‘Come on,’ Chick whispered desperately. ‘Come on, then, boy.’
The horse moved his nose around towards the carrot and finally, reluctantly, his feet. He took the carrot indifferently from the man’s trembling palm, whiffling it in with his black mobile lips, scrunching it languidly with large rotations of jaw. When he had swallowed all the pulped-up bits, he poked his muzzle forward for more. But there was no more, just the lighter square of sky darkening again as the door swung shut, just the faint sounds of the bolt going back, just the fading smell of the man and the passing taste of carrot. Presently he forgot about it and turned slowly round again so that his hindquarters were towards the door, because he usually stood that way, and after a minute or two he blinked slowly, rested his near hind leg lazily on the point of the hoof and lapsed back into twilight mindlessness.
Down in his stomach the liquid narcotic compound with which the carrot had been injected to saturation gradually filtered out of the digesting carrot cells and began to be absorbed into the bloodstream. The process was slow and progressive. And it had started two hours late.
Arthur Morrison stood in his stable-yard watching his men load the chestnut into the motor horsebox that was to take him to the races. He was eyeing the proceedings with an expression that was critical from habit and bore little relation to the satisfaction in his mind. The chestnut was the best horse in his stable: a frequent winner, popular with the public, a source of prestige as well as revenue. The big steeplechase at Cheltenham had been tailor-made for him from the day its conditions had been published, and Morrison was adept at producing a horse in peak condition for a particular race. No one seriously considered that the chestnut would be beaten. The newspapers had tipped it to a man and the bookmakers were fighting shy at 6–4 on. Morrison allowed himself a glimmer of warmth in the eyes and a twitch of smile to the lips as the men clipped shut the heavy doors of the horsebox and drove it out of the yard.
These physical signs were unusual. The face he normally wore was a compound of concentration and disapproval in roughly equal proportions. Both qualities contributed considerably to his success as a racehorse trainer and to his unpopularity as a person, a fact Morrison himself was well aware of. He didn’t in the least care that almost no one liked him. He valued success and respect much more highly than love and held in incredulous contempt all those who did not.
Across the yard Chick was watching the horsebox drive away, his usual scowl in place. Morrison frowned irritably. The boy was a pest, he thought. Always grousing, always impertinent, always trying to scrounge up more money. Morrison didn’t believe in boys having life made too easy: a little hardship was good for the soul. Where Morrison and Chick radically differed was the point at which each thought hardship began.
Chick spotted the frown and watched Morrison fearfully, his guilt pressing on him like a rock. He couldn’t know, he thought frantically. He couldn’t even suspect there was anything wrong with the horse or he wouldn’t have let him go off to the races. The horse had looked all right, too. Absolutely his normal self. Perhaps there had been nothing wrong with the carrot... Perhaps it had been the wrong carrot, even... Chick glanced around uneasily and knew very well he was fooling himself. The horse might look all right but he wasn’t.
Arthur Morrison saddled up his horse at the races, and Chick watched him from ten nervous paces away, trying to hide in the eager crowd that pushed forward for a close view of the favourite. There was a larger admiring crowd outside the chestnut’s saddling stall than for any of the other seven runners, and the bookmakers had shortened their odds. Behind Morrison’s concentrated expression an itch of worry was growing insistent. He pulled the girth tight and adjusted the buckles automatically, acknowledging to himself that his former satisfaction had changed to anxiety. The horse was not himself. There were no lively stamping feet, no playful nips from the teeth, no response to the crowd; this was a horse that usually played to the public like a film star. He couldn’t be feeling well, and if he wasn’t feeling well he wouldn’t win. Morrison tightened his mouth. If the horse were not well enough to win, he would prefer him not to run at all. To be beaten at odds-on would be a disgrace. A defeat on too large a scale. A loss of face. Particularly as Morrison’s own eldest son Toddy was to be the jockey. The newspapers would tear them both to pieces.
Morrison came to a decision and sent for the vet.
The rules of jump racing in England stated quite clearly that if a horse had been declared a runner in a race, only the say-so of a veterinary surgeon was sufficient grounds for withdrawing him during the last three-quarters of an hour before post time. The Cheltenham racecourse veterinary surgeon came and looked at the chestnut and, after consulting with Morrison, led it off to a more private stall and took its temperature.
‘His temperature’s normal,’ the vet assured Morrison.
‘I don’t like the look of him.’
‘I can’t find anything wrong.’
‘He’s not well,’ Morrison insisted.
The vet pursed his lips and shook his head. There was nothing obviously wrong with the horse, and he knew he would be in trouble himself if he allowed Morrison to withdraw so hot a favourite on such slender grounds. Not only that, this was the third application for withdrawal he’d had to consider that afternoon. He had refused both the others, and the chestnut was certainly in no worse a state.
‘He’ll have to run,’ the vet said positively, making up his mind.
Morrison was furious and went raging off to find a steward, who came and looked at the chestnut and listened to the vet and confirmed that the horse would have to run whether Morrison liked it or not. Unless, that was, Morrison cared to involve the horse’s absent owner in paying a heavy fine?
With a face of granite Morrison resaddled the chestnut, and a stable-lad led him out into the parade ring, where most of the waiting public cheered and a few wiser ones looked closely and hurried off to hedge their bets.
With a shiver of dismay, Chick saw the horse reappear and for the first time regretted what he’d done. That stupid vet, he thought violently. He can’t see what’s under his bloody nose, he couldn’t see a barn at ten paces. Anything that happened from then on was the vet’s fault, Chick thought. The vet’s responsibility, absolutely. The man was a criminal menace, letting a horse run in a steeplechase with dope coming out of its eyeballs.
Toddy Morrison had joined his father in the parade ring and together they were watching with worried expressions as the chestnut plodded lethargically around the oval walking track. Toddy was a strong, stocky professional jockey in his late twenties with an infectious grin and a generous view of life that represented a direct rejection of his father’s. He had inherited the same strength of mind but had used it to leave home at eighteen to ride races for other trainers, and had only consented to ride for his father when he could dictate his own terms. Arthur Morrison, in consequence, respected him deeply. Between them they had won a lot of races.
Chick didn’t actually dislike Toddy Morrison, even though, as he saw it, Toddy stood in his way. Occasionally Arthur let Chick ride a race if Toddy had something better or couldn’t make the weight. Chick had to share these scraps from Toddy’s table with two or three other lads in the yard who were, though he didn’t believe it, as good as he was in the saddle. But though the envy curdled around inside him and the snide remarks came out sharp and sour as vinegar, he had never actually come to hate Toddy. There was something about Toddy that you couldn’t hate, however good the reason. Chick hadn’t given thought to the fact that it would be Toddy who would have to deal with the effects of the carrot. He had seen no further than his own pocket. He wished now that it had been some other jockey. Anyone but Toddy.