"Fine." We smiled at each other and turned away. I liked him. He was imaginative and had a sense of humour to leaven the formidable big-business-executive power of his speech and manner. A tough man, I thought appreciatively: tough in mind, muscular in body, unswerving in purpose: a man of the kind to have earned an earldom, if he hadn't inherited it.
Sparking Plug had to do without his bucket of water that night and again the following morning. The box driver set off to Leicester with a pocketful of hard- earned money from the lads and their instructions to back the horse to win; and I felt a traitor.
Inskip's other horse, which had come in the box too, was engaged in the third race, but the novice 'chase was not until the fifth race on the card, which left me free to watch the first two races as well as Sparks' own. I bought a race card and found a space on the parade ring rails, and watched the horses for the first race being led round.
Although from the form books I knew the names of a great many trainers they were still unknown to me by sight; and accordingly, when they stood chatting with their jockeys in the ring, I tried, for interest, to identify some of them. There were only seven of them engaged in the first race: Owen, Cundell, Beeby, Cazalet, Humber. Humber? What was it that I had heard about Humber? I couldn't remember. Nothing very important, I thought.
Humber 's horse looked the least well of the lot, and the lad leading him round wore unpolished shoes, a dirty raincoat, and an air of not caring to improve matters. The jockey's jersey, when he took his coat off, could be seen to be still grubby with mud from a former outing, and the trainer who had failed to provide clean colours or to care about stable smartness was a large, bad-tempered looking man leaning on a thick, knobbed walking stick.
As it happened, Humber 's lad stood beside me on the stand to watch the race.
"Got much chance?" I asked idly.
"Waste of time running him," he said, his lip curling.
"I'm fed to the back molars with the sod."
"Oh. Perhaps your other horse is better, though?" I murmured, watching the runners line up for the start.
"My other horse?" He laughed without mirth.
"Three others, would you believe it? I'm fed up with the whole sodding set up. I'm packing it in at the end of the week, pay or no pay."
I suddenly remembered what I had heard about Humber. The worst stable in the country to work for, the boy in the Bristol hostel had said:
they starved the lads and knocked them about and could only get riffraff to work there.
"How do you mean, pay or no pay?" I asked.
" Humber pays sixteen quid a week, instead of eleven," he said, 'but it's not bloody worth it. I've had a bellyful of bloody Humber. I'm getting out. "
The race started, and we watched Humber 's horse finish last. The lad disappeared, muttering, to lead him away.
I smiled, followed him down the stairs, and forgot him, because waiting near the bottom step was a seedy, black-moustached man whom I instantly recognized as having been in the bar at the Cheltenham dance.
I walked slowly away to lean over the parade ring rail, and he inconspicuously followed. He stopped beside me, and with his eyes on the one horse already in the ring, he said, "I hear that you are hard up."
"Not after today, I'm not," I said, looking him up and down.
He glanced at me briefly.
"Oh. Are you so sure of Sparking Plug?"
"Yeah," I said with an unpleasant smirk.
"Certain." Someone, I reflected, had been kind enough to tell him which horse I looked after: which meant he had been checking up on me. I trusted he had learned nothing to my advantage.
"Hmm."
A whole minute passed. Then he said casually, "Have you ever thought of changing your job… going to another stable?"
"I've thought of it," I admitted, shrugging.
"Who hasn't?"
"There's always a market for good lads," he pointed out, 'and I've heard you're a dab hand at the mucking out. With a reference from Inskip you could get in anywhere, if you told them you were prepared to wait for a vacancy. "
"Where?" I asked; but he wasn't to be hurried. After another minute he said, still conversationally, "It can be very… er… lucrative working for some stables."
"Oh?"
"That is," he coughed discreetly, 'if you are ready to do a bit more than the stable tells you to. "
"Such as?"
"Oh… general duties," he said vaguely.
"It varies. Anything helpful toer the person who is prepared to supplement your income."
"And who's that?"
He smiled thinly.
"Look upon me as his agent. How about it? His terms are a regular river a week for information about the results of training gallops and things like that, and a good bonus for occasional special jobs of a more, er, risky nature."
"It don't sound bad," I said slowly, sucking in my lower lip.
"Can't I do it at Inskip's?"
"Inskip's is not a betting stable," he said.
"The horses always run to win. We do not need a permanent employee in that sort of place. There are however at present two betting stables without a man of ours in them, and you would be useful in either."
He named two leading trainers, neither of whom was one of the three people I had already planned to apply to. I would have to decide whether it would not be more useful to join what was clearly a well-organized spy system, than to work with a once-doped horse who would almost certainly not be doped again.
"I'll think it over," I said.
"Where can I get in touch with you?"
"Until you're on the pay roll, you can't," he said simply.
"Sparking Plug's in the fifth, I see. Well, you can give me your answer after that race. I'll be somewhere on your way back to the stables. Just nod if you agree, and shake your head if you don't. But I can't see you passing up a chance like this, not one of your sort." There was a sly contempt in the smile he gave me that made me unexpectedly wince inwardly.
He turned away and walked a few steps, and then came back.
"Should I have a big bet on Sparking Plug, then?" he asked.
"Oh… er… well… if I were you I'd save your money."
He looked surprised, and then suspicious, and then knowing.
"So that's how the land lies," he said.
"Well, well, well." He laughed, looking at me as if I'd crawled out from under a stone. He was a man who despised his tools.
"I can see you're going to be very useful to us.
Very useful indeed. "
I watched him go. It wasn't from kindheartedness that I had stopped him backing Sparking Plug, but because it was the only way to retain and strengthen his confidence. When he was fifty yards away, I followed him. He made straight for the bookmakers in Tatter- sails and strolled along the rows, looking at the odds displayed by each firm;
but as far as I could see he was in fact innocently planning to bet on the next race, and not reporting to anyone the outcome of his talk with me. Sighing, I put ten shillings on an outsider and went back to watch the horses go out for the race.
Sparking Plug thirstily drank two full buckets of water, stumbled over the second last fence, and cantered tiredly in behind the other seven runners to the accompaniment of boos from the cheaper enclosures. I watched him with regret. It was a thankless way to treat a great-hearted horse.
The seedy, black-moustached man was waiting when I led the horse away to the stables. I nodded to him, and he sneered knowingly back.
"You'll hear from us," he said.
There was gloom in the box going home and in the yard the next day over Sparking Plug's unexplainable defeat, and I went alone to Slaw on Tuesday evening, when Soupy duly handed over another seventy-five pounds. I checked it. Another fifteen new fivers, consecutive to the first fifteen.
"Ta," I said.
"What do you get out of this yourself?"
Soupy's full mouth curled.
"I do all right. You mugs take the risks, I get a cut for setting you up. Fair enough, eh?"