Wobble to Death (3 page)

They were still joking and speculating about Francis Mostyn-Smith thirty minutes later when he appeared at the hut door.

‘If you please, gentlemen?’

They formed a passage for him and watched in silence as he strutted away towards the track.

When Billy Reid was overtaken by Darrell the fact was lost on the majority of spectators because of the disparity in the tracks. But Sam Monk made it his business to seek out Jack Reid, who now sat silent and alone in the stand, hoarse from shouting at his brother.

‘There it is, Jack. My man’s got his nose in front. Forty-eight miles that time and Billy a furlong down. You pushed him too hard, lad. Had your breakfast—or are you on eel-broth too?’

‘Can’t leave him on his own,’ whispered Reid. ‘Might walk off. There ain’t no rest scheduled before noon.’

Monk was firm.

‘I’ll speak to him, tell him to give you an hour off. Tiring work, shouting tactics. It’s all right for the glory-boys out there. All they’ve got to do is keep moving. Us poor buggers have all the head-work to do. Wait here, mate.’

Without waiting for agreement he marched over to the strawberry-faced Billy, issued instructions, and rejoined Jack. ‘Got to be firm from the start, you know. Mind over mind. They need to know you’ve got the reins, you under-stand. Look at Charlie now, plugging away on his own. I don’t even need to tell him I’m off for a break. Come on now, lad. There’s a place in Liverpool Road that does the tastiest kidney breakfast you ever got your teeth into.’

By one o’clock that afternoon several hundred spectators enlivened the scene, and Darrell held a clear lead. Twelve hours now since the start, he had travelled 67 miles. Reid, on 641.2 miles, was about to lose his position to Williams and O’Flaherty, who still ran together. The veteran, Chalk, was resting. He had covered 61 miles. Chadwick still walked resolutely on, but had been forcing his pace to make 60 miles, and the crowd were already barracking him. Never a popular figure, he was ready for this treatment, but could rarely have been so far down in a race, even at this early stage. To more whistles he stepped off the track, and a dress-ing-gown was wrapped around him by Harvey, before he withdrew into his pavilion for luncheon. Other runners, less provided for, lay in the centre of the arena sipping at bot-tles while trainers or friends massaged them devotedly. The majority took no break, except to answer nature’s call. For this they covered a hundred yards which they got no credit for.

As promised, Mostyn-Smith held his second conference at one-thirty. He addressed the Press in the same school-masterly tones:

‘Thank you for your interest, gentlemen. As you will have observed I have completed 336 circuits, making 48 miles. I shall now retire for thirty minutes, after taking my custom-ary refreshment. I intend to continue—’

Shouting had broken out at the track, and Mostyn-Smith’s statement was never completed. Everyone dashed across the Hall to see what sensation was taking place. A sensation it was, for Erskine Chadwick, champion walker of England, was back on the track and running like a startled stag.

CHAPTER
3

A short wait at the edge of the track, with all eyes turned her way, did not alarm Cora Darrell. She had come, the word circulated, to give support to her husband. She was a black-fringed beauty of delicate features, given to cascades of affected laughter. As Herriott steered her safely to the centre his ponderous small-talk was rewarded out of all pro-portion, until even he began to doubt its wit.

But an entrance, an impact, was undeniably made. For the next half-hour the straining heroes on the track might have taken a rest for all the attention they received. With confidence born of the knowledge that the stage was hers, Cora moved from timekeepers to lap-scorers, from trainers to backers, knowing most of them already, and ensuring that she was introduced to the rest. Once or twice as her husband shambled past, Cora blew a genteel kiss in his direction. He did not respond, and she returned to her conversation.

Sam Monk was standing alone outside Darrell’s tent when Cora eventually moved her attention to him.

‘Charles is leading, isn’t he, Sam? You’re pleased with him now, I expect. He’s not suffering, I hope?’

The trainer smirked.

‘If he is, then Lord help him by next Saturday, m’lady, for he’s not coming off this track except at my orders. No, Charlie’s in fine trim. No man in this race is better prepared, I promise you.’

She was smiling.

‘That you don’t have to tell me, Sam. Six weeks is a long time for a man to abandon his wife. And when you return him to me I suppose he will want another six weeks to recover.’

Monk shook his head.

‘Don’t be too sure of that, m’lady. If fancyman Chadwick runs himself out, Charlie should have done enough to win by Friday. We panicked Chadwick, you see. Had the blighter up on his toes for the first time in his life when Charlie got five miles clear.’

Cora paused to watch Chadwick as he cantered past, breathing heavily.

‘The man looks strong to me. He is running at a faster rate than Charles now. I can’t be so confident as you are. Such muscles!’

Monk touched her arm reassuringly.

‘Don’t worry. We know what we’re about, I promise you. I’ve laid a pony on him this time, and I ain’t losing it. Here’—and he moved close to her and spoke confiden-tially—‘ I’ll show you our tent, love. Tell your fortune in there too if you’ve a fancy that way.’

Giggling, she followed Monk to the end of the track where the tents stood, and with a gay wave to her toiling spouse disappeared from view.

Attention returned resignedly to the race. Chadwick’s gallop had by now become a humbler trot. But in the last hour he had regained two miles and was still travelling faster than Darrell. On the outer track several of the early pace-setters had retired from the race. Billy Reid was struggling manfully to keep pace with Williams and O’Flaherty. It was difficult for spectators to tell the state of the race. Some competitors had taken rests and others, patently, would need to retire before long. Yet there was a prolonged cheer—the loudest so far—when Mostyn-Smith, as steadily paced as a metronome, finally overtook another competitor, an old professional who promptly tottered off the track and away to get drunk.

‘I’m leaving now, Walter. I shall rest at the club for an hour and tonight I’m dining at the London Sporting. Don’t send for me unless the building catches fire. If it does, take your time about raising the alarm because we’re magnifi-cently insured.’

Quivering with laughter and enjoying Jacobson’s resent-ment, he sauntered towards the exit.

On the outer track the trio known as the Scythebearer, the Half-breed and the Dublin Stag were lapping together, shuffling gently through the dust lying on the hard-packed surface. They wore silk running costumes of the professional type, zephyrs in brilliant colours, drawers and white tights. Williams had a cap pulled over his forehead as an eye-shade. A firm believer in maintaining the body’s liquid content, he had brought his training to a triumphant peak in the White Hart at Pentonville the evening before, and he was now weathering a hangover.

‘You start by feeling your worst,’ he was telling the oth-ers, ‘and you can only feel better as time goes on. Tomorrow I’ll be in prime shape. You poor coves ’ll be starting to feel your blisters then. ’Ow are your feet, Feargus?’

‘A little warm,’ admitted O’Flaherty, ‘but I’ll have no trouble this time, I promise you. My little room-mate can give me a pick-a-back for a mile or two.’

They were overtaking Mostyn-Smith several times each hour. His presence in the race encouraged them immensely. He was fifty yards ahead of them now, a slight, but upright figure entirely in black, save a flash of white calves where shorts failed to cover sock-tops. His action was an eccentric, loose-limbed performance. The knees were permanently bent and the lower legs enjoyed a mobility of their own, independent of the thighs, the style of an expert in egg-and-spoon racing. As the others overtook him, O’Flaherty slapped his shoulders heartily.

‘Keep going, mate. Only five bloody days and a bit.’

Mostyn-Smith raised a hand in salute, but they were past before he could respond.

‘Give Double-Barrel ’is due,’ Chalk observed. ‘ ’E’s out-lasted some sharp men already. I think ’e might stick it till tomorrow.’

Williams was laughing.

‘Not after a night in O’Flaherty’s ’ut! I wouldn’t even wish that on bloody Chadwick. ’Ow do you sleep now, Feargus? Is there still the trouble with the banshees? Johnny Marsh, the old ’Ackney Clipper, shared a tent with Feargus during Astley’s Wobble last March, ain’t that true, Irish? When Feargus ’ere saw the banshees ’e jumped up, ’it the canvas and brought the bloody lot down! Johnny Marsh wakes up, sees Feargus there, bolt-eyed and naked as a baby, shoutin’ for ’is Maker, and thinks it’s Judgement Day. ’Is ’air went white in an hour, and ’e’s been seeing doctors ever since. Ain’t that so, mate?’

O’Flaherty’s answer was to spit liberally on the track and blaspheme.

Even Williams recognised that the Stag would not be baited any more, and he changed the topic.

‘What happened to Cora Darrell, then? I never saw ’er leave.’

Chalk nodded his head in the direction of Darrell’s tent. ‘Went in there with Monk ten minutes back, like she was doing an inspection.’

‘Inspection! Inspection of what?’ The Half-breed punc-tuated his wit with a belly-laugh that pained his sore head.

‘Cora ain’t the girl to stand by a bed with a bloke and talk about training, now is she?’

‘Seeing as I ain’t been in that position with ’er,’ Chalk retorted, ‘I wouldn’t know.’

Now O’Flaherty recovered his humour.

‘Well, you’re in the minority there, matey. I thought every ped in London—Hello, that was quick, though. Look, she’s out again.’

Mrs Darrell swept into view again and glided across the arena with copious pretty waves and smiles, including one to her husband. When she crossed the tracks only a deft rais-ing of her velvet train rescued it from Billy Reid’s pounding boots as he lumbered past so close that his breath disturbed the curls on the nape of her neck. One final pause at the exit, a smile tossed back to nobody in particular, and Cora relin-quished the limelight to the less glamorous entertainers.

Chalk studied Charles Darrell curiously. He continued his steady semi-trot around the inner track, preoccupied with his task. He was still losing yards each lap to Chadwick, who showed no indication of reverting to a walk. Chalk addressed his companions.

‘What about ’im, then? Ain’t ’e bothered if ’is wife takes up with other parties?’

‘Charlie Darrell ain’t like you and me, friend,’ explained Williams. ‘ ’E’s a real pro—a runner, through and through. When ’e goes into trainin’, that’s it. No ale, tobacco or women. Six weeks of bloody saintly living. If Cora wants amusin’ she knows she can’t look to Charlie, not till after ’is race. And ’e don’t seem to stand in ’er way if she goes else-where. Don’t care a tuppenny damn.’

‘Now there, my friends, is dedication to the profession!’ O’Flaherty declared. ‘You have to admire it. Now I don’t compare with Darrell as a six-day man, but I fancy that if I didn’t have to keep my Moira content while I train I could beat the world.’

‘You’d beat Moira and all, mate, when you found out ’ow she’d passed the time,’ observed the Half-breed. ‘Six bloom-ing weeks of self-control! Can’t see Moira ’olding out, can you? No offence, mate, but you ain’t trained ’er that way.’

O’Flaherty’s temper flared.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I mean is,’ said Williams, as he hastily sought for palliative words, ‘that Cora Darrell ain’t so different from any other woman—any I’ve met, anyhow. But you ain’t no Charlie Darrell. If you went on the wagon for six weeks like ’e does, and then Moira showed ’erself in ’ere, like Cora, while you were chasing your tail round this bloody path, you’d murder ’er, and spread the pieces all over the ’all.’

O’Flaherty grabbed at the Half-breed’s zephyr.

‘Hold your bloody tongue, Williams, or I’ll land one on you. No man insults my wife. If I chose to train away from her for a
year,
my Moira would keep faithful to me. If she didn’t, I’d belt her from here to Dublin.’

‘Just what ’e said, Irish,’ Chalk blandly pointed out. ‘I ain’t a married man, as you know, but I reckon Darrell’s got an ’eadpiece on him. True, Cora comes up ’ere and parades like a doxy, but Charlie can watch ’er at it, can’t ’e? Now you men leave your women on trust for six days and nights. D’you know where Moira is tonight, Feargus? I ain’t seen ’er ’ere.’

The Irishman jerked an elbow sharply into the Scythe-bearer’s ribs and ran on, privately coping with imagined infi-delities on the part of Moira, who at that moment was at home with the five young O’Flaherty’s in Wapping, darning the Dublin Stag’s socks.

It was at seven-fifteen in the evening that Francis Mostyn-Smith interrupted his third rest-period to seek out Herriott. After some delay he was referred to the race man-ager, Jacobson, who explained that the promoter was away from the Hall.

‘I am not at all satisfied with the management of this race,’ Mostyn-Smith told him, ‘and I should like steps to be taken to rectify certain deficiencies as soon as possible. The sleeping accommodation is most insanitary. Fortunately I do not propose retiring tonight, so I shall not have to suffer these conditions, but frankly, sir, the stench in that area of the Hall will become intolerable in a matter of hours.’

‘If I can explain, Mr Smith—’

‘Mostyn-Smith is my name.’

‘Well, sir, you will appreciate that Mr Herriott would want to discuss this with you himself.’

The complainant braced himself to the level of Jacobson’s chin.

‘If he were here, I should not have raised the matter with you, but since you have been made known to me, and you are the manager of this contest, if not the promoter, I am entitled to some action from you.’

Jacobson was a man for ever doomed to be handed responsibility as things were getting out of hand.

‘If I can explain,’ he repeated, ‘you will know that this Hall was established by the Smithfield Club, and that it is often used for agricultural shows.’

‘I agree that the stench contaminating that end of the Hall emanates from the waste products of animals, if that is what you are implying,’ said Mostyn-Smith. ‘It is evident that the ground there was not washed or swept before the huts were erected. There appears to be no ground drainage. Hygiene, sir, is a matter of importance to me. I shall leave it with you to ensure that the hut which I share with—er, a Mr O’Flaherty, is scrubbed clean and disinfected daily, com-mencing this night. If not, I shall be obliged to call the attention of the Press to the insufferable conditions there.’

Jacobson gaped at the retreating figure of Mostyn-Smith, who returned to the track for his next session of walking without waiting for a reply. Why did that bastard Herriott have to go out to dinner tonight? Resignedly, Jacobson began looking for some idle attendant to carry out Mostyn-Smith’s request. He knew that if he waited to refer the mat-ter to Herriott it would rebound upon him in any case. He was not a man who resorted often to swearing, but the bur-den of his resentment and the peculiar aptness of the situa-tion overwhelmed him. He said aloud: ‘Bullshit.’