Silks Read Free

approached the first fence and where I hoped to be as we approached the last. Of course, in my mind’s eye we would win the race and my apprehension would turn to joy. And that wouldn’t be all that unexpected. My bay gelding and I would start as favourite. His win in the Foxhunters at the Cheltenham Festival in March would make sure of that.
    Steve Mitchell came waltzing back into the changing room with a grin on his face wider than the eight-lane highway down the road.
    ‘What about that then, Perry?’ he said, slapping me on the back, bringing me out of my trance. ‘Bloody marvellous. And I beat that bastard Barlow. You should have seen his face. Furious, he was.’ He laughed expansively. ‘Serves him bloody well right.’
    ‘What for?’ I asked innocently.
    He stood still for a moment and looked at me inquisitively. ‘For being a bastard,’ he said, and turned away towards his peg.
    ‘And is he?’ I asked his back.
    He turned round to face me. ‘Is he what?’
    ‘A bastard.’
    There was a pause.
    ‘You’re a funny bloke, Perry,’ he said, irritated. ‘What bloody difference does it make whether he’s a real bastard or not.’
    I was beginning to wish I hadn’t got into this conversation. Being a barrister didn’t always help one to make friends.
    ‘Well done anyway,’ I said to him, but the moment had passed and he just waved a dismissive hand and turned his back on me once again.
    ‘Jockeys!’ An official put his head round the changing-room door and called the group of nineteen of us amateurs to the parade ring.
    My heart rate rose a notch. It always did. Adrenalin pumped through my veins and I positively jumped up and dived through the doorway. No superstitious last one out of the changing room for me, I wanted to savour every moment. It felt like my feet were hardly touching the ground.
    I adored this feeling. This is why I loved to ride in races. This was my fix, my drug. It was arguably less safe than sniffing cocaine and certainly more expensive, but it was a need in me, a compulsion, an addiction. Thoughts of heavy falls, of mortal danger, of broken bones and bruised bodies were banished simply by the thrill and the anticipation of the coming race. Such was the feeling on every occasion, undiminished by time and familiarity. I often told myself that I would hang up my saddle for good only when that emotion ceased to accompany the official’s call for ‘jockeys’.
    I made it to the parade ring without floating away altogether and stood excited on the tightly mowed grass with my trainer, Paul Newington.
    When I acquired my first horse some fifteen years ago, Paul had been thought of as the ‘bright young up-and-coming trainer’ in the sport. Now he was considered to be the man who neverquite fulfilled his potential. He was originally from Yorkshire but had moved south in his late twenties, headhunted to take over from one of the grand old men of racing who had been forced into retirement by illness. Far from being up-and-coming, he was now in danger of becoming down-and-going, struggling to fill his expansive training establishment in Great Milton, just to the east of Oxford.
    But I liked him, and my own experience of his skills had been nothing but positive. Over the years he had bought for me a succession of sound hunter-chasers that had carried me, for the most part, safely over hundreds of miles and thousands of fences. Mostly they had been steady rather than spectacular, but that had been my brief to him when buying. I wanted to be in one piece more than I wanted to win.
    ‘I think you should beat this lot,’ Paul said, loosely waving a hand at the other groups in the parade ring. ‘Fairly jumping out of his skin, he is.’
    I didn’t like being expected to win. Even when defending in court I was generally pessimistic about my clients’ chances. That way, winning was unexpected and joyful while losing wasn’t too much of a disappointment.
    ‘Hope so,’ I replied. My