Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [53]
With a shiver of dismay, Chick saw the horse reappear and for the first time regretted what he’d done. That stupid vet, he thought violently. He can’t see what’s under his bloody nose, he couldn’t see a barn at ten paces. Anything that happened from then on was the vet’s fault, Chick thought. The vet’s responsibility, absolutely. The man was a criminal menace, letting a horse run in a steeplechase with dope coming out of its eyeballs.
Toddy Morrison had joined his father in the parade ring and together they were watching with worried expressions as the chestnut plodded lethargically around the oval walking track. Toddy was a strong, stocky professional jockey in his late twenties with an infectious grin and a generous view of life that represented a direct rejection of his father’s. He had inherited the same strength of mind but had used it to leave home at eighteen to ride races for other trainers, and had only consented to ride for his father when he could dictate his own terms. Arthur Morrison, in consequence, respected him deeply. Between them they had won a lot of races.
Chick didn’t actually dislike Toddy Morrison, even though, as he saw it, Toddy stood in his way. Occasionally Arthur let Chick ride a race if Toddy had something better or couldn’t make the weight. Chick had to share these scraps from Toddy’s table with two or three other lads in the yard who were, though he didn’t believe it, as good as he was in the saddle. But though the envy curdled around inside him and the snide remarks came out sharp and sour as vinegar, he had never actually come to hate Toddy. There was something about Toddy that you couldn’t hate, however good the reason. Chick hadn’t given thought to the fact that it would be Toddy who would have to deal with the effects of the carrot. He had seen no further than his own pocket. He wished now that it had been some other jockey. Anyone but Toddy.
The conviction suddenly crystallised in Chick’s mind as he looked at Toddy and Morrison standing there worried in the parade ring that he had never believed the chestnut would actually start in the race. The stranger, Chick said to himself, had distinctly told him the horse would be too sick to start. I wouldn’t have done it, else, Chick thought virtuously. I wouldn’t have done it. It’s bloody dangerous, riding a doped steeplechaser. I wouldn’t have done that to Toddy. It’s not my fault he’s going to ride a doped steeplechaser, it’s that vet’s fault for not seeing. It’s that stranger’s fault, he told me distinctly the horse wouldn’t be fit to start…
Chick remembered with an unpleasant jerk that he’d been two hours late with the carrot. Maybe if he’d been on time the drug would have come out more and the vet would have seen…
Chick jettisoned this unbearable theory instantly on the grounds that no one can tell how seriously any particular horse will react to a drug or how quickly it will work, and he repeated to himself the comforting self-delusion that the stranger had promised him the horse wouldn’t even start – though the stranger had not in fact said any such thing. The stranger, who was at the races, was entirely satisfied with the way things were going and was on the point of making a great deal of money.
The bell rang for the jockeys to mount. Chick bunched his hands in his pockets and tried not to visualise what could happen to a rider going over jumps at thirty miles an hour on a doped horse. Chick’s body began playing him tricks again: he could feel the sweat trickling down his back and the pulse had come back in his ears.
Supposing he told them, he thought. Supposing he just ran out there into the ring and told Toddy not to ride the horse, it hadn’t a chance of jumping properly, it was certain to fall, it could kill him bloody easily because its reactions would be all shot to bits.
Supposing he did. The way they’d look at him. His imagination blew a fuse and blanked out on that picture because such a blast of contempt didn’t fit in with his overgrown self-esteem. He could not, could not face the fury