by Dick Francis
‘… gave him a bloody great bucket full of water half an hour before the race, and didn’t need any dope to stop him with all that sloshing about inside his gut.’
‘Poured half a bottle of whisky down his throat.’
‘… used to tube horses which couldn’t breathe properly on the morning of the race until they found it wasn’t the extra fresh air that was making the horses win but the cocaine they stuffed them full of for the operation…’
‘They caught him with a hollow apple packed with sleeping pills…’
‘… dropped a syringe right in front of an effing steward.’
‘I wonder if there’s anything which hasn’t been tried yet?’ I said.
‘Black magic. Not much else left,’ said the pretty boy.
They all laughed.
‘Someone might find something so good,’ I pointed out casually, ‘that it couldn’t be detected, so the people who thought of it could go on with it for ever and never be found out.’
‘Blimey,’ exclaimed the cheerful lad, ‘you’re a comfort, aren’t you? God help racing, if that happened. You’d never know where you were. The bookies would all be climbing the walls.’ He grinned hugely.
The elderly little man was not so amused.
‘It’s been going on for years and years,’ he said, nodding solemnly. ‘Some trainers have got it to a fine art, you mark my words. Some trainers have been doping their horses regular, for years and years.’
But the other lads didn’t agree. The dope tests had done for the dope-minded trainers of the past; they had lost their licences, and gone out of racing. The old rule had been a bit unfair on some, they allowed, when a trainer had been automatically disqualified if one of his horses had been doped. It wasn’t always the trainer’s fault, especially if the horse had been doped to lose. What trainer, they asked, would nobble a horse he’d spent months training to win? But they thought there was probably more doping since that rule was changed, not less.
‘Stands to reason, a doper knows now he isn’t ruining the trainer for life, just one horse for one race. Makes it sort of easier on his conscience, see? More lads, maybe, would take fifty quid for popping the odd aspirin into the feed if they knew the stable wouldn’t be shut down and their jobs gone for a burton very soon afterwards.’
They talked on, thoughtful and ribald; but it was clear that they didn’t know anything about the eleven horses I was concerned with. None of them, I knew, came from any of the stables involved, and obviously they had not read the speculative reports in the papers, or if they had, had read them separately over a period of eighteen months, and not in one solid, collected, intense bunch, as I had done.
The talk faltered and died into yawns, and we went chatting to bed, I sighing to myself with relief that I had gone through the evening without much notice having been taken of me.
By watching carefully what the other lads did, I survived the next day also without any curious stares. In the early afternoon I took Sparking Plug from the stables into the paddock, walked him round the parade ring, stood holding his head while he was saddled, led him round the parade ring again, held him while the jockey mounted, led him out on to the course, and went up into the little stand by the gate with the other lads to watch the race.
Sparking Plug won. I was delighted. I met him again at the gate and led him into the spacious winner’s unsaddling enclosure.
Colonel Beckett was there, waiting, leaning on a stick. He patted the horse, congratulated the jockey, who unbuckled his saddle and departed into the weighing room, and said to me sardonically, ‘That’s a fraction of his purchase price back, anyway.’
‘He’s a good horse, and absolutely perfect for his purpose.’
‘Good. Do you need anything else?’
‘Yes. A lot more details about those eleven horses… where they were bred, what they ate, whether they had had any illnesses, what cafés their box drivers used, who made their bridles, whether they had racing plates fitted at the meetings, and by which blacksmiths… anything and everything.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘But they had nothing in common except that they were doped.’
‘As I see it, the question really is what was it that they had in common that made it possible for them to be doped.’ I smoothed Sparking Plug’s nose. He was restive and excited after his victory. Colonel Beckett looked at me with sober eyes.
‘Mr Roke, you shall have your information.’
I grinned at him. ‘Thank you; and I’ll take good care of Sparking Plug… he’ll win you all the purchase price, before he’s finished.’
‘Horses away,’ called an official: and with a weak-looking gesture of farewell from Colonel Beckett’s limp hand, I took Sparking Plug back to the racecourse stables and walked him round until he had cooled off.
There were far more lads in the hostel that evening as it was the middle night of the two-day meeting, and this time, besides getting the talk round again to doping and listening attentively to everything that was said, I also tried to give the impression that I didn’t think taking fifty quid to point out a certain horse’s box in his home stable to anyone prepared to pay that much for the information was a proposition I could be relied on to turn down. I earned a good few disapproving looks for this, and also one sharply interested glance from a very short lad whose outsize nose sniffed monotonously.
In the washroom in the morning he used the basin next to me, and said out of the side of his mouth, ‘Did you mean it, last night, that you’d take fifty quid to point out a box?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t see why not.’
He looked round furtively. It made me want to laugh. ‘I might be able to put you in touch with someone who’d be interested to hear that – for fifty per cent cut.’
‘You’ve got another think coming,’ I said offensively. ‘Fifty per cent… what the hell do you think I am?’
‘Well… a fiver, then,’ he sniffed, climbing down.
‘I dunno…’
‘I can’t say fairer than that,’ he muttered.
‘It’s a wicked thing, to point out a box,’ I said virtuously, drying my face on a towel.
He stared at me in astonishment.
‘And I couldn’t do it for less than sixty, if you are taking a fiver out of it.’
He didn’t know whether to laugh or spit. I left him to his indecision, and went off grinning to escort Sparking Plug back to Yorkshire.
Chapter 5
Again on Friday evening I went down to the Slaw pub and exchanged bug-eyed looks with Soupy across the room.
On the Sunday half the lads had the afternoon off to go to Burndale for the football and darts matches, and we won both, which made for a certain amount of back slapping and beer drinking. But beyond remarking that I was new, and a blight on their chances in the darts league, the Burndale lads paid me little attention. There was no one like Soupy among them in spite of what October had said about the cases of doping in the village, and no one, as far as I could see, who cared if I were as crooked as a cork-screw.
During the next week I did my three horses, and read the form books, and thought: and got nowhere. Paddy remained cool and so did Wally, to whom Paddy had obviously reported my affinity with Soupy. Wally showed his disapproval by giving me more than my share of the afternoon jobs, so that every day, instead of relaxing in the usual free time between lunch and evening stables at four o’clock, I found myself bidden to sweep the yard, clean the tack, crush the oats, cut the chaff, wash Inskip’s car or clean the windows of the loose boxes. I did it all without comment, reflecting that if I needed an excuse for a quick row and walked out later on I could reasonably, at eleven hours a day, complain of overwork.
However, at Friday midday I set off again with Sparking Plug, this time to Cheltenham, and this time accompanied not only by the box driver but by Grits and his horse, and the head travelling lad as well.
Once in the racecourse stables I learne
d that this was the night of the dinner given to the previous season’s champion jockey, and all the lads who were staying there overnight proposed to celebrate by attending a dance in the town. Grits and I, therefore, having bedded down our horses, eaten our meal, and smartened ourselves up, caught a bus down the hill and paid our entrance money to the hop. It was a big hall and the band was loud and hot, but not many people were yet dancing. The girls were standing about in little groups eyeing larger groups of young men, and I bit back just in time a remark on how odd I found it; Grits would expect me to think it normal. I took him off into the bar where there were already groups of lads from the racecourse mingled with the local inhabitants, and bought him a beer, regretting that he was with me to see what use I intended to make of the evening. Poor Grits, he was torn between loyalty to Paddy and an apparent liking for me, and I was about to disillusion him thoroughly. I wished I could explain. I was tempted to spend the evening harmlessly. But how could I justify passing over an unrepeatable opportunity just to keep temporarily the regard of one slow-witted stable lad, however much I might like him? I was committed to earning ten thousand pounds.
‘Grits, go and find a girl to dance with.’
He gave me a slow grin. ‘I don’t know any.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Any of them would be glad to dance with a nice chap like you. Go and ask one.’
‘No. I’d rather stay with you.’
‘All right, then. Have another drink.’
‘I haven’t finished this.’
I turned round to the bar, which we had been leaning against, and banged my barely touched half pint down on the counter. ‘I’m fed up with this pap,’ I said violently. ‘Hey, you, barman, give me a double whisky.’
‘Dan!’ Grits was upset at my tone, which was a measure of its success. The barman poured the whisky and took my money.
‘Don’t go away,’ I said to him in a loud voice. ‘Give me another while you’re at it.’
I felt rather than saw the group of lads further up the bar turn round and take a look, so I picked up the glass and swallowed all the whisky in two gulps and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. I pushed the empty glass across to the barman and paid for the second drink.
‘Dan,’ Grits tugged my sleeve, ‘do you think you should?’
‘Yes,’ I said, scowling. ‘Go and find a girl to dance with.’
But he didn’t go. He watched me drink the second whisky and order a third. His eyes were troubled.
The bunch of lads edged towards us along the bar.
‘Hey, fella, you’re knocking it back a bit,’ observed one, a tallish man of my own age in a flashy bright blue suit.
‘Mind your own ruddy business,’ I said rudely.
‘Aren’t you from Inskip’s?’ he asked.
‘Yea… Inskip’s… bloody Inskip’s’ I picked up the third glass. I had a hard head for whisky, which was going down on top of a deliberately heavy meal. I reckoned I could stay sober a long time after I would be expected to be drunk; but the act had to put on early, while the audience were still sober enough themselves to remember it clearly afterwards.
‘Eleven sodding quid,’ I told them savagely, ‘that’s all you get for sweating your guts out seven days a week.’
It struck a note with some of them, but Blue-suit said, ‘Then why spend it on whisky?’
‘Why bloody not? It’s great stuff-gives you a kick. And, by God, you need something in this job.’
Blue-suit said to Grits, ‘Your mate’s got an outsized gripe.’
‘Well…’ said Grits, his face anxious, ‘I suppose he has had a lot of extra jobs this week, come to think…’
‘You’re looking after horses they pay thousands for and you know damn well that the way you ride and groom them and look after them makes a hell of a lot of difference to whether they win or not, and they grudge you a decent wage…’ I finished the third whisky, hiccupped and said, ‘It’s bloody unfair.’
The bar was filling up, and from the sight of them and from what I could catch of their greetings to each other, at least half the customers were in some way connected with racing. Bookmakers’ clerks and touts as well as stable lads – the town was stuffed with them, and the dance had been put on to attract them. A large amount of liquor began disappearing down their collective throats, and I had to catch the barman on the wing to serve my fourth double whisky in fifteen minutes.
I stood facing a widening circle with the glass in my hand, and rocked slightly on my feet.
‘I want,’ I began. What on earth did I want? I searched for the right phrases. ‘I want… a motor-bike. I want to show a bird a good time. And go abroad for a holiday… and stay in a swank hotel and have them running about at my beck and call… and drink what I like… and maybe one day put a deposit on a house… and what chance do I have of any of these? I’ll tell you. Not a snowball’s hope in hell. You know what I got in my pay packet this morning…? Seven pounds and fourpence…’
I went on and on grousing and complaining, and the evening wore slowly away. The audience drifted and changed, and I kept it up until I was fairly sure that all the racing people there knew there was a lad of Inskip’s who yearned for more money, preferably in large amounts. But even Grits, who hovered about with an unhappy air throughout it all and remained cold sober himself, didn’t seem to notice that I got progressively drunker in my actions while making each drink last longer than the one before.
Eventually, after I had achieved an artistic lurch and clutch at one of the pillars, Grits said loudly in my ear, ‘Dan, I’m going now and you’d better go too, or you’ll miss the last bus, and I shouldn’t think you could walk back, like you are.’
‘Huh?’ I squinted at him. Blue-suit had come back and was standing just behind him.
‘Want any help getting him out?’ he asked Grits.
Grits looked at me disgustedly, and I fell against him, putting my arm round his shoulders: I definitely did not want the sort of help Blue-suit looked as though he might give.
‘Grits, me old pal, if you say go, we go.’
We set off for the door, followed by Blue-suit, me staggering so heavily that I pushed Grits sideways. There were by this time a lot of others having difficulty in walking a straight line, and the queue of lads which waited at the bus stop undulated slightly like an ocean swell on a calm day. I grinned in the safe darkness and looked up at the sky, and thought that if the seeds I had sown in all directions bore no fruit there was little doping going on in British racing.
I may not have been drunk, but I woke the next morning with a shattering headache, just the same: all in a good cause, I thought, trying to ignore the blacksmith behind my eyes.
Sparking Plug ran in his race and lost by half a length. I took the opportunity of saying aloud on the lads’ stand that there was the rest of my week’s pay gone down the bloody drain.
Colonel Beckett patted his horse’s neck in the cramped unsaddling enclosure and said casually to me, ‘Better luck next time, eh? I’ve sent you what you wanted, in a parcel.’ He turned away and resumed talking to Inskip and his jockey about the race.
We all went back to Yorkshire that night, with Grits and me sleeping most of the way on the benches in the back of the horse box.
He said reproachfully as he lay down, ‘I didn’t know you hated it at Inskip’s… and I haven’t seen you drunk before either.’
‘It isn’t the work, Grits, it’s the pay.’ I had to keep it up.
‘Still there are some who are married and have kids to keep on what you were bleating about.’ He sounded disapproving, and indeed my behaviour must have affected him deeply, because he seldom spoke to me after that night.
There was nothing of interest to report to October the following afternoon, and our meeting in the gully was brief. He told me however that the information then in the post from Beckett had been collected by eleven keen young officer cadets from Aldershot who had been given the task as an initiative exercise, and told th
ey were in competition with each other to see which of them could produce the most comprehensive report of the life of his allotted horse. A certain number of questions – those I had suggested – were outlined for them. The rest had been left to their own imagination and detective ability, and October said Beckett had told him they had used them to the full.
I returned down the hill more impressed than ever with the Colonel’s staff work, but not as staggered as when the parcel arrived the following day. Wally again found some wretched job for me to do in the afternoon, so that it was not until after the evening meal, when half the lads had gone down to Slaw, that I had an opportunity of taking the package up to the dormitory and opening it. It contained 237 numbered typewritten pages bound into a cardboard folder, like the manuscript of a book, and its production in the space of one week must have meant a prodigious effort not only from the young men themselves, but from the typists as well. The information was given in note form for the most part, and no space had anywhere been wasted in flowing prose: it was solid detail from cover to cover.
Mrs Allnut’s voice floated up the stairs. ‘Dan, come down and fetch me a bucket of coal, will you please?’
I thrust the typescript down inside my bed between the sheets, and went back to the warm, communal kitchen-living-room where we ate and spent most of our spare time. It was impossible to read anything private there, and my life was very much supervised from dawn to bedtime; and the only place I could think of where I could concentrate uninterruptedly on the typescript was the bathroom. Accordingly that night I waited until all the lads were asleep, and then went along the passage and locked myself in, ready to report an upset stomach if anyone should be curious.
It was slow going: after four hours I had read only half. I got up stiffly, stretched, yawned, and went back to bed. Nobody stirred. The following night, as I lay waiting for the others to go to sleep so that I could get back to my task, I listened to them discussing the evening that four of them had spent in Slaw.
‘Who’s that fellow who was with Soupy?’ asked Grits. ‘I haven’t seen him around before.’