“I can’t deny there is something attractive about a working man. It would be even better if you were digging holes, you know, boots, hairy legs, shorts, tool belt, hard hat,” she spat a great gob of toothpaste into the sink.
“That’s just killed the moment, but remind me to have a rummage in the dressing up box when I get home,” he said rummaging once more in the bottom of the wardrobe.
“What have you lost?”
He stood up holding a pair of black leather shoes that looked more like they’d come out of the canal than a wardrobe. He blew the dust off them and held them up.
“No more trainers then?” she understood the significance, change of shoes, change of life.
He put his shirt and trousers on and squeezed into the shoes. His feet felt imprisoned by the firm leather, a foreboding metaphor for the confining nature of a day job.
Ten minutes later Harry closed the gate behind him, it kept the dogs in and the scallies out. He looked up and Peggy was watching him go from the kitchen window that looked out towards the road. She waved and smiled. Despite the butterflies in his stomach, he knew she was rooting for him and the knowledge that someone has got his back made him feel a little better. Until recently she'd never put any pressure on him to ‘get a proper job'. She gave him the time and space to work it out for himself. He knew he was a lucky guy. It was only the forces of external pressures that had pushed her into making him see the reality and not the fantasy of their situation. Harry had always been a dreamer. His favourite quote was Oscar Wilde's, ‘Just because I'm looking out of the window doesn't mean I'm not working.’ The evolution of man was more about roaming the plains than flying a desk. Swapping a spear for a biro was a backwards step in Harry's book.
He felt a bit strange walking to work. It was only a ten-minute walk from the house into the town centre. Harry had never had a job where he could walk to work and he considered it a small bonus. He tentatively pushed open the door into BarryBet and was amazed to see there were already half a dozen punters in at nine in the morning. ‘There can't be any racing on now surely,' he thought, but he was wrong. From the TV monitors, a harsh Australian voice informed him that ‘they were off!' Big Marge stood by the door to the back office. She looked like Cerberus guarding the gates to Hades.
"Morning," her bass-baritone seemed even deeper and rougher at this early hour, "welcome to hell."
“You didn’t say that yesterday,” Harry wondered if he’d been suckered into the job.
“I need the help, I’ve been short staffed for weeks and I didn’t want to put you off. Most of the applicants we get think a newspaper is just something you wrap your chips in.”
"Hey, are you talking about me," said a very pretty brunette emerging from the back office carrying a steaming brew in a mug that proclaimed ‘This Tea Tastes of Minge.'
“If the cap fits,” said Marge.
“I don’t use them, bit tricky with these,” she brandished a slim, fake tanned hand with long bright green false nails painted with miniature flowers, “the pill’s much easier.”
"See what I mean," Big Marge rolled her eyes at me, "say hello to Harry, Kaylee."
“Hiya Harry, welcome to hell,” she offered me her hand and had a remarkably firm shake.
"You've got me worried now, is it really that bad."
“If we didn’t have the punters it would be great.”
“I’ll give you that,” added Marge, “but they’re not all bad.”
“Aarh no, old Ronnie is lovely, he’ll be in soon and Cheeky Jimmy always gives me a tip.”
“He never gives me a tip.”
“That’s cos you don’t flirt with them.”
“I don’t do flirting,” said Marge, a statement Harry believed with absolute certainty.
“You’ll find out pretty quick which are the nice ones and which are the bell-ends,” said Kaylee sipping her coffee and leaving a big red lipstick print on the mug, “most of them are bell-ends.”
Marge handed Harry a thick ring binder.
"That will keep you out of mischief. You can have a seat here by the safe and let me know when you've finished it. Unfortunately, you have to sign the book to say you have read it. Kaylee will make you a brew."
Harry opened the folder, which was a mixture of health and safety advice, how to work the tills, what the names of all the common bets were and what the law was regarding betting, who could gamble and who couldn't. It was a lot more complicated than he had imagined.
“Do you take sugar?” asked Kaylee. She fluttered her long false eyelashes at him and the breeze turned over the next page of the manual.
"No thanks, just milk."
"Oh yeah, sweet enough are you?" She raised a thick dark brown eyebrow that might have been painted on with a yard brush.
“I used to work in a place where my sugar got pinched on a regular basis, so I stopped taking it.”
“They steal everything in here if it’s not nailed down. The cleaner’s the worst, fat cow. Who pinches bog roll FFS?” she asked rhetorically while putting two sugars in his coffee.
Harry was about to mention the sugar then decided it probably wasn’t worth it.
“Don't worry too much about all that crap,” she handed him the brew.
“But I have to sign it off.”
"Yeah but nobody's going to test you on it."
She sat on the big square safe and took another sip of coffee. Her perfume wafted over Harry, it was the same as an old girlfriend used to wear and he was instantly transported back to that time. A flood of memories took him pleasantly out of the dingy back office with its horse racing calendars and faded health and safety posters.
“You’re a quiet one,” Kaylee broke the moment.
“Still a lot to learn.”
“Don’t worry about it, do I look like Einstein?” she looked more like America's Next Top Model, “anyone can do this job, it’s not hard.”
“Have you worked here long?” Harry took a slug of his coffee and the sugar hit was good.
“Is that your best chat up line?” she smiled.
“Yes, but it never works.”
“I'm only kidding, don’t take any notice of me, I like to wind people up, makes the day go faster. I've been here six months but this isn't what I want to do.”
“It's not what anyone wants to do,” said Marge, obviously able to hear everything in the back office from behind the shop counter.
“I'm only here til my little fella is old enough to go to school then I'm going to start my own business.”
“You are looking at the next Apprentice,” quipped Marge.
"You're fired," said Kaylee pointing a well-manicured finger at Big Marge.
“You'll be fired if you don't get in here and serve these Idiots,” Big Marge filled the doorway and pointed Kaylee to the tills.
“Have you finished your studying?” asked Marge.
“Yes, said Harry even though he hadn’t, “I've signed all the pages.”
“Nice one,” she said, “come in here and sit behind the counter and just watch what we do for a bit.”
The counter was on one side of the oblong shop and the staff were separated from the punters by a toughened glass screen that went from the counter to the ceiling, with a gap at the bottom to slide the betting slips through. On the opposite side of the counter was a wall covered with the Racing Post with all the different race meetings for that day. Above the newspapers was a bank of TV monitors. Some of them had advertisements for the different betting shop products, the Irish Lottery, the Lunchtime Bingo, the special offers for that day, odds for football match results, there was a never-ending stream of information for the punters. The middle two monitors had live feeds, one from the Australian race meeting and another from an Australian dog track meeting. To the left of the counter was a shorter wall adorned with the newspaper pages of the dog races, then a door to the customer's toilet and another to the storeroom. At the far end of the shop, a door opened onto the service roa
d behind the shops.
“Do they really bet on Australian stuff?” asked Harry.
"They bet on how many buttons are undone on Nobby the Jobby's flies," replied Kaylee not looking up from filing her nails.
"Haha gross, but how do they know the runners and the form," Harry's curiosity was roused.
“They don't care they just pick the ones with the long eyelashes,” said Kaylee.
“Is that what you would do?”
"I never bet, it's a mug's game."
A rough looking man suddenly appeared in front of the counter and made Harry jump. He was bent over holding up his unbuckled trousers.
"I've just had a big shit but there's no fuckin paper," he said.
Harry was rendered temporarily speechless.
"That fat cow cleaner must have pinched it again," said Kaylee, as if this was an everyday occurrence.
"What am I going to do, I can't use my finger."
As if in proof he held up a sausage-like finger that in all honesty looked as though it had already been used for that purpose, on many occasions.
“We’ll sort it now,” said Marge, “Harry will get one for you.”
She passed me her bunch of jailer’s keys, holding them by one particular key, “Store Room is next to the bog, there should be a packet on the right as you go in.”
“If the Fat Cow Cleaner hasn’t pinched them too,” added Kaylee, still filing her nails.
Harry found the packet of toilet rolls, there was one left, he handed it to the man.
“Cheers mate, you new here?”
“First day.”
"Welcome to hell."
With a devilish cackle, he opened the door to the loo and disappeared to finish the job. A waft of shit that could have been from the very bowels of hell enveloped Harry as the door closed. He coughed, "Oh my God."
The back door swung open and the Worzel Gummidge lookalike that Harry had knocked over the previous day, limped into the shop at the helm of his walker trike.
“Fuckin hell, you stink,” was his greeting to Harry.
It was a bit rich coming from the old guy, he looked like he'd slept in a ditch and smelled like he showered once a year whether he needed it or not.
"It's not him Nobby, it's Richard," shouted Kaylee holding her nose, the glass partition being no defence against arse gas.
“Richard who?” asked Nobby.
“Richard the Turd,” Kaylee snorted as she tried to laugh and hold her nose at the same time.
She was still laughing at her own joke when Harry resumed station behind the counter.
“Kaylee has her own little names for the customers,” said Marge.
"Have you got one for me?" asked Harry.
"Harry Potter, when he's middle-aged and bald," she drew a lightning zigzag on Harry's forehead with her soft finger.
Harry felt a tingle in the wedding tackle and coughed nervously. Big Marge sensed his discomfort.
"Grass doesn't grow on a busy road, isn't that right Harry?" Marge sprang to Harry's defence. "Kaylee also likes to make personal remarks," she flashed a look of disapproval at Kaylee who was completely unconcerned.
Harry ran a hand over his bald pate and smiled, “I just grew through it.”
Kaylee looked at Harry as if he’d asked her to solve Fermat’s last theorem, “I don’t get it.”
“Go and put the kettle on Kaylee, and find the air freshener,” Marge put an end to what she knew from experience was shaping up to be a painful conversation. “Here Harry, input some of these bets.”
She sat him down behind a till and explained that the tills only scanned an image of the betting slip. Each bet had to be manually entered into the till by reading the scanned image and selecting the bets from lists held by the till computer. The till was basically a P.C. with a scanner. The actual till was a drawer below the counter that held the cash.
“You’re good at computers, this should be a piece of piss,” Big Marge ended eloquently.
Marge was right, Harry was happy to be flying a computer once more. The only problem was the punter's handwriting and the type of bet. He got stuck on one bet that was a long list of runners written in tiny spidery handwriting.
“I can’t read this one,” he asked Marge.
She inspected it and zoomed in on the scan, “Leave that one, I’ll do it later.”
Kaylee placed a coffee next to him and looked over his shoulder and recognised the handwriting, "Maureen, she's a nightmare and a Witch."
“Just because she has a wart on the end of her nose doesn’t make her a Witch,” said Marge.
It was Harry’s turn to snort his coffee.
“It does in every story I’ve read,” said Kaylee.
“Some of us have progressed past the Brothers Grimm.”
An awful stench heralded the arrival at the counter of Richard the Turd. He plonked the loo roll on the counter and fiddled with his still unfastened trouser belt.
“There you go love, better keep that safe, too many tea leaves round ‘ere.”
The hiss of Kaylee’s fresh air spray was his only reply.
“Do you want to put that back in the bog Harry,” said Marge pointing to the loo roll.
“Do I have to?”
“Okay, give it five.”
“Give it an hour,” said Nobby the Jobby posting his betting slip under the screen. The white paper slip had more colour than the shaky old hand, “Put that on, every one a winner.”
“Amazing how people can’t smell their own shit,” said Kaylee scanning the slip with Nobby the Jobby’s Patent Bet - three single bets, two doubles and a treble.
“Is she havin a pop?” he asked Big Marge.
“Just a general observation on life,” she answered.
“Bollocks,” he shuffled off muttering Yoda like, “havin a go at me always she is.”
The shop door closed by itself behind the shabby shuffler and the odour level in the shop dropped noticeably.
“So does Richard the Turd only come in for a dump?” asked Harry retrieving the toilet roll as if it was an unexploded bomb, “doesn’t he put a bet on?”
“I think he might be homeless,” said Marge, “he’s always a bit cleaner when he comes out and sometimes he has a shave in there. Cheeky Jimmy says he’s ex-SAS but I can’t believe that, he just looks too normal. I don’t mind him using the facilities, he’s harmless.”
“I am deffo harmed by that stink,” said Kaylee wrinkling her nose, “what do they feed homeless people.”
“Not much,” added Harry.
"You're kidding me," Kaylee seemed affronted, "them beggars in The Precinct always have Marks & Spencer's butties and Costa Coffee's and packets of Jaffa Cakes. I can't afford none of that. They're all scammers and now it's lunchtime and I'm hungry. Do you want anything from the cafe?"
Kaylee got down off her soapbox and retrieved her fake Versace handbag from the back office and tottered off to feed her face.
“You may as well get your lunch too Harry, I’ll mind the shop.”
He didn’t need to be asked twice.
Later, after an uneventful quiet afternoon of watching the racing and rearranging the bookies biros in the many dispensers, the clock ticked towards 3 o'clock and Harry was coming to the end of his first shift. It had been I have a real eye opener for him, a completely different world to what he was used to. There was always something happening, people coming and going some people sitting there all day like old Ronnie and punters sitting on the fruit machines in the corner by the window for hours on end.
There were manuals to read and machines to learn. He had been a little worried about using the till. After all, it was over forty years since the last time he had used a till, and back then they were like an old typewriter with big heavy keys that dinged when you pressed them and pushed up the card that said how much money the bill had come to. The modern computer-driven tills were so easy in comparison, all you had to do was put the betting slip through the scanner enter the amoun
t of the bet, enter the amount of money you have been given, and the till told you how much change to give.
"If it didn't tell you how much change to give," said Kaylee, "I would just have to guess."
Harry gave her a disbelieving look, as if he couldn't quite believe what he had just heard.
Harry watched the clock approach 3 pm. He was just about to get his coat when the shop door opened and the handles of the dreaded wheelchair hove into view, like the sails of the Flying Dutchman.
"Oh my god," said Harry, "does he come in here."
Big Marge looked up and grimaced.
"Oh yes, I'm afraid he's one of our regulars, but I wish he wasn't."
There had to be at least a dozen bookies in the town centre, why did he have to come in this one, thought Harry. He had decided to sneak into the back room before Wheelchair saw him, but it was too late the sharp-eyed punter spotted Harry.
"Bloody hell what are you doing here, he's not robbing the safe is he? He's a bloody thief on those market stalls, charges ridiculous prices. He did do anyway, I've got most of his stock now," Wheelchair Man laughed at his great good fortune and Harry’s demise.
"Can I help you?" said Harry through clenched teeth.
Wheelchair Man wasn't quite ready to let go of a subject he was very fond of.
"He tells customers to fuck off," he said to Marge.
"That's why we hired him," said Marge, "it's an essential qualification to work in this place."
"Very nice I am sure, I bet you don't tell all your customers to fuck off."
"No only the very, very annoying ones," said Marge, "the ones we would rather use a different shop."
The hint passed over Wheelchair’s head and splatted on the wall behind.
"So what can I do for you then?” said Harry thinking he would like to push his wheelchair down a steep hill into a barbed wire fence.
“I’ve come in for my usual."
“What would that be then?”
"The Irish, what do you think,“ said Wheelchair Man, irritated.
"He means the Irish Lotto,” said Marge, "there's a box on the table behind with all the cards used by the regulars."
Harry retrieved a shoebox filled with pre-printed ‘mark sense’ cards. Some were bundled together with elastic bands.
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