Even Money Read online

  We kept a record on our computer of all the bets taken, both winning and losing, and it never ceased to amaze me how many of the winning tickets were never cashed. Presumably some were lost, and perhaps some inebriated punters didn’t realize they were winners, but almost every day there were two or three winning bets that were never claimed. “Sleepers,” they were called, and they were like a cash bonus for us. But it was one we could never completely rely on. Our tickets didn’t have an expiry date on them, and, only the day before, I’d had to cash a sleeper from the Royal Ascot Meeting of the previous year. Maybe it had been hiding for twelve months in the deep recesses of someone’s morning-coat pocket, or tucked into the hatband of a topper, waiting quietly to be discovered and paid out.

  The crowd had mostly dispersed to the parking lots by the time Luca, Betsy and I had packed up the majority of our gear and loaded it onto our little wheeled trolley that ingeniously doubled up as a base for our computer during the racing. The betting ring was deserted save for the other bookmakers, who, like us, were packing up amongst the detritus of a day’s gambling: discarded newspapers, torn-up betting slips, crumpled coffee cups and half-eaten sandwiches.

  “Do you fancy a beer?” Luca asked as I pulled one of the elastic straps over our equipment.

  “I’d love one,” I said, looking up at him. “But I can’t. I have to go and see Sophie.”

  He nodded at me knowingly. “Some other time, then. Betsy and I are going to go and have one, if that’s all right with you. We’re taking the train into town later to go to the party in the park.”

  “Right,” I said. “You go on. I’ll pack up the rest of the stuff.”

  “Can you manage?” he asked.

  He knew I could. I did it all the time. But this little exchange was his way of not taking it completely for granted.

  I smiled at him. “No problem,” I said, waving a dismissing hand at them. “Go on. I’ll see you both in the morning. Usual time.”

  “OK,” said Luca. “Thanks.”

  Luca and Betsy went off together, leaving me standing alone next to the tarpaulin-covered equipment trolley. I watched them go, Betsy hand in hand with her young man. At one point they stopped and embraced before disappearing out of my sight into the grandstand. Just another happy couple on their way, I assumed, to the bandstand bar, where there was usually an impromptu drinking party after each day’s racing.

  I sighed.

  I supposed I must have been that happy once. But it had been a long time ago. What, I wondered, had happened to all the happy times? Had they deserted me for ever?

  I wiped my brow with the sleeve of my jacket and thought about how I would absolutely adore a nice cooling beer. I wanted to change my mind and go to find the other two, but I knew that it would end up being more trouble than it was worth. It always was.

  I sighed again and stacked the last few of our equipment boxes onto the trolley, then fixed the rest of the elastic cords across the green tarpaulin. I took hold of the handle and released the brakes from the wheels. As I had told Luca, I could just about manage it alone, although it was always easier with two, especially up the concrete slope towards the tunnel through the grandstand. I tugged hard on the handle.

  “Do you want a hand with that?” a voice shouted from behind me.

  I stopped pulling and turned around. It was the man in the cream linen suit. He was about fifteen yards away, leaning up against the metal fence between the betting ring and the Royal Enclosure. I hadn’t noticed him as we’d packed up, and I wondered how long he’d been there watching me.

  “Who’s offering?” I called back to him.

  “I knew your grandfather,” he said again while walking over to me.

  “You said,” I replied.

  But lots of people knew my grandfather, and nearly all of them hadn’t liked him. He had been a typically belligerent bookie who had treated both his customers and his fellow bookmakers with almost the same degree of contempt that they clearly held for him. He had been what many might have called a “character” on the racetrack, standing out in all weathers at an age when most men would be content to put their feet up in retirement. Yes, indeed, lots of people had known my grandfather, but he’d had precious few friends, if any.

  “When did he die?” asked the man, taking hold of one side of the handle.

  We pulled the trolley together in silence up the slope to the grandstand and stopped on the flat of the concourse. I turned and looked at my helper. His gray hair was accentuated by the deeply tanned skin of his face. I reckoned it wasn’t an English-summer tan.

  “Seven years ago,” I said.

  “What did he die from?” he asked. I could detect a slight accent in his voice, but I couldn’t quite place it.

  “Nothing, really,” I said. “Just old age.”And bloody-mindedness, I thought. It was as if he had decided that he’d had his allocated stretch in this world and it was time to go to the next. He had returned from Cheltenham races and had seemingly switched off inside on the Friday, and then he had expired on the Sunday evening. The post-mortem pathologist couldn’t say why he had died. All his bits had apparently been working quite well and his brain had been sharp. I was sure he had simply willed himself to death.

  “But he wasn’t very old,” said the man.

  “Seventy-eight,” I said. “And two days.”

  “That’s not old,” said the man, “not these days.”

  “It was old enough for him,” I said.

  The man looked at me quizzically.

  “My grandfather decided that his time was up, so he lay down and died.”

  “You’re kidding?” he said.

  “Nope,” I said. “Absolutely serious.”

  “Silly old bugger,” he said, almost under his breath.

  “Exactly how well did you know my grandfather?” I asked him.

  “I’m his son,” he said.

  I stared at him with an open mouth.

  “So you must be my uncle,” I said.

  “No,” he said, staring back. “I’m your father.”

  2

  But you can’t be my father” I said, nonplussed.

  “I can,” he said with certainty, “and I am.”

  “My father’s dead,” I said.

  “How do you know?” he asked. “Did you see him die?”

  “No,” I said. “I just . . . know. My parents died in a car crash.”

  “Is that what your grandfather told you?”

  My legs felt detached from my body. I was thirty-seven years old, and I had believed for as long as I could remember that I was fatherless. And motherless too. An orphan. I had been raised by my grandparents, who had told me that both my parents had died when I was a baby. Why would they lie?

  “But I’ve seen a photo,” I said.

  “Of what?” he asked.

  “Of my parents,” I said.

  “So you recognize me, then?”

  “No,” I said. But the photo was very small and at least thirty-seven years old, so would I actually recognize him now?

  “Look,” he said. “Is there anywhere we could go and sit down?”

  In the end I did have that beer.

  We sat at a table near the bar overlooking the pre-parade ring while the man in the cream linen suit told me who I was.

  I wasn’t sure what to believe. I couldn’t understand why my grandparents would have lied to me, but, equally, why would this stranger suddenly appear and lie to me now? It made no sense.

  “Your mother and I were in a road accident,” he told me. He looked down. “And then she died.” He paused for a long time as if wondering whether to carry on.

  I sat there in silence, looking at him. I didn’t feel any real emotion, just confusion.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why what?” he said.

  “Why have you come here today to tell me this?” I began to feel angry that he had chosen to disrupt my life in this way. “Why didn’t you stay away?” I raised
my voice at him. “Why didn’t you stay away as you have done for the past thirty-seven years?”

  “Because I wanted to see you,” he said. “You are my son.”

  “No, I’m not,” I shouted at him.

  There were a few others enjoying a quick drink before making their way home, and they were looking in our direction.

  “You are,” he said quietly, “whether you like it or not.”

  “But how can you be so sure?” I was clutching at imaginary straws.

  “Edward, don’t be stupid,” he said, picking at his fingers.

  It was the first time he had used my name, and it sounded odd. I had been christened Edward, but I’d been known as Ned all my life. Not even my grandfather had called me Edward, except, that is, when he was cross with me or I had done something naughty as a child.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Peter,” he said. “Peter James Talbot.”

  My father’s name was indeed Peter James Talbot. It said so in green ink on both my birth certificate and his. I knew by heart every element of those documents. Over the years the handwritten details on them had somehow been the only tangible link to my parents, that and the small creased-and-fading photograph that I still carried with me everywhere.

  I removed my wallet from my pocket and passed the photo over to him.

  “Blackpool,” he said with confidence, studying the image. “This was taken in Blackpool. We were there for the illuminations in November. Tricia, your mother, was about three months pregnant. With you.”

  I took the photo back and looked again closely at the young man standing next to a dark green Ford Cortina, as I had done hundreds of times before. I glanced up at the man in front of me and then back down at the picture. I couldn’t say for sure that they were the same person, but, equally, I couldn’t say they weren’t.

  “It is me, I assure you,” he said. “That was my first car. I was nineteen when that picture was taken.”

  “How old was my mother?” I asked.

  “Seventeen, I think,” he said. “Yes, she must have been just seventeen. I tried to teach her to drive on that trip.”

  “You started young.”

  “Yes . . . well.” He seemed embarrassed. “You weren’t actually planned, as such. More of a surprise.”

  “Oh thanks,” I replied somewhat sarcastically. “Were you married?” I asked.

  “Not when that picture was taken, no.”

  “How about when I was born?” I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know.

  “Oh yes,” he said with certainty. “We were by then.”

  Strangely, I was relieved that I was legitimate and not a bastard. But did it really matter? Yes, I decided, it did. It meant that there had been commitment between my parents, maybe even love. They cared, or, at least, they had then.

  “Why did you leave?” I asked him. It was the big question.

  He didn’t answer immediately but sat quiet, still looking at me.

  “Shame, I suppose,” he said eventually. “After your mother died, I couldn’t cope with having a baby and no wife. So I ran away.”

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “Australia,” he said. “Eventually. First I signed onto a Liberian-registered cargo ship in the Liverpool docks. I went all over the world for a while. I got off one day in Melbourne and just stayed there.”

  “So why come back now?”

  “It seemed like a good idea,” he said.

  It wasn’t.

  “What did you expect?” I asked. “Did you think I would just welcome you with open arms after all this time? I thought you were dead.” I looked at him. “I think it might be better for me if you were.”

  He looked back at me with doleful eyes. Perhaps I had been a bit hard.

  “Well,” I said, “it would definitely have been better if you hadn’t come back.”

  “But I wanted to see you,” he said.

  “Why?” I demanded loudly. “You haven’t wanted to for the last thirty-seven years.”

  “Thirty-six,” he said.

  I threw my hands up in frustration. “That’s even worse,” I said. “It means you deserted me when I was a year old. How could a father do that?” I was getting angry again. So far my own life had not been blessed with children, but it was not from a lack of longing.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure it was enough.

  “So what made you want to see me now?” I said. “You can’t just have decided suddenly after all this time.” He sat there in front of me in silence. “You didn’t even know that your own father was dead. And what about your mother? You haven’t asked me about her.”

  “It was only you I wanted to see,” he said.

  “But why now?” I asked him again.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for some time,” he said.

  “Don’t try and tell me you had a fit of conscience after all these years,” I scoffed at him with an ironic laugh.

  “Edward,” he said somewhat sternly, “it doesn’t befit you to be so caustic.”

  The laughter died in my throat. “You have no right to tell me how to behave,” I replied with equal sternness. “You forfeited that right when you walked away.” He looked down like a scalded cat. “So what do you want?” I asked him. “I’ve got no money.”

  His head came up again quickly. “I don’t want your money,” he said.

  “What, then?” I asked. “Don’t expect me to give you any love.”

  “Are you happy?” he asked suddenly.

  “Deliriously,” I lied. “I leap out of bed each morning with joy in my heart, delighting at the miracle of a new day.”

  “Are you married?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, giving no more details. “Are you?”

  “No,” he replied. “Not anymore. But I have been. Twice—three times, if you count your mother.”

  I thought I probably would count my mother.

  “Widowed twice and divorced once,” he said with a wry smile. “In that order.”

  “Children?” I asked. “Other than me.”

  “Two,” he said. “Both girls.”

  I had sisters. Half sisters anyway

  “How old are they?”

  “Both in their twenties now, late twenties, I suppose. I haven’t seen them for, oh, fifteen years.”

  “You seem to have made a habit of deserting your children.”

  “Yes,” he said wistfully. “It appears I have.”

  “Why didn’t you leave me alone and go and find them?”

  “But I know where they are,” he said. “They won’t see me, not the other way round. They blame me for their mother’s death.”

  “Did she die in a car crash too?” I said with a touch of cruelty in my voice.

  “No,” he said slowly. “Maureen killed herself.” He paused, and I sat still watching him. “I was made bankrupt, and she swallowed enough tablets to kill a horse. I came home from the court to find bailiffs sitting in the driveway and my wife lying dead in the house.”

  His life was like a soap opera, I thought. Disaster and sorrow had been a constant companion.

  “Why were you made bankrupt?” I asked.

  “Gambling debts,” he said.

  “Gambling debts!” I was astounded. “And you the son of a bookmaker.”

  “It was being a bookie that got me into trouble,” he said. “Obviously, I hadn’t learned enough standing at my father’s side. I was a bad bookie.”

  “I thought gambling debts couldn’t be enforced in a court.”

  “Maybe not technically, but I had borrowed against everything and I couldn’t afford the repayments. Lost the lot. Every single thing, including the girls, who went off to live with their aunt. I never saw them again.”

  “Are you still bankrupt?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” he said. “That was years ago. I’ve been doing fine recently.”

  “As what?” I said.

  “Business,�
�� he said unhelpfully. “My business.”

  One of the bar staff in a white shirt and black trousers came over to us.

  “Sorry, we’re closing,” he said. “Can you drink up, please?”

  I looked at my watch. It was well past six o’clock already. I stood up and drank down the last of my beer.

  “Can we go somewhere to continue talking?” my father asked.

  I thought about Sophie. I had promised I would go and see her straight after the races.

  “I have to go to my wife,” I said.

  “Can’t she wait?” he implored. “Call her. Or I could come with you.”

  “No,” I said rather too quickly.

  “Why not?” he persisted. “She’s my daughter-in-law.”

  “No,” I said decisively. “I need time to get used to this first.”

  “OK,” he said. “But call her and say you’ve been held up and will be home later.”

  I thought again about Sophie, my wife. She wasn’t at home. She would be sitting in front of the television in her room watching the news as she always did at six o’clock. I knew she would be there because she wasn’t allowed not to be.

  Sophie’s room was locked, from the outside.

  Sophie Talbot had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act of 1983 and detained for the past five months in secure accommodation. It wasn’t actually a prison; it was a hospital, a low-risk mental hospital, but it was a prison to her. And this wasn’t the first time. In all, my wife had spent more than half the previous ten years in one mental institution or another. And, in spite of their care and treatment, her condition had progressively deteriorated. What the future held was anyone’s guess.

  “How about a pub somewhere?” my father said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I needed to be at the hospital by nine at the latest. I looked at my watch.

  “I have about an hour maximum,” I said. “Then I’ll have to go.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Do you have a car?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “Came on the train from Waterloo.”

  “Where are you staying?” I asked.

  “Some seedy little hotel in Sussex Gardens,” he said.“Guesthouse, really. Near Paddington Station.”