Iced by Felix Francis

Author:Felix Francis [Francis, Felix]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2021-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

I make it through Shuttlecock with no problems on my first run of the day, partly because I have heeded my own advice at the top and have taken it fairly easy, raking hard into the turn.

‘Pussett down in five-three point four-one,’ says Tower.

Not bad. Slower than my two completed runs in the Grand National, but it’s still not bad. I’ll try and go faster next time.

I lift my toboggan from the track and load it onto the camion for the ride back to Top. With luck I’ll get in a couple of runs before the control tower decides to switch the start point to Junction for the beginners’ first attempts.

The camion waits for a couple more riders and then we are off, negotiating the 514ft change in altitude between Top and the finish, a vertical separation of more than three times the drop over Niagara Falls.

I sit on a bench in the waiting hut until it is my turn.

‘Miles Pussett to the box,’ comes the call.

It’s pulse-racing time once more – and how I love it.

Shuttlecock spares me again, but only just.

I am beginning to master the line I should take at these speeds – surprisingly starting the turn slightly higher on the wall so that I can use gravity to steer left and down as it tightens.

I am laughing out loud as I speed down Bledisloe Straight, streaking under the road bridge and on towards the finish.

At long last, I am beginning to understand this ice.

This time the camion takes me back to the clubhouse – my fun temporarily on hold as the start switches for the next hour from Top to Junction.

Time for a coffee.

Sitting in the clubhouse bar is David Maitland-Butler.

‘Hello, Colonel, what brings you here?’

He seems as surprised to see me as I him. ‘I’m a member.’

‘Really? Since when?’

‘Since before you were born.’ He says it in a manner that is designed to make me feel foolish. ‘I used to be a regular here. I was in the Army team that won the Inter-Services Cup back in the eighties.’

‘Has it changed much?’

‘We never had any of these fancy sliding suits or full-face helmets they use now. Just a pair of coveralls and an old motorcycle dispatch rider’s helmet with leather sides. That was good enough for us.’

He makes it sound like the change to more modern and safer equipment is definitely for the worse.

‘I thought you’d be supervising the loading of your horse.’

‘Not leaving now until tomorrow. Dickinson told me he has some trouble with his staff. Damned nuisance. Something to do with a broken ankle.’

‘How’s Jerry doing?’

‘It’s not he who has the broken ankle.’

‘I know. But he also had a fall on the ice yesterday. He hurt his face and spent last night in the local clinic.’

‘Did he? How strange. He didn’t mention it to me.’

I wonder why I don’t tell the colonel the truth, that Jerry was beaten up by the Fenton twins. Maybe it is out of loyalty to my former employer and the knowledge that the colonel would think it funny.

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