by Nina Allan
So far as I was concerned it sounded insane.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?” I said. “You have to win the race first.”
“We’ll win,” he said. He sounded abstracted, as if the race result were a minor technicality and his mind had already moved on to more important matters. “I’m going to run Limlasker.”
I gaped at him – I think my mouth really did fall open. I honestly considered the possibility that he might have gone crazy.
“You’re living in cloud cuckoo land, Del.”
“No,” he said. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
What it came down to was this: Del was proposing to bet his daughter’s life on a sodding dog race.
~*~
The Delawarr Triple is the biggest event in the racing calendar. It takes place in the third Saturday in June, just before the really hot weather starts to kick in. The stadium is always packed. It’s a 1,100-metre race over hurdles, with the preliminary heats and the quarter- and semi-finals taking place throughout the course of the day. Victory in the Delawarr earns the winner ten full championship points, as well as a mighty winner’s purse of 10,000 shillings. There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the race, a lot of intrigue and rumour during the build-up, and of course a lot of money changes hands. I can’t remember a single year when there wasn’t some betting or doping scandal.
Occasionally dogs are stolen or killed. I remember one year there was a suicide, an out-of-towner who blew his brains out with a shotgun down on the seafront.
He lost his house in a bet, apparently. It happens.
Del had always been nervous around the Delawarr. He usually had a dog or two running and he usually made the semis at least but he had never run Limlasker. He said it was because Lim did better over flat but that was just a get-out. Lim had won his best races over flat, that was true, but he was a good hurdler. He’d won races all the way up to 900 metres.
The truth was that Del had never forgotten the business with Marley Struts. Struts had been a very young, very talented runner and Del’s special protégé. There was a lot of buzz around him and by the evening before the race he was the odds-on favourite. But half an hour before he ran his first heat, Struts was taken outside the ground by some jocks on speed and beaten senseless. He suffered a hairline fracture of the skull and ended up having to have his implant removed. A year later Struts tracked down the people who did it and killed one of them with a crowbar. He’s in prison now, serving life for murder. None of this was Del’s fault, but he took it hard.
The real reason Del had never run Limlasker in the Delawarr Triple was because he was afraid something might happen to him. He tended to run younger dogs, dogs that would benefit from the exposure but without attracting too much attention. Marley Struts had attracted attention, and look what happened.
Limlasker was seven years old now and about to turn eight. He was an old dog, by any standards. He and Tash were still winning races, but Del already had another dog – a nine-month-old bitch named Clearview Princess, Limlasker’s granddaughter – picked out for Tash for when Lim retired. Limlasker would run one more season at the most.
It would be unusual for any dog of his age to run the Delawarr. It’s true that some of the great champions have been five years old or more but they’ve always been dogs with a track record in that particular race. Red Kestrel was six when she won, but she’d been competing in the Delawarr for three previous seasons and placing higher each time. It was a race she wanted to win, anyone could see that.
Limlasker though – so far as the Delawarr was concerned, he was both a veteran and a novice, not a good combination. When Del told me he was planning to run him I thought he’d gone nuts.
But after from my comment about cloud cuckoo land I kept my mouth shut. What else could I do? Del obviously meant to do this, and nothing I or anyone else could say would make any difference.
~*~
We sat Claudia down and talked to her. I did most of the talking, actually – I guess Del thought she’d be more likely to swallow our story if it came from me. We told her Lumey was safe, that she was being held as collateral against a business loan, that it was all a bit of a mix up and Lumey would be returned to us in a couple of weeks.
If anyone asked she was to say Lumey was in Folkestone, visiting her grandma. On no account was she to speak to the police.
“There’s nothing to worry about, honestly,” I said. Claudia blinked at me. Her eyes were shiny and kind of glazed over. It was like she’d been drugged. I felt lower than a louse, but what choice did I have? What I had said was not a lie exactly, and even if I went against my brother and told her everything, what good would it do? The facts of the situation wouldn’t change, and knowing the truth would only make Claudia feel worse.
We all had our jobs to do. Del’s was to juggle hand grenades, mine was to convince him he could perform a miracle. Claudia’s was to shut up and keep out of the way.
The sooner we all got on with them, the better.
“Why not do something special for Lumey, for when she comes home?” I said to Claudia. “You could redecorate her bedroom. I’ll help you choose the colours if you like.”
I felt like a right idiot, suggesting that, but I thought it might help Claudia to have something concrete to focus on, and it did.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, actually,” she said. She was looking a little brighter, a bit less like a zombie on Valium, and I really started to believe that if we could only create a safe space for Claudia to live inside for the next week or so we might just come through this. I guess Del’s madness was catching.
I agreed to stay for supper, and to come over to the Cowshed the following afternoon to help Claudia decide on a theme for Lumey’s new decor.
Del was looking at me like I was some kind of genius. I wanted to thump him.
I didn’t get home until after eleven. I felt exhausted, wiped out, but the idea of sleep seemed impossible. I paced around my apartment, pulling down blinds and checking doors, and all the time there was this horrible little voice inside my head, whispering to me all the terrible things that could be happening to Lumey at that very moment.
If she was even still alive, that was.
I did the only thing I knew that would help. I unwrapped the package of blue leather I’d bought at Romer’s and spread it flesh side up on my workroom table. I stroked it gently, stretching it just a little with the tips of my fingers to test its strength. I flattened my palm against the downy underside, its texture so soft and so pliable I already knew how the needle would feel going in. Smooth and sweet as a silver spoon through a jar of honey. I opened the computer file with Kiwit’s measurements, the photographs I had taken of her hands and arms, both front view and back. Not all gantiers bother with photos, but I have always found them essential because they help me imagine.
Angela Kiwit had very strong forearms. In isolation from the rest of her body, you might easily mistake them for a man’s. The long hands with the tapering fingers did not quite match them.
For me, all hands are beautiful, the most complex and fascinating part of the human body. I spent some time studying those photographs, and at some point all thoughts of Claudia and Del and Lumey leaked silently away. I made a cup of tea and drank it. I thought about making a start on drawing the pattern but suddenly realised how tired I was – tired enough, finally, to sleep.
It was one o’clock in the morning and not quite dark. I love the long summer evenings. In winter it’s the thought of those long light evenings that keeps me going.
~*~
The phone woke me just after seven. The caller was Del.
“I’ve just spoken to them,” he said. “We’ve agreed a date for the exchange.” He named a day, the Monday immediately following the Delawarr Triple. “They’ll let me know the location nearer the time.” He sounded okay, buoyed up even, back in control. “See you this afternoon,” he said. For a moment I couldn’t think what he wa
s talking about, then I remembered I’d promised to go over and see Claudia. It wasn’t a prospect I relished, but I knew there was no way I could get out of it.
“Fine,” I said. “See you.” I ended the call, then spent the rest of the morning measuring and cutting out the paper pattern I would use to make the gloves for Angela Kiwit. Pattern-making sounds simple but it’s not. It’s exacting work, and can’t be rushed. It occupied my mind entirely, and the deeper I sank into my work-trance the less I was aware of anything except the sound of my own breathing, steady and deep and reviving and entirely calm.
It was as if my life had split into two separate halves: one mad, one sane.
~*~
Limlasker was Swift Elin’s grandson. Swift Elin was tall, but Lim was taller, a hand’s breadth at least. He had the same light blue eyes and silver coat, but whereas Swift Elin was silver all over, Lim had a black patch, like an inky handprint, on his left hindquarter. Del always used to say it looked as if he’d had his arse slapped.
When Tash first took over Limlasker, Del stayed away from them as much as he could, at first, anyway. He said it was so Tash could get to know the dog without feeling scrutinized, but really it was for Limlasker and himself. Del wanted Lim to understand that their relationship was to change. Later on though, Del began to supervise Tash and Lim’s training sessions. Gra was worried that it wouldn’t work, that the dog would become confused and his performance would be affected but his fears proved groundless.
It was as if Del had told Lim he was giving him to Tash willingly, for a reason, and Lim understood and accepted that.
Greyhounds are different from other dogs, anyway. They hardly ever bark or wag their tails, but in their own quiet way they seem naturally empathic. Most dogs understand the world around them through their sense of smell, but greyhounds are sight hounds – they use their eyes for communication as well as for hunting prey. In other words, they’re more like people – one of the main reasons greyhounds were chosen to be smartdogs in the first place.
It’s weird, watching them train. The younger, less experienced runners tend to talk out loud to their dogs a lot, praising them and encouraging them or urging them on. Either the implant hasn’t been fully assimilated, or they don’t yet trust their ability. All that changes as they become more experienced, and the most naturally gifted runners – runners like Tash, or Roddy Haskin – hardly ever speak to their dogs at all in the normal sense. Everything happens on another level, an invisible, sub-audible level of communication that turns their training sessions into a kind of silent ballet. If you keep quiet and concentrate hard you can sense that communication taking place. It’s hard to explain but you can definitely feel it: a tension in the air, like electricity, the same sensation you get with lightning just before it strikes.
Watching Tash run Limlasker always gave me goosebumps. The two of them were special together – two faces of the same coin.
~*~
I ate a quick lunch then headed over to the Cowshed. I was worried that Claudia would either be in the depths of a catatonic depression or hyped up to the ceiling but she appeared perfectly calm. Thoughtfully, determinedly calm in a way that seemed just about as far from her usual vagaries as it was possible to get.
“I’ve been jotting down some ideas,” she said, more or less the moment I arrived. “I should have done this ages ago. Lumey’s a grown up little girl now, she isn’t a baby.”
She made us some tea, and showed me her diagrams and notes, plans to turn Lumey’s pink-and-white nursery into what Claudia kept calling ‘a proper little girl’s room’. The metal cot she slept in was to be replaced with a full-sized bed, the plush cerise carpet to be taken up and new wooden floorboards fitted. There was a nautical feel to everything. Clean, bright, cheerful. A room from a magazine feature.
“Do you think she’ll like it?” Claudia said.
I said yes at once, without thinking, then realised I meant it, that Lumey, should she ever return to the room, really would be delighted by the blues and whites, the neat little bookcase Claudia had ordered, the wooden dressing table with its circular mirror and secret drawer. Any child would be. We went online and I helped Claudia to pick out a wind chime to hang in the window, an assortment of dangling glass prisms and brightly painted fish made out of tin.
I became quite caught up in it all, actually, giggling over trifles, searching out new things to waste our money on, and at some point I realised the fiction had taken me over, that on some level at least I’d conned myself into believing my own evasions. The realisation brought it all back to me: Lumey’s gone-ness, the danger, our lies. It was as if a vast hole had opened beneath me, sprawling me backwards into nothingness. I thought of the old mine workings to the north of the town, the way the ground still caved in there sometimes.
People died in those collapses, several dozen every year.
I pictured myself struggling for a handhold in the falling earth, and supposed Claudia felt like that a dozen times already today, a hundred, more. I excused myself then went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. The water from the Cowshed’s taps had a metallic smell, like old coins kept in a shoebox at the bottom of a wardrobe.
The smell always made the water seem colder than it really was.
~*~
I drank a final cup of tea with Claudia and then walked up to the lunges. The lunges was where Del put the dogs through their time trials, a high stretch of what was once parkland but that had been left to run wild, a wide stretch of couch grass and thistle with panoramic views of the coastline and out to sea. If you look east from the lunges you can see the whole of Sapphire spread out beneath you like a toy town. If you look west you’ll see the marshes, stretching all the way to the horizon and beyond.
To the south lies France, just a short distance away across the Channel. Mum once told me that on a clear day you can see France from the top of the lunges but I’ve never been able to. Perhaps it’s never been clear enough. Mum went to France once, just for a day when she was a student.
“What was it like?” I asked her.
She shrugged her shoulders. “We ate sugar buns. In a coffee house. There was a boy there,” she said. I urged her to go on with the story but she wouldn’t. She seemed cross with me for a while after that, but I knew her crossness usually meant she was feeling sad.
Tash was running Limlasker over hurdles. She was wearing a tatty white vest and a pair of old khaki combats. Her hands lay still at her sides, the nails varnished an opalescent pink and perfectly manicured.
The vest had patches of yellow under the arm holes.
Lim was a large dog but when he was running he seemed barely there, an outline of a dog filled with air, a space in the stuff of the world where a dog should be. You could hear him when he passed right by you – a swift pat-pattering where his feet struck the turf – but otherwise he ran more or less silently, a sleek ghost.
Limlasker means ‘salmon’ in old Hoolish. There are no salmon in England now, or only in the very far north. The rivers and briny lakes to the south of London are home only to roach and gudgeon and oil pike and a few hardy carp. But whenever I saw Lim in full flight I found no problem imagining what a salmon looked like: a magnificent silver superfish charging upstream.
I knew Tash wouldn’t talk to me or to anyone while she was running. I could see Del in the distance, way off up the slope, marking timings. I sat down in the grass to watch. I didn’t have a stopwatch, of course, so I couldn’t check, but it seemed to me that Lim was running well, better than ever. Del had been easing off on him in recent months, entering him in fewer races, preparing him for retirement. But from where I was sitting he looked to be in peak condition.
It had already been agreed that when Tash started training with Clearview Princess, Limlasker would go back to the Cowshed to live. If he stayed healthy he’d live another ten years, and have a fine time, but of course Lim was lucky. Retired smartdogs remain valuable because of the implant technology, but
they are also a problem. Many people, including some of the scientists who helped create them, don’t like having smartdogs living with them in their homes. The decent yards sell on their dogs where they can, to cognitive research units, or to rich businessmen in London as pets for their kids. But every year there is a surplus – too many too-old smartdogs. Some are turned loose on the streets, or taken out to the marshes and abandoned.
Most are just shot.
I often wonder if the out-of-towners who come down to Sapphire for a weekend’s racing know what happens to smartdogs when their careers are over. I don’t suppose they think about it much, any more than they wonder about where the kids who sell them fried dough-balls or racetrack souvenirs go when they clock off for the night. The out-of-towners have never been to Hawthorne or Mallon Way, and they never will.
Thinking about it makes me angry, but I also know that without the out-of-towners and their money the situation in Sapphire would be much worse. Without the dog track and the boardwalk and the string of posh hotels along the Bulvard, the estate kids would have no jobs and no prospect of jobs. Hawthorne was bad enough anyway because of the chemo seepage, but after the tunnels under London Road subsided things became even worse. The road is so unstable now that only the army can navigate it, using those big caterpillar trucks of theirs, and you can guess how high up Hawthorne comes in their list of priorities. In summer you can smell the rubbish tips all the way from the Bulvard, if the wind happens to be blowing in the right direction.
Hawthorne is where you live if you have nowhere else. Del once told me that Tash lived up there for a while with her grandmother when she was a kid. I’ve never dared ask her about it, though there are abandoned smartdogs up on the estate, I do know that. Skinny as reeds and left to run wild.
When Del saw I was there he pocketed his stopwatch and came over.
“How’s she doing?” he said. I knew he meant Claudia. He sat down beside me on the grass, his long legs bunched up, his green eyes watchful, a rangy yellow dog with scrawny limbs.