Pulse(78)

We didn’t shake hands as he was in the process of removing a clod of Cheltenham Racecourse mud from a saddle.

Jockeys’ valets are like the engine room of an ocean liner, totally hidden from the paying public but essential to the smooth running of the ship. They are not valets in the gentleman’s gentleman manner of a domestic servant, and they are certainly no Jeeves to a jockeyed Bertie Wooster but, without them, racing would unquestionably grind to a halt.

In short, they are responsible for ensuring that each jockey in their care is properly dressed and presented to the Clerk of the Scales before a race wearing the correct, clean silks and carrying a saddle, number cloth, etc. such that rider plus equipment are at the precise weight specified in the racecard.

To achieve that end requires many hours of unseen preparation with valets arriving at a racecourse at least four hours before racing begins to wash, dry and iron the silks and britches from the previous day, sort and soap saddles, polish boots, check and launder girths, plus a hundred other tasks before even the first punter passes through the turnstiles.

‘How can I help?’ Whizz said, tucking his hands inside the top part of his apron, which had a line of spare safety pins fastened down one side.

‘Dick McGee wants his things sent over to Cheltenham General, especially his mobile phone.’

‘Is he staying in?’ Whizz asked with surprise. ‘I thought he was fine.’

I shook my head. ‘Fractured two vertebrae clean through. He’s a lucky boy not to be paralysed.’

‘Shit,’ Whizz said with feeling. ‘He’ll be off for a while then.’

‘Sure will,’ I said. ‘Can I leave it to you?’

He hesitated. ‘Does he need everything this evening or will tomorrow do?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘I’m just passing on the message.’

‘It’s my wedding anniversary today,’ Whizz said. ‘Promised the wife I’d be home early. Got some friends coming over for dinner and the hospital’s in the wrong direction.’ He paused as if thinking. ‘I’ll do it in the morning before I get here.’

‘If you pack up his things, I’ll drop them in,’ I said. ‘I have to go into town anyway. My sons have been at an Easter-holiday sports club at Cheltenham College. I’m picking them up soon and the hospital’s just across the road.’

‘That would be great, thank you,’ said Whizz. ‘I’ll try to get someone to drive his car home.’ He picked up a Tupperware box containing several sets of car keys and rifled through it. ‘Dick’s will be in here somewhere.’

‘Do you also look after Jason Conway?’ I asked. ‘He’s in the same hospital with concussion.’

‘Sure do,’ he said. ‘Got his car keys in here too. In the old days, back when I was riding, wives and girlfriends always came racing to drive us home if we got injured, but now they all have jobs, or kids to look after.’ He made it sound like a retrograde step. ‘I may have to leave the cars until tomorrow now but they’ll be safe enough overnight in the car park.’

While talking, he’d been stuffing things into two large plastic carrier bags.

‘This one’s Dick’s,’ he said, holding out the bag in his right hand, ‘and this is Jason’s.’ He held out the other. ‘Tell them I say hi and not to worry about their cars. I’ll make some calls and get someone to share lifts here tomorrow to drive them home after.’

‘Thanks, I’ll tell them,’ I said, taking the two bags.

Acting as a delivery girl for Jason Conway had not exactly been on my agenda but, I supposed, in for one, in for them both.

‘How about the girl?’ Whizz said. ‘Ellie. Someone told me she’d broken her leg.’

‘Simple fracture of the fibula,’ I said. ‘She’s been sent home wearing a boot.’

He nodded and went back to removing the mud from the saddle. ‘She’ll sort herself out then. Tough old bird, she is.’

Tough? Yes. Old? No. Bird? Maybe.

I left Whizz and his fellow valets busily packing kit into large rectangular wicker baskets. At least, with a two-day meeting, much of it could remain here overnight stacked ready to be washed and dried in the laundry room adjoining the changing room, in time for it to be worn and dirtied once again, and so the cycle went on relentlessly, day after day.

Horseracing was now a seven-day-a-week business with some 1,500 days of racing annually, spread across the sixty official British racecourses, to say nothing of hundreds of point-to-point meetings in addition. Indeed, there were only a couple of blank days in the whole year, at Christmas.

I took the two plastic bags into the medical room to find that only one of the nurses remained, everyone else having already gone to tea.

‘I’m just locking up,’ said the nurse.

‘I just want to check that everything’s been entered on the computer,’ I said. ‘I’ll only be a minute. You go on. I’ll lock up.’

She handed me the bunch of keys and put on her coat over her uniform scrubs.

‘See you in a minute then,’ she said. ‘You know where to put the keys?’

I nodded. ‘In the key-safe in the Clerk of the Course’s office.’

I checked that all three of the jockeys sent to hospital had been given a Red Entry on RIMANI and that they were all CMA-Red, meaning that each would need clearance from the Chief Medical Adviser before riding again.