I WAS PLACED between Claire Spencer and Toni Beckett for lunch.
“So do you think we’ll win?” Claire asked.
“I hope so,” I replied. “This race is much shorter than the Derby. It’s actually quite unusual for a horse to drop back to a mile having raced previously over a mile and a half, but Potassium has good pace, and I think that the mile will suit him just fine, probably better than the longer distance.”
She smiled at me. “We have more champagne on ice in the boot of the car, just in case.”
I was on my third glass already.
No more, I told myself. Not only because I would be driving home later but also because I needed to have all my wits about me in case I was needed to help Owen get Potassium ready for the race.
Toni was deep in conversation with the man on her other side, another member of the Potassium syndicate. Strangely, it made me think of the argument between Amanda and Darren at our party. Then I realised that was because I was also fed up with all the attention she was paying to the other man rather than to me.
I shook my head slightly, as if to tell myself not even to think about going there, but the thought persisted.
Lunch wound up at about a quarter past one after a spectacular feast, finished off with fresh strawberries and lashings of cream.
“I’m stuffed,” Toni said next to me. “I’m not sure I can even stand up.”
But she managed it.
“Now for the real reason we’re all here today,” I said. “The racing.”
But I was quite sure that some of the people around me in the car park had no intention of going into the enclosures to watch the horses. For them, the car-park picnic was the point of the day, and nothing else mattered. Indeed, the four hours or so it took to run the seven races was simply a chance for them to have a little snooze before the eating and drinking started again afterwards.
“Thank you so much for a fabulous lunch,” I said to Nick and Claire. “Nick, I’ll see you in the parade ring later. Claire, I’m so sorry I don’t have a paddock badge for you.”
“No problem,” she said. “But I’ll get in there somehow if we win.”
“You bet,” I said with a laugh. “I must dash now as I’ve arranged to meet Owen Reynolds at half past one.”
“Please come back after racing,” Nick said. “Either to celebrate a win or to drown our sorrows. We’ll be here until late either way.”
“That’s very kind,” I said. “Let’s wait and see how we get on.”
I turned to go.
“Can I come with you, Chester?” Toni asked suddenly. “I promise I won’t be a nuisance, and it would be nice to be shown around by someone who really knows what’s going on.”
I smiled at her. “I’d be delighted to show you around, but we’ll have to go right now.”
“I’m ready,” she said.
We both hurried over to the enclosure entrance, queued for a minute to get through, and then went on through the Royal Enclosure Gardens, past the temporary restaurants and London club members’ tents and bars, towards the weighing room, where I had arranged to meet Owen.
I tried to take her along the horse walk under the bridge into the parade ring, but we were stopped by an official wearing a dark suit and a bowler hat, who asked to see our badges.
I showed him my owner/trainer badge.
“And for the lady?” he asked.
“She’s with me,” I said, trying to move on.
“Sorry, sir,” the man said firmly but politely, blocking the way. “If the lady has no badge, she cannot gain entry. You know the rules.”
“Yes. Sorry.”
The security was indeed tighter than it looked.
We retraced our steps and went up the steps onto the upper level. People were already beginning to congregate around the parade ring in anticipation of the arrival of the royal family, but I found a space on the rail, near the steps down to the weighing room.
“You stay here,” I said to Toni. “Don’t move or you will lose your place. I have to go and briefly see the trainer of our horse, but I will come back here to join you.”
“I’ll stay right here,” she said, gripping the rail with both hands.
I rushed down the steps, hoping that Owen wouldn’t be late.
I wondered why I had bothered to arrange to meet him.
But I knew the answer. Because meeting up with my trainers before racing was what I usually did. It made me feel comfortable to know that everything was in order with the horses and there was no panic going on over forgotten colours or broken tack. Indeed, I always kept a set of Victrix silks and a spare bridle in the boot of my car, just to be on the safe side.
Perhaps I could have phoned him instead, but calls were often not easy to make on a racecourse, especially one as crowded as it was today. Getting a signal could be difficult with so many people making calls, sending texts, and sharing photos all at the same time, and the background noise of people talking or music playing through the public address system was a problem, even if you were able to get through. Face to face was always better anyway—I was then able to read their body language, which often told me more than their words.
Thankfully, Owen was there ahead of me.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
“Absolutely fine,” he replied. He appeared very relaxed, which was an encouraging sign. “Jimmy has rides in the first two races, the second for me in the Coventry, so we’ll get an accurate assessment of the going. It’s officially ‘good,’ which suits us perfectly.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll see you later then. In the saddling boxes.”
I went back up the steps to where I’d left Toni. The whole place had filled up noticeably, even in the few minutes I’d been away, and I had some difficulty getting to her.
“I’ve been trying to save you some room,” she said as I squeezed in beside her. “But everyone keeps pushing forward.” She said it in a manner that implied that she could hardly believe that gentlemen in full morning dress and ladies in elegant frocks plus equally impressive millinery could act so much like a football crowd.
“Thank you anyway,” I said, personally quite enjoying the sensation of being pressed so close to her body.
I looked again at her Royal Enclosure badge with Mrs Antonia Beckett written on it in black ink.
“Is there a Mr Beckett?” I asked.
“Not anymore,” she replied, turning her head and looking straight at me. “Is there a Mrs Newton?”
“Yes,” I said. “There is.”
“Huh, there would be.” She looked away. “Goddammit. All the men I fancy these days are hitched.”
So she did fancy me.
I turned and faced forward, towards the parade ring, so that she wouldn’t see me blush beneath my top hat.
By the time two o’clock approached, there was not a single space to be found anywhere around the parade ring that provided any sort of view of where the Royal Procession would pass.
We watched on the big screen at the far end of the parade ring as, at two o’clock precisely, the first of four open-topped landau carriages made its way through the Golden Gate at the end of the straight mile.
“Which one is the King in?” Toni asked.
“The front one. The one that the four Windsor Greys are pulling. The other three are pulled by Cleveland Bays.”
“Do they come all the way from Windsor Castle in those?”
“They did once upon a time, but these days they come most of the way in a fleet of cars and then get into the carriages just a short distance from the racecourse.”
We watched on the TV as the procession made its sedate passage down the centre of the racetrack, with the horses trotting. Each carriage was driven by two postilion riders wearing their special Ascot livery of scarlet, purple, and gold jackets with black peaked riding hats, all inspired by the royal racing silks.
They were accompanied by red-uniformed outriders and followed by four mounted police officers. More police were stationed on foot every twenty yards or so down each side of the course.
“Who are the other people?” Toni asked.
“The Queen is sitting next to the King, and more members of the royal family are in the carriages behind. The other people with them are their guests. They will all have had lunch at Windsor Castle. It’s a massive honour to be invited to ride in the Royal Procession.”
“Have you ever?”
I laughed. “No. Nor likely to be. Although I have been in the royal box. I was invited in for a drink after one of my horses won a race here a few years ago.”
“So you’ve met the King?” She sounded impressed.
“I actually met him two weeks ago, at Epsom, when Potassium won the Derby. But I also met Queen Elizabeth the Second here at Ascot.”
I could see that she thought that even more impressive.
We watched the screen as the procession was shown slowing to a walk, and then it turned in to the tunnel under the grandstand that, later, the horses would use to access the track for the races. After another minute or so, the King’s carriage appeared at the end of the parade ring to our right, to rapturous applause from everyone around us, and then made a complete circuit of the ring, to give everyone a good view.
Finally, the carriage stopped just below where we were standing, and we were in the perfect position to see the King and Queen step down and from it, to be met by the waiting dignitaries.
The royal party disappeared from sight into the grandstand at the lower level, and I breathed a small sigh of relief. No one had taken a pot shot at them.
“Wow!” Toni said. “That was neat. I’ve never seen one of our presidents up that close. Does it all happen again in reverse when they leave?”
“No. They go back to Windsor Castle by car. But the procession will happen again tomorrow and every day until Saturday, although with different guests.”
Some of the crowd remained to watch the horses parade for the first race, but many of them dispersed to secure a viewing point in the grandstand.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go and find some seats.”
I boldly took her arm and steered her across the parade-ring concourse into the huge steel and glass grandstand. She didn’t object.
We took the long escalator up to the fourth level and went out to the seats at the front reserved for Royal Enclosure badge holders. Most were already full, but we managed to find a couple free, side by side, in the second row.
“The first race is called the Queen Anne Stakes,” I said to Toni. “It’s always the opening race of Royal Ascot and is named after Queen Anne, who started horseracing here back in 1711.”
“In 1711?” She was amazed. “But that was even before the United States was created.”
“It certainly was, and Ascot is not the oldest racecourse in England—not by a long way. That accolade belongs to Chester, where horseracing has been held continuously since 1539. That’s more than eighty years before the Mayflower sailed to America with the Pilgrim Fathers.”
“Chester knows all about Chester.” She laughed.
“I think my dad actually named me after Chester racecourse. He was mad about his racing. And especially about its history. When I was a kid, he used to quiz me all the time about all the racecourses—you know, their dates and such.” I sighed. “I suppose I should be grateful that I’m not called Epsom or Ascot.” I sighed again.
“When did he die?” Toni asked, correctly reading the cause of my sadness.
“Years ago,” I said.
I paused briefly, but then I decided to go on.
“I was only fifteen. He and my mother owned a boat on the River Thames. A cabin cruiser. They had it for years. When I was a boy, we used to holiday on it every summer, chugging up and down the river. I absolutely loved it, jumping off with the ropes and working the locks.” I smiled at the memory. “Then, one day, Mum and Dad decided to go out for a short jaunt when I was at school, and the boat blew up.”
“Blew up?”
“Yeah. An investigation later worked out that there had been a leak in the fuel system, which had caused a large petrol and air vapour mix to accumulate in the hull, under the floorboards. When my dad went to start the engine, the vapour exploded. Killed them both instantly.”
“Oh my God, how awful.” She had tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I shouldn’t have told you. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I really didn’t know why I had told her.
I never told anybody.
Georgina knew, of course, but no one else. I’d never even spoken about it in such detail to my own children, yet here I was telling the whole story to a complete stranger.
“I’m very grateful that you did tell me.” She put her hand gently on my arm. “So what then happened to you?”
“My grandparents collected me from school later that afternoon, and I went to live with them.”
“Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“No, just me.”
“I’m so sorry.” She stroked my arm.
“Thank you,” I said, putting my hand on hers to stop it moving. “But you don’t need to be. It was a long time ago.”
“Are your grandparents still alive?”
“Oh no. They’re also long gone. But they lived until I was in my early thirties. And they were both at my wedding.”
Now there were tears in my own eyes.
Thankfully, any further conversation on the matter was interrupted by the arrival of the twelve horses for the first race, appearing from the tunnel beneath the grandstand, their silks brightly contrasting with the lush green turf.
“Can we go have a bet?” Toni asked.
“We’ll lose our seats if we do. You can’t reserve them. Let’s have one on the second race.”
The Queen Anne Stakes was run over a mile, just like Potassium’s race, but in this case it was the straight mile, as opposed to being on the round course that would be used later. And this race was for horses aged four and over, of either sex, while Potassium’s was restricted to three-year-old colts.
The runners made their way slowly to the start, way off to our far right, close to where the King’s carriages had entered the course less than half an hour previously.
“In the States,” Toni said, “the horses always race past the grandstands from left to right as you look out, yet here they’ll be going the other way. It’s very confusing. Like all your stupid cars driving on the wrong side of the road.”
I laughed. “In this country, which way the horses go varies from racecourse to racecourse. At some they go one way, and some the other.”
“But I’m sure they go from left to right at Royal Ascot in the film My Fair Lady. I love that film. It’s one of my favourites. ‘Come on, Dover! Move your bloomin’ arse!’ ”
She shouted it out loud and received some very strange looks from those around us, just as Audrey Hepburn had done in the film.
I was so enjoying being with Mrs Toni Beckett that I was forgetting all my other troubles, but that didn’t last for long.
The phone in my trouser pocket vibrated for a moment.
I took it out and read the home screen notification.
Remember, Potassium must lose. Fix it.
“What’s that?” Toni asked.
“Nothing. Just someone wishing me luck for later.”
I quickly stuffed the phone back into my pocket, hoping desperately that Toni hadn’t read the message.