Is This Yours? (Four)

“Watching a bog-standard horse race without having a punt is boring. There’s a certain fascination that the great British public have with races, such as the Derby or the Gold Cup and housewives putting on a pound each way on a rag in the National because the horse’s name is topical or they had a pet budgie once that had the same name; but the only real pleasure you’ll ever derive from a dozen or so prospective dog food candidates racing over a certain distance on a miserable autumnal morning, is to have some money riding on the outcome”
Jim stood in the middle of the betting shop shaking like a petrified forest, this creed reverberating in his head. In his haste he’d made the bet out to win and not each way. “Oh to be a housewife now”
Caught mid-ships between blind panic and uncontrollable trembling he wrote out the last legible words engrained on his subconscious – the text message. He would never have bet the pony to win at that price, but it was too late. If Snake Charmer lost by a nose he may as well have come last; Jim wouldn’t see a penny in return.
It didn’t look promising from the start. Snake Charmer was slow away and was quickly outpaced. The favourite looked a nice horse but ran green with the jockey having to hold the horse’s head back lest it ripped his arms out of their sockets. “At least he won’t win” Jim thought, “He’ll be fucked half way”.
Three others that had raced before had settled quickly and were setting a good pace. Snake Charmer was still struggling to go the gallop but retained a tentative grip on the back of the pack.
One of the leaders struck for home and quickly opened up a couple of lengths lead. “I’m screwed” he muttered, “This is going to piss it”
Although he could hardly bear to drag his terrorised eyes from the TV screen he was distracted by something bopping up and down underneath the monitor. It was dancing a jig and pretending to play an invisible flute. It was the old man. “What was the silly arse doing? Snake Charmer’s losing” he thought. Then he heard the commentator: “And as they head toward the final two furlongs its Flautist stretching them out now”
“Bloody hell, he wasn’t backing my horse at all. It’s Flautist he’s packed his readies on. I didn’t see it. 12 to fucking one as well” and with that he slumped back against the shop window. He looked down at his two hands. One was clutching his bet the other, the black mobile phone that had started all this bloody nonsense. He was going to hand in the phone eventually. If the tip had been kosher he’d have hung onto it for a couple of days by which time either the phone would have been blocked or the tipster line discontinued. He might have made a nice little bundle but luck like that just didn’t happen to Jim.
He used to think his old man was lucky. He never saw him without a roll of cash, carried in his trouser pocket like a gangster. He assumed his father was good at backing winners and so he thought he’d try to hang onto that lucky star.
His dad seemed to be perennially working night shift. He told Jim once that the hours suited him best. Early morning’s he couldn’t stand and days were just too busy. It’s quiet at night – you can get more things done. He certainly got his studying done. Every night he’d leave the house with his battered satchel which, he said, contained his work tools and the evening paper. He never read a headline in his life. Popes and Princesses died; Countries were invaded and liberated; Governments came and went and Banks went boom and bust. These were uncertain elements in an unstable universe, but there was one constant. When he returned home Jim’s father had four horses pencilled in on the race card at the back of the paper.
Jim had just left school. Bright but possessing no application, he garnered no qualifications and applied for no college courses. “I’ll find work” he promised his parents but for six months after leaving secondary education he did nothing except sleep, eat and play computer games. They in turn refused to subsidise his lethargy. After his trip to the Betting Shop that day with his Dad, Jim was determined to become self-financing.
His father kept a ream of betting slips in the bookcase next to the fire. Every morning he’d sit down with a final cup of tea before retiring and complete his bet, referring to the selections he’d made from the paper. The slip was deposited for safe-keeping in a small cheap ornamental box that sat on the mantelpiece. Then he’d drain the last of his tea and return to the kitchen with the newspaper. He’d empty the contents of the teapot into it, wrap it up tightly and throw it into the outside bin. This was usually followed by a stretch, a yawn and a slow climb upstairs to bed.
Jim had observed this behaviour for years when he was getting ready for school, not that he always attended. His Dad used to amuse him by saying “Good night son” before disappearing, especially on summer mornings when the sun was streaming in through the crooked, dust-laden venetian blinds in the sitting-room. He never spoke now. He would even listen to his parent’s door some mornings to eavesdrop on their conversation, particularly if it concerned him; however the only sounds he ever heard were low grunts and sighs; it was his mother who was the silent one.
That early summer he rose immediately after his father closed the bedroom door and before his mother could entangle herself from the spent arms and legs that sat across her body once the sleeping juice had been dispersed into the appropriate depository.
He shimmied down the staircase and hurled himself into the living room. He opened the little box as if he were a pirate with buried treasure and carefully unfolded the betting slip. He copied it down quickly just as his mother’s first steps moaned across the landing boards.
“That was fucking quick” he thought and carefully replaced the slip.
He switched on the TV and sat down as nonchalantly as his racing heart would allow. His mother entered the room. She was of average height, weight and disposition. When his friends at school asked Jim what his mum was like he’d say she was pleasant. That was about as emotionally charged as she could muster. When her husband had the inclination to climb on top of her or mount her from behind, she would smile weakly. She would never permit him the relish of knowing that she detested every single cell of his being.
His Father was tall and handsome in an austere and brutal fashion. He spoke violence with silence.
“Are you going somewhere today?” she asked Jim, more curious than really interested.
“Job interview”
She surmised in a trice Jim was lying, because Jim always lied. Jim, on the other hand, considered his fabrications a necessary form of guile, but could never understand that they were only effective provided that you occasionally told the truth.
“Good luck then” she cheered lackadaisically and stumbled into the kitchen.
He waited until he heard two sounds; a clatter as the frying pan hit the hob and the low throb of the microwave as she overcooked her porridge. He snuck upstairs to his room and dressed himself in yesterday’s clothes and crept back toward the other bedroom. He turned the knob and pushed the door slightly ajar so he could see his father lying on the bed through the gap where the hinges hung. Satisfied his father was slaying Able in the land of Nod, he moved inside toward his mother’s handbag. She always kept it by the bed so that burglars couldn’t get at it. “You spend every week night here alone Mum” Jim scolded her, back when they were both practically children. “If someone wants your money it don’t matter where you keep it”
Today though, for Jim, this was ideal. He rummaged inside until he found the purse and, just as delicately as he had purloined the betting slip, he peeled a fiver out of the wallet, then dropped the purse back in and shook the bag a couple of times to re-rummage the myriad of unused elements that lay within. This was one bit of paper he wasn’t putting back. This was today’s meal ticket. If all went well he’d be replacing it before she’d know it was gone. “I might slip her an extra twenty” a typical gregarious gambler’s thought as if the promise of a munificent act would guarantee success.
Downstairs again he grabbed his front door key and with a quick bye left the house.
He walked into town, slowly. It took about an hour, but it was still only 9:00. The Bookies didn’t open until 10:00 and so he went for a coffee, calling in to buy a newspaper on the way. He had some change of his own so he didn’t have to break into that little blue beauty in his back pocket.
He sat down with his drink and opened up the Daily at the racing pages. He checked the four horses listed on his bit of scrap paper. He understood, as well, that the figures to the left of each horse represented their placing in each of their last six races. Nothing that he could see in black and white justified anyone risking their hard earned money on these animals. Where he expected to see a 1, 2 or 3 – there was a 5 or a 6 or worse still even a 0.
The longer he gazed at the cards the more he became attracted to different horses, ones that had nice black type against their name. Quality horses, not the also-rans his old man had picked out. Over the course of the next forty minutes he marked out four of his own horses and at 10:00 paid for his coffee and left a young effeminate waiter cursing him because he hadn’t left a tip.
When he entered the Betting Shop he immediately went over to the fittings that held the blank betting slips. “What was this?” he gasped, as a bank of different coloured papers confronted him. There were Yankees, Canadians, Lucky 15s, Lucky 31s, Patents, Union Jacks and many more. He hadn’t a clue what to do or which form to use so he grabbed one of each and read them all.
He settled for the Lucky 15 - four horses and a guaranteed return with one winner. “15 bets,” he slavered “15 winning bets - four singles, six doubles, four trebles and a quadruple. At 30 pence a bet that gives me 50 pence change.”
He unrolled his newspaper and laid it out on a table. The scrap paper with his father’s selections fell out of the middle and onto the floor. “It’s a sign” he said and wrote out the bet with his own fancied runners. “I’ll win it without his fucking help”
He turned toward the counter. There was no queue. “I’ll put it on and get the hell out of here, it’s full of weirdos” Then everything went black.
She’d discovered the missing money almost as soon as Jim left the house. It was a bad day for the teenager to try gambling because it was one of those ‘perfect storm’ days when seven seas of rotten luck converge on your little lifeboat and send you to the bottom of the belligerent briny.
The milkman had called round one day early because his wife was due to deliver her baby that weekend. He was a genial guy and had a long scraggly head of ginger hair. He normally called in the afternoon because of Jim’s father being a night worker, but after the shock of seeing the lad himself up early he assumed Jim’s mother would be up early too. He rapped on the front window softly seeing her in the living room in her dressing gown with her back toward him. Unbeknown to the poor window cleaner she’d spilt tea on the front of the gown and had untied it and unbuttoned her pyjama top. Hearing a tapping noise she swung around just as a horn blared outside as a friend of the window cleaners hooted him. He turned to wave in response as Jim’s mother turned toward the window with her extensive right breast in view. She shrieked at what appeared to be a huge head covered with a massive ginger beard. The subsequent scream woke her husband who hurtled downstairs, not because of the possibility his wife had been attacked but due to the sheer ignominious effrontery of anyone daring to wake him.
He flew into the living room swinging at his wife who ducked and pointed at the window. The milkman had seen enough and decided his cash-flow problems were not worth being laid off work with several broken somethings and ran faster than his milk-cart would go.
Jim’s mother calmed her husband down and said she’d make him another cuppa before he went back to bed. On her way to the kitchen she felt guilty for the milkman and went upstairs to fetch the fiver she had put in her purse with the aim of leaving it in an envelope for him with tomorrow morning’s empties. She couldn’t find it Even a woman of her average ability, can weigh up the suspicious nature of her son’s early rising with the disappearance of money, and she was always careful with that.
“Did Jim tell you he had an interview this morning?” she asked her husband. “No” he answered truthfully having hardly said a word to the boy since the New Year.
“He’s took five pounds out of my purse” Normally, despite lukewarm attentions for the boy, she wouldn’t inordinately drop him in it, but stealing was an anathema to her. It was actually the thing that brought her a premature death when she discovered three years later that her husband, although in truth a night worker, was in fact a burglar. He was caught in a large country estate one June evening. He tripped the alarm and then tripped over a rather fat cat that was so obese due to overfeeding that it spent all its time on the upper floors. At night it used to sit on the top of the grand staircase and reminisce of its younger days chasing mice. That night it had inadvertently caught a dirty rat.
That morning as he waited for the cup of tea, the husband caught sight of something in the corner of his eye, something that didn’t look right. A strip of white was sticking out from where it should never stick and he rose toward the small box on the mantelpiece. Jim had been careful about everything but pressing down on the creases firmly. As he popped the betting slip back into its case the paper folds pushed outward lifted the lightweight lid of the box.
“I think I know where to find him” he said and got changed leaving his wife with that self same weak smile she showed him each time he penetrated her. The smile seemed to say “You’re a prick all right, but that’s about all. One big fat fucking prick”
Jim paid for that, physically. His father nearly knocked him unconscious in the bookies and practically kicked him all the way home. Emotionally he didn’t give a damn. After all they couldn’t ignore him any more than was customary. His horses didn’t win but neither did his father’s. He’d soon find out where all the cash came from. Meanwhile he began his own career and stole from other sources. Even so the big gamble never paid off. He was arrested twice with warnings of a long custodial sentence if he couldn’t go straight.
Then he met Cassie. “Cassie saved me” he mumbled, “She…wait a minute…what the f…” A miracle was being performed in front of his eyes. There was a furlong and a half left to run and the most wondrous sight he’d ever witnessed shot him out of his trance like a comet across the night sky. Snake Charmer had moved to the outside of the pack and was gaining ground rapidly.
He hadn’t spoken a word, except to the old man, in all the time he’d been in the Bookmakers. Now it was if a dumb man had been struck lucid. “Come on” the encouraging words were spoken so meekly that they were in danger of falling back down his throat. Snake Charmer was flying now but they were inside the final furlong. “Come on” this time he screamed as if to eradicate his first pathetic attempt at cajoling the nag. Inside though he knew it was too much ground to make up. Flautist was still ahead but getting tired. “Fly my beauty fly” he shouted with tears breaking across his irises. “He won’t make it. I should’ve backed it each way. I’ve lost three grand” But Snake Charmer wasn’t stopping. With half a furlong to run she was beginning to get upsides Flautist “She’s going to do it. She’s going to fucking do it” He could smell the money.
As they neared the line Flautist was tiring rapidly and so was the little old bastard that backed him. He’d stopped dancing. But the leader began to swerve across the track and carried Snake Charmer with it. Flautists jockey straightened him up again and the two horses strode gamely for the finish. Snake Charmer rallied and gained ground with every hoof beat.
They crossed the line in an indistinguishable blur. Jim’s knees gave way. He’d have to wait for the photo finish.