by Sam O'Brien
Chapter 5
Ten years later - Ireland
April 2004
He groaned as he lifted his arm to pivot the fork-load of steaming horse manure up in the air and into the trailer. It was sheer drudgery; brainless, mechanical work that could be done on autopilot, and Oliver had to spend hours doing it. Every day. The rain poured down all around him and on him; it collected in deep pools in the gravel of the yard outside.
Oliver finished that stable and climbed onto the tractor. The rain had flooded the seat on the old wreck. He tried to wipe it off a bit, not that it really mattered. He was soaked already from the constant, driving rain. He moved the tractor and jumped off into the next stable, glancing at one of the other guys who had stopped to send a text. Typical.
There were forty-four stables to be cleaned out every day and, although he was the manager, he had to be there to set the pace. His days were always busy, making sure all his employers’ horses were attended to properly, but he knew as soon as he went into the office or off to the sales to buy fresh horses, the four guys that worked under him would all just sit around smoking and drinking tea. They were useless lazy bums, really. He would love to fire them all and hire proper horsemen who cared about the animals, but at the same time, Oliver couldn’t really blame them. They were being paid the minimum wage, expected to work all hours God sent, and had no interest in the animals or the job. Not that the boss cared; he just wanted cheap labour. So the stress and drudgery continued, day in, day out.
Oliver stopped shovelling and stared out into the rain. How had it all got to this? He wondered. Life had to be better than this; it just had to. He was worn out.
All those years ago, after his New York adventure, he had moved on from Lexington. There were stints in Australia and Argentina, where he had worked and played hard, building his knowledge all the time. By the time he came home to Ireland, he was looking for a real challenge.
He thought he had found that in David Gorman, a successful businessman whose huge ego compensated for his diminutive stature. The man had made a fortune in property and hotels, and was retiring early to set up a stud farm to own and breed top class racehorses. He wanted to put together a young, dynamic team, or so he told Oliver when they had first met. He waved money at Oliver, plus the promise of glory, independence, and a chance to prove himself. Oliver had jumped at the opportunity.
Some land was bought in Cork, not far from where Oliver grew up in Limerick, and the stud farm was designed and built by Oliver. The future looked bright. Oliver devoutly believed that hard work always paid off, so he threw his heart and soul into the place. However, he began to realize that while Gorman was willing to invest – to a point – in horses, he constantly refused to invest in a team of staff or quality infrastructure, and he always wanted more than his pound of flesh. He could never understand that horses were living, breathing, athletic bundles of energy; to Gorman, they were commodities. So the more Oliver gave to his work, the more that was expected.
More, more, always more.
His phone rang, bringing him back to the present. He fished out the device.
“Morning, Boss. How are you?”
“I’m going through the accounts, the farrier bills have gone up again,” Gorman said in his affected southside Dublin accent. “I told you about this before. I thought I ordered you to get this guy to put his prices down.”
“I know,” Oliver sighed, and rolled his eyes. “But as I said, he’s already doing us a good rate. If we beat him down any more, he’ll just stop coming.”
“Then we’ll get another one. Jesus, farriers are ten-a-penny, it’s not exactly brain surgery; not that you’d know it from the bills. Besides, he should be honoured to work with my horses.”
“Farriers may be ten-a-penny, but not good ones.”
“Look, the bottom line is: he’s more expensive than most.”
“Sorry, Mr. Gorman, like I said before, from a horse management point of view, this guy’s top class. He’s worth the money. Remember that job he did last year on the colt who got his foot stuck in a gate and ripped a part of it off?”
“Hmm, the way I remember it, that was down to your fucking negligence.”
“My negligence? I wasn’t the one flying down the fenceline on a quad bike, showing off to my girlfriend.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Why don’t you ask your nephew?”
“What? That’s it! I want you in my office now.”
“I can’t leave the yard while the mucking out’s being done, or they’ll never get finished.”
“Shit shovelling. That’s all you’re good at, isn’t it? Get yourself to my office at four this afternoon, and don’t be late.”
The line went dead.
“I never am,” Oliver said into the phone. He sighed, stuffed the damp handset back in his pocket, and turned to pick up his fork.
Whenever Gorman treated him like this, he wished he had someone to talk to or share his frustration, but there was nobody to come home to. In the beginning, he had shut himself away in the stud. The odd girlfriend came and went, but none would put up with his obsession with work. Before he knew it, he was alone.
When he finally opened his eyes to the reality of his job, seven years had passed. He was stuck, and had nobody to share it with. The happy-go-lucky Oliver had been trodden into the ground. He used to get an occasional respite by going out partying in Dublin with his friends, but one by one they had settled down, got married and moved on with their lives. These days, Oliver stayed in, except to take his mother shopping, or to dinner, or to one of her bridge tournaments. He sometimes considered leaving but, as bad as it was, he kept believing that his work would pay off and that Gorman would change. And part of him was afraid to take the initial step into the unknown.
Meanwhile, over the past decade, his brother Richard’s ventures had gone from strength to strength. Since graduating from Trinity College with a first in his degree, he had borrowed money to set up a taxi and minibus service around an expanding provincial town in the Irish midlands, specializing in pub-runs and trips to sports matches. The vehicles were all top of the range, giving customers a feeling of luxury, and his flyers – Pick-me-up Cabs; anytime, anywhere – were in every pub, club and place of work within a sixty mile radius. He had swiftly annihilated the pitiful opposition by having his drivers available twenty-four-seven, and his cars outside nightclubs to entice tired, drunk customers.
By the time he had a regional monopoly in the midlands, the newly-appointed Minister for Transport announced that his department was to initiate a rural program of intensive breathalyser checkpoints as part of the war on road safety. It put the fear of God into drinkers, and ensured that this ever-expanding fleet was constantly busy. Some ugly rumours went around that Richard had resorted to bribing some of the local Gardai to be extra vigilant. This was strongly denied by the local officers, and one journalist was threatened with legal action. But years later, after a few too many brandies during dinner with his mother and Oliver, Richard had joked, “Oh, the Guards! Gifted men! Some coincidence alright, that drink-driving war. Gifted men!” Then he’d abruptly changed the subject, but the words stayed with Oliver.
His brother expanded the business to take in the rural northwest, and soon after that, he sold up for a handsome profit to a syndicate of local businessmen, three of whom were the sons of retired Gardai. Richard promptly used his success, money and influence to find investors to back him in his next venture. He took the then unbelievable risk of setting up an airline to provide mass-market, cheaply-priced travel, to and from Ireland.
He bought a failing regional airline for peanuts, sold off their old planes to somewhere in Africa, and was brave and charismatic enough to charm the right people to invest in new aircraft. Through hard work and a very tough business style, it paid off. There were some initial stories that he had won certain choice routes and slots a little too easily, and that some politicians enjoyed a v
ery cosy relationship with him, but again these soon died down with the threat of legal action.
All this success, and he wasn’t even a nice guy. The fucker, muttered Oliver, whenever he thought of him. Why did the assholes always succeed? Their father had been so proud of Richard, and never let an occasion pass to remind Oliver what a success his brother was.
“Yeah, yeah, Dad. He’s brilliant, isn’t he?”
“He’s got the balls to get things done, unlike some around here.”
Whenever he felt down, the same old ghosts came back to haunt him.
At ten to four that afternoon, Oliver crossed the yard and let himself through the gate leading to the office and his boss’s house. He winced when his eyes met the sprawling modern complex that Gorman had built to deface this lovely former dairy farm. The house was a modern monument to ostentation. It looked like somebody had stuck a large blue and white mushroom in amongst the old beech trees. Some of the neighbours had even nicknamed it The Smurf House. It was the only part of the development that had nothing to do with Oliver, and to make matters worse, it reminded him of the monstrosity his own brother had built for himself in the midlands.
He opened the office door, kicked off his wellies onto the mat and padded into the empty reception area. The secretary had long since quit and not been replaced. Instead, the pair of beady-eyed accountants who occupied the small office next to the boss, were charged with answering the phone. When it came to horse matters, most people chose to call Oliver directly on his mobile.
He nodded to Tim and Pat, who studied him intently as he made his way into the wood-panelled cavern that was Gorman’s office. Tim made a noise to get Oliver’s attention, which he studiously ignored. He was not in the mood to discuss penny-pinching with the bean counter.
“The only thing that matters is the bottom line,” he frequently droned at Oliver. When Oliver explained that the bottom line was producing top-class racehorses, the accountant’s face would glaze over.
Oliver shut the door and was surprised to find himself alone in the huge room. He checked his watch and his eye drifted to the trophy cabinets. Memories flooded back as he scanned the silverware and photographs, but he felt slightly disconnected from them. Although he had done all the hard work selecting, raising and pre-training these elite racehorses, he had never been allowed to go to the races to see them perform. In the last five racing seasons, Oliver had bought horses which had won eighteen Group One or Classic races; the highest achievement possible on a racecourse. Other blueblooded steeds had won many of Britain and Ireland’s major handicaps, not to mention the victories in ordinary everyday races.
Overall, the percentage of winners to horses bought was a staggering seventy percent – simply unheard of. Not a single individual horse had cost more than a hundred thousand Euro, and later many of them were sold on for a fortune in America or the Middle East, except for the pick of the females, who were brought back to the farm for breeding.
Much to Oliver’s disgust, Gorman simply refused to pay the high fees to use the country’s best stallions. Instead, he followed fashion and used the cheapest, unproven commercial horses, and many of the foals were not up to the standard they should have been. This only added to Oliver’s disgruntlement.
His eye caught the picture of his boss receiving the Epsom Derby trophy from the Queen of England, after Nephew’s Choice – named after Diarmuid, the so-called horse expert relation of the childless Gorman – had romped home by three lengths. Oliver had watched the race at home on TV that day, and Gorman wouldn’t even answer his phone when Oliver tried to contact him afterwards.
He hissed in disgust and turned his gaze to the gable end of the room and the oil painting of the horse, which had been sold to Japan for fifteen million Euro, after adding the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and the Irish Champion Stakes to his resume, and second place in the Prix De L’Arc De Triomphe. Oliver had desperately tried to convince Gorman to keep Nephew’s Choice and stand him as a stallion at the farm, but to no avail. The lure of the money won the day.
Oliver and the staff saw not a penny of the fifteen million. Not a penny. No mention of the bottom line after that deal. He nearly vomited every time he looked at the photo of Gorman and his nephew in the parade ring at Longchamp before the Prix De L’Arc, surrounded by the Japanese.
Gorman had an unerring method of editing Oliver out of the picture at the horse sales, too. They bought weanling foals, because they were cheaper than race-ready yearlings and Oliver could feed and raise them to maximise their athletic potential. Gorman would dispatch Oliver to the foal sales with this favoured nephew, Diarmuid – a snotty, spoiled know-it-all, who gambled plenty on horses, but had never worked with them or bothered to observe them. One of his favourite pursuits was racing around the farm on his quad bike, or posing as a country gent. He had just graduated from university with a degree in Equine Science, and styled himself as a bloodstock agent. Gorman was very proud, and assigned him to work with Oliver to make the preliminary checks.
Oliver hated having to drag the lazy little shit along with him and answer his mundane, idiotic questions. On top of it all, he would inform his uncle if Oliver discussed business with anyone else at the sales. When Oliver had looked at all the horses, compiled shortlists and formed his opinions, his boss would arrive the morning of the sale, meet with him and Diarmuid in the privacy of a hotel room, and take Oliver’s sale catalogue from him, containing all his notes. Gorman would then team up with Diarmuid, and the two would buy the top selections from Oliver’s list. It was Diarmuid’s name that always appeared as the buyer.
Oliver was usually instructed to wait in the hotel until any foals selling later in the week arrived on the sale grounds. He was then to examine these – discreetly, of course – and give a further report. He would then be sent back to the farm. Oliver waited for the day there would be some kind of crisis on sale day, which would require his presence. But if there was one, the call never came.
Some people in the industry began to suspect that the quiet, focused guy at the sales was doing the real groundwork for Gorman and his nephew, but most people never put two and two together, especially as Oliver wasn’t even listed as the Stud Manager in the industry directory. They assumed that Diarmuid really was a judge of horses. And over the years, Gorman started to believe it was all down to his skill and vision – nothing to do with Oliver. Just like he believed his success with property and hotels had all been down to him, and nothing to do with the Celtic Tiger opportunities or the re-zoning of land he purchased for peanuts.
After each sale, Oliver received the purchases. They would be nourished and grown into young athletes for the next twelve months or so, before being carefully and gently broken-in, pre-trained, and finally sent off to trainers that he was required to select for Gorman.
Chapter 6
“Ah, you managed to get here on time,” a voice boomed behind him. David Gorman was a prissy man in his late fifties, with a thinning head of dyed hair and a deep sunbed tan. His reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose and his usual grin was plastered on.
He had crept in to stand at Oliver’s shoulder, admiring the painting. “Some day that. My name forever on the Derby roll of honour.” He clapped his hands together and his grin collapsed into a thunderous grimace, making him look a bit like an evil goblin. “Right, first: how dare you bring Diarmuid’s name into it? He’s a university graduate. He knows horses and has a degree to prove it. What formal qualification have you got?” Gorman arched his eyebrows over his reading glasses. “If you’d installed proper gates around the farm, then the animal would never have caught its foot.”
Oliver’s mouth hung slightly agape.
Gorman plopped himself down at the head of the large mahogany edifice he liked to call the executive table; though exactly where the executives and directors were in this dictatorship, was beyond Oliver. He was not invited to sit.
“But . . . But two years ago I put in a writte
n request to have all the gates fitted with wire grills, specifically so this kind of thing would never happen, but Tim and Pat refused it.”
“I don’t recall that. Anyway, we’ve been over this before,” he waved his hand dismissively. “I called you in here because I want you to change farriers immediately. I’m not paying another cent to that robber.”
“He’s one of the best in the country, he’s worth every penny.”
“Fire him. Today.”
Oliver opened his mouth as if to retaliate, but closed it again. His words had always fallen on deaf ears, and now he simply didn’t have the energy to go at it again.
Gorman glanced up at him over his reading glasses, a flicker of satisfaction in his eyes.
“I’ll call him and meet him somewhere, break the news face-to-face.”
“No, you’ll call him and tell him over the phone. You’re not wasting my fucking diesel and time going to see him. What do you care anyway? Unless you’re taking a cut of his extortionate rates?”
Oliver was speechless at the accusation. Surely Gorman didn’t really believe that? He wanted to rant and rave at the little fucker, but he bit his lip, turned on his heel and left. He felt like spitting on the polished glass of the trophy cabinet as he made his way out.
Chapter 7
The next day, the sun shone. It was the first glorious day in a few months, and Oliver took advantage of it to walk the paddocks and assess the yearlings running about, playing with their peers. He felt it was important to allow them as much time in their natural environment as possible, and liked to keep them in one big group where they could develop their natural herd instincts.