Jump! (93 page)

‘Come on,’ cried Etta. ‘Let’s do a lap of honour,’ and they all piled into the Polo and drove round and round the village.

The whole world seemed to have descended on Willowwood on Gold Cup morning, persuading most of the syndicate they had been right to hang on to Mrs Wilkinson. A vast crowd of camera crews, journalists, photographers and well-wishers outside Throstledown’s gates had cheered her and Furious off to Cheltenham. Despite being besieged by customers, Chris and Chrissie saved the Wilkinson bar for syndicate members to line their stomachs with a massive fry-up and kedgeree made from a salmon caught by Alban.

Those attempting to pace themselves drank Buck’s Fizz rather than champagne, as Dora, looking enchanting in a new short scabious-blue coat with ‘I love Wilkie’ and ‘I love Furious’ badges pinned to each lapel, handed out emerald and willow green rosettes.

‘If we’d accepted Shade’s offer,’ Corinna looked beadily at Dora’s coat, ‘I too could have afforded something new from dear Amanda Wakeley.’

Neither Tilda nor Painswick had been able to afford anything new, but Alan and Pocock respectively thought how lovely they looked.

‘Wilkie has received more than a thousand good luck cards,’ Dora announced proudly, ‘and Furious twenty-two, most of these admittedly from Trixie, his heroic new stable lass.

‘If anyone didn’t see the hilarious Channel 4 film,’ Dora went on, ‘Derek Thompson sportingly mounted Wilkie, whose legs immediately buckled like a camel and, as the camera rolled, so did Wilkie, depositing Tommo on the deck to be butted by Chisolm, after which Wilkie wandered over and sweetly nudged him better.

‘The Easy Lay has already taken thirty thousand on Wilkie this morning and been subjected to an Animal Rights demo.’ So as not to upset Etta, Dora didn’t add that members of the demo had been shocked rigid by Drummond Bancroft’s language when they tried to stop him having a bet on his way to school.

‘The media coverage has been awesome,’ reported Dora modestly, ‘with enough cuttings to repaper the entire Wilkinson Arms. The only person to receive as much fan mail as Wilkie is Woody. “Why can’t they have tree surgeons in
Holby City
?” says
Fame
magazine, but in case Niall gets jealous, we’re incredibly grateful he’s given up a Friday in Lent to bless Mrs Wilkinson.’

‘She’ll need it,’ sighed Joey. ‘Last mare to win the Gold Cup was Dawn Run.’

‘I had the runs at dawn this morning.’ Toby neighed with laughter. ‘Couldn’t sleep a wink.’

‘When I can’t sleep I count past lovers,’ announced Corinna. ‘I always fall asleep before I get to treble figures.’

Etta felt too sick to eat any kedgeree. It had rained heavily in the night. Walking Priceless early, she’d slipped and fallen twice in the mud. How could poor Wilkie stay upright over thirty huge fences and three and three-quarter miles?

She also banked fences when she was tired. As a dreadful omen, the rising red sun had crashed through Valent’s trees, scraping its tummy on the spiky twigs. Etta hadn’t seen Valent since the night he had yet again saved Wilkie and delivered her rejuvenated Polo. She had written him an ecstatic thank-you letter, but so wished her Valent Edwards had flowered in time for her to present him with his own dark red rose for his buttonhole.

Last night Valent had left a gruff message on her machine. He was aware she’d be watching the Gold Cup with the syndicate, but he hoped she’d pop into his box for a drink to meet Ryan, Diane and the grandchildren.

If only Bonny wasn’t insisting on joining the syndicate when they reached Cheltenham, so she could ‘engage with her public’. If Etta had been vain, she would have sworn Bonny was hanging on to her share in Wilkie and watching Valent like a warder to ensure that a ‘lascivious old lady’ didn’t pull a fast one.

For once Etta was happy with her clothes. Painswick had turned up an old dusty-pink coat to well above the knee, Rafiq had polished her black boots and Trixie, out of her first month’s pay packet, had bought her grandmother a dashing mauve velvet beret topped by a bunch of felt violets.

If only Trixie could buy her a new face as well.

Glancing round as the minibus splashed down Leckhampton
Hill, Etta noticed Corinna, glass in one hand, copy of
Hamlet
in the other, scowling in her direction.

‘If we’d accepted Shade’s offer,’ she repeated sourly, ‘dear David Shilling could have run me up a new hat.’

‘Then you wouldn’t have had a horse to dress up for any more,’ said Painswick tartly.

As a downpour drummed enraged fingers on the bus windows, everyone groaned. Marius had refused to make a decision as to whether to run Wilkie until midday. But the pressure was great. Forty thousand extra were expected on the gate to cheer her home. Cheltenham staff had been rugger-tackling each other all week, practising crowd control.

Nor would Valent let Marius pull her. He had poured a lot of money into Marius’s yard. He wanted results.

The Willowwood minibus was cheered all the way through Cheltenham, loveliest of cities, even lovelier in her party dress of pink and white blossom. Daffodils nodded in the parks like horses after a race.

The pavement swarmed with all types and ages. Seedy-looking men in shiny suits and spiky greased-up hair flogging tickets, smiling Irish turning the whole day into a party, Sloanes in little suits and boots. The Check Republic was out in force, high and low society, saints and sinners, happily mixing as they banged on the minibus window.

‘There’s Mr Pocock, how’s your garden growing?’, ‘Hello, Seth, when are you going back to
Holby City
? And there’s Corinna, his partner, isn’t she lovely?’, ‘And there’s Woody, isn’t he goodlooking, can we have your autograph?’, ‘And little Phoebe, how’s Bump, Phoebe?’, ‘And look, there’s Etta and Halban, hello, Halban.’

‘Good God,’ said Alban, going pink.

‘They really know who we are,’ squeaked Etta, ‘thanks to Wilkie.’

‘If she wins, the bookies’ll be carried out on stretchers,’ said Joey.

‘“Amber’s up, the money’s down, the frightened bookies ee,”’ sang the crowd as they drifted into the course.

In the hospitality boxes, waitresses were stripping down to their bras and tattoos and donning aprons, red waistcoats and trousers, to provide splendid lunches for over two thousand people. Ten thousand more were living it up in the tented village. For reasons of economy, the syndicate had not hired their own box, assuming they could watch the race from the Owners and Trainers. Now they bitterly regretted it, never having dreamt of such a
scrum, as they fought to buy drinks or have a bet. It was like backstage on
Britain’s Got Talent,
as men on stilts in top hats, women in hoop dresses and ethnic jewellery, belly dancers, brass bands and gypsies brandishing white heather battled their way through the crowds.

Debbie, being used by the Major as a battering ram, was in full throttle, complaining about the dreadful smell of scampi, fish and chips, burgers, frying onions and stale fat as her huge scarlet Stetson got knocked sideways and her splash of colour was splashed with Guinness.

‘How much did you pay for that heather?’ she beadily asked Joey.

‘A fiver.’ Roaring with laughter, Joey tucked the white sprig into his woolly hat beside his gold pen. ‘Gypsy wanted a tenner. I asked her where she’d picked it, she said, “Birmingham warehouse.”’

Alan, who’d been typing the story of a lifetime on his laptop in the bus, invaded the press room, a hive of rattling activity, where his friends Marcus Armytage and Brough Scott descended on him for news of Wilkie. Would Marius run her?

By the window, the great John McCririck, in his check deerstalker with brown earflaps, pored over hieroglyphics like a kindly stork.

‘When I saw Rogue Rogers looking through his legs,’ typed the
Scorpion,
‘I knew he had something up his sleeve.’

Having walked the course, Marius finally gave the OK at midday. It had stopped raining, but overhead, dark clouds merged with the William Hill balloon.

‘The ground isn’t ideal,’ he tersely told a flotilla of tape recorders, ‘but Mrs Wilkinson has rested since Warwick in February and she’s very well in herself, and had a good blowout last week at Larkminster racecourse.’

‘Course not going in that deep,’ reassured Simon Claisse, the genial Clerk of the Course.

‘Bend’s under water,’ Rafiq, who’d already walked the course twice, told an increasingly terrified Amber.

The five-star racecourse stables, with their little white clock tower topped by a galloping golden horse weathercock, accommodated three hundred horses in Gold Cup week. Ilkley Hall had just spent half an hour in the solarium. Mirrors had been provided in Internetso’s box so he wouldn’t be lonely. In the past, walls had been knocked through between boxes, so an uptight horse could converse with its stable mate. Horses were offered ordinary or organic water. Nothing was too much trouble.

Many horses overnighted before Gold Cup day. Many of the Irish runners, avoiding a rough ferry crossing, had been there for several days and were as relaxed as Priceless.

To his staff’s disappointment, Marius refused to let them or his horses overnight, unlike Harvey-Holden, who even booked himself into the grooms’ hostel, pretending it gave him immediate access to his beloved horses but in actuality because it was cheap and gave him a chance to pull stable lasses.

As runners set off for the third race, the excitement really kicked in as Gold Cup horses were given a final polish. Michelle, polishing her own face for the parade, was debriefing Tresa on last night’s party, emphasizing how badly, released from Jude’s watchful eye, Harvey-Holden had behaved. This was to discourage a tendresse Michelle suspected was developing between H-H and Tresa, who she frequently caught whispering in corners.

The only person who had evidently behaved worse than Harvey-Holden was Rupert Campbell-Black’s grandson, Eddie Alderton. Still celebrating winning the Bumper on Wednesday, he had got into several fights after getting off with other jockeys’ girlfriends.

‘Such a pity Marius won’t let us overnight,’ grumbled Tresa, as usual leaving Tommy to do all the work, ‘but he’s still convinced someone nobbled Bullydozer at Leopardstown. If we were allowed to overnight, Tommy would sleep in Wilkie’s box.’

‘Only thing prepared to sleep with Tommy,’ sneered Michelle.

‘Shut up, you beetch,’ hissed a voice. It was Rafiq, come to check on the horses, his face so contorted with fury that Michelle dropped her eyeliner.

‘My my, someone did get out of the wrong pigsty this morning,’ observed Tresa, as Rafiq disappeared into Wilkie’s box.

Chisolm was having a ball, hooves up on the stable half-door, sporting a new green suede collar, being photographed and stroked. Everyone was in hysterics because Dora had muddled the copy for Rupert’s column in the
Racing Post
with Chisolm’s in the
Mirror,
so Rupert’s readers had been urged to ‘gobble up the polyanthus round Best Mate’s statue and butt Ilkley Hall and Lusty on their delicate legs if they got the chance’.

The stables seethed with the rumour of non-runners, shifting odds and jockey changes. With the rain, Wilkie’s odds had drifted and Lusty and Ilkley Hall had become joint favourites.

Word had also got round that Furious had a stunning new lass. Heads kept popping over the half-door to admire her as she attempted to plait up her fractious charge, hugely embarrassed
that, even with Rafiq’s help, she’d been unable to clip all his coat. With her own dark hair in a long plait, her colt legs in tight black jeans, Trixie was wearing a snazzy jacket Valent had given her, striped in his dusty green and violet colours, fur-lined against the cold and long enough to conceal any bump.

At least the going would suit Furious the mudlark. Described in the
Racing Post
as ‘an alpha mule who couldn’t be relied on to start’, Furious was 50–1.

Half an hour to the parade, Tommy the equable gave a howl of rage.

‘Someone’s shaved off Wilkie’s whiskers, who the hell’s done that? It must have happened in the last hour. I was only away twenty minutes changing for the parade. Did you touch her?’ She turned on Tresa and Josh.

‘I did not, I wouldn’t dare touch your precious baby,’ taunted Tresa.

‘Someone must have done it, someone she knew well.’

‘Probably Rafiq,’ said Josh.

‘Don’t be fatuous.’

‘He was down checking Furious. Feels uncomfortable in the weighing room with the real men,’ said Michelle nastily.

Tresa was peering into the bin. Reaching down, she pulled out a razor with its orange lid off.

‘Rafiq uses these because they’re cheap. Look,’ she waved it triumphantly, ‘it’s got black whiskers in it. You better fingerprint it. I’ve just touched it, so my prints are on it already. I expect Master Rafiq doesn’t want Wilkie to beat Furious.’

‘Oh shut up,’ screamed Tommy.

‘Calm down, no one’s died.’

‘Not yet.’ Tommy had gone bright red in the face.

Taking down Furious as late as possible to saddle him up in the pre-parade ring, Trixie ran slap into Eddie Alderton dropping four Alka-Seltzers into a teacup and about to ride Rupert’s second horse, Merchant of Venus.

‘Oh my gard,’ he yelled, utterly spooking Furious, ‘you are so gorgeous. Will you come out with me tonight? Oh my gard.’