Break in - By Dick Francis Page 0,3

raised their heads with pride. Some were definitely depressed when they lost. Guilt they never felt, nor shame nor regret nor compassion: North Face would dump me next time if he could.

The princess greeted us in the unsaddling enclosure with starry eyes and a flush on her cheeks. Stars for success, I diagnosed, and the flush from earlier embarrassment. I unbuckled the girths, slid the saddle over my arm and paused briefly before going to weigh in, my head near to hers.

‘Well done,’ she said.

I smiled slightly. ‘I expected curses.’

‘He was especially difficult.’

‘And brilliant.’

‘There’s a trophy.’

‘I’ll come right out,’ I said, and left her to the flocking newsmen, who liked her and treated her reverently, on the whole.

I passed the scales. The jockey I’d beaten at the last second was looking ashamed, but it was his own fault, as well he knew. The Stewards might fine him. His owners might sack him. No one else paid much attention either to his loss or to my win. The past was the past: the next race was what mattered.

I gave my helmet and saddle to the valet, changed into different colours, weighed out, put the princess’s colours back on, on top of those I would carry in the next race, combed my hair and went out dutifully for the speeches. It always seemed a shame to me when the presentation photographs were taken with the jockey not wearing the winner’s colours, and for owners I cared for I did whenever possible appear with the right set on top. It cost me nothing but a couple of minutes, and it was more satisfactory, I thought.

The racecourse (in the shape of the chairman of directors) thanked the Sunday Towncrier for its generosity and the Sunday Towncrier (in the shape of its proprietor, Lord Vaughnley) said it was a pleasure to support National Hunt racing and all who sailed in her.

Cameras clicked.

There was no sign anywhere of Holly.

The proprietor’s lady, thin, painted and good-natured, stepped forward in smooth couturier clothes to give a foot-high gilded statue of a towncrier (medieval version) to the princess, amid congratulation and hand shaking. The princess accepted also a smaller gilt version on behalf of Wykeham Harlow, and in my turn I received the smile, the handshake, the congratulations and the attentions of the cameras, but not, to my surprise, my third set of golden towncrier cufflinks.

‘We were afraid you might win them again,’ Lady Vaughnley explained sweetly, ‘so this year it’s a figure like the others,’ and she pressed warmly into my hands a little golden man calling out the news to the days before printing.

I genuinely thanked her. I had more cufflinks already than shirts with cuffs to take them.

‘What a finish you gave us,’ she said, smiling. ‘My husband is thrilled. Like an arrow from nowhere, he said.’

‘We were lucky.’

I looked automatically to her shoulder, expecting to greet also her son, who at all other Towncriers had accompanied his parents, hovering around and running errands, willing, nice-natured, on the low side of average for brains.

‘Your son isn’t with you?’ I asked.

Most of Lady Vaughnley’s animation went into eclipse. She glanced swiftly and uncomfortably across to her husband, who hadn’t heard my remark, and said unhappily, ‘No, not today.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said; not for Hugh Vaughnley’s absence, but for the obvious row in the family. She nodded and turned away, blinking, and I thought fleetingly that the trouble must be new and bad, near the surface of tears.

The princess invited Lord and Lady Vaughnley to her box and they happily accepted.

‘You as well, Kit,’ she said.

‘I’m riding in the next race.’

‘Come after.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Everyone left their trophies on the presentation table to be taken away for engraving and I returned to the changing room as the princess moved away with the Vaughnleys.

She always asked me to her box because she liked to discuss her horses and what they’d done, and she had a loving and knowledgeable interest in all of them. She liked most to race where she rented a private box, namely at Cheltenham, Ascot, Sandown and Lingfield, and she went only to other courses where she had standing invitations from box-endowed friends. She was not democratic to the point of standing on the open stands and yelling.

I came out in the right colours for the next race and found Holly fiercely at my elbow immediately.

‘Have you collected your winnings?’ I asked.

‘I couldn’t reach you,’ she said disgustedly. ‘All those officials, keeping everyone back, and the crowds…’

‘Look,