Is This Yours ? (Five)

These days technology has replaced the humdrum. It offers new forms of entertainment, exciting ways to communicate and educate and unlimited access to the extremities of human insanity and perversion. In the sporting arenas we can be positioned in the epicentre of a tackle in the penalty area five minutes before full-time in the Champions League final and given a worm’s eye view as to whether a rugby ball was grounded for a winning try to clinch the World Cup. Smart computer software can predict the direction of cricket and tennis balls and arbitrate at crucial moments in the most monumental of contests. By contrast computer technology returns the winner of a photo-finish in seconds thus completely eliminating the tension of that pregnant after–race period where speculation and confidence engage sword blows like gladiators in the Coliseum.
Jim remembered a story his dad had told him, practically the only bed-time story he’d ever related to his son, about the legend of the Chester Bookmaker. The story emanated from the misty backwaters of the Nineteen Seventies. This smart guy knew that, because of the attitude of the TV and on-course cameras to the finish line, in a close finish the angle favoured the horse nearer the far railing, and misleadingly enhanced that horse’s position. His board was adjacent to the winning posts and so his eye-line was unimpeded and true.
One spring meeting, a five furlong dash saw the two front runners flash past the post seemingly inseparable. The Bookie knew this was the scenario he had waited years to arrive. He sent his runner into the concourse to look at the TV slow-motion finish with strict instructions to come straight back. He duly returned informing his employer that the horse against the far railings looked to have pinched it by a nose. Looking across at his competitors boards he could see them all offering around 5/6 that this horse would be awarded the race. The other horse was priced at 13/8 against.
With a flourish and a piece of chalk he marked up both horses at 2/1 against. His runner turned pale, “What! No! Didn’t you hear me? The far rail’s got it. They’ll clean us out” And they came, boy how they came.
Like a giant gambler electro-magnet his board attracted punters from all over the course. Yet despite all the money he took he refused to shorten the price or even lay off any of it. His runner gazed agog at the swelling satchel in his arms knowing that within minutes all this and more would disappear back into the hands of those filling it now. He was so convinced his gaffer faced ruin he was already rehearsing the apologetic phone call home: “Yes mum you were right. Does Dad still need a hand with his Window Cleaning job?”
The longer the outcome and the more replays were shown the more the money piled in. The other bookies decided to let the sucker go down and offered silly prices on the outsider to attract some money at least. 11/4 and 3/1 were offered but attracted little attention outside those too pissed to care what they did with their money.
When the result was finally announced there was an uproar as if it had been a conspiracy between the race course owners, the stewards and the bookie. Once the TV experts had unravelled the mystery, something which seemed akin to an electric brae the bookie had taken over £50,000, a very tidy sum - back then.
At Sandown the horses had barely pulled up after the winning post before the result was announced. There was no tension for Jim to live through just an exaggerated sense of deflation. Flautist was the winner. Snake Charmer hadn’t done enough. Jim had fucked up.
Gamblers may differ in many respects; they may adopt different strategies, they may use systems, tipsters, trends or staking plans but they all have one thing in common: ante-post recriminations. These take the form of rhetorical statements beginning with the same two words, ‘if only. There were several of those hammering away at the inside of Jim’s head. “If only I’d stayed in the shop” repeated itself like a baseball bat being drummed against the walls of his cranium. Others such as: “If only the text had come sooner” and “If only I hadn’t ripped up the bet” soon joined in with the mugging.
“That’s why I’ve never won” That pathetic maudlin cry shimmered through him. He’d have to tell her. Even if he managed to deflect the inquisition about the present and the enquiry about the missing take-away; even if he managed to fabricate a clever enough tale to explain it all away, he’d have to tell her. Losing demanded it. You shared your loses with people who couldn’t give a shit, but you bored them anyway. You kept the winnings to yourself, but gambling had never made Jim that selfish.
Cassie fell in love with Jim in a betting shop. She was a student at the local Poly. Her parents were wealthy but at ease with it. Their daughter was clever, not an intellectual, and they never pushed her beyond her capabilities. She had aptitude and was considered mature for her age. She could read people immediately and often warned her friends about relationships they had got themselves into. They never listened to her but she was always right. During the aftermath of these ruined liaisons the blame would be delivered roundly to her doorstep, the upshot being that Cassie’s circle of pals would gradually depreciate as she neared the end of her school years. Although clearly hurt she rationalised that three true friends were better than a dozen acquaintances.
When she left home to study she clashed for the only time with her parents when she resisted their proposition to fund her further education. She insisted on taking a grant and financing herself through astringent means and supreme self-assuredness. It was the making of her and she gained the necessary qualifications to teach.
During those student years she was heavily involved in ‘good works’. In her spare time she worked in the local community helping out the elderly, the infirm and the disabled. She learned to drive and was determined to pass first time because she couldn’t afford to pay for further lessons. The examiner nearly failed her on the emergency stop test. He hadn’t given her the signal when she pulled up abruptly on a narrow street with parked cars on both sides. The examiner was just about to lean over and issue a comment laced with his customary laconic sarcasm, when a four year old child on a bike shot out in front of them from between a Peugeot 206 and an Astra.
In shock he could barely muster “Well done” to her, because there appeared to be no physical way she could have known he was there; and, putting himself in her position (a nightmare which plagued him for years threatening his livelihood) he would almost certainly have run the child over.
Even with her full licence in tow, Cassie could not afford the cost of petrol never mind the purchase of even the most moribund of vehicles, so she drove minibuses for local charities and relished trips taking the local handicapped children to the seaside or maybe to London.
When she came to teach her experience with the physically and mentally impaired became her inspiration and when she was appointed head of the local secondary school it became her passion to ensure that every child who came through the school gates did not handicap their intelligence through idleness or bad behaviour.
Several did fall through the huge fisher net she created for herself but the school’s results improved so dramatically that her biggest problem was not truancy, or bullying but retaining the educational standards she’d implemented for local children in the face of growing numbers of parents buying into the catchment area.
It was on a charitable venture, dressed up as Sandy the female lead in the film Grease, and accompanied fellow students Spike, a podgy version of Danny and Frieda (overseas), a Germanic Betty, that Cassie did a remarkable thing; she dragged the pair of them into the local betting shop during a trek around the town collecting money in buckets, adorned suitably with the charity logo.
It was akin to the melding of two strange badly dressed worlds. At the very least they recorded a reaction from impulses normally attuned to the narrow margins of rising and falling prices from these bargain basement stock traders.
“Come on boys” called Cassie, quickly noting the complete absence of the tender sex, “How about a little donation from all those winners out there” To be honest her comprehension concerning the operational nature of a Bookmaker was naïvety in its purest form.
Heads that had spun round in intrigue they hadn’t experienced in years, spun back so fast at her petition that some necks could be heard cracking. She rattled the bucket again and shifted tack appealing to their heart strings and their hobby: “What about it, a small donation for the handicapped?” But Lachesis had severed those threads long ago.
Spike and Frieda were becoming uncomfortable, especially as both had been propositioned by bored punters between bets. “Cassie, come on” pleaded Spike, “we’re not going to get anything here”
“Not anything we want anyway” Frieda whispered in Cassie’s ear in a soft undertone, in complete antithesis to the stereotype.
In tandem they began to tow her outside as eagerly as she had pulled them in. She resisted and caught sight of a young man in profile, deathly pale but beautiful. He was watching the finish to a race. As they crossed the line his eyes closed in, what she knew was, intense disappointment. She also knew instantly that he was broke.
He turned to leave and as he did he brushed her arm and the bucket rattled. He didn’t look up at her; his eyes had already assumed that conventional downward gaze at a point three feet diagonally in front of him. Automatically he reached for his pocket and extracted a fifty pence piece. He tossed it into the yellow plastic pale. It clattered with irony on top of the rest of the change. At this the heads span round again.
“Thank you so much” Cassie said to him.
“Quick get out before you lose it” he replied, leaving.
“He’s right” choked Spike, “There’s a guy over there who’s just counted what you’ve got in there from the rattle alone”
Outside she watched the donor drift away toward the bus station. “Hold this a minute will you” she said giving Spike her bucket, leaving him standing like a portly version of Libra, and trotted after the young man. Then as quick she turned back and dipped her hand into the bucket taking out a pound coin. Then she resumed the chase.
“I think Cassie has the wrong end of stick, I think” Frieda frowned.
But to Cassie it was just another branch of charity and as she caught up with the young man she proffered the money at him. “Here, take it”
Jim had never begged for money, he considered that lower than stealing. It was all down to a certain expertise involved in one measure that was lacking in the other. Still reeling from the dead cert that had finished dead last, Jim couldn’t understand why a stranger would be plying him with money in the middle of a shopping precinct.
“You’ve earned it. That was your last fifty pence wasn’t it?”
“Oh, I see” Jim replied, simultaneously cognisant of the young lady’s intentions and of a quite handsome face. She had emerald eyes and auburn hair, shoulder length; her nose held a strong line, neither turning up or out, and her chin curved smoothly into her neck and shoulders. She had traces of a double chin but that added roundness enhanced the warmth of her features.
He could see her now. “I think I was another one of her good works” he grumbled, “One that all the concern in the world couldn’t…”
“Fuck me mate!” a loud breathless voice cut through his thoughts.
“Eh” Jim responded.
After the race he’d sat down bereft, his losing bet caught precariously between his thumb and forefinger, and wandered off into memory, a consoling respite from realities savage molars. Curiosity had prompted the punter sitting next to him to look at his bet. He assumed from Jim’s demeanour that he’d lost a bundle. When he translated the scrawl he couldn’t contain himself.
“Where the fuck did you get a bet like that from?”
Jim wondered where too.
“You’ll have to take a cheque”
“Are you taking the piss pal?” he seethed.
“No. Look at the screen”
During Jim’s spell in melancholia Snake Charmer’s trainer had lodged a complaint concerning the interference caused by Flautist to the runner-up. The steward’s had agreed that by hanging right the winner had obstructed Snake Charmer and consequently reversed the decision. Jim had just won £7550.