‘There’s Lysander, lying about thirteenth,’ said Guy. ‘Look, he’s going really well. Come on, Lysander.’
‘You wouldn’t recognize him, nor Arthur,’ said Georgie. ‘They’re both covered in mud.’
‘Arthur was always a mudlark,’ said Kitty in a shaky voice. Then, aware of her husband glaring at her, she added meekly, ‘The Prince is going very well, too.’
Isa Lovell had been brought up to detest Rupert Campbell-Black. He couldn’t overtake Penscombe Pride, but he knew the horse was tiring. Bluey had shifted him on to a different leg to wake him up and he wasn’t running totally straight now. They were coming up for the second time to The Ambush, only six fences from home.
Pridie was very tired, unsettled and encased in fog, with rain lashing his face, but he didn’t stop battling. Glancing round, Bluey saw Isa Lovell’s white and mud-spattered face blazing with hatred and almost crossed himself. Pridie was aware of a dark shape stealing up on the rails, sinister as a shadow on the lung. Concentration flickering, he took off too late. Half a ton of horse-flesh hit the massed panel of gorse and birch six inches too low. Penscombe Pride and the punters of Rutshire and Gloucester gave a grunt of pain as he went head over heels for the first time in his life. Next moment, as The Prince overtook them, Yummy Yuppy was in the air. He swivelled to the left to avoid Pridie, landing awkwardly and crashed with a sickening thud. Busty Beauty, Paddywack and the following horses, joined the pile-up a second later. The fog was thickened with swearing, horses’ legs thrashed the air, bits of gorse and birch lay everywhere. Fraulein, exhausted anyway, took one look at the pandemonium on the other side of the fence and decided enough was enough.
As the closed-circuit television picked up the disaster with not very good pictures, Rupert was absolutely stunned.
‘I do not believe this,’ he said, very slowly tearing up his betting slips. Then, turning to a distraught and tearful Freddie Jones, ‘We were fucking robbed. I’m going to object.’
‘Good old boy, clever old Arthur.’ Blithely unaware of this catastrophe, Lysander came trundling through the fog into what indeed looked like the remains of the Light Brigade, with mud-coated horses and riders picking themselves out of the quagmire with varying degrees of success. Holding Arthur steady, standing back once again, Lysander jumped to the right. Seeing a huddled jockey motionless beneath him, Arthur veered to the left in mid-air, like a Zeppelin changing course, and though pecking on landing, was brilliantly picked up by Lysander. As Arthur flatfooted carefully through the chaos, Lysander was aware of a grimy drenched figure running along beside him.
‘Bluey,’ Lysander shouted in horror. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Sure. Pridie’s buggered off home. Go get that fucker on The Prince of Darkness.’
We will, thought Lysander, as he cantered Arthur up the hill, waiting for the great roar from the crowd which would tell him that the leaders had emerged from the fog. But it never came. They couldn’t be too far ahead.
‘Sock it to them.’ It was Jimmy Jardine, cadging a cigarette from someone in the crowd as he walked an utterly knackered Blarney Stone back home.
‘Come on, Arthur,’ urged Lysander. ‘We’ve got a train to catch.’
The further the old horse galloped the better he seemed to go, like a Volvo that needed a long run. Dying with pride, Lysander was riding like a dream now, sitting very quietly, letting Arthur choose his own pace and the place to jump, his great stride devouring the ground.
Then Lysander gave a strangled whoop of joy as, through the mist, he glimpsed Isa Lovell’s blood-red colours and the sleek black rump of The Prince of Darkness only a fence ahead. Male Nurse was beside him harrying him, giving him a taste of his own medicine.
Hitting the next fence, The Prince of Darkness veered to the right, went wide round the corner and lost a few yards, as Arthur pounded up on the inside, hugging the rails. Male Nurse was at last in the lead, but, just as Rupert had predicted, he was a young horse, and when he saw this huge yelling mass of faces, waving their arms and making more noise than he’d ever heard, his head came up and his jockey felt him coming back, and both Arthur and The Prince of Darkness passed him.
Arthur loved crowds. Now was the time for a bit of showing off, but The Prince was still three lengths ahead. They were into the home straight with two fences to go.
Lysander could see the hoof marks of earlier runners. He must keep his nerve. Ahead, The Prince, furious at being challenged, was looming over from the right determined to squeeze him out. If he froze for a second, it would cost him the race. For a second, Isa Lovell glanced round, his face torn with hatred.
‘Campbell-Black’s bumboy,’ he hissed.
That did it. Remembering the ride-offs in polo, Lysander asked Arthur to push through. White elephants don’t forget. Not wanting to be bitten again, Arthur put on an incredible burst of speed, just grazing The Prince as they drew alongside, thundering neck and neck to the last fence. Meeting it spot-on, Arthur took a great kangaroo leap.
That must put us two lengths ahead, thought Lysander, but soon The Prince’ll rally and catch up.
‘Oh, go on, Arthur,’ he begged.
And Arthur gallantly slogged on up the hill as fast as his great raking stride would take him. But now there were only the ghosts of previous winners to challenge him because The Prince of Darkness had fallen, brought down by the last fence.
‘May I borrow your binoculars, Kitty?’ asked Hermione. ‘This bit looks rather exciting.’
‘No, you may not,’ said Kitty, snatching them back. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly hold them still. Oblivious of Rannaldini’s howl of rage when The Prince had fallen, she was now screaming her head off with excitement. Arthur cleared the last fence and, with a vigour utterly belying his thirteen years, gallumphed towards the post. Lysander had no need to pick up his whip.
David Hawkley thought his heart would burst with pride and there was never such a roar of amazed delight at Rutminster as Arthur came up the straight, his great feet splaying out, rolling along like the bull terrier at the end of
‘My Christ,’ said Rupert, who’d completely recovered his good temper, putting his arm round a joyfully sobbing Taggie. ‘Is that the same old donkey who was always last on the gallops?
‘God, the boy rides like an angel,’ said Ricky France-Lynch in delight.
As if someone had tossed a match into a box of fireworks, the entire Venturer Box erupted in ecstasy.
‘Come on, Arfur, you can fucking do it,’ screamed Kitty, to the amazement of Hermione and the chairman of the New World Phil, and the white-faced, quivering fury of Rannaldini.
‘Come on, Lysander,’ howled Guy and Georgie clutching each other.
Glancing round, Lysander saw Male Nurse ebbing away in the distance. Realizing it was in the bag, and with the post only fifty yards away, he gave a great Tarzan howl of joy that was drowned in the deafening roar of the crowd.
‘We’ve done it, Arthur!’ he yelled and, completely forgetting Rupert’s warning, he punched a fist in the air.
This seemed to startle and unbalance Arthur, who’d always veered to the left when he was tired. Suddenly he stumbled, and to the collective horror of the crowd, he reeled, utterly punch-drunk for a second, then lurched quite out of control towards the rails. Crashing into them, he hurled Lysander over his head within a yard of the finishing post.
For a moment Lysander lay still. Then, dragging himself groggily to his feet, he staggered over to Arthur, collapsing on top of him. Flinging his arms round the horse’s great white motionless body, he pummelled at him with his fists, sobbing his heart out.
The racecourse fell silent. There was hardly a cheer as Male Nurse slid wearily past the post. It was as though the mute button had been pressed on the whole crowd. Utterly appalled, many in tears, they watched the so-recently joyful and youthful conqueror, blood and phlegm pouring from his nose on to his muddy shirt and breeches, as he slumped crying piteously over the huge ugly horse, whose gallant best in the end had not been enough.
The next moment Tabitha had raced up from the stable-lads’ stand and, collapsing, sobbed dementedly beside Lysander.
‘Oh, Arthur, darling Arthur, wake up! I don’t believe it.’
Walking quietly back, leading a shaken but unharmed Prince of Darkness, Isa Lovell dropped a sympathetic
