Rat Race Read online

  I stood up, reached out two hands, caught hold of an assortment of wool and hair, and pulled firmly backwards. The result resolved itself into a youngish man sitting down with surprise much more suddenly than he’d intended.

  ‘Nancy,’ he said in an aggrieved voice.

  ‘This is Chanter,’ she said to me. ‘He’s never grown out of the hippie thing, as you can see.’

  ‘I’m an artist,’ he said. He had an embroidered band across his forehead and round his head: like the horses’ bridles, I thought fleetingly. All the hair was clean and there were shaven parts on his jaw just to prove that it wasn’t from pure laziness that he let everything grow. On closer inspection I was sure that it was indeed a dark green chenille table cloth, with a central hole for his head. Underneath that he wore low-slung buckskin trousers fringed from hip to ankle, and a creepy crepy dim mauve shirt curved to fit his concave stomach. Various necklaces and pendants on silver chains hung round his neck. Under all the splendour he had dirty bare feet.

  ‘I went to art school with him,’ Nancy said resignedly. ‘That was in London. Now he’s at Liverpool, just down the road. Any time I come racing up here, he turns up too.’

  ‘Uh,’ Chanter said profoundly.

  ‘Do you get grants for ever?’ I asked: not sneeringly; I simply wanted to know.

  He was not offended. ‘Look, man, like, up here I’m the fuzz.’

  I nearly laughed. Nancy said, ‘You know what he means, then?’

  ‘He teaches,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, man, that’s what I said.’ He took one of the turkey sandwiches. His fingers were greenish with black streaks. Paint.

  ‘You keep your impure thoughts off this little bird,’ he said to me, spitting out bits of bread. ‘She’s strictly my territory. But strictly, man.’

  ‘Zat so?’

  ‘Zat definitely, but definitely… is… so, man.’

  ‘How come?’

  He gave me a look which was as off beat as his appearance.

  ‘I’ve still got the salt to put on this little bird’s tail,’ he said. ‘Shan’t be satisfied till it’s there…’

  Nancy was looking at him with an expression which meant that she didn’t know whether to laugh at him or be afraid of him. She couldn’t decide whether he was Chanter the amorous buffoon or Chanter the frustrated sex maniac. Nor could I. I understood her needing help when he was around.

  ‘He only wants me because I won’t,’ she said.

  ‘The challenge bit,’ I nodded. ‘Affront to male pride, and all that.’

  ‘Practically every other girl has,’ she said.

  ‘That makes it worse.’

  Chanter looked at me broodingly. ‘You’re a drag, man. I mean, cubic’.

  ‘To each his scene,’ I said ironically.

  He took the last of the sandwiches, turned his back studiously towards me and said to Nancy, ‘Let’s you and me lose this dross, huh?’

  ‘Let’s you and me do nothing of the sort, Chanter. If you want to tag along, Matt comes in the deal.’

  He scowled at the floor and then suddenly stood up so that all the fringes and beads danced and jingled.

  ‘Come on then. Let’s get a look at the horses. Life’s a-wasting.’

  ‘He really can draw,’ Nancy said as we followed the tablecloth out into the sunshine.

  ‘I wouldn’t doubt it. I’ll bet half of what he does is caricature, though, with a strong element of cruelty.’

  ‘How d’ you know?’ she said, startled.

  ‘He just seems like that.’

  He padded along beside us in his bare feet and was a sufficiently unusual sight on a racecourse to attract a barrage of stares ranging from amusement to apoplexy. He didn’t seem to notice. Nancy looked as if she were long used to it.

  We came to a halt against the parade ring rails where Chanter rested his elbows and exercised his voice.

  ‘Horses,’ he said. ‘I’m not for the Stubbs and Munnings thing. When I see a racehorse I see a machine, and that’s what I paint, a horse-shaped machine with pistons thumping away and muscle fibres like connecting rods and a crack in the crank case with the oil dripping away drop by drop into the body cavity…’ He broke off abruptly but with the same breath finished. ‘How’s your sister?’

  ‘She’s much better,’ Nancy said, not seeming to see any great change of subject. ‘She’s really quite well now.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, and went straight on with his lecture. ‘And then I draw some distant bulging stands with hats flying off and everyone cheering and all the time the machine is bursting its gut.… I see components, I see what’s happening to the bits… the stresses… I see colours in components too… nothing on earth is a whole… nothing is ever what it seems… everything is components.’ He stopped abruptly, thinking about what he’d said.

  After a suitably appreciative pause, I asked, ‘Do you ever sell your paintings?’

  ‘Sell them?’ He gave me a scornful, superior stare. ‘No, I don’t. Money is disgusting.’

  ‘It’s more disgusting when you haven’t got it,’ Nancy said.

  ‘You’re a renegade, girl,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘Love on a crust,’ she said, ‘Is fine when you’re twenty, but pretty squalid when you’re sixty.’

  ‘I don’t intend to be sixty. Sixty is strictly for grandfathers. Not my scene at all.’

  We turned away from the rails and came face to face with Major Tyderman, who was carrying his Sporting Life and holding out the aircraft’s keys. His gaze swept over Chanter and he controlled himself admirably. Not a twitch.

  ‘I locked up again,’ he said, handing me the bunch.

  ‘Thanks, Major.’

  He nodded, glanced once more at Chanter, and retreated in good order.

  Even for Nancy’s sake the official wouldn’t let Chanter up the steps to the Owners and Trainers. We watched at grass level with Chanter muttering ‘stinking bourgeois’ at regular intervals.

  Colin Ross finished second. The crowd booed and tore up a lot of tickets. Nancy looked as though she were long used to that, too.

  Between the next two races we sat on the grass while Chanter gave us the uninterrupted benefit of his views on the evils of money, racialism, war, religion and marriage. It was regulation stuff, nothing new. I didn’t say I thought so. During the discourse he twice without warning stretched over and put his hand on Nancy’s breast. Each time without surprise she picked it off again by the wrist and threw it back at him. Neither of them seemed to think it needed comment.

  After the next race (Colin was third) Chanter remarked that his throat was dry, and Nancy and I obediently followed him off to the Tattersalls bar for lubrication. Coca Colas for three, splashed out of the bottles by an overworked barmaid. Chanter busily juggled the three glasses so that it was I who paid, which figured.

  The bar was only half full but a great deal of space and attention was being taken up by one man, a large tough-looking individual with a penetrating Australian accent. He had an obviously new white plaster cast on his leg and a pair of crutches which he hadn’t mastered. His loud laugh rose above the general buzz as he constantly apologised for knocking into people.

  ‘Haven’t got the hang of these props yet…’

  Chanter regarded him, as he did most things, with some disfavour.

  The large Australian went on explaining his state to two receptive acquaintances.

  ‘Mind you, can’t say I’m sorry I broke my ankle. Best investment I ever made.’ The laugh rang out infectiously and most people in the bar began to grin. Not Chanter, of course.

  ‘See, I only paid my premium the week before, and then I fell down these steps and I got a thousand quid for it. Now that ain’t whistling, that ain’t, eh? A thousand bleeding quid for falling down a flight of steps.’ He laughed again hugely, enjoying the joke. ‘Come on mates,’ he said, ‘Drink up, and let’s go and invest some of this manna from Heaven on my good friend Kenny Bayst.’

  I jumpe
d a fraction and looked at my watch. Coming up to three thirty. Kenny Bayst clearly hadn’t told his good friend not to speculate. Absolutely none of my business. Telling him myself would be the worst favour I could do for Kenny Bayst.

  The large Australian swung himself out of the bar, followed by the two mates. Chanter’s curiosity overcame his disinclination to show himself at a loss.

  ‘Who,’ he said crossly, ‘Is going to give that schmo a thousand quid for breaking his ankle?’

  Nancy smiled. ‘It’s a new insurance fund, specially for people who go racing. Accident insurance. I don’t really know. I’ve heard one or two people mention it lately.’

  ‘Insurance is immoral,’ Chanter said dogmatically, sliding round behind her and laying his hand flat on her stomach. Nancy picked it off and stepped away. As a bodyguard, I didn’t seem to be doing much good.

  Nancy said she particularly wanted to see this race properly, and left Chanter looking moody at the bottom of the staircase. Without asking her I followed her up the steps: a period alone with Chanter held no attractions.

  Kenny Bayst, according to my slantways look at Nancy’s racecard, was riding a horse called Rudiments: number seven, owned by the Duke of Wessex, trained by Miss Villars, carrying olive green with silver crossbelts and cap. I watched the horse canter down past the stands on the olive green grass and reflected that the Duke of Wessex had chosen colours which were as easy to distinguish as coal on a black night.

  I said to Nancy, ‘What did Rudiments do in his last race?’

  ‘Hm?’ she said absentmindedly, all her attention on the rose pink and white shape of her brother. ‘Did you say Rudiments?’

  ‘That’s right. I brought Kenny Bayst and Annie Villars here, as well.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ She looked down at her racecard. ‘Last time out… it won. Time before that, it won. Time before that, it came fourth.’

  ‘It’s good, then?’

  ‘Fairly, I suppose.’ She wrinkled her nose at me. ‘I told you you’d get involved.’

  I shook my head. ‘Just curious.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘Is it favourite?’

  ‘No, Colin is. But… you can see over there, on that big board… see?… Rudiments is second favourite on the Tote at about three to one.’

  ‘Well…’ I said. ‘What does it mean, to lay a horse?’

  ‘It means to stand a bet. It’s what bookmakers do. What the Tote does, really, come to that.’

  ‘Can people do it who aren’t bookmakers?’

  ‘Oh sure. They do. Say the bookmakers are offering three to one, and you yourself don’t think the horse will win, you could say to your friends, I’ll lay you four to one; so they’d bet with you because you were offering more. Also, no betting tax. Private wager, you see.’

  ‘And if the horse wins, you pay out?’

  ‘You sure do.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. And I did. Eric Goldenberg had laid Rudiments the last time it had run because Kenny Bayst had agreed to lose, and then he’d gone and won. Their tempers were still on the dicky side as a result: and they had been arguing today about whether or not to try again.

  ‘Colin thinks he’ll win this,’ Nancy said. ‘I do hope so.’

  Bonanza for Bayst, I thought.

  It was a seven furlong race, it seemed. The horses accelerated from standing to 30 m.p.h. in times which would have left a Porsche gasping. When they swung away round the far bend Rudiments was as far as I was concerned invisible, and until the last hundred yards I didn’t see him once. Then all of a sudden there he was, boxed in in a bunch on the rails and unable to get past Colin Ross directly in front.

  Kenny didn’t find his opening. He finished the race in third place, still pinned in by Colin in front and a dappled grey alongside. I couldn’t begin to tell whether or not he had done it on purpose.

  ‘Wasn’t that great?’ Nancy exclaimed to the world in general, and a woman on the far side of her agreed that it was, and asked after the health of her sister Midge.

  ‘Oh, she’s fine, thanks,’ Nancy said. She turned to me and there was less joy in her eyes than in her voice. ‘Come over here,’ she said. ‘You can see them unsaddling the winner.’

  The Owners and Trainers turned out to be on the roof of the weighing room. We leaned over the rails at the front and watched Colin and Kenny unbuckle the saddle girths, loop the saddles over their arms, pat their steaming horses, and disappear into the weighing room. The group in the winner’s enclosure were busy slapping backs and unburdening to the Press. The group in the third enclosure wore small tight smiles and faraway eyes. I still couldn’t tell if they were ecstatic and biding it, or livid and ditto.

  The horses were led away and the groups dispersed. In their place appeared Chanter, staring up and waving his arm.

  ‘Come on down,’ he shouted.

  ‘No inhibitions, that’s his trouble,’ Nancy said. ‘If we don’t go down, he’ll just go on shouting.’

  He did. An official strode up manfully to ask him to belt up and buzz off, but it was like ripples trying to push over Bass Rock.

  ‘Come on down, Nancy.’ Fortissimo.

  She pushed herself away from the rails and took enough steps to be out of his sight.

  ‘Stay with me,’ she said. It was more than half a question.

  ‘If you want it.’

  ‘You’ve seen what he’s like. And he’s been mild, today. Mild. Thanks to you.’

  ‘I’ve done absolutely nothing.’

  ‘You’re here.’

  ‘Why do you come to Haydock, if he always bothers you too much?’

  ‘Because I’m bloody well not letting him frighten me away.’

  ‘He loves you,’ I said.

  ‘No. Can’t you tell the difference, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  She looked startled, then shook her head. ‘He loves Chanter, full stop.’

  She took three more steps towards the stairs, then stopped again.

  ‘Why is it that I talk to you as if I’d known you for years?’

  To a certain extent I knew, but I smiled and shook my head. No one cares to say straight out that it’s because one is as negative as wall paper.

  Chanter’s plaintive voice floated up the steps. ‘Nancy, come on down.…’

  She took another step, and then stopped again. ‘Will you do me another favour? I’m staying up here a few more days with an aunt, but I bought a present for Midge this morning and I’ve given it to Colin to take home. But he’s got a memory like a string vest for everything except horses, so would you check with him that he hasn’t left it in the changing room, before you take off?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Your sister… I gather she’s been ill.’

  She looked away up at the sun-filled sky and down again and straight at me, and in a shattering moment of awareness I saw the pain and the cracks behind the bright public facade.

  ‘Has been. Will be,’ she said. ‘She’s got leukaemia.’

  After a pause she swallowed and added the unbearable bit.

  ‘She’s my identical twin.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  After the fifth race Chanter gloomily announced that about fifty plastic students were waiting for him to pat their egos and that although he despised the system he was likely to find eating a problem if he actually got the sack. His farewell to Nancy consisted in wiping his hands all over her, front and back, and giving her an open mouthed kiss which owing to her split-second evasive action landed on her ear.

  He glared at me as if it were my fault. Nancy not relenting, he scowled at her and muttered something about salt, and then twirled around on his bare heel so that the tablecloth and all the hair and fringes and beads swung out with centrifugal force, and strode away at high speed towards the exit.

  ‘The soles of his feet are like leather,’ she said. ‘Disgusting.’ But from the hint of indulgence in her face I gathered that Chanter’s cause wasn’t entirely lost.
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  She said she was thirsty again and could do with a Coke, and since she seemed to want me still to tag along, I tagged. This time, without Chanter, we went to the members’ bar in the Club enclosure, the small downstairs one that was open to the main entrance hall.

  The man in the plaster cast was there again. Different audience. Same story. His big cheerful booming voice filled the little bar and echoed round the whole hall outside.

  ‘You can’t hear yourself think,’ Nancy said.

  In a huddle in a far corner were Major Tyderman and Eric Goldenberg, sitting at a small table with what looked like treble whiskies in front of them. Their heads were bent towards each other, close, almost touching, so that they could each hear what the other was saying amid the din, yet not be overheard. Relations between them didn’t seem to be at their most cordial. There was a great deal of rigidity in their downbent faces, and no friendliness in the small flicking glances they occasionally gave each other.

  ‘The Sporting Life man,’ Nancy said, following my gaze.

  ‘Yes. The big one is a passenger too.’

  ‘They don’t look madly happy.’

  ‘They weren’t madly happy coming up here, either.’

  ‘Owners of chronic losers?’

  ‘No – well, I don’t think so. They came up because of that horse Rudiments which Kenny Bayst rode for Annie Villars, but they aren’t down in the racecard as its owners.’

  She flicked back through her card. ‘Rudiments. Duke of Wessex. Well, neither of those two is him, poor old booby.’

  ‘Who, the Duke?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Actually I suppose he isn’t all that old, but he’s dreadfully dim. Big important looking man with a big important looking rank, and as sweet as they come, really, but there’s nothing but cotton wool upstairs.’

  ‘You know him well?’

  ‘I’ve met him often.’

  ‘Subtle difference.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The two men scraped back their chairs and began to make their way out of the bar. The man in the plaster cast caught sight of them and his big smile grew even bigger.