Ah Sweet Mystery of Life Read online

  ‘So that’s the game, is it?’ he said.

  Claud was bending over the dog and acting like he hadn’t heard.

  ‘I don’t want you here no more after this, you understand that?’

  Claud went on fiddling with Jackie’s collar.

  I heard someone behind us saying, ‘That flat-faced bastard with the frown swung it properly on old Feasey this time.’ Someone else laughed. Mr Feasey walked away. Claud straightened up and went over with Jackie to the hare driver in the blue jersey who had dismounted from his platform.

  ‘Cigarette,’ Claud said, offering the pack.

  The man took one, also the five pound note that was folded up small in Claud’s fingers.

  ‘Thanks,’ Claud said. ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Don’t mention,’ the man said.

  Then Claud turned to me. ‘You get it all on, Gordon?’ He was jumping up and down and rubbing his hands and patting Jackie, and his lips trembled as he spoke.

  ‘Yes. Half at twenty-fives, half at fifteens.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Gordon, that’s marvellous. Wait here till I get the suitcase.’

  ‘You take Jackie,’ I said, ‘and go and sit in the car. I’ll see you later.’

  There was nobody around the bookies now. I was the only one with anything to collect, and I walked slowly with a sort of dancing stride and a wonderful bursting feeling in my chest, toward the first one in the line, the man with the magenta face and the white substance on his mouth. I stood in front of him and I took all the time I wanted going through my pack of tickets to find the two that were his. The name was Syd Pratchett. It was written up large across his board in gold letters on a scarlet field – ‘SYD PRATCHETT. THE BEST ODDS IN THE MIDLANDS. PROMPT SETTLEMENT.’

  I handed him the first ticket and said, ‘Seventy-eight pounds to come.’ It sounded so good I said it again, making a delicious little song of it. ‘Seventy-eight pounds to come on this one.’ I didn’t mean to gloat over Mr Pratchett. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to like him quite a lot. I even felt sorry for him having to fork out so much money. I hoped his wife and kids wouldn’t suffer.

  ‘Number forty-two,’ Mr Pratchett said, turning to his clerk who held the big book. ‘Forty-two wants seventy-eight pound.’

  There was a pause while the clerk ran his finger down the column of recorded bets. He did this twice, then he looked up at the boss and began to shake his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t pay. That ticket backed Snailbox Lady.’

  Mr Pratchett, standing on his box, leaned over and peered down at the book. He seemed to be disturbed by what the clerk had said, and there was a look of genuine concern on the huge magenta face.

  That clerk is a fool, I thought, and any moment now Mr Pratchett’s going to tell him so.

  But when Mr Pratchett turned back to me, the eyes had become narrow and hostile. ‘Now look Charley,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t let’s have any of that. You know very well you bet Snailbox. What’s the idea?’

  ‘I bet Black Panther,’ I said. ‘Two separate bets of three pounds each at twenty-five to one. Here’s the second ticket.’

  This time he didn’t even bother to check it with the book. ‘You bet Snailbox, Charley,’ he said. ‘I remember you coming round.’ With that, he turned away from me and started wiping the names of the last race runners off his board with a wet rag. Behind him, the clerk had closed the book and was lighting himself a cigarette. I stood watching them, and I could feel the sweat beginning to break through the skin all over my body.

  ‘Let me see the book.’

  Mr Pratchett blew his nose in the wet rag and dropped it to the ground. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you go away and stop annoying me?’

  The point was this: a bookmaker’s ticket, unlike a totalisator ticket, never has anything written on it regarding the nature of your bet. This is normal practice, the same at every racetrack in the country, whether it’s the Silver Ring at Newmarket, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, or a tiny country flapping-track near Oxford. All you receive is a card bearing the bookie’s name and a serial number. The wager is (or should be) recorded by the bookie’s clerk in his book alongside the number of the ticket, but apart from that there is no evidence at all of how you betted.

  ‘Go on,’ Mr Pratchett was saying. ‘Hop it.’

  I stepped back a pace and glanced down the long line of bookmakers. None of them was looking my way. Each was standing motionless on his little wooden box beside his wooden placard, staring straight ahead into the crowd. I went up to the next one and presented a ticket.

  ‘I had three pounds on Black Panther at twenty-five to one,’ I said firmly. ‘Seventy-eight pounds to come.’

  This man, who had a soft inflamed face, went through exactly the same routine as Mr Pratchett, questioning his clerk, peering at the book, and giving me the same answers.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’ he said quietly, speaking to me as though I were eight years old. ‘Trying such a silly thing as that.’

  This time I stepped well back. ‘You dirty thieving bastards!’ I cried. ‘The whole lot of you!’

  Automatically, as though they were puppets, all the heads down the line flicked round and looked at me. The expressions didn’t alter. It was just the heads that moved, all seventeen of them, and seventeen pairs of cold glassy eyes looked down at me. There was not the faintest flicker of interest in any of them.

  ‘Somebody spoke,’ they seemed to be saying. ‘We didn’t hear it. It’s quite a nice day today.’

  The crowd, sensing excitement, was beginning to move in around me. I ran back to Mr Pratchett, right up close to him and poked him in the stomach with my finger. ‘You’re a thief! A lousy rotten little thief!’ I shouted.

  The extraordinary thing was, Mr Pratchett didn’t seem to resent this at all.

  ‘Well I never,’ he said. ‘Look who’s talking.’

  Then suddenly the big face broke into a wide, froglike grin, and he looked over at the crowd and shouted. ‘Look who’s talking!’

  All at once, everybody started to laugh. Down the line the bookies were coming to life and turning to each other and laughing and pointing at me and shouting, ‘Look who’s talking! Look who’s talking!’ The crowd began to take up the cry as well, and I stood there on the grass alongside Mr Pratchett with this wad of tickets as thick as a pack of cards in my hand, listening to them and feeling slightly hysterical. Over the heads of the people I could see Mr Feasey beside his blackboard already chalking up the runners for the next race; and then beyond them, far away up the top of the field, I caught sight of Claud standing by the van, waiting for me with the suitcase in his hand.

  It was time to go home.

  The Champion of the World

  All day, in between serving customers, we had been crouching over the table in the office of the filling-station, preparing the raisins. They were plump and soft and swollen from being soaked in water, and when you nicked them with a razor-blade the skin sprang open and the jelly stuff inside squeezed out as easily as you could wish.

  But we had a hundred and ninety-six of them to do altogether and the evening was nearly upon us before we had finished.

  ‘Don’t they look marvellous!’ Claud cried, rubbing his hands together hard. ‘What time is it, Gordon?’

  ‘Just after five.’

  Through the window we could see a station-wagon pulling up at the pumps with a woman at the wheel and about eight children in the back eating ice-creams.

  ‘We ought to be moving soon,’ Claud said. ‘The whole thing’ll be a washout if we don’t arrive before sunset, you realise that.’ He was getting twitchy now. His face had the same flushed and pop-eyed look it got before a dog-race or when there was a date with Clarice in the evening.

  We both went outside and Claud gave the woman the number of gallons she wanted. When she had gone, he remained standing in the middle of the driveway squinting anxiously up at the sun which was now only the width of a