The small groups of travelling headlads and trainers, to whom Perry always turned in his never-ending quest for rides, watched him with keen interest. It was enough to have been dropped by the accursed horse at all; but to have been dropped in the area habitually frequented by his would-be employers was the biggest indignity of all. They continued to survey him intently.

His young face was grey; he knew that from the unrelenting ache in his shoulder. It was also contorted; an unwelcome sign that could not be avoided in the throws of agony.

‘We’d better get you in to the course doctor, my lad,’ announced a paddock official, standing over him. He hadn’t even bothered with the more usual ‘are you okay?’ which leant itself so readily to the lie of ‘fine, thanks’. Perry, who would still have attempted the ‘fine, thanks’ had he been given the opportunity, nodded resignedly, then buried his face in his arms and gave up on the contortions which had kept the tears at bay. The official waited patiently, then helped him to his feet.

‘Sent you a real pearler, didn’t he, mate?’

It was stating the obvious; and, besides, Perry found it too painful to nod.

‘Still, at least you weighed out. Get to keep your riding fee, don’t you?’

They continued on, with gentle steps, in silence for a while.

‘I guess you’ll be needing it, too, if the doctor signs you off for a spell.’

Perry shot him a sideways glance.

The official smiled knowingly. ‘Usually the lads I help up say they’re fine.’ He shook his head with wry amusement. ‘We grew up with the Bogey Man to keep us in our place - you lads seem to have been raised on the threat of the course doctor!’

‘Stipe’ is a bit of a dirty word, too,’ Perry said, feigning a shudder and at once regretting it.

‘Ah yes; our friends the stipendiary stewards. Always at the ready to report misdemeanours. On a commission, are they?!’

They arrived, in fairly good humour, at the weighing room - just a few yards from the parade ring, though it felt to Perry like miles.

‘Chin up, lad,’ advised his comrade, cheerily. Perry raised a smile, then stepped into enemy territory.

The Powers That Be moved swiftly. As he took his seat in front of the desk occupied by Doctor Cunningham, Perry spied his own medical history book already lying before them. Lying.

‘Oooh,’ hissed Cunningham through his teeth, ‘you’ve taken quite a knock, haven’t you?’ He gently unpinned Perry’s silks and opened the first few buttons; revealing a false white polo-neck collar and bare flesh.

‘Trouble making the weight?’ Cunningham asked conversationally, pulling back the silks from a profusely bleeding shoulder. He tutted to himself at the injustice of his world. ‘Re-used horse shoes,’ he muttered in annoyance, ‘how much are a set of light-weight racing shoes? There’s surely no need to keep using them and re-using them until they wear down to razor blades.’

He unbuttoned the silks fully and removed them. One blood-stained silk shoulder was nothing but torn threads, the lesser victim of a parting kick from a departing horse. ‘Those second-hand shoes don’t look quite such a bargain now, do they?’

He gently fingered the raw skin, satisfied that stitches were unnecessary. Perry winced, as he awaited the inevitable.

‘A bit of a mess, but largely superficial,’ Cunningham declared. ‘The collarbone looks to be broken, though. You’d better step into the x-ray.’ He smiled sympathetically.

Perry donned the paper-like tunic with obvious reluctance and shivered involuntarily as he lay down on the couch. His stomach rose up to his throat. He shut his eyes and prayed wildly.

‘Okay. It’ll take just a few minutes. I’ll sort out your shoulder while we wait.’ Cunningham spoke kindly, his bedside manner faultless. But no amount of comforting could soothe Perry’s conscience. His stomach remained in his throat and he barely noticed the searing cleansing of his shoulder.

The damning medical book lay open at the last entry, ready for that day’s results to be recorded. All falls and injuries had to be entered. Any minor injuries which did not necessitate an absence from the saddle were entered in black ink. Those which the Jockey Club doctors felt would affect a rider’s competence in a race, or which would be aggravated by race riding and the risk of further falls, were recorded in red ink. The dreaded red ink represented an enforced holiday. No rides; no riding fees; no income.

The medical book was the passport of the racing world; a jockey was not permitted to ride without one. And, until the red ink had been officially added to with the black all clear, a jockey was simply not permitted to ride - full stop. There was no avoiding it. No carelessly leaving the book at home. Failure to hand in the book for inspection at every race meeting resulted in a heavy fine. Perry could afford that just about as much as he could afford the compulsory fourteen day lay off which accompanied officially broken collarbones.

‘Hello, what’s this?’ said Cunningham, losing a little of his kindly manner as he examined the X-ray. He frowned at Perry. ‘What have we got here? A fresh break. And what looks to be an older split that hasn’t yet knitted fully. Re-opened.’

Perry swallowed. It was too soon to feign surprise convincingly enough. He tried desperately to gather his wits.

‘This previous injury couldn’t possibly be more than a fortnight old,’ Cunningham said accusingly, thumbing back through the medical book for the non-existent red ink.

‘That’s right,’ Perry said innocently, ‘I did take a fall, at home on the gallops, about two weeks ago. But I couldn’t have broken a bone. I would have known. I was fine - I rode that same afternoon.’

‘Didn’t win, though, I’ll warrant. Nor even finish in the prize money. Did you?’ His voice was stern; threatening. ‘Why didn’t you see a doctor?’

‘There was no need. I felt fine.’

‘As fine as you feel now, no doubt.’ He inhaled sharply as he reviewed the situation.

‘Please...’ Perry said weakly.

Some of Cunningham’s earlier sympathy returned. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I have to report it.’

The burning of the raw shoulder was suddenly unbearable and Perry screwed up his glistening eyes. He felt a hand on his good shoulder and didn’t shrug it off. He would gladly have accepted a hug from the enemy, extended in comfort; but Cunningham’s sympathy was still tainted with disapproval. The doctor did, however, allow him a few moment’s grace, before calling for a stipendiary steward.

Perhaps by design, Cunningham was engrossed in the rather painful fitting of a clavicle ring when the bespectacled stipendiary arrived. The stipe’ viewed the scene with squeamish distaste and much of his natural hostility evaporated.

‘Problem?’ he inquired.

‘Failure to declare an injury.’

‘Oh dear!’ the stipe’ shot a somewhat gleeful glare in Perry’s direction, but was in time to witness the strapping rub against the open cuts and averted his gaze hastily. ‘Oh dear,’ he repeated, with less enmity this time.

‘Perhaps we should tape up that shoulder,’ Cunningham mused, ‘although cuts heal so much quicker when left open.’ He pondered the awkward strapping of the clavicle ring.

‘Er; I’ll report the matter and come back later,’ the stipe’ suggested uncomfortably.

‘No need. Soon be done here; you may as well wait.’ Deciding against the bulk use of elastoplast, Cunningham persevered with the strapping and completed his task. ‘Umm; I’m not altogether happy with it. But still, it’s the best that can be done.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps in future you’ll limit yourself to just one injury at a time. Makes life so much easier.’

Perry raised a smile. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

Cunningham shook his left hand. ‘Mind how you go, now. Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

As Perry turned to leave, Cunningham handed him the medical book, with a rueful smile.

‘Don’t forget this. And remember to fetch it back in to me for today’s details to be entered.’

It was a small matter of stepping out of the jockeys’ medical room and walking a few brief paces in to the stewards’ room. Yet it was no small matter to Perry - with or without a broken collarbone. The shredded silks, replaced for decency rather than necessity, flapped in the breeze.

‘Previously broken collarbone,’ the stipe’ said, glancing briefly at the doctor’s note placed with the medical book. ‘This couldn’t have done it much good, eh?’ He looked at Perry, whose face was now more grey than ever. ‘Don’t think I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You can’t afford a two week holiday. But neither can an owner afford to see a horse finish unplaced when it might well have finished in the prize money under a fit jockey. We have to look after both sides of the fence, you know.’

‘If you’d ever ridden in a race,’ Perry retorted stiffly, ‘you’d know that an injury has no affect once the stall doors spring. I’ve never lost a race I should have won.’

‘And I don’t suppose your ribs or collarbone have ever really knitted since the day you first hit the deck.’

‘That’s for me to live with.’

‘It’s misrepresentation. My job is to safeguard the public. So maybe an owner can afford to finish out of the money. But can the average punter, who entrusts his money to your care according to the information made available to him? God knows it’s hard enough to back a winner, even with such a wide range of information. But if you keep some of it back, you’re just loading the dice against him, aren’t you?’

‘You can also blind them with science - give them so much information they drown in it.’

‘This is fraud,’ the stipe’ insisted, waving the medical book at Perry accusingly. ‘The sooner you boys understand that, the sooner we can stamp it out. Fraud.’

They stopped outside the door to the stewards’ room. The stipe’ knocked on it smartly.

‘Fred Archer rode a blinder to win the 1880 Derby, and in a close finish, too,’ said Perry. ‘They had to remove the plaster from his broken arm to enable him to ride in the race.’

‘A few people lost their money that day, then,’ the stipe’ condescended to admit.

‘They didn’t, actually. He was made 2-1 favourite. It seems the betting public know more about our lack of limitations than you do.’

‘He happened to win, with a broken arm, on the favourite,’ the stipe’ protested. ‘What if he’d passed out half way round? Or lost in that narrow finish?’

‘The point is,’ Perry insisted, ‘he didn’t. He knew his own capabilities. He didn’t ride again for another month, even though it meant missing Royal Ascot. We know when we’re fit enough to do ourselves justice - and when we’re not. We want the right to control our own lives. We’re entitled to have our own fate in our hands.’

‘And in the Victorian days you did have control of your fate! And what did you do? Removed plaster casts in order to ride in races! You boys are not fit to be left in charge of your lives! Thank heaven for the medical book system.’

‘Enter!’ An austere voice cut through the stipe’s last sentence.

Perry felt faint; the pain in his torn shoulder suddenly acute and the ache of his collarbone unbearable. ‘I need Doctor Cunningham,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Enter!’

‘Go in; they’ll let you sit down,’ the stipe’ suggested, ‘I’ll put out a call for him.’

‘Enter!’ The voice grew ever louder with impatience.

‘I feel faint,’ Perry insisted, leaning weakly against the door frame, his head bowed.

‘Go get Cunningham!’ the stipe’ snapped to a passing valet, then entered the daunting room himself.

Perry could hear the low mumble of explanations. He had never before had to go in to that room; never had to stand shame-faced on the carpet while the stewards passed judgement. He just couldn’t do it.

He slid slowly down the wall and folded up on the floor.

‘Oh, it could be any number of things,’ he heard Cunningham saying carelessly, ‘not having eaten properly for a few days; shock from the fall; nerves at the prospect of seeing you gentlemen; sheer pain; the addition of the painkiller I gave him on top of any he may have been taking himself; or a combination of any one of those things.’

It sounded to Perry serious enough to warrant another few minutes of comfortable unconsciousness, regardless of however long he may already have had, but someone had spotted his eyes twitching and unhelpfully declared, ‘he’s coming round.’

It was the stipe’, of course, Perry realised disagreeably. He opened his eyes fully and met the steady gaze of Cunningham.

‘It’s okay,’ the doctor gently reassured him, ‘you just passed out for a moment. Were you wasting for this ride today?’

Perry opened his mouth to reply, then noticed the three course stewards among those standing over him. ‘No,’ he said, rising slowly to his feet with Cunningham’s help.

‘Were you already taking something for your shoulder?’ the doctor asked.

‘No; like I said earlier, I hadn’t even realised it was fractured.’

The truth, nevertheless, shone out from his eyes and Cunningham smiled wryly.

Stepping back from Perry, Cunningham inadvertently collided with the stipe’, who had been in the process of polishing the lenses of his glasses before the doctor sent them crashing to the floor. During the jumbled exchange of apologies that ensued, Cunningham contrived to stand on the luckless spectacles and the lenses at once shattered. There was a sudden silence.

‘Sorry, old man,’ said Cunningham awkwardly.

The stipe’ picked up the slightly crumpled frames and examined them mournfully. ‘Not to worry,’ he said airily, ‘accidents will happen.’ He continued to study the frames sorrowfully as he turned them over in his hand.

One of the stewards coughed. ‘Well, then, gentlemen; if we are all ready now, perhaps we could step through in to the stewards’ room?’

Everyone murmured a general consent; although Perry flushed once more and raised a hand to his brow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said apologetically, ‘it’s this shoulder… very sore.’ He took a couple of sharp breaths and overcame the obvious pain.

‘You don’t look so very fit yourself, Victor,’ Cunningham remarked lightly to one of the stewards as they all shuffled into the room. ‘Ought to pop in to see me after racing.’

Victor smiled and patted his hip. ‘Just the old war wound, Clive. One learns to live with it, what?’

Cunningham supported Perry under his left elbow, though he didn’t feel that he needed it. ‘They don’t give you the afternoon off then, Victor, when it’s playing you up?’

Victor laughed. ‘Good Lord, no! I’m my own boss - the worst sort! Slave-driver! All voluntary, of course. We come in when we can spare the time, war wounds or no war wounds!’

‘Well, you love the sport, don’t you?’ Cunningham agreed, ‘least you can do, really, isn’t it?’

‘Quite; quite. Bite your lip and do your bit, what?’ He glanced at the anxious looking stipe’. ‘I say, Watkins, be able to manage without your specs, will you?’

‘Well, perhaps I’ll just sit in on proceedings. Perhaps Doctor Cunningham would be good enough to report the details.’ He looked at the doctor hopefully.

‘Not really my jurisdiction,’ Cunningham protested, ‘I did my duty and reported a breach of rules. End of story as far as I see it.’

‘Nonsense, Clive!’ argued Victor affably. ‘Next race doesn’t go off for another fifteen minutes. Damned sure you won’t be needed before then. Sit yourself down and join in, old man, what?’

Cunningham shrugged his assent and sat on one of the leather-clad occasional chairs, beside the stipe’. Victor and his two colleagues moved to their seats behind the large leather-topped desk, dominating one end of the long, narrow room; leaving Perry to stand before them on the plush burgundy carpet. He shot Cunningham a panic-stricken glance.

‘I think, under the circumstances, Perry should be allowed a seat,’ Cunningham suggested.

Victor looked at him disapprovingly. ‘Get Lucas a chair, Watkins.’

The stipe’ jumped up hastily and stood a vacant wooden chair behind Perry, who sat down gratefully.

‘Now then,’ Victor began, adopting an austere tone, ‘we are given to understand that a breach of rules has occured. Can you be more precise, Doctor Cunningham?’

Cunningham smiled affably. ‘Certainly, Victor. Perry here sustained an injury in his fall this afternoon, which in turn revealed a previous injury which he had failed to declare in his medical book. And which I duly reported to one of your stipendiaries.’

Three sets of Etonian-toned tuts floated out from behind the desk.

‘A serious allegation, Lucas. And what have you to say on the matter?’

Perry looked from Victor to the stipe’, and felt that he had plenty to say on the matter. Yet, for the time being at least, it was better left unsaid.

‘I had not deliberately set out to break the rules, Sir,’ he said instead, with sudden confidence. ‘I had been totally unaware of the previous injury, Sir.’

‘How so?’ demanded Victor sharply. ‘Any doctor would have diagnosed the injury. Who was your doctor?’

‘I didn’t see one, Sir. The fall was a very minor one, while out on the gallops, and I had no idea I’d been hurt, Sir. I simply remounted and continued the work-out.’ He hoped that the trainer to whom he had made his excuses and left short of a rider for the last of the work-outs would not be suddenly called as a witness.

‘What was the nature of the injury?’ Victor inquired of Cunningham.

‘Broken collarbone.’

‘Is it possible for such an injury to go undetected?’

‘Apparently so.’ He grinned at Perry.

‘In your professional opinion,’ Victor said firmly, ‘could such an injury go undetected?’

‘That would depend entirely upon the natural resilience of the individual in question,’ Cunningham said, just as firmly. ‘And, in this case, the answer appears to be yes.’

‘In view of the X-ray, do you believe Lucas to be stating the truth?’

‘The X-ray told me only of a broken bone. Perry told me of the facts relating to it. I’m afraid the X-ray is quite incapable of putting up an argument.’

Victor muttered under his breath impatiently and glared at Cunningham. ‘Professional opinion apart; do you personally believe that Lucas could ride, unaffected, with a broken collarbone?’ He spoke slowly and deliberately, confident, this time, of the lack of loop holes.

Cunningham smiled more affably than ever. ‘I’m afraid, Victor, that I really can’t give such a personal opinion. Personally, I couldn’t ride with a broken collarbone - in fact I could do diddly squat with a broken collarbone! But neither could I host an enquiry with an arthritic hip; nor oversee the proceedings at a race meeting with impaired vision. It is, you see, gentlemen, entirely a matter of personal resilience.’ He winked at Perry.

Much huffing could be heard behind the table, while the red-faced stipe’ examined his glasses with renewed interest. Cunningham assumed a distinctly holier-than-thou air as he caught the stipe’ eyeing him suspiciously.

‘You deny knowingly omitting to declare an injury?’ Victor demanded irritably of Perry.

‘I do, Sir.’

‘Well then. We shall have to let you go with a caution. Be more careful next time.’

‘I will, Sir.’

‘Was this hearing on record?’ Cunningham asked.

‘All hearings are recorded and appear in the Racing Calender,’ Victor informed him tersely.

Cunningham nodded appreciatively. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘good.’ He frowned slightly. ‘I can safely assume that I won’t get edited out at all? Seeing that I wouldn’t normally be included in a hearing? I only ask, because it’s my first enquiry and, frankly, I’m quite looking forward to seeing "Doctor Cunningham stated" in the old press!’

Victor was clearly beyond the stage of boredom. ‘You’ll be quoted in full, Clive - diddly squats and all.’ His smile at his little quip fell away quite suddenly as he remembered what the ‘and all’ entailed.

‘Good-oh,’ said Cunningham cheerily, grinning broadly.

‘Look forward to reading it,’ agreed Perry, grinning even more broadly.

The stipe’ showed them out, then went about his business outside.

‘How long did you actually take off last time?’ Cunningham asked Perry, as they walked together back to the medical room.

‘Three days. I had no rides booked anyway.’ He smiled. ‘Not even the one I told you I rode in!’

‘Three days. A fair bit short of the fourteen days our friends in there stipulate. How did they come by that amount?’

Perry smiled. ‘Advice from doctors.’

‘Oh.’ Cunningham paused outside the door. ‘You know,’ he said carefully, ‘they didn’t actually ask about today’s injury. And I didn’t mention it; did you?’

‘The stipe’ saw the clavicle ring.’

‘Naturally - you’d aggravated that previous injury of yours. It would need, say, three days to knit again. And today... today you received minor cuts and abrasions from a kick.’ He smiled warmly at Perry. ‘I can’t see any cause for red ink; can you?’