… had been a pesky nor-wester stirring up the dust and making the girls hold onto their hats to stop them taking flight across the field. George had stood in the crowd on the terrace, making a thoughtful selection for the Cup. The Toff’s tips in Truth were Sherwood (‘full of ginger’) or Albert Cling (‘should do well’).
Albert Cling, he decided after some deliberation. A quid for a win. But Finlayson was in no mood for caution.
‘No point going for the favourite, old chum. Let’s take a chance here.’ And he’d placed ten quid on a little bay mare called Reta Peter, for no better reason than that he fancied a girl at the office, Johannson’s new secretary, whose name was Rita.
‘And the odds of having your wicked way with her are about as good as that horse winning,’ said George. They had watched her in the birdcage being led about by a skinny lad. She was small and skittish and she was a trotter. A mare, and a trotter, the only one in the field. All the rest were pacers. Only one trotter had ever in history won the Cup against pacers. ‘You’ll be lucky.’
Finlayson had tapped his nose. ‘Luck’s the name of the game,’ he said. ‘In love or war.’
Reta Peter. Seventh favourite in a field of twelve. ‘Don’t waste your money,’ advised The Toff.
She came in.
Nowhere to be seen as they went down the back stretch, Minston out in front, followed by Erin’s Queen and Willie Lincoln. At the six furlong it was Willie Lincoln in the lead, where he stayed as the field rounded the bend for the last time. The crowd swayed as one to peer down the track, binoculars trained on the big beautiful beasts, all muscle and sinew and coats shining with sweat, giving it everything they possessed. General Link was in second place, then Erin’s Queen and six lengths back were Trix Pointer, Sherwood.
And Finlayson’s little bay mare.
She was holding her own as they raced for home into the roar of the crowd. The great collective roar as the pacers swayed in that strange unnatural rocking motion towards the finish line, hooves tossing up the dust, drivers on their frail bouncing sulkies laying on the whip, urging their charges on, and all the horses had their heads out, ears flattened, flakes of soapy foam blowing from heaving bodies, hearts and lungs bursting, bred for just this moment. Those early morning runs at the edge of the surf, a wide beach opening as they raced into the dazzle. Those winter sessions pounding tracks laid down on the plains, breath and sweat cloudy in the icy air that blows over the flat land straight from the mountains. All the cosseting and grooming, the brushing and the scrape scrape of the curry comb, the tending of hooves tucked against the blacksmith’s leather apron. All the breaking to harness, the feeding and mucking out, the long patient hours of training: it comes down to this.
The finish line was racing towards them and Author Dillon was making a bid for the lead, challenging General Link, but here was the little bay mare, tiptoptiptoptiptop, coming up fast on the outside. Here she was, Reta Peter against all the odds, by half a length from General Link, a neck in front of Author Dillon and the crowd went mad. It was one roaring mass that lifted George, a solid man of middle age, clean off his feet. Then Finlayson was dancing him around in a puppyish headlock, punching his shoulder in jubilation. ‘Did you see that?’ he said, over and over. ‘Did you see that? What did I tell you! Luck!’
And Albert Cling? George’s choice? The favourite? Jibbed and broke at the start, left behind in the dust the whole distance.
The bay mare paid a dividend for a win of £20 11s – £20 11s for every pound wagered! Finlayson took George for a drink on the strength of it, still giddy. Still babbling with excitement.
‘A lesson for you, old chum,’ he said as he slammed down a jug. ‘Don’t play it so safe! We beat the odds at Menin Road! We beat the odds at Colincamps! Born under a lucky star, I reckon.’
George sat amid the uproar in the Star and Garter, fifteen minutes supping up before six o’clock.
Lucky? Was that it?
His son had been unlucky.
While he, who had also gone down to the barracks, who had attempted to enlist, had been turned down as too myopic to be of any use, had returned to the drafting desk, to his family and his home — he was lucky. Was that it?
He had never bothered to enlighten Finlayson concerning his war record. Let him suppose what he liked, this cocky fellow from Clinton, certain it was all going his way.
Two days later, George backed Reta Peter for the Dominion Handicap. Five quid for a win. More than he had ever placed on a horse before. The little bay mare started badly, then trailed the field the whole way. He watched her coming in amid a crowd who had, it seemed, placed as much faith in another miracle as himself. The cheering became muted and George stood, hearing hope fade, and with it, a strange sensation. He did not feel disappointment. Instead, what welled up was a weird satisfaction. It gripped him. It filled him with deep pleasure. This was failure. His old familiar. He settled into it, as if it were a comfortable overcoat.
Horse after horse had trailed since. Had jibbed. Fallen. Stumbled. Broken. Dumped its jockey. Been disqualified. Missed by a nose. A length, several lengths. And George watched them fall and break, taking his bet with them. And all he could feel was a kind of exhilaration. It was like falling into something dark, something bottomless.
Each week he had managed to hand Violet her allowance to maintain the house, though sometimes it was a scramble to fill the envelope. He was a long-serving member of the department, a trusted figure with access to the strongrooms that stood by the lifts on each floor within the Government Building. He worked late. He fiddled and added and altered, careful never to take too much and keeping an accurate private accounting, because when he won, he would pay it all back.
He gave some to Violet, and some, more discreetly, to Daphne, an affable, easy girl with a little flat on Victoria Street. ‘Ooh, ta!’ she said, tucking the notes into a china biscuit jar shaped like a pink pig on the mantel. ‘You are a sweetie, Georgie-pie!’ At least she didn’t think him a fool.
And he paid his regular visits to Charlie, who ran an illegal but nevertheless businesslike bookie’s above a Chinese fruiterer’s on Manchester Street. Full and prompt telephone and telegraphic connection to racecourses throughout the country. Charlie also had a poker game going out the back: a curtained room of dark and peaceful intent, lights lowered over the table, cards snapping to green baize, the muted voices of men saying no more than they had to, men he didn’t need to know, wouldn’t even recognise should he see them on the street. He bought tickets, too, in Tatts, or in the Art Unions. There were dozens of them suddenly, in this new era after everyone had been so serious for so long. And the prizes were no longer art, paintings nobody wanted to hang on their walls, but houses, cars, boats and, more and more often, a gold nugget. It was not legal to offer a simple cash prize, but a gold nugget! Ah! Who wouldn’t want to win that! A nugget worth £4000, the proceeds from its lottery designed to fund the building of tennis courts and cricket grounds around the city. This was not gambling. This was a donation to a noble communal cause. And the gold nugget could, of course, be turned instantly to actual money.
George placed his bets, he picked up the hand, he pocketed his tickets. And week after week, year after year, he awaited the proof that luck was an operative force.
And the horses stumbled, the cards never added up, the gold nugget fell to someone else who had their photograph in the paper, smiling with delight as the recipient of good luck and civic benevolence.
And at night, when the house is quiet, his wife asleep in the room she moved into when the cook/housekeeper left along with her big, soft, lucky son: dismissed in an hour one howling afternoon …
When his younger daughter, square and simple, sleeps in her room, content to share her bed with a dog or a cat …
When all is quiet, when all is dark, George goes to his silent office, and underneath the lid of the windowseat, where no one will ever think to look, he pastes the lottery tickets. The Art Union tickets. The tickets in Tatts. Duds, the lot of them.
And when he looks at that mosaic, when he sees the horses stumble, when he sees his cards trumped upon the table, he feels nothing but the sweetness of failure. The deep sour certainty that he is meant to be unhappy. The satisfaction of …