“You’ve already asked me, Sonny, and I’ve already said you’re the one with the inside knowledge.”
The ex-bookie looked elaborately furtive, then leaned forward on his stool till his cracked lips were very close to Jude’s ear and his purple cheek brushed against the hanging tendrils of her hair. “Well, as it happens…I do know a good thing.”
“Oh?”
“1.40 at Wincanton. Hasn’t raced for over two hundred days. Gonna romp home.”
Jude looked out of the window. Still the sleet fell relentlessly. But Gulliver, under his sheltering roof, had lain down with his front paws forward and looked perfectly content. Maybe she could leave him out there a little longer. “Which horse are you talking about?” she whispered, knowing that Sonny wouldn’t broadcast his tip to the entire room.
He pointed up to the screen displaying the odds for the Wincanton race. “Seven down,” he murmured. “Number Four.”
The horse’s name was Nature’s Vacuum.
“If you’re going to bet, do it quickly. That twenty to one won’t last.”
Jude looked at the central screen, where the horses were ambling their way towards the start. Down in Wincanton the weather looked almost springlike. She wished she were there rather than Fethering.
“Go on, are you going to have a punt?”
She took one more dutiful look out of the window. In spite of the ice bouncing off the pavement only feet away from him, Gulliver’s tail was actually wagging. He really did have a very nice nature.
“Why not?” replied Jude.
Two
As she sat down and looked around her at the punters trying to read the runes of the racing pages spread over the walls, Jude reflected on the unique egalitarianism of betting shops. She had encountered a few that had been silent and dour, but she’d never been in one where she’d felt uncomfortable. True, a less secure soul might have objected to the casual sexism that was the norm in such places, but she had never found the remarks flung at her less than good-natured. With an inward giggle, she wondered whether Carole would feel equally at ease in the environment.
Her bet was placed. Five pounds on Nature’s Vacuum. And she had managed to get the twenty to one – Nikki had written the price on her slip. As Sonny predicted, the odds on the horse had come down in the minutes before the off. Somebody knew something. The twenty to one gave way to sixteen to one. Fourteen to one. The starting price might even be twelves.
With the instinctive reaction of all punters, Jude was already beginning to feel that she was in profit. At fourteen to one, a fiver on the win would only bring in seventy pounds. Whereas the fiver she’d put on at twenty to one would bring in a hundred. She was thirty quid up even before the race started. That there was a hot odds-on favourite called Girton Girl and that Nature’s Vacuum remained a rank outsider were irrelevant details. In the mind of a punter the law of probability never carries as much weight as the law of possibility. And in the extraordinarily unlikely event of Nature’s Vacuum not winning, Jude reckoned the rush of excitement she was feeling at that moment was well worth a fiver.
She looked around at the betting shop’s other occupants and recognized plenty. There was a pair of decorators whose names she knew from overhearing their conversation to be Wes and Vie. The spatters of fresh paint on their overalls suggested that they were actually working, but the frequency with which they rushed in and out of the betting shop made Jude glad they weren’t working for her. Over the years she’d seen them almost every time she had been in, which prompted the bizarre idea that they only took on decorating commissions within walking distance of the place. Wes and Vie were not men who kept their emotions to themselves. Every hope and disappointment was vocalized. Horses and greyhounds, subjects of veneration and hope before their races, were quickly and loudly vilified when they lost.
The other infallible attendees were the waiters from Fethering’s only Chinese restaurant, the Golden Palace. There were never less than two and sometimes as many as five, all young, dressed in their uniform of black shirts and trousers, constantly chattering to each other in high chopped tones.
Another regular was a grey-haired man, dressed unfailingly in a suit and sober tie and carrying a briefcase. He looked like an accountant, who in retirement had chosen to continue working in a variation of his former profession, turf accountancy. And, according to Sonny Frank, that’s what he was. He noted his bets, successes and failures in an old-fashioned ledger, and his face remained impassive, regardless of the outcome. Though he had never spoken directly to her, Jude had overheard him placing bets at the counter. His accent was extremely cultured.
There was also a female regular, whose presence might have reassured a less confident woman than Jude about entering such a predominantly male enclave. A dumpy, white-haired woman, whom again Jude had seen whenever she’d been in. Every day the woman sat in the same chair and, without being particularly outgoing, seemed to be perfectly friendly with everyone. Her name was Pauline, and she was habitually surrounded by scraps of racing pages torn out of newspapers. In the early days Jude had always seen her with a fag in her mouth and a full ashtray in front of her, but now the woman was obedient to the smoking ban. The attraction of betting was apparently stronger than that of tobacco.
Sonny Frank, who always spoke nostalgically of the past history of bookmaking, and thought things had gone downhill since the days when his father and he took illegal bets in the back rooms of pubs, reckoned the smoking ban was another nail in the coffin of the industry he loved. “Punters just won’t come in,” he’d say. “And now they can do it all at home online, anyway. Soon won’t be any high street betting shops left.”
While his prognostication might be true in the long term, Jude reckoned the Fethering business still looked fairly healthy. And, from her own point of view, she thought the smoking ban was an inestimable improvement. It was now possible to spend five minutes in a betting shop without emerging reeking of tobacco.
As the horses on the screen lined up for the 1.40, a change came over the room. Even with the number of races scheduled – at least three meetings for the horses, interspersed with the greyhounds, not to mention computer-generated virtual racing – there was still a moment of intense concentration before the ‘off’ of each one.
“Come on, Girton Girl, you can do it,” said the decorator Wes.
“No way,” said Sonny Frank. “Iffy jumper if ever I saw one. Game down three out last time out at Uttoxeter.”
“But that was the jockey,” Vie, the other decorator, countered. “Useless apprentice. She’s got McCoy up today.”
“Which is why she’s down to eleven to eight,” Wes contributed.
“Still an iffy jumper.”
“What you on then, Sonny?”
“The winner.”
“Oh yeah? So you’re on Girton Girl too, are you?”
The globular old man chuckled. “No, no, I recognize rubbish when I see it. Remember – bookies never lose.”
“Ex-bookies do,” said Wes.
“Ssh, they’re away,” said Vie.
There was an animated exchange between the Chinese waiters and then a moment of relative silence – interrupted only by the endless jingles from the slot machines and the hiss of the sleet-storm outside – descended on the room as the punters listened to the race commentary. One horse had got left at the start and, by the time it got into its running, was some seven lengths away from its nearest rival. The horse was Nature’s Vacuum. Oh dear, thought Jude.