Grand National (3 page)

“Very nice to see you, sir. Welcome to the Hall. Sorry not to be able to meet you at the station, but these people phoned and came down rather unexpectedly. I shall be at your service shortly. Mrs. Robinson wants you to have a drink and dinner with us this evening. Henderson!”

“Yes, sir.” Cobb could have sworn that the groom clicked to attention.

“Take Mr. Cobb and his bags over to Mrs. Briggs. That’s where you’ll be staying. Wait for him, Henderson, and bring him back here.”

“Right, sir.” They climbed back into the tiny Austin, and Cobb learned that Quicksilver had not arrived, but was due the next day directly from Heathrow Airport in London.

Henderson drew up beside a small brick cottage, half smothered in ivy, jumped from the seat behind the wheel, and, hauling the bags out, knocked on a highly polished brass knocker attached to the door.

“Mrs. Briggs! Mrs. Briggs! The gentleman from Emerica.”

The door opened suddenly, so suddenly that someone could have been standing there and probably had been. A stoutish woman in a spotless white apron that covered her entire frontispiece stood there with a surprised look on her face. “My goodness, Mr. Henderson, you did give me a start. Have you been waiting long?”

She seemed flustered. Evidently expecting a red Indian in war paint, thought Jack Cobb.

“Come right in, sir. Come in, please. This way.” Once inside she turned suddenly on him. “Have you had your tea yet? No? Ah, you won’t be wanting any. Well….” There was a note of regret in her tone as if to suggest that after all what could one expect from people who came from America? “It
is
a bit hot this afternoon.” She threw open a door. “Now this is your quarters here. Nice and quiet with full morning sun. You’ll be having your meals on that table there.
With
a private bath.” She threw open a side door disclosing a toilet, a washbasin, and an ancient tin bathtub.

“I do hope this will be satisfactory.” Her tone implied that if the accommodations were not, he was a fussy man, typically American.

As she paused in the flow of words, Jack Cobb intervened. “It’s fine. What’ll be the price of this, Mrs. Briggs?”

She responded quickly and without any hesitation. “Sir, the way prices do be going up, I shall have to charge you fourteen pounds a week. That’s for the room, two meals, plus an extra one-and-six for the morning tea. You’ll be wanting morning tea, I suppose?”

She glanced at him tentatively in a way that made Jack Cobb suspect she was overcharging him. He did a quick sum in his head. The whole thing came to about thirty-seven dollars a week, precisely what he had expected. The place was cheerless, with a grate about as large as a transistor radio, and he would surely be cold in winter. Still, there was no choice. He did not care to bargain, and he nodded.

She seemed relieved. “No doubt, sir, since you have a horse at the Hall, you’ll ride out with Mr. Henderson each morning. What time will you be having your morning tea?”

At this point the head lad, who had been hovering in the rear, spoke up. “We try to push off for the first ride at seven thirty, sir, seven thirty sharp, that is. Better say a half after six, Mrs. Briggs. That’ll give him plenty of time for dressing. He’ll need his tea when we get that chilly winter wind off the sea.”

Mrs. Briggs returned to the attack. “Daresay you’ll ride and have your breakfast with the lads at the Hall afterward?”

Both men assented, and Henderson suggested that Jack join them on the first ride tomorrow even though Quicksilver had not arrived yet. Then he waited while Jack changed his clothes for dinner.

Later that evening, after an excellent meal with the hospitable Robinsons, Jack sat down in his quarters to go over his finances for about the tenth time within the fortnight. The room and meals would come to about a hundred and fifty a month. The cost of training Quicksilver was about the same per week, making a total of seven hundred and fifty dollars a month. Obviously things were precarious. His slender budget would not last more than six or seven months. The horse would simply have to win that year for his own survival. The odds, as Truxton Bingham had remarked that last, lonely evening in Jack’s living room, were heavily against him.

When Mrs. Briggs knocked on the door the next morning with a lukewarm, muddy drink in a cup, he hastily swallowed it, dressed, and set out for the Hall. “The lanes are difficult the first time if you’re not watchful, sir. First left, then by the thatched cottage. That’ll be the Widow Stanleigh. Take the second right, you’ll have a view of the water. Next right, and straight ahead for the Hall.”

Unfortunately, Mrs. Briggs’s directions were confusing, and he soon became lost. A man going past on a bicycle set him straight after he had mucked around for twenty minutes. At last came the view of the Channel, distant and misty through the trees in the morning sun. In a minute he made out the big yellow brick house. He strode on quickly, glanced at his watch, and discovered with some dismay that he was a few minutes late.

There, as he came around to the stables, stood the head lad in clean but worn jodhpurs, a sports coat with a necktie on, plus a cap instead of his derby. The horses were milling around, being mounted by the stable lads.

“Good morning, Mr. Cobb,” said the head lad. “You’re ten minutes late, sir. Now then, kindly mount that gray mare over there by the stable wall.”

Confused, and a bit irritated by the groom’s rebuke, Jack Cobb walked over, patted the horse’s flank, shoved his left foot into the stirrups, and, helped by a stable lad who was holding the animal, got into the saddle. At the far end of the yard the horses were already walking around impatiently in single file. Cobb settled into the saddle, took the reins, clicked with his teeth, gave a sharp kick, and yanked the mare to the right.

Perhaps that tug on the bit and the sudden kick by a stranger were too much. Whatever the reason, the next minute he was on the ground, rolling over on the grass-covered cobblestones. His wind was completely knocked out. He could hardly breathe, and his right shoulder pained him acutely. Through the pain he could distinguish the subdued murmur of the stable lads. All heads were turned on him.

Furious with himself, with the lads, with the head groom, he stumbled to his feet, went up to the horse, put his foot in the iron, seized the reins, and, still panting from pain and annoyance, pulled himself into the saddle. As he fell into line and the procession moved toward the sea, the titters up ahead were audible.

T
HE STABLEBOYS, OR
“the lads,” as they were called around the Hall, greatly interested Jack Cobb. There were sixteen or seventeen of them, including the traveling head lad, who was in charge of the horses when they went off by motor horse box to race meetings. Each lad was responsible for two horses, riding out first one and then the other as they were exercised every morning on the Downs. The lads worked hard, starting at six thirty in the morning and ending perhaps at seven thirty in the evening. In between there was a long afternoon break, except when they went away to a distant race meeting.

Several girls were included in the group. They wore pants and windbreakers like the boys and had the same weather-beaten, horsey look. Every bit as effective and diligent as the boys, they were chiefly distinguishable by the fact that in bad weather they wore scarves tied around their heads.

Everyone at the Hall was friendly and cooperative, save one person. He was George Atherton, the contract jockey attached to the stable. When he met Cobb, he merely grunted and turned away. Chester Robinson explained that he had a bad ulcer. “It acts up on him sometimes, and one has to make allowances.” This Cobb was quite willing to do.

Unlike some trainers, Chester Robinson owned several motor horse boxes for taking horses to race meetings. However, to meet Quicksilver at Heathrow, he had arranged with the Lambourn Horse Box Company to collect him. This company cleared him through customs for travel in the United Kingdom. It was late morning when Quicksilver arrived at the Hall, and a cluster of lads, including Robinson and the head lad, gathered to see the horse that had won the Maryland Hunt Cup and now hoped to run in the Grand National.

The box driver unlocked the door and let down the ramp. Inside was Quicksilver, trembling. He looked as though he had not traveled well, and Robinson and the head lad could not persuade him down for several minutes.

“He’ll want water first off,” said Chester, addressing a lad named Ginger with red hair, who was assigned to Jack Cobb. “Likely he’s somewhat upset by the journey.”

Quickly Ginger brought Quicksilver a pail of rainwater, which was the only kind the horses were permitted to drink at the Hall. After several minutes of walking him around, and some quiet affectionate words in a low tone from Cobb, the trembling ceased. Jack then led him to the stall prepared for him.

The trainer, on looking him over, suggested that they let him rest for the first day. “I can see the journey has worried him. In the morning he can go out with the first lot and have a couple of canters. We must go slow with him until he finds his legs and gets used to us. Basically, he seems to me to be in good shape. That’s a grand horse you have there, Mr. Cobb. No doubt about it.”

A driver from Lambourn’s stood beside Cobb. He had a clipboard with numerous papers. “I wonder whether I can get your signature in quadruplicate on these receipts, sir?”

This done, Cobb left the stableboys, for the journey had taken a toll on him, too. Consequently, he turned in early, tired and anxious to be ready for the morning. Shortly after eleven that night there was a frantic pounding at the door outside, and then a brisk knock on his sitting-room door.

“Mr. Cobb, sir. Your stableboy wants to see you.”

Stumbling to his feet in the dark, he followed Mrs. Briggs to the front door. There in the pitch blackness was Ginger Jones, leaning on his bike and panting.

“Your horse, sir. He’s sick like and sweating. Doesn’t look too well to me. I’ve notified Mr. Robinson, but you had better come around to the stables.”

Hastily throwing on some clothes, Jack borrowed Mrs. Briggs’s bike and tried to follow Ginger up lanes, down shortcuts and passageways, the whole way indistinct and uncertain in the darkness. The bike was old and wobbly, and he took several tumbles that shook him up. Finally they reached the stable yard, which was floodlit. People were moving around; the horses were jittery and pawing at the doors.

One glance at Quicksilver told him that the horse
was
sick. His head drooped, and he kept trying to lie down. Robinson with an electric torch in his hand was inspecting him carefully, feeling his stomach, which made Quicksilver shy away. One sick horse can send an epidemic through a stable and needs watching.

“He’s not right—that’s plain—and he has a temperature. So I called Doctor Sanders, the vet attached to the Hall. He’s coming over in a few minutes.”

As they spoke car headlights showed on the yellow brick walls of the house, flashing on the windows of the Hall. Then the lights of the car went out, a door slammed, and down the long corridor between the horses tramped a youngish, alert man with a torch in one hand and a black doctor’s bag in the other. Good-evenings were exchanged all round.

“This is the horse, Doctor. Belongs to Mr. Cobb here, and just arrived from Heathrow this afternoon.”

The doctor nodded and said nothing but felt the horse’s stomach as he tried to lie down. Then he looked in his mouth, took his temperature, felt his chest, and listened with a stethoscope carefully and competently. Obviously he knew his business.

Next he opened his bag, pulled out a bottle of pills, and with quick, deft movements stuffed two down the animal’s throat. “My guess is that he caught a chill on the way over. Wait a minute….”

Quicksilver tossed his head and tried to turn away from him. The doctor continued his inspection with the stethoscope. At last he declared, “Sorry to say your horse has a touch of colic.”

“Colic?” answered Cobb. “Now how could he have gotten that? Just three days ago, when he left Maryland, he was in perfect shape.”

The vet looked at him coldly. “Can’t tell you, sir, but he has it now. Let’s see… in four hours be sure he takes two of these.” He handed an envelope over to Chester Robinson. “I’ll look in first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, don’t let him lie down. Keep him standing, better still walk him, lead him round no matter how exhausted he seems. If he doesn’t get better, I’ll give him some different medicine, but I’d like to see the colic pass naturally. Well, good night, gentlemen.”

And he was off in his car, briskly bumping down the lane.

The two men and the stableboy looked at each other. “The boy and I will handle this, Mr. Cobb,” said Chester Robinson. “We’ll see him through the night between us.”

Cobb looked up quickly. “That’s kind and thoughtful, but he’s my horse. This is up to me. Ginger and I will take turns walking him. How about that, Ginger?”

The boy agreed almost eagerly. One would have thought that walking a horse around all night was his idea of a good time. Reluctantly the trainer left for bed. The lights in the Hall went out, first on the ground floor, then on the second floor. Only the floodlight in the court remained.

“An hour on and an hour off. One hour is about as much as I want at one time, Ginger.”

“Very good, sir. But Mr. Cobb, this is what I’m hired for, and perhaps I’m a little more used to it than you are. Why not ride back on the bike and get some sleep? I can hold out the rest of the night. It’s getting on midnight now, and the vet will be back at seven. That’s only seven hours.”

“Thanks, my boy, but no. The horse is mine, and I should take the responsibility for him. Just pile up some clean straw for me in the corner of an empty stall, and then carry on while I rest. I’ll spell you at one o’clock.”

“Very good, sir. If he gives me any trouble, I’ll notify you at once. Come on, old boy….” Ginger led Quicksilver by the bridle onto the cobbled stones of the courtyard.

Jack Cobb lay down to rest. He could hear the tired
clop-clop
of Quicksilver’s hooves, and, worried though he was, the sound seemed to put him to sleep. Next thing he knew, he woke up with a jerk. A dim light showed through the stable windows to the east across the Downs. Sleepily he looked at his watch. Almost five o’clock. That boy was still walking Quicksilver. Or had he given up?