10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [40]
Orinda might wish my father dead, but couldn’t kill him herself, and didn’t believe that anyone else had tried.
Orinda, I thought, hadn’t asked or paid anyone to get rid of her rival physically. There were limits to her hate.
I took her across the course to watch the second race from near one of the fences, to give her at least some sensation of the speed involved. Her narrow high heels tended to dig into the turf and stick, making walking difficult, which didn’t please her. I was not, I acknowledged to myself in depression, making a great success of the afternoon.
She was, though, impressed by the noise and energy of the half-ton horses soaring or crashing through the tops of the big black birch fence, and she could hear the jockeys shouting to each other and to their mounts; could see the straining legs in white breeches and the brilliant colors of the silks in the August sun. And whether she wanted me to know it or not, she did quite suddenly understand why this sort of racing fascinated the duke and everyone else who had made the effort and the journey to the racecourse.
When the horses had surged past us again and were striving their way to the winning post, while the very air still vibrated with their passage, I said, “I do understand what you feel about having been passed over by the selectors.”
Orinda said unkindly, “You can’t possibly. You’re far too young.”
Almost in desperation I said, “You’ve lost what you most wanted, and it’s near to unbearable. You were looking forward to a sort of life that would be a joy every day, that would fulfill you and give you inner power to achieve your best dreams, and it’s been snatched away. You’ve been told you can’t have it. The pain of it’s brutal. Believe me, I do know.”
She stared, the green eyes wide.
“You don’t have to be old,” I said. “You can feel it if you’re only six and you passionately want a pony and you’ve nowhere to keep it and it’s not sensible to start with. And I ...” I swallowed. I wanted to stop again, but this time found the grit for the words. “I wanted this.” I swept an arm to the black fence, to the whole wide racecourse. “I wanted all of this. I’ve wanted to be a jockey for as long as I can remember. I’ve grown up in the belief that this would be my life. I’ve grown up feeling warm and certain of my future, and ... well ... this week it’s been snatched away from me. This week I’ve been told I can’t live this life, I’m not a good enough rider, I haven’t the spark to be the jockey I want to be. The trainer I was riding for told me to leave. My father says he’ll pay for me to go to university, but not for me to waste my time riding in races when I’m not going to be brilliant. It didn’t really sink in ... I didn’t know how absolutely awful it would be until I came here today ... but I’d like to scream, actually, and roll on the ground, and if you think you have to be old enough to be my mother to feel as you do, well, you’re wrong.”
Six
At the end of the afternoon I glumly drove the Range Rover back to Polly’s house in the woods, feeling that I’d wasted all her planning and not only failed to profit from an unrepeatable opportunity but had positively made things worse.
By the time Orinda and I had recrossed the course (her heels were sticking worse than ever) and regained the stewards’ room, the duke had disappeared again towards his duties. Orinda watched the third race from the viewing balcony leading out of the luncheon room, her back relentlessly turned towards me, her manner forbidding conversation.
A horse carrying a 7-lb. penalty won the race. Orinda hadn’t backed it.
When the duke returned, all smiles at the sight of her, she thanked him charmingly for his hospitality and left. She said nothing to my father or to Polly or to myself, ignoring our existence, and I survived the last three races wishing I were smaller, richer, and at the very least a genius. Settling for the obvious privileges I had seemed dreary compared with the fairy tale lost.
When Polly invited us