(1980) Reflex by Francis Dick

Author:Francis, Dick [Dick, Francis,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-06-30T14:53:17.390000+00:00

"She's got the message," I said, and he said "Good," and we arranged for me to give him his pictures outside the weighing room during the running of the last race.

Daylight's race was third on the card, and Chain-mail's the fourth. When I went out for the third I was stopped on my way from weighing room to parade ring by a pleasant-mannered woman who I realized with delayed shock was Marie Millace.

Marie Millace with scarcely a trace showing of the devastation of her face. Mrs. Millace on her febt, dressed in brown, pale and ill-looking, but healed.

"You said there wouldn't be a mark," she said, 'and there isn't." "You look great." "Can I talk to you?" I looked to where all the other jockeys I'd started out with were already filing into the parade ring.

"Well... how about later? How about.." um... after the fourth race.

After I've changed. In the warm somewhere." She mentioned a particular bar, and we agreed on it, and I went on to the ring where Harold and Victor Briggs waited. Neither of them said anything to me, nor I to them. Everything of importance had already been said and for the unimportant there was no appetite.

Harold gave me a leg up onto Daylight, and I

nodded to him and Victor and got a grade-one blank Briggs stare in return.

There was no certainty that day that Daylight would win. With much stronger opponents, he wasn't even favourite, let alone odds-on.

I cantered down to the starting gate thinking about courage, which was not normally a word I found much in my mind. The process of getting a horse to go fast over jumps seemed to me merely natural, and something I very much liked doing. One knew theoretically that there would be falls and injuries, but the risk of them seldom affected the way I rode. I had no constant preoccupation with my own safety.

On the other hand I'd never been reckless, as some were, as Steve Millace was, and perhaps my aim had been a little too much to bring myself and the horse back together, and not enough to throw my heart over a fence and let the horse catch up if he could.

It was the latter style of riding that Victor Briggs would expect on that day. My own fault, I thought.

And moreover I'd have to do it twice.

On Daylight it turned out to be fairly easy, as his jumping style held good even though I could sense his surprise at the change of mental gears in his rider.

The telepathic quality of horses, that remarkable extra sense, picked up instantaneously the strength of my intention, and although I knew horses did tune in in that way, it freshly amazed me. One got Used to a certain response from horses, because it was to oneself they were responding. When one's own cast of mind changed radically, so did the horse's response.

Dayligh! and I therefore turned in what was for us a thoroughly uncharacteristic performance, leaving more to luck than judgement.

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