by Jilly Cooper
‘Fine, fine,’ said Alan, typing with one hand, ‘I’ll ring you later, darling. We’ve got to belt down to the winners enclosure. No, I’m not sure what happened to Furious. Wish you were here.’
By the time he’d finished his paragraph and accepted a kiss and a glass of champagne from Tilda, Alan had forgotten all about Etta.
Marius was so enchanted with Sir Cuthbert coming third for Lady Crowe, and Mrs Wilkinson winning, that he and Olivia hugged Rupert, Taggie and Valent. Mrs Wilkinson, her little sides heaving, was so exhausted, she nearly fell over as she tried to shake hooves with her beloved ex-trainer. Instead she rested her weary head on Marius’s shoulder.
Tommy was in heaven.
‘I look after Wilkie, I do everything for her, I love her to bits,’ she was jabbering to Clare Balding. Alas, her euphoria was fleeting as an ashen Lysander pushed his way through the crowd.
‘Brilliantly done, Wilkie and Amber.’ He gave Wilkie a huge pat and kissed Amber. ‘Sorry to spoil things,’ he turned to Rupert, ‘but Furious had to be put down, broke a leg at the Canal Turn. Ilkley Hall broke his back at the same fence.’
‘Oh God,’ Tommy’s tears of joy turned to horror, ‘poor Furious, poor Rafiq.’
‘Rafiq was there,’ explained Lysander, who seemed still in shock. ‘He was sobbing his heart out, begging the vets to save Furious. We had to drag the poor bugger off.’
‘What about Eddie?’ asked Taggie quickly.
‘Might have put his shoulder out,’ answered Valent, ‘but he was able to walk to the ambulance.’
‘How d’you know?’ asked Rupert.
‘I got there joost after they’d shot Furious, but I doubt if we could have done anything, it was a hideous break. Rafiq was absolutely demented, crazed with grief, he ran off down the course.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ snapped Rupert.
‘I didn’t want to spoil Wilkie’s moment.’
And he managed to lead her in, keeping his unhappiness to himself. That was so brave, thought Taggie, giving Valent a hug.
As his overcoat fell open, she noticed his shirt covered in blood. ‘I know how fond you were of him.’
‘How the hell did it happen?’ demanded Rupert.
‘Evidently Wilkie jumped across Furious, cut him up. We’ll see on the rerun.’
All this was going on while a frenzy of press and well-wishers were desperate to congratulate and interview them.
‘Don’t say anything to Amber,’ said Rupert sharply. ‘She’s trying to get through to the hospital.’
‘Dad’s asleep,’ said Amber, switching off her mobile.
As they all posed for photographs, with Chisolm still bleating on Wilkie’s back, Rupert turned to Valent.
‘Sorry about Furious, as Hen Knight said after Best Mate died, “If you have livestock, you have to have deadstock.” It’s a risk sport. You can go to the races with a full lorry and come home with an empty one. I know it’s hard.’ He turned to Taggie, who was comforting a sobbing Tommy. ‘Can you try and track down Eddie? He’s probably been taken to the Fazakerley. We’ve got the presentation in a second and then Amber, Valent and I’ve got to face a press conference.’
‘Well done,’ murmured back Taggie, ‘your first Grand National and your three-thousandth win,’ and she kissed his rigid cheek.
‘I’d forgotten about that.’
*
Walking back from the bookies down a side alley and carrying a bulging suitcase, Rupert bumped into a man in a black woolly hat. Then, seeing murder in his eyes, he recognized Rafiq and said, ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t save him.’
‘You killed him,’ said Rafiq hysterically. ‘Wilkie took him out, cutting across him. But it was the fault of your precious grandson holding him up, allowing him no daylight. Now he never see daylight again.’ He gave a strangled sob.
‘I’m sorry, we’ll try and bury him at Penscombe.’
‘I bury you first,’ hissed Rafiq, spitting in Rupert’s face before he disappeared into the crowd, upsetting Rupert more than he cared to say.
140
On the television screen, after a rerun of the race the BBC showed Mrs Wilkinson’s name being painted in gold letters on the Grand National winners’ list.
‘Not since Aldaniti,’ observed Rogue to Richard Dunwoody, ‘has an entire country been behind a horse.’
Clare Balding had made the presentation and Amber was now in the media centre facing the post-race press conference with Rupert and Valent, their early euphoria diluted by the death of Furious. Amber, her sweat- and champagne-drenched hair unloosed, sat looking vulnerable, still wrapped in her Union Jack and clutching her big silver winner’s plate like a shield to ward off trouble.
Clancy Wiggins, the racing correspondent of the Scorpion, kept putting the boot in. ‘Would Mrs Wilkinson have won if she’d stayed with Marius? How did Amber feel when Mrs Wilkinson was taken away? Was Marius upset when you opted to ride for Rupert?’
‘Marius behaved impeccably,’ said Amber crossly. ‘He lent his best lads, Tommy and Rafiq, to Rupert.’
‘But Marius still threw you out the next day.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘Well, his wife kicked you out.’
‘Shut oop,’ snapped Valent, ‘this has nothing to do with the National.’
‘The course rode beautifully,’ insisted Amber.
‘Furious died in the race,’ persisted Clancy. ‘Why didn’t you let Rafiq Khan ride Furious rather than your grandson, who couldn’t stay on his horse either in the National or the Gold Cup?’
‘We’re not talking about Furious,’ Amber said irritably. ‘His death was a complete accident.’
‘He was brought down by Mrs Wilkinson,’ said Clancy, ‘cutting across him, hanging left.’
‘Was he?’ gasped Amber, turning to Valent in horror.
‘Am I going to have to come over and throttle you?’ bellowed Valent.
‘Amber has achieved the impossible,’ began Rupert, then, pausing to answer his mobile: ‘Yes, OK, we’ll come at once.’ He beckoned to an Aintree official, and after a few words rose to his feet.
‘Sorry, guys,’ he told the protesting room, ‘we’ve got to go. Valent will answer any questions, thank you, everyone.’
Such was his chilling blue glare and his air of suppressed menace, no one tried to stop him.
‘Your father’s taken a turn for the worse,’ he told Amber outside. ‘He’s conscious but he’s sinking. He can’t see any more but he heard the race on the wireless. We’ve got to move fast.’
Aintree provided Rupert and Amber with a VIP car. As police horses had escorted her back from the winning post, now a policeman on a motorbike led them out of the course, weaving his way through the happy home-going crowd.
They passed the horsebox car park where horses were being led out with huge bandages on their legs, hay nets were being loaded into lorries for the journey home, and the lads were calling out: ‘Thank you for having us, see you next year.’
I won’t see Dad, thought Amber in terror.
The car had to weave its way through a swaying, limping forest of Liverpool ladies carrying their stilettos and queuing up to buy flip-flops, which were selling almost as fast as cuddly Wilkinsons.
Drunks slept peacefully in the gutter.
There was the sign by the exit: ‘John Smith thanks you for drinking responsibly’.
Dad never did, thought an anguished Amber.
The nurses clapped her as she entered the ward.
‘Your dad couldn’t see the TV but Nurse Jenkins held the radio to his ear. He heard everything, he was so pleased and proud,’ they told Amber.
‘He’s just been given another injection to relax his muscles, stop him tensing up against the pain and control the rattle in his throat,’ said Nurse Jenkins. Amber looked at her round kind face in bewilderment.
‘Is he dying?’
‘He’s near it. Go in and tell him you love him. Try not to cry, it’s the last t
hing he’ll want to hear when he’s leaving this world.’ Nurse Jenkins put her arm round Amber’s shoulders. ‘You couldn’t be braver than you were this afternoon.’
Down the passage Amber could see her mother Janey blubbing into her mobile.
‘Amber and Rupert have just arrived, my sons Christy and Junior are on their way home.’
Amber ran into the room and shut the door.
‘Daddy, it’s me, I love you.’ She took his hand.
Billy was lying on his side, the flesh on his face fallen away. She had to lean close to hear him.
‘Oh darling,’ he gasped, ‘I don’t need to go to heaven any more. I’ve been there today, most wonderful moment when you headed Playboy, and Rupe’s three-thousandth win. What a brave little mare.’
Next moment Rupert stalked in with a briefcase and scattered thousands of notes over Billy.
‘Two hundred grand,’ he said.
‘Should have done it both ways,’ muttered Billy. ‘Thank you, Rupe. It’s your inheritance, darling. You rode so well and Wilkie, what a sweetheart.’
Billy’s voice was hardly audible as Rupert sat down on his other side, putting a hand on his shoulder.
‘Do you remember how The Bull hated water, Rupe? I hope I see The Bull again.’ Billy’s hand in Amber’s went slack.
Out of the window against a rose-pink sky, Amber could see the black silhouette of Paddy’s Wigwam and the Church of England cathedral with its spikes coaxed upwards.
After a minute Rupert, his normally deadpan face contorted by anguish, managed to say, ‘I’m afraid he’s gone.’
And Amber felt free to burst into agonizing sobs.
‘I did it for Dad, I did it for Dad, I wanted Dad to call me home.’
Rupert was still patting her shuddering, champagne-soaked shoulders, unable to comfort her, wishing Taggie was here, when a figure appeared in the doorway and a soft Irish voice said, ‘God called your father home.’
‘Fuck off,’ snarled Rupert, desperately wiping his eyes on a sheet.
Amber looked up in bewilderment to see Rogue, still with the mike in the lapel of his beautiful grey presenter’s suit, still in his television make-up. But no eyeliner or shadow was responsible for the concern and tenderness in his eyes.
‘What are you doing here?’ she sobbed.
‘Come to take care of you,’ said Rogue, as she stumbled into his arms. ‘I know when I’m wanted.’
Word had galloped round and the press prowling outside the Royal Liverpool surged forward as Rogue and Amber came out twenty minutes later. Amber was white and trembling, but warmed by Rogue’s right arm round her shoulders. Before anyone could ask questions, Rogue raised his left hand.
‘I want to say something. Amber and I are together now,’ he ran a finger down her ashen cheek, ‘for always. This afternoon, Amber achieved a miracle winning the Grand National,’ loud cheers, ‘but she has also just lost her father, Billy Lloyd-Foxe, an absolute hero just like herself.’
Even the most hardened members of the press groaned in dismay and sympathy.
‘So I beg you to respect her need to mourn the loss of a truly sweet man and leave us alone.’
For once Rogue’s handsome face was drained of laughter. His shoulders were twice the width of Amber’s. They were the same height, but at that moment he seemed ten feet tall.
Tape recorders were switched off, cameras put down. As a car slid forward, Clancy Wiggins leapt forward to open the door for them.
‘Godspeed,’ he shouted, banging the roof of the car, as they set out for Rupert’s helicopter.
141
FOREVER AMBER! NATIONAL TREASURE! LADIES FIRST! Mrs Wilkinson and her jockey dominated the headlines. The country reeled with happiness. Journalists writing emotionally and beautifully ran out of superlatives. National Hunt racing was thrilled to be so positively in the spotlight. Billy’s death only served to add a poignant and heroic dimension to Amber’s huge achievement. Rogue, another favourite son, riding to the rescue provided a comforting and happy ending.
Chisolm and Mrs Wilkinson, with her red and black John Smith’s Grand National winner’s rug still flapping round her fetlocks, because any turning up would have lopped off the word ‘winner’, went on a triumphant tour of the Cotswolds in her open-top bus adoring the adulation.
Rupert, fed up with the volume of Mrs Wilkinson’s fan mail, was contemplating returning her to Throstledown. To distract himself from Billy’s death, he was in an insufferably triumphalist mood, winding up both Shade and Harvey-Holden, who was being accused of overracing his horses at Sandown, Ayr and Perth in a desperate attempt to clinch the leading trainer’s title.
Nor was Rupert’s press entirely flattering. Charges of nepotism and racism hovered. Why had he jocked off and sacked rising star Rafiq and put up his clearly inexperienced grandson? What a tragic waste of glorious Furious.
Throstledown felt the same and found it hard to rejoice wholeheartedly in Wilkie’s and Cuthbert’s victory now Furious had gone and Rafiq vanished. Tommy kept her mobile on twenty-four hours a day, praying he’d make contact.
Etta, desperately disappointed that Valent had never rung her back, had to admit that Mrs Wilkinson’s portrait had brought the reverse of bad luck. Valent, however, had not offered it to her again, instead presenting it to Chris and Chrissie to hang in the Wilkinson Arms. And serve Etta right, thought many of the syndicate, for not supporting Wilkie at Aintree, where they delighted in telling her they’d had such a brilliant time.
‘Corinna, Bonny and Phoebe were saying you ought to be more media-friendly, Etta,’ Romy had even more delight in passing on.
The snow which had fallen on Grand National Day had melted except for the occasional frozen fragment on verges or beneath the trees across the valley. With these Etta identified – somehow she couldn’t unthaw. She was also devastated about Furious and petrified that Rafiq, on the loose with nowhere to go, might do something terrible to avenge him. And that was Valent and Rupert’s fault too.
Distraction from such sadness and recrimination was provided the following Saturday by the Equine Hero of the Year awards, known as the Horsecars, which were being televised at Rutminster racecourse after the day’s racing.
Mrs Wilkinson had been nominated, as had Rupert for his three-thousandth win, Amber for her heroic victory, and Billy posthumously for his contribution to equine sports. Votes were pouring in but Mrs Wilkinson was hot favourite. Despite tickets being like gold dust, Valent, who felt they deserved a treat after all their hard work, had managed to secure enough for both Rupert’s and Marius’s lads.
The syndicate were extremely miffed at not being invited.
‘All Etta’s fault for rejecting that picture and blacking the National,’ grumbled Phoebe.
A despairing Etta felt totally to blame.
There was still no word from Rafiq. But as Rupert was interviewed by his old friend John McCririck before the 3.15 on Saturday afternoon, suddenly behind them, amid the waving, winking punters on their mobiles to alert friends they were on telly, Rafiq’s pale, cold, murderous face appeared brifley.
142
The races were over; a rising moon was casting the dim grey shadow of Rutminster Cathedral across the course. The horses had gone home, except Mrs Wilkinson and Chisolm, who, parading that afternoon and giving a display of their footballing skills, had upped the gate by tens of thousands. The People’s Pony was now housed in one of the course boxes, tended by Rupert’s laziest stable lad, Michael Meagan.
Tommy had been extremely reluctant to relinquish this responsibility, but Valent insisted that she attend the awards ceremony and have some fun, particularly as she’d been nominated for Groom of the Year. Valent had thrust a mega wodge of greenbacks into her jeans after the National, ordering her to buy a new dress. Taking herself glumly off to Monsoon, she was amazed to find herself size twelve and voluptuously curved for the first time in her life. She had stopped eating since Rafiq vanished and could now squeeze hersel
f into a dress of dark blue lace, which enhanced her big cornflower-blue eyes, her splendid cleavage and her smooth no-longer-bulging shoulders. Embarrassed but delighted by the compliments – even Rupert had told her she looked gorgeous – wishing Rafiq could see her, she was now getting tanked up and singing, ‘Here’s to you, Mrs Wilkinson’, in the bar with the rest of the lads.
It had been noticed that special red rush matting had been laid up to the podium, which could mean that Wilkie … expectations were sky-high.
Gossip also centred around how the hell Tresa, on a lad’s salary, could afford a slinky black dress, cross-laced back and front and saved from indecency by strategically placed ostrich feathers, and secondly, whether the nasty cuts on Johnnie Brutus’s pretty face, which had needed stitches, had been caused by a fall into barbed wire or by an enraged Harvey-Holden slashing him with a bridle after the demise of Ilkley Hall in the Grand National.
Michael Meagan, meanwhile, was fed up with being left down at an otherwise deserted stables with Mrs Wilkinson and Chisolm. His crush on Tresa had increased since the National. He wanted to be beside her in the bar, fending off competition. He was disconsolately reading the evening’s programme, salivating over the details of the three-course dinner. Frankie Dettori had been nominated. Tresa was nuts about him. He had just seen Zara Phillips, Alice Plunkett, Claire King and Katie Price rolling up.
Michael’s sense of injustice intensified. God, he needed a drink. Suddenly Mrs Wilkinson gave a whicker of welcome, Chisolm an excited bleat. Looking up, Michael crossed himself as Rafiq padded up on panther feet.
‘How’d you get in here?’ asked Michael.
‘Hung on to my stable pass when Rupert sacked me.’
‘Everyone’s looking for you. You’ve been nominated for Conditional Jomp Jockey.’