18.

Song of Sixpence

Many of the lads in my father’s yard had worked there their whole lives. Jim Corfield had arrived in his early thirties and was still there, giving the horses their hay every morning, shortly before he died, at the age of eighty-five. My father gave the address at his funeral and said that he was one of the finest horsemen he had ever come across.

There is a black-and-white picture of Jim cantering up the gallop on a sleek black thoroughbred. His trousers are tucked into his socks, his jodhpur boots pushed firmly into the irons, and he’s wearing no hat.

The quotation above the photo is from Sir Winston Churchill: “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.”

Jim had been one of Dad’s senior work riders from when he took over the license in 1964 and was now looking after a six-year-old pot-bellied bay gelding called Song of Sixpence, who had had a decent career but had rather lost his way.

It was evening stables, and Dad was doing the rounds, feeling each horse’s legs for any warmth, which could signify an injury. Our assistant trainer, Patrick, was carrying the bucket of carrots, while I stayed a few paces behind, pausing to make a fuss of the horses I knew. I caught the end of a conversation my father was having in the next stall.

“I’m thinking we should try something completely different with him,” said my father.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know—maybe an amateur race. Clare could ride him, see if it makes a difference.”

“Oh no, Guv’nor, don’t do that. Please give him another chance first!”

I stayed stock still, scared of revealing myself and making the situation worse.

My father was determined. “Come on, Jim, it’s not that bad. There’s a race at Newbury in a week or so that is perfect. Let’s enter him for that and see how we get on.”

Jim had a sad-looking face at the best of times, but I could see through the bars that it was particularly mournful that evening. I slipped by the front of the stable as he tied up Song of Sixpence, and hoped that he hadn’t seen me.

I avoided Jim, and he ignored me on the few occasions that I rode Song of Sixpence at home. He was a sweet, placid horse, but desperately uncomfortable. He had a shuddering slow canter that felt like you were on a vibrating tractor but, when he went faster, his stride was much more fluid. Lots of racehorses are poor in their slower paces but, when allowed to stretch their limbs and go on a stride quicker, they move well.

Song of Sixpence could carry weight, which was just as well, because he was going to be at the top of the handicap for any race we had together. He was easily the highest rated and therefore, technically, the best horse I rode.

In the race at Newbury, Maxine Cowdrey was riding a fabulous horse trained by Mary Reveley called Mellottie. They were 9–4 favorite, Amanda Harwood’s mount Alreef was second favorite at 15–2 and Song of Sixpence was 14–1.

The race was recorded by BBC television to be shown during that afternoon’s coverage. I decided to keep an eye on Maxine and Amanda, to track them and stay as close as I could. Dad had given me simple instructions:

“Just look after him. You know what you’re doing and, if you think he can win, go for it. Try to at least look as if you’re riding a finish.”

He said that because I had been hauled up in front of the stewards for “not trying” in a race earlier that month. In my head I had been riding a forceful finish but whenever I watched the video it looked as if I wasn’t moving at all.

“Watch any winner I’ve ever ridden,” I told the stewards. “I always look like that. I’m doing the best I can. Honestly.”

Jim led me out on to the course and muttered something to the effect that he still didn’t agree with running his star horse in an amateur race but, if I was going to have to ride him, to do it properly.

Song of Sixpence shuddered his way down to the start and I almost thought of pulling him out because he felt lame. It was lucky I had ridden him at home and knew he was always like this. I thought about Jim and how much I needed to prove to him that I could ride a good horse, and I thought of Mr. Mellon, who owned Song of Sixpence. I was wearing the famous black colors with the gold cross, the same ones carried by Mill Reef, and here I was at Newbury, our local course, in a race that was going to be on BBC TV. I couldn’t withdraw.

As the field jumped off, I was still in two minds about Song of Sixpence. I decided that, if he didn’t feel right at racing pace, I would pull him up straight away. He settled into his stride and felt fine. I was right behind Alreef and alongside Mellottie. Perfect. The straight at Newbury is long, so there is plenty of time to make a move and, as the field had fanned across the course, there was room. I watched Maxine kick Mellottie into the lead and go for home. I watched Alreef follow them, and I sat behind them, waiting for one or both of them to fade. Mellottie ran out of gas first, and I went past, talking to Song of Sixpence as I went: “That’s a good lad. You can do it. Come on now, one more to catch. Let’s go.”

He picked up and drew level with Alreef. I tried to push him in rhythm with his stride, feeling his lungs expand and contract as he made his effort. We nudged ahead and, as we passed the line, I raised my hand in an air-punch.

I pulled him up, turned him around and cantered back to the stands. Jim was running toward me, beaming with pride.

“Good lad,” he said, patting Song of Sixpence on the neck. “I knew this was a good idea. Always said so.”

He was looking up at me and grinning. Dad puffed out his chest as we came into the winner’s enclosure.

“See, Jim, I told you she’d look after him. Cheeky bloody thing!” He was looking at me. “Nearly gave me a heart attack, you did. Barely moving and winning by a head—you want to watch yourself. Now, don’t forget to weigh in.”

After the trophy presentation, I was asked to go up to the television studio to be interviewed by Julian Wilson. I was still red in the face from the effort and gave a breathless, gushing interview.

Song of Sixpence was unplaced in his next couple of runs for professional jockeys, then won for Steve Cauthen, but only by a short-head, in a race he should have dominated. He then finished down the field at York, with Seamus O’Gorman on board.

“How is he, Jim?” Dad asked as he went around evening stables.

“I don’t think he’s quite himself,” Jim replied. “Can I make a suggestion?”

“Of course you can.”

“Well, the thing is,” Jim said, pausing and then almost whispering, “I think Clare should ride him again.”

“I’m sorry, Jim, I didn’t quite hear you.” Dad was teasing him.

“I think Clare should ride him again,” Jim said, a little louder this time.

“Really? Well, I’m sure she’ll be pleased that you approve. I shall see what there is that might be suitable.”

When Dad told me, he couldn’t stop laughing. There was a race at Ayr, the same one that I had won on Mailman a couple of years earlier, which was just the ticket. So Jim and Song of Sixpence made the long journey in the horse trailer to just south of Glasgow, and Mum and I met them there. Song of Sixpence justified favoritism and won cosily. He was rated 84 at the time of that race. Steve Cauthen took over again and won on him for the following two Saturdays, including the Chesterfield Cup at Glorious Goodwood. Then he won a Listed Race at Windsor and his rating shot up to 108, way beyond the class of amateur races.

Jim was right: he was far too talented for me—but I caught him at just the right time and benefited with two wins out of two.

~

I was nineteen and in my second “gap year,” having failed dismally to get an offer from any university I liked. Bristol and Exeter had both turned me down, despite my improved “A”-level grades. In the interview I admitted that I had selected universities according to their proximity to racecourses. I now wonder if that was the most intelligent answer. They did not seem impressed.

I wanted to give Cambridge another shot. I had no particular reason to think that I might get in, except for the knowledge that I should never have applied for law and that I was much better suited to reading English. Age was on my side, as I had been young for my year at school and, as long as I promised to do something useful, Mum said it was worth giving it a go.

My father made his one and only contribution to my academic progress by organizing for me to have interview training at Radley College, where my brother was a pupil under the headmastership of one of Dad’s old rugby mates, Dennis Silk.

“Everyone says that boys come across more confidently when they’re interviewed,” Dad explained. “I mean, of course they are—they’re better at most things—but I think it might do you good to get a little help so that you can sell yourself.

“Now, what is it you’re going to read again? Biology?”

“No, Dad.” It always annoyed me that he had no clue which subjects I was any good at. “English.”

I knew the way to Radley pretty well. I’d driven Andrew back to college a few times in my Mini, with him smoking out of the window, wearing his black “smoking glove” so that his hand didn’t smell. He bought packets of ten, snuck out in the garden at home and sucked so hard he made the filters soggy.

“Oh, don’t be such a square.” Andrew was cross because I wouldn’t let him smoke in the car.

“It’s my car, and I don’t like the smell. I’ll pull over in the next turnout and you can get out.”

I don’t think it’s much fun to stand on the side of a dual highway smoking, but Andrew had no bargaining room. It was my car and, as every teenager knows, your first car is your ticket to an independent life. That little red Mini was more than just a car. So, no, Andrew could not smoke in it—if we were running late, I might let him stick his head right out the window, but he had to keep it out there the whole way through the cigarette. No exhaling once he was back inside.

The speedometer went up to 90 mph, but on the downhill sections of the A34 from Newbury to Oxford, with the wind behind us, we could make it go right past 90 and around to zero. The whole car would shudder, and the steering wheel felt as if it was going to fall off in my hands. Andrew and I screamed in delight and whacked the music up loud. We had grown up with our father weaving in and out of cars on the highway, undertaking on the hard shoulder and speeding as a matter of honor—of course we thought that was the only way to drive.

~

Dad used to take us with him for his annual shopping expedition for Mum’s Christmas stocking. It was always a last-minute affair. We had to run from shop to shop, Dad dancing from one foot to another like a rugby player running around defenders as he feinted and glanced around bemused shoppers. Andrew and I trotted along behind, attempting to persuade him not to buy lacy underwear or a fluffy bra.

“Dad, I don’t think she wants that. Really.”

Andrew stood next to me, mute with embarrassment.

“But what do you think?” Dad turned to the shop assistant, usually a girl in her early twenties, who would blush deep red.

“My wife is about the same size as you—do you think this would fit?” He held the silky negligee up to the shop assistant.

“Yes, sir, I’m sure it would. Now I must just see to a customer over there . . .”

She would scamper away.

I’m sure he meant no harm. I was mortified. We took one basket each, and all three of us selected presents that we thought appropriate. My basket was full of music, books, sensible pants, soap, talcum powder and her brand of shampoo.

Dad selected on a basis of see-buy. If it was in front of him—a handbag, a belt, a pair of gloves, a jar of jam—he would put it in the basket. I reckon department stores are laid out for men who are panic buying. That’s why all those leather goods are there on the ground floor as soon as you walk through the door—so that men like my father can scoop up things they think their wife might like.

“Dad, she doesn’t like green.” I tossed out a pair of bright-green leather gloves. “And you know she can’t wear wool. Or costume jewelry—it gives her a rash.”

“But it’s nice,” my father argued. “I like it.”

“Yes, but that’s not the point.”

I looked in Andrew’s basket. There was a football and a packet of jelly sweets. He looked at me hopefully.

When we made it to the cash register, a voice would trill, “Cash or check, sir?”

Dad was allowed to raid the petty cash at Christmastime.

“Cash!” His voice sang out as he produced his wad with a flourish and slapped it down in front of the register.

While Dad counted the bills, Andrew shoved his new football in the bottom of a big shopping bag and covered it up with a dressing gown.

It was my job to wrap the stocking when we got home and weed out some of the less desirable objects. It was also my job to keep all the receipts for the inevitable journey back to Camp Hopson in Newbury.

~

The interview training from Radley was soon to be put to the test. Mum drove me to Newmarket, where we stayed the night, before she dropped me off at Newnham College for my day of interrogation.

I felt relaxed as soon as I walked past the porter’s desk and through the internal doors, admiring the full stretch of Newnham’s red-brick buildings, with their high-arched, white-trimmed windows. It has a feeling of space and light and I knew that, if I got in, I would have time to think.

Hidden away from the busy, rather ugly Sidgwick Avenue side of college, there are eighteen acres of gardens. There is a sunken garden, a formal pond, miles of borders and, unlike most Cambridge colleges, you can walk or sit on the lawns almost all year round. Hardly any tourists know about Newnham, so you can do so relatively undisturbed.

I liked the place. I didn’t want to admit to anyone how much, but I really, really liked it. I was ready to study again, and I wanted it to be here.

Such was my desire to impress the director of studies, Mrs. Gooder, that I almost fell over myself in my enthusiasm to get into her drawing room and start my interview. Mrs. Gooder had one of those warm faces turned at the pottery wheel of love and laughter and it made me want to hug her straight away. I restrained myself and shook her hand instead.

The study was on the ground floor of Clough Hall and had a huge desk facing out into the garden. It was large enough to have an array of sofas and chairs, which later that year would be filled with up to twenty girls exchanging views with Mrs. Gooder about Shakespeare and Dickens, Henry James and Emily Dickinson.

I have no idea what I did in that interview, other than be wildly enthusiastic about the books I liked and the challenge of prose and poetry I had yet to discover, but it seemed to work. Mrs. Gooder did not so much ask me questions; it seemed to me that we had a conversation in which we both took part.

I didn’t want the interview to end. Mrs. Gooder finally looked at her watch and politely ushered me toward the door. As I walked backward I said, “This place has the most wonderful aura. I could learn so much here. I really hope you will give me that chance.”

I meant it. I may even have come out in an immediate rash, such was my feverish desire to study at Newnham.

“We’ll see,” said Mrs. Gooder, looking at me kindly—or perhaps noticing the rash.

Less than a month later, I received a letter from Newnham College, Cambridge, saying they had accepted my application and looked forward to seeing me for the start of the new academic year in September 1990. I would be following in the footsteps of A. S. Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Iris Murdoch, Joan Bakewell, Eleanor Bron and Emma Thompson, who had all studied there.

So many people had told me that I wasn’t clever enough to get into Cambridge; that I was crazy taking another year to apply again. My mother was quietly and completely thrilled for me.

“Must have been the interview practice Dennis Silk gave you,” said my father. “Mind you, I knew they’d see sense in the end. Just ridiculous they turned you down in the first place. Ridiculous.”

“Dad,” I said, for the hundred and fiftieth time, “they didn’t turn me down. I didn’t get the grades. Remember? Bristol and Exeter—they turned me down.”

Lovely as it was that he cared, I wasn’t sure Dad really understood that this is what happened in the real world—some people liked you and some people didn’t. They would select you or not select you for universities and jobs accordingly. The real world was almost entirely subjective. His world was based on hard facts; mine would rest on whether people liked me or not. It wasn’t a case of how many winners you trained or where you stood in a table.

~

There was a lot of reading to be done that summer in preparation for my first term, but there was a lot more riding. In my third season as an amateur jockey, I was throwing everything at what might be the only chance I would ever have of being champion and winning the Lady’s Championship I had narrowly missed the season before.

Every week, the racing calendar would arrive. This is the equivalent of the Radio Times—it is the forward planner that contains all the races in the country and the conditions required for entry. Some trainers now use a computer program to suggest every horse that is qualified for each race, but Dad didn’t have that luxury—nor would he have used it. He preferred to plan individually for every horse in the yard and write, with his all-color Biro, the name of the horses he wanted to be entered next to the relevant races. No wonder he didn’t have a lot of time for us as children.

Throughout the summer of 1990, it was not the Group races that would catch his attention first—it was the amateur ones. He looked at all of them in the calendar and tried to find a horse that was qualified and suitable. He and I both knew that my amateur career was not going to last forever, so it was now or never. I rode at Catterick, Ayr, Pontefract, Redcar, Beverley, Brighton, Goodwood, Yarmouth—it didn’t matter how far away or how little the race was worth, if it was a points-scoring opportunity, I had to be there.

I rode horses for other trainers, and I rode a few that were probably unsuitable for amateur races. I had a horror fall at Kempton, when my stirrup leather snapped and I landed like a sack of cement then was kicked in the head by a horse who trampled over me. I couldn’t remember much about it but when I came around from the concussion I kept saying, “I would have won, I would have won.”

The hospital staff patiently replied, “Of course you would have done, dear. Now drink this glass of water, tell me your name, your date of birth and the name of the prime minister.”

I missed a few races but, two weeks later, I was riding again.

One morning on the Downs, in a thick pea-souper of a fog, I was on a filly called Skazka. She had never been much of a work horse, only ever doing as much as she had to, but, on this morning, when we couldn’t see farther than fifty yards in front of us, she emerged from the fog fifteen lengths clear of her work companion. I had hardly been able to hold one side of her, but she’d kept going all the way to the top of the gallop and I struggled to pull her up.

“Interesting,” said my father. “I’ve seen that happen before in the fog. It can act like a pair of blinkers. She couldn’t see behind her so was trying to get away from the sound of being chased.”

For a while during her two- and three-year-old career, Skazka had looked as if she might be a decent filly. She was out of a mare called Winter Words, and Paul Mellon had chosen a name that is Russian for “fairytale” in the hope that this filly might be a bit special. Unfortunately, that early promise faded, and this piece of work in the fog was the first time she had shown enthusiasm in ages.

Dad entered her in the same race at Beverley—the Contrac Computer Supplies Handicap—that I had won the previous year on Waterlow Park, at the expense of the Princess Royal. He was worried that Skazka didn’t really get a mile and a half, so told me to conserve her energy. Mum and I made the familiar journey up the M1 to Doncaster, east on the M18 past Goole, and headed north of Hull to what had become my favorite racecourse.

After I had walked the course, I bumped into Elaine Bronson, who was riding an old favorite of hers called Cathos.

“What do you reckon?” she asked.

“The ground’s all right,” I said. “A bit rough just off the rail, but smooth right on it or out wide.”

“I don’t care about the effin’ ground,” she said. “What do you reckon to your chances? Bookies have got you as favorite.”

“Oh,” I said dismissively, “I’m not sure she’ll stay, to be honest. She’s never won over more than a mile.”

I wasn’t lying—I wasn’t sharp enough for that—but I hadn’t predicted that we would go no pace at all for the first two furlongs. Nothing seemed to want to make the running so, as we crossed the path that Waterlow Park had jumped a year earlier, I found myself near the front of the field. Skazka heard something that scared her and she started to motor.

I did my best to hold her, but I didn’t want to upset her rhythm by fighting too hard. Within a furlong, we were ten lengths clear of the rest and, as we turned into the straight, nothing was closing. I kept her right on the inside rail, trying to find that strip less than four feet wide that was smooth, fresh grass. My boot was scraping the rail and, as we passed the furlong marker, Skazka bumped the rail and momentarily lost her balance. I could hear someone wailing like a banshee and the thundering of hooves, but I dared not look around.

Skazka was tiring, and I just sat there, holding her together and barely moving, willing the line to come before we both fell in a heap. The dreadful noise, which I knew could only be Elaine, was getting closer but, luckily, the winning post came just in time. Two strides after it, she passed us.

“I thought you said your horse wouldn’t stay?” Elaine was shouting at me.

“I didn’t think she would,” I puffed.

I didn’t know at the time why Elaine was so annoyed but, when I saw her boss David Wilson’s face, I realized that, once again, they had had a big bet and, this time, it hadn’t worked out.

“That’s why she’s going to Cambridge,” he shouted at her. “And you never will! She had you fooled, you idiot.”

When my father rang to give me a scolding for not following his instructions, I told him that I had deliberately exploited the rest of the field’s assumption that Skazka wouldn’t stay.

One thing I had learned in my study of the world away from school was that men seemed to take credit for success, even when it happened by accident. They did not immediately point out their own mistakes. My mother knew the truth, of course, and I suspect my father did too, but Elaine Bronson and David Wilson were convinced I was shrewder than I appeared.

My first job when I got to Newnham would be to persuade Mrs. Gooder to let me keep a car there and to give me time off to ride in the final race of the season at Chepstow.