The only good thing to say about the Thursday of the April meeting was that it was less busy than the day before, at least as far as the medical team was concerned. However, the sunshine of the previous day had given way to overcast skies and a steady drizzle, interspersed with heavier showers as a cold front moved in from the west. Definitely an anorak day.
I dropped the boys off at their cricket-coaching course at eleven. They didn’t mind the rain as they would be inside anyway, using the indoor nets in the college sports hall.
‘Don’t wander off,’ I told them seriously. ‘And wait inside for Dad to collect you. He should be here by six.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ they said, rolling their eyes in unison. ‘We could have caught a bus home, you know. We’re no longer little kids.’
Catching a bus would have involved walking down the hill from the college to the bus station in the town centre, as well as along our road in Gotherington at the other end and, for reasons I didn’t explain, I wasn’t keen for them to be out wandering the streets alone. Not just at the moment.
Indeed, I checked all around to ensure I couldn’t spot a lurking long black Mercedes before I was happy to leave them and go on to the racecourse.
As on the day before, I was the first doctor to arrive at the medical room, but there were already three jockeys waiting in there for clearance to ride.
One of them was Mike Sheraton with his stitched right knee, and he wasn’t pleased to see me.
‘I’ll come back,’ he mumbled to no one in particular, walking back out into the changing room.
Go ahead, I thought, taking off my coat.
I didn’t want to see him every bit as much as he clearly didn’t want to see me.
The other two were straightforward and I removed their Red Entries from RIMANI.
Next, I helped the nurse go through all the medical supplies, checking that they were all back in order after busy use the previous afternoon.
Adrian Kings arrived as we were finishing off.
‘Ah, hello, Chris,’ he said. ‘Thank you for stepping into the breach. Don’t know what we’d have done today without you.’
‘I’ll remind you of that before the Festival next March,’ I said with a laugh.
Mike Sheraton came back into the medical room and presented himself to Adrian.
‘Can you clear me, doc?’ he said.
Adrian was busy working out the doctor and ambulance positions for each race, writing them up on the whiteboard on the wall ready for his briefing.
‘Chris,’ he said to me. ‘Can you do it?’
Mike Sheraton wasn’t happy, and nor was I, but neither of us had much choice.
He pulled up his right trouser leg and put his foot on a chair while I removed the dressing and inspected the knee.
The nurse really had done a good job with the suturing and healing had clearly started.
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Healing well. You will need a support dressing over it but otherwise you are fit to ride.’
He looked at me with distaste.
‘I could have bloody ridden yesterday. You cost me a winner in the last.’
‘My job is simply to ensure you receive the best possible medical care,’ I said. ‘No other considerations are important. Today you are fit to ride, yesterday you were not. I will confirm to the Clerk of the Scales that your Red Entry has been removed.’
He didn’t thank me. He just pulled down his trouser leg and walked out without even waiting for the dressing to be replaced. I wasn’t going to call him back. If he landed on his knee and split it open again, he would have no one to blame but himself.
Did I care?
Not a jot.
Thankfully, there was not a single faller in any of the first three races, which allowed me to remain in the dry of the Land Rover as much as possible.
However, the third race was not without some interest.
I was in the centre of the course for the start of a two-and-a-half-mile handicap hurdle with thirteen runners.
I confirmed to the officials that the medical arrangements were in place and then watched as the horses circled, having their girths tightened by the starter’s assistants.
Mike Sheraton was riding horse number one, the top weight, and he jumped off fast when the flag dropped, skipping over the first hurdle in front of the other twelve.
They’re at it again, I thought.
They must be very sure of themselves.
Mike Sheraton had known I was there, he’d seen me at the start. Perhaps they still didn’t realise I knew what they were up to, or maybe the bets had already been laid and it was too late, and too expensive, to cancel.
Either way, I considered it a personal insult.
But it was none of my business, right?
I had a customer in the fourth race, a pretty young lady jockey called Jane Glenister, who fell at the open ditch at the top of the hill while leading the pack of nine runners.
‘Hi, there,’ I said when I reached her. ‘Dr Rankin here.’
She was sitting on her haunches, groaning.
‘Where does it hurt?’ I asked.
‘Where doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Got kicked around by all of them like a bloody football.’ She started to get slowly to her feet. ‘But I’ll be fine.’
‘Did you bang your head at all?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, taking off her racing helmet and shaking free a huge bundle of bouncing red curls. ‘Thank God.’
I walked with her away from the fence towards the inside rail.
She winced as she ducked under it.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’
‘Nothing a couple of ibuprofen and a long stretch in the sauna won’t cure. I’m just sore, that’s all.’
‘Make sure you report to the medical room when you get back to the weighing room,’ I reminded her. ‘You’ll need to be checked over there.’
‘Sure will. Thank you, Dr Rankin.’ She smiled at me with a set of gleaming-white perfect teeth before climbing into the jockey transport that had stopped to collect her. I stood for a second and watched her go, wondering why such a beautiful face wanted to gallop over fences at thirty miles per hour with the inevitable injuries that would surely come. Had she not seen the men in the changing room with mouthfuls of gaps and dentures?
But, I suppose, if she loved the excitement of racing and the surge of adrenalin in her veins that it produced, then maybe it was worth the bumps and bashes. I just hoped she still thought the same in the years to come. If I had teeth like that, I’d take up something safer, like BASE jumping.
I returned to the Land Rover and rejoined the chase of the remaining runners on their second circuit, but there were no more fallers and I made my way back through the rain to the weighing room.
Jane Glenister was there, lying on one of the beds. She watched me come in.
‘You OK?’ I asked her.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Just resting my aching bones until the ibuprofen kicks in. I’ll be fine in a bit.’
‘No more rides today.’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Just the one. All this way just to get my arse walloped.’
‘Where’s home?’ I asked.
‘In Devon, near Plymouth.’
‘Are you driving back tonight?’
‘That’s the plan. Straight down the M5.’
I turned to the nurse. ‘Has she done the concussion tests?’
‘Passed with flying colours,’ the nurse said with a laugh. ‘She didn’t just know which jockey won the Gold Cup, but also his extra-large condom size.’
‘That was meant to be a secret between you and me,’ Jane whined in mock complaint.
‘Too much information,’ I said, laughing. But I was satisfied that she wasn’t concussed. ‘Lie there for as long as you like. But promise me you’ll tell us if something doesn’t feel right, and don’t drive home unless you’re well enough. Better to stay somewhere locally.’
‘OK, OK,’ she said, waving a hand at me. ‘Don’t make a bloody fuss.’ She closed her eyes. She was clearly in more pain than she was letting on, but there was nothing unusual about that in racecourse changing rooms.
‘Jockeys, five minutes,’ announced the loudspeaker.
Time for me to go out again to the Land Rover.
There were two more fallers in the remaining races but neither of the jockeys was injured, one of them getting up from the turf beyond the second-last fence and running off so fast that I was left gasping in his wake.
‘No strenuous exercise.’ I could almost hear my GP’s stern warning ringing in my ears.
I gave up the chase, watching him disappear into the distance. I’d done my best to attend to him within one minute. If he was able to run all the way back to the weighing room, I reckoned I could safely assume he was unhurt. Not that he wouldn’t still be tested for concussion when he got there.
I returned to the medical room more slowly to find that the two beds were now empty.
‘What happened to our patient?’ I asked the nurse.
‘She went for a sauna. She said it would ease her aches and pains.’
I smiled.
Jane Glenister was clearly quite a girl.
Cheltenham Racecourse hadn’t yet run to a separate sauna for the lady jockeys, the only one being in a corner of the male toilets. Perhaps Jane’s knowledge of the over-endowment of the Gold Cup winner had been acquired in appropriately steamy surroundings.
The day concluded with Adrian giving his debrief about an hour after the last race. I had already called Grant to ensure he hadn’t forgotten about picking up the boys from their cricket course.
‘Of course I haven’t forgotten,’ he’d said rather tetchily. ‘What time will you be home?’
‘Seven to seven-thirty,’ I’d replied.
‘Did you get my steak?’
The route to a man’s heart.
‘It’s in the fridge. I went to the butcher’s early.’
After the debrief, I switched my racecourse doctor’s coat for my anorak and went into the jockeys’ changing room to find Whizz. He and the other valets were busy finishing the loading of all the equipment into three huge wicker baskets.
‘Where tomorrow?’ I asked.
‘These two are for Fontwell,’ he said, indicating towards the baskets nearest to him, ‘and the other one’s for Southwell for evening racing. I just hope I get the right stuff in each.’
I was confident that he would.
‘I gave your bags to Dick McGee and Jason Conway,’ I said.
‘I know. Jason discharged himself from hospital and was here first thing to collect his car keys.’
‘How is he?’ I asked, not that I cared much.
‘Like a bear with a sore head,’ Whizz said. ‘And still a bit confused, I reckon. I didn’t fancy him driving so I arranged for my lads to drive him home. He only lives in Cirencester. But, I tell you, he’s not happy with you medics. He’s furious that he can’t ride for seven days.’
One had to wonder why, after such heavy falls, jockeys were so keen to do it all over again. But that was what they were all like.
‘Seven days is the absolute minimum after a concussion,’ I said. ‘He’ll have to pass two separate assessments including one with a consultant neurologist. Ten to fourteen days is much more likely, or even longer.’
‘Don’t tell him that,’ Whizz said. ‘He’s angry enough already.’
Didn’t I know it.
The medical team all went for tea together in one of the tented restaurants near the exit to the car park.
The season at Cheltenham was almost over for another year, with just the Hunter Chase evening meeting to come in another week or so, when the jockeys would all be amateurs and the horses have to qualify by spending days out hunting. The course would soon hibernate for the summer, with only the Best Mate enclosure being used as a caravan park, before racing returned in October.
I sat at the table for quite a long time relaxing and drinking tea, while the others ate ham, egg and cucumber sandwiches and slices of a delicious-looking fruit cake.
I just watched.
Not that I wasn’t hungry. I was. Very.
It was a state I was used to. I spent most of my life these days being desperately hungry but trying to blot it out of my mind.
Yet, in spite of my hunger, I still couldn’t eat anything because the voice in my head was telling me not to. It told me that terrible things would happen if so much as a single mouthful passed my lips. The house would burn down. Or Grant would leave me. Or my boys would get run over by a long black Mercedes.
I called Grant to check again that he’d picked them up and all was fine.
‘Safe and sound,’ he said. ‘Oliver’s up in his room playing computer games and Toby has gone along to the village sports ground for a team practice before their last game of the season on Saturday.’
‘You let him go on his own?’ I asked incredulously.
‘Why not?’
Why not!
‘Please collect Oliver and both of you go down to the sports ground to watch Toby.’
There must have been a degree of desperation in my voice because Grant didn’t argue.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go right away.’
‘Please call me when you’re there. I’m going to leave here now and I’ll come straight to the ground.’
I disconnected and stood up to go.
‘Oh, Chris,’ Adrian Kings said, putting a hand on the arm of my anorak. ‘I’ve just had a call from the weighing room. Seems our lady jockey, Jane Glenister, is now not feeling very well. She’s asked if you could go back and see her.’
Now what did I do? I wanted to leave, to get to Gotherington, to check on my babies.
‘Can’t you go?’ I asked.
‘She apparently asked specifically for you and I promised my wife I’d be home early.’
Hell, I thought.
Grant would be at the sports ground before me anyway, even if I drove there at breakneck pace. It would be all right, I told myself. I’d eaten no sandwiches nor any cake so Toby would be fine. Surely he’d be safe with all the other members of the football team around him?
‘OK,’ I said with resignation. ‘Where is she?’
‘She’s waiting in the changing room.’
I hurried back towards the weighing room.
It was now raining hard with the few remaining racegoers hurrying to their cars with coat hoods pulled up against the elements. I skipped up the steps into the weighing room and went to collect the keys to the medical room from the key-safe in the Clerk of the Course’s office.
They weren’t there.
How odd, I thought.
I went through into the changing room, which was deserted. The jockeys and valets had all gone home. The door to the medical room was wide open and the lights were still on. Adrian must have forgotten to lock up.
I walked over and went in.
The blue privacy curtains were pulled around one of the beds.
‘What’s wrong, Jane?’ I asked, pulling the curtains open.
But it wasn’t Jane Glenister in there.
So preoccupied had I become with the safety and security of my sons that I had neglected my own and walked straight into a trap.
Behind the curtains was the man I’d last seen sitting in the long black Mercedes, the driver with the bulging biceps.