Common People

by Kit de Waal

  In theory, greyhound racing is a simple premise: six dogs emerge from wooden and metal boxes called ‘traps’, chase after a mechanical ‘hare’, which looks more like a sock than a rabbit, and the one who gets to the line first is the winner. Most of the races at Easington were ‘handicaps’, which meant that the traps could be moved closer or further away from the winning line, depending upon each dog’s level of ability. To give each dog an equal chance, the best runners go to the back, and the worst ones to the front. So far, so straightforward.

  Until, of course, you realise that the six greyhounds have six different owner-trainers, all of whom are desperate to land a gamble. The training of greyhounds at Easington was completely unregulated: the most complex check involved matching a dog’s ear-mark (a three-letter tattoo of identification) to their race name. They could be trained anyhow and fed anything, so you could never truly know that the ‘best’ dog really was at the back, or the ‘worst’ dog was ten metres closer to the line until the race was over. You might look at each dog’s previous runs, but how could you be sure that they reflected their true abilities? The dogs might have been unfit, unwell, unable to produce the speed or stamina that the distance of the race required. All the form did was tell you how the race should pan out; how it would do so was another matter entirely.

  The little white race card that I so adored, then, could barely be worth the paper it was written on. But even as their fingers flicked through it and their betting-shop pens made notes in the margins, my family kept their eyes peeled and ears open for something far more valuable than form: the indication that someone was trying.

  Not for a baby, of course, but for an event that was just as precious: a successful gamble. When the form could mislead you and people deceive you, it was time to study real figures instead of printed ones. The smallest details could be an indication that someone was running their dog with the intention of winning tonight. The lass who normally kept well away from her brother was sitting with him for the quarter of an hour between the first race and the second. That was funny – she had a dog running in the third. The lad with stout enough bowels to cope with the track café’s burgers kept making pungent trips to the bog as if he had a bug. Maybe he did, but he also had a dog running off top in the sixth race. These quirks could be completely innocent, but when they coincided with a sudden, unexplained decline in the dog’s performance, alarm bells rang.

  ‘I’m sure they’re trying tonight,’ our dad would murmur. We’d all lean forward like conspirators. ‘Their dog’s in trap five. They’ve ran him in sprints but he hasn’t got the pace. He’s over a longer distance and he’s only got the six to beat to the corner. If he gets round that first bend in front, it’s goodnight Vienna.’

  And so it proved to be a good night, for us and for the dog’s owners. I was far too young to be allowed near the betting ring, a line of four bookmakers’ boards that stank of sweat and smoke, but I always watched the process with fascination. A crowd of men would gather round the bookies, chatting casually as they waited for the prices to be chalked up.

  ‘What d’you reckon?’

  ‘I’d say 6/4 the six dog, 3/1 the one, 4/1 bar. The five’ll probably be the outsider, no form at all.’

  A nod of agreement, a drag of a rolled-up fag.

  Then: ‘6/4 the field!’

  Like soldiers in battle, the men shot forward at the cry. I was always impressed to see our dad and my brothers courteously let the gambled-on dog’s owners get their money on before they placed their bets. But when the five dog strolled to the line, their cheers rang out first.

  ‘Get in there!’

  ‘Ea-sy! Ea-sy! Ea-sy!’

  ‘Take ’em round again! He’d still win!’

  They kept cheering as they dashed off to stretch out their palms before the abashed bookies.

  For the most part, people took it with good grace when their selection was beaten by a gamble. The fault was with them, not the dog’s owners: they should have realised that it was a stayer rather than a sprinter, and besides, they were planning their own coup themselves. But, in the words of our mam, ‘There’s always one.’

  This ‘one’ was a brooding bruiser of a man who had thought that backing the six dog to win was ‘like taking a Dime bar off a bairn’. The bairn must have turned out to be a right little tough nut, because there was the six dog, a valiant but well beaten second, and here he was, penniless. He stood there, eyes fixed on the panting six dog walking alongside the lass who owned him, as noiseless as a dormant volcano. But when they came into earshot, he blew his top.

  ‘Your dog’s dodgy.’

  More potent than a punch, more wounding than a weapon, these three white-hot words stunned the crowd and the dog’s owner. To tell someone that their dog was ‘dodgy’ was the ultimate blow. ‘Dodgy’ was short for ‘dodgepot’, a term reserved for aberrant creatures who showed no interest in reaching the hare and refused to pass other dogs. When dodgepots turned up on the track, as they did from time to time, they would be identified as such in low tones, well out of earshot of their owner. As shameful as it was to own a dodgepot, it was even worse to have your dog accused of being one when all it wanted to do was win.

  So when the six dog’s owner straightened up, squared her shoulders, and snarled, ‘If I didn’t have my dog on this lead, son, I’d wrap it straight round your neck,’ no one protested. And even as our mam hurried me away from the scene in case it all kicked off, I was proud of the woman and aggrieved at the man who had insulted her.

  It was inevitable that skirmishes arose in the charged atmosphere of Easington Greyhound Stadium: there was pride at stake as well as money. I was six years old and I knew it as well as if I’d been through it myself. Like women of the factories, the once-proud men of the pits had suddenly been forced to endure the spine-shrivelling abasement of having to sign on the dole. ‘Just one’ visit to the Jobcentre grew into ten, twenty, thirty, in sync with the rejection letters that politely told them they were useless. Pitch in jibes from the neighbours, taunts from relatives, tears from children, and was it any wonder that the spectacle of a greyhound desperately chasing after a hare it would never catch had such a great appeal? Getting one over on the bookies or your fellow punters was the only measure of success left; of course people were going to disagree and, occasionally, fight. But if you were away by nine, as we always were, a war of words was the worst you’d see.

  Going flapping was, for the most part, like being a member of a slightly dysfunctional extended family. When someone overstepped the line, there was always someone else to fight your corner and share your sweets. That same someone might spoil your planned gamble with one of their own, but we all came into this world with nothing anyway, so we were used to it. Next time might be your time, or the time after that.

  Your life was going to the dogs, but that was a reason to smile, not cry.

  Underdogs

  Helen Wilber

  Do you know the best thing about football? It’s the getting there. Nothing compares to marching in the same direction as 30,000 other human beings. Together we are an army on the move, a sea of denim and cheap blue nylon. We are average people with average aspirations. Some of us go without holidays, nights out, clothes, to be here, walking as one.

  And this year, for sure, is our year.

  I’d never been to the football until you took me. Everyone remembers their first time: the smell of processed meat, the salivating sniffer dogs, the mechanical click of the turnstiles. On the steaming concourse, we fought through the queues for pies and lager, the row of outlets resembling a twilit underground shopping centre. I followed you up the concrete stairs, resisting the urge to run. But what I remember most is the blast of cold air as we peered over the cliff edge at the bright green sea below. And then, the noise…

  I wheel my bike down High Street, looking in the charity shops and the dingy pub windows adorned with blue flags and crepe-paper trimmings. The baying cars on the ring road are backed u
p for miles. It feels like Christmas Eve. Behind the clock tower posters of the team are displayed on railings like towels over hotel balconies. I continue down towards Primark. Some homeless people sit with their backs to the shoe-shop window. The ones who are awake turn their faces towards the spring sunshine.

  I lock up my bike and go into Superdrug. The shop is crowded, even for a Saturday. But this is no ordinary bank holiday. If Leicester beat Manchester United tomorrow, the biggest gift in English football is ours. The girl in front of me is told by the shop assistant that that the hairspray in her basket is on two for one. ‘It’s a sign!’ hisses her dad.

  That first match you took me to was brilliant. How could it have been anything less? I remember it was cold; near Christmas. A lacklustre Millwall were the perfect pantomime villains, every kick drawing boos and hisses from the jubilant crowd. ‘Is every game like this?’ I shouted in your good ear (the one that wasn’t damaged by meningitis) as City banged in their fourth goal. ‘No, every game isn’t like this!’ you laughed.

  I leave Superdrug and I stand in the sunshine, looking at the flags with the life-sized images of City players. I launch a silent prayer, ‘Dear God, even though I don’t believe in you, please let Leicester City win the League.’ I can’t remember wanting anything more than this, not even a bike as a child.

  In the Buddhist Centre café the orange walls are adorned with blue-and-white trimmings. Even the Buddhists are backing the Blues. Lucy and I order lunch and talk excitedly about the football.

  After lunch we head to the pound shop. Brucciani’s are selling blue cobs (that’s bread cakes, baps or rolls to you) that look like pebbles from an alien beach. The straw-headed dummies in the school-shop window are draped in Leicester City scarves.

  In the evening there is a party. High on alcohol, adrenaline and hope, we eat the birthday cake, sodden with sickly blue-and-white icing. Every conversation is about the football. Will tomorrow be the day? Or will we have to wait until next week, when City play Everton at home?

  I miss you most when there’s a party, a gig, New Year’s Eve. A Friday night could flash by in seconds when we were together, talking intensely in our huddle, ignoring everyone else. We were always the last to leave any party. There was always so much to say.

  The next day I wake up early. Will today be the day? The local and national press have been carping about how City will always be the bridesmaid, never the bride. But what do they know? I text my friends to arrange a rendezvous, wondering how I will make it through to kick-off time.

  Opening the pub door it is like stepping off a plane somewhere hot. There is no air, and the heat from the sweating bodies is stifling. The place is dangerously crowded, eight deep at the bar. Scenes from Hillsborough flash through my mind; the terrified faces from a time when fences penned in fans as if they were dogs.

  I have no chance of fighting my way into the pub, so I leave. Hipsters in tight jeans and Vardy T-shirts are walking six abreast and City fans are queuing outside every pub. The city is awash with blue and white.

  There was no reason for us to become friends except for the fact that we liked each other. You were nearly twenty years older than me when I wandered into the office next door, looking for work.

  ‘I don’t believe in volunteering,’ you told me, grumpily. ‘Why on earth do you want to be a volunteer?’

  ‘I need work experience,’ I said. ‘Nobody will take me on without experience and I can’t get experience unless someone takes me on.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ you said.

  I ring Jack and persuade him to watch the match with me in a pub near home. I cycle to his house amid the blaring commentaries of pub TVs and car radios, panicking about the ticking clock. I must see this match. When I get to Jack’s, he is listening to Five Live and while he is lacing his baseball boots, Manchester United score.

  The moment we walk through the door, City score the equaliser and the pub erupts in ecstatic cheers and fist pumps. We laugh; this run of luck of ours is ridiculous. Nothing will stop us now. I go to the bar and order two pints of lager.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know much about politics,’ I said, that first night when we went out. I was drinking pints and you were on the Bacardi, moaning about the measly British measures. You told me that you didn’t drink much; you had always preferred drugs.

  ‘All I know about politics is that a very small number of people have got more or less all of the wealth,’ I said.

  ‘Well then, you do know about politics!’ you said.

  You had been part of many left-wing causes, from supporting the miners to fighting running battles with fascist groups in the eighties. You told me about the hunger strikers in Northern Ireland, how they took it in turns, the next man starting his strike after the death of the last.

  ‘They wanted to be treated as political prisoners,’ you explained.

  Your real heroes were always the people closer to home, though, the ones that you knew from up North. There was Yvette, the first female bus driver in your home town. But the characters from the shipyards were the ones who stood out, the ones who had inhabited the vast hangars where giant, whale-like vessels were nestled in intricate cat’s cradles of scaffold and walkways. You told me about the cross-dresser you knew, how she came to work every day in high heels and full make-up, waving cheerily at the cat-callers and bigots until eventually they got bored and their disdain was replaced by grudging admiration. Now that takes real guts, you said.

  Jack and I find a place to stand in front of one of the TVs, trying not to get in anyone’s way. This is a pub where it’s best to blend in. Having a bloke at my side makes me feel safe, though I resent the fact. The mood is charged, boisterous, combustible. A tracksuited man shouts almost constantly at the TV, swearing at the other team and abusing the ref. I look around for other women because I don’t want to be the only one. The few that I see are dressed to impress, in high heels and short leather jackets that skim their tiny waists. The men, glassy-eyed with drink, are casual, their bellies sagging over tracksuit bottoms or jeans. In the corner I spy the skinny one with the blond hair. The one I know, though he doesn’t know me; the one who hits first and asks questions later.

  When you told me about how you came to live in Leicester, I didn’t know whether to believe you.

  ‘Really, you stuck a pin in a map?’ I said.

  ‘It was time to get out,’ you said. ‘The police had had enough of us. They were getting heavy.’

  A raid had taken place, something to do with an abandoned caravan that you were using to take drugs. Unspeakable things were happening to your female friends while in police custody. When the pin came down slap-bang in the middle of Leicester, you found out whether you could study here, and when you knew that you could, you applied to the poly. After the interview, you dropped some acid and wandered into one of the city’s parks. You decided that you liked it here. There seemed to be loads of nice places to take drugs, you said.

  Manchester United is playing dirty and we are no better. The game is full of yellow cards, hair-pulling and weaponised elbows. We watch, urging Leicester on. At half time, I buy more lager.

  Jack is out of work. His last job was delivering oxygen cylinders for medical use to the homes of people who were sick, sometimes dying. The houses were chaotic; sometimes there were vicious dogs, squalor and dysfunctionality. One house was entirely filled, floor to ceiling, with rotting oranges. Jack’s employer hated it if employees wasted time chatting with the patients as they hooked them up to the ugly brown cans.

  Sometimes I wish my friends would ask me about my job, but they’re not that interested; I’m barely interested myself. There’s nothing much to say about admin, and Tuesday will come knocking soon enough, brutal as a bailiff. Good friends like Jack are as precious as bank holidays, and just as rare. For now, the lager is flowing and we are on the brink of greatness.

  The second half is as good as the first. Manchester United look like scoring, but our Kasper is fant
astic, parrying blows like Zorro, and the equaliser doesn’t come. The din in the pub gets louder as the clock shows seventy-five, then eighty minutes played. Suddenly we are all chanting, ‘We’re going to win the League.’ Everyone is on their feet, banging beer glasses deafeningly on the wooden tables.

  I’m not sure when you decided to give up drugs, but it was years before we met. ‘The hardest thing is sacking your friends off,’ you told me. ‘Stopping seeing the people you usually see, avoiding all the places you usually go, you know?’ (I didn’t.) You rented a cheap cottage in the country for a month especially for the task in hand. You said, ‘People talk all kinds of bullshit about giving up drugs.’

  ‘But doesn’t it make you feel really ill?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s no worse than the flu,’ you replied.

  Your childhood wasn’t up to much. Perhaps that’s why you chose social work. You didn’t know your dad, and your mum sounded challenged, at best. You didn’t attend school much. The house where you lived had a big hole in the floor. You left home at sixteen to live in a student house with your older brother. He moved out on the day you moved in.

  The match ends in a one-all draw. If Spurs draw tomorrow, we will win the League. If Spurs win, we still only need one win or two draws. Surely it must happen now? I cycle home in the rain and I tipsily make dinner. I haven’t felt this happy in ages.

  Dear You,

  A lot has happened since you died. There is some crazy, exciting news, but I will fill you in on the other stuff first. I saw one of our friends the other day, the one who had the party where we stayed until everyone else had left and then walked home in the snow. We were talking about you. She asked me how you and I became such good friends. I reminded her that we met through work.