The Horse With My Name

by Bateman

  ‘Keeping an eye on Mandy. What’ll you be having?’

  I asked for another whiskey and he hurried off. ‘You don’t sound like you approve.’

  McClean shrugged. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘Is she any good?’

  ‘As a jockey? She’s excellent.’

  ‘I put a fiver on her.’

  ‘Good man. Paper Lad’s a fine horse. You should turn a healthy profit on that one.’

  By the time Derek returned, the horses were lined up at the start. There was a roar from the crowd as the starter set them off. Two laps of the course. Fences. I watched the big screen, troubled, and sipped my whiskey. Derek stood by McClean’s side roaring Mandy on. McClean himself stood stock still, the binoculars clamped to his eyes, but his knuckles showed white from gripping them too hard. The runners were still on their first lap when I asked McClean if he had much money on the race.

  ‘Not directly,’ he said, his eyes never leaving the course.

  ‘I heard you once lost a whole house over a bet.’

  ‘Not directly,’ he said again.

  There was commentary relayed across the members’ lounge but it was drowned out as the riders came back round for the final time. I sipped on my whiskey and watched as Paper Lad approached the third fence from home. He jumped it without difficulty and was third going into the second last. He jumped clear again. There was another yell from Derek to my left. McClean remained motionless. My leg was shaking. I thought: what the fuck is this about? Paper Lad was gaining ground on second-placed Evil Intent as they came to the last; all three went over it and began the sprint for the line. Mandrake, in the lead, was clearly going to take it, but Mandy and Evil Intent were sweating it out neck to neck for second; Derek was screaming hoarse in my ear and McClean’s knuckles looked set to burst out of his skin.

  The roar from the crowd was for Mandrake, but the smile from McClean was for his daughter, pulling fractionally ahead of Evil Intent to take second. I said, ‘Well done.’

  The smile faded. ‘Could have been better.’ McClean made a point of studying his race card for the next race. It seemed a bit churlish. I looked at Derek, sweaty-browed with excitement. He gave a little shrug and said, ‘She was soo close!’

  I smiled and looked back down to the track. I took a sip of my whiskey. McClean turned from the window. ‘So you heard about the house.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s kind of entered Belfast folklore.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re all having a bloody good laugh.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘That fucker Corkery. I’m glad a fucking car fell on him. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer man.’

  ‘There are those,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the advert for Harp that was running on the big screen across the track, ‘who say you might have dropped it.’

  McClean’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I’m not paid to think. Come to think of it, I’m not paid at all.’

  ‘Never a fucking straight answer with you, is there, Dan?’ He nodded for several moments. ‘Dan – you wouldn’t be down here because of that, would you?’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘Have you ever known me to joke?’

  ‘Not intentionally.’

  ‘Okay then.’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I’m not here about that.’ He kept looking at me. I’ve never been one to let things sit. Always the last word. ‘Although I have met his girlfriend,’ I volunteered. ‘She’s a bit cooky. She’s full of conspiracy theories.’

  ‘That house you’re staying in was rented out in a fictitious name, one previously used by that bastard Corkery.’

  I tried to be as nonchalant as possible. Normally when I’m lying my face goes red, but with the whiskey and the heat generated in the members’ room by several hundred drinking punters it felt like it was already most of the way there. ‘Yeah, it was, and nice place. Too big for me though. His girl offered it to me for buttons when she heard I was coming down. It was bugger all use to her with her man flat under a Volkswagen.’ I took another drink, then tutted. ‘I came down to write a book. Now I’m not even sure about that.’

  That was it. He appeared to believe me. I hung around the members’ room for another couple of hours. McClean suggested I put what money I had left on a horse called Prior Commitment, and right enough, it came in at five to one. I made some money, though not enough to buy my way into heaven. There was no sign of Mandy, and I didn’t ask why. I said goodbye to McClean. As far as he was concerned it was the last he would see of me. There were no further invitations. He had had me checked out, he’d confronted me, he’d heard what I had to say; it didn’t make any difference to me whether he believed me or not, he’d already indicated that he wasn’t going to cooperate with my book and by extension my investigation into the death of Mark Corkery. I’d never expected him to throw open his files and say, here, do your worst.

  I tramped home, tired and slightly drunk.

  I tried to sleep but there was a racket going on out in the street; the kids across the road were playing camogie or hurling or gaelic or one of those stupid Irish no-rules sports. I felt sick and homesick. I felt lonely and confused because the glimpse of Mandy’s silk arse in the air had affected me more than it should have. I knew what it was, it was delayed reaction, it was the shock of Little Stevie’s death and Patricia’s desertion, it was nothing to do with a pretty young girl who clearly despised me. It was me, me, me.

  It’s always you, you, you, that’s what Patricia used to say when we’d storm about the kitchen. And she was right. I could see that.

  I took a shower. I studied the television guide. Although not at the same time. There was nothing even slightly interesting on. It was Easter, there was Ben Hur and ET. There were tins of beer in the fridge. I drank three and thought of my new-found pals and how awful I’d been to them.

  I pulled on my clothes and went back out to Muldoons.

  It was heaving. It was Easter Monday, everyone was off work and pissed from the races. Big fat incoherent lad appeared not to remember me. I asked where the chicken man, the oil paintings man and the dry-cleaner were, but he just stared at me like I was mental. So I ordered a pint and squeezed into a corner and sat there for a couple of hours thinking about everything and nothing, hardly noticing or listening to what was going on around me. I only cheered up as an image of Patricia’s man getting his beard caught in elevator doors and his head being pulled off flicked across my mind.

  I phoned Mouse and related this. ‘You’re back on the sauce again.’

  ‘Only for tonight,’ I said. ‘It’s Easter.’

  ‘Happy Easter,’ he said.

  ‘Slainte,’ I replied. He had nothing to report, and less to say. He was with his family enjoying dinner. I said, at least you have one, and he put the phone down on me without establishing whether I was talking about a family or a dinner, or both. He was right.

  A woman’s voice, a million miles away, said, ‘Ish anyone sitting here?’

  When I looked up, it took several moments to recognise her. She was wearing make-up, her hair was slightly spiked, she looked fantastic and she was smiling at me.

  I have encountered many smiling assassins, so I tensed and said, ‘What?’

  ‘I said . . .’ Mandy stopped and rolled her eyes; on closer inspection her eyeliner was smudged and her eyes were glassy. She sat down. Or tried to. She missed the stool completely and sprawled away across the floor. She lay there for several long moments, giggling hysterically into the floorboards and ignoring completely the hoots of laughter coming from the table behind. I glanced slightly groggily across to see a crowd of a similarly diminutive stature roaring their heads off. Empty pint glasses stood precariously in leaning towers before them.

  Mandy crawled back across the floor towards me. Her lipstick was smudged across her face from kissing the wood-work and it took some considerable effort to drag herself up on to the stool beside me.

/>   I took a sip of my drink.

  ‘I been watching you for an hour,’ she slurred. Her accent wasn’t so English now.

  ‘Very good,’ I said. I looked warily beyond her, but another of her company had fallen off his chair on the other side of the table and general hysterics had broken out again.

  ‘I’m sorry for shouting at you yesserday, but you shouldn’t, sugar.’

  I nodded.

  ‘My father, the bastard, told me all about you.’

  I nodded again and took another sip.

  ‘You and your dead . . . tod . . . toddler. I’m very sorry. I didn’t . . . know.’ She leaned forward and gripped my hand. It was the same hand that was holding the pint, and the suddenness of it sent a wave of lager up and over the edge. She was looking into my eyes. ‘I really didn’t know . . .’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘No, it’s not okay, it’s inex . . . scusable.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. Good, ahm, race today.’

  ‘You saw it? Awe. That’s sweet. Excep’ – that horse is a fucking donkey. I could have run faster than . . . Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you had much to drink tonight?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well I have. And so . . .’ she pointed wildly behind her, ‘have those fuckers. Could you do me a really, really, really big favour?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Could you drive me home?’

  ‘I don’t have the car . . .’

  ‘M . . . my car. Please. Daddy’ll kill me if I don’t get the F . . . Ferrari home.’

  I looked at her. I had come south to ruin her father, to gain evidence of his murder of Mark Corkery. To reveal the sordid secrets he was trying to hide from the Horse Whisperer. I was single, sad, drunk and depressed. My only friends south of the border were an oil paintings salesman, a chicken man and a dry-cleaner, and they weren’t really my friends at all. Friendless, hopeless and ultimately, reckless. Because it doesn’t matter what state you’re in, you don’t turn down a beautiful drunk woman with a Ferrari.

  10

  You don’t, but you should.

  I knew from the second I took off that the Ferrari was too wild a beast for me. I was more a Fiesta and Metro man, with a nice rug in the back and a packet of Jaffa Cakes melted into each other in the glove compartment. The Ferrari is power. It went faster in first than I’d previously managed in fourth. We’d gone about three hundred yards when I lost control on a corner and ploughed through a hedge and up into the air before banging down into a ploughed field with me flailing at the controls, finally coming to a rest on the edge of a steep bank overlooking a stream. The noise was deafening, and that was just me screaming. But if anyone, apart from the fish below and the sheep behind, noticed or gave a hoot, it was not immediately apparent. Not even Mandy was aware. She was snoring as gently in the front as she had been before take-off. I had taken the precaution of fastening her seatbelt, although I hadn’t envisaged that it really would be for take-off.

  I got out of the car as gently as I could and walked round to the other side. The breeze was nice and fresh and the gurgling of the water lent a peacefulness to the night air as if nothing untoward had happened. If I’d been driving drunk, I was now standing sober. I inspected the damage by the light of a pale moon, and I was relieved to find that it didn’t appear to be too severe. The headlights were broken. There was an indentation in the hood, and some severe scratching to the paintwork. Nothing that a few thousand pounds wouldn’t sort out. I stood and surveyed my surroundings for several moments, breathing easily, happy to be alive, then opened her door, undid her belt and began to push her over into the driver’s seat. She kind of flopped across it, murmuring wordlessly. I returned to the driver’s door and pulled her over further so that her legs were in behind the wheel. Then I pushed her upright in the seat and secured the safety belt.

  I removed one of her shoes and hurried down to the stream. I hunkered down and filled the shoe with icy water.

  Back at the car I threw the water in her face, then started to shake her. ‘Mandy!’ I called. ‘Mandy!’

  ‘Whad . . . whad . . . what?’ she said blearily, raising her hands defensively.

  ‘C’mon! Get out of the car!’ I urged her. ‘We’ve had a crash – c’mon now.’

  I undid her belt and helped her out of the vehicle. She staggered. I held her up. ‘But . . . but . . . you . . . Christ . . . Christ! Daddy’ll . . . Fuck!’

  ‘It’s okay . . . it’s only a scratch . . . come with me. C’mon.’

  I led her across the field, then hauled her back up the bank and through the hole in the hedge I’d created only a few minutes before. We started to walk along the road. We made slow progress, Mandy moving sideways like a crab, holding on to me for support, talking gibberish about the car and horses and her dad and thanking me repeatedly for saving her life. At one point she sank abruptly to her knees and peed in the middle of the road. I didn’t know where to look, except at her peeing in the middle of the road. It seemed to go on for ever. It was only when car headlights began to appear around the bend behind us that she finally staggered to her feet. She was weaving about in the middle of the road trying to get her knickers back into place as the car appeared. It slowed, crept past her like she was a dangerous wild animal, then sped away, Mandy firing curses after it. Somewhere along the way she’d managed to completely lose the English accent.

  We finally made it back to the house. It was five minutes by car, but half an hour by drunk woman in one heel. I opened the front door and she fell through it. I picked her up off the floor and steered her into the lounge. I let her down gently on to the sofa and her head fell immediately on to the arm rest. She was snoring before her eyes closed. I lifted her feet up on to the cushions. I removed her shoes. Her short skirt had ridden way up to reveal her tanned, finely muscled legs and her knickers, again. There was a smidgin of pubic hair showing through where she hadn’t pulled them up properly and I debated for several seconds what the gentlemanly thing to do was, pull the material back into place or get a felt pen from my pencil case and write Kilroy Was Here. In the end, of course, I chose neither. I went upstairs and got a quilt off one of the spare beds and placed it gently over her. I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen and two headache pills from my personal and vital supply and left them on the carpet where she couldn’t miss them.

  Then I went to bed.

  I woke to the sound of hearty cursing from below. It was still dark and I was in the middle of another bleak dream. It took me a moment to get my bearings. Then I pulled on my trousers and hurried down.

  Mandy was sitting in the middle of the carpet, blood dripping from her foot. ‘Some stupid bastard left a glass on the floor!’ she cried as I appeared. She was gripping her foot and there were tears on her cheeks and blood on her fingers as she gingerly tried to remove the little shards embedded in her sole.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘that was me. I thought––’

  ‘For fuck sake! How could you be so . . .’ She let out a painful sigh. ‘Never mind – can you get me a towel or something?’ She winced again and I went to get one. I stayed in the kitchen long enough to take a drink of Diet Pepsi to clear the hangover throat, then hurried back in. She was still examining her foot. I asked her if she’d got them all out and she said there might still be one in there, but she’d probably only know when it made its way through her bloodstream to her brain and killed her.

  ‘Okay,’ I said and handed her the towel.

  She gave me half an apologetic smile then pressed the towel against her foot. She winced. She looked up again, then nodded at the sofa. ‘I was sick on your . . . I was in the middle of clearing it up when I stepped on the glass. I got kitchen roll from the kitchen. I think I got most of it.’

  ‘It’s the most of it that worries me.’

  She smiled endearingly. ‘I know. There’s some gone down the back in under the cushion I couldn’t get.’ She winced
again.

  ‘Do you think you need a doctor?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She peered in at the wound. She pressed some kitchen roll against it, held it, then removed it. I could see several small lacerations, but nothing major, at least to a man. ‘It should be okay,’ she said. She looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry, it was more the shock of it.’

  I shrugged. I got her a drink of Diet Pepsi. We sat opposite each other, sipping. After a while she said, ‘What am I doing here?’

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘I remember – the pub. A field? I don’t really know.’

  ‘You insisted on giving me a lift home in your car. You were drunk, but you insisted. Then you lost control and we flew through a hedge and across a field and nearly tipped up into a river. But didn’t. It’s still sitting there. Or should be. I wouldn’t leave it there too long.’ I looked at my watch. It was getting near six and was starting to brighten outside. ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘My head’s going to explode.’

  ‘Feel free. The sofa’s already ruined.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ve only got this house for the Easter week. They’ll be advertising it next week as five-bedroom furnished house with slight smell of boke.’

  Her smile was nice, but it soon faded. ‘I can’t believe how horrible I’ve been to you. At the stables, nearly killing you in the car, then I’m sick down your settee and bleed on the carpet. You must hate me.’

  ‘Hate’s a very strong word, but perfectly adequate.’ I shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just let me know where to send the bill.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry. I know someone in the trade. You’ll get a discount.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Joke. He doesn’t give discount.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘You have a hangover. You should sleep some more. Come upstairs. Uhm. There’s a spare room.’

  ‘Okay. What about the car?’