They shuddered in a bunch against the barrier, then streamed out, that long trajectory of colour against an indifferent landscape, the muscle whipped by rain, by the sudden emotional compact of breath and wind. They urged into the wind and the flat, grey with trees. The colour broke fiercely on the grey. It whipped round the bend. The horses coiled back in a long elastic thread. You could hear their hoofs dulled by the mud. You could hear the approach of frantic breath. You could almost hear a flash of colour breaking through a clump of trees. And the crowd leant over the fence, drawing the horses on with their hands, so many puppets on so many strings, of which the jockeys, balled up on their saddles, had no ultimate control.
Arthur Quong held on to the fence. Upright, he did not breathe with the crowd, was something apart, or part of the colt, could feel his muscles, touched in the stable, stretch out, watched that coloured bead move on the string and fuse with the one ahead. He felt the wind. Hoofs dealt mud on his face. Hoofs ebbed in a wave of sound. Interview was done, they said, with the mud, with the weight. They swirled out on the second round. Arthur Quong fixed his eyes ahead, felt a singing singing, as he waited, felt himself smiling, tapping his foot, as he waited, as he clung to the fence. He had stopped breathing. Because this was no longer Arthur Quong, was out there threading through the trees one green and orange bead. That colt of Arthur Quong’s, they said, was leading, they said. Did not hear this, but the whinging of breath. They eased up slower along the landscape. He felt a kind of long lassitude, almost closed his eyes, if it were not for the motion of air that pressed open lids. The ears heard the approach. Stevie Everett’s face was pale against the neck of a bay colt. Arthur Quong dropped his shoulders. The wind died.
A Chow! somebody shrugged. It’s the day. No horse could carry weight in all that mud.
Mr Belper tore up two more tickets. Who would have thought that the Cup, that Arthur Quong…
Almost touched Vic Moriarty, Arthur leading in the winner, she looked up, saw the nostrils blown out pink, and a horse was going past, and vaguely she knew the Cup was over. She looked down, she had a ticket in her hands, Sir Galahad, she had asked for only so that she could turn, turned and was no one but backs closing. She let the ticket fall from her hands. I got to see him, she said. She pushed past Mrs Everett, who had a newspaper over her head because of the rain. She went round the corner of the stand by the urinal. She went along the line of stalls. I got to see him, she said. She heard her feet plopping in the mud. It went on jabbing in her head, one idea, I got to see, I don’t care, but I got to see. He was standing at the back of the bookies’ pitch lighting a cigarette.
Clem, she said. Clem. I’ve been looking for you every-where.
I haven’t been so many places, he said.
Don’t get wild, Clem, she said. I didn’t mean it.
Mean what?
Giving you the go-by like I did.
He caught in his breath. She was mauling his arm. Vic Moriarty making a scene, when as if he would have given a damn whether she thought what she thought he thought. He looked hard at his cigarette. A drop of rain became smoke on its point.
Did you? he said.
Yes, I thought.
Well, I didn’t. Now let go my arm.
She wanted to cry.
Clem, she said, don’t be hard.
Sidney Furlow walked past. Her hair was plastered at the sides against her face, that did not see, was cold eyes with the lids half dropped. He could have run after her, twisted her round, and said. He did not know what he would have said. He looked down.
Damn you, he said. Let go my arm.
She began to whimper, the rain on her lips. Sidney Furlow got into a car. He wanted to run, stop, stop, firing its exhaust. And Vic was holding on to his arm. God, what a sight. The car moved slowly out.
Now, he said, are you satisfied? Now that you’ve had your scene?
I didn’t want to make a scene.
No, he said. You couldn’t help yourself.
But last night, and to-day, I wanted to say, Clem, I had to, you’ll tell me when it’s finished, Clem, you won’t walk out, you can’t.
Words in a whimper made her lips swell plumped out face and wet in the cracks. A mouth said Mrs Moriarty’s gone. He wanted to press on a mouth his mouth not this plumped out for a song.
Ernest’s gone to Moorang, she said.
She watched him, anxious to suggest, or seize the expression in his eyes. Her voice halted for this.
We can’t stand here like a couple of fools. You’d better do something about your face.
His voice at least was flat.
But Ernest, she said. You will, Clem?
She stood and waited.
Yes, he said. We’ll see.
Would go perhaps because nowhere else, and you could not wring a neck that wasn’t there to wring, and Vic what a sight was still nothing wrong, if only he got that out of his head and could not feel her dance.
The crowd, its stare glazed, its emotions spent, trampled cards underfoot, the Cup was run, the day without expectation after this. They wandered without much purpose waiting for another race. It was over, or as good as over. Thought hung limp like a flag on its pole. It was over for another year, they said, all that had happened and that had not happened, the money lost and the hat worn. But they waited without animation, for some last-minute frenzy perhaps, for some sign that it wasn’t time to go home. Because going home is acceptance of the ultimate defeat.
I took my girl to the races, sang Walter Quong.
He was lurching about behind the stand, trying to catch the rain.
24
Being alone made her feel a bit afraid. That zooming of a moth over-life-size on the wall, or two moths, shadow and substance, had also the implication of dead things, a moth or a bird, that she could not bear to touch. When Tiny died she could not touch him, lying in a shawl, though I love all dogs, she said, and when you think of the affection of a dog, but before it goes stiff of course. Ernest took Tiny by the hind-leg, she cried to see her poor pet, he was almost a whippet, hang stiff like a flying fox, in the Museum with Ernest, who said that the flying fox was a curse, with the rabbit, the prickly pear, and the briar, and none of them aboriginal except the flying fox perhaps. Though Ernest liked Tiny. Oh dear, my poor Tiny, she said, I wish we could have had a child, because Tiny dead makes you feel there is nothing else left. Ernest said yes. He shuffled in his slippers and coughed. She had embroidered slippers from a pattern, two pairs, but the first hadn’t come off, so it shows my industry, she said, that I didn’t give in on one. Ernest called it application.
He had forgotten to take his slippers to Moorang, they lay under a chair, she saw, because Gertie had forgotten to move, Gertie always forgot. It made her sort of guilty looking at the slippers. She looked away. She thought of a flying fox. They hung upside down from the fruit-trees, or brushed through trees, and squealed. The zooming of a moth made her twist her hands. If he comes as he said, she said, I shall hear him coming up the path, if he comes. The slippers made her feel guilty. She took them from under the chair and threw them into a cupboard, where they made a softish thud. Perhaps I’m fonder of Ernest, she felt, hearing the slippers thud, fonder than I, at least after standing in the rain, and you couldn’t move his arm, only touch his arm, and that was what Ernest would not understand, what made you want to hold on to Clem, when he touched you in the bed. That’s lust, Ernest would have said, all right, she said, it’s lust that makes you wait for feet coming up the path. Like the Bible, and Daisy giggled at the curate reading the lesson, that big brass eagle standing on balls, and she said at the bazaar the ice-cream slipped down her throat when he touched. She wished she had lit the fire.