Robert decided then and there that he would join the owner’s grandson and place a bet of £25 each way on the horse. He did so with another bookmaker, not Vernons Credit Betting, and they all waited, with almost daily conferences at the Kardomah, for the great day to come.
On Saturday morning, 19 March, they met at the coffee house early, prior to Robert driving his colleagues fast back out to the Wirral to play rugby that afternoon for Birkenhead Park. Nick was there first, poring over the Sporting Life, the specialist newspaper for the horse-racing industry. As far as the others were concerned it might have been printed in Latin. But Nick had known his way around that publication almost since birth, and now he had the page open at the Four-Day Acceptors, and he was studying precisely who the opposition would be, the booked jockeys and, above all, the weights.
‘The first thing to check’, he said, ‘is the top weight … damn it. Sovereign Path’s stood its ground.’
‘I suppose there is no possibility of you breaking into English?’ said Robert. ‘What d’you mean “Damn it. Sovereign Path’s stood its ground”?’
‘Well, Sovereign Path, who is a very tough grey horse, has already won six races, one of them by ten lengths. He nearly won a classic trial last season and he is the best horse in the Lincoln. I was rather hoping he would not be ready this early in the season. But he’s in and his jockey is booked. He’ll run. Still, he has a huge amount of weight – nine stone five pounds. No horse has carried that much to win the Lincoln this century. Anyway, I don’t really think he will be happy giving us thirty pounds.’
‘Could you tell me how you know all that stuff, about the biggest weight this century and everything?’ asked Robert.
‘Oh, those are just little facts that all horse-racing people know, or somehow get to know, round about the time of the Lincoln. I think the biggest weight was carried by Dorigen who won in 1933. I’m not sure of the exact amount, but it was less than nine-five.’
‘Well, it would take me about fifty years to learn it all,’ said Robert, and then, ‘Hey! What about this horse, Courts Appeal, he’s from the O’Brien stable in Ireland. Vincent O’Brien, best trainer in the world.’
Nick looked up, grinning. Robert, flushed with success, having detonated his one shining fact about racing, decided to elaborate, and he charged on. ‘Trained the runner-up in the Derby for the same owner, John McShain, a couple of years ago, as I remember. A very shrewd man.’
Nick replied, ‘Yes, and he trained Mr McShain’s mare Gladness to win the Gold Cup a couple of years ago, and they’ll probably make Courts Appeal favourite just because O’Brien is bringing him over from Ireland. But he won’t win, not with eight stone twelve pounds.’
At this stage Robert shuddered at the thought of his early view that this was a rather ‘uncomplicated sport’, since such a notion could clearly have been considered only by a lunatic. This was the most complicated sport he had ever known. It would, he thought, take a lifetime to comprehend it.
On the day of the race, all of them were strategically placed around the city with phone lines open to Robert’s credit office to hear the result. This was, of course, long before the days of commentaries being beamed into betting shops and call-in phone lines. And when they heard the result there was a terrible hush. Chalk Stream had finished nowhere. In fact he had finished twenty-ninth out of thirty-one. Understandably Nick Robinson was a bit sheepish and did not call Robert until he had ascertained that the gelding had been very hesitant at the start, had lost his place in the general mêlée for position, and never got into the race at all. Such things happen every day in racing, but Nick was nonetheless quite upset that his new friend had lost so heavily and told him they would have another chance. Chalk Stream would come good, of that he was sure.
What he did not know was that Robert Sangster did not give a tinker’s cuss about the result, or the £50. He could not remember having had such fun (at least, not since he had flattened Tiny Davies). For weeks now he had been personally involved in this major horse race. Somehow he had lived that Lincolnshire Handicap in his mind. It was almost as if he had been there at the racecourse, listening to the roar of the crowd as the field thundered into the last furling.
In his mind he could almost hear the vicarious pounding hooves, as Sam Hall’s lightly weighted chestnut gelding Mustavon, hard under the whip, fought a gripping battle with Jim Joel’s Major General to win by three parts of a length. It had been a terrific race. There was less than a length between the first three. The big weight had beaten Sovereign Path, as it also had beaten the O’Brien-trained favourite Courts Appeal. In a strange way Robert felt a part of all this, as if their studied calculations in the Kardomah had somehow influenced the result.
There was now only one thing Robert wanted in this life. He wanted to buy a racehorse. And the racehorse he wanted to buy was Chalk Stream.
Quite frankly, Nick was flabbergasted. But Robert did not habitually make jests about matters like £1000, the sum he was offering. Nick knew his grandfather had paid only 620 guineas for Chalk Stream’s dam, Sabie River, and he set about trying to get the horse for racing’s brand new devotee. There were many conferences between Sir Foster and his trainer Arthur Budgett, but after several weeks of negotiation they agreed to sell. Robert gave the son of the stallion Midas to Christine as a wedding present. Chalk Stream would henceforth be campaigned in the colours of Mrs Robert Sangster.
The first thing Robert needed was a trainer and he wanted one close to Chester so that he and Christine could visit the horse. He chose the thirty-nine-year-old Eric Cousins, a rather dashing ex-RAF pilot who had ridden fifty winners as an amateur over the jumps. He was a top-class horseman, a keen fox-hunter and had won the great long-distance handicap, the Ascot Stakes, at the Royal Meeting in 1957, just three years after taking out his licence to train. Better yet, he was developing a burgeoning reputation for his ability to place highly trained horses into exactly the right spot on the handicap. He had just moved his horses from Rangemore, near Burton-on-Trent, right into the heart of Cheshire, at Sandy Brow Stables, outside the country town of Tarporley, less than an hour’s drive from the Wirral.
Chalk Stream journeyed north from the historic Budgett stables of Whatcombe in Berkshire and met his new trainer. He was already fit and sharp, but Cousins set about trying to improve him. He ran him often and the horse showed courage running into the first four on four occasions and then winning, on one glorious afternoon at Haydock Park, eleven miles out of Liverpool. It was a little handicap named after the nearby village of Hermitage Green, but Chalk Stream won it by two lengths at 3–1. Robert and Christine and all of the entourage, including, of course, a massively relieved Nick Robinson, had the most wonderful celebration.
Then Cousins worked the magic again, sending Chalk Stream to victory at the old Manchester Racecourse in early October. It was quite a competitive little contest, its prize money sponsored by a local dog-food firm, and afterwards Eric Cousins announced that he would now prepare Chalk Stream for a shot at a big race, the Liverpool Autumn Cup, to be run on the flat at Aintree, almost opposite the Vernons Pools offices, on a Friday afternoon in the dying days of the flat race season, 4 November. The prize money was about £1000 to the winning owner.
Robert had rarely known such overpowering elation (not since Tiny hit the deck, anyway) as he experienced in the days leading up to that great North Country handicap. Just to have a chance. Just to be in there with a horse. To be at the local racecourse with all of his friends. What a day it was going to be.
The weights were announced. Chalk Stream was in with seven stone two pounds. ‘Is that good?’ asked Robert. ‘That’s very adequate,’ replied Cousins, which Robert took to mean: ‘We’re in with a real shout here.’ He proceeded to have what was the biggest bet of his life, £100 on the nose. Chalk Stream to win. ‘I’ll take 9–1.’ They all went in, some of them with ten bob, Nick with £25.
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