by Wade, Calvin
I parked up in the car park by the bus station, with more adrenalin flowing through my veins than I had ever felt before. Could this have possibly been the Holy Spirit? I needed to go to Stanley Racing and pick the right horse. It was still only late morning, so I decided I would pick my horse, refrain from placing the bet, head out for lunch, take time to ponder and deliberate, then return just before the race, if everything still felt right, to invest my thousand pounds.
By eleven thirty that morning, I was in Stanley Racing in Ormskirk, praying fate and faith would lend a hand. It was busier than a normal Saturday morning in there, not Grand National busy, but certainly Cheltenham Festival busy, so I found myself having to make pleasant chit chat with part-time punters who I had not seen for a few months, all looking for a bit of guidance. I was genuine when I told them I had yet to decide. Some punters like to keep their cards close to their chests, but I was not one of them, it defied logic, it was not as though the horse knew my money was down and would suddenly feel additional pressure to perform. I just told people that they could copy my bets if they liked, but if they did not have big enough balls to choose for themselves, then they did not have the right to come whingeing to me if things worked out badly.
As soon as I looked at the racecard for the Derby, on the wall of Stanley Racing, that euphoric feeling that had never been far away since my “Roads To Damascus” moment, came hurtling back. Something weird happened. Every horses name seemed to shrink so they became impossible to read, with one exception, DUSHYANTOR. As the others shrank, this one was magnified to ten times it normal size. It was as if God was imprinting the name on my brain, DUSHYANTOR. I had a look at its form, its breeding, its jockey, its trainer and its odds and amazingly everything seemed right. I was so excited my body started shaking like God was using me as a rattle.
“Thank you Lord!” I whispered. “Thank you!”
Dushyantor, second in the Dante stakes at York, fantastic pedigree, ridden by the sublime Pate Eddery, trained by the wonderful Henry Cecil and priced at 5-1, meaning if I placed the full £1000 on this horse, I would collect £6000 when it won. I just felt destiny was well and truly on my side. I felt so confident, I nearly filled out the betting slip and ran to the counter waving my thousand pounds in the air. There was definitely no way I was going to change my mind. I felt the engraver could start putting the name Dushyantor on to the trophy already. I stopped myself. Was this certainty or optimistic excitement? I had to be sure. My mindset had been that I would follow a set routine, choose a horse, go and have coffee and lunch, then return to place the bet. If God wanted me to change horses, I was sure this would give him ample opportunity to give me a sign. I decided against placing my bet there and then, but bade my fellow punters farewell convinced I would see their faces again on a regular basis around town and that in twenty four hours time, I would be feasting on a Sunday Roast rather than providing a feast for some underground insects. I had the winner. Dushyantor. No doubt about it. I had the winner.
I went over to Taylor’s coffee shop for my lunch, I just had a baked potato with cheese and a black coffee and read the papers. I always started a newspaper from the back, the sports pages and all the tabloids were full of hype about England football teams first game in the European Championship against Switzerland, that was kicking off at three o’clock at Wembley. This was the first time England had hosted a major football tournament since the 1966 World Cup. Would this be the year to end thirty years of hurt? The tabloids suspected it was, I suspected not. Venables was a good manager, but we were still emerging from one of the most disastrous spells English football had ever known and I thought this tournament had arrived a bit too soon for us. We had not qualified for the 1994 World Cup and automatically qualified for this because we were hosting it. The Derby was at 2.25pm, so if I picked up my six grand after that, I could go and have a pint or two in “The Buck”, “Bowlers” or “Disraelis” and cheer the boys on.
By two o’clock, lunch eaten, coffees drunk, newspapers read, I was ready. It was time to go to work. Time for my lifesaving bet. Time for the last bet of my life, that was a guarantee, win or lose, it would be the last bet. If I lost, there would never be another opportunity. If I won, I had made a deal with God and I needed to stand by that. I had read the Bible, God didn’t seem to sympathise too much with the people who crossed him, just ask Noah who he went for a pint with after the floods or ask Lot what he had on his fish and chips. This was it. My time had come. It was quite literally do or die. Bring it on! I gathered up my plates and mugs, put them on a tray and returned them to the ladies in the kitchen, put my newspapers under my arm and headed to the door. As soon as I took one step outside Taylor’s, on my short journey to Stanley’s, I heard a familiar voice,
“Dad!”
To be honest, despite its familiarity, I didn’t take too much notice, probably a third of the people in Ormskirk were answerable to that name.
“DAD!”
It was deeper and louder second time, followed by a high pitched, “Charlie! Charlie!”
I looked over and making their way through the crowds were our Jim and Amy.
“Shit!” I mumbled to myself. “Could you not have distracted them, God?”
Jim and Amy, holding hands, were sidestepping market day shoppers, heading towards me with faces full of smiles. I did not look quite as gleeful, I felt they could be signing my death warrant.
“Dad! How are things? All set for the Derby?”
This was a catastrophe! There was no way I wanted Jim anywhere near me when I placed my lifesaving bet. How could I explain to him why I was putting a grand on Dushyantor? I tried to lie.
“I think I’ll give the Derby a miss this year, son.”
Jim automatically thought I was joking.
“Good one, Dad! That would be like Father Christmas saying he fancied a night in front of the TV on Christmas Eve! No really, what’ve you picked?”
“I haven’t even looked, son.”
Amy then did her impression of Inspector Jean Darblay from Juliet Bravo.
“What’s that you’ve scribbled on your paper, Charlie?”
I looked down at my Daily Mirror. As well as having nervously scribbled moustaches, beards and cross-eyes on every male and female character, I had written, Dushyantor, hundreds of times, all over the front and back cover. Normally with Dot, I had a bit of time to think of excuses, this time I felt really on the spot.
“Erm…Dushyantor…it’s a new cream.
“What sort of cream?” Amy asked.
“For my piles,” I answered.
Nosey bitch deserved that!
“Oh!”
Jim laughed.
“Take no notice of him, Amy! Dad’s taking the mickey out of you! It’s a horse in the Derby! It won’t win though.”
“What’s going to beat it, then?” I challenged Jim.
“Shaamit. Nailed on.”
“Shaamit!” I said like it was something I’d stood in, “that’s got no bloody chance!”
“It’ll win!” Jim insisted.
“Amy, don’t let him put any of your money on that thing,” I advised,
“ it’s got no worthwhile form, it’s not even run this season!”
“Michael Hills, good young jockey.” Jim explained.
“Damon Hill is a good racing driver, but he couldn’t get a tractor to win the Grand Prix!” I countered.
This was standard banter between Jim and I. Normally, I loved it, but on this day, it definitely had a less lighthearted edge. That would have been down to me.
“Where are you watching it?” Jim asked, “Amy was going to do a bit of shopping, see if she pick up a few bargains off the market, so I was going to head up to Stanley’s for an hour. Is that where you were heading?”
“No, I was going to go to Woolies to buy a Neil Sedaka CD,” I lied, “but seeing as though you are heading to Stanley’s, I’ll head up there with you.”
I needed to shake Jim off somehow. I suppo
se I could have just made my excuses and gone to another bookies, there were a few scattered around the town, but Stanley’s was my home territory, my lucky bookie, so I did not want to go anywhere else. Up until this point, I was convinced God was on my side, but now I felt the devil had joined the game. I felt like God had handpicked ‘Dushyantor’ for me and now the devil was trying to sabotage the plan and stop me placing this bet.
Twenty minutes later, I found myself standing next to my youngest son in Stanley Racing, wishing he would faint. I wanted a spade that I could knock him out with. Everything I had suggested to get rid of him in the previous twenty minutes had failed.
“Should you not go and give your wife a hand?” I asked. “She’ll be fine!” Jim replied.
“Can you not just nip over to the other bookies to check the other prices?”
“It’s not worth the energy for a tenner bet, Dad!”
“I think I’ve forgotten to lock my car, be a good lad and run over to the bus station for me and check it, will you?”
“Piss off!”
Five minutes before the race started, as the horses were heading across Epsom Downs to the starting point of the 217th Derby, I was in a blind panic. I had a grand total of £10 on Dushyantor to win at 9-2. One thing I knew for certain, was that if my horse won, Kiffer would not be accepting a £55 downpayment on a debt of six grand! It had just been impossible to get the bet on with Jim following my every move. I felt like I was slowly suffocating. The grains of sand in my egg timer were dropping fast. I could hardly breathe and not just because the fumes from a hundred gamblers fags were polluting the air.
“£10 each way on Shaamit at twelves!” Jim was saying, “if this comes in, I’ll buy the pints during the England game!”
I felt faint. The blood drained from my face like someone had pulled a plug out of my neck.
“I need the toilet, Jim.”
Jim took a proper look at me and realised I would go undetected in a milk bath.
“Are you OK, Dad? You look awful!”
“I’m OK.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“NO!” I said rather too forcefully, “what are you going to do? Wipe my arse?”
“Catch you if you faint.”
“I’ll be fine.”
I headed towards the toilets. I thought I was going to vomit, everything was swirling. I entered the cubicle, which, in a bookmakers, is never the most salubrious of locations. Gamblers have a poor aim or are always in too much of a rush to line their shot up. There was urine all over the seat and the stale aroma of a hundred previous craps, some of which still graced the porcelain. Luckily, there was a window in there. A half opened window. A window, just about big enough for me to squeeze out of. I opened the window as wide as it could possibly open, pushed myself up on to the window sill and squeezed myself through. This measure was done from desperation rather than calculation. I did not even consider what was on the other side, which turned out to be a four foot drop to a muddy puddle and I fell like Humpty Dumpty into the middle of it, belly flopping into a three inch pool of mud. There was no time for self-pity though, so I picked myself up and ran through Ormskirk towards the nearest alternative bookies, looking like an overfed swamp creature. I tried to sprint but its hard to run when you are a fifty something, fat waster, caked in mud. I waddled across looking like a rhino and moving like a penguin. With two minutes to spare, I pushed opened the door of Ladbills. Everyone gets paranoid at times, thinks other people are staring at them, but this was not paranoia. It was impossible not to stare at me, my whole front, from my forehead to my shoes, was caked in mud.
“Shit!” someone said, “Augustus Gloops escaped from the factory!”
I disregarded the comments, picked up a betting slip and a pen and wrote out,
‘2.25 EPSOM - £990 WIN - DUSHYANTOR’.
Typically, there was a queue. All three staff members were serving clueless punters. Everyone else in the queue stepped back and let me through. Managing to ignore my impression of a mask free bog snorkeller, the three staff members busied themselves with the idiots at the counter. The first one was a twice a year female punter, who probably only bet on the Derby and the Grand National, she was asking Vera how to complete her slip. Secondly, Graham was helping old Ernie, a doddery ninety something who punted in copper, to count out his pennies and then Suzy was trying to find a price on a horse for ‘Mardy Martin’, an idiotic regular punter who would argue a horse with a dick the size of Gibraltar was a mare. Martin was arguing some no hoper should be priced at 250-1 rather than 200-1, which was immaterial as in five minutes it would no doubt finish last.
“This is fucking ridiculous!” I said to the Zander, the South African punter stood next to me, looking almost as twitchy as me, “it’s Derby Day, they should take more staff on! Martin, if you want to give me your two quid, mate, if that bloody donkey wins, I’ll give you the £500 myself!”
Martin uttered something under his breath. I could see on the screens that the first horses were being led into the stalls, I dug my muddied wedge of notes from out my pocket, just as old Ernie shuffled away from the counter, clutching his betting slip in his withered old hand. I strode to the counter, about ten of the horses were in the stalls. I pushed my betting slip and money across the polished counter towards Graham.
“What’s this?” Graham asked surveying my dirty notes.
“That would be legal tender, Graham.”
“Where in? Trampsville? We’ll never get these banked.”
“Of course you bloody would!”
“Well, I’m not accepting them!”
“Graham! The race is about to fucking start!”
“No need to speak to me like that, Charlie!”
I had lost it. I may as well have passed this moron a loaded revolver and asked him to shoot me.
“Yes there fucking is! I need this bet on!”
I am sure even God would have had to use all his powers not to swear at Graham, he was, and I am sure still is, a pompous prick.
“Well take it somewhere else and see if they’ll accept it!”
“I can’t, the race is about to start!”
“Well, you should have got here earlier then, Charlie, shouldn’t you? They haven’t changed the time of the race. You could have come here any time this week, but you come in two minutes before the start, stinking to high heaven and then kick off because we won’t accept your money that looks like its been stored up your arse! Piss off, Charlie, I’ve real customers to serve!”
I snatched my cash and betting slip back off him and moved away from the counter as the stalls opened and the Derby began. I felt like Graham was my very own Judas, I had asked him three times to put my bet on and each time he had denied me. I hoped Graham’s bowels would all spill out at Akeldama too!
Seething, I walked straight out of Ladbills, still cursing to myself and walked the seventy five yards up to Stanleys. I went in and started to push through the crowds to get to Jim, but when they saw the state I was in, they parted like they were the Red Sea and I was Moses. I went and stood right next to Jim, but he was too embroiled in the race to notice my unkempt appearance.
“Bloody Shammit’s lost this already!” he moaned, “it’s about eighteen horses back!”
“What about Dushyantor?” I asked.
“I think that’s one of the two behind it!”
The cloud of dejection that felt like it had been about two feet above my head, pissing urine and faeces on to my already filthy body seemed to move off and be replaced by Johnny Nash, merrily singing, “I Can See Clearly Now” into my ears! Maybe I had this all wrong, maybe the devil was trying to encourage me to back Dushyantor and God had sent Jim and pompous Graham to stop me losing everything.
Counting your blessings is like counting sheep, just when you’ve counted them, they jump over the fence and disappear. As the horses rounded Tattenham corner, into the final straight, some of the horses at the front, decided they were knack
ered and some of the ones at the back, decided they fancied the idea of a sprint downhill, so the complexion of the race changed in the blink of an eye and of the eight horses that still had a chance, Dushyantor and Shaamit were two of them. With a couple of furlongs left, Michael Hills and Shammit made me eat my pre-race words about tractors, as they shot off like Champion the Wonder Horse in pursuit of a thief. Jim clenched his fist.
“I’ve won this Dad! I’ve won this!” he was saying.
There was only one horse that could steal the crown from Shaamit now and that was Dushyantor. The race suddenly seemed to almost stop and advanced frame by frame. Pat Eddery had angled Dushyantor onto the outside of the rest of the weary pack and was making a desperate lunge for Shaamit. After three furlongs downhill, the last half furlong at Epsom is back uphill, and a pretty steep uphill climb it is too, so stride by stride, Dushyantor was closing in.
“Go on SHAAMIT!” yelled Jim.
“Shift your bloody arse, SHAAMIT!” I yelled twice as loud as Jim, his head jerked momentarily away from the screen and towards me, in bewilderment, as he knew I had backed Dushyantor. Little did Jim know that if Dushyantor won, I would feel like I’d lost five grand and an escape route, but if Shaamit won, I had a second chance. I kept expecting Dushyantor’s nose to elongate like Pinocchios and flash past the winning post a nostril hair ahead of Shaamit, but it did not happen, despite tiring as it headed back uphill, Shaamit clung on gamely to become the 1996 Derby winner. Jim was ecstatic, he had not only found the Derby winner, but by finding me had saved my life, temporarily at least, not that he knew that.
As Jim raced excitedly to the counter to collect his winnings, I toiled with a new dilemma. What would I bet on now? Once Jim left Stanleys, I would place the new bet there, as the staff knew me well enough to accept my muddy notes, but what or who should I bet on? Jim solved that riddle.
“Bloody hell, Dad!” he shouted over, “what’s happened to you? Have you been rolling in cow pat again? You best go and get yourself cleaned up before the match!”
