Low life
Nag, nag, nag
Jeffrey Bernard
Ican't say I told you so because I didn't. I was what is laughingly called on holiday, meaning that I had forgotten my lines and dried up. Anyway, even if I had told you that I felt very strongly that Saumarez would win the Ciga Prix de L'Arc de Triomphe you wouldn't have taken any notice of me. I rallied sufficiently by the end of the week to tell Sunday Mirror readers just that but I doubt if even one of its vast readership availed themselves of the hint. You only have to raise a glass to your lips once or twice in the course of a day and everyone thinks you're daft.
Anyway, Saumarez had been on my mind for quite a few days before the race. I had read all I could about the horse, fancied him and then got a loud whisper about him from France. I also had a strong gut feeling but that may have been from putting too much freshly squeezed orange juice in my vodka. Very acid stuff. So, on Friday morning and on the spur of the moment, I phoned Victor Chandler and enquired about Saumarez. The man in the office told me that Corals were offering 16-1 but he said I could help myself to 20-1 so I did. Not an enormous helping but enough.
On Sunday an old friend came around to have lunch and watch the television, as is his wont on big race days. While some of the horses began to sweat up in the paddock I was sweating over a kedgeree, my friend's favourite dish. I was also praying so hard it was giving me a pain in the chest. It must be agony to be a monk or a nun. Although Saumarez was well placed throughout the race I was feeling pessimis- tic. Then, when he hit the front coming into the straight I knew he had it. I felt quite sick. I am not sure whether it was because of winning, praying too hard, too much vodka and orange juice or eating the kedgeree too quickly. When I recovered my cool, and I very rarely lose it over a punt on a horse race, I began to feel somewhat saddened by the thought of what must have been going through Charles St George's mind. For the benefit of those of you who don't know about these things, Charles owned Saumarez and then sold it earlier this year to go racing in France. Last Sunday the Arc was worth approximately f500,000 to the winner. It doesn't bear thinking about.
Mind you, it shows what a good judge of a yearling he is. Saumarez cost only £45,000, not much nowadays and a snip for an eventual Arc winner. Now Charles has got a two-year-old called Peter Davies who won a very good race at Newmarket last week and was immediately installed in the betting for next year's Derby at 33-1. I would dearly love to see him pull that off. So now I have somewhat mixed feelings about the Arc. .I know that there is a cheque in the post but I still keep wonder- ing how Charles must have felt when the field turned into the straight.
Oh well, the cheque will be useful, particularly since my daughter, Isabel, is coming back from Spain today where she has been staying with her mother for the past four months. Her mother was the wife who left me in my car. If she left me now I suppose she would do so on my crutches. But I can't bear the idea of having to pull myself together even for the short time my daughter will be staying with me. And she nags. Her greeting is always the same: `Have you remembered to take your in- sulin today?' No, I bloody well haven't. I haven't remembered anything since Saumarez.
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