For Kicks

by Dick Francis

  I drifted eastwards, walking, asking, listening. Gradually I came to the conclusion that if I knocked off the aitches and didn’t clip the ends of my words, I might get by. I practised that all afternoon, and finally managed to alter a few vowel sounds as well. No one asked me where I came from, which I took as a sign of success, and when I asked the last man, a barrow-boy, where I could catch a bus back to the West, I could no longer detect much difference between my question and his answer.

  I made one purchase, a zip-pocketed money belt made of strong canvas webbing. It buckled flat round my waist under my shirt, and into it I packed the two hundred pounds: wherever I was going I thought I might be glad to have that money readily available.

  In the evening, refreshed, I tried to approach the doping problem from another angle, by seeing if the horses had had anything in common.

  Apparently they hadn’t. All were trained by different trainers. All were owned by different owners: and all had been ridden by different jockeys. The only thing they all had in common was that they had nothing in common.

  I sighed, and went to bed.

  Terence, the manservant, with whom I had reached a reserved but definite friendship, woke me on the fourth morning by coming into my room with a laden breadfast tray.

  ‘The condemned man ate hearty,’ he observed, lifting a silver cover and allowing me a glimpse and a sniff of a plateful of eggs and bacon.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, yawning contentedly.

  ‘I don’t know what you and his lordship are up to, sir, but wherever you are going it is different from what you are used to. That suit of yours, for instance, didn’t come from the same sort of place as this little lot.’

  He picked up the fibre suitcase, put it on a stool, and opened the locks. Carefully, as if they had been silk, he laid out on a chair some cotton pants and a checked cotton shirt, followed by a tan coloured ribbed pullover, some drain-pipe charcoal trousers and black socks. With a look of disgust he picked up the black leather jacket and draped it over the chair back, and neatly arranged the pointed shoes.

  ‘His Lordship said I was to make certain that you left behind everything you came with, and took only these things with you,’ he said regretfully.

  ‘Did you buy them?’ I asked, amused, ‘or was it Lord October?’

  ‘His Lordship bought them.’ He smiled suddenly as he went over to the door. ‘I’d love to have seen him pushing around in that chain store among all those bustling women.’

  I finished my breakfast, bathed, shaved, and dressed from head to foot in the new clothes, putting the black jacket on top and zipping up the front. Then I brushed the hair on top of my head forwards instead of back, so that the short black ends curved on to my forehead.

  Terence came back for the empty tray and found me standing looking at myself in a full-length mirror. Instead of grinning at him as usual I turned slowly round on my heel and treated him to a hard, narrow-eyed stare.

  ‘Holy hell!’ he said explosively.

  ‘Good,’ I said cheerfully. ‘You wouldn’t trust me then?’

  ‘Not as far as I could throw that wardrobe.’

  ‘What other impressions do I make on you? Would you give me a job?’

  ‘You wouldn’t get through the front door here, for a start. Basement entrance, if any. I’d check your references carefully before I took you on; and I don’t think I’d have you at all if I wasn’t desperate. You look shifty… and a bit… well… almost dangerous.’

  I unzipped the leather jacket and let it flap open, showing the checked shirt collar and tan pullover underneath. The effect was altogether sloppier.

  ‘How about now?’ I asked.

  He put his head on one side, considering. ‘Yes, I might give you a job now. You look much more ordinary. Not much more honest, but less hard to handle.’

  ‘Thank you, Terence. That’s exactly the note, I think. Ordinary but dishonest.’ I smiled with pleasure. ‘I’d better be on my way.’

  ‘You haven’t got anything of your own with you?’

  ‘Only my watch,’ I assured him.

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  I noticed with interest that for the first time in four days he had failed to punctuate any sentence with an easy, automatic ‘sir’, and when I picked up the cheap suitcase he made no move to take it from me and carry it himself, as he had done with my grip when I arrived.

  We went downstairs to the street door where I shook hands with him and thanked him for looking after me so well, and gave him a five pound note. One of October’s. He took it with a smile and stood with it in his hand, looking at me in my new character.

  I grinned at him widely.

  ‘Goodbye Terence.’

  ‘Goodbye, and thank you… sir,’ he said; and I walked off leaving him laughing.

  The next intimation I had that my change of clothes meant a violent drop in status came from the taxi driver I hailed at the bottom of the square. He refused to take me to King’s Cross station until I had shown him that I had enough money to pay his fare. I caught the noon train to Harrogate and intercepted several disapproving glances from a prim middle-aged man with frayed cuffs sitting opposite me. This was all satisfactory, I thought, looking out at the damp autumn countryside flying past; this assures me that I do immediately make a dubious impression. It was rather a lop-sided thing to be pleased about.

  From Harrogate I caught a country bus to the small village of Slaw, and having asked the way walked the last two miles to October’s place, arriving just before six o’clock, the best time of day for seeking work in a stable.

  Sure enough, they were rushed off their feet: I asked for the head lad, and he took me with him to Inskip, who was doing his evening round of inspection.

  Inskip looked me over and pursed his lips. He was a stringy, youngish man with spectacles, sparse sandy hair, and a sloppy-looking mouth.

  ‘References?’ In contrast, his voice was sharp and authoritative.

  I took the letter from October’s Cornish cousin out of my pocket and gave it to him. He opened the letter, read it, and put it away in his own pocket.

  ‘You haven’t been with racehorses before, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When could you start?’

  ‘Now.’ I indicated my suitcase.

  He hesitated, but not for long. ‘As it happens, we are short-handed. We’ll give you a try. Wally, arrange a bed for him with Mrs Allnut, and he can start in the morning. Usual wages,’ he added to me, ‘eleven pounds a week, and three pounds of that goes to Mrs Allnut for your keep. You can give me your cards tomorrow. Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said: and I was in.

  Chapter 3

  I edged gently into the life of the yard like a heretic into heaven, trying not to be discovered and flung out before I became part of the scenery. On my first evening I spoke almost entirely in monosyllables, because I didn’t trust my new accent, but I slowly found out that the lads talked with such a variety of regional accents themselves that my cockney-Australian passed without comment.

  Wally, the head lad, a wiry short man with ill-fitting dentures, said I was to sleep in the cottage where about a dozen unmarried lads lived, beside the gate into the yard. I was shown into a small crowded upstairs room containing six beds, a wardrobe, two chests of drawers, and four bedside chairs; which left roughly two square yards of clear space in the centre. Thin flowered curtains hung at the windows, and there was polished linoleum on the floor.

  My bed proved to have developed a deep sag in the centre over the years, but it was comfortable enough, and was made up freshly with white sheets and grey blankets. Mrs Allnut, who took me in without a second glance, was a round, cheerful little person with hair fastened in a twist on top of her head. She kept the cottage spotless and stood over the lads to make sure they washed. She cooked well, and the food was plain but plentiful. All in all, it was a good billet.

  I walked a bit warily to start with, but it was easier to be accepted and
to fade into the background than I had imagined.

  Once or twice during the first few days I stopped myself just in time from absent-mindedly telling another lad what to do; nine years’ habit died hard. And I was surprised, and a bit dismayed, by the subservient attitude every one had to Inskip, at least to his face: my own men treated me at home with far more familiarity. The fact that I paid and they earned gave me no rights over them as men, and this we all clearly understood. But at Inskip’s, and throughout all England, I gradually realised, there was far less of the almost aggressive egalitarianism of Australia. The lads, on the whole, seemed to accept that in the eyes of the world they were of secondary importance as human beings to Inskip and October. I thought this extraordinary, undignified, and shameful. And I kept my thoughts to myself.

  Wally, scandalised by the casual way I had spoken on my arrival, told me to call Inskip ‘Sir’ and October ‘My lord’ – and said that if I was a ruddy communist I could clear off at once: so I quickly exhibited what he called a proper respect for my betters.

  On the other hand it was precisely because the relationship between me and my own men was so free and easy that I found no difficulty in becoming a lad amongst lads. I felt no constraint on their part and, once the matter of accents had been settled, no self-consciousness on mine. But I did come to realise that what October had implied was undoubtedly true: had I stayed in England and gone to Eton (instead of its equivalent, Geelong) I could not have fitted so readily into his stable.

  Inskip allotted me to three newly arrived horses, which was not very good from my point of view as it meant that I could not expect to be sent to a race meeting with them. They were neither fit nor entered for races, and it would be weeks before they were ready to run, even if they proved to be good enough. I pondered the problem while I carried their hay and water and cleaned their boxes and rode them out at morning exercise with the string.

  On my second evening October came round at six with a party of house guests. Inskip, knowing in advance, had had everyone running to be finished in good time and walked round himself first, to make sure that all was in order.

  Each lad stood with whichever of his horses was nearest the end from which the inspection was started. October and his friends, accompanied by Inskip and Wally, moved along from box to box, chatting, laughing, discussing each horse as they went.

  When they came to me October flicked me a glance, and said, ‘You’re new, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He took no further notice of me then, but when I had bolted the first horse in for the night and waited further down the yard with the second one, he came over to pat my charge and feel his legs; and as he straightened up he gave me a mischievous wink. With difficulty, since I was facing the other men, I kept a dead-pan face. He blew his nose to stop himself laughing. We were neither of us very professional at this cloak and dagger stuff.

  When they had gone, and after I had eaten the evening meal with the other lads, I walked down to the Slaw pub with two of them. Half way through the first drinks I left them and went and telephoned to October.

  ‘Who is speaking?’ a man’s voice inquired.

  I was stumped for a second: then I said ‘Perlooma,’ knowing that that would fetch him.

  He came on the line. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Does anyone at the local exchange listen to your calls?’

  ‘I wouldn’t bet on it.’ He hesitated. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Slaw, in the phone box at your end of the village.’

  ‘I have guests for dinner; will tomorrow do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He paused for thought. ‘Can you tell me what you want?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The form books for the last seven or eight seasons, and every scrap of information you can possibly dig up about the eleven… subjects.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want anything else?’

  ‘Yes, but it needs discussion.’

  He thought. ‘Behind the stable yard there is a stream which comes down from the moors. Walk up beside it tomorrow, after lunch.’

  ‘Right.’

  I hung up, and went back to my interrupted drink in the pub.

  ‘You’ve been a long time,’ said Paddy, one of the lads I had come with. ‘We’re one ahead of you. What have you been doing – reading the walls in the Gents?’

  ‘There’s some remarks on them walls,’ mused the other lad, a gawky boy of eighteen, ‘that I haven’t fathomed yet.’

  ‘Nor you don’t want to,’ said Paddy approvingly. At forty he acted as unofficial father to many of the younger lads.

  They slept one each side of me, Paddy and Grits, in the little dormitory. Paddy, as sharp as Grits was slow, was a tough little Irishman with eyes that never missed a trick. From the first minute I hoisted my suitcase on to the bed and unpacked my night things under his inquisitive gaze I had been glad that October had been so insistent about a complete change of clothes.

  ‘How about another drink?’

  ‘One more, then,’ assented Paddy. ‘I can just about run to it, I reckon.’

  I took the glasses to the bar and bought refills: there was a pause while Paddy and Grits dug into their pockets and repaid me elevenpence each. The beer, which to me, tasted strong and bitter was not, I thought, worth four miles’ walk, but many of the lads, it appeared, had bicycles or rickety cars and made the trek on several evenings a week.

  ‘Nothing much doing, tonight,’ observed Grits gloomily. He brightened. ‘Pay day tomorrow.’

  ‘It’ll be full here tomorrow, and that’s a fact,’ agreed Paddy. ‘With Soupy and that lot from Granger’s and all.’

  ‘Granger’s?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure, don’t you know nothing?’ said Grits with mild contempt. ‘Granger’s stable, over t’other side of the hill.’

  ‘Where have you been all your life?’ said Paddy.

  ‘He’s new to racing, mind you,’ said Grits, being fair.

  ‘Yes, but all the same!’ Paddy drank past the half-way mark, and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  Grits finished his beer and sighed. ‘That’s it, then. Better be getting back, I suppose.’

  We walked back to the stables, talking as always about horses.

  The following afternoon I wandered casually out of the stables and started up the stream, picking up stones as I went and throwing them in, as if to enjoy the splash. Some of the lads were punting a football about in the paddock behind the yard, but none of them paid any attention to me. A good long way up the hill, where the stream ran through a steep, grass sided gully, I came across October sitting on a boulder smoking a cigarette. He was accompanied by a black retriever, and a gun and a full game bag lay on the ground beside him.

  ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Quite right, Mr Stanley. How did you guess?’ I perched on a boulder near to him.

  He kicked the game bag, ‘The form books are in here, and a note book with all that Beckett and I could rake up at such short notice about those eleven horses. But surely the reports in the files you read would be of more use than the odd snippets we can supply?’

  ‘Anything may be useful… you never know. There was one clipping in that packet of Stapleton’s which was interesting. It was about historic dope cases. It said that certain horses apparently turned harmless food into something that showed a positive dope reaction, just through chemical changes in their body. I suppose it isn’t possible that reverse could occur? I mean, could some horses break down any sort of dope into harmless substances, so that no positive reaction showed in the test?’

  ‘I’ll find out.’

  ‘There’s only one other thing,’ I said. ‘I have been assigned to three of those useless brutes you filled the yard up with, and that means no trips to racecourses. I was wondering if perhaps you could sell one of them again, and
then I’d have a chance of mixing with lads from several stables at the sales. Three other men are doing three horses each here, so I shouldn’t find myself redundant, and I might well be given a raceable horse to look after.’

  ‘I will sell one,’ he said, ‘but if it goes for auction it will take time. The application forms have to go to the auctioneer nearly a month before the sale date.’

  I nodded. ‘It’s utterly frustrating. I wish I could think of a way of getting myself transferred to a horse which is due to race shortly. Preferably one going to a far distant course, because an overnight stop would be ideal.’

  ‘Lads don’t change their horses in mid-stream,’ he said rubbing his chin.

  ‘So I’ve been told. It’s the luck of the draw. You get them when they come and you’re stuck with them until they leave. If they turn out useless, it’s just too bad.’

  We stood up. The retriever, who had lain quiet all this time with his muzzle resting on his paws, got to his feet also and stretched himself, and wagging his tail slowly from side to side looked up trustingly at his master. October bent down, gave the dog an affectionate slap, and picked up the gun. I picked up the game bag and swung it over my shoulder.

  We shook hands, and October said, smiling, ‘You may like to know that Inskip thinks you ride extraordinarily well for a stable lad. His exact words were that he didn’t really trust men with your sort of looks, but that you’d the hands of an angel. You’d better watch that.’

  ‘Hell,’ I said, ‘I hadn’t given it a thought.’

  He grinned and went off up the hill, and I turned downwards along the stream, gradually becoming ruefully aware that however much of a lark I might find it to put on wolf’s clothing, it was going to hurt my pride if I had to hash up my riding as well.

  The pub in Slaw was crowded that evening and the wage packets took a hiding. About half the strength from October’s stable was there – one of them had given me a lift down in his car – and also a group of Granger’s lads, including three lasses, who took a good deal of double-meaning teasing and thoroughly enjoyed it. Most of the talk was friendly bragging that each lad’s horses were better than those of anyone else.