Mount! (26 page)

Consequently, Rupert was fined heavily and Quickly banned from racing for six months, the only redeeming feature being that the ban lasted over the winter, which would give Gav a chance to sort Quickly out before the 2000 Guineas at the beginning of May.

On the good side, Love Rat’s progeny, particularly New Year’s Dave, had had such a brilliant year that the stallion had leapt six places in the Leading Sire charts, to just behind Roberto’s Revenge – so things were looking promising for when the results would be announced at the end of December.

The time in December had now arrived for Rupert to return to York and, as the winning owner of the Gimcrack Stakes, to deliver a key speech on the state of racing at the incredibly prestigious white-tie Gimcrack dinner.

For many owners this had been a terrifying ordeal in which they’d only stumbled out a few sentences. Other speeches had been highly contentious, sparking off rows ending up in the High Court or with powerful sheikhs threatening to take their horses away from Britain altogether.

‘Not sure if we ought to let Campbell-Black loose,’ blustered Roddy Northfield, a long-term Gimcrack stalwart. ‘Always driven down bus lanes, bound to cause havoc and say a host of inflammatory things. Etta Edwards, the co-owner, is the most delightful woman – why don’t we ask her? I could brief her, or her husband Valent Edwards – bit of a rough diamond but sound ideas.’

Etta, however, who had no desire to fall at the first fence, insisted the task was left to Rupert. This year, as well as one hundred and twenty men, august members of the racing world, six women had been invited, including Taggie.

As she and Rupert walked out to the helipad at Penscombe, Rupert noticed Celeste, yakking on her mobile, riding past on Dorothy the grey practice mare, and crossed himself. A red-head on a white horse always foretold disaster.

‘What the hell are you doing on Dorothy?’ he yelled.

‘Just popping into the village for a birthday card.’

‘Well, get off her and bloody well walk.’

Worried that some terrible accident might befall them, Gav felt passionate relief when Rupert, with a host of instructions, rang to say they’d landed at York.

‘Good luck,’ said Gav.

The Gimcrack dinner was held in York’s Old County stand, a lovely Victorian domed dining room with red and green curtains, a green carpet and big gold chandeliers.

At the bottom of the room hung a huge portrait of James Melrose, Chairman of York Racecourse Committee for over fifty years; he had a sweet face and a white rose in his button-hole. At the top end hung Stubbs’ lovely portrait of Gimcrack, the gallant little grey colt after whom the club had been named, who had won twenty-seven out of thirty-six races back in the eighteenth century. Held by a groom in a black hat and a stylish long beige coat, the equally stylish Gimcrack had very slim legs, blue eyes and a flowing white tail held at a jaunty angle.

‘He reminds me of Quickly,’ cried a delighted Taggie.

‘Let’s hope Quickly leaves the same footprints on racing’s landscape,’ said Rupert.

The great and the good, many of them in hunting tail-coats, sat around and up the insides of a table shaped like a horseshoe. Rupert at the top with Gimcrack’s portrait behind him was between his friend Lord Grimthorpe, the Chairman of the racecourse, and a local stud-owner, Lord Halifax.

Five seats away, his tail-coat straining to contain his hulking shoulders, Roddy Northfield, representing the British Racing Association and Rutminster Racecourse, looked on in outrage, anticipating trouble. Enid hadn’t made the cut and Roddy forbore to hand on her message, ‘to give special luck and love to Rupert’.

In the old days, winning owners were expected to provide six dozen bottles of champagne, but today only the fireworks. Taggie, down the table between the charming Nick Luck of Channel 4 and her favourite trainer, Tommy Westerham, was
having a lovely time. She was really pleased with her new dress, silver-grey silk to match her eyes, and it was heaven to eat something she hadn’t cooked herself. She couldn’t read the menu so every delicious mouthful had been a surprise: warm duck and orange ravioli; halibut, crab and scallops in a wonderful pink shellfish bisque; chocolate brioche with ice cream; and Welsh rarebit, all accompanied by unbelievable wine. She had therefore really stuffed her face and drank every drop of offered Pouilly Fumé, Fleurie, champagne and brandy, and was now as giggly as a teenager at her first party. The men round the table were having a lovely time looking at Taggie.

‘What are you going to talk about, Rupert?’ asked Lord Grimthorpe. ‘Rachel Hood was awfully good last year.’

‘Hood was good, Hood was good,’ murmured Rupert as he got up to speak.

Taggie in turn thought he had never looked handsomer or happier because of the brilliant year he had had. The white tie and tails set off a magnificent Far Eastern tan.

‘Remember there are ladies present,’ warned Roddy Northfield.

‘Gimcrack, winner of twenty-seven races, was admired by the public for his fighting spirit. Only fourteen hands, he once ran twenty-two and a half miles in an hour, with twelve and a half stone on his back. He was also a great star at stud,’ began Rupert idly, ‘and was probably a rival of my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s stallion Third Leopard, who won the St Leger and was Leading Sire for five years towards the end of the eighteenth century.

‘The Gimcrack has a proud history of great winners, like Mill Reef, Caspar Netscher, Showcasing – and none potentially greater than my own New Year’s Dave. As a result of his and Master Quickly’s sensational victories, Love Rat’s foals and yearlings have been setting the sale rings alight this autumn. Love Rat is the sire whose name you want on your passport.’

‘Oh, cut out the commercial, Rupert,’ shouted Tommy Westerham, pelting him with petits fours.

‘None of that,’ barked Roddy, turning pucer than his fifth glass of wine.

Rupert took a hefty slug of brandy then launched into an attack on every aspect of racing: the greed of the bookies, the lack of government support, lousy prize money, avaricious racecourses resulting in far too many races and too many meetings on the same day, the massive over-breeding of horses, a prohibitive handicap system, so that good horses went abroad because they had nowhere to race, amateur stewards often so terrified of the bookies they’d do anything to let a horse keep a race, and bookies going offshore and not paying anything back into racing.

‘I used to train horses for other people, but gave up because I found them even more selfish and tiresome than myself,’ he told his startled audience. ‘And because they all tried to pull my wife.’

‘Oh Rupert,’ protested Taggie, wishing the green carpet would swallow her up.

‘On the other hand, owners have a lousy deal. Go to any meeting and after a race you will find nineteen out of twenty disappointed connections being lied to: “it’s the draw, it’s the rain, it’s the start, it’s traffic, it’s interference, it’s the trip, it’s too firm, it’s too testing, it was a messy race,” and so on. I hated telling lies – another reason I gave up training other people’s horses.’

Then, like a small boy with a brick on the end of a rope, he attacked all the ruling bodies of racing for incompetence, pusillanimity and the inability to stick together.

‘How can hounds catch a fox, if they all rush off giving tongue in different directions. The British Racing Association, BRA, as it’s known, is a misnomer.’

‘Rubbish,’ thundered Roddy.

‘Because they often provide
no
support. They’ll accuse a trainer or jockey of something then spend months gathering evidence, by which time his owners or his rides have drifted away. If you asked me to sum up the state of British Racing today, I’d say it’s got too big, it’s destroyed the ground at too many tracks, the breed has been weakened, there are far too many horses bred, many often bad or unsound horses. I would cut the fixture list by twenty-five per cent, but the managing
directors at the racecourse have different aims. Stable staff too should be paid properly and should be given decent time off.

‘And, if you want decent crowds, build up the horses like Frankel, Black Caviar, Kauto Star and Master Quickly’s dam Mrs Wilkinson and my own Safety Car, who make people flock to the races. Owners should also have the guts to keep these great horses in training as four- and five-year-olds and not whisk them off to stud, so the public has a chance to fall in love with them, like little Gimcrack.’

The audience were looking stunned, so Rupert switched tack, making them laugh with a few jokes, bluer than his wickedly sparkling eyes.

‘I repeat, there are ladies present,’ boomed Roddy, turning even pucer.

‘Gimcrack,’ went on Rupert, ignoring him, ‘had a sire called Cripple and an uncle called Bloody Buttocks, neither of which would have got through Weatherbys today.’

He then gave an impersonation of the ladies of Weatherbys trying out horses’ names on each other, to check if there were any double entendres, repeating in a prim voice words like ‘Forced King’ and ‘Far Canal’ over and over again until the audience were crying with laughter.

‘Finally,’ Rupert took another slug, ‘I’d like to thank York Racecourse Committee and the Gimcrack for an absolutely marvellous dinner, and congratulate them for being an equally marvellous racecourse where nothing is too much trouble.’

Then, remembering how Roddy had banned Quickly, ‘So unlike our local Rutminster Racecourse, which has potholes all over the track, rotten food and spends fortunes on portraits of today’s committee. It’s hardly surprising Rufus Rutshire wants to build houses all over it.’

‘Rupert,’ murmured Lord Grimthorpe, ‘Rodders is about to have a coronary.’

‘To end,’ concluded Rupert, ‘I’d like to propose a toast to the health of British racing and to this year’s Gimcrack winner, New Year’s Dave, who is as sweet-natured as he is brilliant.’

As he sat down to moderate cheers, Taggie mouthed down the table: ‘You are so clever.’

‘God knows how he got away with it.’ Nick Luck was shaking his head. ‘He’d better not do anything to prompt a stewards’ enquiry for a year or two.’

Roddy was hopping like a maddened bullfrog.

While more speeches followed, Rupert carried on drinking then reluctantly got up to go, having an early flight to Singapore in the morning.

Aware that most of the audience would like to throttle him, he hustled Taggie down the steps and out into the weighing room, where they were accosted by a reporter from the
Scorpion
sidling up, to break the very sad news that Jake Lovell, the great showjumper and silver medallist of Rupert’s era, had just died at the tragically early age of fifty-nine.

‘Really,’ drawled Rupert.

‘How do you feel, Rupert?’

‘Profound gratitude. Particularly,’ continued Rupert, ‘for his ridding me of my first wife, Helen. Jake did me a huge service by running off with her in the middle of the Los Angeles Olympics, leaving a depleted but utterly determined British team to take the Gold.’

‘Rupert, no!’ gasped Taggie in horror.

The reporter gasped too, reeling from a mixture of shock and scoop.

‘What is running through your mind, Rupert?’

‘I repeat, profound gratitude for ridding me of my pseudo-intellectual, pretentious and totally unsuitable first wife, and freeing me up to marry the angel who is my wife today,’ said Rupert as he stalked out of the building.

‘I’m really, really sorry for Tory and Isa and all the family,’ Taggie stammered to the reporter before she fled after Rupert. ‘How could you?’ she panted when she caught up with him. ‘Poor Tory and poor Isa, he’ll be devastated.’

‘Payback time indeed. I have absolutely no sympathy for that weasel who pinched all my ideas. Talk about Leading Sore.’

Rupert arrived at Penscombe to find the paparazzi outside the drive and all the way down Penscombe High Street – and that a colossal row had broken out.

Isa, who adored his father, was insane with rage at Rupert’s universally reported comments, particularly on behalf of his mother, who had been nursing a desperately ill Jake for months. Rupert’s diatribe had been the only negative in a fountain of eulogy. The press were already regurgitating all the old stories about Rupert bullying Jake, both at school and on the showjumping circuit, and how the feud had continued because of the annexing of Helen – right down to the acrimonious departure of Isa, as Rupert’s stable jockey and assistant.

Turning on her laptop first thing to check how Rupert’s speech had gone, Celeste smiled in triumph. Gav deserved to be punished for resisting her advances, Rupert for jocking her off.

She was not going to be demoted to shovelling shit unless it was over those two. Joyfully she drew out the bloodstained foaling certificate from under the lining paper of her bedroom drawer. It was still readable: ‘chestnut colt – 31 December’. Picking up her mobile, she dialled Cosmo Rannaldini’s number.

‘I’ve got some interesting information on Rupert Campbell-Black, Gavin Latton and New Year’s Dave,’ she said.

‘Come right over,’ purred Cosmo. ‘Get yourself to Aston Down and I’ll send the chopper.
Gotcha!
’ he shouted as he put down the telephone.

‘This is how I should always travel,’ reflected Celeste as Cosmo’s scarlet and magenta helicopter flew over the rustic cathedral town of Rutminster, with its olive-green sweep of racecourse. There was the long drive, winding up to Rutminster Hall, the Georgian mansion belonging to Roddy Northfield’s brother, Lord Rutshire.

Roddy always gave her a lovely smile on the rare occasions beastly Rupert had allowed her to go to the races, and there, as the helicopter began its descent, was Valhalla, the great grey abbey guarded by its dark army of trees. Rooks fluttered out of a white shroud of mist as they landed.

A chauffeur in a Chelsea tractor met her and whisked her through rusty gates, bearing the inscription
Amor Vincit Omnia
. A stunning girl with an amazing willowy body and long shining dark hair was waiting at the door. She introduced herself as Sauvignon, Cosmo’s PA – which stood for phenomenally attractive, thought Celeste, feeling upstaged. Having led her along endless dark passages to Cosmo’s office, Sauvignon announced that he would be with her in a few minutes.