Hugh McPhail had first heard about the Trans-America at half-time in a sixpence-a-man soccer match on Glasgow Green, a rough stretch of land known locally as the “Broo Park”. “Broo” was a colloquialism for the unemployment bureau which all the twenty-two players dutifully attended each Thursday. There they collected the few shillings which the government supplied to sustain them and their families for another week.
There were few recreations available for the unemployed in the bleak winter Glasgow of I930. The public library, the park bench, the street corner, the betting shop, the pub: there was little else to do.
The library was one of the few warm places in the city, and in its antiseptic silence lived the unemployed from 9 a.m. when the doors opened till 7 p.m. when the library was cleared. There were three activities. The first was the study of racing form in the pages of the sporting press. On such earnest studies rested the long-odds “doubles” and “trebles” designed to bring the unemployed if not to riches then to slightly better rags. Alas, the library did not house the specialized racing papers beloved of gamblers, such as the Sporting Life. Hugh’s father, down to his last sixpence, had once despatched his son to the newsagent in search of the newspaper. Finding none available, the boy had purchased a copy of the comic paper, Comic Cuts, which featured his favourites, Wearie Willie and Tired Tim. His father, enraged, had given him a sound thrashing. However, later that evening Hugh had been treated to a massive bag of sweets; his father’s Aintree double of “Wearie Willie” and “Tired Tim” had come in at I00-I.
The second activity at the library was sleep. All day long men who had exhausted the possibilities of the daily press and the Encyclopaedia Britannica sat with their heads resting on the backs of their hands on the glass tables in front of them. This was a dangerous practice, for it gave the assistants an excuse to move them out. Better by far, therefore, to pretend to pore over a vast medical dictionary, snatching a few moments of furtive sleep behind it when one could.
The final activity was study – random study of anything and everything the reference library had to offer – and many men became experts on subjects as diverse as astrology and bee-keeping from those long empty hours in the silent libraries of Glasgow.
The park bench provided no such solace. The west of Scotland, warmed by the sea, is rarely bitterly cold, but its winter wetness chills the bones. Similarly, there was comradeship but little solace for those small groups who would stand hunched at street corners all over the grimy city, moving their weight from foot to foot.
The betting shop, like the pub, offered warmth, companionship and hope: when you are at the bottom of the heap the only way is up. That at least was the theory, as men placed their sixpences and shillings on drugged greyhounds at massive odds, or on long-odds horses from lush stables somewhere in southern England. The regularity of their losses did not deter them, for there was always the hope of the “big one” that would change their luck.
Glasgow was a wasteland. Its main industry, shipbuilding, had virtually closed down, and with it the small industries which supported it. The cranes lay still, like frozen prehistoric animals waiting for a breath of life. The great steel mills at Dixons Blazes were silent.
Hugh McPhail was simply one of thousands, a legion of the lost containing some of the world’s most skilled craftsmen, men denied the opportunity to express their unique and subtle skills. At first it was believed that the lay-offs would be short, but as time wore on men began to rot. Deprived of work, the spine of their life had vanished, and with it the core of their belief in themselves. These men were what they worked at. Nothing in their recreation or their family life could ever make up for that loss.
Hugh had started as a shipyard riveter, ten hours a day on a narrow scaffold, his arms shuddering as he drilled five thousand holes a day; even at weekends his hands still shook. Laid off in 1927, he had spent two hard years in the mines at Shotts, south of Glasgow.
There even his fitness had not saved him. Each day, after stumbling through the early morning mists, he and the others had crawled two miles underground to the coal face. For most of the time he had been in agony, for his thighs, unused to the cramped movements imposed by the narrow tunnels, were in constant spasm. Even his best friend, Stevie McFarlane, who had hardly taken exercise in his life, had found it easier. The other miners were sympathetic, waiting for Hugh and massaging his legs until he was ready to continue.
Then there was the work itself, ten hours in semi-darkness, hacking at the coal face. Much of the time the men worked naked, the sweat streaming in white rivulets down their black bodies. It was no wonder that miners were lean-waisted; all day long they pumped into the face with bellies of steel. Food was taken on the job – sandwiches and cold tea, with the men crouching together in crevices, mice scuttling between their legs. Then the return, three agonizing miles bent double, back to the lift.
Hugh dreaded each morning. The only saving grace was the miners themselves. They had been born to it, to accept scarred backs, skins veined like Stilton cheese, crippling injury and death. However, they accepted him, knowing that it was barely possible that he could condition himself to the work, and respecting his painful attempts to do so. To begin with his work-rate was dismal, but eventually he came to accept the pain. It took him longer to adapt to the walks.
It was not only Hugh who was cheered by the presence of wee Stevie. The miners had taken to the little man instantly. Even in the worst times his quick and ready wit had lifted their spirits. A product of the worst slums of Glasgow, he had somehow managed to rise above the stinking squalor of the “single end” which had been his home and the rickets which had put his legs in irons until his early teens. Working at the coal face was particularly hard for him, for he was not built for such toil. But Stevie McFarlane was invincible. He had already seen the worst, and it had not been that bad.
Then, after two years at the mine, came “the visit”. In the winter of 1928 the Shotts mine was visited by Lord Featherstone, M.P., and a member of the British Olympic team soon to travel to Amsterdam. McPhail was immediately sought out by the mine’s manager, Fallon.
“We hear you’ve done a bit of running in your time,” opened Fallon.
“A bit,” Hugh replied guardedly.
“Then you’ve heard tell of Lord Featherstone?”
“The Olympic athlete?”
“The pit’s due for a visit to open the new pithead baths. The usual thing – Lord Featherstone, a fella from the Scottish Amateur Athletic Association and a clanjamfray of local bigwigs. The Tories have heard you’ve run at the big professional races at Powderhall and they think it might make a nice touch if you and Lord Featherstone had a wee race. What d’you think?”
For a moment Hugh looked straight ahead. Then he said: “Featherstone’s a quarter-miler. My top distance is what we run at the Powderhall handicap. One hundred and thirty yards.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll race him, all right, but over a hundred yards.”
Fallon nodded, and went off to convey Hugh’s views to his masters. Two days later news came through that the race was on.
It soon became the talk of Shotts, but even Lord Featherstone had to secure clearance from the SAAA to run against McPhail, for three years a “pro”. The race was therefore required to be billed as an “exhibition”, to avoid breaching amateur rules.
That night, Lang, the shop steward, broached Hugh in the Miner’s Arms, nodding to the barman to set up two pints.
Lang was direct. “What are your chances?”
Hugh shrugged. “Six weeks to go. I reckon the mining has taken about six yards out of my legs. That puts me back around ten point six. Featherstone runs about ten point one. So I’ve got just six weeks to find six yards.”
“Jesus Christ! Some of the boys are laying their wages on you already. They’re getting terrific odds.”
“I’m not surprised. The bookies’ve got it right as usual. As things stand, I haven’t got a snowball in hell’s chance. Man, Featherstone eats steaks seven days a week! He’s got his own track in his father’s grounds, his personal professional trainer. His running shoes are handmade by some guy in Bond Street. Me, I spend all week doubled up two miles underground, drinking cold tea and eating bread and butter. Who the hell’s the amateur?”
Lang put both hands on Hugh’s shoulders. “There’s a bit more to it than that, son,” he said. “There’s an election coming up soon. Featherstone only has a couple of thousand votes in hand. McNair, the Labour agent, says that a win in the sprint could come in very handy. Man, the national press is coming up to cover it.”
Hugh exploded. “What is this, a bloody three-ring circus? I agreed to run this little race; okay. But I didn’t think it was going to be built up into the bloody Olympics.”
“Calm down, lad,” said Lang. He puckered his lips in thought, then sipped his beer. “You said six yards. Jesus, we know here what professional runners have to do if anybody does. You said steaks. Then you’ll get steaks, the best. We don’t have a trainer, but Dad McPherson’s got the best hands in the business. We don’t have a track, but there’s the hundred and fifty yards of cinders down by the railway line. We’ll get it rolled as flat and hard as Powderhall. What d’ye say?”
“It’s no good,” said Hugh. “Four miles walking underground and ten hours a day at the face is no way to prepare for a sprint match.”
“We’ll get you work above ground,” said Lang. “The lads’ll club together to make up your wages.”
“Then you’re on,” said Hugh, nodding.
The next night, after work, Hugh and Stevie met at the pub for a council of war.
“Six yards,” said the wee man, gulping down his McEwans, the foam staying on his lips.
“Six weeks,” said Hugh.
They took physical inventory.
“How’s your weight?”
“About a hundred and fifty-five pounds.”
“Too light.”
“Lost a hell of a lot of muscle underground,” Hugh explained.
“Your legs?”
Hugh grimaced. “The mines again – all that walking doubled up. I’ll pull a muscle just thinking about sprinting.”
Stevie made some notes. “The steaks’ll take care of your weight. As for your legs, Dad McPherson can get to work on them, and you’ll have to stretch daily. Now you’re to be moved above ground the muscles should start to lengthen anyway.”
“So who made you the expert?”
“I can read,” answered Stevie, holding up a thick red book. “It’s all in The Complete Athletic Trainer by Sam Mussabini. He coaches some university guy named Abrahams. I’ve read it from cover to cover. And now it’s all in here.” He tapped his head.
“Well, just make sure it all comes out,” said Hugh sourly.
But Stevie was as good as his word and conducted every detail of Hugh’s preparation. And every day old McPherson massaged Hugh’s legs.
“Tight,” he said, on the first day. “Don’t run hard on these yet.”
McPherson had been blinded in a pit accident, but the old man had supple hands smoothed by years of massage, most of it on racing whippets.
“Stiff,” he said, when he came to knead Hugh’s calves. “But it’s all there – just wants bringing out.”
Others did their part with equal dedication. As he had promised, Lang smoothed and flattened one hundred and fifty yards of cinder track by the side of the railway, the area earmarked for the “exhibition”. It had taken ten miners most of two days to take the wrinkles and bumps out of the surface, but in the end it was sharp and fast. “A Powderhall indeed,” Hugh said admiringly when he saw it.
For a few weeks this bleak anonymous strip of track in the middle of a grimy coal mine in central Scotland would be the focus of his life. Six weeks from now it would be transformed into an arena in which he would face a man from another class – indeed, another world. Hugh felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and he shivered. He had only run once with real money on his back, at the New Year handicap at Powderhall, and he knew the agonies of self-doubt which grew day by day as fitness becomes increasingly sharp and the mind trembles on a fine edge. He looked again down the dead, silent strip of cinder, and thought of the life which his feet would bring to it, and in turn drain from its surface.
Training – or “prep”, as the specialized preparation was called, in the time-honoured traditions of Scottish professional running – went well. Prep was the method of pedestrians who ever since the great clashes of professional sprinters in the nineteenth century had honed their bodies to a knife-edge for two-man “matches”, or for those twelve burning seconds which formed the annual New Year’s Day Powderhall sprint in Edinburgh.
The method itself was a ritual whose secrets were as closely guarded as those of any ancient priesthood. After a big breakfast Hugh would be massaged lightly by Dad McPherson, then off to the track for six scores – twenty yard sprints with great attention to relaxed running technique. Next would follow an hour’s sleep, in turn followed at one o’clock by a steak dinner; there was no such meal as lunch to the miners at Shotts.
After another hour’s sleep it was back to the track for six runs over one hundred and twenty yards, at half effort, every run watched by the meticulous Stevie, who would again stress relaxation and running form. Then, in a disused hut beside the track, where Stevie had created a primitive gymnasium, Hugh practised for half an hour on the punch-ball, the sweat drenching his thick jersey as he rhythmically pummelled the springy leather ball. The next half hour was spent on hundreds of repetitions of abdominal exercises, performed until his stomach went into spasms.
“Mussabini says the secret of sprinting is in the abdominals,” Stevie would comment earnestly, tapping the spine of The Athletic Trainer, as Hugh lay writhing on the floor of the hut. Sometimes Hugh wished Mussabini had kept his secret to himself.
The day’s ritual ended with a walk back through gathering gloom to McPherson’s cottage for a final massage and high tea. Hugh would then put in a light shift on the mine’s surface before retiring to bed at nine thirty.
There was no doubt that the training was working. Every day Hugh’s recovery from runs became quicker, and gradually the running began to flow into him and from him. Under Dad’s skilful, searching fingers his muscles became soft and supple, the hardness of the months at the pit face teased gently from them.
More important, Hugh again began to feel like an athlete. With the hardening and stretching of the muscles he could feel that his mind became daily quicker and sharper; like some delicate, hunted animal learning to tread its way in a world of danger.
Nor was there a day when a miner did not approach him to ask how he was feeling. “How’s it going, then?” they would ask. “The training. Getting enough steaks, are you?”
There was no envy in their questions. Hugh was their man, on whom they had placed their hopes, and it was right and just that he should be given special treatment. The miners’ experience with whippets and pigeons had taught them that you did not treat diamonds like quartz. They knew that a professional sprinter, a “ped”, had to be treated with care, like the greyhound he undoubtedly was.
However, each question, each query about his health and well-being increased the weight of responsibility Hugh felt resting upon him. What had begun as a “wee race” was, whatever Lord Featherstone felt, going to be a race to the death for Hugh. Men had staked their wages, some their entire savings on him, for the initial odds offered by the bookmakers had been generous. Featherstone was after all an Olympian, having run 47.8 seconds for 400 metres, one of the fastest times in the world. Hugh realized that it was not only the money, though God knew that was reason enough for concern. It was “Them” against “Us”, Tory against Labour, workers against management.
Final training went well. With two weeks to go Hugh clocked ten point three seconds in a trial run, two yards off target time. For all that, Stevie could feel his man becoming more and more tense in the week before the race.
“Let’s go to the pictures,” he said one afternoon, over tea.
The Roxy in Shotts was a fleapit, but a warm and pleasant place. The Charlie Chaplin film The Gold Rush was ideally suited to the occasion, and Stevie knew he had made the right decision.
Then came Pathé News. A couple of items, then “Oxford versus Cambridge, Queen’s Club, London” read the titles. The annual athletics match. There on the screen was Featherstone, clad in Oxford bags and white sweater with a woollen scarf wrapped carelessly round his neck.
“Lord Featherstone, a triple winner,” said the titles. “440 yards – 48.2 seconds. 220 yards – 21.9 seconds.”
“Wait for it,” said Hugh, gripping his seat.
“100 yards – 9.9 seconds.”
“Jesus Christ!” Hugh exclaimed.
They could both feel the change in the atmosphere as the lights went on. All round the cinema miners were arguing. “I think they know the score now,” said Hugh quietly, as they made their way to the exit.
“It was probably wind-assisted,” growled Stevie on the way home. “Amateur time-keepers.”
It did not take the people of Shotts long to hear that their man would have to find four extra yards by race day. The atmosphere at the mine on Monday was sepulchral.
“What do you think?” asked Lang that evening at Dad McPherson’s.
Hugh shook his head.
“I’ll not run nine point nine if you took a red-hot poker to my arse,” he said, then added: “Still, we’ve got two weeks, and that railroad track isn’t Queen’s Club.”
Lang’s eyebrows lifted. “How d’you mean?”
“I mean nine point nine at Queen’s Club might only be worth ten point one here. I’m running ten point three now, with two weeks to go. I’ve got to find two-tenths. Anyhow, for Featherstone, it’s just an ‘exhibition’. For me it’s shit or bust.”
In his final trial, two days before the race, he ran ten point two. Everyone in the colliery knew, for there were at least ten watches on him when the trial was run. Still two yards to find, perhaps three.
“I’d like you to see someone,” said Stevie as they talked together at Dad McPherson’s one night after training. “It might help.”
“Help!” exclaimed Hugh. “I’ve had help enough. Steaks, massage, my own track, handmade spikes from London. I’ll tell you the help I need. I need a bloody miracle.”
“Calm down,” said his friend sharply, as there was a knock at the door. “Here,” he added. “I’d like you to meet Jock Wallace.”
He ushered into the living room a big, heavy grey-haired man in his mid-fifties, cap in hand. The man looked uneasy and immediately sensed Hugh’s antagonism as he lay on the bed on his stomach with Dad’s smooth fingers kneading his calves.
“Sorry to trouble you . . . at this time,” he said apologetically, as Hugh looked up.
Gathering himself he blurted: “Just some advice. You forget about Featherstone. You’re not running against him. You run against yourself when you’ve got big money on your back. Run in four feet of space. That’s all. Just run in four feet of space.”
He picked up his cap, nodded at Stevie, and was led out of the room by McPherson.
Hugh scowled and looked at Stevie.
“What did he mean, four feet of space?”
“He meant run your race. If it’s good enough you’ll win, if not you lose. So just drill through your four feet of space. That’s what sprinting’s all about. You run in blinkers.”
“What does he know about it?”
“You know who that was? That’s Wallace of Perth. He won the Powderhall sprint in 1888. That old man ran with five thousand pounds on his back. He’s been there. He’s been through it. He knows.”
Wallace of Perth. Hugh had heard of him. Twelve point seven seconds off two yards handicap on crushed snow. Wallace had been a legend in his time, a Scot who had taken on and beaten some of the best professional sprinters in the world. And now there he was, a big, soft old man telling Hugh to run in four feet of space. As Hugh pondered he realized the old man was right. You ran a hundred yards in separate tunnels, the winner being the man first out of his tunnel at the end. That tunnel was four feet wide and that was the space he had to penetrate oblivious of Featherstone.
He couldn’t sleep the night before the race. In his dreams he ran and re-ran the race, each time wallowing with leaden legs up endless tracks. Each time he woke up sweating.
Management tried to play down the exhibition, treating it as just a minor part of a day of handshakes, junketing and grand speeches. But there was no doubt about how the colliers saw it. All morning long the pit seethed with anticipation.
Hugh could eat virtually nothing and had only tea and toast. Stevie, as was the custom, had given him a good dose of laxatives the night before, and Hugh spent most of the morning in the toilet. By noon he felt he could not run one yard, let alone a hundred.
“Relax,” said Stevie, as Hugh lay in the cottage on the massage table. “For God’s sake.” But Hugh could feel the tension in Stevie’s voice and knew that the little man had invested as much as anyone in him, not merely in money but in the meticulous and purposeful training programme he had devised. For the past six weeks the bandy-legged little man had lived his sporting life through Hugh. They both knew how fragile a sprint performance was. The slightest overtraining and a muscle could go like a violin string. Undertrain, and one came to the start sluggish and heavy. In the race itself the slightest mistake was lethal: over a hundred yards there was no time to recover from error.
That afternoon, an hour before the race, even Dad McPherson sweated as he lightly caressed the muscles of Hugh’s hamstrings. The old man had put his life-savings on Hugh – fifty pounds, ten shillings and sixpence, at ten to one. For him the race meant the difference between five more cramped years at the pit and a life of ease with his beloved pigeons and whippets. McPherson knew how greyhounds sprang from the traps to seek their whirling prey. He prayed that his fingers could breathe something of that quality into Hugh McPhail.
Half an hour later, a black silk dressing-gown, which had been purchased by the colliers, draped round his shoulders, Hugh walked down through the packed pit towards the competition area, flanked by Stevie, engulfed by the crowd who lined every yard of the cinder route. Hugh felt weak in the stomach. This was not what he had expected; no fragile sprint was meant to bear such pressure, and certainly no man. He felt like a pit prop, bending and groaning under the black earth above. These miners were burying him beneath their hopes. He warmed up, feeling tired and breathless. Everything poured into ten brief seconds. His mouth dried as he thought of lt.
Featherstone was a tall blonde man, his lightly-tanned skin a product of Cannes in summer, Chamonix in winter. He had a soft handshake.
“Pleased to meet you, McPhail,” he said.
Despite his manner Featherstone was under no illusions about what was at stake. Row upon row of grimy chokered men in flat caps and pit-boots, straining at the ropes which enclosed the track, made it only too clear. He checked his lane. Those fellows had certainly done a good job: it was quite the equal of Queen’s Club. He looked across at Hugh. The man had the look of a sprinter. Thick, powerful thighs, light calves, strong shoulders. Well, they would soon see.
They stripped off. Featherstone wore long silk Oxford shorts, rimmed in dark blue, as was his half-sleeved vest. A whisper ran through the crowd. The man had a superb physique, yet as unlike McPhail’s as could be imagined. It was completely balanced, with no obvious rippling muscularity. Featherstone looked an animal born to run.
Hugh did not even glance at him, focusing rather on his strip of track. Four feet of space, old Wallace had said . . . Gradually the area outside of his lane was narrowing, and with it the bubble of the crowd faded.
“Take to your marks!” The starter stood only ten yards behind them, but his voice seemed to come from a long way off.
Hugh looked up the track again. His lane was like a beam of light, with nothing but darkness on either side. He screwed his feet into his holes, feeling the light pressure of his right knee upon the cinders as he lowered it to the ground. All was still.
“Get set!”
He lifted his hips, feeling the pressure on his finger tips. The gun was a release. He surged out like water bursting through a hole in a dam, piercing the space, his legs eating the ground beneath him. Then, suddenly, it was slow, but not sluggish, for this was the slowness of ease, the slowness induced by a feeling that there was ample time for every movement, time enough for the high pick-up of the thigh, time enough for the strong drive-back of the elbows. Hugh knew that his running was pouring out of him, gushing along that narrow four-foot strip which had been made for his movements and his alone. He ran in a sweet dream, only dimly aware of the noise which raged on each side of his lane. He wanted it to last for ever. Then it was over.
Hugh’s legs burnt the final yards of the track. He had no need for the “dip” finish with which his chest snapped the tape. Featherstone proffered his hand, this time with a firm shake.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You ran as if you were on your own.”
“I was,” replied Hugh.
When the official announcement came it was almost drowned in the shouts of the crowd. “First, McPhail, Shotts. Ten seconds even.” Many of the miners started to dance up and down, gripping each other by the shoulders. Children ran on to the track to touch him. Stevie and McPherson stood by the finish, tears streaming down their faces. On the special dais constructed for management and guests there was silence.
Although a reporter from every national newspaper was there the “exhibition” was reported in none of them. It was as if a race watched by six thousand people had never happened. A week later Hugh and Stevie were sacked. No reason was given, none required. It was not simply that Hugh had beaten Featherstone. His mistake had been in taking it too seriously – in having the miners formally invest in him in a way which Featherstone’s class had done since birth as a matter of course. Worst of all they had won for Lang, the union man and for the people. For Featherstone the race had merely been a ripple in what was to be a successful campaign, and he was not told of Hugh’s leaving.
But Lang did not let them down. Through contacts in Glasgow the union man had arranged work for Hugh and Stevie as dishwashers in a central hotel. Ten hours a day with hands in hot greasy water was a far cry from the pampered life of a professional athlete, but Hugh was content. Those ten seconds of the Shotts sprint had taught him much about himself. He had been tried and had not been found wanting. The work in the hotel, was, however, only a short step from the unemployment of 1930, and for Hugh and Stevie it was soon back to the pleasures of the library, the street corner and the Broo Park.
McPhail had tried them all, these pleasures of the poor, and, being physically active, had found the “tanner-a-man” matches on Glasgow Green most to his liking. The rules were simple enough: if you won your opponent gave you sixpence; if you lost you gave him the same sum.
The name Glasgow Green was misleading, for there was little green about its soccer pitches. The area around the Green had once, long past, been elegant enough, with pillared Georgian houses, homes of the eighteenth-century tobacco barons, but had long since gone to seed as successive generations of the working class had pressed in and on, and the rich had moved south or west to avoid both the smoke and the workers who created it. The remaining “green” lay in the well-cut lawns provided by thoughtful Victorian councillors, but the soccer pitches themselves were made of rough, black industrial cinders. Now, in winter, corrugated, gripped by frost, they could rip a man’s flesh to shreds.
The “tanner-a-man” matches were desperate affairs, for few of the men could afford to lose even sixpence. It was one-all at half-time and McPhail and his team were squatting at the side of the pitch when wee Stevie let slip that he had read in a newspaper about the Trans-America race. “Ninety thousand pounds,” said Stevie. “But the bastards’ll earn it. Three thousand miles across America. Poor sods.” Stevie had read the news in a paper in which he had bought his staple diet of fish and chips, so for all McPhail knew the race had already been run. But he made a mental note before returning his attention to the game.
One of the players, McGowan, had in his early years been a professional with Partick Thistle. He had been a beautiful player, a nimble dribbler who could lay off streams of goal-scoring passes, but a leg injury had stopped short his career. Now in his mid-forties, tubercular, he hardly appeared to run a step but dominated the middle of the field, rarely having to make a tackle, always reading each situation early, making interceptions and still pushing out accurate passes. The game was tied at two-all when McGowan fell to the ground coughing. He put his hand to his mouth and dark blood seeped through his fingers. McPhail went to him.
“Off you go, old man,” he said. “I’ll pay if we lose.”
The old player was helped, protesting, from the field, still spluttering blood. Ten minutes later McPhail laid on a pass for another team member to score in the top right-hand corner. “You’ve earned a pint,” said McGowan, as McPhail trudged from the pitch.
The game had been over for two hours. Hugh, after a brief excursion to the public library, had settled in a corner of the pub to drink his pint with McGowan and look at the page of the newspaper which he had ripped off from the library copy, the same page he had seen beneath Stevie’s fish and chips. No, there was time: the Trans-America race was still several months away in March I931. But where in God’s name was California? He finished his drink, and after making his farewells to McGowan returned to the library to seek out a map. California was on the west coast, and could not have been farther away. He could see no way of getting there.
“You’re not using the head,” said Stevie, when he told him.
“Whit d’ye mean?” Hugh replied testily.
“Look,” said Stevie. “First you’re a sprinter. You’ve never run a hundred miles, let alone three thousand. Second, you’ve nae money to get there. Why not kill two birds with one stone?” Hugh did not reply, so he went on. “Get somebody to organise a Scottish Trial, for God’s sake. Some newspaper like The Times or the Citizen. That way if you are good enough you’ll find out. If not you won’t have wasted your own or anybody else’s money, going all the way out to California.”
Hugh thought for a moment. “You’re right, Stevie. But the man for this is Jimmy G. Miller.”
“Jimmy G.”, as he was commonly known, a Bridgeton turf accountant of doubtful reputation, was not immediately taken with the idea of putting up £500 in prize money for an unheard-of event.
“What do I get out of it?” he asked Hugh suspiciously.
“First,” said Hugh, “the prestige. You’ve put up the cash so that a Scot can go to America and take on the best in the world. Second, the betting. You’ll take a big book on the result of the race. And third, me.”
“You?” exploded Jimmy G. “God in heaven, you’re a bloody sprinter. Where’s the money in you?”
“Give me six months’ preparation. Take me off with a good trainer and some steaks and I’ll win you that trial. You’ll get big odds on me, and clean up a packet.”
Jimmy G. took the wet stub of the cigar from his mouth and looked across the table at him. “Can you guarantee to win?”
“I can’t. That’s your gamble. That’s what you are anyway, a gambler, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” replied Jimmy G. “I’m a bookmaker.” But he was smiling.
After that events moved quickly. The £500 prize money that James G. Miller of Bridgeton put up for the Scottish Trans-America trial caused a sensation, and the bookmaker and his race became a national talking point, just as McPhail had prophesied. Jimmy G. was happy with the result, for overnight, for a mere £500, he had been elevated from the relative obscurity of a Bridgeton bookmaker to the status of a national figure. Times were hard, the winter was bleak, Scotland had just lost in the annual soccer match against England. Jimmy G. had given the country something to talk about, something to which people could look forward. The only problem was that he had never organized a race in his life. He decided to seek the advice of someone who had – Murdoch, the organizer of the 1909 Powderhall marathon.
“Nae problem,” said the old man, and set to planning a course from Aberdeen to Glasgow.
Meanwhile Jimmy G. had kept the final part of his agreement and had sent McPhail to the Highlands under the stern eye of the professional trainer “Ducky” Duckworth. The bookmaker saw little hope of any return on his investment on McPhail, but reckoned he would soon know from Duckworth’s trials if the Glasgow man had any chance of surviving the Trans-American race, let alone winning it. Duckworth was not so optimistic, for though the trials run by professional sprinters were good guides to eventual racing form, there was no real way of testing whether or not a man could run a hundred miles without exposing him to massive fatigue, from which there might not be time to recover. There was no real precedent for training for this length of race, and there was a real danger of running your man into the ground before the contest. He therefore resolved to make the final trial at least a fortnight before the race, and for it to consist of two fifty-mile runs, with three hours’ rest in between.
McPhail’s stay in the central highlands was an exhausting one. First, Duckworth boiled him down to “racing weight” from his normal weight of 170 pounds by having him lose eight pounds in the first fortnight. The first two weeks McPhail ran and walked only about eight miles a day, mostly on soft grass, in stints of three to five miles. At first he found this hard, particularly as Duckworth made him run part of the distance in boots and heavy clothing. Gradually, however, he felt his thighs harden again, his breathing become easier.
After a month Duckworth gave him a trial over a hilly ten-mile course. “Run it in inside an hour,” he said, “or the preparation’s over.”
Hugh got through the first five miles in well inside the half hour, with Duckworth behind him on a bicycle. Even at seven and a half miles he was inside his schedule, and feeling pleased with himself. Then, at eight miles, he cracked. Suddenly, as if someone inside his body had turned off a tap, his legs tightened and his stride dropped to a crippled trot. Duckworth immediately saw what had happened, slowed, and sat back to watch.
Hugh had never experienced anything like this before. True, he had tightened up in sprints, but that had been painless, over in a flash. Now his thighs and the inside of his groin were screaming. Yet he did not drop to a walk. He did not dare, for he knew that if he did he would never be able to restart.
Just as the chemistry of his body had changed, so had that of his mind. Perhaps a scientist could analyse and measure it in terms of molecules whirling desperately towards some mad collision. To Hugh it took the form of a blur of images: on the one hand, the cinders of tanner-a-man football on Glasgow Green, endless cups of kitchen tea on endless winter afternoons, standing in line at the Broo. On the other, a chance – not much of a chance, perhaps – of a money prize and a trip to the sun on the other side of the world. Above all, a chance to break clear, to start again. On the one hand, the pain, and the certainty of at least another quarter of an hour of it; on the other, his hopes and his dreams.
Hugh started to groan. It was not a conscious groan, but one which came from deep inside and pulsed in rhythm with his now short and shattered strides. In a way it helped, acting as a sort of metronome against which his strides could be placed, his pain measured. Every now and then his groans would be interrupted by a sound which came from even deeper within him, a little scream which pierced the groans and then died away.
In the central highlands of Scotland, silhouetted against the grey winter sky, a man staggered, groaning, followed by a little man on a bicycle. Fiercer battles had been fought on stranger ground, but none more severe.
It took Duckworth more than half an hour to bring his charge round. Hugh jerked his head away from the sharp smell of the smelling salts.
“Did I make it?” he asked, propping himself up.
“Yes,” said Duckworth. “Ye ran ten miles.”
“But the time? Did I make it in the hour?”
“No. One hour and two minutes.”
McPhail wept, the salt tears dropping on to a vest already sodden with sweat. He wept like a child, in deep sobs.
Duckworth bent down, so that his eyes were in line with Hugh’s. “Ye didn’t make it in the hour, but ye’ve satisfied me. Ma faither, when he telt me of great runners, used tae call it ‘bottom’. A’ the great yins had it. Ye can call it whit ye like – courage, stamina, endurance. He called it ‘bottom’.
You’ve got it, lad.”
“You mean we go on with the prep?”
“Aye. Now it’s just a matter of getting miles under yer belt. Now we know ye’ll stay when trouble comes.”
Three months later, his body toned and hardened by Duckworth’s training, Hugh found no difficulty in winning the Scottish Trans-America trial. He had been virtually the only trained man in the trial, a race in which he had faced the gaunt men of the Scottish Broo Parks. He led them easily through the black, slimy streets of Glasgow, and finished before forty thousand spectators at Ibrox stadium.
Throughout that day broken men stumbled round the sodden cinder track, all hope of the Trans-America gone. Hugh watched them from the comfort of the stands and asked himself why they kept going. Months later, thousands of miles from home, he was to receive the answer.