by Roald Dahl
And then the secret conferences between us in the kitchen, the detailed planning, the selection of the most suitable track, and finally every other Saturday, eight times in all, locking up my filling-station (losing a whole afternoon’s custom) and driving the ringer all the way up to Oxford to a scruffy little track out in the fields near Headington where the big money was played but which was actually nothing except a line of old posts and cord to mark the course, an upturned bicycle for pulling the dummy hare, and at the far end, in the distance, six traps and the starter. We had driven this ringer up there eight times over a period of sixteen weeks and entered him with Mr Feasey and stood around on the edge of the crowd in freezing raining cold, waiting for his name to go up on the blackboard in chalk. The Black Panther we called him. And when his time came, Claud would always lead him down to the traps and I would stand at the finish to catch him and keep him clear of the fighters, the gipsy dogs that the gipsies so often slipped in specially to tear another one to pieces at the end of a race.
But you know, there was something rather sad about taking this dog all the way up there so many times and letting him run and watching him and hoping and praying that whatever happened he would always come last. Of course the praying wasn’t necessary and we never really had a moment’s worry because the old fellow simply couldn’t gallop and that’s all there was to it. He ran exactly like a crab. The only time he didn’t come last was when a big fawn dog by the name of Amber Flash put his foot in a hole and broke a hock and finished on three legs. But even then ours only just beat him. So this way we got him right down to bottom grade with the scrubbers, and the last time we were there all the bookies were laying him twenty or thirty to one and calling his name and begging people to back him.
Now at last, on this sunny April day, it was Jackie’s turn to go instead. Claud said we mustn’t run the ringer any more or Mr Feasey might begin to get tired of him and throw him out altogether, he was so slow. Claud said this was the exact psychological time to have it off, and that Jackie would win it anything between thirty and fifty lengths.
He had raised Jackie from a pup and the dog was only fifteen months now, but he was a good fast runner. He’d never raced yet, but we knew he was fast from clocking him round the little private schooling track at Uxbridge where Claud had taken him every Sunday since he was seven months old – except once when he was having some inoculations, Claud said he probably wasn’t fast enough to win top grade at Mr Feasey’s, but where we’d got him now, in bottom grade with the scrubbers, he could fall over and get up again and still win it twenty – well, anyway, ten or fifteen lengths, Claud said.
So all I had to do this morning was go to the bank in the village and draw out fifty pounds for myself and fifty for Claud which I would lend him as an advance against wages, and then at twelve o’clock lock up the filling-station and hang the notice on one of the pumps saying GONE FOR THE DAY. Claud would shut the ringer in the pen at the back and put Jackie in the van and off we’d go. I won’t say I was as excited as Claud, but there again, I didn’t have all sorts of important things depending on it either, like buying a house and being able to get married. Nor was I almost born in a kennel with greyhounds like he was, walking about thinking of absolutely nothing else all day – except perhaps Clarice in the evenings. Personally, I had my own career as a filling-station owner to keep me busy, not to mention second-hand cars, but if Claud wanted to fool around with dogs that was all right with me, especially a thing like today – if it came off. As a matter of fact, I don’t mind admitting that every time I thought about the money we were putting on and the money we might win, my stomach gave a little lurch.
The dogs had finished their breakfast now and Claud took them out for a short walk across the field opposite while I got dressed and fried the eggs. Afterwards, I went to the bank and drew out the money (all in ones), and the rest of the morning seemed to go very quickly serving customers.
At twelve sharp I locked up and hung the notice on the pump. Claud came around from the back leading Jackie and carrying a large suitcase made of reddish-brown cardboard.
‘Suitcase?’
‘For the money,’ Claud answered. ‘You said yourself no man can carry two thousand pounds in his pockets.’
It was a lovely yellow spring day with the buds bursting all along the hedges and the sun shining through the new pale-green leaves on the big beech tree across the road. Jackie looked wonderful, with two big hard muscles the size of melons bulging on his hindquarters, his coat glistening like black velvet. While Claud was putting the suitcase in the van, the dog did a little prancing jig on his toes to show how fit he was, then he looked up at me and grinned, just like he knew he was off to the races to win two thousand pounds and a heap of glory. This Jackie had the widest most human-smiling grin I ever saw. Not only did he lift his upper lip, but he actually stretched the corners of his mouth so you could see every tooth in his head except perhaps one or two of the molars right at the back; and every time I saw him do it I found myself waiting to hear him start laughing out loud as well.
We got in the van and off we went. I was doing the driving. Claud was beside me and Jackie was standing up on the straw in the rear looking over our shoulders through the windshield. Claud kept turning round and trying to make him lie down so he wouldn’t get thrown whenever we went round the sharp corners, but the dog was too excited to do anything except grin back at him and wave his enormous tail.
‘You got the money, Gordon?’ Claud was chain-smoking cigarettes and quite unable to sit still.
‘Yes.’
‘Mine as well?’
‘I got a hundred and five altogether. Five for the winder like you said, so he won’t stop the hare and make it a no-race.’
‘Good,’ Claud said, rubbing his hands together hard as though he were freezing cold. ‘Good, good, good.’
We drove through the little narrow High Street of Great Missenden and caught a glimpse of old Rummins going into the Nag’s Head for his morning pint, then outside the village we turned left and climbed over the ridge of the Chilterns towards Princes Risborough, and from there it would only be twenty-odd miles to Oxford.
And now a silence and a kind of tension began to come over us both. We sat very quiet, not speaking at all, each nursing his own fears and excitements, containing his anxiety. And Claud kept smoking his cigarettes and throwing them half finished out the window. Usually, on these trips, he talked his head off all the way there and back, all the things he’d done with dogs in his life, the jobs he’d pulled, the places he’d been, the money he’d won; and all the things other people had done with dogs, the thievery, the cruelty, the unbelievable trickery and cunning of owners at the flapping tracks. But today I don’t think he was trusting himself to speak very much. At this point, for that matter, nor was I. I was sitting there watching the road and trying to keep my mind off the immediate future by thinking back on all that stuff Claud had told me about this curious greyhound-racing racket.
I swear there wasn’t a man alive who knew more about it than Claud did, and ever since we’d got the ringer and decided to pull this job, he’d taken it upon himself to give me an education in the business. By now, in theory at any rate, I suppose I knew nearly as much as him.
It had started during the very first strategy conference we’d had in the kitchen. I can remember it was the day after the ringer arrived and we were sitting there watching for customers through the window, and Claud was explaining to me all about what we’d have to do, and I was trying to follow him as best I could until finally there came one question I had to ask.
‘What I don’t see,’ I had said, ‘is why you use the ringer at all. Wouldn’t it be safer if we use Jackie all the time and simply stop him the first half-dozen races so he comes last? Then when we’re good and ready, we can let him go. Same result in the end, wouldn’t it be, if we do it right? And no danger of being caught.’
Well, as I say, that did it. Claud looked up at me quickly
and he said, ‘Hey! None of that! I’d just like you to know “stopping’s” something I never do. What’s come over you, Gordon?’ He seemed genuinely pained and shocked by what I had said.
‘I don’t see anything wrong with it.’
‘Now, listen to me, Gordon. Stopping a good dog breaks his heart. A good dog knows he’s fast, and seeing all the others out there in front and not being able to catch them – it breaks his heart, I tell you. And what’s more, you wouldn’t be making suggestions like that if you knew some of the tricks them fellers do to stop their dogs at the flapping tracks.’
‘Such as what, for example?’ I had asked.
‘Such as anything in the world almost, so long as it makes the dog go slower. And it takes a lot of stopping, a good greyhound does. Full of guts and so mad keen you can’t even let them watch a race they’ll tear the leash right out of your hand raring to go. Many’s the time I’ve seen one with a broken leg insisting on finishing the race.’
He had paused then, looking at me thoughtfully with those large pale eyes, serious as hell and obviously thinking deep. ‘Maybe,’ he had said, ‘if we’re going to do this job properly I’d better tell you a thing or two so’s you’ll know what we’re up against.’
‘Go ahead and tell me,’ I had said. ‘I’d like to know.’
For a moment he stared in silence out the window. ‘The main thing you got to remember,’ he had said darkly, ‘is that all these fellers going to the flapping tracks with dogs – they’re artful. They’re more artful than you could possibly imagine.’ Again he paused, marshalling his thoughts.
‘Now take for example the different ways of stopping a dog. The first, the commonest, is strapping.’
‘Strapping?’
‘Yes. Strapping ’em up. That’s commonest. Pulling the muzzle-strap tight around their necks so they can’t hardly breathe, see. A clever man knows just which hole on the strap to use and just how many lengths it’ll take off his dog in a race. Usually a couple of notches is good for five or six lengths. Do it up real tight and he’ll come last. I’ve known plenty of dogs collapse and die from being strapped up tight on a hot day. Strangulated, absolutely strangulated, and a very nasty thing it was too. Then again, some of ’em just tie two of the toes together with black cotton. Dog never runs well like that. Unbalances him.’
‘That doesn’t sound too bad.’
‘Then there’s others that put a piece of fresh-chewed gum up under their tails, right up close where the tail joins the body. And there’s nothing funny about that,’ he had said, indignant. ‘The tail of a running dog goes up and down ever so slightly and the gum on the tail keeps sticking to the hairs on the backside, just where it’s tenderest. No dog likes that, you know. Then there’s sleeping pills. That’s used a lot nowadays. They do it by weight, exactly like a doctor, and they measure the powder according to whether they want to slow him up five or ten or fifteen lengths. Those are just a few of the ordinary ways,’ he had said. ‘Actually they’re nothing. Absolutely nothing, compared with some of the other things that’s done to hold a dog back in a race, especially by the gipsies. There’s things the gipsies do that are almost too disgusting to mention, such as when they’re just putting the dog in the trap, things you wouldn’t hardly do to your worst enemies.’
And when he had told me about those – which were, indeed, terrible things because they had to do with physical injury, quickly, painfully inflicted – then he had gone on to tell me what they did when they wanted the dog to win.
‘There’s just as terrible things done to make ’em go fast as to make ’em go slow,’ he had said softly, his face veiled and secret. ‘And perhaps the commonest of all is wintergreen. Whenever you see a dog going around with no hair on his back or little bald patches all over him – that’s wintergreen. Just before the race they rub it hard into the skin. Sometimes it’s Sloan’s Liniment, but mostly it’s wintergreen. Stings terrible. Stings so bad that all the old dog wants to do is run, run, run as fast as he possibly can to get away from the pain.
‘Then there’s special drugs they give with the needle. Mind you, that’s the modern method and most of the spivs at the track are too ignorant to use it. It’s the fellers coming down from London in the big cars with stadium dogs they’ve borrowed for the day by bribing the trainer – they’re the ones who use the needle.’
I could remember him sitting there at the kitchen table with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and dropping his eyelids to keep out the smoke and looking at me through his wrinkled, nearly closed eyes, and saying, ‘What you’ve got to remember, Gordon, is this. There’s nothing they won’t do to make a dog win if they want him to. On the other hand, no dog can run faster than he’s built, no matter what they do to him. So if we can get Jackie down into bottom grade, then we’re home. No dog in bottom grade can get near him, not even with wintergreen and needles. Not even with ginger.’
‘Ginger?’
‘Certainly. That’s a common one, ginger is. What they do, they take a piece of raw ginger about the size of a walnut, and about five minutes before the off they slip it into the dog.’
‘You mean in his mouth? He eats it?’
‘No,’ he had said. ‘Not in his mouth.’
And so it had gone on. During each of the eight long trips we had subsequently made to the track with the ringer I had heard more and more about this charming sport – more, especially, about the methods of stopping them and making them go (even the names of the drugs and the quantities to use). I heard about ‘The rat treatment’ (for non-chasers, to make them chase the dummy hare), where a rat is placed in a can which is then tied around the dog’s neck. There’s a small hole in the lid of the can just large enough for the rat to poke its head out and nip the dog. But the dog can’t get at the rat, and so naturally he goes half crazy running around and being bitten in the neck, and the more he shakes the can the more the rat bites him. Finally, someone releases the rat, and the dog, who up to then was a nice docile tail-wagging animal who wouldn’t hurt a mouse, pounces on it in a rage and tears it to pieces. Do this a few times, Claud had said – ‘Mind you, I don’t hold with it myself’ – and the dog becomes a real killer who will chase anything, even the dummy hare.
We were over the Chilterns now and running down out of the beechwoods into the flat elm- and oak-tree country south of Oxford. Claud sat quietly beside me, nursing his nervousness and smoking cigarettes, and every two or three minutes he would turn round to see if Jackie was all right. The dog was at last lying down, and each time Claud turned round, he whispered something to him softly, and the dog acknowledged his words with a faint movement of the tail that made the straw rustle.
Soon we would be coming into Thame, the broad High Street where they penned the pigs and cows and sheep on market day, and where the fair came once a year with the swings and roundabouts and bumping cars and gipsy caravans right there in the street in the middle of the town. Claud was born in Thame, and we’d never driven through it yet without him mentioning the fact.
‘Well,’ he said as the first houses came into sight, ‘here’s Thame. I was born and bred in Thame, you know, Gordon.’
‘You told me.’
‘Lots of funny things we used to do around here when we was nippers,’ he said, slightly nostalgic.
‘I’m sure.’
He paused, and I think more to relieve the tension building up inside him than anything else, he began talking about the years of his youth.
‘There was a boy next door,’ he said. ‘Gilbert Gomm his name was. Little sharp ferrety face and one leg a bit shorter’n the other. Shocking things him and me used to do together. You know one thing we done, Gordon?’
‘What?’
‘We’d go into the kitchen Saturday nights when Mum and Dad were at the pub, and we’d disconnect the pipe from the gas-ring and bubble the gas into a milk bottle full of water. Then we’d sit down and drink it out of teacups.’
‘Was that so good?’
; ‘Good! It was absolutely disgusting! But we’d put lashings of sugar in and then it didn’t taste so bad.’
‘Why did you drink it?’
Claud turned and looked at me, incredulous. ‘You mean you never drunk “Snakes Water”!’
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘I thought everyone done that when they was kids! It intoxicates you, just like wine only worse, depending on how long you let the gas bubble through. We used to get reeling drunk together there in the kitchen Saturday nights and it was marvellous. Until one night Dad comes home early and catches us. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live. There was me holding the milk bottle, and the gas bubbling through it lovely, and Gilbert kneeling on the floor ready to turn off the tap the moment I give the word, and in walks Dad.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh Christ, Gordon, that was terrible. He didn’t say one word, but he stands there by the door and he starts feeling for his belt, undoing the buckle very slow and pulling the belt slow out of his trousers, looking at me all the time. Great big feller he was, with great big hands like coal hammers and a black moustache and them little purple veins running all over his cheeks. Then he comes over quick and grabs me by the coat and lets me have it, hard as he can, using the end with the buckle on it and, honest to God, Gordon, I thought he was going to kill me. But in the end he stops and then he puts on the belt again, slow and careful, buckling it up and tucking in the flap and belching with the beer he’d drunk. And then he walks out again back to the pub, still without saying a word. Worst hiding I ever had in my life.’