I WAS ALWAYS excited on the first morning of Royal Ascot, but this year, my excitement was tinged with apprehension and worry, and not only because Potassium was running in the St James’s Palace Stakes but also because of the text message I’d received from Squeaky Voice, telling me the horse must lose.
I spoke to Owen earlier than usual, at eight o’clock, and he reported that all was well with the horse and that it had just left the yard in a horsebox to get to the course early to avoid the usual dreadful Royal Ascot traffic jams.
I had plans to leave in good time for the same reason.
I also spoke to Georgina. She had called me on Sunday afternoon to tell me that she had arrived safely at her parent’s house in Harrogate. During that first call, she had been very upset by her father’s worsened condition, but he had recovered somewhat over the last couple of days, and he was now eating again.
“I know I said I’d only be here a few days, but having seen how he is, I think I should stay for the rest of the week,” she said.
“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’ll be at Ascot all this week anyway.”
“Mum is totally exhausted. She can’t cope on her own, so I’ve arranged with a care agency for someone to come in every day for an hour or so in the mornings, to help her get Dad washed and to clean out his oxygen equipment. But they can’t start until Thursday, and I’d like to be here for the first day or so to see what they do and how it goes.”
“Does your father need to be in a care home, even if he’s not in hospital?”
“It may come to that. I’ll talk to Mum about it. But they’ve lived here together for so long, it would be a great wrench.”
Georgina sounded good. She had always been confident in dealing with other people’s problems. It was just trying to deal with her own that left her an emotional wreck.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Amanda,” she said.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Neither have I.” She sighed down the line. “I can’t even let her know that her grandfather is so ill.”
“Is he actually dying?” I asked. “I mean imminently?”
“I really thought he was going to pop off on Sunday afternoon when I arrived, but he’s rallied since. He’s even started telling his dreadful jokes again.” She laughed.
It was good to hear her laugh.
“Tell him to watch the 4.20 at Royal Ascot today on the television,” I said. “Potassium is running. You could watch it with him.”
“Okay,” she said with a happy note. “We will.”
“Great. Take care.”
“You too.”
We disconnected.
It was true that while I was still greatly enjoying my time at home on my own, I was beginning to miss her a bit, and I had caught myself feeling quite lonely on a couple of occasions, especially in the evenings.
In spite of my early start, I was still caught up in some of the race-day traffic.
Horseracing has been staged at Ascot for over three hundred years, since Queen Anne first recognised the potential for building a racecourse on Ascot Heath. But I am quite sure that the original designers of the course, and of the surrounding roads, never envisaged that up to seventy-five thousand people would now descend on this part of Berkshire for each of the five June days of Royal Ascot.
Hence the traffic jams.
Over the years I had tried to find the perfect approach to the racecourse during the Royal meeting, investigating the very smallest of back roads in the hope of bypassing the queues. On a map, my route to the course would appear akin to spaghetti in its winding, but it meant that I would sit for only about ten minutes in traffic, just to get across the final roundabout, rather than the hour or more that some would wait if using their satnavs.
I parked my Jaguar in Car Park 2, across the road from the racecourse.
I checked again that my named Royal Enclosure badge was securely pinned to my morning coat’s left lapel.
I didn’t actually need to purchase a Royal Enclosure badge if I didn’t want to. As the syndicate manager of a runner in one of today’s races, I received a complimentary owner/trainer badge that gave me access to the Queen Anne Enclosure, which included the parade ring.
However, many of the people I arranged to meet were members of the Royal Enclosure, and I felt that it put me at a disadvantage to have to ask them to come out to join the lesser mortals in order to speak to me. Hence I believed the expense was justified, and I put it through the company accounts.
The Royal Enclosure was first established in 1822 when a separate area was designated for the sole use of King George IV, to entertain his personally invited guests. Since then the clientele has expanded somewhat, although everyone entitled to purchase Royal Enclosure tickets is still sent an annual stiff invitation card by the reigning monarch’s representative.
The Royal Enclosure has always had a very strict dress code.
Today, gentlemen have to wear black, grey, or navy-blue morning dress, a waistcoat, a tie (but not a bow tie), socks that cover the ankle, black shoes (but not sneakers), and a black or grey top hat.
Ladies must be in what Ascot calls “formal daywear,” which includes a dress or skirt that falls to just above the knee (or longer) and that has shoulder straps with a minimum width of one inch, or a trouser suit of matching material and colour. See-through, strapless, off-the-shoulder (one or both), and halter-neck dresses, as well as visible midriffs, are all definite no-nos. A hat (not a fascinator) that has a solid base with a diameter of at least four inches must also be worn at all times.
In addition, fancy dress, novelty, branded, or promotional clothing of any type is not permitted anywhere on the racecourse (unless you’re a jockey).
The dress code is rigorously enforced, not least by the Yeoman Prickers, the sovereign’s Ascot ceremonial escort, dressed in their forest-green velvet livery coats and top hats, both trimmed with gold braid, as they have been since they were first introduced by Queen Anne.
I collected my owner/trainer badge for the day plus my parade-ring pass for the fourth race from the collection desk, but I didn’t make my way directly through the turnstiles into the enclosures. Instead, I walked down the High Street on the outside the racecourse, and into the entrance to Car Park 1.
I had an invitation to a prerace picnic lunch in the most sought-after and exclusive picnic site on the planet.
“Come early,” Nick Spencer had said. “Claire and I will be setting up from about nine o’clock.”
I looked at my watch. It was ten minutes to eleven. Five and a half hours to Potassium’s race time.
I walked down the rows of parking spaces looking for Nick Spencer. He had told me the row and number, and I had written it down, but I had carelessly left the piece of paper at home on the kitchen table.
Row G, I thought I remembered.
Parking berths in Car Park 1 for Royal Ascot were all numbered and reserved, with the spaces often passed down through the generations. The longer you or your family have had it, the closer you were to the racecourse entrance, and any spaces becoming available were as rare as snow in the Sahara.
And picnics here are not of the “rug on the beach” variety.
Oh no.
Folding dining tables and chairs were set up on the grass, with starched white tablecloths, flowers in vases, silver cutlery, best cut glass and fine china, and even the occasional candelabra. Lavish spreads of smoked or poached salmon, foie gras, cold sliced rare roast beef, coronation chicken, and multiple salads were on offer, accompanied by the finest wines and champagne, served in some cases by a butler wearing a tailcoat and white gloves.
It was definitely the Rolls Royce of all car-park picnics, with plenty of vehicles of that marque also on display, many of them vintage or classic models. It was as far removed from a wet winter’s afternoon racing at Bangor-on-Dee as was possible to imagine.
Unquestionably, it was a day to see—and to be seen.
I found Nick Spencer in Row G, or rather, he found me.
I was about to call his mobile when I heard him shouting.
“Chester, over here!”
I walked over to join him and saw that a few other members of the Potassium syndicate were amongst his guests. I looked at them and wondered if any of them were Squeaky Voice, but I more or less dismissed the thought almost as soon as I’d had it.
Why would any of them want Potassium to lose today?
A Class 6 handicap at Lingfield or a Class 4 Novice Stakes at Newbury were one thing—they were both only worth a few thousand pounds to the winner—but here, today, was quite another.
The prize money awarded to the victor of the St James’s Palace Stakes was over three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, to say nothing of how a triumph today would further enhance his value at auction as a future stallion.
Even with about ten per cent of that prize going to the winning trainer, and seven per cent to the winning jockey, plus the remainder being divided amongst the twelve syndicate members, it would still take a lot of betting on others, or laying of Potassium, to match the personal financial reward we would each acquire from our horse winning the race.
So how could Potassium losing it be a benefit to any of us?
“Come and meet my American guests,” Nick Spencer said, breaking my line of thought. He took me by the arm and steered me over to a group of three people I didn’t recognise, one man and two women.
“Chester Newton,” Nick said, “meet Herb and Harriet Farquhar, and …”
He tailed off.
“Toni Beckett,” said the lady on the left, the attractive one with the blonde shoulder-length hair, who I took to be in her early forties. “That’s Toni with an i.” She drawled it out, Southern style. “It’s short for Antonia.”
“Yes, of course,” Nick said, not seemingly embarrassed in the slightest by his forgetfulness.
I shook their hands.
“Chester, here, is our syndicate manager,” Nick said. “He keeps us all in order.” He laughed. “Herb owns a beautiful horse farm just outside Lexington, Kentucky.”
I nodded in approval. “I’ve been to the yearling sales in Lexington,” I said.
“Buy anything?” Herb asked sharply.
I smiled at him. “Not on that occasion, but I might in the future.”
“Chester has a great eye for a horse,” Nick said. “He bought Potassium at the sales for only a hundred thousand guineas, and look what’s happened to him since. He’s now worth millions.”
Thankfully, he didn’t mention some of the other horses I had bought for roughly the same money, which had then turned out to be fairly useless in comparison.
“What’s a guinea?” Toni asked.
“It’s an old British measure of money,” I said. “A little over a pound. Horses are still sold in guineas at Newmarket. On present exchange rates, a guinea is about one and a third American dollars.”
She raised her eyes to the heavens as if to imply that we were all crazy.
“Who’d like a drink?” Nick said, and he turned away to fetch a bottle.
Herb and Harriet drifted off after him, leaving me standing alone with Toni Beckett.
“Do you work on the horse farm too?” I asked.
“Oh no. I run the ticketing division at Keeneland Racetrack in Lexington. Mr and Mrs Spencer came over for our Spring Meet in April, and they stayed with Mr and Mrs Farquhar. I managed to get them all Clubhouse hospitality tickets for the races. This is a sort of thank-you for that.”
“Have you been to Ascot before?”
“Never. This is my first trip to England. I caught the red-eye over, Sunday night.”
“Are you here at the races all week?” I asked, noting that she had a five-day Royal Enclosure badge pinned to her yellow dress.
“Just for four days,” she said. “I have to fly home Saturday, to be back at work Monday morning.” She pulled a face.
“Will you be with Nick Spencer for all four days?
“Oh no. Just today. Mr and Mrs Farquhar have invitations from other friends for the rest of the week, and I will just tag along with them. We’re in someone’s private suite tomorrow, and then guests of something called the Ascot Authority on Thursday. I can’t remember where we are on Friday.” She smiled. “I just know it’s going to be a busy week.”
Nick came back with two glasses of champagne.
“Here you are,” he said, handing one to each of us. “We will sit down to eat at a quarter to twelve. That will give us plenty of time to finish and get in to watch the Royal Procession at two o’clock.”
“Royal Procession?” Toni said.
“The King and other members of the royal family ride down the racecourse in open carriages, and then under the grandstand to the paddock. It’s very grand and most people go to watch.”
“Open carriages? Doesn’t anyone take a pot shot at them? If our president did that, he’d be killed inside five minutes.” She laughed. “The last one to ride in an open-topped car was shot dead in it, in Dallas back in the sixties.”
“But we all love our royal family,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” Toni replied. “But it only takes one nutcase with a gun.”
“I’m sure security is tighter than it looks,” I said. “Let’s have another drink.”
But she was right.
And what lengths would Squeaky Voice go to in order to prevent Potassium from winning?
Surely not that.
He’d probably have more chance if he shot the horse.