"For Kicks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Francis Dick)

CHAPTER FIVE

Again on Friday evening I went down to the Slaw pub and exchanged bug-eyed looks with Soupy across the room.

On the Sunday half the lads had the afternoon off to go to Burndale for the football and darts matches, and we won both, which made for a certain amount of back slapping and beer drinking. But beyond remarking that I was new, and a blight on their chances in the darts league, the Burndale lads paid me little attention. There was no one like Soupy among them in spite of what October had said about the cases of doping in the village, and no one, as far as I could see, who cared if I were as crooked as a cork-screw.

During the next week I did my three horses, and read the form books, and thought: and got nowhere. Paddy remained cool and so did Wally, to whom Paddy had obviously reported my affinity with Soupy. Wally showed his disapproval by giving me more than my share of the afternoon jobs, so that every day, instead of relaxing in the usual free time between lunch and evening stables at four o'clock, I found myself bidden to sweep the yard, clean the tack, crush the oats, cut the chaff, wash Inskip's car or clean the windows of the loose boxes. I did it all without comment, reflecting that if I needed an excuse for a quick row and walked out later on I could reasonably, at eleven hours a day, complain of overwork.

However, at Friday midday I set off again with Sparking Plug, this time to Cheltenham, and this time accompanied not only by the box driver but by Grits and his horse, and the head travelling-lad as well.

Once in the racecourse stables I learned that this was the night of the dinner given to the previous season's champion jockey, and all the lads who were staying there overnight proposed to celebrate by attending a dance in the town. Grits and I, therefore, having bedded down our horses, eaten our meal, and smartened ourselves up, caught a bus down the hill and paid our entrance money to the hop. It was a big hall and the band was loud and hot, but not many people were yet dancing. The girls were standing about in little groups eyeing larger groups of young men, and I bit back just in time a remark on how odd I found it; Grits would expect me to think it normal. I took him off into the bar where there were already groups of lads from the racecourse mingled with the local inhabitants, and bought him a beer, regretting that he was with me to see what use I intended to make of the evening. Poor Grits, he was torn between loyalty to Paddy and an apparent liking for me, and I was about to disillusion him thoroughly.

I wished I could explain. I was tempted to spend the evening harmlessly. But how could I justify passing over an unrepeatable opportunity just to keep temporarily the regard of one slow-witted stable lad, however much I might like him? I was committed to earning ten thousand pounds.

"Grits, go and find a girl to dance with."

He gave me a slow grin.

"I don't know any."

"It doesn't matter. Any of them would be glad to dance with a nice chap like you. Go and ask one."

"No. I'd rather stay with you."

"All right, then. Have another drink."

"I haven't finished this."

I turned round to the bar, which we had been leaning against, and banged my barely touched half pint down on the counter.

"I'm fed up with this pap," I said violently.

"Hey, you, barman, give me a double whisky."

"ClanI' Grits was upset at my tone, which was a measure of its success. The barman poured the whisky and took my money.

"Don't go away," I said to him in a loud voice.

"Give me another while you're at it."

I felt rather than saw the group of lads farther up the bar turn round and take a look, so I picked up the glass and swallowed all the whisky in two gulps and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. I pushed the empty glass across to the barman and paid for the second drink.

"Clan," Grits tugged my sleeve, 'do you think you should? "

"Yes," I said, scowling.

"Go and find a girl to dance with."

But he didn't go. He watched me drink the second whisky and order a third. His eyes were troubled.

The bunch of lads edged towards us along the bar.

"Hey, fella, you're knocking it back a bit," observed one, a tallish man of my own age in a flashy bright blue suit.

"Mind your own ruddy business," I said rudely.

"Aren't you from Inskip's?" he asked.

"Yea… Inskip's… bloody Inskip's…" I picked up the third glass. I had a hard head for whisky, which was going down on top of a deliberately heavy meal. I reckoned I could stay sober a long time after I would be expected to be drunk; but the act had to be put on early, while the audience were still sober enough themselves to remember it clearly afterwards.

"Eleven sodding quid," I told them savagely, 'that's all you get for sweating your guts out seven days a week. "

It struck a note with some of them, but Blue-suit said, "Then why spend it on whisky?"

"Why bloody not? It's great stuff gives you a kick. And, by God, you need something in this job."

Blue-suit said to Grits, "Your mate's got an outsized gripe."

"Well…" said Grits, his face anxious, "I suppose he has had a lot of extra jobs this week, come to think…"

"You're looking after horses they pay thousands for and you know damn well that the way you ride and groom them and look after them makes a hell of a lot of difference to whether they win or not, and they grudge you a decent wage…" I finished the third whisky, hiccupped and said, "It's bloody unfair."

The bar was filling up, and from the sight of them and from what I could catch of their greetings to each other, at least half the customers were in some way connected with racing. Bookmakers' clerks and touts as well as stable lads the town was stuffed with them, and the dance had been put on to attract them. A large amount of liquor began disappearing down their collective throats, and I had to catch the barman on the wing to serve my fourth double whisky in fifteen minutes.

I stood facing a widening circle with the glass in my hand, and rocked slightly on my feet.

"I want," I began. What on earth did I want? I searched for the right phrases.

"I want… a motor-bike. I want to show a bird a good time.

And go abroad for a holiday. and stay in a swank hotel and have them running about at my beck and call. and drink what I like. and maybe one day put a deposit on a house. and what chance do I have of any of these? I'll tell you. Not a snowball's hope in hell. You know what I got in my pay packet this morning. Seven pounds and fourpence. "

I went on and on grousing and complaining, and the evening wore slowly away. The audience drifted and changed, and I kept it up until I was fairly sure that all the racing people there knew there was a lad of Inskip's who yearned for more money, preferably in large amounts. But even Grits, who hovered about with an unhappy air throughout it all and remained cold sober himself, didn't seem to notice that I got progressively drunker in my actions while making each drink last longer than the one before.

Eventually, after I had achieved an artistic lurch and clutch at one of the pillars. Grits said loudly in my ear, "Clan, I'm going now and you'd better go too, or you'll miss the last bus, and I shouldn't think you could walk back, like you are."

"Huh?" I squinted at him. Blue-suit had come back and was standing just behind him.

"Want any help getting him out?" he asked Grits. Grits looked at me disgustedly, and I fell against him, putting my arm round his shoulders: I definitely did not want the sort of help Blue-suit looked as though he might give.

"Grits, me old pal, if you say go, we go." We set off for the door, followed by Blue-suit, me staggering so heavily that I pushed Grits sideways. There were by this time a lot of others having difficulty in walking a straight line, and the queue of lads which waited at the bus stop undulated slightly like an ocean swell on a calm day. I grinned in the safe darkness and looked up at the sky, and thought that if the seeds I had sown in all directions bore no fruit there was little doping going on in British racing.

I may not have been drunk, but I woke the next morning with a shattering headache, just the same: all in a good cause, I thought, trying to ignore the blacksmith behind my eyes.

Sparking Plug ran in his race and lost by half a length. I took the opportunity of saying aloud on the lads' stand that there was the rest of my week's pay gone down the bloody drain.

Colonel Beckett patted his horse's neck in the cramped unsaddling enclosure and said casually to me, "Better luck next time, eh? I've sent you what you wanted, in a parcel." He turned away and resumed talking to Inskip and his jockey about the race.

We all went back to Yorkshire that night, with Grits and me sleeping most of the way on the benches in the back of the horse box.

He said reproachfully as he lay down, "I didn't know you hated it at Inskip's and I haven't seen you drunk before either."

"It isn't the work. Grits, it's the pay." I had to keep it Up.

"Still there are some who are married and have kids to keep on what you were bleating about." He sounded disapproving, and indeed my behaviour must have affected him deeply, because he seldom spoke to me after that night.

There was nothing of interest to report to October the following afternoon, and our meeting in the gully was brief. He told me, however, that the information then in the post from Beckett had been collected by eleven keen young officer cadets from Aldershot who had been given the task as an initiative exercise, and told they were in competition with each other to see which of them could produce the most comprehensive report of the life of his allotted horse. A certain number of questions those I had suggested were outlined for them.

The rest had been left to their own imagination and detective ability, and October said Beckett had told him they had used them to the full.

I returned down the hill more impressed than ever with the Colonel's staff work, but not as staggered as when the parcel arrived the following day. Wally again found some wretched job for me to do in the afternoon, so that it was not until after the evening meal, when half the lads had gone down to Slaw, that I had an opportunity of taking the package up to the dormitory and opening it. It contained 237 numbered typewritten pages bound into a cardboard folder, like the manuscript of a book, and its production in the space of one week must have meant a prodigious effort not only from the young men themselves, but from the typists as well. The information was given in note form for the most part, and no space had anywhere been wasted in flowing prose: it was solid detail from cover to cover.

Mrs. AUnut's voice floated up the stairs.

"Clan, come down and fetch me a bucket of coal, will you please?"

I thrust the typescript down inside my bed between the sheets, and went back to the warm, communal kitchen-living-room where we ate and spent most of our spare time. It was impossible to read anything private there, and my life was very much supervised from dawn to bedtime; and the only place I could think of where I could concentrate uninterruptedly on the typescript was the bathroom. Accordingly that night I waited until all the lads were asleep, and then went along the passage and locked myself in, ready to report an upset stomach if anyone should be curious.

It was slow going: after four hours I had read only half. I got up stiffly, stretched, yawned, and went back to bed. Nobody stirred. The following night, as I lay waiting for the others to go to sleep so that I could get back to my task, I listened to them discussing the evening that four of them had spent in Slaw.

"Who's that fellow who was with Soupy?" asked Grits.

"I haven't seen him around before."

"He was there last night too," said one of the others.

"Queer sort of bloke."

"What was queer about him?" asked the boy who had stayed behind, he watching the television while I in an armchair caught up on some sleep.

"I dunno," said Grits.

"His eyes didn't stay still, like."

"Sort of as if he was looking for someone," added another voice.

Paddy said firmly from the wall on my right, "You just all keep clear of that chap, and Soupy too. I'm telling you. People like them are no good."

"But that chap, that one with that smashing gold tie, he bought us a round, you know he did. He can't be too bad if he bought us a round"

Paddy sighed with exasperation that anyone could be so simple.

"If you'd have been Eve, you'd have eaten the apple as soon as look at it.

You wouldn't have needed a serpent. "

"Oh well," yawned Grits.

"I don't suppose he'll be there tomorrow. I heard him say something to Soupy about time getting short."

They muttered and murmured and went to sleep, and I lay awake in the dark thinking that perhaps I had just heard something very interesting indeed. Certainly a trip down to the pub was indicated for the following evening.

With a wrench I stopped my eyes from shutting, got out of my warm bed, repaired again to the bathroom, and read for another four hours until I had finished the typescript. I sat on the bathroom floor with my back against the wall and stared sightlessly at the fixtures and fittings. There was nothing, not one single factor, that occurred in the life histories of all of the eleven microscopically investigated horses. No common denominator at all. There were quite a few things which were common to four or five but not often the same four or five like the make of saddles their jockeys used, the horse cube nuts they were fed with, or the auction rings they had been sold in: but the hopes I had had of finding a sizeable clue in those packages had altogether evaporated. Cold, stiff, and depressed, I crept back to bed.

The next evening at eight I walked alone down to Slaw, all the other lads saying they were skint until payday and that in any case they wanted to watch Z Cars on television.

"I thought you lost all your cash on Sparks at Cheltenham," observed Grits.

"I've about two bob left," I said, producing some pennies.

"Enough for a pint."

The pub, as often on Wednesdays, was empty. There was no sign of Soupy or his mysterious friend, and having bought some beer I amused myself at the dart board, throwing one-to-twenty sequences, and trying to make a complete ring in the trebles. Eventually I pulled the darts out of the board, looked at my watch, and decided I had wasted the walk;

and it was at that moment that a man appeared in the doorway, not from the street, but from the saloon bar next door. He held a glass of gently fizzing amber liquid and a slim cigar in his left hand and pushed open the door with his right. Looking me up and down, he said, "Are you a stable lad?"

"Yes."

"Granger's or Inskip's?"

"Inskip's."

"Hmm." He came farther into the room and let the door swing shut behind him.

"There's ten bob for you if you can get one of your lads down here tomorrow night… and as much beer as you can both drink."

I looked interested.

"Which lad?" I asked.

"Any special one? Lots of them will be down here on Friday."

"Well, now, it had better be tomorrow, I think. Sooner the better, I always say. And as for which lad… er… you tell me their names and I'll pick one of them… how's that?"

I thought it was damn stupid, and also that he wished to avoid asking too directly, too memorably for. well. for me?

"OK. Paddy, Grits, Wally, Steve, Ron…" I paused.

"Go on," he said.

"Reg, Norman, Dave, Jeff, Clan, Mike…"

His eyes brightened.

"Clan," he said.

"That's a sensible sort of name.

Bring Clan. "

"I am Clan," I said.

There was an instant in which his balding scalp contracted and his eyes narrowed in annoyance.

"Stop playing games," he said sharply.

"It was you," I pointed out gently, 'who began it. "

He sat down on one of the benches and carefully put his drink down on the table in front of him.

"Why did you come here tonight, alone?" he asked.

"I was thirsty."

There was a brief silence while he mentally drew up a plan of campaign. He was a short stocky man in a dark suit a size too small, the jacket hanging open to reveal a monogrammed cream shirt and golden silk tie. His fingers were fat and short, and a roll of flesh overhung his coat collar at the back, but there was nothing soft in the way he looked at me.

At length he said, "I believe there is a horse in your stable called Sparking Plug?"

"Yes."

"And he runs at Leicester on Monday?"

"As far as I know."

"What do you think his chances are?" he asked.

"Look, do you want a tip, mister, is that what it is? Well, I do Sparking Plug myself and I'm telling you there isn't an animal in next Monday's race to touch him."

"So you expect him to win?"

"Yes, I told you."

"And you'll bet on him I suppose."

"Of course."

"With half your pay? Four pounds, perhaps?"

"Maybe."

"But he'll be favourite. Sure to be. And at best you'll probably only get even money. Another four quid. That doesn't sound much, does it, when I could perhaps put you in the way of winning… a hundred?"

"You're barmy," I said, but with a sideways leer that told him that I wanted to hear more.

He leaned forward with confidence.

"Now you can say no if you want to. You can say no, and I'll go away, and no one will be any the wiser, but if you play your cards right I could do you a good turn."

"What would I have to do for a hundred quid?" I asked flatly.

He looked round cautiously, and lowered his voice still farther.

"Just add a little something to Sparking Plug's feed on Sunday night.

Nothing to it, you see? Dead easy. "

"Dead easy," I repeated: and so it was.

"You're on, then?" he looked eager.

"I don't know your name," I said.

"Never you mind." He shook his head with finality.

"Are you a bookmaker?"

"No," he said.

"I'm not. And that's enough with the questions. Are you on?"

"If you're not a bookmaker," I said slowly, thinking my way, 'and you are willing to pay a hundred pounds to make sure a certain favourite doesn't win, I'd guess that you didn't want just to make money backing all the other runners, but that you intend to tip off a few bookmakers that the race is fixed, and they'll be so grateful they'll pay you say, fifty quid each, at the very least. There are about eleven thousand bookmakers in Britain. A nice big market. But I expect you go to the same ones over and over again. Sure of your welcome, I should think. "

His face was a study of consternation and disbelief, and I realized I had hit the target, bang on.

"Who told you…" he began weakly.

"I wasn't born yesterday," I said with a nasty grin.

"Relax. No one told me." I paused.

"I'll give Sparking Plug his extra nosh, but I want more for it. Two hundred."

"No. The deal's off." He mopped his forehead.

"All right." I shrugged.

"A hundred and fifty then," he said grudgingly.

"A hundred and fifty," I agreed.

"Before I do it."

"Half before, half after," he said automatically. It was by no means the first time he had done this sort of deal.

I agreed to that. He said if I came down to the pub on Saturday evening I would be given a packet for Sparking Plug and seventy-five pounds for myself, and I nodded and went away, leaving him staring moodily into his glass.

On my way back up the hill I crossed Soupy off my list of potentially useful contacts. Certainly he had procured me for a doping job, but I had been asked to stop a favourite in a novice 'chase, not to accelerate a dim long priced selling plater. It was extremely unlikely that both types of fraud were the work of one set of people.

Unwilling to abandon Colonel Beckett's typescript I spent chunks of that night and the following two nights in the bathroom, carefully re-reading it. The only noticeable result was that during the day I found the endless stable work irksome because for five nights in a row I had had only three hours' sleep. But I frankly dreaded having to tell October on Sunday that the eleven young men had made their mammoth investigation to no avail, and I had an unreasonable feeling that if I hammered away long enough I could still wring some useful message from those densely packed pages.

On Saturday morning, though it was bleak, bitter, and windy, October's daughters rode out with the first string. Elinor only came near enough to exchange polite good mornings, but Patty, who was again riding one of my horses, made my giving her a leg up a moment of eyelash-fluttering intimacy, deliberately and unnecessarily rubbing her body against mine.

"You weren't here last week, Danny boy," she said, putting her feet in the irons.

"Where were you?"

"At Cheltenham… miss."

"Oh. And next Saturday?"

TO be here. "

She said, with intentional insolence, "Then kindly remember next Saturday to shorten the leathers on the saddle before I mount. These are far too long."

She made no move to shorten them herself, but gestured for me to do it for her. She watched me steadily, enjoying herself. While I was fastening the second buckle she rubbed her knee forwards over my hands and kicked me none too gently in the ribs.

"I wonder you stand me teasing you, Danny boy," she said softly, bending down, 'a dishy guy like you should answer back more. Why don't you? "

"I don't want the sack," I said, with a dead straight face.

"A coward, too," she said sardonically, and twitched her horse away.

And she'll get into bad trouble one day, if she keeps on like that, I thought. She was too provocative. Stunningly pretty of course, but that was only the beginning;

and her hurtful little tricks were merely annoying. It was the latent invitation which disturbed and aroused.

I shrugged her out of my mind, fetched Sparking Plug, sprang up on to his back and moved out of the yard and up to the moor for the routine working gallops.

The weather that day got steadily worse until while we were out with the second string it began to rain heavily in fierce slashing gusts, and we struggled miserably back against it with stinging faces and sodden clothes. Perhaps because it went on raining, or possibly because it was, after all, Saturday, Wally for once refrained from making me work all afternoon, and I spent the three hours sitting with about nine other lads in the kitchen of the cottage, listening to the wind shrieking round the corners outside and watching Chepstow races on television, while our damp jerseys, breeches, and socks steamed gently round the fire.

I put the previous season's form book on the kitchen table and sat over it with my head propped on the knuckles of my left hand idly turning the pages with my right.

Depressed by my utter lack of success with the eleven horses' dossiers, by the antipathy I had to arouse in the lads, and also, I think, by the absence of the hot sunshine I usually lived in at that time of the year, I began to feel that the whole masquerade had been from the start a ghastly mistake. And the trouble was that having taken October's money I couldn't back out; not for months. This thought depressed me further still. I sat slumped in unrelieved gloom, wasting my much needed free time.

I think now that it must have been the sense that I was failing in what I had set out to do, more than mere tiredness, which beset me that afternoon, because although later on I encountered worse things it was only for that short while that I ever truly regretted having listened to October, and unreservedly wished myself back in my comfortable Australian cage.

The lads watching the television were making disparaging remarks about the jockeys and striking private bets against each other on the outcome of the races.

"The uphill finish will sort 'em out as usual," Paddy was saying.

"It's a long way from the last… Aladdin's the only one who's got the stamina for the job."

"No," contradicted Grits.

"Lobster Cocktail's a flyer…"

Morosely I riffled the pages of the form book, aimlessly looking through them for the hundredth time, and came by chance on the map of Chepstow race course in the general information section at the beginning of the book. There were diagrammatic maps of all the main courses showing the shape of the tracks and the positioning of fences, stands, starting gates, and winning posts, and I had looked before at those for Ludlow, Stafford, and Haydock, without results. There was no map of Kelso or Sedgefield. Next to the map section were a few pages of information about the courses, the lengths of their circuits, the names and addresses of the officials, the record times for the races, and so on.

For something to do, I turned to Chepstow's paragraph. Paddy's 'long way from the last' was detailed there: two hundred and fifty yards. I looked up Kelso, Sedgefield, Ludlow, Stafford, and Haydock. They had much longer run-ins than Chepstow. I looked up the run-ins of all the courses in the book. The Aintree Grand National run-in was the second longest. The longest of all was Sedgefield, and in third, fourth, fifth, and sixth positions came Ludlow, Haydock, Kelso, and Stafford.

All had run-ins of over four hundred yards.

Geography had nothing to do with it: those five courses had almost certainly been chosen by the dopers because in each case it was about a quarter of a mile from the last fence to the winning post.

It was an advance, even if a small one, to have made at least some pattern out of the chaos. In a slightly less abysmal frame of mind I shut the form book and at four o'clock followed the other lads out into the unwelcome rainswept yard to spend an hour with each of my three charges, grooming them thoroughly to give their coats a clean healthy shine, tossing and tidying their straw beds, fetching their water, holding their heads while Inskip walked round, rugging them up comfortably for the night, and finally fetching their evening feed. As usual it was seven before we had all finished, and eight before we had eaten and changed and were bumping down the hill to Slaw, seven of us sardined into a rickety old Austin.

Bar billiards, darts, dominoes, the endless friendly bragging, the ingredients as before. Patiently, I sat and waited. It was nearly ten, the hour when the lads began to empty their glasses and think about having to get up the next morning, when Soupy strolled across the room towards the door, and, seeing my eyes on him, jerked his head for me to follow him. I got up and went out after him, and found him in the lavatories.

"This is for you. The rest on Tuesday," he said economically; and treating me to a curled lip and stony stare to impress me with his toughness, he handed me a thick brown envelope. I put it in the inside pocket of my black leather jacket, and nodded to him. Still without speaking, without smiling, hard-eyed to match, I turned on my heel and went back into the bar: and after a while, casually, he followed.

So I crammed into the Austin and was driven up the hill, back to bed in the little dormitory, with seventy- five pounds and a packet of white powder sitting snugly over my heart.