Racing Manhattan (31 page)

Ahead of me is a horse whose jockey is beginning to get to work on him.

I am about to pull out and ease my way past him when, to our right, someone yells and swears. Like an out-of-control bumper-car, his horse swerves inwards, moving in a matter of strides from the outside of the field to beside me, holding me against the rails. It is like a door being slammed shut.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see purple.

‘Cosy here, eh,
chiquita
?'

The voice is a low growl. Around the turn as we head for home the jockeys ahead of us are coming alive, pulling their whips through, shouting ‘Hah! Hah!' at their horses. I am completely boxed in. The jockey on the horse in front of me glances over his shoulder, then suddenly begins to lose ground. Dominguez, on my outside, could overtake him, but instead moves back with him, taking me further and further away from the field. It is like a cork being slowly pulled from a bottle. In a shock of realisation, I see that the two jockeys – one in front of me, another beside me – are working together to take me out of the race.

‘You ain't going nowhere, honey,' says Pablo, eyes straight ahead.

He has his horse leaning towards me, pinching me against the rails. We are so close now that his boot is rubbing against mine. Ahead, the field is moving away from us.

We're trapped. If I pull back sharply to get round Dominguez, I will be so far behind that my race will be over, yet we're losing ground with every stride.

Do something, Hat!

Manhattan's ears go back. No other horse has dared to rub up against her like this on a racetrack. She likes it even less than I do.

Suddenly, without breaking her stride, she lunges, teeth first, to her right.

Dominguez's horse is so startled it throws its head up in alarm. For a second, there is a gap to our right.

It is all we need.

Head down, Manhattan barges her way like a battering ram between the horse in front of her and Dominguez.

I hear a curse and, at the moment when we see daylight, there's a crack and, just for a few strides, Manhattan loses her action.

As we enter the home straight, she hits her rhythm once more.

Yes, Hat. We can do this.

But can we? As we pass the last quarter pole, the runners are like a wall ahead of us. We must be almost twenty lengths behind the leading horse.

I had wanted to save Manhattan until the last furlong but now I have no choice. We are beyond tactics now.

OK, Hat, let's go.

A gap between the two horses ahead of us widens as they tire. We go for it, parting them like an axe splitting wood.

There are still eight or nine horses in front of us. Low in the saddle, I push Manhattan through the field, worming our way past the tiring horses. Ahead of us, three horses are locked in battle.

No choice, girl. Got to go on the outer.

I check Manhattan for a stride, then switch her to the right. Now we have a clear run to the finishing line. There is an explosion of sound from the crowd as they suddenly see us, poised to make our challenge. It is like hitting a wall of noise, but Manhattan, her ears pointing for home, dives into it.

We are in the final furlong. The two leaders, locked together, are still four lengths ahead of us, but we are pulling them back to us with every stride.

Now, Hat, now!

From somewhere distant, the hysterical voice of the racecourse commentator is screaming: ‘And now Manhattan's on the charge!'

Go, Hat!

I hear my own roar as, from somewhere, Manhattan finds more strength, more speed. We reach the two other horses fifty yards from the post. She seems to lower herself to the ground and stretch for the line.

And suddenly I know. The winning post flashes past me. The sound all around changes from screams and yells to cheers and celebration. The commentator is saying, ‘Unbelieeeevable, we've never seen a race like that. Manhattan takes the Breeders' Cup Classic!'

We pull up around the bend after the winning post. Manhattan slows to a canter, then a trot. She is spent. Some of the other jockeys are shouting across to me but I can't hear what they're saying in the frenzy of noise. I smile and nod. We turn to head back to the grandstand.

We trot for a few metres but then, without warning, Manhattan breaks into a walk. I pat her. She is drenched with sweat. Looking behind the saddle, I see that her flanks are heaving with exhaustion. She can hardly put one foot in front of the other.

Easy, Hat. You've run your race now. They can wait for us.

The outrider who will lead us back is cantering towards us. We stop, standing at the end of the straight, taking in the crazy scenes in front of us. Down the track, lead rein swinging, Deej is running towards us, the biggest smile I have ever seen on his face. Beyond him, the Wilkinsons and Prince Muqrin are surrounded by people congratulating them. In the grandstand, thousands and thousands of faces are looking at us, cheering, laughing, waving banners which read ‘Go, girls!', ‘Manhattan For Me!' and ‘We Love Bug!' Somewhere in there, my best friend, Uncle Bill and Aunt Elaine will be laughing with joy. With them will be my father. A band has started playing. The racecourse commentator is gabbling with excitement. A woman with a microphone, followed by a cameraman, is walking towards us.

Manhattan snorts, amazed by what she is seeing. She lifts her head high, her ears pricked. Her body is shaking, she is blowing so hard that I feel her moving beneath me with every breath, but she stands tall, her feet planted in the dirt, the queen of Santa Anita Park.

These few seconds are our moment, and somehow I know it. Frozen in time. Never to be forgotten. I trace a heart on her sweat-drenched shoulder.

We did it, girl. You and me.

Then we walk on, towards the noise and the waving and the people.

Let.

The.

Madness.

Begin.

IT IS NOT
much to show for a life. On a small slab of concrete, part of a long wall in a cemetery garden, the words are written:

Deborah Ann Barton
1982–2008

I look along the length of the wall. So many names with their dates, each with their own memories of happy days, sad days.

It has been six crazy months since my life changed on the Santa Anita racetrack. Every day I have thought about Debs and have wondered what she would say about her daughter's fame. What would she make of the decisions I have made? How would she react to the reappearance in my life of the old Helldawg, Jim Thurston?

Jim. I smile at Mum's stone. The next time I'll be here, he will probably be with me. He is bringing his family to England later this summer for their vacation. He has said he wants to pay his respects to my mother.

There will be a few days spent at Coddington. ‘Completing the circle' is what Jim calls it, although, to tell the truth, the family circle has a few dents in it these days. After he returned from America, Uncle Bill was arrested for not paying his taxes. He was found guilty and a judge told him he had to repay his debt to society by doing 200 hours of community service.

It's quite possible that the first sight Jim Thurston will have of his brother-in-law will be through the window of a car as it passes a gang of yellow-jacketed litter-pickers as they repay their debt to society.

I thought about what Uncle Bill has done in my life, the good as well as the bad, and how Michaela found my father, and I reached a big decision. I would use some of my winnings in America, plus the money I have earned for interviews and personal appearances since then, to help the family keep Coddington. I made one condition – that they brought back Dusty to live out his days in the field next to the house.

Uncle Bill is going to pay me back, he says. The litter-picking thing has given him time to think up a few new plans for the future. Three words to my uncle: include me out.

The meeting of Uncle Bill and Jim Thurston is not exactly a red-letter day in my diary, but my father has told me I needn't worry about what happened in the past. Nobody's perfect, he says, and I guess he should know.

When I visited him after Santa Anita, he told me several times that ‘families are what it's all about'. My face must have given away more than I thought because he quickly started talking about how great his kids Barney and Jared were, how lucky he had been to find Linda.

‘I thought I had a perfect life,' my father said. ‘But it just got even better.'

There are voices behind me in the crematorium garden. A family – mother, father and bored-looking daughter of about twelve – are looking along the wall for the name of their dead loved one.

As I pass them, the mother does that little double-take that I have come to know. She recognises me from the papers.

A taxi is waiting. I drive in silence to the station. When it arrives, the train is fuller than I expected. It is the start of the summer holiday and families are returning from the seaside.

Now and then one of the adults, knowing who I am, catches my eye. I give them my public this-far-and-no-further smile.

I gaze out of the window, watching the fields of barley and corn as they glide by.

The madness started that day in California last October. Maybe you read or heard about me somewhere. How someone thought they saw me in a swanky new London club. How a Hollywood star was rumoured to be going out with me. How a friend of mine, who preferred to remain nameless, revealed that I wanted to be an actress. How surprisingly shy I was, or how nice, or I was the most impossible person in the world.

The newspaper stories, the weird and crazy fantasies, rolled out whatever I did or said. They were about a stranger I didn't even know. For a few weeks after my return from America, I played the fame game, appearing on TV, doing interviews, listening to men in suits as they explained how much money could be made if I agreed to exploit something they called my ‘brand'.

But as winter turned to spring, I knew in my heart that, with every new celebrity item about me, I was leaving behind what I really liked doing. The more I became a brand, the less there was of me.

I learned to say ‘no'. I stayed in Newmarket, out of sight, riding out at the Wilkinson yard. With the new season, Mr Wilkinson began to give me rides. I had some winners, and for other trainers too. I'm doing well.

Now and then, I stay a weekend at Coddington. Michaela has fallen in love with a boy from her college, and so a lot of listening and sympathetic nodding has to go on. Uncle Bill talks racing to me. Aunt Elaine asks how Tariq is. We might almost be a family.

They say that when you ride a race you should never look back, and that is true for life too. But now and then I think of what was said about Manhattan after she won in America.

She was hailed as one of racing's all-time greats. She had it all, they said – speed, strength and courage. With that one great performance, she had proved herself to be a true champion for our time.

There is no Manhattan in the string this year but, riding out, I am reminded of her every day. A two-year-old might stand stock-still, as she used to. Another might prefer to be at the front of the string. There could be something about the way a colt carries his head while working, or a filly might pretend to be fierce in the stable.

The train slows as we approach Newmarket, and soon I am stepping onto the platform where it all began.

I catch glances from strangers as I make my way through the station, but no one tries to talk to me. I like this town, where jockeys and lads, the famous and the unknown, are together, united by the strange business of working with horses.

It feels like home.

Up the high street. Turn right towards Edgecote House. The drive and the house are more spruced up, less tired, than they once were.

There have been changes this season. The Wilkinson yard has become almost fashionable. Prince Muqrin is still an owner, although he spends more time these days in Saudi Arabia. He is a minister in the government now. In the newspapers, he is no longer the ‘playboy prince' but ‘the new face of the House of Saud'.

In the end, what happened at Santa Anita might have only made a small difference. A woman rode one of his horses, and the whole of civilisation did not come tumbling down. It's not everything, but it's something.

I stand at the entrance to the yard for a moment. It is mid-afternoon, and there is an air of sleepiness to the place. Officially I am still a lad, but these days I spend so many days racing that I don't have my own horses to ‘do' but help out Laura and Chloe – one of the new girls – with their horses.

I walk across the yard, into the tack room. Deej is at a table, working out the List for the following day. As I enter, he looks up and gives me a big smile.

‘Hey,' I say. ‘It's the head lad at work.'

He laughs. ‘It never stops,' he says, but there is no complaint in his voice.

Soon after the Breeders' Cup Classic, Angus took early retirement. His old riding injury was playing up, he said. There is a rumour that Mrs Wilkinson encouraged him to make the move. Now and then he calls in at the yard, looking older, but happier.

Deej became head lad. A few weeks later, Harry Bucknall announced that he was to run a small yard of steeplechasers down in the West Country. Another rumour has it that Mrs Wilkinson told him that his services were no longer required.

I like these rumours. I believe them.

She is there every day, first and second lot, still the trainer's wife but no longer in the background. Sometimes Mr Wilkinson remains at home. More rumours. Change is in the air.

Deej and I chat easily about the yard, its latest winners, how there are more girls working there than there used to be, how Laura is getting on since she was promoted to travelling head lad. The way he talks these days is more confident. He is stronger now, waiting for his moment. One day, I just know, he will be a trainer.