Cox Plate in Melbourne in a few days’ time, and he’ll tell me all about it!
October 24
We just heard on the radio that Phar Lap did win the Cox Plate. Maybe our favourite horse will have a chance in the Melbourne Cup after all! But reports said he was panting a bit after the Plate. No wonder, poor thing, he had so much weight to carry. Dad says if it was his horse he wouldn’t want him to run under such conditions. He says it’s cruel. ‘The horse will always try his best, because racing is what he loves doing. But it’s too much strain. Far too much strain. And it’s not as though they can win big money any more—the prize-money was even reduced this year from what it was last year.’
I asked Dad if that was done on purpose because of Phar Lap winning too much, and he said he didn’t think so—it’s more to do with the hard times.
‘But there’s no doubt the racing authorities are in two minds about Phar Lap racing—on the one hand, he brings in the crowds. On the other hand, he’s so good that winning’s a foregone conclusion and no-one else gets a look-in. The bookies are annoyed and other owners must be pretty sore too. So I suppose the racing clubs try to stack the odds against him in other ways.’
I think it’s a shame. Why should Phar Lap be penalised just because he’s so much better than every other horse? People say it makes things fairer, but I don’t see that. I think it just makes it less true, less real, in a way. It’s as if in a running race they tied the best runner’s legs together or something, just to give the others a chance!
October 26
Letter from Billy, who described Phar Lap’s thrilling win in the Cox Plate, despite the big handicap. He said that the poor horse was panting more than a bit, and his sides were glistening with sweat. It made Billy feel sick, he said. And he is very gloomy about Phar Lap’s prospects in the Cup. He thinks it will be impossible for him to win it. He says that even in his stable, which of course is a rival to Mr Telford’s, everyone thinks it’s a real shame.
October 27
This morning Dad was called in to Mr Kane’s office. Mr Kane said he’d had a phone call from a Melbourne lawyer, checking Dad’s ‘bona fides’, as he said (that means checking up on him, basically). When Mr Kane said that Dad was excellent at his job and talked a bit about some of the cases he’d worked on for Mr Kane, the lawyer said he was acting for Mr Davis, who wanted to know whether Mr Fielding might be available for a special assignment. When Mr Kane asked what it was, the lawyer hummed and hawed and said he wasn’t at liberty to say, but that Mr Fielding should, if he was interested, present himself for an interview in Melbourne in two days’ time. Mr Kane said he couldn’t speak on Dad’s behalf and so the lawyer gave him a number to call. Mr Kane was a bit reluctant about the whole thing and he advised Dad to make sure he got as much information as possible.
So Dad called the Melbourne lawyer. He didn’t get much more out of him than Mr Kane did, other than that it was very well-paid and interesting work, but the upshot was he agreed to go to Melbourne tomorrow. He called Mr Kane and told him and Mr Kane said he had to do as he saw fit, and he was a free agent. I think he was a bit miffed, but in the end he came round to it and said it was likely a very good opportunity, and Dad should take it.
I wish I could go with him too, but Dad says no, I’m to stay at Lizzie’s place again. I wonder what Mr Davis wants him to do? It’s got to have something to do with Phar Lap—but what?
October 29
Found out today—Dad rang and said he’d seen Mr Davis and that the ‘special assignment’ was to keep an eye out for any problems that might arise this week. Soon it will be
exactly a year since Phar Lap was shot at, and Mrs Davis in particular is nervous that someone might try again. She’s persuaded Mr Davis something should be done about it. But they didn’t think the police would provide a guard again, just on the off-chance something might happen, so they thought of Dad. In a way I suppose he’s going to be like a bodyguard. I was a bit worried at first when I heard that, because of what happened before, when he was bashed. But Dad says I’m not to worry, that he’s taking great care and that he doesn’t think they’ll try anything this year.
He’s staying at the Bellinis’, but spending all this week with Phar Lap and Tommy Woodcock, accompanying them on exercises and all that sort of thing. I wish I could be there with him (even though I’m having a good time here with Lizzie and her family as usual).
October 31
Dad rang again tonight. Phar Lap won the Melbourne Stakes today—the very same race that he ran the same day those people shot at him last year! But, thank goodness, no attempt was made this year, and the race was run without a hitch. Dad said he was very relieved indeed. There’d been no sign of Hardy or Freeman or anyone involved in the earlier attempt, and no sign of anything suspicious. The villains must have given up, he said. It’s not worth the bother now there’s no money to be made from the betting on the races Phar Lap’s in, anyway.
The real worry now, he said, is the problem of the handicaps, which are getting bigger and bigger. The one for the Melbourne Cup is going to be huge, the biggest ever for poor Bobby—ten stone ten! Dad said that’s almost as much as Phar Lap having to carry a second jockey on his back. Last Melbourne Cup he had to carry nine stone twelve, which was bad enough, but this is just beyond the pale.
Dad said that Jimmy Pike (the jockey) thinks it is impossible, and that Mr Davis and Mr Telford should get the horse scratched from the Cup, he isn’t fit enough to carry such a weight. Eventually they were convinced—but when Mr Davis went to see the racing club chairman about it, he point blank refused to allow it, and said it was too late for Phar Lap to be scratched. Dad suspects that what they’re really thinking is that if Phar Lap is scratched, the crowds just won’t turn up.
The crowds were still out in force to see Phar Lap at the Melbourne Stakes. Mr Walters heard the race on the radio while Lizzie and the twins and I were at the movies for the double-bill. It was two American gangster movies, Public Enemy and Little Caesar, they were really exciting but scary too. The twins kept pretending to be gangsters all the way home, pointing imaginary guns at Lizzie and me, shouting bang-bang-bang, and yelling that we had to pretend to be dead. Of course we ignored them! Little brothers are such pests. I’m glad I don’t have any.
Oh, and Dad popped over to Billy’s stables. He said Billy was going great guns, everyone spoke very highly of him. He is looking quite different too, Dad said, putting on some muscle, he’s even getting taller. It seems to Dad that the work really agrees with him! ‘He asked after you, of course,’ Dad went on. ‘He loves getting your letters.’ Well that’s good, because I enjoy getting his. It’s funny, because I think in a way Billy and I have become quite good friends—good pen-friends anyway—and I’d never have expected that when I first met him!
November 3
Today was the first Tuesday in November, Melbourne Cup Day! It was supposed to be a school day, of course, but Lizzie and I had decided there was no way we were going because if we did we’d still be in class when the race was broadcast on the radio. So we rubbed some chalk into our cheeks and rubbed at our eyes till they looked red, and when Mrs Walters came into our room in the morning we started coughing and spluttering as though we were feeling really sick. I’m not sure if she believed us completely, but she let us stay home anyway.
Mind you, she made us stay in bed all morning, which was pretty boring. She wouldn’t even let us read, she said if we were unwell we shouldn’t strain our eyes, and we had to whisper to each other in case she came in and told us off for gossiping when we should be resting! After a lunch of chicken soup we said we felt much better, so she set us to work peeling potatoes and washing floors and a few other very dull chores. At one point I got worried that she might even have plans to stop us listening to the radio at race time! But, thank goodness, that didn’t happen—she turned the radio on a little while before the race started, and Mr Walters came in from the shop to listen, along with his new apprentice, Rich.
On the radio it described the atmosphere in the crowd as the horses came out from the mounting yard and headed for the start line. Everyone in Australia knew about Phar Lap’s massive handicap and that even a horse as big-hearted as him had Buckley’s chance of winning under such conditions, but everyone (apart, I suppose, from the owners and trainers of the other horses!) was hoping against hope that Phar Lap would pull off a miracle and trounce them all again. I imagined that all over Australia everyone was sitting around their radios hoping and wishing and crossing their fingers. He’d done it before every time, for so long. He was such a champion. Such a wonder horse. The best in the whole wide world!
The race started and we were all huddled around the radio, biting our fingernails and yelling, ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ with Tilly bouncing up and down in her mum’s lap, squeaking. Round the first turn they came, Phar Lap doing his usual thing of staying behind—but that’s what he always does, hangs back and then puts on a burst of speed that leaves all the others in the dust. Round the next and still he was behind. The crowd at Flemington racecourse was roaring, and in the Walters’ kitchen we were roaring, and I suppose if you could have looked into people’s kitchens and offices and factories all over Australia at that moment, you’d have heard the same roar coming up from millions of throats: Come on, Big Red, come on! You can do it! You can do it! Round the next—and then in the next moment Phar Lap started to make a move, in the last third of the race he was coming up from well behind, and the hope sprang and flared in us, we were jumping up and down now, yelling at those other horses to get out of the way, and the radio announcer’s voice was getting faster and faster, he was screaming too, and then it was the last bit and it was clear Phar Lap wasn’t going to make it, it was too much of a strain for him, and try as he might he could not do it. Would not do it.
He came in eighth. Eighth! That’s not even a place. Mr Walters said it was the very first time in the all the races he’s run since September 1929 that he has been unplaced. He’s had one third, three seconds—and 35 firsts!
It is a crushing defeat and a bitter disappointment, though completely expected and completely unsurprising. Phar Lap ran so well, much better than any horse could have done, but it was an impossible task, and those against him knew it. It makes me so angry. It makes everyone so angry, Dad said tonight when he called. ‘But think of it this way,’ he said. ‘What sort of a victory is it really for the owners of the winning horse, White Nose, and the other place-getters? They know their horses only won because Phar Lap was so unfairly weighted down, and that’s all people will remember of them in the future.’
He said that Tommy Woodcock and Jimmy Pike were absolutely ropeable at the end of the race. They had already been worried about Phar Lap racing at all. Now Dad says Mr Woodcock is grimly determined to stop Mr Telford and Mr Davis from racing Phar Lap any more at all this season. The horse is exhausted and unfit and needs a long rest. There had been talk of entering him in another race a week after the Melbourne Cup, but Dad said that’s a no-go now. Mr Woodcock won’t have a bar of it, and as he does most of the training of Phar Lap now, and is the one who knows the most about the horse, what he says pretty much goes. So Dad’s coming home the day after tomorrow, because he won’t be needed while Phar Lap is spelling.
November 5
The most exciting and amazing thing happened today. I’m still pinching myself to make sure it’s all true and that I haven’t dreamed it all!
First of all, a letter from San Francisco arrived this morning—it was from Miss O’Brien, of course. Well actually it was two letters—a longish one for
me, describing San Francisco and other places she’d been, and a short one for Dad. I really, really wanted to look inside to see what it said, but it was sealed, and I knew if I tried to steam open the envelope Dad would know. And he was coming home tonight. So I had to wait for him to get back. I gave it to him straight away, I was itching for him to open it and tell me what it said.
He did open it—but he didn’t tell me what it said, though I saw his expression change as he read it, and he sat down with a bit of a thump, as though he’d had a shock. He read it again then he looked at me. There was an odd light in his eyes. ‘You got a letter too,’ he said.
I nodded. ‘It was all about what it was like over there.’
‘Can I read it, Sal?’
‘Of course, Dad.’ I gave it to him. He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. ‘Fair’s fair,’ he said, and slid his note over to me. I picked it up hesitantly. He smiled. ‘It’s all right. You can read it,’ he said.
This is what it said:
Thank you for writing, Charlie. I am well and quite liking it here, though I do miss Sydney. Like I told Sally, I have been mostly taking it easy, thanks to the kindness of my cousin, but have also done a little French translation work for fashion houses here.
I most certainly do not think badly of you, and I am glad you do not think badly of me either. Perhaps, as you say, one day our paths may cross again. I hope they may. Take good care of yourself and your dear daughter.
With best regards,
Lily
I looked up at Dad, not sure what he wanted me to say. ‘It’s—it’s nice,’ I said at last.
The Phar Lap Mystery Page 10
