Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [103]
In the weighing-room, Jerry Springwood bore the congratulations as best he could and announced to surprised television millions that he would be hanging up his boots immediately, after this peak to his career.
He didn’t realise he had ridden the bravest race of his life. When the plaudits were over he locked himself in the washroom and wept for his lost courage.
Austin Dartmouth Glenn travelled home empty-handed and in a vile mood, not knowing that his lost ticket had saved him from arrest. He cursed his wife and kicked the cat, and after a hasty supper, he put on his neat navy-blue uniform. Then he went scowling to work his usual night shift in the nearby high-security jail.
HAIG’S DEATH
What if? is the beginning of fiction. What if Haig died when he shouldn’t?
There could be a hundred intertwined ripples but, anyway, here there are three.
Unaware that it was for the last time, Christopher Haig steered his buzzing electric razor over the contours of his chin and watched its progress impersonally in the bathroom mirror.
Christopher Haig’s beard grew strong and black; unfairly virile, he considered, when his crown was mercilessly thinning. Sighing, he straightened the transition line between beard and hair beside each ear, and blew the shaved-off ends of whiskers carefully into a plastic bag always ready for the purpose.
As middle-age and a gentle paunch had crept up and overtaken him, Christopher Haig had begun at forty-two to wish that he had dared more, had crazily set off to fly round the world in a hot air balloon or spent a summer photographing penguins in Antarctica or had canoed up the Orinoco river to the Angel Falls. Instead, he had worked reliably day by day as an animal-feed consultant and, as the pinnacle of his suppressed urge to adventure, acted as the judge at race meetings.
He looked forward, on that particular Friday morning, to the bustle of the first half of the two-day Winchester Spring Meeting. He savoured his drive to Winchester racecourse from his home (an empty-feeling home now that his wife had run off with a raggle-taggle TV repair man), taking pleasure in the sunshine sparkling on the fresh green buds of regenerate trees. Happy enough without his wife (relieved, if the truth were told), he wondered how one actually set about dog-sledding in Alaska or driving across the vast red-dust wastes of Australia: could one’s every-day travel agent arrange it?
Meticulous by nature, he packed imaginary suitcases for his fantasy journeys, wondering if snow-shoes would glide over both powdery surfaces, and choosing audio books for the long nights. Dreams and daydreams plugged the empty spaces of a worthy working life.
He was one of the fifteen judges regularly called to decide the winner and placed horses of the races. As there were fifteen judges but not fifteen race meetings every day (there were seldom more than four except on public holidays), acting as judge was to Chris Haig a sporadic and unpredictable pleasure more than an occupation. He never knew long in advance to which meeting he might be sent: none of the judges officiated always on the same course.
Christopher Haig regretted the passing of the old days when the word of the judge was law: if the judge said ‘So and so’ had won the race, then he darned well had won it, even if halt the racegoers put ‘What d’ya macall’ in front. Nowadays the photo-finish camera gave unarguable short-head verdicts, which the judge did little more than announce. Fairer, Chris Haig acknowledged, but not much fun.
The photo-finish camera at Winchester races had been on the blink last time out, though the trouble (more pompously classified as a malfunction) had happened to another judge, not Christopher Haig. It had now not only reportedly been fixed but exhaustively tested. A pity, Haig reprehensibly thought.
Chris Haig parked his car (for the last time) in the ‘Officials only’ car park and made his way jauntily towards the weighing-room (the centre of officialdom), scattering ‘good mornings’ to gatemen and