High Stakes

2

The owner of the crunched box accepted my apologies, remembered he was well insured and decided not to press charges. The policeman sighed, drew a line through his notes and departed. Jody let down the ramp of his box, brought out Energise and walked briskly away with him in the direction of the stables. And I returned to my binoculars, took off my battered coat and went thoughtfully back towards the weighing room.

The peace lasted for all of ten minutes — until Jody returned from the stables and found I had not cancelled my cancellation of his authority to act.

He sought me out among the small crowd standing around talking on the weighing room verandah.

‘Look, Steven,’ he said. ‘You’ve forgotten to tell them I’m still training for you.’

He showed no anxiety, just slight exasperation at my oversight. I weakened for one second at the thought of the storm which would undoubtedly break out again and began to make all the old fatal allowances: he was a good trainer, and my horses did win, now and again. And I could keep a sharp eye on the bills and let him know I was doing it. And as for the other thing... I could easily avoid being robbed in future.

I took a deep breath. It had to be now or never.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ I said slowly. ‘I meant what I said. I’m taking the horses away.’

‘What?’

‘I am taking them away.’

The naked enmity that filled his face was shocking.

‘You bastard,’ he said.

Heads turned again in our direction.

Jody produced several further abusive epithets, all enunciated very clearly in a loud voice. The Press notebooks sprouted like mushrooms in little white blobs on the edge of my vision and I took the only way I knew to shut him up.

‘I backed Energise today on the Tote,’ I said.

Jody said ‘So what?’ very quickly in the second before the impact of what I meant hit him like a punch.

‘I’m closing my account with Ganser Mays,’ I said.

Jody looked absolutely murderous, but he didn’t ask why. Instead he clamped his jaws together, cast a less welcoming glance at the attentive Press and said very quietly and with menace, ‘If you say anything I’ll sue you for libel.’

‘Slander,’ I said automatically.

‘What?’

‘Libel is written, slander is spoken.’

‘I’ll have you,’ he said, ‘if you say anything.’

‘Some friendship,’ I commented.

His eyes narrowed. ‘It was a pleasure,’ he said, ‘to take you for every penny I could.’

A small silence developed. I felt that racing had gone thoroughly sour and that I would never get much fun from it again. Three years of uncomplicated enjoyment had crumbled to disillusionment.

In the end I simply said, ‘Leave Energise here. I’ll fix his transport,’ and Jody turned on his heel with a stony face and plunged in through the weighing room door.

The transport proved no problem. I arranged with a young owner-driver of a one-box transport firm that he should take Energise back to his own small transit yard overnight and ferry him on in a day or two to whichever trainer I decided to send him.

‘A dark brown horse. Almost black,’ I said. ‘The gate-keeper will tell you which box he’s in. But I don’t suppose he’ll have a lad with him.’

The owner-driver, it transpired, could provide a lad to look after Energise. ‘He’ll be right as rain,’ he said. ‘No need for you to worry.’ He had brought two other horses to the course, one of which was in the last race, and he would be away within an hour afterwards, he said. We exchanged telephone numbers and addresses and shook hands on the deal.

After that, more out of politeness than through any great appetite for racing, I went back to the private box of the man who had earlier given me lunch and with whom I’d watched my own horse win.

‘Steven, where have you been? We’ve been waiting to help you celebrate.’

Charlie Canterfield, my host, held his arms wide in welcome, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. He and his eight or ten other guests sat on dining chairs round a large central table, its white cloth covered now not with the paraphernalia of lunch, but with a jumble of half full glasses, race cards, binoculars, gloves, handbags and betting tickets. A faint haze of Havana smoke and the warm smell of alcohol filled the air, and beyond, on the other side of snugly closed glass, lay the balcony overlooking the fresh and windy racecourse.

Four races down and two to go. Mid afternoon. Everyone happy in the interval between coffee-and-brandy and cake-and-tea. A cosy little roomful of chat and friendliness and mild social smugness. Well-intentioned people doing no one any harm.

I sighed inwardly and raised a semblance of enjoyment for Charlie’s sake, and sipped champagne and listened to everyone telling me it was great that Energise had won. They’d all backed it, they said. Lots of lovely lolly, Steven dear. Such a clever horse... and such a clever little trainer, Jody Leeds.

‘Mm,’ I said, with a dryness no one heard.

Charlie waved me to the empty chair between himself and a lady in a green hat.

‘What do you fancy for the next race?’ he asked.

I looked at him with a mind totally blank.

‘Can’t remember what’s running,’ I said.

Charlie’s leisured manner skipped a beat. I’d seen it in him before, this split-second assessment of a new factor, and I knew that therein lay the key to his colossal business acumen. His body might laze, his bonhomie might expand like softly whipped cream, but his brain never took a moment off.

I gave him a twisted smile.

Charlie said ‘Come to dinner.’

‘Tonight, do you mean?’

He nodded.

I bit my thumb and thought about it. ‘All right.’

‘Good. Let’s say Parkes, Beauchamp Place, eight o’clock.’

‘All right.’

The relationship between Charlie and me had stood for years in that vague area between acquaintanceship and active friendship where chance meetings are enjoyed and deliberate ones seldom arranged. That day was the first time he had invited me to his private box. Asking me for dinner as well meant a basic shift to new ground.

I guessed he had misread my vagueness, but all the same I liked him, and no one in his right mind would pass up a dinner at Parkes. I hoped he wouldn’t think it a wasted evening.

Charlie’s guests began disappearing to put on bets for the next race. I picked up a spare race card which was lying on the table and knew at once why Charlie had paid me such acute attention: two of the very top hurdlers were engaged in battle and the papers had been talking about it for days.

I looked up and met Charlie’s gaze. His eyes were amused.

‘Which one, then?’ he asked.

‘Crepitas.’

‘Are you betting?’

I nodded. ‘I did it earlier. On the Tote.’

He grunted. ‘I prefer the bookmakers. I like to know what odds I’m getting before I lay out my cash,’ And considering his business was investment banking that was consistent thinking. ‘I can’t be bothered to walk down, though.’

‘You can have half of mine, if you like,’ I said.

‘Half of how much?’ he said cautiously.

‘Ten pounds.’

He laughed. ‘Rumour says you can’t think in anything less than three noughts.’

‘That was an engineering joke,’ I said, ‘which escaped.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I sometimes use a precision lathe. You can just about set it to an accuracy of three noughts... point nought nought nought one. One ten thousandth of an inch. That’s my limit. Can’t think in less than three noughts.’

‘He chuckled. ‘And you never have a thousand on a horse?’

‘Oh, I did that too, once or twice.’

He definitely did, that time, hear the arid undertone. I stood up casually and moved towards the glass door to the balcony.

‘They’re going down to the post,’ I said.

He came without comment, and we stood outside watching the two stars, Crepitas and Waterboy, bouncing past the stands with their jockeys fighting for control.

Charlie was a shade shorter than I, a good deal stouter, and approximately twenty years older. He wore top quality clothes as a matter of course and no one hearing his mellow voice would have guessed his father had been a lorry driver. Charlie had never hidden his origins. Indeed he was justly proud of them. It was simply that under the old educational system he’d been sent to Eton as a local boy on Council money, and had acquired the speech and social habits along with the book learning. His brains had taken him along all his life like a surf rider on the crest of a roller, and it was probably only a modest piece of extra luck that he’d happened to be born within sight of the big school.

His other guests drifted out on to the balcony and claimed his attention. I knew none of them well, most of them by sight, one or two by reputation. Enough for the occasion, not enough for involvement.

The lady in the green hat put a green glove on my arm. ‘Waterboy looks wonderful, don’t you think?’

‘Wonderful,’ I agreed.

She gave me a bright myopic smile from behind thick lensed glasses. ‘Could you just tell me what price they’re offering now in the ring?’

‘Of course.’

I raised my binoculars and scanned the boards of the bookmakers ranged in front of a sector of stands lying some way to our right. ‘It looks like evens Waterboy and five to four Grepitas, as far as I can see.’

‘So kind,’ said the green lady warmly.

I swung the binoculars round a little to search out Ganser Mays: and there he stood, halfway down the row of bookmakers lining the rails separating the Club Enclosure from Tattersall’s, a thin man of middle height with a large sharp nose, steel-rimmed spectacles and the manner of a high church clergyman. I had never liked him enough to do more than talk about the weather, but I had trusted him completely, and that had been foolish.

He was leaning over the rails, head bent, talking earnestly to someone in the Club Enclosure, someone hidden from me by a bunch of other people. Then the bunch shifted and moved away and the person behind them was Jody.

The anger in Jody’s body came over sharp and clear and his lower jaw moved vigorously in speech. Ganser Mays’ responses appeared more soothing than fierce and when Jody finally strode furiously away, Ganser Mays raised his head and looked after him with an expression more thoughtful than actively worried.

Ganser Mays had reached that point in a bookmaker’s career where outstanding personal success began to merge into the status of a large and respectable firm. In gamblers’ minds he was moving from an individual to an institution. A multiplying host of betting shops bore his name from Glasgow southwards, and recently he had announced that next Flat season he would sponsor a three-year-old sprint.

He still stood on the rails himself at big meetings to talk to his more affluent customers and keep them faithful. To open his big shark jaws and suck in all the new unwary little fish.

With a wince I swung my glasses away. I would never know exactly how much Jody and Ganser Mays had stolen from me in terms of cash, but in terms of dented self-respect they had stripped me of all but crumbs.

The race started, the super-hurdlers battled their hearts out, and Crepitas beat Waterboy by a length. The Tote would pay me a little because of him, and a great deal because of Energise, but two winning bets in one afternoon weren’t enough to dispel my depression. I dodged the tea-and-cakes, thanked Charlie for the lunch and said I’d see him later, and went down towards the weighing room again to see if inspiration would strike in the matter of a choice of trainers.

I heard hurrying footsteps behind me and a hand grabbed my arm.

‘Thank goodness I’ve found you.’

He was out of breath and looking worried. The young owner-driver I’d hired for Energise.

‘What is it? Box broken down?’

‘No... look, you did say your horse was black, didn’t you? I mean, I did get that right, didn’t I?’

Anxiety sharpened my voice. ‘Is there anything wrong with him?’

‘No... at least... not with him, no. But the horse which Mr Leeds has left for me to take is... well... a chestnut mare.’

I went with him to the stables. The gatekeeper still smiled with pleasure at things going wrong.

‘S’right,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Leeds went off a quarter of an hour ago in one of them hire boxes, one horse. Said his own box had had an accident and he was leaving Energise here, instructions of the owner.’

‘The horse he’s left is not Energise,’ I said.

‘Can’t help that, can I?’ he said virtuously.

I turned to the young man. ‘Chestnut mare with a big white blaze?’

He nodded.

‘That’s Asphodel. She ran in the first race today. Jody Leeds trains her. She isn’t mine.’

‘What will I do about her then?’

‘Leave her here,’ I said. ‘Sorry about this. Send me a bill for cancellation fees.’

He smiled and said he wouldn’t, which almost restored my faith in human nature. I thanked him for bothering to find me instead of keeping quiet, taking the wrong horse and then sending me a bill for work done. He looked shocked that anyone could be so cynical, and I reflected that until I learned from Jody, I wouldn’t have been.

Jody had taken Energise after all.

I burnt with slow anger, partly because of my own lack of foresight. If he had been prepared to urge Andy-Fred to risk running me down I should have known that he wouldn’t give up at the first setback. He had been determined to get the better of me and whisk Energise back to his own stable and I’d under-estimated both his bloody-mindedness and his nerve.

I could hardly wait to be free of Jody. I went back to my car and drove away from the racecourse with no thoughts but of which trainer I would ask to take my horses and how soon I could get them transferred from one to the other.

Charlie smiled across the golden polished wood of the table in Parkes and pushed away his empty coffee cup. His cigar was half smoked, his port half drunk, and his stomach, if mine were anything to go by, contentedly full of some of the best food in London.

I wondered what he had looked like as a young man, before the comfortable paunch and the beginning of jowls. Big businessmen were all the better for a little weight, I thought. Lean-and-hungry was for the starters, the hotheads in a hurry. Charlie exuded maturity and wisdom with every excess pound.

He had smooth greying hair, thin on top and brushed back at the sides. Eyes deep set, nose large, mouth firmly straight. Not conventionally a good-looking face, but easy to remember. People who had once met Charlie tended to know him next time.

He had come alone, and the restaurant he had chosen consisted of several smallish rooms with three or four tables in each; a quiet place where privacy was easy. He had talked about racing, food, the Prime Minister and the state of the Stock Market, and still had not come to the point.

‘I get the impression,’ he said genially, ‘that you are waiting for something.’

‘You’ve never asked me to dine before.’

‘I like your company.’

‘And that’s all?’

He tapped ash off the cigar. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

‘I thought not,’ I smiled. ‘But I’ve probably eaten your dinner under false pretences.’

‘Knowingly?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know exactly what’s in your mind.’

‘Your vagueness,’ he said. ‘When someone like you goes into a sort of trance...’

‘I thought so,’ I sighed. ‘Well, that was no useful productive otherwhereness of mind, that was the aftermath of a practically mortal row I’d just had with Jody Leeds.’

He sat back in his chair. ‘What a pity.’

‘Pity about the row, or a pity about the absence of inspiration?’

‘Both, I dare say. What was the row about?’

‘I gave him the sack.’

He stared. ‘What on earth for?’

‘He said if I told anyone that, he’d sue me for slander.’

‘Oh, did he indeed!’ Charlie looked interested all over again, like a horse taking fresh hold of its bit. ‘And could he?’

‘I expect so.’

Charlie sucked a mouthful of smoke and trickled it out from one corner of his mouth.

‘Care to risk it?’ he said.

‘Your discretion’s better than most...’

‘Absolute,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

I believed him. I said, ‘He found a way of stealing huge sums from me so that I didn’t know I was being robbed.’

‘But you must have known that someone...’

I shook my head. ‘I dare say I’m not the first the trick’s been played on. It’s so deadly simple.’

‘Proceed,’ Charlie said. ‘You fascinate me.’

‘Right. Now suppose you are basically a good racehorse trainer but you’ve got a large and crooked thirst for unearned income.’

‘I’m supposing,’ Charlie said.

‘First of all, then,’ I said, ‘you need a silly mug with a lot of money and enthusiasm and not much knowledge of racing.’

‘You?’ Charlie said.

‘Me.’ I nodded ruefully. ‘Someone recommends you to me as a good trainer and I’m impressed by your general air of competence and dedication, so I toddle up and ask you if you could find me a good horse, as I’d like to become an owner.’

‘And do I buy a good horse cheaply and charge you a fortune for it?’

‘No. You buy the very best horse you can. I am delighted, and you set about the training and very soon the horse is ready to run. At this point you tell me you know a very reliable bookmaker and you introduce me to him.’

‘Oh hum.’

‘As you say. The bookmaker however is eminently respectable and respected and as I am not used to betting in large amounts I am glad to be in the hands of so worthy a fellow. You, my trainer, tell me the horse shows great promise and I might think of a small each way bet on his first race. A hundred pounds each way, perhaps.’

‘A small bet!’ Charlie exclaimed.

‘You point out that that is scarcely more than three weeks’ training fees,’ I said.

‘I do?’

‘You do. So I gulp a little as I’ve always bet in tenners before and I stake a hundred each way. But sure enough the horse does run well and finishes third, and the bookmaker pays out a little instead of me paying him.’

I drank the rest of my glass of port. Charlie finished his and ordered more coffee.

‘Next time the horse runs,’ I went on, ‘you say it is really well and sure to win and if I ever want to have a big bet, now’s the time, before everyone else jumps on the bandwagon. The bookmaker offers me a good price and I feel euphoric and take the plunge.’

‘A thousand?’

I nodded. ‘A thousand.’

‘And?’

‘The word goes round and the horse starts favourite. It is not his day, though. He runs worse than the first time and finishes fifth. You are very upset. You can’t understand it. I find myself comforting you and telling you he is bound to run better next time.’

‘But he doesn’t run better next time?’

‘But he does. Next time he wins beautifully.’

‘But you haven’t backed it?’

‘Yes, I have. The price this time isn’t five to two as it was before, but six to one. I stake five hundred pounds and win three thousand. I am absolutely delighted. I have regained all the money I had lost and more besides, and I have also gained the prize money for the race. I pay the training bills out of the winnings and I have recouped part of the purchase price of the horse, and I am very happy with the whole business of being an owner. I ask you to buy me another horse. Buy two or three, if you can find them.’

‘And this time you get expensive duds?’

‘By no means. My second horse is a marvellous two-year-old. He wins his very first race. I have only a hundred on him, mind you, but as it is at ten to one, I am still very pleased. So next time out, as my horse is a hot favourite and tipped in all the papers, you encourage me to have a really big bet. Opportunities like this seldom arise, you tell me, as the opposition is hopeless. I am convinced, so I lay out three thousand pounds.’

‘My God,’ Charlie said.

‘Quite so. My horse sprints out of the stalls and takes the lead like the champion he is and everything is going splendidly. But then half way along the five furlongs a buckle breaks on the saddle and the girths come loose and the jockey has to pull up as best he can because by now he is falling off.’

‘Three thousand!’ Charlie said.

‘All gone,’ I nodded. ‘You are inconsolable. The strap was new, the buckle faulty. Never mind, I say kindly, gulping hard. Always another day.’

‘And there is?’

‘You’re learning. Next time out the horse is favourite again and I have five hundred on. He wins all right, and although I have not this time won back all I lost, well, it’s the second time the horse has brought home a decent prize, and taking all in all I am not out of pocket and I have had a great deal of pleasure and excitement. And I am well content.’

‘And so it goes on?’

‘And so, indeed, it goes on. I find I get more and more delight from watching horses. I get particular delight if the horses are my own, and although in time of course my hobby costs me a good deal of money, because owners on the whole don’t make a profit, I am totally happy and consider it well spent.’

‘And then what happens?’

‘Nothing really,’ I said. ‘I just begin to get these niggling suspicions and I thrust them out of my head and think how horribly disloyal I am being to you, after all the winners you have trained for me. But the suspicions won’t lie down. I’ve noticed, you see, that when I have my biggest bets, my horses don’t win.’

‘A lot of owners could say the same,’ Charlie said.

‘Oh sure. But I tot up all the big bets which didn’t come up, and they come to nearly forty thousand pounds.’

‘Good God.’

‘I am really ashamed of myself, but I begin to wonder. I say to myself, suppose... just suppose... that every time I stake anything over a thousand, my trainer and my bookmaker conspire together and simply keep the money and make sure my horse doesn’t win. Just suppose... that if I stake three thousand, they split it fifty fifty, and the horse runs badly, or is left, or the buckle on the girth breaks. Just suppose that next time out my horse is trained to the utmost and the race is carefully chosen and he duly wins, and I am delighted... just suppose that this time my bookmaker and my trainer are betting on the horse themselves... with the money they stole from me last time.’

Charlie looked riveted.

‘If my horse wins, they win. If my horse loses, they haven’t lost their own money, but only mine.’

‘Neat.’

‘Yes. So the weeks pass and now the Flat season is finished, and we are back again with the jumpers. And you, my trainer, have found and bought for me a beautiful young hurdler, a really top class horse. I back him a little in his first race and he wins it easily. I am thrilled. I am also worried, because you tell me there is a race absolutely made for him at Sandown Park which he is certain to win, and you encourage me to have a very big bet on him. I am by now filled with horrid doubts and fears, and as I particularly admire this horse I do not want his heart broken by trying to win when he isn’t allowed to... which I am sure happened to one or two of the others... so I say I will not back him.’

‘Unpopular?’

‘Very. You press me harder than ever before to lay out a large stake. I refuse. You are obviously annoyed and warn me that the horse will win and I will be sorry. I say I’ll wait till next time. You say I am making a big mistake.’

‘When do I say all this?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘And today?’ Charlie asked.

‘Today I am suffering from suspicion worse than ever. Today I think that maybe you will let the horse win if he can, just to prove I was wrong not to back him, so that next time you will have no difficulty at all in persuading me to have a bigger bet than ever.’

‘Tut tut.’

‘Yes. So today I don’t tell you that a little while ago... because of my awful doubts... I opened a credit account with the Tote, and today I also don’t tell you that I have backed my horse for a thousand pounds on my credit account.’

‘Deceitful of you.’

‘Certainly.’

‘And your horse wins,’ Charlie said, nodding.

‘He looked superb...’ I smiled wryly. ‘You tell me after the race that it is my own fault I didn’t back him. You say you did try to get me to. You say I’d do better to take your advice next time.’

‘And then?’

‘Then,’ I sighed, ‘all the weeks of suspicion just jelled into certainty. I knew he’d been cheating me in other ways too. Little ways. Little betrayals of friendship. Nothing enormous. I told him there wasn’t going to be a next time. I said I would be taking the horses away.’

‘What did he say to that?’

‘He didn’t ask why.’

‘Oh dear,’ Charlie said.