Derby Day (53 page)

*

‘Which is the horse with the man in crimson and blue?’

‘That is Abraxas, Lord Parmenter’s.’

Neither Rosa nor Mr Happerton, watching the early races that preceded the Derby, was altogether happy: Rosa because she was bored by the horses and felt that she had been kept purposely from anyone worth the meeting, and was inconveniently hot; Mr Happerton because he had decided that his association with her must come to an end. If Rebecca had been with him, he thought, she would have said sensible things, and not prattled on about the horses’ colours. Instead he had brought a simpering, doll-faced idiot whom he could not introduce to his friends. There would be an end to all this, he thought, an end to Rosa, and Mount Street, and irregularity, and perhaps even to horses. He would collect his winnings – they could not be less than fifteen thousand pounds – and retire from sporting life, live modestly in Lincolnshire and cultivate his estate. No, he would follow his wife’s counsel – very brilliant counsel it seemed now – and take up politics. Had not old Jack Gully, the bare-knuckle boxer, once sat in the House? Well, surely the proud electors of the Chelsea Districts could find space for a respectable gentleman of independent means such as himself? Thinking these thoughts he became quite virtuous and charitable. An old, white-faced acrobat in a spangled jerkin came stumbling along the path with a small boy turning somersaults in his wake, and he stopped him and put a sixpence in his hand. The great merit of Mrs Rebecca, he told himself again, was that she had his best interests at heart. How many other men could say that of their wives? Wholly absorbed by these imaginings, he strolled along the paddock’s edge, not hearing a word that Rosa spoke to him, as the sporting gentlemen clustered around the horses, the crowd stirred and murmured and the white birds spiralled in the azure sky.

*

‘You are more of a sporting man than I am,’ Captain McTurk said to Mr Masterson as their cab rattled along the Embankment. ‘How shall we lay our hands on this Mr Happerton?’

‘How indeed?’ Mr Masterson wondered. ‘There will be a hundred thousand people on the Downs, I dare say. See how empty the city is.’

‘I have had Hopkins send a wire to Captain Simms. No doubt he can advise us.’

‘What is to be done with Mrs Happerton?’

‘What is to be done with her?’ Captain McTurk was still frowning at the empty streets, as if he could not quite fathom the urge that had seen them abandoned for a horse race in Surrey. ‘Why, we shall see how much of their stories tally. But it would surprise me if she knew everything.’

‘And yet it seems to me that she knows a good deal,’ Mr Masterson said.

‘So did Mrs Macdougall, the wife of that fellow in Brighton who murdered the attorneys in their room,’ Captain McTurk said, ‘but it was he who went to the block.’

They turned south over Westminster Bridge, where the stink of the river came up and filled the cab, and the pennants on the pleasure-craft drawn up on the southern side glittered in the sun. There were boys out diving for pennies from the ramp beyond Westminster Gardens, and ancient persons, looking as if they had only lately climbed up from the depths, grubbing for flotsam in the mud of the shallows, and Mr Masterson stared at them as he passed. A police launch came into view, moving very slowly, with a man leaning over the side and prodding with a stick at some grey and half-submerged object bobbing under the boat’s prow, and Mr Masterson, knowing what the thing was and what would be the outcome of it, turned his gaze elsewhere, out across the church spires, and the factory chimneys, and the mean little streets, and the teeming red-brick villas of South London, and the Epsom Road.

*

‘Can’t properly see?’ Mr Pritchett said to his assistant, as they lounged by the rail. ‘I daresay you can’t. There are eighty thousand people here can’t properly see, but the race will be won just the same. Now take this down:
The paddock, immediately prior to commencement, afforded the most fascinating parade of colour and equine celebrity. I saw Lord Martindale himself, dressed in the very height of sporting fashion
– you might ask, Jones, and see if that old fellow with the whiskers is his lordship –
leading Severus as he took his turn. Mr Grant and Pericles were roundly applauded by an appreciative crowd
… That Grant is a vulgar man, Jones. Look at him bowing to every navvy that’s raising a glass to him. Ugh! …
Lord Eddington’s Avoirdupois was most prettily got up, with Lord
Eddington walking proudly alongside. There, too, were Baldino and Pericles
– such a profusion of horses, each taking their cheer from the crowd, that one despaired of their ever being brought to the start, but somehow Mr Robey’s men did their business, and that gentleman, with his handkerchief in his hand, could be seen approaching over the turf, acknowledging the salutations of the crowd, for his is a deserved popularity
– It’s lies you know, Jones. Dorling would discharge him tomorrow if he weren’t Lord Ilchester’s son-in-law –
but anxious to bring the business of the day to a swift despatch
.

*

Mr McIvor accepted a final bet on Septuagint from a drunken costerwoman, flung his satchel over his shoulder – how it jingled! – left the twin poles where they stood, caught the eye of his fast friend Mr Jemmy Partridge from the Raven in Shoreditch, laid off a £5 note on Tiberius as Mr Mulligan had counselled him, took the proffered slip and then lowered his head and slipped like an eel through the press of hats and bonnets and nankeen jackets and scarlet frock-coats and varnished boots and shabby highlows to see the fun.

*

As the moment of the race draws near, another change comes upon the crowd. The women grow quieter and less boisterous, conscious that the thing they have come to see will soon be upon them, anxious lest it should lose its savour. The men are seizing their vantage points: a patch on the hill where a pair of field glasses, trained at a certain angle, may engage half a dozen horses as they take the turn around Tattenham Corner. A lick or two of wind stirs up the trampled grass, displaces hats, sets the muslin flounces astir. In the carriages drawn up along the rail the ladies have put away their wineglasses, and had their chicken-bones disposed of by the servants. The Gypsies’ stalls and the booths on the hill are quite empty now, for who is there among us who wants his fortune told, or his portrait taken off, or to shy for cocoanuts, or stare at a two-headed baby in its jar, when it wants but five minutes to the running of the Derby?

*

Captain Raff looked at the horses at they ranged out over the grass with benign interest. He could see Septuagint with little Dick Tomkins on his back, taking his place in the line, Dick Tomkins whom he had once given a five-pound note to years ago. How he wished he could have that five pounds back! He knew that should Baldino not win the race he was ruined, that his life would be of no consequence to him any more, but somehow the knowing of it did not seem so very terrible to him, here in the midst of the crowd with the bright sun beating down on his forehead. And so he stared at the horses as they ranged over the grass and tapped his fingers on the breast of his jacket and the thing that lay inside it.

*

‘It seems uncommonly quiet,’ Captain McTurk said as they came through Epsom, with the hill rising sharply in the distance before them.

‘Everyone is at the race, you see. It is quite the event of the year in these parts.’

‘Had we better not leave the cab and go on foot?’

‘There is a path, I believe, that will take us to the back of the grandstand,’ Mr Masterson said.

The track led them through a kind of rural wasteland, defiled and run to seed, composed of cook-tents, horseboxes and discarded lumber, kettles boiling over tenantless fires, rather as if, Captain McTurk thought, a conquering army had passed that way, paused briefly to recruit itself, and then moved on. A clerk at a barred gate hesitated to admit them, but was quelled by Captain McTurk’s flashing eye.

‘They make a great mess of the place I daresay,’ Captain McTurk said.

‘I believe Dorling keeps the site in very good order,’ Mr Masterson said meekly. His own gaze fell upon incidentals: a Gypsy arranging what looked like a skinned rabbit on a spit; a stray horse wandering over the trampled grass; an old lady with a parasol, quite oblivious to the crowds massed a quarter of a mile before her, muttering away on some private errand.

Captain Simms met them at the rear of the stand. He was very much in awe of Captain McTurk.

‘They will be off directly,’ he said. ‘Would you have me stop the race?’

‘There is no need for that I think,’ Captain McTurk said. ‘Where is Happerton?’

‘He is in the grandstand. I have a constable directly behind him.’

‘He is with a party, I take it?’

‘There is a woman with him, I believe.’

There was a sudden roar of enthusiasm from the wooden platforms above their heads, and the sound of a thousand feet drumming in unison.

‘There is the race beginning,’ Mr Masterson said. ‘We had better not waste any time.’

*

A riot of colour. Colour everywhere. The horses are of every imaginable hue: black, bay, chestnut, grey, a multitude of shades in between. The jockeys’ silks – scarlet, magenta, carmine, green-and-white, quartered blues and yellows – rustle in the breeze. In the distance a sea of faces, sharp and distinct where the people press up against the rail, fading – as the crowd diffuses up the hill – into a remote generality. Nothing Mr Frith could ever do can convey the enormity of the scene or its infinite particularity, the sway and eddy of fifty thousand shoulders, the women fainting in the heat and being taken out, the flashes of light as the sun catches on the raised opera glasses in the grandstand, the cacophony of individual shouts – ‘Baldino!’, ‘Septuagint!’, ‘Pendragon!’. The band is still playing ‘The British Grenadiers’ on the near side of the paddock, but nobody hears it. Nobody hears anything, for there is nothing that can properly be heard. The field is strung out now in a ragged line behind the single restraining rope, and already there is a doubt as to how they shall be got off. Major Hubbins is snug in his saddle, with his whip clutched in his hand, but little Dick Tomkins has turned whey-faced and is having to be put onto his mount by main force, and the crowd groans and cheers according to taste and prejudice, and the rope yields a little and is then dragged back. Here is Mr Robey! Make way for Mr Robey! Mr Robey will take charge!

And Mr Robey looks around him, commands that a horse with no rider nor with anyone seeming to know where he came from shall be taken away, and that the rope be pulled back another yard and that Dick Tomkins’ two assistants retire unless they mean to ride the race as a trio. Mr Robey has his flag in his hand, and the crowd stares at it, but no, there is another difficulty, another check, and the line of horses sways backwards and the rope tumbles around their ankles. But then suddenly, and with no obvious help from anyone present, the thing resolves itself. The horses come daintily forward, like dancers in a gavotte, Major Hubbins looks calmly round him, the rope tightens around the first straining chests, Mr Robey drops his flag – that flag that a dozen people will fight over for the luck of it – the rope falls and the race is begun.

*

‘Trust Robey to get them away,’ Mr Pritchett said to his assistant, ‘for all he’s Lord Ilchester’s son-in-law. Sutherland is supposed to be at Tattenham Corner with his easel ready to take them off as they come round, but it’s a precious hard job he’ll have of it. Gracious, what a noise these fellows make. Well, there is The Coalman. Heavens! He will run into the rail at this rate. There! What did I tell you? Whose is the grey? Pendragon, you say. No, he has faltered already. There’s your shilling gone, Jones. What is old Hubbins doing? Biding his time, I daresay. Here comes Baldino, at any rate. Tomkins on Septuagint looks as if he were ready to fall off. There was talk that he hadn’t eaten for a week. There, Pendragon has pulled up, what did I tell you? And Severus does not look much better. Baldino at two lengths. Why, they are nearly half-way now. If Hubbins wants to make ground, now is the time to do it. Still Baldino, but Septuagint nowhere … I should think Tomkins will need a week in bed after this … Baldino, still, by a length …’

*

They took Mr Happerton at the very foot of the grandstand, where he leant on the rail with Rosa beside him. At first, amid the tumult of the crowd – he could hear the voices shouting ‘Baldino’ and ‘Tiberius’ in strophe and antistrophe – he could not understand what they wanted of him. Then, when he understood, a kind of terror came into his eye and he made a dart under the rail, only for Mr Masterson to upend him and, with the aid of Captain Simms’ constable, take a grip on his collar. Rosa they ignored. Looking up, as they passed back along the rows, Captain McTurk had a sudden glimpse of the line of horses: furious chips of bright colour, black, red and black again, that surged unappeasably over the bright grass, but the spectacle did not interest him and he lowered his head.

*

‘Who has won?’ Mr Masterson demanded of a steward, as he came out of the back of the grandstand with Mr Happerton’s wrist wedged up under his arm.