Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [71]
She was a woman of kindness and good humour, but suffered from a dangerous belief that everyone was basically as well-intentioned as herself. Like children who pat tigers, she expected a purr of appreciation in return for her offered friendship, not to have her arm bitten off.
Derek Roberts, jockey, saw Mrs Angela Hart prosaically as the middle-aged owner of Billyboy and Hamlet, a woman to whom he spoke habitually with a politeness born from needing the fees he was paid for riding her horses. His job, he reckoned, involved pleasing the customers before and after each race as much as doing his best for them in the event, and as he had long years ago discovered that most owners were pathetically pleased when a jockey praised their horses, he had slid almost without cynicism into a way of conveying optimism even when not believing a word of it.
When he walked into the parade ring at Cheltenham, looking for Mrs Hart and spotting her across the grass in her green tweed coat and brown fur hat, he was thinking that as Billyboy hadn’t much chance in today’s company he’d better prepare the old duck for the coming disappointment and at the same time insure himself against being blamed for it.
‘Lovely day,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘Real spring sunshine.’
‘Lovely.’ After a short silence, when she said nothing more, he tried again.
‘Much better for Billyboy, now all that rain’s drying out.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’
She wasn’t as talkative as usual, he thought. Not the normal excited chatter. He watched Billyboy plod round the ring and said encouragingly, ‘He should run well today… though the opposition’s pretty hot, of course.’
Mrs Hart, looking slightly vague, merely nodded. Derek Roberts, shrugging his mental shoulders, gave her a practised, half-genuine smile and reckoned (mistakenly) that if she had something on her mind, and didn’t want to talk, it was nothing to do with him.
A step away from them, also with his eyes on the horse, stood Billyboy’s trainer, Clement Scott. Strong, approaching sixty, a charmer all his life, he had achieved success more through personality than any deep skill with horses. He wore good clothes. He could talk.
Underneath the attractive skin there was a coldness which was apparent to his self-effacing wife, and to his grown and married children, and eventually to anyone who knew him well. He was good company, but lacked compassion. All bonhomie on top: ruthlessly self-seeking below.
Clement Scott was old in the ways of jockeys and owners, and professionally he thought highly of the pair before him: of Derek, because he kept the owners happy and rode well enough besides, and of Angela because her first interest was in the horses themselves and not in the prize money they might fail to win.
Motherly sentimental ladies, in his opinion, were the least critical and most forgiving of owners, and he put up gladly with their gushing telephone calls because they also tended to pay his bills on receipt. Towards Angela, nicely endowed with a house on the edge of Wentworth golf course, he behaved with the avuncular roguishness that had kept many a widow faithful to his stable in spite of persistent rumours that he would probably cheat them if given half a chance.
Angela, like many another lady, didn’t believe the rumours. Clement, dear naughty Clement, who made owning a racehorse such satisfying fun, would never in any case cheat her.
Angela stood beside Clement on the stands to watch the race, and felt an extra dimension of anxiety; not simply, as always, for the safe return of darling Billyboy, but also, acutely, for the man on his back. Such risks he takes, she thought, watching him through her binoculars. Before that day she had thought only of whether he’d judged the pace right, or taken an available opening, or ridden a vigorous finish. During that race her response to him crossed conclusively from objectivity