10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [66]
In a way, I deeply loved him.
In a way I felt wholly incapable of ever equaling his mental force or his determination. It took me years to realize that I didn’t have to.
On the morning after his maiden speech I caught the early train from Paddington to Exeter, clicketing along the rails from reflected fame to anonymity.
In Exeter, one of eight thousand residential students, I coasted through university life without attracting much attention, and absorbed reams of calculus, linear algebra, actuarial science and distribution theory towards a bachelor of science degree in mathematics with accounting: and as a short language course came with the package I also learned French, increasing my vocabulary from piste and écurie (“track” and “stable”) to law and order.
As often as possible I cycled to Stallworthy’s stable to ride Sarah’s Future, and on several Saturdays set off from starting gates. After the first flourish as a novice, finding winning races for a steady but unspectacular jumper proved difficult, but also-ran was fine by me: fourth, fifth, sixth, one easy fall and no tailed-offs.
On one very cold December Saturday towards the end of my first term I was standing on the stands at Taunton watching one of Stallworthy’s string scud first towards the last flight of hurdles when it crashed and fell in a cascading cartwheel of legs, and snapped its neck.
They put screens round the disaster and winched the body away, and within ten minutes I came across Stallworthy trying to comfort the female owner. Crying ladies were not Stallworthy’s specialty. He first asked me to find Jim and then canceled that instruction and simply passed the weeping woman into my arms, and told me to take her for a drink.
Many trainers went white and shook with emotion when their horses died. Stallworthy shrugged and drew a line across a page.
Mrs. Courtney Young, the bereaved owner, wiped away her tears and tried to apologize while a large bracer of gin took its effect.
“It’s all right,” I assured her. “If my horse died, I’d be devastated.”
“But you’re so young. You’d get over it.”
“I’m sure you will, too, in time.”
“You don’t understand.” Fresh tears rolled. “I let the horse’s insurance lapse because I couldn’t afford the premium, and I owe Mr. Stallworthy a lot of training fees, and I was sure my horse would win today so I could pay off my debts, and I backed it with a bookie I have an account with, and I haven’t any money to pay him. I was going to have to sell my horse anyway if he didn’t win, but now I can’t do even that. . . .”
Poor Mrs. Courtney Young.
“She’s mad,” Jim told me later, saddling Sarah’s Future. “She bets too much.”
“What will she do?”
“Do?” he exclaimed. “She’ll sell a few more heirlooms. She’ll buy another horse. One day she’ll lose the lot.”
I grieved very briefly for Courtney Young, but that evening I telephoned my father and suggested he insure Sarah’s Future.
“How did you get on today?” he asked. “I heard the results and you weren’t in the first three.”
“Fourth. What about insurance?”
“Who arranges horse insurance?”
“Weatherbys.”
“Do you want to?”
“For your sake,” I said.
“Then send me the paperwork.”
Weatherbys, the firm that arranged insurance for horses, were the administrators for the whole of racing. It was Weatherbys who kept the records, who registered horses’ names and ownership details, including colors; Weatherbys to whom trainers sent entries for races; Weatherbys who confirmed a horse was running and sent details of racing programs to the press; Weatherbys who printed race cards in color by night and dispatched them to racecourses by morning.
Weatherbys published the fixture list, kept the Thoroughbred Stud Book and acted as a bank for the transfer of fees to jockeys, prize money to owners, anything to anyone.