by Jilly Cooper
In the dark blue control room next door, a wall of monitors showed the director everything, policemen turning to watch the Liverpool ladies arriving in their finery, wonderful sepia film of charismatic past winners coming out of peeling stables, the paddock, the bookies, the stewards, jockeys in the weighing room reading about themselves in the Racing Post, snatching sleep on benches, Johnnie Brutus admiring himself in the mirror, Awesome Wells struggling with the crossword.
‘Pretty tame this year,’ giggled Deirdre, ‘without Rogue dropping his trousers and flashing his tackle all the time.’
‘Basically,’ Dermot, glancing down at the running sheet, told the marquee, ‘this is where we move into position for the big race, so grab any winning trainers and ask them for their take on the National and on Rupert’s three-thousandth win.’
It was not worth even Clare Balding approaching Rupert, Dermot added regretfully. He’d only tell her to eff off.
‘He wouldn’t even let us film Mrs Wilkinson at Penscombe,’ grumbled Deirdre.
‘We’ll be showing film of Tipperary Tim winning eighty years ago,’ went on Dermot. ‘Any anecdotes about Tipperary Tim, Rogue?’
But Rogue wasn’t listening because on the monitor he could see Amber being interviewed, lovely pink lips parted over lovely white teeth, soon to be covered by a gum shield. Dear God, don’t let a hair of her head be hurt. I’ve broken every bone in my body, he thought despairingly, why can’t I recover from a broken heart?
‘Now we move on to Richard Dunwoody and Rogue discussing iconic moments in the Grand National,’ Dermot was saying, giving Rogue a stab of regret. He’d have liked to create one of those moments himself. He must get his career back on track.
‘To sum up then,’ said Dermot, ‘we start with the titles, horses crossing the course. We go back to the runners and riders, followed by film of old winners and heroes, all contributing to the sense that we’re about to witness something special.
‘After this meeting, Rogue, we’ve got a job we know you’ll enjoy, interviewing some Liverpool lovelies.’
Clare Balding smiled at Rogue:
‘Did you know there are more sunbeds per capita in Liverpool than anywhere else in the world?’
The syndicate had reached Aintree on Friday, and Debbie had gone straight to heaven when she was awarded a Citroën car as a prize for the Best Dressed Mature Lady.
Where would the Major find room to park it?
Everyone was frightfully excited to be staying at the pukka Radisson Hotel. Alan, however, made a note for his book that outside the vast Littlewood’s building opposite, the sculpture of its founder, Sir John Moores, a big, smooth-featured, handsome man whose eyes looked straight through you, bore a spooky resemblance to Shade Murchieson.
*
‘Do you think this is too see-through?’ asked Tilda as they set out for the racecourse next morning.
‘No, it’s Liverpool,’ said Alan.
136
Having dropped in on Billy at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, Amber found him conscious but drowsy from a morphine injection to kill the pain.
‘She’s the People’s Pony, darling, just bring her and yourself back safely. God, I wish I was calling you home.’
It had started to snow as Amber took a taxi back to the course. The driver pointed out the Catholic cathedral known as Paddy’s Wigwam and the Church of England cathedral topped by vertical spikes, as though coaxed up by the product Billy had always refused to use on his hair. As they drove past red houses, purple dustbins, shivering flowering currant, an off-licence called Quencher and the Co-operative Ireland Funeral Parlour, the driver told Amber that as a child he used to watch the Grand National from the roof of the pub belonging to his father, who had drunk and gambled away all the family money.
As Amber leapt out, he asked for her autograph and wished her and Mrs Wilkinson good luck. ‘And good luck to your dad, a lovely man.’
A somewhat optimistic sign by the entrance to the course said: ‘John Smith thanks you for drinking responsibly.’
‘Amber!’ Despite the bitter cold, a swarm of half-naked orangeskinned girls in huge hats and party dresses came tottering towards her on six-inch heels, cuddly Wilkinsons in one hand, glasses of champagne in the other.
‘Can we have your autograph? We’ve all backed Wilkie. Girl Power.’ They punched the air, sprinkling champagne. ‘Is Chisolm here too?’
Amber was warmed by their friendliness but overwhelmed by the hugeness of Aintree. The stands were like vast chests with their drawers pulled out and already overflowing with people. The John Smith Stand, layered with hospitality boxes, soared like a glass mountain. Cheltenham was the country; Aintree the town. The Check Republic was less in evidence here, Alban wouldn’t know everyone, but there was a terrific atmosphere of jollity and camaraderie, like a huge party where everyone spoke to everyone.
At the prospect of 600 million people watching him fall at the first fence, even Eddie’s chatter was stilled, as he walked the course with Amber and Rupert.
‘Get a good gallop across the Melling Road until you come to the first,’ Rupert told them at the first fence, ‘then stand well back on your hocks.’
They came to Becher’s. A terrifying five foot high with a sevenfoot drop, it was composed of piled-up branches of spruce, on which the snow was settling, which were already scattering pine needles. Amber broke off a sprig to take back to her father. Rupert advised them to jump near the middle where the drop was least.
‘Go wide at the canal turn,’ he continued, as they reached another bogey fence. ‘It’s a right angle, if you cut the corner you can easily get interfered with by the people going wide. But don’t go too wide, particularly in the second circuit, or you’ll lose too much ground, then straighten up and go hell for leather for Valentine’s.’
Seeing television cameras everywhere, Amber kept looking for Rogue.
‘Don’t forget two fences are missed out on the second circuit. Crucially – are you listening, Amber?’ snapped Rupert – ‘don’t pick up your whip until you get to the elbow,’ the slight bend into the home straight. ‘Unless you’ve got a fifth gear you’re fucked. It’s the longest run-in in the world.’
Noticing how white she’d gone, Rupert bore Amber and Eddie off to look at Red Rum’s grave, on the left of the winning post. It was scattered with bunches of red tulips and daffodils and the Polos he loved so much.
‘He won three times and second twice,’ exclaimed Eddie. ‘That is cool!’ and he helped himself to a Polo.
‘Eddie,’ cried Amber, shocked, ‘fans gave Rummy those. What does it say on his grave?’ She crouched down to read.
‘Respect this place, this hallowed ground
A legend here his rest has found
His feet would fly, our spirits soar
He earned our love for ever more.
‘God, how sweet,’ she sobbed into Rupert’s coat, ‘I just wish Dad was calling me home.’
For a second, they clung to each other.
‘Come on, let’s go and have a drink.’
Getting across Aintree with Rupert was rather like taking Muhammad Ali to a boxing match. The crowd mobbed him all the way, asking after Wilkie and Furious and how Taggie was.
Rupert took them to the Old Weighing Room, which had now become a bar and a shrine to heroism.
‘It used to be the old unsaddling enclosure as well,’ said Rupert as he handed them both tomato juice. ‘You’re supposed to see ghost horses at night.’
On the walls of the bar were photographs of former winners, their silks, saddles and whips.
‘Oh look, there’s Red Rum’s maroon and yellow colours, and there’s Foinavon,’ Amber told Eddie, ‘a rank outsider, one of a handful that finished in 1967. And there’s the huge saddle of gallant Crisp, ridden by dear Richard Pitman. He gave Red Rum twenty-three pounds and led all the way round, only giving in to Rummy in the run-in. So Wilkie could beat Bafford Playboy.’
So much history, she th
ought, I want to be up there too. Then, overwhelmed by the enormity of the task, she fled to the Ladies, throwing up only tomato juice and then bile.
But on the wall on the way out she noticed a 1930 plan of the Grand National course. Along the bottom of the green picture frame had been listed the names of all the thirteen winning mares including Charity, Miss Mowbray, Jealousy, Sheila’s Cottage and Nickel Coin, ten of them in the nineteenth century, only three in the twentieth, the last way back in 1951, and none in the twenty-first.
‘We’re going to change that, Wilkie,’ said Amber grimly.
No lady rider had ever won the Grand National. History said top weight never won either. Bugger history, thought Amber.
If only she had a ride in an earlier race to distract her. It had started to snow again. Coming out of the bar, they went slap into Rogue interviewing wildly excited Liverpool ladies.
As it was the north, many of the horses running were still in their winter coats. The ladies were not. They were showing acres of cellulite, tattoos everywhere, visible panty lines, mobiles instead of earrings, and an inch gap at the heel of their stilettos in case their feet swelled up. Hailstones were now bouncing off their gooseflesh.
‘Who have you backed?’ Rogue was asking them.
‘Mrs Wilkinson,’ came the reply, ‘she’s the People’s Pony. It’s girl power, innit.’
‘You all look stunning,’ Rogue told them, ‘but aren’t you frozen and aren’t those shoes killing you?’
‘To be in fashion you’ve got to suffer pain,’ said the blondest and prettiest, who was eating scampi out of a cardboard box. ‘I bought my outfit back in August.’
‘Paintree,’ laughed Rogue. ‘Jump jockeys are the same. No gain without pain.’
‘Why aren’t you riding in the National, Rogue?’ they asked him. ‘You’re the best jockey.’
‘It’s rather a long story.’
‘Will you come to our party tonight?’
Rogue was very dolled up in a lovely pale grey suit, a sky-blue shirt and pink silk tie covered in blue elephants. He was also wearing television make-up. His curls were brushed flat, he looked gorgeous, thought Amber, and as usual surrounded by girls.
Catching sight of her, he yelled out, ‘Amber.’
‘Not today, thank you,’ snapped Rupert, frogmarching her back into the crowd.
Alban knew fewer people than he did at Cheltenham, the Major was fretting about who to lean on to get planning permission for a second garage for Debbie’s new car, but they were utterly compensated by so many ravishing half-naked girls everywhere.
The men who drove the horse ambulance had parked near the crossing by the Melling Road, so they could have a laugh as the stilettos of more ladies pouring into the ground got stuck in the thick sand. They needed a laugh. Later they might have the grim task of fatally injecting some beautiful horse that had fallen.
At least Chisolm was enjoying herself. While Wilkie was in the farrier’s box, she’d hoovered up the azaleas blooming outside. Now, jumping on to Wilkie’s back, she was wolfing pansies growing in the hanging baskets above the saddling-up boxes. Debbie agreed they were the best hanging baskets she’d ever seen.
137
A terrific tension and feeling of menace was building up. Animal Rights, revving up for Horse Awareness Week, were out for blood. Would they sabotage the race?
The combination of Mrs Wilkinson, Rupert and the possibility of his three-thousandth win had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The bookies had already taken a massive £200 million.
Bafford Playboy, the course specialist, was favourite, particularly as he was being ridden by Killer, who was wearing the gold armband of the jockey with the meeting’s most wins. But with punters worried the fences and the extra weight would be too much for her, Wilkie’s odds had drifted to 20–1.
Many of the vast crowd, fifteen deep round the parade ring and waving ‘Where there’s a Wilkie, there’s a way’ posters and cuddly Wilkinsons and Chisolms, were unhappy and booed Rupert and Valent, shouting at them to give Wilkie back to Marius. They also booed Eddie for replacing Rafiq on Furious.
Their animosity had been exacerbated by Dora’s leak to the press that Etta, whom the crowd loved because she’d rescued Wilkie in the first place, had stayed away because she so disapproved of the move to Rupert and felt Wilkie was far too small for the National.
Unlike a heartbroken Etta, however, Rafiq couldn’t bear to stay away. Disguised as a treader, in woolly hat, gumboots and dark glasses, he had stolen away from the course where he was pretending to replace divots, and joined the crowd round the parade ring.
There was his darling Tommy, proudly leading up Mrs Wilkinson, whose lack of inches nothing emphasized more than Rupert’s dark blue rug with the emerald-green binding almost trailing on the grass.
‘Painswick should have turned it up,’ giggled Dora, who was hanging on to Chisolm. She’d escaped earlier and been found running round the lorry park.
For the first time, Mrs Wilkinson, like Furious, would be running in Valent’s violet and dusty green colours. In defiance, on her quarters, now hidden by the rug, Tommy had imposed a weeping willow.
After the Gold Cup win, Furious was 12–1 and evoking vast interest. He looked both glorious and potentially victorious, but he’d sweated up and as he dragged along Michael Meagan and another of Rupert’s lads, his rolling eyes, eternally searching for Rafiq, showed how unhappy he was.
Rafiq longed to call out, knowing he could calm him in a trice. It was cold comfort that when the arrogant American bastard Eddie came swaggering out, female screams at his beauty were drowned by boos and cries of ‘Bring back Rafiq.’
Amber was panicking again. Even in the paddock she had borrowed Rupert’s mobile and having illicitly rung the hospital had failed to get beyond the switchboard.
‘I don’t want to look at your swine flu website,’ she was yelling, ‘I want to talk to my father, Billy Lloyd-Foxe. I know he’s there. I’m about to ride in the Grand National, yes I bloody am, I want to say goodbye to my father in case I don’t come back.’
‘That’s enough.’ Rupert took the mobile from her.
At least this altercation distracted her from the embarrassment of seeing Marius and Olivia. Olivia, wearing dark glasses and a rather dowdy olive-green suit, which Amber recognized from her wardrobe at Throstledown, clung on to Marius’s arm. She looked tired but so relieved to be back with him, which couldn’t have improved Shade’s temper. Ringed by the orange and magenta backs of the four jockeys riding his horses, Shade and Harvey-Holden had their heads together, plotting devilries and death to Mrs Wilkinson.
Incarcerated at Rupert’s, Mrs Wilkinson hadn’t for ages seen any of her horse friends, except Furious who she loathed. Suddenly, ambling half asleep towards her, his long grey face lengthened by a lack of noseband, came her sugar daddy, Sir Cuthbert. Mrs Wilkinson went crazy, rushed over, nuzzling and nudging, knuckering and exchanging whiskery kisses.
Towed up by Chisolm, Dora turned to Bianca.
‘I wonder if she’s telling Cuthbert Love Rat’s got her up the duff,’ she whispered.
‘Shut up,’ hissed Bianca, going pale. ‘Daddy’ll kill us.’
Mrs Wilkinson had also seen Niall and Valent, and bustled over to welcome them like a party hostess, then started looking around hopefully for Etta.
Realizing how tiny she was, how huge the other horses and how challenging the fences out on the course, Valent suddenly felt ashamed of himself. Why the hell was he endangering this darling horse? No wonder Etta hated him.
‘Hello, Valent, got butterflies?’ said a hearty voice. It was Martin Bancroft, who with Romy had flown up last night with Harvey-Holden. Both of them were avid to meet Rupert.
‘Where’s the syndicate?’ asked Romy.
‘Oop in my box. Only room for Niall and Dora in the parade ring,’ said Valent.
‘Mother up there too?’ demanded Martin.
‘Couldn’t make it,’ Valent said griml
y, ‘doesn’t approve of the Grand National.’
‘What!’ exploded Martin. ‘Thought she was definitely coming. If we’d known we’d never have bothered to fork out a fortune for a sitter.’
‘I’ll phone her and tell her to hotfoot over to Harvest Home and relieve Sarah,’ said Romy, edging out of the mob and switching on her mobile. She was back a minute later, crimson in the face. ‘Your mother told me to bugger off, she was watching the National.’
Valent grinned broadly, and seeing him looking more approachable, Clare Balding sidled up:
‘Mrs Wilkinson’s looking well.’
Forty horses were now circling the parade ring. The uptight ones, principally Furious, were causing logjams as they jigjogged into the backs of those who were calmly walking.
Bafford Playboy and Ilkley Hall both looked magnificent and very large. Vakil, leering in an even sharper black suit, looked very sinister.
‘Michelle must be sleeping with Harvey-Holden,’ whispered Dora to Bianca, ‘for him to allow her to lead up Ilkley Hall in stilettos. I’m sure it was her or Tresa who let Chisolm out this morning, Michael Meagan’s so besotted with Tresa he wouldn’t have noticed.’
Niall was praying his heart out to compete with the Catholic priests and their rosaries, who were busy blessing Dermie O’Driscoll’s Squiffey Liffey and the other great Irish horses.
‘Squiffey is even plainer than Not for Crowe,’ said Dora. ‘I wonder if they’re related.’
‘Squiffey’s very full of himself,’ Dermie was telling Clare Balding. ‘Hopefully he’ll be thereabouts, but the race is going to be a triller.’
The paps were everywhere, hoping for a fight. Would Shade punch Marius for getting Olivia back, would Marius punch Rupert for taking away his best horses?
Marius was giving last-minute instructions to Awesome Wells: ‘Don’t fiddle with Cuthbert, just sit still and let him make his own way. Give him plenty of daylight, start picking them off in the second circuit.’