by Simon Brett
Four male jaws dropped as one. Then the quickest of them to recover shouted, “Bloody hell, Donal’s got two of them after him now.”
“Always did fancy a threesome, old Donal.”
“Yes, he’s a kinky old—”
“Will you please be quiet. It’s extremely important that we contact Donal Geraghty as soon as possible. If you have any idea where he is or how we can get in touch with him, will you please tell us.”
The men were totally confused by Carole’s schoolmarm approach and fell silent. Then the leader said grudgingly, “We don’t know where he is. Gather he’s had a bit of trouble recently, so don’t know what gaff he’s kipping down in. Somebody’s stable or outhouse I expect, but I can’t tell you whose. Mind you, if you really want to find him, I could tell you somewhere he’s bound to be.”
“Then I think you’d better tell me.” Behind the rimless glasses Carole’s grey eyes were steely.
“It’s Fontwell races day after tomorrow. No way Donal won’t be at Fontwell. If you want to find him, that’s going to be your best bet.”
“Thank you very much,” said Carole Seddon. Then she put down her hardly touched glass of wine on a nearby table and stalked, with considerable dignity, out of the Cheshire Cheese.
Jude, not wishing to spoil her friend’s exit, put down her completely untouched glass, and hurried after her.
27
“WHAT’S THAT IN the back?” asked Jude, as Carole sedately drove the Renault the eleven miles from Fethering to Fontwell Park racecourse.
“Erm…well…”
Jude looked round at the purple straw creation she had last seen at Stephen and Gaby’s wedding.
“It’s a hat, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Carole conceded.
“Did you bring that for today?”
“Well, quite honestly, I wasn’t sure what the form was. I’ve never been racing before.”
“And the only racing you’ve seen has been when it’s made it onto the national news?”
“Maybe.”
“In other words, Royal Ascot.” It was only then Jude noticed that, under her doughty Burberry, her neighbour was dressed in the full purple wedding outfit.
“Um, Carole, a Thursday Fontwell meeting in early March isn’t quite like Ascot. It’s quite low-key in terms of dress.”
“So I won’t look underdressed?”
“Good heavens, no. Rather the reverse. I suggest you keep your raincoat firmly belted up.”
“And don’t wear the hat?” asked Carole a little wistfully.
“Definitely don’t wear the hat.”
“Oh.”
“I promise you, you’ll be the only person there dressed anything like that. There’ll be plenty of Burberrys, and Barbours, and Drizabones, and quite a few sheepskins, but no wedding outfits. We’re not going to the royal enclosure. And it is only national hunt.”
“Sorry? I thought it was racing, not hunting. And isn’t hunting illegal these days?”
“Carole, you don’t know anything about racing, you do?”
“Why should I? I spent my career in the Civil Service, not hanging round racecourses.”
“Well, listen, there are two sorts of racing in this country: national hunt and the flat.”
“The flat?”
“Yes. And the flat, as the name might suggest, is run on the flat.”
“Not uphill, you mean?”
“No, there are hills on flat courses. Some are very hilly, like Epsom, for instance. But it’s called ‘flat racing’ because there are no jumps or hurdles.”
The tone of Carole’s “Ah” suggested Jude wasn’t getting her message across. “National Hunt races are run over jumps or hurdles. The horses not only have to run fast, but they also have to negotiate a series of obstacles. These might be fences in a steeplechase, or in a hurdle race, as the name suggests, they’d be hurdles. Then there are different sorts of races within those categories and…”
The expression on her neighbour’s face for a moment dried up Jude’s supply of words.
“Never mind.” She picked up again. “The details aren’t important. The main thing is that it’s fun. The element of chance, having a flutter. You know, there are very few things to beat that moment when your fancy is nearly winning and on the next few seconds depend your chances of making some huge multiple of your stake and…”
Carole’s expression had the same dehydrating effect once again.
“Have you ever actually gambled, Carole?”
“Good heavens, no.”
Carole thought they were rather expensive, but Jude insisted they buy tickets for the premier enclosure. They didn’t know whereabouts on the course Donal was going to be, and that way they’d have access to the whole area.
Walking across the mud from where they’d parked to the enclosures, Carole stepped fastidiously, wishing she hadn’t put on the least sensible shoes she possessed, but looked around at the crowd with diminishing anxiety. She had been expecting to spend the afternoon surrounded by clones of the men in the Cheshire Cheese; to her relief, however, the crowds ambling cheerfully in the same direction seemed, well, middle class. And from the occasional Sloaney squawk she heard, some of them were very definitely upper class. Camilla Parker-Bowles seemed to have been cloned many times over.
For all the crowd members, what they were doing seemed completely natural. For them, going to the races was clearly a regular occurrence. They had the accoutrements—old-fashioned trench coats and Barbours against the weather, green Wellingtons, soft dark olive trilbies (for women as well as men). Many carried battered binoculars on whose straps hung the coloured strings of former day badges. From the lapels of the hardened race-goers dangled the metal badges of life members. Though Carole could not suppress the thought that not many of these people had any work to go to, she could not deny that they comprised one of the least threatening crowds she had ever encountered.
Inside the premier enclosure there was another expense to be dealt with. “We’ve got to get race cards,” Jude insisted.
“But we’re here to look for Donal, not waste the afternoon watching horses.”
“Carole, we’re here at the races. It would be sacrilege for us not to have a bet.”
The look prompted by that suggested there were many things in life more sacrilegious, but the race cards were duly bought.
“Hm. First race is a two-mile-six and a half-hurdle, so we’ll watch from the grandstand.”
“I’m sorry? What do you mean?”
“Fontwell’s got two courses. The hurdles go round in an oval; the steeplechase course is a figure-of-eight. On the chases, it’s quite fun to go and watch from the middle. You can get very close to the jumps.”
Carole looked at Jude in bewilderment. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“I have been racing before.”
“Yes, but not here.”
“Of course here.”
“Why?”
“Well, you move into an area, you look around for things. You want to see what the place has to offer, don’t you?”
Carole didn’t reply. When she’d first arrived in Fethering, she had looked around for a supermarket, a doctor, a dentist, and left it at that. The idea of checking out the local racecourse was completely alien to her.
“Anyway, let’s go and look at the runners.”
“Why?”
“Because we want to know what they look like. Might get an idea of which one will win.”
“Do you actually know anything about racehorses, Jude?”
“I know as much as the average punter does.”
“Which is?”
“I know if I like the look of one; I know if I like its name, or the colours it’s wearing, or its jockey’s bottom.”
“And you actually bet according to that kind of…whim?”
“Yes. That’s what most people do. And you have as good a chance of winning as by any other method.”
“It doesn’t soun
d very logical.”
“Carole, logic and gambling are two words that don’t fit in the same sentence.”
All that got was a sniff.
“And another reason for going to the parade ring is that it’s exactly the kind of place where we might see Donal.”
As Jude knew, Fontwell Park was a small racecourse, with its parade ring to the left just inside the entrance. Behind it were the large stalls where the horses were saddled before being led round the brick oval, in the grassy centre of which their owners and “connections” stood and speculated. All of them dreamed of winning, but a convention amongst them dictated that no one ever said anything more optimistic than, “So long as the horse gets round all right—that’s the only thing I’m worried about.”
Carole and Jude wriggled through the growing crowds around the parade ring to find a foothold on the paved viewing steps. For a while, Carole scanned the jovial sea of faces for the elusive Donal, but soon she found that her eyes were drawn to the horses. Someone who had rarely been near to a real horse could not fail to be impressed by the sheer size and elegance of the creatures. In a few moments all but three of them would be condemned by the punters as useless donkeys, but now, clip-clopping beside their stable lads (mostly female), they did look truly beautiful.
And it was a nice sharp day, whose thin sun suggested spring wasn’t that far away. The fact that they were now into March was comforting; it was so much more optimistic a month than February. Carole, as she had done so many times since she had moved to Fethering, thawed a little. Maybe going to the races wasn’t such a pointless pastime, after all.
“Well, I’m Random Missile,” said Jude.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Random Missile. Number Four. Going to walk it.”
“Do you know something? Do you have inside information?” asked Carole, like a character out of early Le Carré.
“No, I told you. There’s no science to it. I just like the look of the horse.”
“I’m sure there could be science applied to it. If you assessed all the variables—you know, the horse’s fitness, where it had run before, who it had beaten, who it had lost to…”
“Carole, don’t go down that road. The world is full enough already of people who’ve worked out infallible systems for getting winners, and let me tell you, none of them work.”
“But if one were going to bet”—doing one’s supermarket shopping on Mars sounded a likelier option—“wouldn’t it be better to do it in an informed manner?”
“Depends on how you get your thrills. What I like about betting is that it’s random. That’s why I’m going to back Random Missile.”
“Just because of the name?”
“Yes, and the fact that I like the look of him…and the fact that his stable girl has a nice-coloured scrunchy in her hair.”
“Sometimes I just don’t believe you, Jude. You’re really going to put money on it?”
“Of course I am. Come on, you just look at the horses. Tell me which one you think’ll win.”
“‘Think’ll win’ or ‘like the look of’?”
“Whichever. It comes to the same thing.”
Carole scrutinised all the circling horses with calculating care. Then she pointed to a tall grey. “That one.”
“Number Seven.” Jude consulted her race card. “Gerry’s Tyke. Not a bad choice. Will probably start favourite.”
“You mean I’ve picked the winner?”
“You’ve picked the one most people think’ll win.”
“Oh?”
“Which is a very different thing. Come on, let me show you where the bookies are.”
They dismounted from the viewing steps. As they moved away, the jockeys in their bright silks were starting to appear on the central green of the parade ring, chatting with eager politeness to their paymasters and eyeing up the opposition. As Carole and Jude walked up towards the stands, aromas of curry and onions and chips wafted from the high vans dispensing them. Large men with beer in plastic glasses milled around, but nothing threatened. The atmosphere remained benign, anticipatory, everyone having a good day out.
Jude led Carole through the milling bodies in a passage between the stands that led to the trackside area. Here two rows of bookies plied their trade, the more modern with the horses’ names and odds red on electronic displays, but the majority still relying on printed cards, a felt pen to write up the odds and a finger to wipe them away.
“You can bet on the tote, but I much prefer doing it with the bookies. You can see the odds change from minute to minute.”
Carole nodded, as if she had a clue what she was being told. Jude pointed up at a bookie’s board. “See, Random Missile’s at twenty-fives. Gerry’s Tyke’s eleven-to-eight favourite.”
“Ah.”
“Ooh.” Jude suddenly darted along the row. By the time Carole struggled her way through the crowd to catch up, she saw her friend holding up a ten-pound note to another bookie. “Tenner on Random Missile.”
“Three hundred and thirty pound to ten, Number Four,” said the bookmaker, for the benefit of the recorder behind him, and waited till a ticket was printed out to hand to Jude.
“Why that bookmaker rather than the other one?” asked Carole.
“Because he was offering thirty-three to one. The other was only at twenty-fives.”
“Ah.”
“Which means I win 330 quid.”
“If the horse wins.”
“He will win. I know it.”
“How do you know it?”
“I just do.”
“Hmph,” said Carole.
“Ooh, look! They’re offering seven to four on yours over there.”
“What?”
“Seven to four on Gerry’s Tyke. Go on, grab it; won’t last long.”
“Are you suggesting that I should actually bet on the horse?”
“Yes. You think it’s going to win, don’t you?”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“I’d have thought it was exactly the point.”
“Well, I’m not going to bet on it,” said Carole primly. “I didn’t spend all those years contributing to my pension so that I could fritter it all away on horses.”
“Okay. Your decision.” Overhead the tannoy crackled welcomes to the visitors and announced that the horses were coming out onto the course for the first race. “Come on, Carole, let’s get a good vantage point in the stands.”
At the narrow gate from the bookmakers’ area, a red-faced man in a blazer checked their day badges and let them through into the premier enclosure.
“There’s the winning post, you see,” said Jude. “If we get right up into the stands on a line with this, we’ll get a perfect view of the finish.”
Though the crowds were now starting to stream through from the other parts of the course, Carole and Jude were ahead of the rush and managed to secure a good vantage point on the highest of the cement steps overlooking the winning post.
“They start over there for this one.” Jude pointed to the farside of the course, where a blur of moving colours could just be discerned.
“You can see why people bring binoculars,” Carole observed.
“Don’t worry. There’ll be a running commentary while the race is on. There are whole areas of the course that are out of sight. In terms of seeing everything, you do better watching racing on television, but of course it’s more exciting when you’re actually here.”
“Are you telling me, Jude, that you sometimes watch horse racing on television?”
“Yes, of course I do. When I’m bored. But I don’t always have a bet.”
Deflated, Carole let the air puff out of her mouth, with the expression of a woman who had now heard everything.
The buzz of excitement around them grew as more and more people crammed into the stands. The grassy area below, near the winning post, was also filling up, and the level of decibels and excitement mounted as the start approached. Steam rose off the
crowd in the March air and dissolved into the high roof of the stand.
Then, with their crackling pre-echoes, the loudspeakers announced the magic words, “They’re under starter’s orders. They’re off!”
As the commentary rumbled around the track, Carole found it difficult to pick out the individual words, but she kept hearing the name of Random Missile. From their vantage point, they could just about see the start, then the horses went almost out of sight down the bottom of the course, but became clearer as they entered the straight.
The commentary also seemed to become clearer at that point—or maybe Carole’s ears were just getting used to the strange sound quality—and there was no doubt from what was being said that Random Missile was way out ahead. Ten lengths, twelve lengths. To her surprise, Carole found herself clutching Jude’s arm. “Goodness,” she said, “yours is winning!”
“Yes, at the moment, but—”
“Ssh! He’s coming up to the finish!”
Random Missile, by now some twenty lengths ahead of his nearest rival, flashed past the post. Carole, uncharacteristically, found herself jumping in the air. “Jude!” she shrieked. “Random Missile’s won! You’ve won three hundred and thirty pounds!”
Perhaps it was the good-humoured laughter from the punters around them, or it could have been the fact that the horses all continued running that made Carole realise something was wrong. Crestfallen, she looked at her neighbour for an explanation.
“They’ve got two more circuits to go.” Jude was trying desperately hard not to sound patronising. “The one who wins will be the one who’s ahead the third time they pass the post.”
“Oh,” said Carole.
By the next time the horses passed the stands, Random Missile’s lead had been cut down to nothing, and as they climbed to the top of the course, he seemed to have found a reverse gear and was slipping back through the pack. Jude jutted out a rueful lower lip. “He never was going to stay in this going.”
Carole didn’t ask for a gloss on this; she got the gist.