The Horse With My Name

by Bateman

  ‘We hate that cunt,’ said the oil paintings man.

  ‘We should kill him,’ said the chicken guy.

  ‘And I could get the bloodstains out,’ said the dry-cleaning man.

  It was a plot that was never going to get beyond the pub, and they knew it. The Celtic Tiger was creating superwealth for the chosen few in Dublin, while the likes of them were wallowing in the tiger shit, earning fuck all in the fields and fuck all calling cold with disinterested and similarly strapped householders. I asked about the upcoming races at Fairyhouse and they all said they were involved in the catering end of it. I asked for more detail and they said they’d be selling sandwiches and hot dogs on the road outside on Easter Monday.

  We stayed drinking until closing time. I’d heard tales of marvellous country Irish pubs where the landlord never called time and you drank until you fell over, but incoherent fat lad behind the bar suddenly started grunting on the stroke of eleven and by a quarter past we were standing on the pavement outside. I felt quite sorry for them. They didn’t seem to have any other friends and they looked shiftily away when I mentioned my wife in passing, though I doubted if any of them had slept with her. I invited them back to the house and then stood tapping my foot while they pleaded with the landlord to serve them a carry-out.

  Eventually he caved in. He disappeared back inside, then reappeared with four bags packed full of tins of Guinness. He was wearing a blue Dexter and Hush Puppies and appeared to think he was coming to the party as well.

  We set off down the winding road back towards my empty, spacious house. The oil paintings salesman, the chicken man, the dry-cleaner and the fat incoherent landlord. As we walked I reflected on the fact that although I had learned nothing, it hadn’t been a bad first night south of the border at all.

  7

  At first he didn’t have a clue who I was, walking across the damp grass, six a.m. and the sun just a dull glow behind dark clouds to the east; one minute he was watching horses galloping past and the next there I was smiling as I came towards him, cupping my hands against the diminishing sound of thunderous hooves and shouting didn’t he think it was cruel to get horses up so early.

  As Geordie McClean eyed me curiously, two guys carrying shotguns rushed up to intercept me.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ one snapped.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ followed the other. Their accents were northern, and so was their attitude. I didn’t reply, I just kept my smile in place and my eyes on Geordie. Their hands ran over my denim jacket, probably searching for a designer label.

  They continued to shout questions, but I ignored them and concentrated on McClean, coming across the chewed-up ground towards us. It had been several years since we’d met, but if anything he looked younger, fresher. He was wearing a Barbour jacket, a flat cap, wellington boots and a look of surprise that slowly transformed itself into a smile. He was puffing on a thin cigar which he removed as he approached and extended his hand. As he did the two gunmen glanced at each other, then let me go. ‘Dan the Man!’ McClean exclaimed. ‘Dan the Man – how the hell are you?’

  ‘Cold, wet and intimidated, thanks. Can’t even go rambling without—’

  ‘It’s private property, son – but Jesus! Dan the Man! In the flesh. Jesus, Dan, appearing out of the mist like the fucking Grim Reaper! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I got redirected from your stables.’

  ‘No! What are you doing here at all? I haven’t seen you since, like, New York.’

  ‘I know. I heard you named a horse after me. I’m here to collect my royalties.’

  He grinned widely. ‘Dan – you should have called. I could have had you barred.’

  ‘You probably would too.’

  I glanced at the gunmen, who’d now retreated several yards but were still keeping an eye at me as they leant against the side of a Land Rover emblazoned with an angular green IAR logo. I looked back to McClean. ‘I was just passing, y’know. Thought I’d look you up.’

  ‘You never call me, you never write, and here you are – Dan the Man.’

  ‘Yes, I think we’ve established who I am. Now who are you? Sheikh Abdul Lottsahorses or what?’

  He took another puff on his cigar. ‘I’m the man who’s giving racing a fucking good kick up the arse, that’s who I am, Dan. As you no doubt know already.’ He gave me a serious look, and I shrugged. ‘So what’re you really doing here, Dan? You don’t strike me as an early bird. You don’t look like you’ve even been to bed.’

  ‘It’s the new look. Hangover chic.’ I smiled. ‘I want to write a book about Dan the Man. And about the business. About you. How you can switch horses midstream, boxing to geegees, and still make a mint. You know the kind of book. Like the last one.’

  ‘The last one, indeed.’ He nodded for several moments. ‘You know, my lawyer wanted to sue.’

  ‘I didn’t even mention him.’

  ‘You know what I mean. But I said no. Because I thought it was bloody good work. I’m not much of a book man, Dan, and I’m not sure I emerged smelling of roses, but then maybe I don’t – not these days anyway, eh?’ And to emphasise the point he kicked at a lump of horse shit which managed to splatter across the front of my jeans. We looked at each other for several moments before he said, ‘Sorry about that.’ I shrugged. I’d been knee deep in it before, and would be again. McClean took a deep breath and nodded towards the horses that were now galloping back in our direction. ‘Ah now, Dan, I thought boxing was the thing for me, but this, it’s an entirely different ball game.’

  I nodded encouragingly.

  ‘And I’m not sure it’s one I want written about. But let’s talk about it. Come up to the house for lunch. I’ve some business first, but sure, let’s talk. It’s good to talk.’

  I nodded again. It had been much easier to make a connection than I thought. Maybe he was a changed man. Maybe he had mellowed. Maybe I was nicer, better with people, maybe I should stay up all night drinking more often.

  As the horses came thundering past, a dozen of them, chucking up muck and grass, their diminutive jockeys with legs clamped to flanks and their arses in the air, I glanced at McClean, his eyes narrowed, a picture of absolute concentration.

  ‘Ah, now, Danny boy,’ he said when they’d passed, ‘there’s no substitute for this, getting up at dawn, coming down here. For all the science involved, the blood tests, the weighing, the working on the split times, it can all still just be down to watching the horses, like this, having that knack for knowing when they’re going to hit the top of their form.’

  ‘And you have that knack?’

  ‘Sometimes. And when I haven’t, I buy a man that has.’

  I nodded after the departing horses. ‘Which one was he, then? Dan the Man.’

  ‘The fast one.’

  I’d not noticed, but I nodded anyway. ‘Did you really name him after me?’

  ‘Somebody told you that?’

  ‘I heard a whisper.’

  There was no reaction; I didn’t really expect one; he was an old pro. He gave a little shrug. ‘Well it must be true then,’ he said, turning and nodding to the men by the Land Rover. They pushed themselves straight and pulled open the doors. McClean put his hand out to me and we shook. ‘I’ll see you up at the house around one if it suits, Dan. You can have a proper look at Dan the Man and we can have a chat about the book. Good to see you.’ He climbed into the vehicle. One of his men was behind the wheel and the other in the back. The passenger window was already rolled down. As the engine was started I said, ‘Why the guns, Geordie?’

  He flicked the end of his cigar out of the window and it landed at my feet. ‘Dan, remember the boxing? You thought it was full of sharks? Well they were fucking goldfish compared to this.’ The Land Rover moved forward. He winked and said, ‘Toodle-pip then.’

  I watched him speed off down the lane and thought for a moment about what I might be getting myself involved with. It wasn’t the thought of shotguns, sharks or g
oldfish, or even the horse shit on my trousers. It was dealing with a grown man who said toodle pip.

  I stopped off at a diner in the village that was advertising a full Irish breakfast. The woman serving didn’t give a second glance to my shit-spattered trousers but she looked confused when I asked for an Ulster fry. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I forgot I was south of the border, down Mexico way.’

  Her brow crinkled like the bacon she brought. And the egg and the sausage. It was nice, but it lacked what makes the northern fry special: potato bread, soda bread, pancake, and I pined quietly for it. I shouldn’t have been eating any of it, of course. It is not the modern way. But then I’ve never been particularly modern, you only have to look at my record collection to see that. In my book, if it’s not fried, battered or covered in chocolate, it’s not worth eating.

  The thing is, I’ve never been Mr Fatty. Quite the opposite. I’m dead thin. This occasionally helps me to delude myself that I’m actually quite healthy, but deep down I know that cholesterol gathers just as handily in the arteries of a thin man as a fat; that if I continue the way I’m going the day will come when I’m sauntering down to the pub for lunch and I’ll just explode. Like a lot of fools, I have conned myself into believing that anything with the word Diet on the side must naturally be good for you, and that the more of it you take, the healthier you will be. It amazes me that the marketing people haven’t yet devised Diet Benson & Hedges as a marketing ploy, because they do make you thinner, eventually.

  I picked at my fry. I’d gotten out of the way of healthy eating in the past few months – being sad and lonely was enough without being hungry – but when I was properly married Patricia used to sit me down and say, right, healthy eating begins on Monday. That was generally on a Tuesday, allowing me the best part of a week to stock up on my supplies of sugar and fat, culminating in a Sunday night visit to McDonald’s, where I’d discovered the delights of hot apple pie and ice cream smothered in caramel sauce. And all for just 90p. Or two for £1.80.

  ‘I said, are you finished?’

  I looked at my plate. It was clean. It was a stupid question unless down here they ate plate as well. But I nodded and smiled, because I had to live with these people, at least for a weekend. She was middle-aged and her hair was tied back in a hambuger bun. Her skin was yellow, or it might just have been batter. I glanced at my watch. It was still only seven thirty. Staying up all night to meet McClean had paid off, but now I could go back to bed and sleep off the drink.

  Or I would have done if the party animals had not still been boozing and singing along at the tops of their voices to some country cak on the radio, with the birdshit neighbour across the road staring in with a face like a bag of spiders.

  I roared in and smacked off the radio. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled. ‘It’s eight o‘clock in the fucking morning! Grow up! Tidy up! And if you have to throw up do it somewhere else! Haven’t you got jobs to go to? Haven’t you got homes, you sad fucking wankers! And even if you haven’t, I don’t fucking care, just get out of my fucking house, okay!’

  They stared meekly at me as they gathered up their meagre belongings. I moved to let the dry-cleaner get his coat from the chair behind me. When he’d pulled it on he shyly gave my arm a little squeeze. ‘We understand about Patricia, Dan, and your son.’

  I looked from one sympathetic face to another, and wondered what I’d said, and why. ‘You know nothing!’ I snapped. ‘Now you better be fucking out of here by the time I wake up!’

  I practically ran out of the lounge and up the stairs. I tore off my jeans and crawled beneath a quilt. For some reason there were tears rolling down my cheeks and I couldn’t stop hugging myself. It was the funniest thing.

  I woke just before noon. The house was quiet. I had a quick shower and shave and soaked myself in anti-perspirant and aftershave, but I could still smell horses, and I’d the feeling that I would do for some considerable time to come.

  I dressed in my idea of smart casual. Black jeans, red sweatshirt, black sports jacket, Oxford shoes. If I was going to spend much longer around horses I would certainly have to do something about the shoes. It would mean investing in wellington boots or at least investigating if they did a lace-up version. When I went downstairs there was an oil painting of a little girl picking flowers hanging in the lounge. There was chicken in the freezer and a bag of Guinness cans in the fridge. On a hanger perched on the open door to the utility room were my stained jeans, now washed and pressed.

  There was no note anywhere, and there was no need for one.

  Geordie McClean’s stable was about twenty minutes out of Ashtown. As usual I was running behind schedule. The windy roads and the cows in the way didn’t help. When I finally pulled up to the gates it was nearly half past one. It had been Hilda’s idea to try and meet Geordie face to face on the gallops, rather than risk a brush-off from some underling at the house, so I was hoping he hadn’t checked out my lie about being redirected there by his staff. But as I looked up at the gate and the security cameras watching me I knew that he knew, and just hoped that it wouldn’t make any difference. I gave my name and my business and after a thirty-second wait the gates swung inwards.

  I drove up towards a large whitewashed bungalow. Large, but it wasn’t a mansion. It had nothing on Mark Corkery’s place. There was an IAR Land Rover sitting outside and I could just see the red roof of what I presumed to be the stables beyond. As I parked, the front door opened and the two guys who’d admired my jacket earlier came out, though this time neither of them were packing lead. They were much friendlier. They introduced themselves as Derek and Eric and asked me what part of Belfast I was from. They said they’d grown up around the corner from there and asked me if Lavery’s bar was still in business because it had been a while since they’d been back. I said it was and always would be. We were getting on like old mates, but there was no doubt in my mind that no matter what corners we might have passed each other on years before, they would still break my legs if McClean asked them to.

  ‘Is the man in?’ I asked. ‘I got delayed.’

  ‘Nah – he’s running late. He sends his apologies and would you wait.’

  I nodded. They invited me inside and I said I’d rather take a look round, if they didn’t mind.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Eric.

  ‘He said you’d want to,’ said Derek.

  ‘Feel free. We’ve no secrets here.’ He laughed as he said it and I grinned back. Then they searched me for a camera.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Eric, ‘we have to be careful.’

  ‘In this business,’ said Derek, ‘information means money, and money means information.’

  ‘It’s a bit wasted on me,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t know a thoroughbred from a pantomime horse.’

  I winked like a professional and wandered away, absolutely convinced that as soon as I was out of view they’d be scurrying back inside to watch my every step via one of the many security cameras mounted about the property.

  8

  I had taken the precaution of bringing sugarlumps, pilfered from the home of the Irish all-day breakfast. I was going up and down the stalls patting heads and feeding cubes and thought I was getting on rather well when there was a shriek from behind and a girl came powering out of the afternoon brightness into the rather pleasant gloom of the stable.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing!’ she yelled as she approached, her voice English plummy.

  Naturally I assumed someone else had done something awful. A stable lad had stuck a pitchfork into half a million’s worth of prime horseflesh or a carelessly dropped hand grenade was about to blow; but no, when I turned she was certainly shouting at me. Her cheeks were red and her nostrils were flared and her big brown horse eyes were mad as hell.

  ‘Nothing . . .’

  She let out another shriek, this time generously soaked in derision, and grabbed hold of the hand I was now holding tightly closed. ‘Open it!’ she screamed.

  She had a more than
decent grip, so fearing for my safety, I reluctantly uncurled my fingers. ‘Sugar . . . horses . . .’ I stammered.

  She glared at the half-dozen sugarlumps sitting on my palm, then slapped them wildly out of it. ‘Are you insane?’ she hissed.

  ‘I th-thought . . . horses loved . . . Trigger . . .’

  ‘Have you any idea what . . .’ Then she let out a frustrated grunt and stamped her feet down on to as many of the cubes as she could find. She was slim and somewhere around the twenty mark; her hair was mousy brown, cut short so that she wouldn’t have to bother with it, but obviously did. It didn’t seem the time to ask what a fine young filly like her was getting so upset about. So I just continued to look hapless while she opened the first of several stall doors and began to urgently examine the creatures within.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ she snapped. ‘What the hell are you doing here? Who told you you could come in here? Didn’t you think to ask? Have you any idea what this can do to their blood sugar? How it can affect our readings? How do I know they’re not full of dope? Don’t you know never ever ever to give a thoroughbred something to eat without checking first?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said again.

  She gently slapped the side of the horse, then came out of the stall towards me. The first assault had made her seem quite tall, but now that she was standing head to shoulder before me it was clear that she wasn’t really. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Dan the Man.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dan the Man.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘Dan the Man. The horse.’

  ‘Yes, I know the horse.’

  ‘Geordie McClean named him after me. Dan Starkey. Dan. The Man.’ I smiled proudly.

  ‘Dan the Man was bought in as a juvenile last year from the East Coast. He wasn’t named after anybody, at least nobody on this side of the Atlantic.’