10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [58]
At a half-speed gallop, riding the chestnut was a bit like sitting astride a launched rocket: powerful, purposeful, difficult to deflect. I reined to a slightly breathless walk and went over to where Jim waited beside the gate. “Right,” he said noncommittally, “now try the other one.”
The other horse, a bay gelding with a black mane, was of a leaner type and struck me as being more of a speed merchant than the one I’d just ridden. He carried his head higher and was more frisky and eager to set off and get into his stride. Whether that stride would last out over a distance of ground was, perhaps, doubtful.
I stood with my toes in the irons all the way down the field, letting the trot and canter flow beneath me. This was not a horse schooled to give his rider a peaceful look at the countryside; this was a fellow bred to race, for whom nothing else was of interest. At the far end of the field, instead of turning quietly, he did one of those swerving pirouettes with a dropped shoulder, a maneuver guaranteed to fling an unwary jockey off sideways. I’d seen many horses do that. I’d been flung off myself. But I was ready for Stallworthy’s bay to try it; on his part more from eagerness to gallop than from spite.
His half-speed gallop home was a battle against my arms all the way: he wanted to go much faster. Thoughtfully I slid off his back and led him to Jim at the gate.
“Right,” Jim said. “Which do you want?”
“Er ...” I patted the bay’s neck. He shook his head vigorously, not in disapproval, I gathered, but in satisfaction.
“How about,” I suggested, “a look at the form books and the breeding over a sandwich in a pub?”
I was quite good at pub life after three and a half weeks with my father.
Jim briefly laughed. “I was told I was to fetch a schoolkid. You’re some schoolkid.”
“I left school last month.”
“Yeah. Makes a difference!”
With good-natured irony he collected the necessary records from inside Stallworthy’s house and drove us to a local pub where he was greeted as a friendly regular. We sat on a high-backed wooden settle and he put the form books on the table beside the beer (him) and the Diet Coke (me).
In steeplechase breeding it’s the dams that matter. A dam who breeds one winner will most likely breed others. The chestnut’s dam had never herself won, though two of her progeny had. The chestnut so far hadn’t finished nearer than second.
The bay’s dam had never even raced, but all of her progeny, except the first foal, had won. The bay had won twice.
Both horses were eight.
“Tell me about them,” I said to Jim. “What ought I to know?”
There was no way he was going to tell me the absolute truth if he had any commission coming from the sale. Horse traders were as notorious as car salesmen for filling the gearbox with chaff.
“Why are they for sale?” I asked.
“Their owners are short of money.”
“My father would need a vet’s certificate.”
“I’ll see to it. Which horse do you want?”
“I’ll talk to my father and let you know.”
Jim gave me a twisted smile. He had white eyebrows as well as white lashes. I needed to make a friend of him if I were to come often to ride exercise, so regrettably, with all my father’s wily political sense, I deliberately set about canvassing Jim’s pro-Ben vote, and thought that maybe I’d learned a few reprehensible techniques, while being willing to listen to people’s troubles and desires.
Jim told me, laughing, that he’d hitched himself to Stallworthy because he hadn’t been able to find a comparable trainer with a marriageable daughter. A good job I wasn’t Usher Rudd, I thought.
Spencer Stallworthy apparently slept on Sunday afternoons, so I didn’t see him again that day. Jim (and Bert) drove me back to Exeter by three o’clock and with a grin and a warm slap on the back he handed me over to the black car with the silent chauffeur.