Free A Disturbing Influence by Julian Mitchell Page B

gnawing my hero-worshipping heart.
    A single full-bellied cloud drifts majestically above the bending races. Next is the jumping. Already Molly has won a blue rosette. Shylock wears it on his bridle, not sure whether to ignore it or treat it as an excuse to misbehave. At first I had enjoyed myself, strolling among the cars, noting two Bentleys, a Hudson and Cartersfield’s only really interesting car, an Atalanta. Then I reached the Simpsons’ Rover. Molly was sitting down, picking at the grass by the rug, her jockey cap hiding most of her hair, though the soft curly down on her neck was visible, slightly ragged, like the first drifting seaweed that promises land. Shylock pawed at the ground near by, occasionally lifting his head to watch in astonishment as other horses minced and snorted by.
    ‘I hope you do very well.’
    ‘Thank you.’ The hand—I had held it how many times now? Still single figures—went on scrabbling at the dry short grass by the rug, a red-and-green tartan.
    ‘How are you doing so far?’
    ‘One second in the potato race.’
    ‘Terrific!’
    ‘We could have been first, but Shylock got so excited. He prances about so much as soon as we get in the ring.’
    ‘But second is jolly good.’
    ‘We could have been first, though.’
    I squatted down beside her and said: ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘There’s no need to be sorry,’ she said. ‘It was my fault for not controlling him properly. But he can be such a pig .’
    Molly nervous, plucking at the hard white dry grass, her cap on tears hovering about her face, eyes cloudy.
    ‘Can I do anything?’
    ‘No, thanks awfully.’
    ‘Well, good luck. I shall be watching you.’
    No response, she missed her cue, eyes on Shylock, Molly in a world of horses, who wants horses? Silverstone starts in two minutes. I must be off. I get up.
    ‘I’m sure you’ll win.’
    ‘That’s me,’ she said, listening to an announcement, not to me. She jumped up—Molly in jodhpurs!—untied Shylock, led him away from the cars, put one foot in the stirrup, and then she was up. Molly vaulting, one leg flinging up and over, be careful, Molly, avoid violence, treat your body with tenderness, don’t do the splits, don’t have a fall.
    And she was off to the parade ring. I went to the car, to the radio, to Stirling Moss. It could have been a big day for the BRM. Molly nearly fell off in the bending, fell dangling a-straddle Shylock’s neck, and I was out of the car before she’d grabbed his mane and slithered, me watching in outrage, back to the saddle. Such litheness, such a supple slither. Back in the car it was the nineteenth lap and the BRM was doing well, very well. But then the fatal twenty-fifth, and Moss retired. I got out of the car and stretched.
    ‘Is it over at last?’ said my mother.
    ‘Moss has been forced to retire.’
    They looked at me as though I was mad. They understood an exact and perfect circle of nothing.
    ‘At least it’s better than listening to cricket,’ said the traitor Jane.
    ‘I suppose tennis is exciting,’ I said. ‘Bang-bang, bang-bang, love-fifteen, bang, fifteen all, bang-bang, bang-bang, thirty-fifteen, bang-bang——’
    ‘Oh, be quiet, Teddy, for heaven’s sake,’ said my mother.
    Jane had developed a passion for some ludicrous tennis player.I sat as far from her as possible to watch the jumping. She stuck out her tongue at me. I ignored her, superbly.
    At last came Molly, trotting out of the parade ring, making a neat turn before breaking into a canter and heading Shylock into the first jump. As she went over, the white number tied round her waist (what a salmon-thin, salmon-sprung waist!), her body flat along Shylock’s withers and reaching neck, my right leg jumped with them, sympathetic magic. Oh witchcraft in white numbers, the girl jumped over the horse, and the moon shone for ever on Molly Simpson and Edward Gilchrist as they walked out into an eternal blaze of dawn and dusk, all midday and midnight vanished and