‘Good old boy, clever old Arthur.’ Blithely unaware of this catastrophe, Lysander came trundling through the fog into what indeed looked like the remains of the Light Brigade, with mud-coated horses and riders picking themselves out of the quagmire with varying degrees of success. Holding Arthur steady, standing back once again, Lysander jumped to the right. Seeing a huddled jockey motionless beneath him, Arthur veered to the left in mid-air, like a Zeppelin changing course, and though pecking on landing, was brilliantly picked up by Lysander. As Arthur flatfooted carefully through the chaos, Lysander was aware of a grimy drenched figure running along beside him.

‘Bluey,’ Lysander shouted in horror. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Sure. Pridie’s buggered off home. Go get that fucker on The Prince of Darkness.’

We will, thought Lysander, as he cantered Arthur up the hill, waiting for the great roar from the crowd which would tell him that the leaders had emerged from the fog. But it never came. They couldn’t be too far ahead.

‘Sock it to them.’ It was Jimmy Jardine, cadging a cigarette from someone in the crowd as he walked an utterly knackered Blarney Stone back home.

‘Come on, Arthur,’ urged Lysander. ‘We’ve got a train to catch.’

The further the old horse galloped the better he seemed to go, like a Volvo that needed a long run. Dying with pride, Lysander was riding like a dream now, sitting very quietly, letting Arthur choose his own pace and the place to jump, his great stride devouring the ground.

Then Lysander gave a strangled whoop of joy as, through the mist, he glimpsed Isa Lovell’s blood-red colours and the sleek black rump of The Prince of Darkness only a fence ahead. Male Nurse was beside him harrying him, giving him a taste of his own medicine.

Hitting the next fence, The Prince of Darkness veered to the right, went wide round the corner and lost a few yards, as Arthur pounded up on the inside, hugging the rails. Male Nurse was at last in the lead, but, just as Rupert had predicted, he was a young horse, and when he saw this huge yelling mass of faces, waving their arms and making more noise than he’d ever heard, his head came up and his jockey felt him coming back, and both Arthur and The Prince of Darkness passed him.

Arthur loved crowds. Now was the time for a bit of showing off, but The Prince was still three lengths ahead. They were into the home straight with two fences to go.

Lysander could see the hoof marks of earlier runners. He must keep his nerve. Ahead, The Prince, furious at being challenged, was looming over from the right determined to squeeze him out. If he froze for a second, it would cost him the race. For a second, Isa Lovell glanced round, his face torn with hatred.

‘Campbell-Black’s bumboy,’ he hissed.

That did it. Remembering the ride-offs in polo, Lysander asked Arthur to push through. White elephants don’t forget. Not wanting to be bitten again, Arthur put on an incredible burst of speed, just grazing The Prince as they drew alongside, thundering neck and neck to the last fence. Meeting it spot-on, Arthur took a great kangaroo leap.

That must put us two lengths ahead, thought Lysander, but soon The Prince’ll rally and catch up.

‘Oh, go on, Arthur,’ he begged.

And Arthur gallantly slogged on up the hill as fast as his great raking stride would take him. But now there were only the ghosts of previous winners to challenge him because The Prince of Darkness had fallen, brought down by the last fence.

‘May I borrow your binoculars, Kitty?’ asked Hermione. ‘This bit looks rather exciting.’

‘No, you may not,’ said Kitty, snatching them back. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly hold them still. Oblivious of Rannaldini’s howl of rage when The Prince had fallen, she was now screaming her head off with excitement. Arthur cleared the last fence and, with a vigour utterly belying his thirteen years, gallumphed towards the post. Lysander had no need to pick up his whip.

David Hawkley thought his heart would burst with pride and there was never such a roar of amazed delight at Rutminster as Arthur came up the straight, his great feet splaying out, rolling along like the bull terrier at the end of The Incredible Journey, lop ears flapping, to catch every word his young master was saying.

‘My Christ,’ said Rupert, who’d completely recovered his good temper, putting his arm round a joyfully sobbing Taggie. ‘Is that the same old donkey who was always last on the gallops? Come on, Arthur. He’s fucking going to do it.’

‘God, the boy rides like an angel,’ said Ricky France-Lynch in delight.

As if someone had tossed a match into a box of fireworks, the entire Venturer Box erupted in ecstasy.

‘Come on, Arfur, you can fucking do it,’ screamed Kitty, to the amazement of Hermione and the chairman of the New World Phil, and the white-faced, quivering fury of Rannaldini.

‘Come on, Lysander,’ howled Guy and Georgie clutching each other.

Glancing round, Lysander saw Male Nurse ebbing away in the distance. Realizing it was in the bag, and with the post only fifty yards away, he gave a great Tarzan howl of joy that was drowned in the deafening roar of the crowd.

‘We’ve done it, Arthur!’ he yelled and, completely forgetting Rupert’s warning, he punched a fist in the air.

This seemed to startle and unbalance Arthur, who’d always veered to the left when he was tired. Suddenly he stumbled, and to the collective horror of the crowd, he reeled, utterly punch-drunk for a second, then lurched quite out of control towards the rails. Crashing into them, he hurled Lysander over his head within a yard of the finishing post.

For a moment Lysander lay still. Then, dragging himself groggily to his feet, he staggered over to Arthur, collapsing on top of him. Flinging his arms round the horse’s great white motionless body, he pummelled at him with his fists, sobbing his heart out.

The racecourse fell silent. There was hardly a cheer as Male Nurse slid wearily past the post. It was as though the mute button had been pressed on the whole crowd. Utterly appalled, many in tears, they watched the so-recently joyful and youthful conqueror, blood and phlegm pouring from his nose on to his muddy shirt and breeches, as he slumped crying piteously over the huge ugly horse, whose gallant best in the end had not been enough.

The next moment Tabitha had raced up from the stable-lads’ stand and, collapsing, sobbed dementedly beside Lysander.

‘Oh, Arthur, darling Arthur, wake up! I don’t believe it.’

Walking quietly back, leading a shaken but unharmed Prince of Darkness, Isa Lovell dropped a sympathetic hand briefly on her shoulder as he passed.

Before Rannaldini could stop her, Kitty had fled from the box, clattering down the grey stone steps, shoving her way through the boiling cauldron of crowd.

‘What ’appened, me darlin’?’ asked an Irishman.

‘Arfur’s dead, broken his neck,’ sobbed Kitty. It seemed to take hours to battle her way round the paddock, where Arthur had shambled so jauntily only half an hour ago. Barging into the changing room, she pushed past jockeys in various stages of undress and some with just coloured towels round their hips, but all utterly shocked as they looked on helplessly.

Lysander sat huddled in a chair, his head in his hands. Rupert in a mad rage was yelling at him.

‘You fucking bloody idiot goofing off like that. If you’d kept him straight, he’d never have crashed into the rails. Why didn’t you bloody listen to me?’

‘Shut up, Rupert,’ yelled Kitty back. ‘It weren’t Lysander’s fault.’

Lysander looked up. His face was a chaos of tears, blood and mud.

‘Oh, Kitty, I let him down.’

‘No, you didn’t, my lambkin.’ Kitty flung her arms round Lysander’s frantically shuddering body, cradling his head against her breasts. ‘You rode the most wonderful race in the world. They forget winners in a week, but Arfur’ll be remembered for ever. He won really. His great ’eart just gave out.’

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ roared Rupert. ‘He broke his fucking neck.’

‘How d’you know it was that, you great bully?’ screamed Kitty. ‘It might have been his ’eart, or his legs givin’ out, and then he broke his neck fallin’ into the rails. There hasn’t been a post-mortem. It’s all right, pet, it wasn’t your fault.’ She clung to Lysander trying to warm him and still his sobs.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ A chill had entered the room, a waft of Maestro mingled with the stench of sweat and antiseptic. Beneath his icy calm, such was the gale force of Rannaldini’s fury that the jockeys drew back.

‘Do you want to make a complete fool of yourself?’ he hissed at Kitty, then nodding icily at Rupert. ‘Sorry about the horse. It was bad luck to lose like that. Come, Kitty, you are needed in the box. We have guests to entertain.’

Lysander looked up in bewilderment.

‘Don’t go,’ he said, hanging on to Kitty in anguish. ‘Please don’t leave me.’

Clamping Kitty’s arm like a vice, Rannaldini almost dragged her out of the changing room. On the way they passed David Hawkley.

‘Where’s Lysander?’

‘In there. Please look after ’im,’ begged Kitty. ‘He needs you so badly.’

For a second, David took her rough, frozen hands.

‘You OK?’

‘Yes, yes,’ sobbed Kitty. ‘But I should ’ave lighted a candle for Arfur as well.’

Only when they were outside among the crowds did Rannaldini let rip a lethal lava of invective, far worse than any of his screaming tantrums to the London Met. Hypnotized by his frenziedly yelling mouth, his black-maddened flashing eyes, sickened by the smell of frying hamburgers and the animal reek of wet sheepskin coats all round her, Kitty started to sway. Suddenly she crumpled and was sent flying by a fractious crowd, deprived of the result they wanted and pushing through to watch the next race. As she was trampled underfoot she lost consciousness.