For Kicks - Страница 7

He hesitated, but not for long.

"As it happens, we are short-handed.

We'll give you a try. Wally, arrange a bed for him with Mrs. Allnut, and he can start in the morning. Usual wages," he added to me, 'eleven pounds a week, and three pounds of that goes to Mrs. Allnut for your keep. You can give me your cards tomorrow. Right?"

"Yes," I said: and I was in.

CHAPTER THREE

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 cockney-Australian passed 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 space in the centre. Thin flowered curtains hung at the window, 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. AUnut, 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 attitude everyone 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 realized, 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, scandalized 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 relationship between me and my own men was so free and easy that I found no difficulty in becoming a lad among 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 realize 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 farther 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. Halfway through the first drinks I left them and went and telephoned 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 scrap 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," assented Paddy.

"I can just about run to it, I reckon."

I took the glasses to the bar and bought refills: there was a pause while Paddy and Grits dug into their pockets and repaid me eleven pence 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 tother 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 halfway 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, grass-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.

"Dr. 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 notebook 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 the 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?"

Til find out. "

"There's only one other thing," I said.

"I have been assigned 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 race able horse to look after."