I had it all planned, you see. We would arrive at the racecourse on a beautiful sunny day. There would be burnished, stick-legged thoroughbreds, their jockeys in billowing bright silks, careening past. Perhaps a brass band or two. The stands would be full of cheering people, and we would find a space from which to wave our winning betting slips. Will’s competitive streak would kick in and he would be unable to resist calculating the odds and making sure he won more than either Nathan or me. I had worked it all out. And then, when we had had enough of watching the horses, we would go to the well-reviewed racecourse restaurant and have a slap-up meal.
I should have listened to my father. ‘Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?’ he would say. ‘Plan a fun family day out.’
It started with the car park. We drove there without incident, me now a little more confident that I wasn’t going to tip Will over if I went faster than 15 mph. I had looked up the directions at the library, and kept up a cheerful banter almost the whole way there, commenting on the beautiful blue sky, the countryside, the lack of traffic. There were no queues to enter the racecourse, which was, admittedly, a little less grand than I had expected, and the car park was clearly marked.
But nobody had warned me it was on grass, and grass that had been driven over for much of a wet winter at that. We backed into a space (not hard, as it was only half full) and almost as soon as the ramp was down Nathan looked worried.
‘It’s too soft,’ he said. ‘He’s going to sink.’
I glanced over at the stands. ‘Surely, if we can get him on to that pathway we’ll be okay?’
‘It weighs a ton, this chair,’ he said. ‘And that’s forty feet away.’
‘Oh, come on. They must build these chairs to withstand a bit of soft ground.’
I backed Will’s chair down carefully and then watched as the wheels sank several inches into the mud.
Will said nothing. He looked uncomfortable, and had been silent for much of the half-hour drive. We stood beside him, fiddling with his controls. A breeze had picked up, and Will’s cheeks grew pink.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ll do it manually. I’m sure we can manage to get there between us.’
We tilted Will backwards. I took one handle and Nathan took the other and we dragged the chair towards the path. It was slow progress, not least because I had to keep stopping because my arms hurt and my pristine boots grew thick with dirt. When we finally made it to the pathway, Will’s blanket had half slipped off him and had somehow got caught up in his wheels, leaving one corner torn and muddy.
‘Don’t worry,’ Will said, dryly. ‘It’s only cashmere.’
I ignored him. ‘Right. We’ve made it. Now for the fun bit.’
Ah yes. The fun bit. Who thought it would be a good idea for racecourses to have turnstiles? It was hardly as if they needed crowd control, surely? It’s not as if there were crowds of chanting racehorse fans, threatening riots if Charlie’s Darling didn’t make it back in third, rioting stable-girls who needed penning in and keeping out. We looked at the turnstile, and then back at Will’s chair, and then Nathan and I looked at each other.
Nathan stepped over to the ticket office and explained our plight to the woman inside. She tilted her head to look at Will, then pointed us towards the far end of the stand.
‘The disabled entrance is over there,’ she said.
She said disabled like someone entering a diction contest. It was a good 200 yards away. By the time we finally made it over there the blue skies had disappeared abruptly, replaced by a sudden squall. Naturally, I hadn’t brought an umbrella. I kept up a relentless, cheerful commentary about how funny this was and how ridiculous, and even to my ears I had begun to sound brittle and irritating.
‘Clark,’ said Will, finally. ‘Just chill out, okay? You’re being exhausting.’
We bought tickets for the stands, and then, almost faint with relief at finally having got there, I wheeled Will out to a sheltered area just to the side of the main stand. While Nathan sorted out Will’s drink, I had some time to look at our fellow racegoers.
It was actually quite pleasant at the base of the stands, despite the occasional spit of rain. Above us, on a glass-fronted balcony, men in suits proffered champagne glasses to women in wedding outfits. They looked warm and cosy, and I suspected that was the Premier Area, listed next to some stratospheric price on the board in the ticket kiosk. They wore little badges on red thread, marking them out as special. I wondered briefly if it was possible to colour our blue ones a different shade, but decided that being the only people with a wheelchair would probably make us a little conspicuous.
Beside us, dotted along the stands and clutching polystyrene cups of coffee and hip flasks, were men in tweedy suits and women in smart padded coats. They looked a little more everyday, and their little badges were blue too. I suspected that many of them were trainers and grooms, or horsey people of some sort. Down at the front, by little whiteboards, stood the tic-tac men, their arms waving in some strange semaphore that I couldn’t understand. They scribbled up new combinations of figures, and scrubbed them out again with the base of their sleeves.
And then, like some parody of a class system, around the parade ring stood a group of men in striped polo shirts, who clutched beer cans and who seemed to be on some kind of outing. Their shaved heads suggested some kind of military service. Periodically they would break out into song, or begin some noisy, physical altercation, ramming each other with blunt heads or wrapping their arms around each other’s necks. As I passed to go to the loo, they catcalled me in my short skirt (I appeared to be the only person in the whole of the stands in a skirt) and I flipped them the finger behind my back. And then they lost interest as seven or eight horses began skirting around each other, eased into the stands with workmanlike skill, all preparing for the next race.
And then I jumped as around us the small crowd roared into life and the horses bolted from the starting gate. I stood and watched them go, suddenly transfixed, unable to suppress a flurry of excitement at the tails suddenly streaming out behind them, the frantic efforts of the brightly coloured men atop them, all jostling for position. When the winner crossed the finishing line it was almost impossible not to cheer.
We watched the Sisterwood Cup, and then the Maiden Stakes, and Nathan won six pounds on a small each-way bet. Will declined to bet. He watched each race, but he was silent, his head retracted into the high collar of his jacket. I thought perhaps he had been indoors so long that it was bound to all feel a little weird for him, and I decided I was simply not going to acknowledge it.