For Kicks Part 6

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

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

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

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

He gave me a slow grin. 'I don't know any.'

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

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

'All right, then. Have another drink.'

'I haven't finished this.'

I turned round to the bar, which we had been leaning against, and banged my barely touched half pint down on the counter. 'I'm fed up with this pap,' I said violently. 'Hey, you, barman, give me a double whisky.'

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

'Don't go away,' I said to him in a loud voice. 'Give me another while you're at it.'

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

'Dan,' Grits tugged my sleeve, 'do you think you should?'

'Yes,' I said, scowling. 'Go and find a girl to dance with.'

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

The bunch of lads edged towards us along the bar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Why b.l.o.o.d.y not? It's great stuff-gives you a kick. And, by G.o.d, you need something in this job.'

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

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

'You're looking after horses they pay thousands for and you know d.a.m.n well that the way you ride and groom them and look after them makes a h.e.l.l of a lot of difference to whether they win or not, and they grudge you a decent wage...' I finished the third whisky, hiccupped and said, 'It's b.l.o.o.d.y unfair.'

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

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

'I want,' I began. What on earth did I want? I searched for the right phrases. 'I want... a motor-bike. I want to show a bird a good time. And go abroad for a holiday... and stay in a sw.a.n.k hotel and have them running about at my beck and call... and drink what I like... and maybe one day put a deposit on a house... and what chance do I have of any of these? I'll tell you. Not a s...o...b..ll's hope in h.e.l.l. You know what I got in my pay packet this morning...? Seven pounds and fourpence...'

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

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

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

'Want any help getting him out?' he asked Grits.

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

'Grits, me old pal, if you say go, we go.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs Allnut's voice floated up the stairs. 'Dan, come down and fetch me a bucket of coal, will you please?'

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

It was slow going: after four hours I had read only half. I got up stiffly, stretched, yawned, and went back to bed. n.o.body stirred. The following night, as I lay waiting for the others to go to sleep so that I could get back to my task, I listened to them discussing the evening that four of them had spent in Slaw.

'Who's that fellow who was with Soupy?' asked Grits. 'I haven't seen him around before.'

'He was there last night too,' said one of the others. 'Queer sort of bloke.'

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

'I dunno,' said Grits. 'His eyes didn't stay still, like.'

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

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

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

Paddy sighed with exasperation that anyone could be so simple. 'If you'd have been Eve, you'd have eaten the apple as soon as look at it. You wouldn't have needed a serpent.'

'Oh well,' yawned Grits. 'I don't suppose he'll be there tomorrow. I heard him say something to Soupy about time getting short.'

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

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

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

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

'I've about two bob left,' I said, producing some pennies. 'Enough for a pint.'

The pub, as often on Wednesdays, was empty. There was no sign of Soupy or his mysterious friend, and having bought some beer I amused myself at the dart board, throwing one-to-twenty sequences, and trying to make a complete ring in the trebles. Eventually I pulled the darts out of the board, looked at my watch, and decided I had wasted the walk; and it was at that moment that a man appeared in the doorway, not from the street, but from the saloon bar next door. He held a gla.s.s of gently fizzing amber liquid and a slim cigar in his left hand and pushed open the door with his right. Looking me up and down, he said, 'Are you a stable lad?'

'Yes.'

'Granger's or Inskip's?'

'Inskip's.'

'Hmm.' He came further into the room and let the door swing shut behind him. 'There's ten bob for you if you can get one of your lads down here tomorrow night... and as much beer as you can both drink.'

I looked interested. 'Which lad?' I asked. 'Any special one? Lots of them will be down here on Friday.'

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

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

'O.K. Paddy, Grits, Wally, Steve, Ron...' I paused.

'Go on,' he said.

'Reg, Norman, Dave, Jeff, Dan, Mike...'

His eyes brightened. 'Dan,' he said. 'That's a sensible sort of name. Bring Dan.'

'I am Dan,' I said.

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

'Stop playing games,' he said sharply.

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

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

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

'I was thirsty.'

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

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

'Yes.'

'And he runs at Leicester on Monday?'

'As far as I know.'

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

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

'So you expect him to win?'

'Yes, I told you.'

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

'Of course.'

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

'Maybe.'

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

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

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

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