by A. P. McCoy
His dad was sceptical at first. ‘You can’t know that,’ he said. ‘Not for sure you can’t.’
‘Yes I can. It’s a pattern.’
‘I know it’s a pattern, but—’
‘I can tell when this one in Tattersalls is talking to his mate in the Silver Ring. He’s telling him too many people are backing one of the horses.’
His dad, who always wore a sporting trilby and a moth-eaten sheepskin coat, tipped his hat back on his head and thought for a moment. He studied the form in his folded newspaper. A minute later he said, ‘You little beauty! You sodding little beauty!’ and gave him a tenner.
Duncan, small for his years, had approached a bookie with the terrific name of Billy B. Bonsor. Billy B. Bonsor had a beautifully painted fairground-style board with the slogan ‘Payment as a Matter of Honour’. Mr Bonsor (so Duncan took the man to be) stood on an upturned wooden crate and announced as if to the entire racetrack, ‘Very young fellow says ten on Midnight at sevens and who knows it?’ Another man standing behind the crate recorded the bet in a ledger and Duncan was handed a betting slip. Before he released the slip, Billy B. Bonsor gave Duncan a weird look. Then he ran a finger under his nose and wiped the board, dropping Midnight Rambler from 7–1 to 5–1. Then he wiped the board again and changed it to 9–2.
Duncan ran back to his dad and gave him the betting slip. ‘Why did he drop the odds?’ he asked.
‘He thinks someone sent you with the bet.’
‘But you did!’
‘Yes.’
His dad told him that there was good money and mug’s money in gambling and that theirs was mug’s money, even though they were in the business. Mug’s money it might have been, but Midnight Rambler strolled home, and after deducting the stake, his dad let Duncan split the take. Thirty-five pounds was an inconceivable amount of money for a nine-year-old boy.
But what mesmerised Duncan even more than the tic-tac men and the painted boards was the racing itself. There was something unearthly and magical about the jockeys. He got up as close as he could to them and studied them. Some were tight-lipped before a race, and some would be wisecracking and all smiles. But Duncan knew it was the same thing. It was the tension. The excitement. They glowed with it.
And when he stood with his dad roaring them in near the whitewashed rail at the home stretch, there was something beyond beautiful in the growing rumble of the approaching riders. There was a moment when the silks flashed past, when the hooves thundered on the turf and the jockeys and their mounts seemed to be locked into position. If he could have frozen the world in time it would have been at that moment. It was perfection. It was life itself.
This was the obsession. Not so much with gambling, though that was part of it, but with the racing. He wanted in. He wanted to be bathed in that glowing thing.
He told his dad he wanted to start saving and would put his thirty-five pounds towards his own pony.
His dad laughed and tipped his trilby back on his head. ‘Well, you’re about the right size and weight,’ he said, ‘so long as you don’t grow too much over the years. So long as you keep your weight down.’
‘What is it?’ Lorna said.
‘It’s no good. I need to pee. I’m going to have to pull over.’
‘Can’t you wait till the next services?’
‘It’s a desperate situation. I’ve got to go.’ The pills didn’t take any argument. He was already slowing down and indicating for the hard shoulder. He stopped the car, got out, went round and faced away from the motorway, and unzipped. The release of pressure was indescribable. His body sagged with relief. He stood there pissing heartily, in full view of passing traffic. He didn’t care. It seemed to go on. And on. He looked at his watch. He was still pissing when he sensed another car cruising along the hard shoulder to draw up behind the Lamborghini.
The police officer was already getting out of his car. It made no difference.
The officer walked towards him with slow, measured strides. ‘Not exactly discreet, is it?’ he said. ‘Not exactly discreet in a big yellow sports car, relieving yourself in full view on the Queen’s highway, is it?’
Duncan finished the task in hand, vented a huge sigh and zippered himself up. He turned and offered the policeman a smile that went the full distance.
‘I mean,’ said the officer, ‘it’s all a bit of a circus, isn’t it?’
‘You’re right, officer. And I’m not going to try to argue my way out of this one. Let me say this: you fellows do a fine job. I’ve always said so. So I can’t complain when I’m found out myself, now can I? But in my own defence, I wouldn’t be standing here like this if there was any other way on this earth. Believe me, I wouldn’t. Now without taking anything away from you, or without trying to stop you from doing a proper job, will you give me permission to tell you how I came to be here, like this, on the Queen’s highway and all that?’
The officer blinked very slowly. ‘Try me,’ he said.
A few minutes later Duncan got back in the car, still smiling.
‘Did he book you?’ Lorna said.
‘Nope.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘What did I say to him? He’s a racing fan. I gave him a winner.’
‘You did? Isn’t that a bribe?’
Duncan toed the accelerator and got another big-cat squeal out of the engine before pulling on to the motorway. ‘Oh no. I just told him I was a jockey and that I was late for the two thirty at Doncaster and I was riding a mare called Trojan’s Trumpet and that it was guaranteed to at least get a place but that I needed to get there and that I was really sorry. That’s all I said.’
‘He went off pretty quick.’
‘Oh yes. He’s off now to find the nearest bookie.’
She looked at Duncan with a mixture of admiration and disapproval. ‘How do you do it?’
‘How do I do what?’
‘That. People like you, doesn’t matter where you fall, you come up smelling of roses, don’t you? How do you do it?’
‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘If only that were true.’ He pulled out into the fast lane and put his foot down to the board.
Doesn’t matter where you fall, she’d said. He’d fallen off horses enough times, that much was certain. He’d forgotten falling off more times than he remembered. Duncan started riding when he was five and owned his first pony shortly after that first day at the races. He’d ridden gymkhanas and juvenile events until he was impatient for the real thing. He was always falling off. But it wasn’t all roses.
Keeping a small training concern going was hard for his old man. It broke your heart and it broke your back. They had occasional help but mostly they had to do everything themselves. Even so, his old man always put Duncan before himself.
Then one year things started to look up. His dad’s hard work began to pay off and in one great season he had a slew of point-to-point winners. Then in the next season he started competing with the National Hunt big boys. He had winners at Cheltenham, took fourth place over the giant fences of the celebrated Grand National and finished a great run with victories at Punchestown in Ireland and at Sandown. People started looking their way. Owners were always dissatisfied if their expensive animals weren’t pulling in the prizes, and it was easy and lazy to blame the trainer; and so one or two owners were always moving their horses along. Some started to come to Duncan’s father.
And one or two big-time trainers didn’t like it. Duncan wasn’t aware – at the time – how easy it was to make serious enemies in horse racing. Ugly enemies.
At the track, the stewards pointed him to the car park reserved for owners and trainers. With the Lamborghini purring, he crawled into the parking area. He could see Kerry, already in his jockey’s silk, standing outside the entrance, puffing on a cigarette and anxiously looking the other way. He slipped on some dark glasses and inched the motor as close as he could to Kerry and wound down the window. Kerry glanced over. He obviously didn’t recognise Duncan in his shades,
nor the car, because he looked away again. Duncan hit the horn.
Kerry looked over again.
‘How are we for time?’ Duncan asked him.
Kerry’s handsome Irish jaw opened but he didn’t say anything. He tossed away his cigarette and stalked over to the car. He peered inside and the skin crinkled around his steely-blue eyes as he took in the red-headed Lorna in the passenger seat, and the plush interior of the car. Then he stepped back and folded his arms, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘And you can wipe that bloody silly smirk off your face.’
‘Was I smiling?’ Duncan said. ‘We’ll have to stop that, then.’
‘How in hell do you do it?’ Kerry said. ‘Go on. Tell me. I’d really like to know.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Really? No? Well tell me something else. Is that a nippy car?’
‘Lamborghini? You bet it is.’
‘Good. Because when you’ve finished your race, with the amount of shit you’re in today you’re going to need to get away from this place very fast.’
2
He’d told that copper on the side of the motorway that Trojan’s Trumpet would finish in the frame, and he thought he might. The race was a seller, and Kerry was riding the fancied horse, but there wasn’t much in it across a field of six over two-miles-and-four. He got off to a poor, leaping start and was slowly away with four in front, the field already lit up by Kerry. After the second fence a horse called Mountain Block moved up close by and Duncan felt a sudden impulsion from his mount. He gave her a squeeze and she followed Mountain Block. Duncan sensed that she’d got a good turn of foot. He decided to wait and bide his time.
Trojan’s trainer Billy Miles had told him to stay on the outside, but Mountain Block tracked to the inner. He was going with it; fuck Billy, it was him riding the horse, not the trainer. Trojan had enough to go past Mountain Block, but Duncan held her, kept her back. He knew she’d got plenty.
It was something his dad had once told him. Never disappoint a horse. What he’d meant was that although a horse would often want to leap to the front and you had to hold it back, there were other moments when its mood and form flashed like white heat and you needed to let it go.
It was still about his dad. Well, that and the fact that Duncan was a competitive, bloody-minded and obsessive son-of-a-bitch who didn’t like getting beaten at anything, whether it was a donkey derby on Skegness sands or the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. Not that he’d ridden in the Gold Cup. Not yet. But that was coming.
Duncan wanted to give it all back to his dad. He wanted to repay him for all the sacrifices, the loyalty, the things he’d gone without. But time was not on his side. Dad was showing early signs of losing his memory. His own father had been a victim of early dementia, and both Duncan and Charlie knew that he was going the same way. There had already been a clinical diagnosis, and it was not good. Duncan didn’t know exactly how many years he would have before the idea of repayment became meaningless. He wanted to do things for his dad before it was too late. He only knew that if he was to achieve any of this and soon, he’d better make smart use of the whip.
He was very certain of what had quickened his father’s professional demise. Three terrific seasons had started to pull in the good horses. His dad changed his business model. Instead of scouting, buying, training and selling on quickly, he started to hang on to his winners and look upwards on the National Hunt calendar. The top races brought big cash prizes, and that in turn would attract still more owners.
It was all going so well. Then in a single season it all crashed spectacularly. Failure followed failure. Bad luck stalked bad luck. Then came the doping charge that destroyed him. It was crazy: there wasn’t a more honest trainer in the country, but Charlie was hauled up and found guilty. He became ill with the stress and the worry of it all. His burgeoning training business collapsed.
They hit the halfway, the pounding hooves picking up in tempo now, and took a fence together sweetly, Trojan still tucked in behind Mountain Block. From there he moved past two of the other runners, who were never going to be on terms. Kerry was still way out in the lead with the second horse just a length in front, kicking up a lot of shit into Duncan’s goggles, half blinding him. The jockey on Mountain Block must have thought the same thing, because he squeezed up, and Duncan followed, still with plenty in hand, and they were through the shit-storm with only Kerry out in front but starting to look tired.
Duncan felt a familiar blood-surge in his brain. This was the moment. He lived for this precise moment. The sound of the hooves blotted out all other sound; the smell of the sweat on the horse’s flanks obliterated all other smells; the grip of the reins in his hands and the balance of his toes in the stirrups were the only things he could feel.
We go, thought Duncan, and the horse, picking up his message, just breezed in front of Mountain Block and was soon pressing on Kerry.
Kerry looked back at him. ‘Where the fuck did you come from?’ he shouted.
‘You’ve fucked it!’ Duncan shouted, and he laid his stick over Trojan’s haunches. ‘You dropped your pants!’
‘You’re not having this one!’ Kerry yelled back.
Duncan was fifteen when he left school. His dad gave him the choice and he leapt right out of the ring. But Charlie figured he’d already taught Duncan everything he could. With things going well, he had taken on other hands, and could afford to send Duncan to a stables where he might learn some new tricks. He’d chosen Penderton, run by an old friend, Dick Sommers. But mainly he had wanted Duncan to work with Dick’s head lad.
To call a man closing in on retirement a ‘lad’ was just one of the many odd things about the racing industry. Head lad Tommy was the wrong side of sixty. A former jockey himself, he’d seen pretty much everything from the days long before TV cameras had featured at the tracks and changed the game. He knew horses, and he knew where all the bodies were buried. He was a fierce taskmaster and had little to say to anyone, preferring to communicate by means of a growl and a curse and a stinging slapped ear.
But it was Tommy who found Duncan crying behind one of the stables at Penderton the day after the doping charge was made to stick. Tommy knew exactly what it was about. The grizzled old boy came up to him and fixed him with his unblinking green and yellow eyes.
‘Stop your snivelling. Now listen. Charlie’s a good ’un. He didn’t let anyone down.’ He held his hand up and Duncan backed off a little, thinking he was going to get a slap from the old man. ‘See that hand? Your dad can have that hand any day. I owe him. But I’ll tell you this for nothing, son. For nothing. He was done over.’
Ashamed to be caught crying Duncan tried to dry his eyes on the back of his hand. ‘What?’
‘You heard me, son. They got at him.’
‘Who?’
Tommy shook his head. He had eyes like ice in a yard bucket on a frosty morning. He poked Duncan on the shoulder with a hard, leathery finger. ‘Your old man’s a good ’un, and don’t you ever forget it.’
But the next time Duncan went up to Penderton, Tommy sent him to bring out a horse called Stormbringer. There in the stable, on the wall, was a dead betting slip. On the reverse were three names. They were the names of three top players in the field: a trainer, an owner and a major jockey. The handwriting was clumsy, almost childlike. Duncan knew that Tommy could barely read or write, but could do so well enough to write down the names of horses. This note was his work.
The dead betting slip was one issued by none other than Billy B. Bonsor, the bookie who had taken Duncan’s first ever bet. There was his slogan. Payment as a Matter of Honour. Duncan memorised the three names and then tore the slip into tiny pieces. Then he walked out Stormbringer and looked across the yard.
There was Tommy, watching, giving him a look that was as old as time.
Old mates that they were, after the race Kerry and Duncan always exchanged banter and occasionally offered a little flick of the whip when one bested the other.
The competition between them as conditionals had been keen. By the time they were full jockeys it was mustard. Now they’d skin a horse with a thin whip to get in front of the other, even if it took them through the gates of hell.
‘Close thing.’
‘Closer than you think.’
‘No, I had you.’
‘No you didn’t.’
‘You let me win, then?’
The stable lads led the horses away, and as Duncan carried his saddle back to the Weighing Room, Billy Miles came over. Billy was a decent trainer and Duncan didn’t mind him, though he liked the owner of the horse, George Millichip, a lot less. Billy wore a brown fedora and a Berber coat and he had a way of squinting at you when he talked. ‘Not bad,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Duncan said.
‘If you’d kept her on the outside you’d have won that race.’
‘Not a chance, Billy.’
‘You’ll not be told, Duncan, will you?’
‘Listen, I’ve just put a couple of thousand pounds’ selling value on that horse for the owner and here you are looking like you’ve lost a fiver.’
‘You can tell him yourself. He’s on his way over and he’s not best pleased with you.’
George Millichip, also wearing a brown fedora but with a camel-hair coat, came striding across the grass. He was already purple in the face. ‘What sort of a game do you think you’re playing?’ There was spittle on his lip.
Duncan saw Billy look away. ‘Well done, Duncan. You rode that nag to a good second place, Duncan. You made me a good few quid there, Duncan. Thank you, Duncan, here’s a drink for you, Duncan.’
‘I’m not talking about the race,’ Millichip spat. ‘I’m talking about your appalling behaviour. You were so late I was lining up another jockey. You left us no time for instructions. You made us look a pair of fools.’
