For Kicks Part 3

Chapter 3.

I edged gently into the life of the yard like a heretic into heaven, trying not to be discovered and flung out before I became part of the scenery. On my first evening I spoke almost entirely in monosyllables, because I didn't trust my new accent, but I slowly found out that the lads talked with such a variety of regional accents themselves that my c.o.c.kney-Australian pa.s.sed without comment.

Wally, the head lad, a wiry short man with ill-fitting dentures, said I was to sleep in the cottage where about a dozen unmarried lads lived, beside the gate into the yard. I was shown into a small crowded upstairs room containing six beds, a wardrobe, two chests of drawers, and four bedside chairs; which left roughly two square yards of clear s.p.a.ce in the centre. Thin flowered curtains hung at the windows, and there was polished linoleum on the floor.

My bed proved to have developed a deep sag in the centre over the years, but it was comfortable enough, and was made up freshly with white sheets and grey blankets. Mrs Allnut, who took me in without a second glance, was a round, cheerful little person with hair fastened in a twist on top of her head. She kept the cottage spotless and stood over the lads to make sure they washed. She cooked well, and the food was plain but plentiful. All in all, it was a good billet.

I walked a bit warily to start with, but it was easier to be accepted and to fade into the background than I had imagined.

Once or twice during the first few days I stopped myself just in time from absent-mindedly telling another lad what to do; nine years' habit died hard. And I was surprised, and a bit dismayed, by the subservient att.i.tude every one had to Inskip, at least to his face: my own men treated me at home with far more familiarity. The fact that I paid and they earned gave me no rights over them as men, and this we all clearly understood. But at Inskip's, and throughout all England, I gradually realised, there was far less of the almost aggressive egalitarianism of Australia. The lads, on the whole, seemed to accept that in the eyes of the world they were of secondary importance as human beings to Inskip and October. I thought this extraordinary, undignified, and shameful. And I kept my thoughts to myself.

Wally, scandalised by the casual way I had spoken on my arrival, told me to call Inskip 'Sir' and October 'My lord' and said that if I was a ruddy communist I could clear off at once: so I quickly exhibited what he called a proper respect for my betters.

On the other hand it was precisely because the relations.h.i.+p between me and my own men was so free and easy that I found no difficulty in becoming a lad amongst lads. I felt no constraint on their part and, once the matter of accents had been settled, no self-consciousness on mine. But I did come to realise that what October had implied was undoubtedly true: had I stayed in England and gone to Eton (instead of its equivalent, Geelong) I could not have fitted so readily into his stable.

Inskip allotted me to three newly arrived horses, which was not very good from my point of view as it meant that I could not expect to be sent to a race meeting with them. They were neither fit nor entered for races, and it would be weeks before they were ready to run, even if they proved to be good enough. I pondered the problem while I carried their hay and water and cleaned their boxes and rode them out at morning exercise with the string.

On my second evening October came round at six with a party of house guests. Inskip, knowing in advance, had had everyone running to be finished in good time and walked round himself first, to make sure that all was in order.

Each lad stood with whichever of his horses was nearest the end from which the inspection was started. October and his friends, accompanied by Inskip and Wally, moved along from box to box, chatting, laughing, discussing each horse as they went.

When they came to me October flicked me a glance, and said, 'You're new, aren't you?'

'Yes, my lord.'

He took no further notice of me then, but when I had bolted the first horse in for the night and waited further down the yard with the second one, he came over to pat my charge and feel his legs; and as he straightened up he gave me a mischievous wink. With difficulty, since I was facing the other men, I kept a dead-pan face. He blew his nose to stop himself laughing. We were neither of us very professional at this cloak and dagger stuff.

When they had gone, and after I had eaten the evening meal with the other lads, I walked down to the Slaw pub with two of them. Half way through the first drinks I left them and went and telephoned to October.

'Who is speaking?' a man's voice inquired.

I was stumped for a second: then I said 'Perlooma,' knowing that that would fetch him.

He came on the line. 'Anything wrong?'

'No,' I said. 'Does anyone at the local exchange listen to your calls?'

'I wouldn't bet on it.' He hesitated. 'Where are you?'

'Slaw, in the phone box at your end of the village.'

'I have guests for dinner; will tomorrow do?'

'Yes.'

He paused for thought. 'Can you tell me what you want?'

'Yes,' I said. 'The form books for the last seven or eight seasons, and every sc.r.a.p of information you can possibly dig up about the eleven... subjects.'

'What are you looking for?'

'I don't know yet,' I said.

'Do you want anything else?'

'Yes, but it needs discussion.'

He thought. 'Behind the stable yard there is a stream which comes down from the moors. Walk up beside it tomorrow, after lunch.'

'Right.'

I hung up, and went back to my interrupted drink in the pub.

'You've been a long time,' said Paddy, one of the lads I had come with. 'We're one ahead of you. What have you been doing reading the walls in the Gents?'

'There's some remarks on them walls,' mused the other lad, a gawky boy of eighteen, 'that I haven't fathomed yet.'

'Nor you don't want to,' said Paddy approvingly. At forty he acted as unofficial father to many of the younger lads.

They slept one each side of me, Paddy and Grits, in the little dormitory. Paddy, as sharp as Grits was slow, was a tough little Irishman with eyes that never missed a trick. From the first minute I hoisted my suitcase on to the bed and unpacked my night things under his inquisitive gaze I had been glad that October had been so insistent about a complete change of clothes.

'How about another drink?'

'One more, then,' a.s.sented Paddy. 'I can just about run to it, I reckon.'

I took the gla.s.ses to the bar and bought refills: there was a pause while Paddy and Grits dug into their pockets and repaid me elevenpence each. The beer, which to me, tasted strong and bitter was not, I thought, worth four miles' walk, but many of the lads, it appeared, had bicycles or rickety cars and made the trek on several evenings a week.

'Nothing much doing, tonight,' observed Grits gloomily. He brightened. 'Pay day tomorrow.'

'It'll be full here tomorrow, and that's a fact,' agreed Paddy. 'With Soupy and that lot from Granger's and all.'

'Granger's?' I asked.

'Sure, don't you know nothing?' said Grits with mild contempt. 'Granger's stable, over t'other side of the hill.'

'Where have you been all your life?' said Paddy.

'He's new to racing, mind you,' said Grits, being fair.

'Yes, but all the same!' Paddy drank past the half-way mark, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

Grits finished his beer and sighed. 'That's it, then. Better be getting back, I suppose.'

We walked back to the stables, talking as always about horses.

The following afternoon I wandered casually out of the stables and started up the stream, picking up stones as I went and throwing them in, as if to enjoy the splash. Some of the lads were punting a football about in the paddock behind the yard, but none of them paid any attention to me. A good long way up the hill, where the stream ran through a steep, gra.s.s sided gully, I came across October sitting on a boulder smoking a cigarette. He was accompanied by a black retriever, and a gun and a full game bag lay on the ground beside him.

'Doctor Livingstone, I presume,' he said, smiling.

'Quite right, Mr Stanley. How did you guess?' I perched on a boulder near to him.

He kicked the game bag, 'The form books are in here, and a note book with all that Beckett and I could rake up at such short notice about those eleven horses. But surely the reports in the files you read would be of more use than the odd snippets we can supply?'

'Anything may be useful... you never know. There was one clipping in that packet of Stapleton's which was interesting. It was about historic dope cases. It said that certain horses apparently turned harmless food into something that showed a positive dope reaction, just through chemical changes in their body. I suppose it isn't possible that reverse could occur? I mean, could some horses break down any sort of dope into harmless substances, so that no positive reaction showed in the test?'

'I'll find out.'

'There's only one other thing,' I said. 'I have been a.s.signed to three of those useless brutes you filled the yard up with, and that means no trips to racecourses. I was wondering if perhaps you could sell one of them again, and then I'd have a chance of mixing with lads from several stables at the sales. Three other men are doing three horses each here, so I shouldn't find myself redundant, and I might well be given a raceable horse to look after.'

'I will sell one,' he said, 'but if it goes for auction it will take time. The application forms have to go to the auctioneer nearly a month before the sale date.'

I nodded. 'It's utterly frustrating. I wish I could think of a way of getting myself transferred to a horse which is due to race shortly. Preferably one going to a far distant course, because an overnight stop would be ideal.'

'Lads don't change their horses in mid-stream,' he said rubbing his chin.

'So I've been told. It's the luck of the draw. You get them when they come and you're stuck with them until they leave. If they turn out useless, it's just too bad.'

We stood up. The retriever, who had lain quiet all this time with his muzzle resting on his paws, got to his feet also and stretched himself, and wagging his tail slowly from side to side looked up trustingly at his master. October bent down, gave the dog an affectionate slap, and picked up the gun. I picked up the game bag and swung it over my shoulder.

We shook hands, and October said, smiling, 'You may like to know that Inskip thinks you ride extraordinarily well for a stable lad. His exact words were that he didn't really trust men with your sort of looks, but that you'd the hands of an angel. You'd better watch that.'

'h.e.l.l,' I said, 'I hadn't given it a thought.'

He grinned and went off up the hill, and I turned downwards along the stream, gradually becoming ruefully aware that however much of a lark I might find it to put on wolf's clothing, it was going to hurt my pride if I had to hash up my riding as well.

The pub in Slaw was crowded that evening and the wage packets took a hiding. About half the strength from October's stable was there one of them had given me a lift down in his car and also a group of Granger's lads, including three la.s.ses, who took a good deal of double-meaning teasing and thoroughly enjoyed it. Most of the talk was friendly bragging that each lad's horses were better than those of anyone else.

'My b.u.g.g.e.r'll beat yours with his eyes shut on Wednesday.'

'You've got a ruddy hope...'

'... Yours couldn't run a snail to a close finish.'

'... The jockey made a right muck of the start and never got in touch...'

'... Fat as a pig and b.l.o.o.d.y obstinate as well.'

The easy chat ebbed and flowed while the air grew thick with cigarette smoke and the warmth of too many lungs breathing the same box of air. A game of darts between some inaccurate players was in progress in one corner, and the b.a.l.l.s of bar billiards clicked in another. I lolled on a hard chair with my arm hooked over the back and watched Paddy and one of Granger's lads engage in a needle match of dominoes. Horses, cars, football, boxing, films, the last local dance, and back to horses, always back to horses. I listened to it all and learned nothing except that these lads were mostly content with their lives, mostly good natured, mostly observant and mostly harmless.

'You're new, aren't you?' said a challenging voice in my ear.

I turned my head and looked up at him. 'Yeah,' I said languidly.

These were the only eyes I had seen in Yorks.h.i.+re which held anything of the sort of guile I was looking for. I gave him back his stare until his lips curled in recognition that I was one of his kind.

'What's your name?'

'Dan,' I said, 'and yours?'

'Thomas Nathaniel Tarleton.' He waited for some reaction, but I didn't know what it ought to be.

'T. N. T.' said Paddy obligingly, looking up from his dominoes. 'Soupy.' His quick gaze flickered over both of us.

'The high explosive kid himself,' I murmured.

Soupy Tarleton smiled a small, carefully dangerous smile: to impress me, I gathered. He was about my own age and build, but much fairer, with the reddish skin which I had noticed so many Englishmen had. His light hazel eyes protruded slightly in their sockets, and he had grown a narrow moustache on the upper lip of his full, moist-looking mouth. On the little finger of his right hand he wore a heavy gold ring, and on his left wrist, an expensive wrist watch. His clothes were of good material, though distinctly sharp in cut, and the enviable fleece-lined quilted jacket he carried over his arm would have cost him three weeks' pay.

He showed no signs of wanting to be friendly. After looking me over as thoroughly as I had him, he merely nodded, said 'See you,' and detached himself to go over and watch the bar billiards.

Grits brought a fresh half pint from the bar and settled himself on the bench next to Paddy.

'You don't want to trust Soupy,' he told me confidentially, his raw boned unintelligent face full of kindness.

Paddy put down a double three, and looking round at us gave me a long, unsmiling scrutiny.

'There's no need to worry about Dan, Grits,' he said. 'He and Soupy, they're alike. They'd go well in double harness. Birds of a feather, that's what they are.'

'But you said I wasn't to trust Soupy,' objected Grits, looking from one to the other of us with troubled eyes.

'That's right,' said Paddy flatly. He put down a three-four and concentrated on his game.

Grits s.h.i.+fted six inches towards Paddy and gave me one puzzled, embarra.s.sed glance. Then he found the inside of his beer mug suddenly intensely interesting and didn't raise his eyes to mine again.

I think it was at that exact moment that the charade began to lose its light-heartedness. I liked Paddy and Grits, and for three days they had accepted me with casual good humour. I was not prepared for Paddy's instant recognition that it was with Soupy that my real interest lay, nor for his immediate rejection of me on that account. It was a shock which I ought to have foreseen, and hadn't: and it should have warned me what to expect in the future, but it didn't.

Colonel Beckett's staff work continued to be of the highest possible kind. Having committed himself to the offensive, he was prepared to back the attack with ma.s.sive and immediate reinforcements: which is to say that as soon as he had heard from October that I was immobilized in the stable with three useless horses, he set about liberating me.

On Tuesday afternoon, when I had been with the stable for a week, Wally, the head lad, stopped me as I carried two buckets full of water across the yard.

'That horse of yours in number seventeen is going tomorrow,' he said. 'You'll have to look sharp in the morning with your work, because you are to be ready to go with it at twelve-thirty. The horse box will take you to another racing stables, down near Nottingham. You are to leave this horse there and bring a new one back. Right?'

'Right,' I said. Wally's manner was cool with me; but over the week-end I had made myself be reconciled to the knowledge that I had to go on inspiring a faint mistrust all round, even if I no longer much liked it when I succeeded.

Most of Sunday I had spent reading the form books, which the others in the cottage regarded as a perfectly natural activity; and in the evening, when they all went down to the pub, I did some pretty concentrated work with a pencil, making a.n.a.lyses of the eleven horses and their a.s.sisted wins. It was true, as I had discovered from the newspaper cuttings in London, that they all had different owners, trainers and jockeys: but it was not true that they had absolutely nothing in common. By the time I had sealed my notes into an envelope and put it with October's notebook into the game bag under some form books, away from the inquiring gaze of the beer-happy returning lads, I was in possession of four unhelpful points of similarity.

First, the horses had all won selling chases races where the winner was subsequently put up for auction. In the auctions three horses had been bought back by their owners, and the rest had been sold for modest sums.

Second, in all their racing lives all the horses had proved themselves to be capable of making a show in a race, but had either no strength or no guts when it came to a finish.

Third, none of them had won any races except the ones for which they were doped, though they had occasionally been placed on other occasions.

Fourth, none of them had won at odds of less than ten to one.

I learned both from October's notes and from the form books that several of the horses had changed trainers more than once, but they were such moderate, unrewarding animals that this was only to be expected. I was also in possession of the useless information that the horses were all by different sires out of different dams, that they varied in age from five to eleven, and that they were not all of the same colour. Neither had they all won on the same course, though in this case they had not all won on different courses either; and geographically I had a vague idea that the courses concerned were all in the northern half of the country Kelso, Haydock, Sedgefield, Stafford and Ludlow. I decided to check them on a map, to see if this was right, but there wasn't one to be found chez Mrs Allnut.

I went to bed in the crowded little dormitory with the other lads' beery breaths gradually overwhelming the usual mixed clean smells of boot polish and hair oil, and lost an argument about having the small sash window open more than four inches at the top. The lads all seemed to take their cue from Paddy, who was undoubtedly the most aware of them, and if Paddy declined to treat me as a friend, so would they: I realized that if I had insisted on having the window tight shut they would probably have opened it wide and given me all the air I wanted. Grinning ruefully in the dark I listened to the squeaking bed springs and their sleepy, gossiping giggles as they thumbed over the evening's talk; and as I s.h.i.+fted to find a comfortable spot on the lumpy mattress I began to wonder what life was really like from the inside for the hands who lived in my own bunk house, back home.