by David Szalay
‘Looks like you weren’t expecting it to win that way.’
‘I see,’ James said. He wanted to be there when she won, however, so he said, ‘Is that necessary?’
There was a stubborn silence.
Then Miller said, ‘I think it is.’
‘You’re sure?’ James said.
‘I’m sure. So give Huntingdon a miss tomorrow. Okay?’
James needed to pass this on to Freddy. He also wanted to emphasise to him, not for the first time, the importance of putting the money on properly—meaning in small quantities throughout the London area. Not all in one place. And not on the Internet, that was very important. Freddy said he understood. When he had finished speaking to him, James pocketed his phone and stared at the blue perspective of Theobald’s Road.
He was on his way to a dinner party in Highbury Fields. It was in a small first-floor flat that had been done up like a large house, so that it felt like a doll’s house, a very expensive one, obsessive in its attention to detail. The hostess—an ex of his from long ago—was trying to live, and entertain, like her parents. Thus the ten diners were squeezed into the little living room, in which there was also—somehow—a table set for ten. When they sat down to eat, it was extremely hot. Faces shone with sweat in the candlelight, and people kept apologising for elbowing each other. Shoehorned in next to a man who used to be in the army and was now in insurance, and a woman whose face was vaguely familiar from somewhere, he was not properly engaged with the situation. He talked a lot without any interest in what he was saying or in what was being said to him. While the main course was being served, he manoeuvred his way out of his place and withdrew to the minuscule loo. On his own, it struck him that he was quite drunk. He made some excuse and left straight after dessert, and it was like a liberation to walk out into the fresh night air and unurban quiet of Highbury Fields. The old street lamps made pools of pale light in the wide darkness. And now that the day was done, now that all the last preparations for the ‘touch’ were in place, his mind was empty except for one insistent thing—
Is everything okay?
No.
Everything is not okay. Standing in Highbury Fields—he has stopped walking and is just standing there, listening unsoberly to the wind in the trees—he feels a terrible need for things to be okay. From where he is, he would be able to walk to her flat in twenty minutes. Less.
‘I’m in Highbury,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been to a dinner party. Is it okay if I come over?’
‘Of course,’ she says.
And now he is walking quickly towards Essex Road. The way she said Of course—that on its own has helped immensely. He is practically jogging towards Essex Road now, through the Islington streets and squares he used to know so well.
He finds her watching television with Summer. They watch television for an hour. Later, when they are in bed, he starts to talk about last night. She says, ‘I was upset because you didn’t say anything. That’s why I was upset.’
He says, ‘I didn’t say anything because I felt so bad.’
‘Well…’ She seems exasperated. ‘Say something! Maybe if you said something you wouldn’t feel so bad.’ He just stares at her. She touches his face. ‘I don’t care about what happened. I don’t care about that! If you don’t talk to me, though, if you don’t say anything, if you just go to sleep… How do you think that makes me feel?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘You’ve been feeling bad about it all day, haven’t you?’ He nods and she strokes his hair. ‘I’m sorry I was mean with you this morning. That wasn’t very nice of me.’
‘It’s okay. We had such a lovely time on Friday,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘Why was that so lovely and yesterday such a fucking disaster?’
She laughs. ‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘I don’t know either.’
‘You see, I didn’t even know that you thought that!’
‘Thought what?’
‘That yesterday was a fucking disaster.’
‘Of course it was.’
She shoves him playfully. ‘Well, how do I know you think that if you don’t say anything? I thought you thought everything was okay.’
‘No…’
‘That was the worst thing for me.’
‘I didn’t think that…’
‘Say something!’ She sits up and has a drink of water. Then she says, ‘Do you want some water?’
The way she says words like ‘water’. The way she meticulously enunciates the Ts in the middle of those words—it makes him want to kiss her. Why that? he wonders, shaking his head—he does not want any water. Why does that make me want to kiss her? Why does it matter why? Whatever. It just does. He pulls her towards him and kisses her.
5
Four o’clock on Monday morning and Simon Miller is up in the washed-out light of the laptop monitor. His face looks puffier in that light—his eyes peer out from over a whole series of seamed, sleepless pouches. Two-fingeredly he types in a password, thinking of last Wednesday night in the horse transport, pulled over in a shuttered Sussex lane with the hazards flashing. Then he had little Kelly Nicholls out of them poncey jodhpurs at last, though it weren’t easy, they were that tight… Logged in, he mouses his way towards the two o’clock at Huntingdon. And horses kept fartin of course. That’s one problem, having it off in a horse transport… The market for the two o’clock is now on the screen and still sleepily savouring the memory of Wednesday—precious memories!—he scrolls down looking for his horse.
She is hardly a proper outsider at all. The top price on offer is less than twenty to one. He scratches his head and wonders who has been forcing the price in. Officially only five people know about the touch. Himself. The owners. Piers. And Tom. Word will be out though. Owners always talk, or take young Tom. He were shaggin that scrawny thing, the vet’s assistant. He woulder told her. Probably fockin desperate to impress her, what with her being taller and intelligenter and posher than him. (None of which is that hard, mind.) He lights his second Marlboro of the day. He knows the markets. There is pressure on the price already. He’d be surprised if she was more than twelves with the firms in the morning.
As soon as it is light, leaving Piers to supervise the work session, he takes the Range Rover and drives to Trumpington. The sky is overcast except for in the east where it seems to have been torn open and a flame-blue pallor is sinking through like pigment into water, flooding the landscape with soft cold light. The wet meadows. The ploughed fields. He pulls up outside the Londis in Trumpington and switches off the engine. Kelly is not there yet, and he stands in the nippy morning air, smoking. There is no-one else in the street. Still, it is not quiet, exactly. The mumble of the M11 is faintly audible, and then a substantial plane passes quite low overhead, moaning, on its way in to land at Cambridge airport. Maybe a load of Sheikh Mo’s horses, Simon thinks, watching it from his hunched shoulders, home from their winter in Dubai… Lucky for some. When Kelly turns up in her little Fiat—she only got her licence last year—he is back in the Range Rover with the heating on.
She sits on the toasty leather of the passenger seat and when he has finished feeling and kissing her—he has not shaved, his stubble is sharp—he produces an envelope. ‘Thousand quid,’ he says. His voice smells of smoke. ‘I’m trusting you with it.’ He tells her to drive to Northampton and then Milton Keynes and Luton and visit twenty betting shops putting some of the money on in each, not the same amount in all of them, and never more than £100 in one place. She takes the envelope and looks inside it. Then she zips it into the pocket of her fleece. He says, ‘Our little secret, okay?’ She nods. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘And one other thing. You’re not to phone me or send me any messages today—not about this or anything else. Understood?’
‘I understand,’ she says, looking at herself in the wing mirror.
He stares at her with undisguised hunger. He was once han
dsome. Now his strong chin, halved like an arse, is submerged in a wall of wanton obesity. Years as an unusually tall jockey, starving himself to do the weight, the fingers down the throat, the tears, the fockin eating disorders—since all that ended (1990, a horrendous fall at Uttoxeter) he hasn’t had the heart to deny himself much. His jawline went long ago.
His eyes are still fixed on her.
When he starts the deep-voiced engine, she says, ‘Where are we going?’
And he says, ‘Somewhere we’ll not be seen.’
On the way home he meets another vehicle in the lane near the yard. The lane is only just wide enough for them to pass each other, and in fact they stop, and electric windows hum down. The driver of the other vehicle is Jeremy Nicholls, Simon’s landlord. Nicholls sticks his blonde, wide-jawed head out the window and in his posh voice says, ‘Morning, Simon. Not on the gallops this morning?’
‘No, not this morning,’ Simon says.
‘Had other things to do, eh?’
‘That’s right.’
‘How’s Kelly doing?’ Nicholls says. ‘Pleasing you, I hope.’
‘Very much so.’
‘That’s excellent. Excellent. So she knows what she’s doing?’
‘She does. And if there’s anything she doesn’t know, she picks it up soon enough. She’s a quick learner.’
Nicholls is smiling proudly. ‘She is,’ he says. ‘She is. Wonderful. I’ll see you later, Simon.’
‘See you, Jeremy.’
The windows have started to hum up when Nicholls shouts, ‘Oh, Simon!’
‘Yeh?’
He is still smiling. ‘You don’t have a tip for me, do you?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t, Jeremy.’
‘You must have something at Huntingdon today?’
‘None of em’s got much of a chance.’
‘No? Okay then. See you.’
Simon tilts his head for a moment in a sort of mock-salute, then powers his window up and drives on. He parks the Range Rover in the yard. There is nothing picturesque about the place. Even the old house is a morose-looking thing—small-windowed, white-washed, with its inevitable satellite-dish. Next to it is a warehouse-like structure with mossy fibreglass walls where the haylage and Vixen nuts are stored and the tractor and various other pieces of sourly oily machinery live.
He finds Mrs Miller in the overheated kitchen looking through a surgical enhancement prospectus. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she says. He puts two packs of Marlboro Reds on the table and pats her terrycloth haunch. ‘Just fillin up the Range Rover.’
‘Oh?’ It hardly explains why he has been away for an hour and a half.
‘Yeah,’ he says, taking a seat with a tiny smirk on his face, ‘just fillin her up…’
‘Please don’t pat me like I’m a horse, Simon.’
‘Alright, alright…’ he mutters, and starts to read the UKIP Members’ Newsletter while she serves him his breakfast. He is quite involved politically.
He is still eating—trying to pick up a slick of yolk with a mushy triangle of fried bread—when his phone starts to sing ‘You’re Just Too Good To Be True.’
You’re just too good to be true
Can’t take my eyes off of you
You’d be like heaven to touch
I wanna hold you so much…
Shoving his plate away, he answers it. It is Francis Moss, a well-known horseracing journalist, media personality, fellow UKIP member, and friend.
‘Alright, Mossy,’ Simon says. ‘How are you? Alright?’
Mossy says something.
‘Yeah alright,’ Simon says.
Then he says, ‘Oh, did you?’ He frowns and using only his free hand unwraps one of the packs of Marlboro Reds. Then he says, ‘Well as it happens, yes.’
Mossy speaks again.
‘No, Huntingdon.’
And then—‘The two o’clock.’
And finally—‘That’s just for you Mossy. Not for the service. I mean it.’ As one of his many sidelines Mossy operates a tipping service, his familiar face smiling out of ads in the Racing Post. ‘Nice one,’ Simon says. ‘Yeah, I’m going to be there. Okay, see you there. Oh, did you get the newsletter? Just got it in the post this morning.’ For a few minutes they talk UKIP politics—who’s in, who’s out (of the EU). Mossy is a fairly senior tin-rattler for the party, on friendly terms with the national leadership.
Simon says, ‘Listen, I’ve got to go, mate. Yeah, I’ll see you at the track. Smashing. Yeah. Ta. See you there.’
Leaving his plate on the table, he lights a Marlboro, pulls on his Hunters and pushes his way through a fierce wet wind towards the stables, where Piers is supervising the loading of the horse transport.
*
In the first betting shop James enters, near Russell Square tube, the price is so short he thinks there’s been some mistake. There had not. And then, as he watches, it shortens still further. With the price unstoppably shortening, he spends the morning lowering his estimate of how much he will win if the touch is landed, until at about noon, from somewhere next to a motorway in Neasden, he phones Freddy. ‘Have you seen the fucking price?’ he shouts.
‘It’s fucking short,’ Freddy agrees.
‘Do you think Miller’s stiffing us? Do you think him and his mates got all the fancy prices?’
‘There was some twelve to one first thing,’ Freddy says. ‘Didn’t you have any of that?’
‘No, I didn’t…’
‘Last night on Betfair,’ Freddy says, ‘there were some silly prices. I hoovered up everything down to twenty to one. There was even a few quid of hundred to one.’
‘You didn’t use your own account?’
‘For some.’
‘You used your own account?’
‘For some of it. Why not? It’s normal. I part-own the fucking horse…’
James says, ‘If we get in shit for this I’m going to fucking kill you.’
‘Stop worrying,’ Freddy says. ‘Everything’s going to be okay. What’s that noise? Where are you?’
‘Neasden.’
‘What the fuck are you doing there?’
‘Trying to be subtle about it,’ James says. ‘I shouldn’t have fucking bothered. I’ll talk to you later.’ There is little more than an hour to post time, and he still has nearly a thousand unwagered pounds in his pocket.
*
The scene of his triumph is a quiet William Hill’s in Hendon.
Standing in the threadbare Hill’s, his heart pumping, with two old men he watches his horse win easily on one of the screens. When she wins he experiences several seconds of pure satisfaction and pleasure. The pure stuff. Unmixed with anything else. Medical quality feelings. And then there is Miller on the screen, unmistakably flushed with triumph. From the way he is flushed, from the way he is windily speaking, it is obvious that he is euphoric. ‘Wasn’t expecting that!’ he says with a laugh.
‘Weren’t you?’ the interviewer asks him.
‘No, not at all!’
‘Well the market got it right.’
‘Yeah. Wasn’t my money though.’
‘You didn’t have a few quid on?’
‘Not a penny. Unfortunately!’
While Miller is still speaking, James takes the first of his winnings from the teller and walks out into the traffic noise, the London light—sun smearing pigeon-hued pavements and striking the modest parade of shops of which the Hill’s forms a part. In the end he won very much less than he hoped—not much more than £10,000 is his first estimate, which will last him only a few months, five at the most—and once the euphoria wears off a sort of disappointment sets in. He takes a taxi from Kilburn High Street in the late afternoon, and dusk is falling when he lets himself into the flat and hides his winnings, well wrapped in plastic, in the soil of a house-plant, a hibiscus, that he acquired especially for the purpose. If the stewards are suspicious, they or the police might look for the money, for some money
—they were unlikely to find it there. Then he has a shower and dresses for an evening out.
*
When word got round that Simon had landed a nice little touch and was sharing the wealth in the usual way, the villagers packed the Plough like it were New Year’s Eve. As for the karaoke it were like this— Simon sang a song, then somebody else sang a song, then Simon sang two songs, then somebody else sang a song, then Simon sang three songs… He did all his favourites. ‘New York, New York’. Start spreadinnn the noooze… (Very flat on that last word.) I’m leavinn terdaaay… (Even flatter.) He did ‘Let Me Entertain You’. And obviously ‘You’re Just Too Good To Be True’— soft-soaping the opening section with his eyes shut, and then absolutely yelling out I LOVE YOU BAY-BEE!! He was looking straight at Kelly Nicholls when he sang those words. That was unwise. Especially since her father is in. Jeremy is sitting as far as possible from the temporary little stage in its puddle of coloured light, smoking a Hamlet— the law on smoking in public places was not always observed in the Plough— and drinking a double Scotch. When Simon passes him on his way to the Gents, his face varnished with sweat and his voice hoarse, Jeremy says, with a smile, ‘None of em’s got much of a chance, eh, Simon?’ It takes Simon a second to work out what he is talking about— their meeting in the lane. When he does, he just winks at him, without stopping, and proceeds to take his piss.
That double Scotch is not, of course, the only imbursement the Nicholls family has taken from the touch. Earlier in the evening—the karaoke hadn’t started yet—he met with Kelly on the empty expanse of tarmac at the side of the pub. There he took from her the same envelope she had pocketed in the morning, only now it was very much fatter. It would hardly shut. He sat in the Range Rover with the vanity light on leafing through the immense wad and quickly worked out there was the thick end of £10,000 there. Moistening his index finger at his small mouth, he extracted £200 from the envelope, and then—experiencing a unexpected surge of feeling for his young mistress—supplemented it with a further hundred. She was still waiting on the wet tarmac when he lowered himself from the Range Rover and slammed the door. ‘Here,’ he said. Then he tenderly lifted her fleece, popped the button of her jeans and pushed the folded money down the front of her pants.