I Own the Racecourse!

by Patricia Wrightson

  ‘It’ll be all right. Dry-cleaning’ll take that off.’

  Matt choked a little.

  As they reached the busier streets they began to realize that other people were laughing too.

  ‘How are you, boss? Doing any more painting?’ said a man outside Blessings.

  ‘Don’t worry, mate, we’ll stand up for you,’ called the men outside the hotel.

  Andy turned pink and chuckled faintly.

  The next evening, with Andy safely at home, the others wandered out restlessly to look at Beecham Park where the Committee was meeting. There were one or two cars in the grounds, and a dim light shone from a room under the big stand.

  ‘We can get round to the back of that,’ said Mike.

  They went down to the park, and worked quietly round the lower wall of the racecourse until they found an open gate. They slipped quietly through it, and along one side of the stand where another lighted window was partly open. They sat in a silent row underneath it, leaning against the wall. A rumble of men’s voices came through the window.

  ‘No good,’ whispered Joe. ‘Can’t hear.’

  They would have left, but a late-coming car kept them frozen while the beam of its headlights fumbled past them and reached across the grounds. By the time the driver had disappeared through a door in the front of the stand, an outbreak of louder voices was coming through the window. The boys sat and listened to the phrases they could hear.

  ‘…find it very difficult to believe…’

  ‘Never heard such nonsense!’

  ‘Disgraceful lack of control…not the Committee’s responsibility.’

  Someone banged with something, and a single voice spoke quietly on; but tempers seemed to be rising in the room, and it was not long before loud voices broke out again.

  ‘Ridiculous story!’

  ‘We shall be a laughing-stock!’

  ‘Public opinion…very strong feelings among the men…nasty incident avoided…Fair Lady…’

  Then one voice, very loud: ‘Are you suggesting that this Committee should be held to ransom?’

  More banging, and a call: ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Difficult matter…undesirable publicity…further consideration…’

  There was silence for a moment, and then a general rumbling of voices. Mike tugged at the sleeve nearest him. ‘I think they’re coming out,’ he whispered.

  The four listeners drifted quietly off to the park, where they paused and looked at each other rather wildly.

  ‘But what did they decide?’ cried Matt. ‘As far as I can see, they just gave up and went home.’

  ‘They’ve got to find a way to keep it dark,’ said Terry. ‘They don’t want a row with the men, and stories in the papers and all that.’

  ‘That’s something,’ said Joe moodily. ‘No more do we.’

  They walked home in silence; and as they separated Mike said, ‘They’ve still got to find a way to make Andy believe he isn’t the owner. They haven’t even started yet.’ Then he grinned. ‘Rocked them a bit, didn’t it?—finding out that someone else owned their racecourse.’

  It did seem that the Committee’s meeting had made very little difference. The incident of the band’s trousers began to fade in importance, even to Andy’s friends. Andy himself was recovering rapidly. ‘I made a mistake, see,’ he said to Joe. ‘I got to be in it for years yet. Then I’ll know.’ On the day after that, he invited his friends to come down and watch the greyhounds training, just as if nothing had happened.

  ‘I’d rather watch from the top of the cliff,’ said Joe quickly. ‘You can see more from up there.’

  They went to the cliff and sat on the rocks. Men and dogs moved about below as casually as they always did on a training night. It was early, and at first the mechanical hare was not moving; but in a moment the high, mechanical whine came up to the cliff, and the small bobbing shape went swinging round the course, gathering speed as it approached the barrier where some of the dogs waited. As it swung past, the barrier doors opened and three greyhounds sprang after it. The hare raced ahead, bobbing bravely—until suddenly it paused and seemed to consider. The whining sound increased, but the hare moved sedately, with teasing slowness, for a yard or two while the dogs hurled themselves at it. Then, with the sudden speed of a bullet, it shot away to the other side of the track while the dogs yelped with bewilderment. They had lost it. The hare dropped back to its normal racing speed while three men ran out on the track to collect the bewildered dogs.

  Andy was laughing joyously. ‘Did you see him go? They lost him! He nearly caught ’em up from behind.’ He laughed and laughed.

  Now again the hare came past the barrier, and four more dogs leapt after it. The hare swung ahead—and again, at the same spot, it paused, went slowly while the dogs caught up, then shot off at amazing speed half-way round the track. Then it stopped. Andy lay back against the rock and laughed helplessly.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ said Mike, frowning.

  ‘Notice how the whine goes up when she slows down?’ said Terry. ‘They put on more power, trying to get her through the slow bit, and when she comes through she’s going like a rocket till they get her slowed down again. There’s something wrong with the rail at that place where she slows down.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Andy, still chuckling. ‘Not there, there isn’t. I tightened those nuts myself. With my spanners, I did it.’ They were staring at him.

  ‘Andy!’

  ‘Oh, no—you didn’t, did you?’

  ‘What’s up?’ said Andy. He lay back and laughed again.

  They carried him off to the workshop and there, in private, explained. By tightening those nuts, they said, he had forced together the rails along which ran the bogey that drew the hare; so that at that point, they said, the wheels of the bogey were squeezed too tightly by the rails and had to force their way through. They showed him, using the skateboard and two lengths of wood arranged as rails. There would be no more greyhound-training tonight, they explained gravely.

  ‘Don’t you worry, they’ll fix it all right,’ Andy assured them. ‘I can show ’em which nuts.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘No, you needn’t do that!’

  ‘They’ll find the nuts, all right. But they won’t be pleased.’

  Andy was sober for a moment. Then he remembered the hare, teasingly luring the dogs close only to shoot away; and he laughed and laughed. ‘I never did no harm this time,’ he said coaxingly. ‘Not like those trousers.’

  Finally, Matt took him home for the night while the others sat on in a tired way. This was the end, they knew. No matter how adverse the publicity, no matter if every man on the grounds went on strike, those angry men in the Committee Room would have no more of Andy. His dream-castle was tottering. It would crash.

  The very next afternoon, as they went down Wattle Road with Andy following, they saw Bert Hammond waiting at the corner. They hesitated, then went slowly forward. Bert put a hand on Andy’s shoulder.

  ‘Come along, son. Marsden wants a word with you.’

  ‘Eh?’ said Andy; and Bert drew him on towards Beecham Park while the others watched.

  ‘This is it,’ said Joe grimly; and they went slowly on to the gate themselves, watching the solid, rather clumsy figure of Andy going with Bert towards the farther end of the big stand, where it disappeared from sight. They waited by the gate, swinging their school-bags and not speaking, for what seemed a long time.

  ‘Here he comes,’ said Mike at last.

  Andy was coming slowly back, pausing, looking about him, and coming on again. In the background, Bert stood and watched him go as his four friends were watching him come. Lost in thought and often stopping, Andy came on until he saw the group at the gate. Even then he didn’t hurry, and they saw that his face was solemn and absorbed. As soon as he was close enough he began to talk in a voice that was full of awe.

  ‘You know what they did, Mike? Those ones that get the money—you know what they did, Joe? They bought Beech
am Park. They bought it off me. Look.’ He opened one hand a little and showed them some crumpled notes. ‘Ten dollars, they paid me. That’s a lot more than it cost me.’

  A little breath stirred the four boys at the gate. Andy looked from face to face and saw that they were impressed. ‘I had to sign a paper,’ he said importantly.

  ‘You sold it to them, did you?’ said Mike. He didn’t know what else to say; but he sent his silent thanks across the racecourse to Bert Hammond, Marsden the Secretary and the Committee. Whether they had meant it like this or not, they had found a way for Andy.

  ‘Three dollars,’ said Andy. ‘That’s what they said first. They wanted to give me three dollars, like I paid the old bloke. I had three dollars before, I told ’em that. What do I want with three dollars when I got a racecourse already? I told ’em that.’

  Terry grinned. ‘What did they say then?’

  ‘Oh—they talked a lot of stuff about a new stand they want—and those seats, what I did—and then they gave me ten dollars. That’s a lot of money, ten dollars is. So now I got no racecourse.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Joe quickly. ‘We’ll go up on the cliff every Saturday night and watch, just the same. You did a good deal—what are you going to do with all that money?’

  Andy gave a puzzled chuckle. ‘I dunno,’ he said, and followed his friends out of the gate and up the hill.

  They spent the afternoon in the workshop fixing the O’Days’ lawnmower. Andy sat in a corner and watched, clutching his notes. Just as he was leaving to go home he paused in the doorway. ‘Hey, Joe! Could I have a plane like yours, Joe? Is this enough money?’

  ‘We’ll fix it for you,’ Mike promised. He was thinking rather sadly that soon they would all be used to an orderly, peaceful life in which Andy Hoddel no longer owned Beecham Park Trotting Course. When Andy had gone, Mike looked slyly at Joe.

  ‘You were wrong. It didn’t crash. You forgot that Andy wouldn’t let it.’

  ‘Andy! He couldn’t have stopped it. It was Bert Hammond and the racecourse lot.’

  ‘And why do you think they went to all that trouble? There was nothing else they could do! Andy knew he owned the place, so they just had to see it his way.’

  ‘Maybe. We can’t tell. Can we make him a plane for eight dollars? He’s got to put two dollars back in his money-box.’

  Matt said, ‘I know a chap with a motor that he might sell cheap.’

  ‘Is it any use?’ said Terry. ‘He’ll only bust it.’

  ‘What does it matter?’ demanded Mike almost roughly. ‘He’s got to have things sometimes, even if he does bust them.’

  Andy was sitting on his favourite patch of ground among the stray cats, and gazing at the quiet grounds of Beecham Park. He might have been thinking of seagulls, perhaps, or of greyhounds; of strong, dark horses whirling satin-clad drivers under the spraying lights. He might have been thinking of quiet afternoons and friendly people.

  A man came striding up the stairs with a newspaper under his arm.

  ‘There you are, boss. Keeping an eye on your property?’

  ‘She’s not mine,’ said Andy. ‘I sold her, see.’

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