Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life

by Roald Dahl

  I swear there wasn’t a man alive who knew more about it than Claud did, and ever since we’d got the ringer and decided to pull this job, he’d taken it upon himself to give me an education in the business. By now, in theory at any rate, I suppose I knew nearly as much as him.

  It had starting during the very first strategy conference we’d had in the kitchen. I can remember it was the day after the ringer arrived and we were sitting there watching for customers through the window, and Claud was explaining to me all about what we’d have to do, and I was trying to follow him as best I could until finally there came one question I had to ask.

  ‘What I don’t see,’ I had said, ‘is why you use the ringer at all. Wouldn’t it be safer if we use Jackie all the time and simply stop him the first half dozen races so he comes last? Then when we’re good and ready, we can let him go. Same result in the end, wouldn’t it be, if we do it right? And no danger of being caught.’

  Well, as I say, that did it. Claud looked up at me quickly and said, ‘Hey! None of that! I’d just like you to know “stopping’s” something I never do. What’s come over you, Gordon?’ He seemed genuinely pained and shocked by what I had said.

  ‘I don’t see anything wrong with it.’

  ‘Now listen to me, Gordon. Stopping a good dog breaks his heart. A good dog knows he’s fast, and seeing all the others out there in front and not being able to catch them – it breaks his heart, I tell you. And what’s more, you wouldn’t be making suggestions like that if you knew some of the tricks them fellers do to stop their dogs at the flapping-tracks.’

  ‘Such as what, for example?’ I had asked.

  ‘Such as anything in the world almost, so long as it makes the dog go slower. And it takes a lot of stopping, a good greyhound does. Full of guts and so mad keen you can’t even let them watch a race they’ll tear the leash right out of your hand rearing to go. Many’s the time I’ve seen one with a broken leg insisting on finishing the race.

  He had paused then, looking at me thoughtfully with those large pale eyes, serious as hell and obviously thinking deep. ‘Maybe,’ he had said, ‘if we’re going to do this job properly I’d better tell you a thing or two so’s you’ll know what we’re up against.’

  ‘Go ahead and tell me,’ I had said. ‘I’d like to know.’

  For a moment he stared in silence out the window. ‘The main thing you got to remember,’ he had said darkly, ‘is that all these fellers going to the flapping-tracks with dogs – they’re artful. They’re more artful than you could possibly imagine.’ Again he paused, marshalling his thoughts.

  ‘Now take for example the different ways of stopping a dog. The first, the commonest, is strapping.’

  ‘Strapping?’

  ‘Yes. Strapping ’em up. That’s commonest. Pulling the muzzle-strap tight around their necks so they can’t hardly breathe, see. A clever man knows just which hole on the strap to use and just how many lengths it’ll take off his dog in a race. Usually a couple of notches is good for five or six lengths. Do it up real tight and he’ll come last. I’ve known plenty of dogs collapse and die from being strapped up tight on a hot day. Strangulated, absolutely strangulated, and a very nasty thing it was too. Then again, some of ’em just tie two of the toes together with black cotton. Dog never runs well like that. Unbalances him.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too bad.’

  ‘Then there’s others that put a piece of fresh-chewed gum up under their tails, right up close where the tail joins the body. And there’s nothing funny about that,’ he had said, indignant. ‘The tail of a running dog goes up and down ever so slightly and the gum on the tail keeps sticking to the hairs on the backside, just where it’s tenderest. No dog likes that, you know. Then there’s sleeping pills. That’s used a lot nowadays. They do it by weight, exactly like a doctor, and they measure the powder according to whether they want to slow him up five or ten or fifteen lengths. Those are just a few of the ordinary ways,’ he had said. ‘Actually they’re nothing. Absolutely nothing compared with some of the other things that’s done to hold a dog back in a race, especially by the gypsies. There’s things the gypsies do that are almost too disgusting to mention, such as when they’re just putting the dog in the trap, things you wouldn’t hardly do to your worst enemies.’

  And when he had told me about those – which were, indeed, terrible things because they had to do with physical injury, quickly, painfully inflicted – then he had gone on to tell me what they did when they wanted the dog to win.

  ‘There’s just as terrible things done to make ’em go fast as to make ’em go slow,’ he had said softly, his face veiled and secret. ‘And perhaps the commonest of all is wintergreen. Whenever you see a dog going around with no hair on his back or little bald patches all over him – that’s wintergreen. Just before the race they rub it hard into the skin. Sometimes it’s Sloans Liniment, but mostly it’s wintergreen. Stings terrible. Stings so bad that all the old dog wants to do is run run run as fast as he possibly can to get away from the pain.

  ‘Then there’s special drugs they give with the needle. Mind you, that’s the modern method and most of the spivs at the track are too ignorant to use it. It’s the fellers coming down from London in the big cars with stadium dogs they’ve borrowed for the day by bribing the trainer – they’re the ones use the needle.’

  I could remember him sitting there at the kitchen table with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and dropping his eyelids to keep out the smoke and looking at me through his wrinkled, nearly closed eyes, and saying, ‘What you’ve got to remember, Gordon, is this. There’s nothing they won’t do to make a dog win if they want him to. On the other hand, no dog can run faster than he’s built, no matter what they do to him. So if we can get Jackie down into bottom grade, then we’re home. No dog in bottom grade can get near him, not even with wintergreen and needles. Not even with ginger.’

  ‘Ginger?’

  ‘Certainly. That’s a common one, ginger is. what they do, they take a piece of raw ginger about the size of a walnut, and about five minutes before the off they slip it into the dog.’

  ‘You mean in his mouth? He eats it?’

  ‘No,’ he had said. ‘Not in his mouth.’

  And so it had gone on. During each of the eight long trips we had subsequently made to the track with the ringer I had heard more and more about this charming sport – more, especially, about the methods of stopping them and making them go (even the names of the drugs and the quantities to use). I heard about ‘the rat treatment’ (for nonchasers, to make them chase the dummy hare), where a rat is placed in a can which is then tied around the dog’s neck. There’s a small hole in the lid of the can just large enough for the rat to poke its head out and nip the dog. But the dog can’t get at the rat, and so naturally he goes half crazy running around and being bitten in the neck, and the more he shakes the can the more the rat bites him. Finally, someone releases the rat, and the dog, who up to then was a nice docile tail-wagging animal who wouldn’t hurt a mouse, pounces on it in a rage and tears it to pieces. Do this a few times, Claud had said – ‘mind you, I don’t hold with it myself’ – and the dog becomes a real killer who will chase anything, even the dummy hare.

  We were over the Chilterns now and running down out of the beechwoods into the flat elm- and oak-tree country south of Oxford. Claud sat quietly beside me, nursing his nervousness and smoking cigarettes, and every two or three minutes he would turn round to see if Jackie was all right. The dog was at last lying down, and each time Claud turned round, he whispered something to him softly, and the dog acknowledged his words with a faint movement of the tail that made the straw rustle.

  Soon we would be coming into Thame, the broad High Street where they penned the pigs and cows and sheep on market day, and where the Fair came once a year with the swings and roundabouts and bumping cars and gypsy caravans right there in the street in the middle of the town. Claud was born in Thame, and we’d never driven through it yet without him
mentioning this fact.

  ‘Well,’ he said as the first houses came into sight, ‘here’s Thame. I was born and bred in Thame, you know, Gordon.’

  ‘You told me.’

  ‘Lots of funny things we used to do around here when we was nippers,’ he said, slightly nostalgic.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  He paused, and I think more to relieve the tension building up inside him than anything else, he began talking about the years of his youth.

  ‘There was a boy next door,’ he said. ‘Gilbert Gomm his name was. Little sharp ferrety face and one leg a bit shorter’n the other. Shocking things him and me used to do together. You know one thing we done, Gordon?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’d go into the kitchen Saturday nights when Mum and Dad were at the pub, and we’d disconnect the pipe from the gas-ring and bubble the gas into a milk bottle full of water. Then we’d sit down and drink it out of teacups.’

  ‘Was that so good?’

  ‘Good! It was absolutely disgusting! But we’d put lashings of sugar in and then it didn’t taste so bad.’

  ‘Why did you drink it?’

  Claud turned and looked at me, incredulous. ‘You mean you never drunk “Snakes Water”!’

  ‘Can’t say I have.’

  ‘I thought everyone done that when they was kids! It intoxicates you, just like wine only worse, depending on how long you let the gas bubble through. We used to get reeling drunk together there in the kitchen Saturday nights and it was marvellous. Until one night Dad comes home early and catches us. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. There was me holding the milk bottle, and the gas bubbling through it lovely, and Gilbert kneeling on the floor ready to turn off the tap the moment I give the word, and in walks Dad.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Oh Christ, Gordon, that was terrible. He didn’t say one word, but he stands there by the door and he starts feeling for his belt, undoing the buckle very slow and pulling the belt slow out of his trousers, looking at me all the time. Great big feller he was, with great big hands like coalhammers and a black moustache and them little purple veins running all over his cheeks. Then he comes over quick and grabs me by the coat and lets me have it, hard as he can, using the end with the buckle on it and honest to God, Gordon, I thought he was going to kill me. But in the end he stops and then he puts on the belt again, slow and careful, buckling it up and tucking in the flap and belching with the beer he’d drunk. And then he walks out again back to the pub, still without saying a word. Worst hiding I ever had in my life.’

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘Round about eight, I should think,’ Claud said.

  As we drew closer to Oxford, he became silent again. He kept twisting his neck to see if Jackie was all right, to touch him, to stroke his head, and once he turned around and knelt on the seat to gather more straw around the dog, murmuring something about a draught. We drove around the fringe of Oxford and into a network of narrow country roads, and after a while we turned into a small bumpy lane and along this we began to overtake a thin stream of men and women all walking and cycling in the same direction. Some of the men were leading greyhounds. There was a large saloon car in front of us and through the rear window we could see a dog sitting on the back seat between two men.

  ‘They come from all over,’ Claud said darkly. ‘That one there’s probably come up special from London. Probably slipped him out from one of the big stadium kennels just for the afternoon. That could be a Derby dog probably, for all we know.’

  ‘Hope he’s not running against Jackie.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Claud said. ‘All new dogs automatically go in top grade. That’s one rule Mr Feasey’s very particular about.’

  There was an open gate leading into a field, and Mr Feasey’s wife came forward to take our admission money before we drove in.

  ‘He’d have her winding the bloody pedals too if she had the strength,’ Claud said. ‘Old Feasey don’t employ more people than he has to.’

  I drove across the field and parked at the end of a line of cars along the top hedge. We both got out and Claud went quickly round the back to fetch Jackie. I stood beside the car, waiting. It was a very large field with a

  steepish slope on it, and we were at the top of the slope, looking down. In the distance I could see the six starting traps and the wooden posts marking the track which ran along the bottom of the field and turned sharp at right angles and came on up the hill towards the crowd, to the finish. Thirty yards beyond the finishing line stood the upturned bicycle for driving the hare. Because it is portable, this is the standard machine for hare-driving used at all flapping-tracks. It comprises a flimsy wooden platform about eight feet high, supported on four poles knocked into the ground. On top of the platform there is fixed, upside down with wheels in the air, an ordinary old bicycle. The rear wheel is to the front, facing down

  the track, and from it the tyre has been removed, leaving a concave metal rim. One end of the cord that pulls the hare is attached to this rim, and the winder (or hare-driver), by straddling the bicycle at the back and turning the pedals with his hands, revolves the wheel and winds in the cord around the rim. This pulls the dummy hare toward him at any speed he likes up to forty miles an hour. After each race someone takes the dummy hare (with cord attached) all the way down to the starting traps again, thus unwinding the cord on the wheel, ready for a fresh start. From his high platform, the winder can watch the race and regulate the speed of the hare to keep it just ahead of the leading dog. He can also stop the hare any time he wants and make it a ‘no race’ (if the wrong dog looks like winning) by suddenly turning the pedals backwards and getting the cord tangled up in the hub of the wheel. The other way of doing it is to slow down the hare suddenly, for perhaps one second, and that makes the lead dog automatically check a little so that the others catch up with him. He is an important man, the winder.

  I could see Mr Feasey’s winder already standing atop his platform, a powerful-looking man in a blue sweater, leaning on the bicycle and looking down at the crowd through the smoke of his cigarette.

  There is a curious law in England which permits race meetings of this kind to be held only seven times a year over one piece of ground. That is why all Mr Feasey’s equipment was movable, and after the seventh meeting he would simply transfer to the next field. The law didn’t bother him at all.

  There was already a good crowd and the bookmakers were erecting their stands in a line over to the right. Claud had Jackie out of the van now and was leading him over to a group of people clustered around a small stocky man dressed in riding-breeches – Mr Feasey himself. Each person in the group had a dog on a leash and Mr Feasey kept writing names in a notebook that he held folded in his left hand. I sauntered over to watch.

  ‘Which you got there?’ Mr Feasey said, pencil poised above the notebook.

  ‘Midnight,’ a man said who was holding a black dog.

  Mr Feasey stepped back a pace and looked most carefully at the dog.

  ‘Midnight. Right. I got him down.’

  ‘Jane,’ the next man said.

  ‘Let me look. Jane… Jane… yes, all right.’

  ‘Soldier.’ This dog was led by a tall man with long teeth who wore a dark-blue, double-breasted lounge suit, shiny with wear, and when he said ‘Soldier’ he began slowly to scratch the seat of his trousers with the hand that wasn’t holding the leash.

  Mr Feasey bent down to examine the dog. The other man looked up at the sky.

  ‘Take him away,’ Mr Feasey said.

  The man looked down quick and stopped scratching.

  ‘Go on, take him away.’

  ‘Listen, Mr Feasey,’ the man said, lisping slightly through his long teeth. ‘Now don’t talk so bloody silly, please.’

  ‘Go on and beat it, Larry, and stop wasting my time. You know as well as I do the Soldier’s got two white toes on his off fore.’

  ‘Now look, Mr Feasey,’ the man sa
id. ‘You ain’t even seen Soldier for six months at least.’

  ‘Come on now, Larry, and beat it. I haven’t got time arguing with you.’ Mr Feasey didn’t appear the least angry. ‘Next,’ he said.

  I saw Claud step forward leading Jackie. The large bovine face was fixed and wooden, the eyes staring at something about a yard above Mr Feasey’s head, and he was holding the leash so tight his knuckles were like a row of little white onions. I knew just how he was feeling. I felt the same way myself at that moment, and it was even worse when Mr Feasey suddenly started laughing.

  ‘Hey!’ he cried. ‘Here’s the Black Panther. Here’s the champion.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Feasey,’ Claud said.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Mr Feasey said, still grinning. ‘You can take him right back home where he come from. I don’t want him.’

  ‘But look here, Mr Feasey…’

  ‘Six or eight times at least I’ve run him for you now and that’s enough. Look – why don’t you shoot him and have done with it?’

  ‘Now listen, Mr Feasey, please. Just once more and I’ll never ask you again.’

  ‘Not even once! I got more dogs than I can handle here today. There’s no room for crabs like that.’

  I thought Claud was going to cry.

  ‘Now honest, Mr Feasey,’ he said. ‘I been up at six every morning this past two weeks giving him roadwork and massage and buying him beefsteaks, and believe me he’s a different dog absolutely than what he was last time he run.’

  The words ‘different dog’ caused Mr Feasey to jump like he’s been pricked with a hatpin. ‘What’s that!’ he cried. ‘Different dog!’

  I’ll say this for Claud, he kept his head. ‘See here, Mr Feasey,’ he said. ‘I’ll thank you not to go implying things to me. You know very well I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘All right, all right. But just the same, you can take him away. There’s no sense running dogs as slow as him. Take him home now, will you please, and don’t hold up the whole meeting.’

  I was watching Claud. Claud was watching Mr Feasey. Mr Feasey was looking round for the next dog to enter up. Under his brown tweedy jacket he wore a yellow pullover, and this streak of yellow on his breast and his thin gaitered legs and the way he jerked his head from side to side made him seem like some sort of a little perky bird – a goldfinch, perhaps.