“I don’t know what to say, kid. Gooch isn’t likely to change his mind.” He pressed his teeth together hard, making the muscles in his jaw jump. “I’ll tell you one thing, though, everyone on the track will know what’s what. You’ve done the work with her. All I’m getting is the ride.”
When he’d gone I stared at the wall, my heart shuddering in place. There had been times in my life when I might have deserved this sort of comeuppance. I couldn’t pretend otherwise. Eric’s wife had no doubt heard an earful of gossip about me, but I hadn’t so much as put a finger on him. I had worried over Wise Child, nurtured and babied her, loved her. Now she’d been taken from my stables, my hands.
Not even Ruta could talk to me.
At the post, ten horses ripple and stamp, their jockeys light, brilliant as feathers. They’re poised to run, dying to run, and when the starter gives his signal, they do. Ruta stands behind me in Delamere’s box. We both feel Wise Child in the field, quivering like music. Every horse is glorious. Each has a story and a magnificent will, blood and muscle, clean legs and flying tail—but none of them is like her. They none of them have her strength.
Sonny knows how to get everything from our filly, but little by little. One pulsing beat at a time. He intuits when to coax her or hold her back, or inch her into a waiting, almost infinitesimal gap. She has speed and smoothness, and a reserve of something else, something undefined—but will it be enough?
Soon, everyone in the grandstand comes to their feet, craning to see bits of coloured silk above churning legs, the stakes high or negligible. None of that matters. The money is an afterthought, something to play at, shells on a table. The horses, though. The horses live, and Wise Child is more soulful and alive than she has ever been or ever will be. She gains on a black stallion, then a chestnut, and a creamy filly. Flank and rail, shadow and silky animal grace. At the final turn she has the lead. A nose at first, then a body length. Two.
Ruta puts a hand on my shoulder. My stomach leaps into my throat, my ears. There isn’t a sound in the crowd of thousands, none that I can hear. Somewhere Eric Gooch is watching with his wife, dying a little to see his horse in front. But he won’t see what I see. No one knows what to look for except me and Ruta, and Sonny. How Wise Child lists from the rail. A snag, a falter, a flickering sway that amounts to less than a fraction of a moment. Her legs are going. They’ve done all they can for her.
The field closes on her as I lurch backwards, into Ruta’s chest. I feel his steady drumming heart with my whole body, the beating of a long-ago ngoma, the pounding of arap Maina’s fist against the taut hide of his shield, and that’s how I can bear the rest of it, when I want to cry and scream and go to her, stopping the race. Everything. Can’t the world see that she’s thrown all of herself on that track, and that it isn’t enough?
Then, somehow, from a place beyond sense or strategy, she breaks forward, unpinned from her body’s flaws and marvels. It’s only courage that takes her the final distance. Only grit. When her muzzle hits the tape, the crowd releases the flare of a single collective cheer. Even the losers have triumphed with her, for she has shown them something more than a race.
There is a bright blur of thrown tickets, bodies crowding the rails and gate. The band begins to play. Only Ruta and I are still. Our girl has done more than win. With those legs, with not much more than her heart, she’s broken the St. Leger record.
Even when he was very old, and horses were behind him, and Africa, too, Sonny Bumpus would keep a silver cigarette case in his pocket that I’d engraved for him with Wise Child’s name and the date of our St. Leger. He was fond of taking it out and stroking the warm and gleaming top with his thumb, ready to tell anyone who would listen about the ride of his life, and how I’d brought back Wise Child from a near-crippled state to produce one of the greatest victories in the history of racing.
Sonny was a good egg. He had had that moment of perfect flight, but he gave the greater part of the glory to me. And though Eric Gooch never came crawling to give Wise Child back, or even thank me, most of the colony was ready to praise my accomplishments. Later that season, Ruta and I had a string of validating wins. Welsh Guard triumphed at Eldoret, Melton Pie took the Christmas Handicap, and our own Pegasus won gold at three gymkhanas running.
In February, I began to train Dovedale, a horse of Ben Birkbeck’s, and when I met him at D’s hotel in Nakuru to talk over our strategy, Ginger Mayer was on his arm. I hadn’t seen very much of her since Karen’s shooting party, but she looked lovely and content now, her bright red hair pulled back on one side with a jewelled clip, her pale skin flawless. On her left hand sat a fat pearl ring. Apparently, she and Ben were engaged. She’d made quick work of it, too; his divorce from Cockie had been finalized only months before.