CHAPTER ELEVEN #4
The jockeys streamed out of the weighing room, shivering like thistledown in the wind dressed in only insubstantial rainbow silks. Josie Moore appeared before them wearing Betsy’s colours of pale pink with a blue hoop.
‘Afternoon, sir. It’s a privilege to ride for you,’ she said respectfully to Dennis. ‘Hello,’ she added good-naturedly, as she turned to Sage and Dolly and shook their hands. She must have been about nineteen, as brave as she was young.
‘Stick to the plan we talked about on the telephone,’ Dennis said gruffly.
‘The main thing is that she has a good start, and that she enjoys it. I’ve put a neck strap on her as she can be flighty – don’t be afraid to use it.
’ As he finished talking, the bell rang for the jockeys to mount.
Jim, his travelling head lad, pulled off Skylark’s sheet and Dennis legged Josie up.
She and Skylark turned the corner into the chute and went briskly away, down to the start.
Hurrying now, as they only had a few minutes, Dennis, Sage and Dolly made their way up to the trainers’ balcony to watch the race.
The all-weather track was brightly lit by floodlights and the starting stalls were stark against the moody, dark sky.
The breath from the horses’ nostrils looked like plumes of smoke drifting up into the dank, murky dusk.
All seven horses were finally loaded safely and the starter waited for all the stall handlers to get out of the way of the gates; then they were off.
Skylark broke slowly out of the stalls, stumbling slightly, leaving her six lengths adrift of the others who had noticeably pulled ahead.
Josie was a sympathetic jockey and did not hassle her.
Instead she sat quietly and waited, letting Skylark find her feet in her own time.
The filly gathered herself and began to gallop in earnest. Within a furlong, they had joined the back of the pack, Skylark travelling easily under a nice hold.
From his position in the stands, Dennis grimaced into his binoculars, watching Skylark’s reaction to the kickback from the horses in front. ‘Go wide, get out in front.’
As if hearing the instructions, coming around the homeward bend, Josie took a slightly wider course than most would have done, guiding her into space where she would be saved a face full of all-weather sand.
Making progress now, Skylark passed four of her six rivals with ease, motoring effortlessly up through the gears.
Entering the final straight, Josie gave her the reins and encouraged her to make a race of it.
The filly duly obliged, switching leads and mockingly skipping past her last two opponents in a matter of strides to win by four lengths.
Skylark jogged back to the winners’ enclosure, prancing about while Katie clipped her back onto the lead rope. Her eyes were on stalks and both Josie and Katie patted her neck over and over again.
‘She really enjoyed it! I think she’d go again straight off the bat!’ Josie said happily.
To prove it, the filly put in a few hops, bucking playfully as she came into the white-railed paddock.
She was hardly blowing and so het up that she was reluctant to stand still.
Josie dismounted, sliding down lightly, and loped off to weigh in, a huge grin on her flushed face under the pink-capped helmet.
Betsy had come down with the others and ducked under the rails to give Skylark more pats and congratulations; the filly restlessly threw her head about, turning impatient circles as Katie scraped off the sweat and rugged her up again to stop her from getting cold.
‘Well done, Josie. You rode a textbook race,’ Sage said as the small jockey rejoined them, having been congratulated by a quietly ecstatic Dennis outside the weighing room.
‘Oh, that’s kind, thank you. She was an absolute privilege to ride.
She ran the race herself and after a difficult start she pulled it out of the bag.
She gave me some feeling! She’s got a Ferrari engine under her red bonnet.
’ Josie hoped that she would get the ride again; she could tell this filly was an exciting prospect.
Betsy rushed over to thank her jockey and Sage stepped back to take it all in. Dolly leant in close and spoke quietly in her ear.
‘There’s that gorgeous trainer, Rafe, the one who came to dinner the other day. He’s up on that balcony looking all swarthy and brooding like Heathcliff. Oh shit! He’s looking at us.’ Dolly turned her eyes away hastily, embarrassed to be caught ogling.
Sage lifted her gaze up to where Rafe was standing about twenty feet away, higher up on some private balcony. They locked eyes and stared at each other hungrily, the longing between them almost palpable. Dolly gaped at Sage.
‘Fill me in, please!’ she said, her eyes wide.
Sage tore her gaze away.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Time, we have got. Your grandparents want to stay for the last race.’ Dolly linked her arm through Sage’s and led her up towards the luring warmth of the bar. ‘Let’s get a drink, and you can tell me all about it.’