A rattling steeplechase reveals a special aspect of the Irish character, Bill Barich discovered when he followed his heart to Dublin. It was a safe bet there was a book in it
Sometimes a book drops into a writer's lap, and so it was with A Fine Place to Daydream. When I left San Francisco for a six-month stay in London, I had no idea where the trip would lead or what it would yield. I was just bored with myself and hoping a change of scenery might wake me up, the way a famous Zen master once woke a listless student by smacking him on the head with a sandal. Ireland didn't figure in my plans, nor did racehorses. If you had asked me about the chances of falling in love, I would have laughed and warned you not to bet on such a long shot.
But a traveller is in for surprises. Everything changed in an instant when I met Imelda, an artist and teacher from Dublin, at a gallery opening in Soho, and fell for her like the proverbial ton of bricks. With unexpected bravado, I decided to pursue her and rented a flat on Pembroke Road across from Patrick Kavanagh's old digs. Alone in a city where I knew no one except Imelda, I had many idle hours on my hands at first and wandered about as Kavanagh used to do, stopping at bookshops and pubs and eventually at the betting shops I might have ignored in a former life.
I was familiar with flat racing in California, but the jumps were a new adventure, and the sight of horses sailing over hurdles struck me as entirely beautiful. Out in Ireland's lush countryside, the National Hunt offered up a kind of pastoral poetry. The races weren't about speed. They unfolded at a leisurely, 19th-century pace, full of intriguing subplots and dramatic reversals of fate. For the Irish, a rattling steeplechase got the blood boiling and revealed a special aspect of their character. "There is a sympathy between the rush of the racing hunter and their own impetuous natures," said the Dublin Saturday Magazine in 1865.
Before long, I was hooked, and joined the regulars at the nearest Paddy Power shop, swapping dubious "inside information" and "hot tips" with the other punters. I mastered the art of wasting time by studying the racing pages, and learned how to heap abuse on a bad jockey. It was fun, and instructive too, and whenever I won some money I felt that my superior intelligence, previously hidden from the world, had been tossed into the spotlight. My losses I forgot over a pint of the black stuff. The system was brilliant. I was growing more Irish by the minute.
In the sleepy grandeur of the National Library, I read up on the sport's history. The British might be mad about the steeplechase now, and anxious to defeat their Irish rivals at the Cheltenham Festival, but they considered it a "bastard amusement" when they first encountered it in Ireland. Yet they were impressed with the natural skills of Irish riders, who had such empathy and control that there seemed to be nothing between them and their horses, with or without a saddle.
In those days, the chases were brutal affairs where a horse could fall two, three, or even four times and still manage to win. Heroes emerged, among them Black Jack Dennis, renowned for jumping over both a fence and the donkey cart parked in front of it. To cash a bet, Dennis rode the intimidating course at Rahasane (10 stone walls, 25 fences) without a whip, relying on a cabbage stalk instead.
As my education progressed, I started keeping notebooks, gathering information about the personalities involved as a novelist might. Gradually the universe of the National Hunt, so self-contained, with its own traditions and values, became as compelling and complex as any fiction I might create, so I chose to let my new obsession flow into a book. From the early autumn into the spring, I would follow the progress of the key Irish players on the bumpy road to Cheltenham, while telling enough of my own fortunate story to explain my presence in Ireland.
Last October, I boarded a train for Tipperary to meet Jessica Harrington, Ireland's leading woman trainer, at Gowran Park. This was my first visit to an Irish racecourse, and the level of intimacy astonished me. At the parade ring, I could have reached out and touched the horses. The jockeys strolled right through the crowd after a race, too, an unthinkable passage at an American track where they'd be risking bodily harm. But the Gowran Park atmosphere was so friendly and gentle, I could have been at a county fair. Elderly men in flat caps discussed the weather, while children ate ice-cream and chatted with the bookies.
I never felt the slightest bit sorry for a bookie until I spoke with Francis Hyland, who heads the Irish National Bookmakers' Association, at Leopardstown one day. Hyland didn't resemble the stereotypical turf account, having once been a dealer on the London Stock Exchange. He was still dressed as if for a slick round of trading in a pinstripe suit. He swore that on-course bookies were practically an endangered species, under threat from high-street shops, where customers can wager on things other than racing (football, a white Christmas, whether or not Bono will become a Buddhist), and from Internet exchanges. "Punters aren't mugs," Francis insisted. Contrary to rumour, only about 20 per cent of his members earned a substantial living, he said, and I almost - but not quite - shed a tear.
Jessie Harrington proved to be a great help later on. She invited me to her yard in Moone, a lovely 100-acre spread set against the Wicklow Mountains. The yard was always alive with a bristling, animal energy. Whether the day was wet or frosty, her horses were out on her gallops, and I'd stand by a fence and listen to their pounding hooves and the roar of their breath as the exercise forced their lungs to expand. Here I was introduced to the magnificent Moscow Flyer, the best two-mile chaser around and probably the most cerebral, an intelligent horse who enjoys watching the traffic flash by on the N9 - he could be watching TV - and never loses except when he beats himself by falling or unseating Barry Geraghty, his jockey.
Sadly, Moscow cost me some cash at Cheltenham, but I couldn't hold it against him. He was too regal, above such petty human concerns. I didn't feel the same about Beef Or Salmon, who constantly fell short of my expectations. Michael Hourigan, his trainer, proved to be worth a book on his own. One morning in Limerick, after we'd both stayed too long at the bar of the Dunraven Arms Hotel the night before, he described his extraordinary rise to the top. Unable to read or write at the age of 13, Hourigan was shipped off to the Holy Fathers at Rockwell College to rectify matters, then apprenticed to the trainer Charlie Weld on the Curragh at the age of 14 in 1962. Though he was the ideal size for a jockey, things did not go well.
"Why?" he replied, when I asked him. "Because I was a terrible coward! Terrible! In all those years, I rode just nine winners on the flat and four over jumps. The last was on Ballybar at Cork, and the crowd cheered for me. They must have been in shock!"
I appreciated Hourigan's self-deprecating sense of humour. As we sat in his kitchen eating bread and jam, the conversation turned to romance, and he told me how he had spotted his future wife Anne when she was only 15 and playing tennis in a short skirt on a summer evening. Married for 32 years now, they have five children. "Boy, girl, boy, girl, boy," he said, counting on his fingers, pleased with the symmetry. "Mark, the youngest, is 10, and just starting to ride ponies."
Almost everywhere I went, I was greeted with the same openness and generosity of spirit. At a family lunch in Kill, Ted Walsh put me on the trail of Tom Costello, the legendary horse trader from Clare, who has sold six winners of the Gold Cup. Over a drink in Ashbourne, Paul Carberry shared his enthusiasm for hunting. He said he was as happy to ride out after a stag with his Ward Union club in Co Meath as to win a big prize at Fairyhouse. Willie Mullins showed me a wire sculpture of Florida Pearl scaling a hedge on his front lawn, while Father Seán Breen, the "Racing Priest," recalled seeing Arkle's first victory in the Gold Cup in 1963.
I endured some less rewarding moments, of course, brief intervals when I questioned my sanity. At a weekday meeting in Thurles, conducted during a punishing winter storm, I almost froze to death while searching for a source of heat I never did locate. My only defence was to adopt a strategy the locals employed and generate some inner heat with a steady stream of hot whiskeys, and that had a predictably adverse effect on my ability to pick winners. In fact, so many inferior nags were entered that day, I wondered if the Irish were willing to bestow their affection on any horse at all, regardless of its merits. How else to account for the presence of Camillas Estate (no wins in 31 starts), A.C. Azure (none in 27 starts), and Callas (zero for 25)?
As the Cheltenham Festival approached, I kept tabs on Henrietta Knight, Best Mate's trainer. A former schoolteacher whose students once locked her in a book cupboard for nearly an hour, she was so superstitious she'd couldn't bear to watch Matery run for fear she'd see him fall. Not only that, she always placed a bet on her horse's opponents, as if to put a jinx on them. On Gold Cup Day, she promised to wear the same clothes she'd worn last year, and the year before, and to repeat every movement in the same way. Long into the night, she sat up answering Best Mate's copious fan mail, and that caused her husband to grumble, wishing she'd quit it and come to bed.
The festival was the icing on the cake, naturally. However obsessed with the jumps I believed myself to be, I discovered I was still a novice compared with the truly besotted, who'd been attending for years and could recite Arkle's record from memory. The Irish contingent, some 5,000 strong, supported their hometown favourites with patriotic zeal, and when Ireland had a winner they celebrated with an almost frightening vigour.
They shouted, sang, displayed fistfuls of cash, and raised their glasses for a toast. And in the Gold Cup, when Paul Carberry aboard Harbour Pilot nearly stole the race from Best Mate, I worried that the lads might all faint in unison from the stress of that thrilling finish.
After the festival, I returned to Dublin somewhat humbled, my bankroll cut in half rather than inflated. I was as exhausted as the other pilgrims, a victim of violent mood swings related to the state of my luck, and needed a week to recuperate before I could begin my book.
When it was done, I found myself thinking about Patrick Kavanagh again. One afternoon, while I was out for a stroll, I sat on his bench by the Grand Canal and remembered a line from The Green Fool. "Ireland is a fine place to daydream in," he wrote, a sentiment that summed up my dreamy season of following the horses, so I borrowed it for a title.
A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance and the Irish by Bill Barich is published on March 7th by HarperCollins, £15.99
