For Kicks Part 11

A lad who had gone out of racing would never connect the Dobbin or Sooty he had once looked after with the Rudyard who won a race for another trainer two years later.

But why, why why did he win two years later? About that, I was as ignorant as ever. did he win two years later? About that, I was as ignorant as ever.

The cold weather came and gripped, and stayed. But nothing, the other lads said, could be as bad as the fearsome winter before; and I reflected that in that January and February I had been sweltering under the midsummer sun. I wondered how Belinda and Helen and Phillip were enjoying their long vacation, and what they would think if they could see me in my dirty down-trodden sub-existence, and what the men would think, to see their employer brought so low. It amused me a good deal to imagine it: and it not only helped the tedious hours to pa.s.s more quickly, but kept me from losing my own inner ident.i.ty.

As the days of drudgery mounted up I began to wonder if anyone who embarked on so radical a masquerade really knew what he was doing.

Expression, speech and movement had to be unremittingly schooled into a convincing show of uncouth dullness. I worked in a slovenly fashion and rode, with a pang, like a mutton-fisted clod; but as time pa.s.sed all these deceptions became easier. If one pretended long enough to be a wreck, did one finally become one, I wondered. And if one stripped oneself continuously of all human dignity would one in the end be unaware of its absence? I hoped the question would remain academic: and as long as I could have a quiet laugh at myself now and then, I supposed I was safe enough.

My belief that after three months in the yard a lad was given every encouragement to leave was amply borne out by what happened to Geoff Smith.

Humber never rode out to exercise with his horses, but drove in a van to the gallops to watch them work, and returned to the yard while they were still walking back to have a poke round to see what had been done and not done.

One morning, when we went in with the second lot, Humber was standing in the centre of the yard radiating his frequent displeasure.

'You, Smith, and you, Roke, put those horses in their boxes and come here.'

We did so.

'Roke.'

'Sir.'

'The mangers of all your four horses are in a disgusting state. Clean them up.'

'Yes, sir,'

'And to teach you to be more thorough in future you will get up at five-thirty for the next week.'

'Sir.'

I sighed inwardly, but this was to me one of his more acceptable forms of pinp.r.i.c.k punishment, since I didn't particularly mind getting up early. It entailed merely standing in the middle of the yard for over an hour, doing nothing. Dark, cold and boring. I don't think he slept much himself. His bedroom window faced down the yard, and he always knew if one were not standing outside by twenty to six, and shining a torch to prove it.

'And as for you.' He looked at Geoff with calculation. 'The floor of number seven is caked with dirt. You'll clean out the straw and scrub the floor with disinfectant before you get your dinner.'

'But sir,' protested Geoff incautiously, 'if I don't go in for dinner with the others, they won't leave me any.'

'You should have thought of that before, and done your work properly in the first place. I pay half as much again as any other trainer would, and I expect value for it. You will do as you are told.'

'But, sir,' whined Geoff, knowing that if he missed his main meal he would go very hungry, 'Can't I do it this afternoon?'

Humber casually slid his walking stick through his hand until he was holding it at the bottom. Then he swing his arm and savagely cracked the k.n.o.bbed handle across Geoff's thigh.

Geoff yelped and rubbed his leg.

'Before dinner,' remarked Humber: and walked away, leaning on his stick.

Geoff missed his share of the watery half-stewed lumps of mutton, and came in panting to see the last of the bread-and-suet pudding spooned into Charlie's trap-like mouth.

'You b.l.o.o.d.y sods,' he yelled miserably, 'You b.l.o.o.d.y lot of sods.'

He stuck it for a whole week. He stood six more heavy blows on various parts of his body, and missed his dinner three more times, and his breakfast twice, and his supper once. Long before the end of it he was in tears, but he didn't want to leave.

After five days Ca.s.s came into the kitchen at breakfast and told Geoff, 'The boss has taken against you, I'm afraid. You won't ever do anything right for him again from now on. Best thing you can do, and I'm telling you for your own good, mind, is to find a job somewhere else. The boss gets these fits now and then when one of the lads can't do anything right, and no one can change him when he gets going. You can work until you're blue in the face, but he won't take to you any more. You don't want to get yourself bashed up any more, now do you? All I'm telling you is that if you stay here you'll find that what has happened so far is only the beginning. See? I'm only telling you for your own good.'

Even so, it was two more days before Geoff painfully packed his old army kit bag and sniffed his way off the premises.

A weedy boy arrived the next morning as a replacement, but he only stayed three days as Jimmy stole his blankets before he came and he was not strong enough to get them back. He moaned piteously through two freezing nights, and was gone before the third.

The next morning, before breakfast, it was Jimmy himself who collected a crack from the stick.

He came in late and cursing and s.n.a.t.c.hed a chunk of bread out of Jerry's hand.

'Where's my b.l.o.o.d.y breakfast?'

We had eaten it, of course.

'Well,' he said, glaring at us. 'you can do my ruddy horses, as well. I'm off. I'm not b.l.o.o.d.y well staying here. This is worse than doing bird. You won't catch me staying here to be swiped at, I'll tell you that.'

Reggie said, 'Why don't you complain?'

'Who to?'

'Well... the bluebottles.'

'Are you out of your mind?' said Jimmy in amazement. 'You're a b.l.o.o.d.y nit, that's what you are. Can you see me, with my form, going into the cop house and saying I got a complaint to make about my employer, he hit me with his walking stick? For a start, they'd laugh. They'd laugh their bleeding heads off. And then what? Supposing they come here and asked Ca.s.s if he's seen anyone getting the rough end of it? Well, I'll tell you, that Ca.s.s wants to keep his cushy job. Oh no, he'd say, I ain't seen nothing. Mr Humber, he's a nice kind gentleman with a heart of gold, and what can you expect from an ex-con but a pack of bull? Don't ruddy well make me laugh. I'm off, and if the rest of you've got any sense, you'll be out of it too.'

No one, however, took his advice.

I found out from Charlie that Jimmy had been there two weeks longer than he, which made it, he thought, about eleven weeks.

As Jimmy strode defiantly out of the yard I went rather thoughtfully about my business. Eleven weeks, twelve at the most, before Humber's arm started swinging. I had been there already three: which left me a maximum of nine more in which to discover how he managed the doping. It wasn't that I couldn't probably last out as long as Geoff if it came to the point, but that if I hadn't uncovered Humber's method before he focused his attention on getting rid of me, I had very little chance of doing it afterwards.

Three weeks, I thought, and I had found out nothing at all except that I wanted to leave as soon as possible.

Two lads came to take Geoff's and Jimmy's places, a tall boy called Lenny who had been to Borstal and was proud of it, and Cecil, a far-gone alcoholic of about thirty-five. He had, he told us, been kicked out of half the stables in England because he couldn't keep his hands off the bottle. I don't know where he got the liquor from or how he managed to hide it, but he was certainly three parts drunk every day by four o'clock, and snored in a paralytic stupor every night.

Life, if you could call it that, went on.

All the lads seemed to have a good reason for having to earn the extra wages Humber paid. Lenny was repaying some money he had stolen from another employer, Charlie had a wife somewhere drawing maintenance, Cecil drank, Reggie was a compulsive saver, and Humber sent Jerry's money straight off to his parents. Jerry was proud of being able to help them.

I had let Jud Wilson and Ca.s.s know that I badly needed to earn sixteen pounds a week because I had fallen behind on hire purchase payments on the motor-cycle, and this also gave me an obvious reason for needing to spend some time in the Posset post office on Sat.u.r.day afternoons.

Public transport from the stables to Posset, a large village a mile and a half away, did not exist. Ca.s.s and Jud Wilson both had cars, but would give no lifts. My motor-cycle was the only other transport available, but to the lads' fluently expressed disgust I refused to use it on the frosty snow-strewn roads for trips down to the pub in the evenings. As a result we hardly ever went to Posset except on the two hours we had off on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, and also on Sunday evenings, when after a slightly less relentless day's work everyone had enough energy left to walk for their beer.

On Sat.u.r.days I unwrapped the motor-cycle from its thick plastic coc.o.o.n and set off to Posset with Jerry perched ecstatically on the pillion. I always took poor simple-minded Jerry because he got the worst of everything throughout the week; and we quickly fell into a routine. First we went to the post office for me to post off my imaginary hire purchase. Instead, leaning on the shelf among the telegram forms and sc.r.a.ps of pink blotting paper, I wrote each week a report to October, making sure that no one from the stables looked over my shoulder. Replies, if any, I collected, read, and tore up over the litter basket.

Jerry accepted without question that I would be at least a quarter of an hour in the post office, and spent the time unsuspiciously at the other end of the shop inspecting the stock in the toy department. Twice he bought a big friction-drive car and played with it, until it broke, on the dormitory floor: and every week he bought a children's fourpenny comic, over whose picture strips he giggled contentedly for the next few days. He couldn't read a word, and often asked me to explain the captions, so that I became intimately acquainted with the doings of Micky the Monkey and Flip McCoy.

Leaving the post office we climbed back on to the motor-cycle and rode two hundred yards down the street to have tea. This ritual took place in a square bare cafe with margarine coloured walls, cold lighting, and messy table tops. For decoration there were pepsi-cola advertis.e.m.e.nts, and for service a bored looking girl with no stockings and mousy hair piled into a matted, wispy mountain on top of her head.

None of this mattered. Jerry and I ordered and ate with indescribable enjoyment a heap of lamb chops, fried eggs, flabby chips and bright green peas. Charlie and the others were to be seen doing the same at adjoining tables. The girl knew where we came from, and looked down on us, as her father owned the cafe On our way out Jerry and I packed our pockets with bars of chocolate to supplement Humber's food, a h.o.a.rd which lasted each week exactly as long as it took Reggie to find it.

By five o'clock we were back in the yard, the motorcycle wrapped up again, the week's highlight nothing but a memory and a belch, the next seven days stretching drearily ahead.

There were hours, in that life, in which to think. Hours of trotting the horses round and round a straw track in a frozen field, hours brushing the dust out of their coats, hours cleaning the muck out of their boxes and carrying their water and hay, hours lying awake at night listening to the stamp of the horses below and the snores and mumblings from the row of beds.

Over and over again I thought my way through all I had seen or read or heard since I came to England: and what emerged as most significant was the performance of Superman at Stafford. He had been doped: he was the twelfth of the series: but he had not won.

Eventually I changed the order of these thoughts. He had been doped, and he had not won; but was he, after all, the twelfth of the series? He might be the thirteenth, the fourteenth... there might have been others who had come to grief.

On my third Sat.u.r.day, when I had been at Humber's just over a fortnight, I wrote asking October to look out the newspaper cutting which Tommy Stapleton had kept, about a horse going berserk and killing a woman in the paddock at Cartmel races. I asked him to check the horse's history.

A week later I read his typewritten reply.

'Old Etonian, destroyed at Cartmel, Lancashire, at Whitsun this year, spent the previous November and December in Humber's yard. Humber claimed him in a selling race, and sold him again at Leicester sales seven weeks later.

'But: Old Etonian went berserk in the parade ring before before the race; he was due to run in a handicap, not a seller; and the run-in at Cartmel is short. None of these facts conform to the pattern of the others. the race; he was due to run in a handicap, not a seller; and the run-in at Cartmel is short. None of these facts conform to the pattern of the others.

'Dope tests were made on Old Etonian, but proved negative.

'No one could explain why he behaved as he did.'

Tommy Stapleton, I thought, must have had an idea, or he would not have cut out the report, yet he could not have been sure enough to act on it without checking up. And checking up had killed him. There could be no more doubt of it.

I tore up the paper and took Jerry along to the cafe, more conscious than usual of the danger breathing down my neck. It didn't, however, spoil my appet.i.te for the only edible meal of the week.

At supper a few days later, in the lull before Charlie turned on his transistor radio for the usual evening of pops from Luxemburg (which I had grown to enjoy) I steered the conversation round to Cartmel races. What, I wanted to know, were they like?

Only Cecil, the drunk, had ever been there.

'It's not like it used to be in the old days,' he said owlishly, not noticing Reggie filch a hunk of his bread and margarine.

Cecil's eyes had a glazed, liquid look, but I had luckily asked my question at exactly the right moment, in the loquacious half-hour between the silent bleariness of the afternoon's liquor and his disappearance to tank up for the night.

'What was it like in the old days?' I prompted.

'They had a fair there.' He hiccuped. 'A fair with roundabouts and swings and side-shows and all. Bank Holiday, see? Whitsun and all that. Only place outside the Derby you could go on the swings at the races. Course, they stopped it now. Don't like no one to have a good time, they don't. It weren't doing no harm, it weren't, the fair.'

'Fairs,' said Reggie scornfully, his eyes flicking to the crust Jerry held loosely in his hand.

'Good for dipping,' commented Lenny, with superiority.

'Yeah,' agreed Charlie, who hadn't yet decided if Borstal qualified Lenny as a fit companion for one from the higher school.

'Eh?' said Cecil, lost.

'Dipping. Working the pockets,' Lenny said.

'Oh. Well, it can't have been that with the hound trails and they stopped them too. They were good sport, they were. b.l.o.o.d.y good day out, it used to be, at Cartmel, but now it's the same as any other ruddy place. You might as well be at Newton Abbot or somewhere. Nothing but ordinary racing like any other day of the week.' He belched.

'What were the hound trails?' I asked.

'Dog races,' he said, smiling foolishly. 'b.l.o.o.d.y dog races. They used to have one before the horse races, and one afterwards, but they've ruddy well stopped it now. b.l.o.o.d.y kill-joys, that's all they are. Still,' he leered triumphantly, 'if you know what's what you can still have a bet on the dogs. They have the hound trail in the morning now, on the other side of the village from the race-track, but if you get your horse bedded down quick enough you can get there in time for a bet.'

'Dog races?' said Lenny disbelievingly. 'Dogs won't race round no horse track. There ain't no b.l.o.o.d.y electric hare, for a start.'

Cecil swivelled his head unsteadily in his direction.

'You don't have a track for hound trails,' he said earnestly, in his slurred voice. 'It's a trail trail, see? Some bloke sets off with a bag full of aniseed and paraffin, or something like that, and drags it for miles and miles round the hills and such. Then they let all the dogs loose and the first one to follow all round the trail and get back quickest is the winner. Year before last someone shot at the b.l.o.o.d.y favourite half a mile from home and there was a bleeding riot. They missed him, though. They hit the one just behind, some ruddy outsider with no chance.'

'Reggie's ate my crust,' said Jerry sadly.

'Did you go to Cartmel this year too?' I asked.

'No,' Cecil said regretfully. 'Can't say I did. A woman got killed there, and all.'

'How?' asked Lenny, looking avid.

'Some b.l.o.o.d.y horse bolted in the paddock, and jumped the rails of the parade ring and landed on some poor b.l.o.o.d.y woman who was just having a nice day out. She backed a loser all right, she did that day. I heard she was cut to bits, time that crazy animal trampled all over her trying to get out through the crowd. He didn't get far, but he kicked out all over the place and broke another man's leg before they got the vet to him and shot him. Mad, they said he was. A mate of mine was there, see, leading one round in the same race, and he said it was something awful, that poor woman all cut up and bleeding to death in front of his eyes.'

The others looked suitably impressed at this horrific story, all except Bert, who couldn't hear it.

'Well,' said Cecil, getting up, 'it's time for my little walk.'

He went out for his little walk, which was presumably to wherever he had hidden his alcohol, because as usual he came back less than an hour later and stumbled up the ladder to his customary oblivion.

Chapter 10.

Towards the end of my fourth week Reggie left (complaining of hunger) and in a day or two was duly replaced by a boy with a soft face who said in a high pitched voice that his name was Kenneth.

To Humber I clearly remained one insignificant face in this endless procession of human flotsam; and as I could safely operate only as long as that state of affairs continued I did as little as possible to attract his attention. He gave me orders, and I obeyed them: and he cursed me and punished me, but not more than anyone else, for the things I left undone.

I grew to recognise his moods at a glance. There were days when he glowered silently all through first and second exercise and turned out again to make sure that no one skimped the third, and on these occasions even Ca.s.s walked warily and only spoke if he were spoken to. There were days when he talked a great deal but always in sarcasm, and his tongue was so rough that everyone preferred the silence. There were occasional days when he wore an abstracted air and overlooked our faults, and even rarer days when he looked fairly pleased with life.

At all times he was impeccably turned out, as if to emphasize the difference between his state and ours. His clothes, I judged, were his main personal vanity, but his wealth was also evident in his car, the latest type of Cunard-sized Bentley. It was fitted with back-seat television, plush carpets, radio telephone, fur rugs, air conditioning, and a built-in drinks cabinet holding in racks six bottles, twelve gla.s.ses, and a glittering array of chromiumed cork screws, ice picks and miscellaneous objects like swizzle sticks.

I knew the car well, because I had to clean it every Monday afternoon. Bert had to clean it on Fridays. Humber was proud of his car.

He was chauffeured on long journeys in this above-his-status symbol by Jud Wilson's sister Grace, a hard faced amazon of a woman who handled the huge car with practised ease but was not expected to maintain it. I never once spoke to her: she bicycled in from wherever she lived, drove as necessary, and bicycled away again. Frequently the car had not been cleaned to her satisfaction, but her remarks were relayed to Bert and me by Jud.

I looked into every cranny every time while cleaning the inside, but Humber was neither so obliging nor so careless as to leave hypodermic syringes or phials of stimulants lying about in the glove pockets.