Ah Sweet Mystery of Life Read online

  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 gypsies and the touts and the dregs and the sewage and the scrapings 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 pigswill 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? Okay?

  Okay.

  ‘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 nosy 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 recognise 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 ccs of ether, subcutaneous, done in the car, injected very slow. That’ll put ten lengths on any dog. Or sometimes it’s caffein, caffein 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 caffein, 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 give 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 chlorbutal. That’s a beauty, chlorbutal, 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