Field of Thirteen - Dick Francis [8]
Red Millbrook thought his new professional status a step up, not down. Anxious to put on a reasonable show at Sandown, he took a fierce determination to the starting gate, and over the first fence awoke to an unexpected mental alliance with the horse. He had never felt anything like it. His whole body responded. He and the horse rose as one over each of the string of jumps constructed and spaced to sort out the fleetest. He as one with the horse swept round the final bend and stretched forward up the last testing hill. He shared the will and the determination of his animal partner. When he won, he felt, not amazement, but that he had come into his natural kingdom.
In the winner’s unsaddling enclosure Gypsy Joe and Red Millbrook smiled faintly at each other as if they had joined a private brotherhood. Gypsy Joe knew he’d found his man. Red Millbrook embraced his future.
*
Up on the stands the two passed-over stable jockeys watched the race and the win with increasing rage. One of them would normally have been on the horse, and he – Davey Rockman – felt his fury thoroughly justified.
Gypsy Joe was a rough customer to work for (Davey Rockman considered), but his horses ran often, were well schooled, and had kept him – Davey – in luxury and girlfriends for the past five years. Davey Rockman’s appetite for women, once the scandal of the racecourse, had long been accepted as the norm; and conversely ‘The Rock’s’ dark good looks were known powerfully to attract anything female. Davey Rockman’s anger at the loss of the money he would have earned by winning the big prestigious race was minor compared with the insult to his sexual pride.
It didn’t once occur to him that had he, and not the usurper Red Millbrook, been riding the horse, it might not have won.
Nigel Tape, the stable’s regular second-string jockey, burned with loyal resentment on ‘The Rock’s’ behalf. Nigel Tape, destined never himself to shine as a star, habitually basked in his position of side-kick to ‘The Rock’, always echoing the same frustrations, the same triumphs, the same unrealistic gripes. He felt all of Davey Rockman’s legitimate indignation at having been replaced, and magnified the umbrage to vindictive proportions. Davey ‘The Rock’ felt flattered by Nigel Tape’s almost fanatical devotion and didn’t see its dangers.
On the Monday after the April Gold Cup, Gypsy Joe surveyed the glowering faces of his two long-term jockeys as they drove into his stable-yard for the morning exercise and training session.
He said to them flatly, in businesslike tones, ‘As you’ve probably realised, Red Millbrook will be my first retained jockey from now on. You, Davey, have the option of staying on here as schooling jockey, which you’re good at, and riding the occasional race, or of course if you prefer it you can try for chief stable jockey with a different trainer.’
Davey Rockman listened in bitter silence. His status as Gypsy Joe’s first jockey had been comfortably high in the jump-racing world. The demotion the trainer was handing out not only meant a severe permanent drop in face and in income, but also the virtual end of his attractiveness to skirts. He habitually used the power of his position to dominate women. He liked to slap them about a bit and make them beg for passion. He felt superior. He strode about often in his jockey boots, counting them a symbol of virility.
Finding a job with comparable standing was hardly an option: there weren’t enough good stable-jockey jobs to go round. Davey Rockman looked straight at Gypsy Joe’s uncaring determination to downgrade him and felt the first surge of murderous hate.
Nigel Tape asked aggressively, ‘What about me, then?’
‘You can go on as before,’ the trainer told him.
‘Picking up crumbs? It’s not fair.’
‘Life is never fair,’ Gypsy Joe said. ‘Haven’t you noticed?’
Gypsy Joe’s ancient instincts proved spectacularly right. Red Millbrook and Gypsy Joe’s horses galvanised each other on track after track while the main part of the jump-racing programme waned towards summer. The cheers