GREAT BRITAIN: Interval’s End

It was a dreary, drizzling day, but the bright gypsy caravans were encamped again on Epsom Downs. Carousels tinkled. Hawkers, pickpockets and bookies plied their trades among a milling crowd of 100,000.

Along the twisting horse-&-buggy roads through London’s suburbs, sleek patrician Bentleys elbowed war-weary jalopies aside oh the way to the track. Charabancs full of cheering trippers from Clapham Common and Edgeware overtook lumbering six-horsed coaches complete with liveried postilions and grey-toppered gentry.

“Let me read your fortune,” whined an old gypsy woman at the grandstand where bunting fluttered and only a patch of bright new brick, where a bomb had struck, recalled a recent war. In a third-tier box a discussion raged over whether to open the champagne with lunch or stick to the burgundy. “My God,” said one, “the redder with lunch. The champoo afterwards.”

“White Jacket can stay on this heavy track,” said somebody else, “but he’s only won one beastly little race.” “You just can’t ignore Fast & Fair,” said another.

Planes zoomed overhead, but only the hunch-players were reminded of a 50-to-1 shot called Airborne. There was a hush as three stately maroon Daimlers rolled up the track to leave their passengers at the Royal Box. The whisper “They’re off!” sounded as it always had.

Two minutes and 44.6 seconds later Airborne, the rank outsider, romped home to win. As an exasperated bettor somewhere flung down his morning copy of the Times, the dampness underfoot seeped across the words of an article already part of history. “The 163rd Renewal of the Derby Stakes,” it said, “is at Epsom again after an interval of seven years.”