We were both up early when the big day came. I wandered into the kitchen for a shave, but Claud got dressed right away and went outside to arrange about the straw. Through the kitchen window, I could see the sun just coming up behind the line of trees on top of the ridge the other side of the valley.
Each time Claud came past the window with an armload of straw, I noticed over the rim of the mirror the intent, breathless expression on his face, the great round bullethead thrusting forward and the forehead wrinkled into deep corrugations right up to the hairline. I’d only seen this look on him once before and that was the evening he’d asked Clarice to marry him. Today he was so excited he even walked funny, treading softly as though the concrete around the filling station were a shade too hot for the soles of his feet; and he kept packing more and more straw into the back of the van to make it comfortable for Jackie.
Then he came into the kitchen to fix breakfast, and I watched him put the pot of soup on the stove and begin stirring it. He had a long metal spoon and he kept on stirring and stirring, and about every half minute he leaned forward and stuck his nose into that sickly-sweet steam of cooking horseflesh. Then he started putting extras into it—three peeled onions, a few young carrots, a cupful of stinging-nettle tops, a teaspoon of Valentine’s Meat Extract, twelve drops of cod-liver oil—and everything he touched was handled very gently with the ends of his big fat fingers as though it might have been a little fragment of Venetian glass. He took some minced horse meat from the icebox, measured one handful into Jackie’s bowl, three into the other, and when the soup was ready he shared it out between the two, pouring it over the meat.
It was the same ceremony I’d seen performed each morning for the past five months, but never with such breathless concentration as this. There was no talk, not even a glance my way, and when he turned and went out again to fetch the dogs, even the back of his neck and his shoulders seemed to be whispering, “Oh, Jesus, don’t let anything go wrong, and especially don’t let me do anything wrong today.”
I heard him talking softly to the dogs in the pen as he put the leashes on them, and when he brought them around into the kitchen, they came in prancing and pulling to get at the breakfast, treading up and down with their front feet and waving their enormous tails from side to side like whips.
“All right,” Claud said, speaking at last. “Which is it?”
Most mornings he’d offer to bet me a pack of cigarettes, but there were bigger things at stake today, and I knew all he wanted for the moment was a little extra reassurance.
He watched me as I walked once around the two beautiful, identical, tall, velvety-black dogs, and he moved aside, holding the leashes at arm’s length to give me a better view.
“Jackie!” I said, trying the old trick that never worked. “Hey Jackie!” Two identical heads with identical expressions flicked around to look at me, four bright, identical, deep-yellow eyes stared into mine. There’d been a time when I fancied the eyes of one were a slightly darker yellow than those of the other. There’d also been a time when I thought I could recognize Jackie because of a deeper brisket and a shade more muscle on the hindquarters. But it wasn’t so.
“Come on,” Claud said. He was hoping that today of all days I would make a bad guess.
“This one,” I said. “This is Jackie.”
“Which?”
“This one on the left.”
“There!” he cried, his whole face suddenly beaming. “You’re wrong again!”
“I don’t think I’m wrong.”
“You’re about as wrong as you could possibly be. And now listen, Gordon, and I’ll tell you something. All these last weeks, every morning while you’ve been trying to pick him out—you know what?”
“What?”
“I’ve been keeping count. And the result is you haven’t been right even one-half the time! You’d have done better tossing a coin!”
What he meant was that if I (who saw them every day and side by side) couldn’t do it, why the hell should we be frightened of Mr. Feasey. Claud knew Mr. Feasey was famous for spotting ringers, but he knew also that it could be very difficult to tell the difference between two dogs when there wasn’t any.
He put the bowls of food on the floor, giving Jackie the one with the least meat because he was running today. When he stood back to watch them eat, the shadow of deep concern was back again on his face and the large pale eyes were staring at Jackie with the same rapt and melting look of love that up till recently had been reserved only for Clarice.
“You see, Gordon,” he said. “It’s just what I’ve always told you. For the last hundred years, there’s been all manner of ringers, some good and some bad, but in the whole history of dog racing there’s never been a ringer like this.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, and my mind began travelling back to that freezing afternoon just before Christmas, when Claud had asked to borrow the van, and had driven away in the direction of Aylesbury without saying where he was going. I had assumed he was off to see Clarice, but late in the afternoon he had returned bringing with him this dog he said he’d bought off a man for thirty-five shillings.
“Is he fast?” I had said. We were standing out by the pumps and Claud was holding the dog on a leash and looking at him, and a few snowflakes were falling and settling on the dog’s back. The motor of the van was still running.
“Fast!” Claud had said. “He’s just about the slowest dog you ever saw in your whole life!”
“Then what you buy him for?”
“Well,” he had said, the big bovine face secret and cunning, “it occurred to me that maybe he might possibly look a little bit like Jackie. What d’you think?”
“I suppose he does a bit, now you come to mention it.”
He had handed me the leash and I had taken the new dog inside to dry him off while Claud had gone round to the pen to fetch his beloved. And when he returned and we put the two of them together for the first time, I can remember him stepping back and saying, “Oh, Jesus!” and standing dead still in front of them like he was seeing a phantom. Then he became very quick and quiet. He got down on his knees and began comparing them carefully point by point, and it was almost like the room was getting warmer and warmer the way I could feel his excitement growing every second through this long silent examination in which even the toenails and the dewclaws, eighteen on each dog, were matched alongside one another for color.
“Look,” he had said at last, standing up. “Walk them up and down the room a few times, will you?” And then he had stayed there for quite five or six minutes leaning against the stove with his eyes half closed and his head on one side, watching them and frowning and chewing his lips. After that, as though he didn’t believe what he had seen the first time, he had gone down again on his knees to re-check everything once more; but suddenly, in the middle of it, he had jumped up and looked at me, his face fixed and tense, with a curious whiteness around the nostrils and the eyes. “All right,” he had said, a little tremor in his voice. “You know what? We’re home. We’re rich.”
And then the secret conferences between us in the kitchen, the detailed planning, the selection of the most suitable track, and finally every other Saturday, eight times in all, locking up my filling station (losing a whole afternoon’s custom) and driving the ringer all the way up to Oxford to a scruffy little track out in the fields near Headingley where the big money was played but which was actually nothing except a line of old posts and cord to mark the course, an upturned bicycle for pulling the dummy hare, and at the far end, in the distance, six traps and the starter. We had driven this ringer up there eight times over a period of sixteen weeks and entered him with Mr. Feasey and stood around on the edge of the crowd in the freezing raining cold, waiting for his name to go up on the blackboard in chalk. The Black Panther we called him. And when his time came, Claud would always lead him down to the traps and I would stand at the finish to catch him and keep him clear of the fighters, the gypsy dogs that the gypsies so often slipped in specially to tear another one to pieces at the end of a race.
“Leave it on.”
But you know, there was something rather sad about taking this dog all the way up there so many times and letting him run and watching him and hoping and praying that whatever happened he would always come last. Of course, the praying wasn’t necessary and we never really had a moment’s worry because the old fellow simply couldn’t gallop and that’s all there was to it. He ran exactly like a crab. The only time he didn’t come last was when a big fawn dog by the name of Amber Plash put his foot in a hole and broke a hock and finished on three legs. But even then ours only just beat him. So this way we got him right down to bottom grade with the scrubbers, and the last time we were there all the bookies were laying him twenty or thirty to one and calling his name and begging people to back him.
Now at last, today, on this sunny day, it was Jackie’s turn to go instead. Claud said we mustn’t run the ringer any more or Mr. Feasey might begin to get tired of him and throw him out altogether, he was so slow. Claud said this was the exact psychological time to have it off, and that Jackie would win it anything between thirty and fifty lengths.
He had raised Jackie from a pup and the dog was only fifteen months now, but he was a good fast runner. He’d never raced yet, but we knew he was fast from clocking him round the little private schooling track at Uxbridge where Claud had taken him every Sunday since he was seven months old—except once when he was having some inoculations. Claud said he probably wasn’t fast enough to win top grade at Mr. Feasey’s, but where we’d got him now, in bottom grade with the scrubbers, he could fall over and get up again and still win it twenty—well, anyway ten or fifteen lengths.
So all I had to do this morning was go to the bank in the village and draw out fifty pounds for myself and fifty for Claud, which I would lend him as an advance against wages, and then at twelve o’clock lock up the filling station and hang the notice on one of the pumps saying “GONE FOR THE DAY.” Claud would shut the ringer in the pen at the back and put Jackie in the van and off we’d go. I won’t say I was as excited about it as Claud, but there again, I didn’t have all sorts of important things depending on it either, like buying a house and being able to get married. Nor was I almost born in a kennel with greyhounds like he was, walking about thinking of absolutely nothing else—except perhaps Clarice in the evenings. Personally, I had my own career as a filling-station owner to keep me busy, not to mention second-hand cars, but if Claud wanted to fool around with dogs that was all right with me, especially a thing like today—if it came off. As a matter of fact, I don’t mind admitting that every time I thought about the money we were putting on and the money we might win, my stomach gave a little lurch.
The dogs had finished their breakfast now and Claud took them out for a short walk across the field opposite while I got dressed and fried the eggs. Afterward, I went to the bank and drew out the money (all in ones), and the rest of the morning seemed to go very quickly serving customers.
At twelve sharp, I locked up and hung the notice on the pump. Claud came around from the back leading Jackie and carrying a large suitcase made of reddish-brown cardboard.
“Suitcase?”
“For the money,” Claud answered. “You said yourself no man can carry two thousand pound in his pockets.”
Jackie looked wonderful, with two big hard muscles the size of melons bulging on his hindquarters, his coat glistening like black velvet. While Claud was putting the suitcase in the van, the dog did a little prancing jig on his toes to show how fit he was, then he looked up at me and grinned, just like he knew he was off to the races to win two thousand pounds and a heap of glory.
We got in the van and off we went. I was doing the driving. Claud was beside me and Jackie was standing up on the straw in the rear looking over our shoulders through the windshield. Claud kept turning round and trying to make him lie down so he wouldn’t get thrown whenever we went round the sharp corners, but the dog was too excited to do anything except grin back at him and wave his enormous tail.
“You got the money, Gordon?” Claud was chain-smoking cigarettes and quite unable to sit still.
“Yes.”
“Mine as well?”
“I got a hundred and five altogether. Five for the winder like you said, so he won’t stop the hare and make it a no race.”
“Good,” Claud said, rubbing his hands together hard as though he were freezing cold. “Good good good.”
We drove through the little narrow High Street of Great Missenden and caught a glimpse of old Rummins going into the Nag’s Head for his morning pint, then outside the village we turned left and climbed over the ridge of the Chilterns toward Princes Risborough, and from there it would only be twenty-odd miles to Oxford.
And now a silence and a kind of tension began to come over us both. We sat very quiet, not speaking at all, each nursing his own fears and excitements, containing his anxiety. And Claud kept smoking his cigarettes and throwing them half finished out the window. Usually, on these trips, he talked his head off all the way there and back, all the things he’d done with dogs in his life, the jobs he’d pulled, the places he’d been, the money he’d won; and all the things other people had done with dogs, the thievery, the cruelty, the unbelievable trickery and cunning of owners at the flapping tracks. But today I don’t think he was trusting himself to speak very much. At this point, for that matter, nor was I. I was sitting there watching the road, and trying to keep my mind off the immediate future by thinking back on all that stuff Claud had told me about this curious greyhound-racing racket.
I swear there wasn’t a man alive who knew more about it than Claud did, and ever since we’d got the ringer and decided to pull this job, he’d taken it upon himself to give me an education in the business. By now, in theory at any rate, I suppose I knew nearly as much as him.
It had started during the very first strategy conference we’d had in the kitchen. I can remember it was the day after the ringer arrived and we were sitting there watching for customers through the window, and Claud was explaining to me all about what we’d have to do, and I was trying to follow him as best I could until finally there came one question I had to ask him.
“What I don’t see,” I had said, “is why you use the ringer at all. Wouldn’t it be safer if we use Jackie all the time and simply stop him the first half-dozen races so he come last? Then when we’re good and ready, we can let him go. Same result in the end, wouldn’t it be, if we do it right? And no danger of being caught.”
Well, as I say, that did it. Claud looked up at me quickly and said, “Hey! None of that! I’d just like you to know stopping’s something I never do. What’s come over you, Gordon?” He seemed genuinely pained and shocked by what I had said.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it.”
“Now listen to me, Gordon. Stopping a good dog breaks his heart. A good dog knows he’s fast, and seeing all the others out there in front and not being able to catch them—it breaks his heart, I tell you. And what’s more, you wouldn’t be making suggestions like that if you knew some of the tricks them fellers do to stop their dogs at the flapping tracks.”
“Such as what, for example?” I had asked.
“Such as anything in the world almost, so long as it makes the dog go slower. And it takes a lot of stopping, a good greyhound does. Full of guts and so mad keen you can’t even let them watch a race they’ll tear the leash right out of your hand rearing to go. Many’s the time I’ve seen one with a broken leg insisting on finishing the race.”
He had paused then, looking at me thoughtfully with those large pale eyes, serious as hell and obviously thinking deep. “Maybe,” he had said, “if we’re going to do this job properly I’d better tell you a thing or two so’s you’ll know what we’re up against.”
“Go ahead and tell me,” I had said. “I’d like to know.”
For a moment he stared in silence out the window, and his face began slowly to assume the expression of a man who possesses dangerous secrets. “The main thing you got to remember,” he had said, “is that all these fellers going to the flapping tracks with dogs—they’re artful. They’re more artful than you could possibly imagine.” Again he paused, marshalling his thoughts.
“Now take for example the different ways of stopping a dog. The first, the commonest, is strapping.”
“Strapping?”
“Yes. Strapping ’em up. That’s commonest. Pulling the muzzle strap tight around their necks so they can’t hardly breathe, see. A clever man knows just which hole on the strap to use and just how many lengths it’ll take off his dog in a race. Usually a couple of notches is good for five or six lengths. Do it up real tight and he’ll come last. I’ve known plenty of dogs collapse and die from being strapped up tight on a hot day. Strangulated, absolutely strangulated, and a very nasty thing it was, too. Then again, some of ’em just tie two of the toes together with black cotton. Dog never runs well like that. Unbalances him.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Then there’s others that put a piece of fresh-chewed gum up under their tails, right up close where the tail joins the body. And there’s nothing funny about that,” he had said, indignant. “The tail of a running dog goes up and down ever so slightly and the gum on the tail keeps sticking to the hairs on the backside, just where it’s tenderest. No dog likes that, you know. Then there’s sleeping pills. That’s used a lot nowadays. They do it by weight, exactly like a doctor, and they measure the powder according to whether they want to slow him up five or ten or fifteen lengths. Those are just a few of the ordinary ways,” he had said. “Actually, they’re nothing. Absolutely nothing compared with some of the other things that’s done to hold a dog back in a race, especially by the gypsies. There’s things the gypsies do that are almost too disgusting to mention, such as when they’re just putting the dog in the trap, things you wouldn’t hardly do to your worst enemies.”
And when he had told me about those—which were, indeed, terrible things because they had to do with physical injury, quickly, painfully inflicted—he had gone on to tell me what they did when they wanted the dog to win.
“There’s just as terrible things done to make ’em go fast as to make ’em go slow,” he had said softly, his face veiled and secret. “And perhaps commonest of all is wintergreen. Whenever you see a dog going around with no hair on his back or little bald patches all over him—that’s wintergreen. Just before the race, they rub it hard into the skin. Sometimes it’s Sloan’s liniment, but mostly it’s wintergreen. Stings terrible. Stings so bad that all the old dog wants to do is run run run as fast as he possibly can to get away from the pain.
“Then there’s special drugs they give with the needle. Mind you, that’s the modern method and most of the spivs at the track are too ignorant to use it. It’s the fellers coming down from London in the big cars with stadium dogs they’ve borrowed for the day by bribing the trainer—they’re the ones use the needle.”
“I guess cats just can’t appreciate Frank Gehry.”
I could remember him sitting there at the kitchen table with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and dropping his eyelids to keep out the smoke and looking at me through his wrinkled, nearly closed eyes, and saying, “What you’ve got to remember, Gordon, is this. There’s nothing they won’t do to make a dog win if they want him to. On the other hand, no dog can run faster than he’s built, no matter what they do to him. So if we can get Jackie down into bottom grade, then we’re home. No dog in bottom grade can get near him, not even with wintergreen and needles.”
And so it had gone on. During each of the eight long trips we had subsequently made to the track with the ringer, I had heard more and more about this charming sport—more, especially, about the methods of stopping them and making them go (even the names of the drugs and the quantities to use). I heard about the “rat treatment” (for non-chasers, to make them chase the dummy hare), where a rat is placed in a can which is then tied around the dog’s neck. There’s a small hole in the lid of the can just large enough for the rat to poke its head out and nip the dog. But the dog can’t get at the rat, and so naturally he goes half crazy running around and being bitten in the neck, and the more he shakes the can the more the rat bites him. Finally, someone releases the rat, and the dog, who up to then was a nice docile tail-wagging animal who wouldn’t hurt a mouse, pounces on it in a rage and tears it to pieces. Do this a few times, Claud had said—“mind you, I don’t hold with it myself”—and the dog becomes a real killer who will chase anything, even the dummy hare.
We were over the Chilterns now and running down out of the beechwoods into the flat elm and oak-tree country south of Oxford. Claud sat quietly beside me, nursing his nervousness and smoking cigarettes, and every two or three minutes he would turn round to see if Jackie was all right. The dog was at last lying down, and each time Claud turned round, he whispered something to him softly, and the dog acknowledged his words with a faint movement of the tail that made the straw rustle.
Soon we would be coming into Thame, the broad High Street where they penned the pigs and cows and sheep on market day, where the fair came once a year with the swings and round-abouts and bumping cars and gypsy caravans right there in the street in the middle of the town. Claud was born in Thame, and we’d never driven through it yet without him mentioning this fact.
“Well,” he said as the first houses came into sight, “here’s Thame. I was born and bred in Thame, you know, Gordon.”
“You told me.”
“Lots of funny things we used to do around here when we was nippers,” he said, slightly nostalgic.
“I’m sure.”
He paused, and I think more to relieve the tension building up inside him than anything else, he began talking about the years of his youth.
“There was a boy next door,” he said. “Gilbert Gomm his name was. Little sharp ferrety face and one leg a bit shorter’n the other. Shocking things him and me used to do together. You know one thing we done, Gordon?”
“What?”
“We’d go into the kitchen Saturday nights when Mum and Dad were at the pub, and we’d disconnect the pipe from the gas ring and bubble the gas into a milk bottle full of water. Then we’d sit down and drink it out of teacups.”
“Was that so good?”
“Good! It was disgusting! But we’d put lashings of sugar in and then it didn’t taste so bad.”
“Why did you drink it?”
Claud turned and looked at me, incredulous. “You mean you never drunk Snake’s Water!”
“Can’t say I have.”
“I thought everyone done that when they was kids! It intoxicates you, just like wine only worse, depending on how long you let the gas bubble through. We used to get reeling drunk together there in the kitchen Saturday nights and it was marvellous. Until one night Dad comes home early and catches us. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. There was me holding the milk bottle, and the gas bubbling through it lovely, and Gilbert kneeling on the floor ready to turn off the tap the moment I give the word, and in walks Dad.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, Christ, Gordon, that was terrible. He didn’t say one word, but he stands there by the door and he starts feeling for his belt, undoing the buckle very slow and pulling the belt slow out of his trousers, looking at me all the time. Great big feller he was, with great big hands like coal hammers and a black mustache and them little purple veins running all over his cheeks. Then he comes over quick and grabs me by the coat and lets me have it, hard as he can, using the end with the buckle on it and honest to God, Gordon, I thought he was going to kill me. But in the end he stops and then he puts on the belt again, slow and careful, buckling it up and tucking in the flap and belching with the beer he’s drunk. And then he walks out again back to the pub, still without saying a word. Worst hiding I ever had in my life.”
“How old were you then?”
“Round about eight, I should think,” Claud said.
As we drew closer to Oxford, he became silent again. He kept twisting his neck to see if Jackie was all right, to touch him, to stroke his head, and once he turned around and knelt on the seat to gather more straw around the dog, murmuring something about a draft. We drove around the fringe of Oxford and into a network of narrow country roads, and after a while we turned in to a small bumpy lane and along this we began to overtake a thin stream of men and women all walking and cycling in the same direction. Some of the men were leading greyhounds. There was a large saloon car in front of us and through the rear window we could see a dog sitting on the back seat between two men.
“They come from all over,” Claud said. “That one there’s probably come up special from London. Probably slipped him out from one of the big stadium kennels just for the afternoon. That could be a Derby dog probably, for all we know.”
“Hope he’s not running against Jackie.”
“Don’t worry,” Claud said. “All new dogs automatically go in top grade. That’s one rule Mr. Feasey’s very particular about.”
There was an open gate leading into a field, and Mr. Feasey’s wife came forward to take our admission money before we drove in.
“He’d have her winding the bloody pedals, too, if she had the strength,” Claud said. “Old Feasey don’t employ more people than he has to.”
I drove across the field and parked at the end of a line of cars along the top hedge. We both got out and Claud went quickly round the back to fetch Jackie. I stood beside the van, waiting. It was a very large field with a steepish slope on it, and we were at the top of the slope, looking down. In the distance, I could see the six starting traps and the wooden posts marking the track which ran along the bottom of the field and turned sharp at right angles and came on up the hill toward the crowd, to the finish. Thirty yards beyond the finishing line stood the upturned bicycle for driving the hare. Because it is portable, this is the standard machine for hare driving used at all flapping tracks. It comprises a flimsy wooden platform about eight feet high, supported on four poles knocked into the ground. On top of the platform, there is fixed, upside down with wheels in the air, an ordinary old bicycle. The rear wheel is to the front, facing down the track, and from it the tire has been removed, leaving a concave metal rim. One end of the cord that pulls the hare is attached to this rim, and the winder (or hare driver), by straddling the bicycle at the back and turning the pedals with his hands, revolves the wheel and winds in the cord around the rim. This pulls the dummy hare toward him at any speed he likes up to forty miles an hour. After each race, someone takes the dummy hare (with cord attached) all the way down to the starting traps again, thus unwinding the cord on the wheel, ready for a fresh start. From his high platform, the winder can watch the whole race and regulate the speed of the hare to keep it just ahead of the leading dog. He can also stop the hare any time he wants and make it a “no race” (if the wrong dog looks like winning) by suddenly turning the pedals backward and getting the cord tangled up in the hub of the wheel. The other way of doing it is to slow down the hare suddenly, for perhaps one second, and that makes the lead dog automatically check a little so that the others catch up with him. He is an important man, the winder.
I could see Mr. Feasey’s winder already standing atop his platform, a powerful-looking man in a blue sweater, leaning on the bicycle and looking down at the crowd through the smoke of his cigarette.
There is a curious law in England which permits race meetings of this kind to be held only seven times a year over one piece of ground. That is why all Mr. Feasey’s equipment was moveable; after the seventh meeting he would simply transfer to the next field. The law didn’t bother him at all.
There was already a good crowd, and the bookmakers were erecting their stands in a line over to the right. Claud had Jackie out of the van now and was leading him over to a group of people clustered around a small stocky man dressed in riding breeches—Mr. Feasey himself. Each person in the group had a dog on a leash and Mr. Feasey kept writing names in a notebook that he held in his left hand. I sauntered over to watch.
“Which you got there?” Mr. Feasey said, pencil poised above the notebook.
“Midnight,” a man said who was holding a black dog. Mr. Feasey stepped back a pace and looked most carefully at the dog.
“Midnight. Right. I got him down.”
“Jane,” the next man said.
“Let me look. Jane … Jane … yes, all right.”
“Soldier.” This dog was led by a tall man with long teeth who wore a dark-blue, double-breasted lounge suit.
Mr. Feasey bent down to examine the dog. The other man looked up at the sky.
“Take him away,” Mr. Feasey said.
The man looked down quick.
“Go on, take him away.”
“Listen, Mr. Feasey,” the man said, “now don’t talk so bloody silly, please.”
“Go on and beat it, Larry, and stop wasting my time. You know as well as I do the Soldier’s got two white toes on his off fore.”
“Now look, Mr. Feasey,” the man said. “You ain’t even seen Soldier for six months at least.”
“Come on now, Larry, and beat it. I haven’t got time arguing with you.” Mr. Feasey didn’t appear in the least angry. “Next,” he said.
I saw Claud step forward leading Jackie. The large bovine face was fixed and wooden, the eyes staring at something about a yard above Mr. Feasey’s head, and he was holding the leash so tight his knuckles were like a row of little white onions.
Mr. Feasey suddenly started laughing. “Hey!” he cried. “Here’s the Black Panther. Here’s the champion.”
“That’s right, Mr. Feasey,” Claud said.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Mr. Feasey said, “you can take him right back home where he come from. I don’t want him.”
“But look here, Mr. Feasey—”
“Six or eight times at least I’ve run him for you now and that’s enough. Look—why don’t you shoot him and have done with it?”
“Now listen, Mr. Feasey, please. Just once more and I’ll never ask you again.”
“Not even once! I got more dogs than I can handle here today. There’s no room for crabs like that.”
I thought Claud was going to cry.
“Now honest, Mr. Feasey,” he said, “I been up at six every morning this past two weeks giving him roadwork and massage and buying him beefsteaks, and believe me he’s a different dog absolutely than what he was last time he run.”
“Just the same, you can take him away. There’s no sense running dogs as slow as him. Take him home now, will you please, and don’t hold up the whole meeting.”
I was watching Claud. Claud was watching Mr. Feasey. Mr. Feasey was looking round for the next dog to enter up. Under his brown tweedy jacket he wore a yellow pullover, and this streak of yellow on his breast and his thin gaitered legs and the way he jerked his head from side to side made him seem like some sort of a little perky bird—a goldfinch, perhaps.
Claud took a step forward. His face was beginning to purple slightly.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Feasey. I’m so absolutely sure this dog’s improved I’ll bet you a quid he don’t finish last. There you are.”
Mr. Feasey turned slowly round and looked at Claud. “You crackers?” he asked.
“I’ll bet you a quid, there you are, just to prove what I’m saying.”
It was a dangerous move, certain to cause suspicion, but Claud knew it was the only thing left to do. There was silence while Mr. Feasey bent down and examined the dog. I could see the way his eyes were moving slowly over the animal’s whole body, part by part. There was something to admire in the man’s thoroughness, and in his memory; something to fear also in this self-confident little rogue who held in his head the shape and color and markings of perhaps several hundred different but very similar dogs. He never needed more than one little clue—a small scar, a splay toe, a trifle in at the hocks, a less pronounced wheelback, a slightly darker brindle; Mr. Feasey always remembered.
So I watched him now as he bent down over Jackie. His face was pink and fleshy, the mouth small and tight as though it couldn’t stretch enough to make a smile, and the eyes were like two little cameras focussed sharply on the dog.
“Well,” he said, straightening up. “It’s the same dog anyway.”
“I should hope so, too!” Claud cried. “Just what sort of a feller you think I am, Mr. Feasey?”
“I think you’re crackers, that’s what I think. But it’s a nice easy way to make a quid. I suppose you forgot how Amber Flash nearly beat him on three legs last meeting?”
“This one wasn’t fit then,” Claud said. “He hadn’t had beefsteak and massage and roadwork like I’ve been giving him lately. But look, Mr. Feasey, you’re not to go sticking him in top grade just to win the bet. This is a bottom-grade dog, Mr. Feasey. You know that.”
Mr. Feasey laughed. The small button mouth opened into a tiny circle and he laughed and looked at the crowd who laughed with him. “Listen,” he said, laying a hairy hand on Claud’s shoulder, “I know my dogs. I don’t have to do any fiddling around to win this quid. He goes in bottom.”
“Right,” Claud said. “That’s a bet.” He walked away with Jackie and I joined him.
“Jesus, Gordon, that was a near one!”
“Shook me.”
“But we’re in now,” Claud said. He had that breathless look on his face again and he was walking about quick and funny, like the ground was burning his feet.
People were still coming through the gate into the field and there were easily three hundred of them now. Not a very nice crowd. Sharp-nosed men and women with dirty faces and bad teeth and quick, shifty eyes. The dregs of the big town. Oozing out like sewage from a cracked pipe and trickling along the road through the gate and making a smelly little pond of sewage at the top end of the field. They were all there—some with dogs, some without. Dogs led about on pieces of string, miserable dogs with hanging heads, thin mangy dogs with sores on their quarters (from sleeping on board), sad old dogs with gray muzzles, doped dogs, dogs stuffed with porridge to stop them winning, dogs walking stiff-legged—one especially, a white one. “Claud, why is that white one walking so stiff-legged?”
“Which one?”
“That one over there.”
“Ah yes, I see. Very probably because he’s been hung.”
“Hung?”
“Yes, hung. Suspended in a harness for twenty-four hours with his legs dangling.”
“Good God, but why?”
“To make him run slow, of course. Some people don’t hold with dope or stuffing or strapping up. So they hang ’em.”
“I see.”
“Either that,” Claud said, “or they sandpaper them. Rub their pads with rough sandpaper and take the skin off so it hurts when they run.”
“Yes, I see.”
And then the fitter, brighter-looking dogs, the better-fed ones who get horsemeat every day, not pig swill or rusk and cabbage water, their coats shinier, their tails moving, pulling at their leads, undoped, unstuffed, awaiting perhaps a more unpleasant fate, the muzzle strap to be tightened an extra four notches. But make sure he can breathe now, Jock. Don’t choke him completely. Don’t let’s have him collapse in the middle of the race. Just so he wheezes a bit, see. Go on tightening it up an extra notch at a time until you can hear him wheezing. You’ll see his mouth open and he’ll start breathing heavy. Then it’s just right. But not if his eyeballs is bulging. Watch out for that, will you? O.K.?
O.K.
“Let’s get away from the crowd, Gordon. It don’t do Jackie no good getting excited by all these other dogs.”
We walked up the slope to where the cars were parked, then back and forth in front of the line of cars, keeping the dog on the move. Inside some of the cars I could see men sitting with their dogs, and the men scowled at us through the windows as we went by.
“Watch out now, Gordon. We don’t want any trouble.”
“No, all right.”
These were the best dogs of all, the secret ones kept in the cars and taken out quick just to be entered up (under some invented name) and put back again quick and held there till the last minute, then straight down to the traps and back again into the cars after the race so no nosy bastard gets too close a look. The trainer at the big stadium said so. All right, he said. You can have him, but for Christsake don’t let anybody recognize him. There’s thousands of people know this dog, so you’ve got to be careful, see. And it’ll cost you fifty pound.
Very fast dogs these, but it doesn’t much matter how fast they are, they probably get the needle anyway, just to make sure. One and a half cc.’s of ether, subcutaneous, done in the car, injected very slow. That’ll put ten lengths on any dog. Or sometimes it’s caffeine, caffeine in oil, or camphor. That makes them go, too. The men in the big cars know all about that. And some of them know about whiskey. But that’s intravenous. Not so easy when it’s intravenous. Might miss the vein. All you got to do is miss the vein and it don’t work and where are you then? So it’s ether, or it’s caffeine, or it’s camphor. Don’t give her too much of that stuff now, Jock. What does she weigh? Fifty-eight pounds. All right then, you know what the man told us. Wait a minute now. I got it written down on a piece of paper. Here it is. Point one of a cc, per ten pounds body weight equals five lengths over three hundred yards. Wait a minute now while I work it out. Oh, Christ, you better guess it. Just guess it, Jock. It’ll be all right, you’ll find. Shouldn’t be any trouble anyway, because I picked the others in the race myself. Cost me a tenner to old Feasey. A bloody tenner I give him, and dear Mr. Feasey, I says, that’s for your birthday and because I love you.
Thank you ever so much, Mr. Feasey says. Thank you, my good and trusted friend.
And for stopping them, for the men in the big cars it’s chlorbutal. That’s a beauty, chlorbutal, because you can give it the night before, especially to someone else’s dog. Or Pethidine. Pethidine and Hyoscine mixed, whatever that may be.
“Lot of fine old English sporting gentry here,” Claud said.
“Certainly are.”
“Watch your pockets, Gordon. You got that money hidden away?”
We walked around the back of the line of cars—between the cars and the hedge—and then I saw Jackie stiffen and begin to pull forward on the leash, advancing with a stiff crouching tread. About thirty yards away, there were two men. One was holding a large fawn greyhound, the dog stiff and tense like Jackie. The other was holding a sack in his hands.
“Watch,” Claud whispered, “they’re giving him a kill.”
Out of the sack onto the grass tumbled a small white rabbit—fluffy white, young, tame. It righted itself and sat still, crouching in the hunched-up way rabbits crouch, its nose close to the ground. A frightened rabbit. Out of the sack so suddenly onto the grass with such a bump. Into the bright light. The dog was going mad with excitement now, jumping up against the leash, pawing the ground, throwing himself forward, whining. The rabbit saw the dog. It drew in its head and stayed still, paralyzed with fear. The man transferred his hold to the dog’s collar, and the dog twisted and jumped and tried to get free. The other man pushed the rabbit with his foot, but it was too terrified to move. He pushed it again, flicking it forward with his toe like a football, and the rabbit rolled over several times, righted itself and began to hop over the grass away from the dog. The other man released the dog which pounced with one huge pounce upon the rabbit, and then came the squeals, not very loud but shrill and anguished and lasting rather a long time.
“There you are,” Claud said. “That’s a kill.”
“Not sure I liked it very much.”
“I told you before, Gordon. Most of ’em does it. Keens the dog up before a race.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“Nor me. But they all do it. Even in the big stadiums, the trainers do it. Proper barbary I call it.”
We strolled away, and below us on the slope of the hill the crowd was thickening and the bookies’ stands with the names written on them in red and gold and blue were all erected now in a long line back of the crowd, each bookie already stationed on an upturned box beside his stand, a pack of numbered cards in one hand, a piece of chalk in the other, his clerk behind him with book and pencil. Then we saw Mr. Feasey walking over to a blackboard that was nailed to a post stuck in the ground.
“He’s chalking up the first race,” Claud said. “Come on, quick!”
We walked rapidly down the hill and joined the crowd. Mr. Feasey was writing the runners on the blackboard, copying names from his soft-covered notebook, and a little hush of suspense fell upon the crowd as they watched.
1. SALLY
2. THREE QUID
3. SNAILBOX LADY
4. BLACK PANTHER
5. WHISKEY
6. ROCKIT
“He’s in it!” Claud whispered. “First race! Trap four! Now listen, Gordon! Give me a fiver quick to show the winder.”
Claud could hardly speak from excitement. That patch of whiteness had returned around his nose and eyes, and when I handed him a five-pound note, his whole arm was shaking as he took it. The man who was going to wind the bicycle pedals was still standing on top of the wooden platform in his blue jersey, smoking. Claud went over and stood below him, looking up.
“See this fiver,” he said, talking softly, holding it folded small in the palm of his hand.
The man glanced at it without moving his head.
“Just so long as you wind her true this race, see. No stopping and no slowing down, and run her fast. Right?”
The man didn’t move but there was a slight, almost imperceptible lifting of the eyebrows. Claud turned away.
“Now look, Gordon. Get the money on gradual, all in little bits like I told you. Just keep going down the line putting on little bits so you don’t kill the price, see. And I’ll be walking Jackie down very slow, as slow as I dare, to give you plenty of time. Right?”
“Right.”
“And don’t forget to be standing ready to catch him at the end of the race. Get him clear away from all them others when they start fighting for the hare. Grab a hold of him tight and don’t let go till I come running up with the collar and lead. That Whiskey’s a gypsy dog and he’ll tear the leg off anything as gets in his way.”
“Right,” I said. “Here we go.”
I saw Claud lead Jackie over to the finishing post and collect a yellow jacket with “4” written on it large. Also a muzzle. The other five runners were there, too, the owners fussing around them, putting on their numbered jackets, adjusting their muzzles. Mr. Feasey was officiating, hopping about in his tight riding breeches like an anxious perky bird, and once I saw him say something to Claud and laugh. Claud ignored him. Soon they would all start to lead the dogs down the track, the long walk down the hill and across to the far corner of the field to the starting traps. It would take them ten minutes to walk it. I’ve got at least ten minutes, I told myself, and then I began to push my way through the crowd standing six or seven deep in front of the line of bookies.
“Even money Whiskey! Even money Whiskey! Five to two Sally! Even money Whiskey! Four to one Snailbox! Come on now! Hurry up, hurry up! Which is it?”
On every board all down the line, the Black Panther was chalked up at twenty-five to one. I edged forward to the nearest book.
“Three pounds Black Panther,” I said, holding out the money.
The man on the box had an inflamed magenta face and traces of some white substance around the corners of his mouth. He snatched the money and dropped it in his satchel. “Seventy-five pound to three Black Panther,” he said. “Number forty-two.” He handed me a ticket and his clerk recorded the bet.
I stepped back and wrote rapidly on the back of the ticket “75 to 3,” then slipped it into the inside pocket of my jacket, with the money.
So long as I continued to spread the money out thin like this, it ought to be all right. And anyway, on Claud’s instructions, I’d made a point of betting a few pounds on the ringer every time he’d run so as not to arouse any suspicion when the real day arrived. Therefore, with some confidence, I went all the way down the line staking three pounds with each book. I didn’t hurry, but I didn’t waste any time either, and after each bet I wrote the amount on the back of the ticket before slipping it into my pocket. There were seventeen bookies. I had seventeen tickets and had laid out fifty-one pounds without disturbing the price one point. Forty-nine pounds left to get on. I glanced quickly down the hill. One owner and his dog had already reached the traps. The others were only twenty or thirty yards away. Except for Claud. Claud and Jackie were only halfway there. I could see Claud in his old khaki greatcoat sauntering slowly along with Jackie pulling ahead keenly on the leash, and once I saw him stop completely and bend down, pretending to pick something up. When he went on again, he seemed to have developed a limp so as to go slower still. I hurried back to the other end of the line to start again.
“Three pounds Black Panther.”
The bookmaker, the one with the magenta face and the white substance around the mouth, glanced up sharply, remembering the last time, and in one swift almost graceful movement of the arm he licked his fingers and wiped the figure twenty-five neatly off the board. His wet fingers left a small dark patch opposite Black Panther’s name.
“All right, you got one more seventy-five to three,” he said. “But that’s the lot.” Then he raised his voice and shouted, “Fifteen to one Black Panther! Fifteens the Panther!”
“It’s always ‘Sit,’ ‘Stay,’ ‘Heel’—never ‘Think,’ ‘Innovate,’ ‘Be yourself.’ ”
All down the line the twenty-fives were wiped out and it was fifteen to one the Panther now. I took it quick, but by the time I was through, the bookies had had enough and they weren’t quoting him any more. They’d only taken six pounds each, but they stood to lose a hundred and fifty, and for them—small-time bookies at a little country flapping track—that was quite enough for one race, thank you very much. I felt pleased the way I’d managed it. Lots of tickets now. We stood to win something over two thousand pounds. Claud had said he’d win it thirty lengths. Where was Claud now?
Far away down the hill, I could see the khaki greatcoat standing by the traps and the big black dog alongside. All the other dogs were already in and the owners were beginning to walk away. Claud was bending down now, coaxing Jackie into No. 4, and then he was closing the door and turning away and beginning to run up the hill toward the crowd, the greatcoat flapping around him. He kept looking back over his shoulder as he ran.
Beside the traps, the starter stood, and his hand was up waving a handkerchief. At the other end of the track, beyond the winning post, quite close to where I stood, the man in the blue jersey was straddling the upturned bicycle on top of the wooden platform, and he saw the signal and waved back and began to turn the pedals with his hands. Then a tiny white dot in the distance—the artificial hare that was in reality a football with a piece of white rabbitskin tacked onto it—began to move away from the traps, accelerating fast. The traps went up and the dogs flew out. They flew out in a single dark lump, all together, as though it were one wide dog instead of six, and almost at once I saw Jackie drawing away from the field. I knew it was Jackie because of the color. There weren’t any other black dogs in the race. It was Jackie all right. Don’t move, I told myself. Don’t move a muscle or an eyelid or a toe or a fingertip. Stand quite still and don’t move. Watch him going. Come on Jackson, boy! No, don’t shout. It’s unlucky to shout. And don’t move. Be all over in twenty seconds. Round the sharp bend now and coming up the hill and he must be fifteen or twenty lengths clear. Easy twenty lengths. Don’t count the lengths, it’s unlucky. And don’t move. Don’t move your head. Watch him out of your eye corners. Watch that Jackson go! He’s really laying down to it now up that hill. He’s won it now! He can’t lose it now…
When I got over to him, he was fighting the rabbitskin and trying to pick it up in his mouth, but his muzzle wouldn’t allow it, and the other dogs were pounding up behind him and suddenly they were all on top of him grabbing for the rabbit, and I got hold of him round the neck and dragged him clear like Claud had said and knelt down on the grass and held him tight with both arms round his body. The other catchers were having a time all trying to grab their own dogs.
Then Claud was beside me, blowing heavily, unable to speak from blowing and excitement, removing Jackie’s muzzle, putting on the collar and lead, and Mr. Feasey was there, too, standing with hands on hips, the button mouth pursed up tight like a mushroom, the two little cameras staring at Jackie all over again.
“So that’s the game, is it?” he said.
Claud was bending over the dog and acting like he hadn’t heard.
“I don’t want you here no more after this, you understand that?”
Claud went on fiddling with Jackie’s collar.
I heard someone behind us saying, “That flat-faced bastard with the frown swung it properly on old Feasey this time.” Someone else laughed. Mr. Feasey walked away. Claud straightened up and went over with Jackie to the hare driver in the blue jersey who had dismounted from his platform.
“Cigarette,” Claud said, offering the pack.
The man took one, also the five-pound note that was folded up small in Claud’s fingers.
“Thanks,” Claud said. “Thanks very much.”
“Don’t mention,” the man said.
Then Claud turned to me. “You get it all on, Gordon?” He was jumping up and down and rubbing his hands and patting Jackie, and his lips trembled as he spoke.
“Yes. Half at twenty-fives, half at fifteens.”
“Oh, Christ, Gordon, that’s marvellous. Wait here till I get the suitcase.”
“You take Jackie,” I said, “and go and sit in the car. I’ll see you later.”
There was nobody around the bookies now. I was the only one with anything to collect, and I walked slowly, with a sort of dancing stride and a wonderful bursting feeling in my chest, toward the first one in the line, the man with the magenta face and the white substance on his mouth. I stood in front of him and I took all the time I wanted going through my pack of tickets to find the two that were his. The name was Syd Pratchett. It was written up large across his board in gold letters on a scarlet field—“SYD PRATCHETT. THE BEST ODDS IN THE MIDLANDS. PROMPT SETTLEMENT.”
I handed him the first ticket, and said, “Seventy-eight pounds to come.” It sounded so good I said it again, making a delicious little chant of it. “Seventy-eight pounds to come on this one.” I didn’t mean to gloat over Mr. Pratchett. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to like him quite a lot. I even felt sorry for him having to fork out so much money. I hoped his wife and kids wouldn’t suffer.
“Number forty-two,” Mr. Pratchett said, turning to his clerk who held the big book. “Forty-two wants seventy-eight pound.”
There was a pause while the clerk ran his finger down the column of recorded bets. He did this twice, then he looked up at the boss and began to shake his head.
“No,” he said. “Don’t pay. That ticket backed Snailbox Lady.”
Mr. Pratchett, standing on his box, leaned over and peered down at the book. He seemed to be disturbed by what the clerk had said, and there was a look of genuine concern on the huge magenta face.
That clerk is a fool, I thought, and any moment now Mr. Pratchett’s going to tell him so.
But when Mr. Pratchett turned back to me, the eyes had become narrow and hostile. “Now look, Charley,” he said softly. “Don’t let’s have any of that. You know very well you bet Snailbox. What’s the idea?”
“I bet Black Panther,” I said. “Two separate bets of three pounds each at twenty-five to one. Here’s the second ticket.”
This time he didn’t even bother to check it with the book. “You bet Snailbox, Charley,” he said. “I remember you coming round.” With that, he turned away from me and started wiping the names of the last-race runners off his board with a wet rag. Behind him, the clerk had closed the book and was lighting himself a cigarette. I stood watching them, and I could feel the sweat beginning to break through the skin all over my body.
“Let me see the book.”
Mr. Pratchett blew his nose into the wet rag and dropped it to the ground. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you go away and stop annoying me?”
The point was this: a bookmaker’s ticket, unlike a pari-mutuel ticket, never has anything written on it regarding the nature of your bet. This is normal practice, the same at every race track in the country, whether it’s the Silver Ring at Newmarket, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, or a tiny country flapping track near Oxford. All you receive is a card bearing the bookie’s name and a serial number. The wager is (or should be) recorded by the bookie’s clerk in his book, alongside the number of the ticket, but apart from that there is no evidence at all of how you betted.
“Go on,” Mr. Pratchett was saying. “Hop it.”
I stepped back a pace and glanced down the long line of bookmakers. None of them was looking my way. Each was standing motionless on his little wooden box beside his wooden placard, staring straight ahead into the crowd. I went up to the next one and presented a ticket.
“I had three pounds on Black Panther at twenty-five to one,” I said firmly. “Seventy-eight pounds to come.”
This man, who had a soft inflamed face, went through exactly the same routine as Mr. Pratchett, questioning his clerk, peering at the book, and giving me the same answers.
“Whatever’s the matter with you?” he said quietly, speaking to me as though I were eight years old. “Trying such a silly thing as that.”
This time I stepped well back. “You dirty thieving bastards!” I cried. “The whole lot of you!”
Automatically, as though they were puppets, all the heads down the line flicked round and looked at me. The expressions didn’t alter. It was just the heads that moved, all seventeen of them, and seventeen pairs of cold, glassy eyes looked down at me. There was not the faintest flicker of interest in any of them.
“Somebody spoke,” they seemed to be saying. “We didn’t hear it. It’s quite a nice day today.”
The crowd, sensing excitement, was beginning to move in around me. I ran back to Mr. Pratchett, right up close to him, and poked him in the stomach with my finger. “You’re a thief! A lousy rotten little thief!” I shouted.
The extraordinary thing was that Mr. Pratchett didn’t seem to resent this at all.
“Well I never,” he said. “Look who’s talking!”
Then suddenly the big face broke into a wide, froglike grin, and he looked over at the crowd and shouted, “Look who’s talking!”
All at once, everybody started to laugh. Down the line, the bookies were coming to life and turning to each other and laughing and pointing at me and shouting, “Look who’s talking! Look who’s talking!” The crowd began to take up the cry as well, and I stood there on the grass alongside Mr. Pratchett with this wad of tickets as thick as a pack of cards in my hand, listening to them and feeling slightly hysterical. Over the heads of the people, I could see Mr. Feasey beside his blackboard already chalking up the runners for the next race; and then beyond him, far away up the top of the field, I caught sight of Claud standing by the van, waiting for me with the suitcase in his hand.
It was time to go home.
| 1953 |
“Scotch and toilet water?”
