Complete Short Stories (52 page)

‘It goes against my principles.’

‘To the crows with your principles! Take this purse: there should be ninety-six gold pieces in
it. Run across to the Greens at once, and put the lot on Scorpus! Lodge your bet at the corner bookmaker’s. The Greens somehow fancy Thallus to win; so don’t accept less than evens! A maiden bet, ye Gods! I’ve never once known a maiden bet go astray. If you won’t help me, Myconian, I’ll beat you till you sneeze!’

Most reluctantly, he took the purse and placed the bet, getting evens all right.
I could have done better, probably, because Thallus and Scorpus were almost equally fancied, and five to one was being quoted against the field. Five to one may seem short odds, but think how many eager punters back the field!

There we sat, in marble seats, up front, beside the rest of Scorpus’s ‘family’ – his trainer, chariot-master, head stable-lad, veterinary, and his green-eyed girl friend
Bufotilla. It’s ‘First come, first get’ here with all seats except the Imperial Enclosure and the rows reserved for Senators, Knights, and faction officials like ourselves. That’s why thousands of sportsmen queue up, the evening before, to grab good seats when the gates open at daybreak. An hour later they’d find standing-room only. You never know whom you’ll be next to; I first met my Syrian wife
in a Circus queue…

Thallus’s ‘family’ sat near us, across a gangway. The philosopher’s grey cloak puzzled them. ‘What business has Scorpus with philosophy?’ they wondered. ‘Philosophy’s something that generals and statesmen take up in retirement. Can Scorpus be retiring?’

We let them wonder. Jokes and insults flew between the rival families.

The philosopher had been enormously impressed by
the Colosseum audience; but at the Great Circus he doubted his eyes. ‘How many! How many!’ he groaned, gazing around him.

‘Almost a full house,’ I said. ‘Above a quarter of a million people. Including the Emperor Domitian himself – over there in scarlet! With the purple cloak, the golden wreath, and his favourite dwarf.’

I remember the veterinary saying he felt worried. Something he’d heard
in the crowd suggested that Blue had been got at.

We took him up on this at once. ‘What do you mean “got at”? By whom? Let’s have it! Together, we five are responsible for the whole turnout – except for Scorpus. And that’s Bufotilla’s job. Got anything against Bufotilla?’

‘He better hadn’t!’ said Bufotilla fiercely.

‘No, no, don’t talk that way,’ protested the veterinary. ‘It’s just something
in the air. Those Greens look so damnably cocksure.’

Trumpets blew and, amid tempestuous cheers, the four teams entered at a trot and lined up behind the starting-rope. The draw for places had been unfortunate. Scorpus got the outer berth; his Red partner got the inner; and between them Green and White – so that from inside to outside the colours ran Red, White, Green, Blue.

A beautiful, warm,
windless day; the vast, tight-packed Circus; the fine yellow sand; the charioteers poised like gods, leaning back a little, with the reins wound fast about their waists; the horses pawing, snorting, and flaunting coloured favours. Above them, on the long, narrow embankment around which the course ran, towered the immense obelisk brought by Augustus from Egypt; and on either side of it stood marble
images of Neptune, Hercules and the Heavenly Twins. Also bronzes of deified Caesars: Augustus, Claudius and Vespasian – each of whom in his lifetime had generously patronized this Circus.

The Emperor waved his napkin to signal ‘Begin!’ Another trumpet flourish: the taut rope fell, four whips cracked as one, and the chariots were off, scattering clouds of sand.

Blue’s partner, Red, having drawn
the best berth, should have gone hell for leather to reach the turning-post first, then rounded it in a wide enough sweep to hold White and Green securely on his flank, while letting his partner, Blue, nip in behind and steal the turn. I’ve watched that manoeuvre often; but it needs judgement. On this occasion Red got away to a slow start, let White crowd him into the embankment, four lengths before
the post, and thus open the inner berth for Thallus. Scorpus, counting on Red to reach the post unchallenged, hadn’t let his team go full out; by the time he’d whisked around White at the turn, Green was well ahead. (These two posts, at either end of the embankment, are pillars of gilt bronze; seven huge wooden eggs rest on a frame above them. An Imperial slave takes one egg down as soon as
the leading chariot has gone past; and another at each lap, until all seven eggs have disappeared. It saves charioteers and spectators the trouble of keeping count.)

A bad beginning. Thallus kept his lead of three lengths, and completed the first lap with so sharp a turn that I’d swear his wheel shaved the gilt off both sides of the bronze! After him shot Scorpus, now far enough away from White
not to be worried by him; though plainly worried by the
Green tunic in front. Later we heard that our near team-horse had not been in top condition.

Three very fast laps, no change in position, and towards the end of the fourth lap Scorpus challenged; he ran neck to neck with Green for a while, but failed to make that inner berth at the turn.

Four eggs down! Five eggs down!

Scorpus didn’t challenge
again; he waited, despite jeers, protests, whistles and encouraging yells. He waited patiently, until Red had lost a whole lap and was hugging the embankment, some lengths in the rear of White, with Green threatening to pass him at the post.
‘Ag’ut primä debebas!’
Scorpus shouted – he lay a little behind and beyond Green – ‘Do what you should have done at the first post!’

Red understood; he flogged
blood and sweat out of his nags, and this time rounded the turn wide enough to carry Green with him. Scorpus, wheeling almost at right angles, nipped in behind so neatly that his off-tracer’s shoulder grazed the Red chariot-tail: he’d beaten Green to the inner berth and won three lengths.

‘Success t t et vicet
!’ the Blues roared – ‘He’s gained the lead, and he’ll keep it!’

Six eggs down!

Now
White, just ahead of Scorpus, though still in the fifth lap, was weaving in and out to hamper him; Green ran a close third. Caught between his two rivals, Scorpus made a bold decision. He forced his tracers to take the last turn wide; whereupon White lost his whip, as well as his head. Mistaking Thallus’s team for Scorpus’s – the Green tracers being also bays – he baulked him at the critical moment.
Thallus’s wheel struck the post, square, the chariot broke up. In the nick of time he used his dagger to cut himself free from the reins. On rushed the horses, hauling the wreckage after them.

A thunderstorm of cheers and curses. It was Blue’s race all right – Scorpus could have finished at a walk. But as he walloped his triumphant Thessalians at high speed down the stretch, a small, ragged-shirted
figure leaped the barrier and ran across the sand, shaking his puny fists. There he stood – directly in the chariot’s path! Expecting him to lose his nerve and dart back, Scorpus neither reined in nor swerved. The intruder sprang at the duns’ heads, then fell with a scream under their iron hooves. The tracers, meanwhile, had shied and plunged, slewing the chariot around. Scorpus was thrown,
and his helmet struck sickeningly against the marble embankment. He was dragged past the winning-post – one lap and five lengths ahead of White.

An indescribable hubbub. I heard the chariot-master’s gasp of horror. In a nightmare, I heard my own groans, as if heaved from some other man’s guts. Scorpus, our great Scorpus! Down at last with a smashed skull and broken neck! The long play had ended.
We wept like orphan children.

Bufotilla fainted; the veterinary took charge of her. I was glad she’d fainted. We all thought the world of her. She and Scorpus were to have married in the New Year. One can find no words of comfort on such occasions…

Further hubbub. The judges were signalling a Blue victory. Someone tugged at my sleeve. ‘You’ve won your ninety-six gold pieces!’ said the philosopher.
‘I renounce my share. It would be disgraceful to profit from a man’s death.’

He was being illogical. Dead men don’t win races, and the judges’ decision clearly showed that Scorpus had been dragged alive past the mark. But why argue?

‘What pain! What misery!’ I mourned. ‘Scorpus is gone! Those murderous Greens must have been counting on Ragged Shirt to save their bets. A suicidal wretch, who’d
bet against Scorpus once too often? But I won’t believe a man could have scrambled over that barrier without help!’

Just then the Imperial catapults opened up: a volley of metal vouchers scattering in showers among the seats. Some were for money, anything from a single gold piece to a hundred; some had even higher value, gifts of farms, houses, shops – properties confiscated by the Emperor from
banished noblemen, or left him in wills.

‘I can stand no more!’ the philosopher exclaimed shrilly. ‘Tomorrow I shall return to Myconos, if the kind Gods will arrange my passage.’ And that the Gods were kind, and very kind, a most curious coincidence proved. A voucher struck the head of some woman sitting behind us and bounced into the philosopher’s lap. It entitled him to ‘a fifty-ton merchant
vessel, the
Good Fortune
, at present lying off Naples; warranted sound and well found.’ How’s that for maiden luck? And only five days later an Imperial Edict banished all philosophers from Rome!

Not since the Emperor Titus died have I seen a better attended funeral. The Spanish poet Martial wrote a graceful dirge: ‘Let Victory sadly break her palm,
etcetera, etcetera…’
Also an epitaph: to the
effect that an envious Fate having counted Scorpus’s victories, decided that at twenty-seven years he’d won enough for a lifetime; then took up her shears and snipped his vital thread. I’m no judge of verse, but I admired the sentiment.

Thallus has succeeded to Scorpus’s throne; and we Blues seldom win these days. Besides, racing isn’t what it was: the Emperor, for inscrutable reasons of State,
has formed two new factions – Purple and Gold. Our harassed bookmakers never know how to figure the odds.

And I’m sick of the Colosseum as well. Hermes, my favourite gladiator, left hospital too soon and got chopped in his first show. Talk of the Good Life! If things don’t improve soon, and if I get any balder from worry, I’m half inclined to sail for Myconos myself and open a quiet little cockpit
there.

Y
OUNG
S
TAN COMES
around yesterday about tea-time – you know my grandson Stan? He’s a Polytechnic student, just turned twenty, as smart as his dad was at the same age. Stan’s all out to be a commercial artist and do them big coloured posters for the hoardings. Doesn’t answer to ‘Stan’, though – says it’s ‘common’; says he’s either ‘Stanley’ or he’s nothing.

Stan’s got a bagful
of big, noble ideas; all schemed out carefully, with what he calls ‘captions’ attached.

Well, I can’t say nothing against big, noble ideas. I was a red-hot Labour-man myself for a time, forty years ago now, when the Kayser’s war ended and the war-profiteers began treading us ex-heroes into the mud. But that’s all over long ago – in fact, Labour’s got a damn sight too respectable for my taste!
Worse than Tories, most of their leaders is now – especially them that used to be the loudest in rendering ‘We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Still’. They’re all Churchwardens now, or country gents, if they’re not in the House of Lords.

Anyhow, yesterday Stan came around, about a big Ban-the-Bomb march all the way across England to Trafalgar Square. And couldn’t I persuade a few of my old comrades
to form a special squad with a banner marked ‘First World War Veterans Protest Against the Bomb’? He wanted us to head the parade, ribbons, crutches, wheel-chairs and all.

I put my foot down pretty hard. ‘No, Mr Stanley,’ I said politely, ‘I regret as I can’t accept your kind invitation.’

‘But why?’ says he. ‘You don’t want another war, Grandfather, do you? You don’t want mankind to be annihilated?
This time it won’t be just a few unlucky chaps killed, like Uncle Arthur in the First War, and Dad in the Second… It will be all mankind.’

‘Listen, young ’un,’ I said. ‘I don’t trust nobody who talks about mankind – not parsons, not politicians, nor anyone else. There ain’t no such thing as “mankind”, not practically speaking there ain’t.’

‘Practically speaking, Grandfather,’ says young Stan,
‘there
is
. Mankind means all the different nations lumped together – us, the Russians, the Americans, the Germans, the French, and all the rest of them. If the bomb goes off, everyone’s finished.’

‘It’s not going off,’ I says.

‘But it’s gone off twice already – at Hiroshima and Nagasaki,’ he argues, ‘so why not again? The damage will be definitely final when it
does
go off.’

I wouldn’t let
Stan have the last word. ‘In the crazy, old-fashioned war in which I lost my foot,’ I said, a bit sternly, ‘the Fritzes used poison gas. They thought it would help ’em to break through at Wipers. But somehow the line held, and soon our factories were churning out the same stinking stuff for us to use on them. All right, and now what about Hitler’s war?’

‘What about it?’ Stan asks.

‘Well,’ I
says, ‘everyone in England was issued an expensive mask in a smart-looking case against poison-gas bombs dropped from the air – me, your Dad, your Ma, and yourself as a tiny tot. But how many poison-gas bombs were dropped on London, or on Berlin? Not a damned one! Both sides were scared stiff. Poison-gas had got too deadly. No mask in the market could keep the new sorts out. So there’s not going to
be no atom bombs dropped neither, I tell you, Stanley my lad; not this side of the Hereafter! Everyone’s scared stiff again.’

‘Then why do both sides manufacture quantities of atom bombs and pile them up?’ he asks.

‘Search me,’ I said, ‘unless it’s a clever way of keeping up full employment by making believe there’s a war on. What with bombs and fall-out shelters, and radar equipment, and unsinkable
aircraft-carriers, and satellites, and shooting rockets at the moon, and keeping up big armies – takes two thousand quid nowadays to maintain a soldier in the field, I read the other day – what with all that play-acting, there’s full employment assured for everyone, and businessmen are rubbing their hands.’