‘That’s enough.’ Rupert took the mobile from her.
At least this altercation distracted her from the embarrassment of seeing Marius and Olivia. Olivia, wearing dark glasses and a rather dowdy olive-green suit, which Amber recognized from her wardrobe at Throstledown, clung on to Marius’s arm. She looked tired but so relieved to be back with him, which couldn’t have improved Shade’s temper. Ringed by the orange and magenta backs of the four jockeys riding his horses, Shade and Harvey-Holden had their heads together, plotting devilries and death to Mrs Wilkinson.
Incarcerated at Rupert’s, Mrs Wilkinson hadn’t for ages seen any of her horse friends, except Furious who she loathed. Suddenly, ambling half asleep towards her, his long grey face lengthened by a lack of noseband, came her sugar daddy, Sir Cuthbert. Mrs Wilkinson went crazy, rushed over, nuzzling and nudging, knuckering and exchanging whiskery kisses.
Towed up by Chisolm, Dora turned to Bianca.
‘I wonder if she’s telling Cuthbert Love Rat’s got her up the duff,’ she whispered.
‘Shut
up
,’ hissed Bianca, going pale. ‘Daddy’ll kill us.’
Mrs Wilkinson had also seen Niall and Valent, and bustled over to welcome them like a party hostess, then started looking around hopefully for Etta.
Realizing how tiny she was, how huge the other horses and how challenging the fences out on the course, Valent suddenly felt ashamed of himself. Why the hell was he endangering this darling horse? No wonder Etta hated him.
‘Hello, Valent, got butterflies?’ said a hearty voice. It was Martin Bancroft, who with Romy had flown up last night with Harvey-Holden. Both of them were avid to meet Rupert.
‘Where’s the syndicate?’ asked Romy.
‘Oop in my box. Only room for Niall and Dora in the parade ring,’ said Valent.
‘Mother up there too?’ demanded Martin.
‘Couldn’t make it,’ Valent said grimly, ‘doesn’t approve of the Grand National.’
‘What!’ exploded Martin. ‘Thought she was definitely coming. If we’d known we’d never have bothered to fork out a fortune for a sitter.’
‘I’ll phone her and tell her to hotfoot over to Harvest Home and relieve Sarah,’ said Romy, edging out of the mob and switching on her mobile. She was back a minute later, crimson in the face. ‘Your mother told me to bugger off, she was watching the National.’
Valent grinned broadly, and seeing him looking more approachable, Clare Balding sidled up:
‘Mrs Wilkinson’s looking well.’
Forty horses were now circling the parade ring. The uptight ones, principally Furious, were causing logjams as they jigjogged into the backs of those who were calmly walking.
Bafford Playboy and Ilkley Hall both looked magnificent and very large. Vakil, leering in an even sharper black suit, looked very sinister.
‘Michelle must be sleeping with Harvey-Holden,’ whispered Dora to Bianca, ‘for him to allow her to lead up Ilkley Hall in stilettos. I’m sure it was her or Tresa who let Chisolm out this morning, Michael Meagan’s so besotted with Tresa he wouldn’t have noticed.’
Niall was praying his heart out to compete with the Catholic priests and their rosaries, who were busy blessing Dermie O’Driscoll’s Squiffey Liffey and the other great Irish horses.
‘Squiffey is even plainer than Not for Crowe,’ said Dora. ‘I wonder if they’re related.’
‘Squiffey’s very full of himself,’ Dermie was telling Clare Balding. ‘Hopefully he’ll be thereabouts, but the race is going to be a triller.’
The paps were everywhere, hoping for a fight. Would Shade punch Marius for getting Olivia back, would Marius punch Rupert for taking away his best horses?
Marius was giving last-minute instructions to Awesome Wells: ‘Don’t fiddle with Cuthbert, just sit still and let him make his own way. Give him plenty of daylight, start picking them off in the second circuit.’
‘I will,’ said Awesome, who was the colour of the tiny leaves thrusting out of the sticky buds overhead.
‘I’d give instructions to Cuthbert, he knows his way around,’ murmured Lady Crowe, Marius’s most loyal owner.
Sir Cuthbert was so old that the grey dapples on his coat had turned white. It had taken years of sweat and vet’s bills to get him right. Despite her gruff exterior, Lady Crowe adored her ancient horse as once she’d loved Marius’s father.
‘Good luck, old chap, come back safe,’ she said, scratching Cuthbert’s neck with a claw-like liver-spotted hand. ‘And good luck to you,’ she called out to Awesome, as Tresa led them off to join the parade.
‘That horse’ll need a Zimmer to get round,’ yelled Harvey-Holden.
Awesome for once was paying enough attention to turn round and give him a V-sign.
Winning trainers were being grabbed by BBC presenters and asked for their take on the race. Rogue, in the studio, had been asked for his most iconic National moment.
‘Now, today,’ he’d replied in a choked voice. ‘Mrs Wilkinson is the smallest horse carrying the most weight, a brave and beautiful girl on her back,’ and 600 million viewers cheered in agreement.
The crowds bubbling over with excitement, the clattering of police horses’ hooves and the fanfare from red-uniformed trumpeters with radio mikes on the end of their instruments shredded the horses’ nerves as they set out in the parade led by Mrs Wilkinson carrying the top weight.
The BBC had each horse’s details ready in order, but everything was screwed up by Furious, who was used to having Rafiq on his back and going straight down to the start. Catching Michael Meagan off guard as he gazed at Tresa, Furious took off, taking half the runners with him.
‘What would be going through your mind at this moment, Rogue?’ asked Richard Pitman.
‘Irritation at the hold-up, wanting to get going,’ said Rogue.
It was eerie and very cold at the start. The huge crowd had gone so quiet you could hear the distant cries of the bookies as punters scurried to put on last bets. Treaders edged in final divots. Spotters checked their walkie-talkies.
Dora had gained the scoop of a lifetime, riding along in a car with the BBC camera crew filming the race. As they waited, she watched the jockeys taking their horses to look at the first fence.
Mrs Wilkinson couldn’t see over it, Sir Cuthbert, who resented missing lunch, was trying to eat it and spitting out bits of spruce. Other horses were having their manes raked or their ears pulled, anything to calm them.
For a second Tommy clung to Mrs Wilkinson.
‘Just come home safely, darling, and you too, Amber.’
‘I want to say thank you for all you’ve done for me, Tom,’ muttered Amber, about to cover her frantically chattering teeth with her gum shield. ‘If I don’t come back, I want you to have all my jewellery.’
Tommy thought her heart would burst.
As forty horses circled together, the sun came out to see them off. All the Irish jockeys were crossing themselves.
‘Our father,’ Awesome intoned.
‘Defend oh Lord, this thy child and her horse,’ murmured Amber. She thought about Rogue and then about Billy, then she thought of nothing but the race as they hustled in a cavalry charge over the Melling Road for three hundred yards to the first fence rising as huge as a green block of flats. A great cheer went up as Mrs Wilkinson stood back on her hocks and flew over.
‘That bar used to be a railway siding, where people watched the race from the train,’ said a BBC cameraman as they hurtled Dora along beside the track.
‘Wilkie’s jumping really well,’ crowed Dora. ‘Can we go a bit faster?’
‘We mustn’t go too fast or the horses start racing us, which infuriates the jockeys.’
As Rupert had told her to hunt round the first circuit, Amber was actually taking it very easily. Rupert had had a good effect on Wilkie, she was running much straighter. Furious, even further behind, was loathing having horses all round him, and exhausting himself battling against the brutal strength of Eddie, who’d been instructed to hold him up.
Shade’s pacemaker Voltaire Scott was as usual going much too fast. Out of the forty runners, six horses, trying to keep up, fell at the first fence, eight at the second, seven at the third. Soon loose horses were galloping all round Amber.
At each fence the leaders ripped away a forest of fir tree and put up a cloud of dust it was difficult to see through. Amber was
trying to get a clear run, but every time she landed, she had to avoid fallen horses and jockeys on the ground.
Now it was Becher’s, vaster than Etta’s conifer hedge and with its seven-foot drop. As Rupert had instructed, she steered Wilkie towards the middle and even though she felt they were falling off the edge of the world, they landed safely.
When would Harvey-Holden start employing his team tactics? Gradually on her left she was aware of a dark shadow growing closer, Johnnie Brutus and Ilkley Hall edging up on the rails, then Bafford Playboy sliding up on her right, and she realized in terror they were trying to box her in and once again block Wilkie’s good eye.
Somehow they scrambled over Foinavon and were scorching towards the Canal Turn, where the course jinked ninety degrees and where, because of Animal Rights trouble in the past, no crowds were allowed.
Through a haze of fear, Amber tried to remember what Rupert had told her.
‘Go wide round the bend, take it at an angle, then swing left in the air, straighten out and go hell for leather for Valentine’s.’
Shoved out by Johnnie Brutus on the inner, unable to go wide because of Killer threatening her on her right, Mrs Wilkinson forgot Rupert’s lessons and jumped wildly to the left to reach the safety of the rails, cutting across Furious who was just behind her.
Losing concentration, distracted by the swearing and the shouts of the jockeys and by loose horses on all sides, Furious took off too early, hit the top of the fence and seeing a horse writhing just below him, lunged to the right. Next minute he had fallen heavily, taking Eddie with him.
Eddie sat with his head bowed, his right hand thrashing the cut-up ground with his whip, he’d done something awful to his left shoulder. He’d let Grandpa down, no three-thousandth win.
‘Fucking, fucking horse, fucking stupid animal,’ he screamed, until the rest of the field had moved on and the sun had gone in in embarrassment.
The crowd and Rafiq watching on the big screen had yelled in relief as, ever gallant, Furious scrambled to his feet and broke into a canter. The cameras moved on, but those nearby gasped in horror as they realized his hind leg was swinging loose as if to drop off and he was running on three legs. When an official managed to catch his reins, Furious bit him.
Ilkley Hall, who’d been the horse writhing on the ground and who’d been raced three times in three weeks, chasing the Order of Merit for Harvey-Holden, had not got up.
The screens went round both horses. Rupert’s assistant Lysander, having grabbed an official car, was at the scene as quickly as possible, by which time a course vet had decreed that Furious must be put down and moved to the side of the course before the runners came round again. Furious, who’d been initially sedated by an injection, was for once standing docile.
Next moment a screaming, hysterical treader in a woolly hat and dark glasses had shoved aside the screens and, sobbing wildly, flung his arms around Furious.
‘Don’t shoot him. We can save him, Martin Pipe saved Our Vic, please don’t kill him, please don’t.’
‘Rafiq,’ gasped Lysander as he and a security man and two spotters managed to tug him away. Rafiq immediately struggled free, clutching Furious, smoothing back the blond mane, at which Furious whickered lovingly to see him.
‘Look, he know me, he’s OK. He’s all right.’ Rafiq looked beseechingly up at Lysander. ‘We can mend him.’ His sobs increased. ‘I’m going to give you a wonderful home.’ He dropped a kiss on Furious’s white star.
‘Please be quiet, you’re upsetting the horse,’ snapped the course vet. ‘We’ve got to get it out of the way.’
This time it took two security men, two spotters and Lysander to drag Rafiq off and restrain him as a horse ambulance man held Furious while the course vet put a gun to his white star and pulled the trigger.
There was blood everywhere as, with maddened strength, Rafiq fell back on to Furious’s body.
‘You kill my horse, he shouldn’t have died,’ he howled at the course vet.
A shadow fell across them. It was Valent, who put a hand on Rafiq’s shoulder.
‘Nothing they could do?’ he asked Lysander, who was also in tears as he shook his head.
Ilkley Hall, meanwhile, who was whimpering in the most pathetic way, had struggled to sit up like a dog. Putting his ear to the horse’s back, the vet heard a crunch.
‘Back’s broken. We’ve got to get them to the side of the course.’
Eddie Alderton, spitting out mud and grass, had staggered to his feet. Johnnie Brutus lay still. Glaring wildly round, utterly deranged, Rafiq watched Harvey-Holden, with a strange, almost excited look in his reptilian eyes, approaching to see his horse dispatched. This time there was no whickering of recognition from Ilkley Hall. As the trigger was pulled he writhed, kicked violently and went still.
As the horse ambulance men winched the two horses to the side of the course, Rafiq turned like a viper on Harvey-Holden.