Cruelty

by Roald Dahl

  ‘How old were you then?’

  ‘Round about eight, I should think,’ Claud said.

  As we drew closer to Oxford, he became silent again. He kept twisting his neck to see if Jackie was all right, to touch him, to stroke his head, and once he turned around and knelt on the seat to gather more straw around the dog, murmuring something about a draught. We drove around the fringe of Oxford and into a network of narrow open country roads, and after a while we turned into a small bumpy lane and along this we began to overtake a thin stream of men and women all walking and cycling in the same direction. Some of the men were leading greyhounds. There was a large saloon car in front of us and through the rear window we could see a dog sitting on the back seat between two men.

  ‘They come from all over,’ Claud said darkly. ‘That one there’s probably come up special from London. Probably slipped him out from one of the big stadium kennels just for the afternoon. That could be a Derby dog probably, for all we know.’

  ‘Hope he’s not running against Jackie.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Claud said. ‘All new dogs automatically go in top grade. That’s one rule Mr Feasey’s very particular about.’

  There was an open gate leading into a field, and Mr Feasey’s wife came forward to take our admission money before we drove in.

  ‘He’d have her winding the bloody pedals too if she had the strength,’ Claud said. ‘Old Feasey don’t employ more people than he has to.’

  I drove across the field and parked at the end of a line of cars along the top hedge. We both got out and Claud went quickly round the back to fetch Jackie. I stood beside the car, waiting. It was a very large field with a steepish slope on it and we were at the top of the slope, looking down. In the distance I could see the six starting-traps and the wooden posts marking the track which ran along the bottom of the field and turned sharp at right angles and came on up the hill towards the crowd, to the finish. Thirty yards beyond the finishing line stood the upturned bicycle for driving the hare. Because it is portable, this is the standard machine for hare-driving used at all flapping tracks. It comprises a flimsy wooden platform about eight feet high, supported on four poles knocked into the ground. On top of the platform there is fixed, upside down with wheels in the air, an ordinary old bicycle. The rear wheel is to the front, facing down the track, and from it the tyre has been removed, leaving a concave metal rim. One end of the cord that pulls the hare is attached to this rim, and the winder (or hare-driver), by straddling the bicycle at the back and turning the pedals with his hands, revolves the wheel and winds in the cord around the rim. This pulls the dummy hare towards him at any speed he likes up to forty miles an hour. After each race someone takes the dummy hare (with cord attached) all the way down to the starting traps again, thus unwinding the cord on the wheel, ready for a fresh start. From his high platform, the winder can watch the race and regulate the speed of the hare to keep it just ahead of the leading dog. He can also stop the hare any time he wants and make it a ‘no-race’ (if the wrong dog looks like winning) by suddenly turning the pedals backwards and getting the cord tangled up in the hub of the wheel. The other way of doing it is to slow down the hare suddenly, for perhaps one second, and that makes the lead dog automatically check a little so that the others catch up with him. He is an important man, the winder.

  I could see Mr Feasey’s winder already standing atop his platform, a powerful-looking man in a blue sweater, leaning on the bicycle and looking down at the crowd through the smoke of his cigarette.

  There is a curious law in England which permits race meetings of this kind to be held only seven times a year over one piece of ground. That is why all Mr Feasey’s equipment was movable, and after the seventh meeting he would simply transfer to the next field. The law didn’t bother him at all.

  There was already a good crowd and the bookmakers were erecting their stands in a line over to the right. Claud had Jackie out of the van now and was leading him over to a group of people clustered around a small stocky man dressed in riding-breeches – Mr Feasey himself. Each person in the group had a dog on a leash and Mr Feasey kept writing names in a notebook that he held folded in his left hand. I sauntered over to watch.

  ‘Which you got there?’ Mr Feasey said, pencil poised above the notebook.

  ‘Midnight,’ a man said who was holding a black dog.

  Mr Feasey stepped back a pace and looked most carefully at the dog.

  ‘Midnight. Right. I got him down.’

  ‘Jane,’ the next man said.

  ‘Let me look. Jane … Jane … yes, all right.’

  ‘Soldier.’ This dog was led by a tall man with long teeth who wore a dark-blue, double-breasted lounge suit, shiny with wear, and when he said ‘Soldier’ he began slowly to scratch the seat of his trousers with the hand that wasn’t holding the leash.

  Mr Feasey bent down to examine the dog. The other man looked up at the sky.

  ‘Take him away,’ Mr Feasey said.

  The man looked down quick and stopped scratching.

  ‘Go on, take him away.’

  ‘Listen, Mr Feasey,’ the man said, lisping slightly through his long teeth. ‘Now don’t talk so bloody silly, please.’

  ‘Go on and beat it, Larry, and stop wasting my time. You know as well as I do the Soldier’s got two white toes on his off fore.’

  ‘Now look, Mr Feasey,’ the man said. ‘You ain’t even seen Soldier for six months at least.’

  ‘Come on now, Larry, and beat it. I haven’t got time arguing with you.’ Mr Feasey didn’t appear the least angry. ‘Next,’ he said.

  I saw Claud step forward leading Jackie. The large bovine face was fixed and wooden, the eyes staring at something about a yard above Mr Feasey’s head, and he was holding the leash so tight his knuckles were like a row of little white onions. I knew just how he was feeling. I felt the same way myself at that moment, and it was even worse when Mr Feasey suddenly started laughing.

  ‘Hey!’ he cried. ‘Here’s the Black Panther. Here’s the champion.’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Feasey,’ Claud said.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Mr Feasey said, still grinning. ‘You can take him right back home where he come from. I don’t want him.’

  ‘But look here, Mr Feasey …’

  ‘Six or eight times at least I’ve run him for you now and that’s enough. Look – why don’t you shoot him and have done with it?’

  ‘Now, listen, Mr Feasey, please. Just once more and I’ll never ask you again.’

  ‘Not even once! I got more dogs than I can handle here today. There’s no room for crabs like that.’

  I thought Claud was going to cry.

  ‘Now honest, Mr Feasey,’ he said. ‘I been up at six every morning this past two weeks giving him roadwork and massage and buying him beefsteaks, and believe me he’s a different dog absolutely than what he was last time he run.’

  The words ‘different dog’ caused Mr Feasey to jump like he’d been pricked with a hatpin. ‘What’s that!’ he cried. ‘Different dog!’

  I’ll say this for Claud, he kept his head. ‘See here, Mr Feasey,’ he said. ‘I’ll thank you not to go implying things to me. You know very well I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘All right, all right. But just the same, you can take him away. There’s no sense running dogs as slow as him. Take him home now, will you please, and don’t hold up the whole meeting.’

  I was watching Claud. Claud was watching Mr Feasey. Mr Feasey was looking round for the next dog to enter up. Under his brown tweedy jacket he wore a yellow pullover, and this streak of yellow on his breast and his thin gaitered legs and the way he jerked his head from side to side made him seem like some sort of a little perky bird – a goldfinch, perhaps.

  Claud took a step forward. His face was beginning to purple slightly with the outrage of it all and I could see his Adam’s apple moving up and down as he swallowed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mr Feasey. I’m so absolutely
sure this dog’s improved I’ll bet you a quid he don’t finish last. There you are.’

  Mr Feasey turned slowly around and looked at Claud. ‘You crackers?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll bet you a quid, there you are, just to prove what I’m saying.’

  It was a dangerous move, certain to cause suspicion, but Claud knew it was the only thing left to do. There was silence while Mr Feasey bent down and examined the dog. I could see the way his eyes were moving slowly over the animal’s whole body, part by part. There was something to admire in the man’s thoroughness, and in his memory; something to fear also in this self-confident little rogue who held in his head the shape and colour and markings of perhaps several hundred different but very similar dogs. He never needed more than one little clue – a small scar, a splay toe, a trifle in at the hocks, a less pronounced wheelback, a slightly darker brindle – Mr Feasey always remembered.

  So I watched him now as he bent down over Jackie. His face was pink and fleshy, the mouth small and tight as though it couldn’t stretch enough to make a smile, and the eyes were like two little cameras focused sharply on the dog.

  ‘Well,’ he said, straightening up. ‘It’s the same dog, anyway.’

  ‘I should hope so too!’ Claud cried. ‘Just what sort of a fellow you think I am, Mr Feasey?’

  ‘I think you’re crackers, that’s what I think. But it’s a nice easy way to make a quid. I suppose you forgot how Amber Flash nearly beat him on three legs last meeting?’

  ‘This one wasn’t fit then,’ Claud said. ‘He hadn’t had beefsteak and massage and roadwork like I’ve been giving him lately. But look, Mr Feasey, you’re not to go sticking him in top grade just to win the bet. This is a bottom-grade dog, Mr Feasey. You know that.’

  Mr Feasey laughed. The small button mouth opened into a tiny circle and he laughed and looked at the crowd, who laughed with him. ‘Listen,’ he said, laying a hairy hand on Claud’s shoulder. ‘I know my dogs. I don’t have to do any fiddling around to win this quid. He goes in bottom.’

  ‘Right,’ Claud said. ‘That’s a bet.’ He walked away with Jackie and I joined him.

  ‘Jesus, Gordon, that was a near one!’

  ‘Shook me.’

  ‘But we’re in now,’ Claud said. He had that breathless look on his face again and he was walking about quick and funny, like the ground was burning his feet.

  People were still coming through the gate into the field and there were easily three hundred of them now. Not a very nice crowd. Sharp-nosed men and women with dirty faces and bad teeth and quick shifty eyes. The dregs of the big town. Oozing out like sewage from a cracked pipe and trickling along the road through the gate and making a smelly little pond of sewage at the top end of the field. They were all there, all the spivs, and the gipsies and the touts and the dregs and the sewage and the scraping and the scum from the cracked drainpipes of the big town. Some with dogs, some without. Dogs led about on pieces of string, miserable dogs with hanging heads, thin mangy dogs with sores on their quarters (from sleeping on board), sad old dogs with grey muzzles, doped dogs, dogs stuffed with porridge to stop them winning, dogs walking stiff-legged – one especially, a white one. ‘Claud, why is that white one walking so stiff-legged?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘That one over there.’

  ‘Ah. Yes, I see. Very probably because he’s been hung.’

  ‘Hung?’

  ‘Yes, hung. Suspended in a harness for twenty-four hours with his legs dangling.’

  ‘Good God, but why?’

  ‘To make him run slow, of course. Some people don’t hold with dope or stuffing or strapping up. So they hang ’em.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Either that,’ Claud said, ‘or they sandpaper them. Rub their pads with rough sandpaper and take the skin off so it hurts when they run.’

  ‘Yes, I see.’

  And then the fitter, brighter-looking dogs, the better-fed ones who get horsemeat every day, not pig-swill or rusk and cabbage water, their coats shinier, their tails moving, pulling at their leads, undoped, unstuffed, awaiting perhaps a more unpleasant fate, the muzzle-strap to be tightened an extra four notches. But make sure he can breathe now, Jock. Don’t choke him completely. Don’t let’s have him collapse in the middle of the race. Just so he wheezes a bit, see. Go on tightening it up an extra notch at a time until you can hear him wheezing. You’ll see his mouth open and he’ll start breathing heavy. Then it’s just right, but not if his eyeballs is bulging. Watch out for that, will you? OK?

  OK.

  ‘Let’s get away from the crowd, Gordon. It don’t do Jackie no good getting excited by all these other dogs.’

  We walked up the slope to where the cars were parked, then back and forth in front of the line of cars, keeping the dog on the move. Inside some of the cars I could see men sitting with their dogs, and the men scowled at us through the windows as we went by.

  ‘Watch out now, Gordon. We don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘No, all right.’

  These were the best dogs of all, the secret ones kept in the cars and taken out quick just to be entered up (under some invented name) and put back again quick and held there till the last minute, then straight down to the traps and back again into the cars after the race so no nosey bastard gets too close a look, The trainer at the big stadium said so. All right, he said. You can have him, but for Christsake don’t let anybody recognize him. There’s thousands of people know this dog, so you’ve got to be careful, see. And it’ll cost you fifty pound.

  Very fast dogs these, but it doesn’t much matter how fast they are, they probably get the needle anyway, just to make sure. One and a half cc’s of ether, subcutaneous, done in the car, injected very slow. That’ll put ten lengths on any dog. Or sometimes it’s caffeine in oil, or camphor. That makes them go too. The men in the big cars know all about that. And some of them know about whisky. But that’s intravenous. Not so easy when it’s intravenous. Might miss the vein. All you got to do is miss the vein and it don’t work and where are you then? So it’s ether, or it’s caffeine, or it’s camphor. Don’t give her too much of that stuff now, Jock. What does she weigh? Fifty-eight pounds. All right then, you know what the man told us. Wait a minute now. I got it written down on a piece of paper. Here it is. Point 1 of a cc per 10 pounds bodyweight equals 5 lengths over 300 yards. Wait a minute now while I work it out. Oh Christ, you better guess it. Just guess it, Jock. It’ll be all right you’ll find. Shouldn’t be any trouble anyway because I picked the others in the race myself. Cost me a tenner to old Feasey. A bloody tenner I gave him, and Dear Mr Feasey, I says, that’s for your birthday and because I love you.

  Thank you ever so much, Mr Feasey says. Thank you, my good and trusted friend.

  And for stopping them, for the men in the big cars, it’s chlorbutol. That’s a beauty, chlorbutol, because you can give it the night before, especially to someone else’s dog. Or pethidine. Pethidine and hyoscine mixed, whatever that may be.

  ‘Lot of fine old English sporting gentry here,’ Claud said.

  ‘Certainly are.’

  ‘Watch your pockets, Gordon. You got that money hidden away?’

  We walked around the back of the line of cars – between the cars and the hedge – and I saw Jackie stiffen and begin to pull forward on the leash, advancing with a stiff crouching tread. About thirty yards away there were two men. One was holding a large fawn greyhound, the dog stiff and tense like Jackie. The other was holding a sack in his hands.

  ‘Watch,’ Claud whispered, ‘they’re giving him a kill.’

  Out of the sack on to the grass tumbled a small white rabbit, fluffy white, young, tame. It righted itself and sat still, crouching in the hunched-up way rabbits crouch, its nose close to the ground. A frightened rabbit. Out of the sack so suddenly on to the grass with such a bump. Into the bright light. The dog was going mad with excitement now, jumping up against the leash, pawing the ground, throwing himself forward, whining. The rabbit
saw the dog. It drew in its head and stayed still, paralysed with fear. The man transferred his hold to the dog’s collar, and the dog twisted and jumped and tried to get free. The other man pushed the rabbit with his foot but it was too terrified to move. He pushed it again, flicking it forward with his toe like a football, and the rabbit rolled over several times, righted itself and began to hop over the grass away from the dog. The other man released the dog, which pounced with one huge pounce upon the rabbit, and then came the squeals, not very loud but shrill and anguished and lasting rather a long time.

  ‘There you are,’ Claud said. ‘That’s a kill.’

  ‘Not sure I liked it very much.’

  ‘I told you before, Gordon. Most of ’em does it. Keens the dog up before a race.’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’

  ‘Nor me. But they all do it. Even in the big stadiums the trainers do it. Proper barbary I call it.’

  We strolled away and below us on the slope of the hill the crowd was thickening and the bookies’ stands with the names written on them in red and gold and blue were all erected now in a long line back of the crowd, each bookie already stationed on an upturned box beside his stand, a pack of numbered cards in one hand, a piece of chalk in the other, his clerk behind him with book and pencil. Then we saw Mr Feasey walking over to a blackboard that was nailed to a post stuck in the ground.

  ‘He’s chalking up the first race,’ Claud said. ‘Come on, quick!’

  We walked rapidly down the hill and joined the crowd. Mr Feasey was writing the runners on the blackboard, copying names from his soft-covered notebook, and a little hush of suspense fell upon the crowd as they watched.

  Sally

  Three Quid

  Snailbox Lady

  Black Panther

  Whisky

  Rockit

  ‘He’s in it!’ Claud whispered. ‘First race! Trap four! Now, listen, Gordon! Give me a fiver quick to show the winder.’ Claud could hardly speak from excitement. That patch of whiteness had returned around his nose and eyes, and when I handed him a five-pound note, his whole arm was shaking as he took it. The man who was going to wind the bicycle pedals was still standing on top of the wooden platform in his blue jersey, smoking. Claud went over and stood below him, looking up.