I Own the Racecourse! (5 page)

It took him five afternoons to raise the dollar. He tried knocking at the doors of people he knew and offering to run messages or mow lawns; but most of those who accepted his offer did so in a spirit of gratitude that made him too uncomfortable to ask for money.

‘You're a real kind boy, Andy,' said Ma Eaton, giving him a sweet smile and a spotty banana from the window of the shop. ‘I'll be sure and tell your mother what a help you've been. She ought to be real proud.'

Andy gave up this scheme after two days, having raised only another twenty cents. He was wandering homeward down a lane, depressed and lonely, when he was startled by voices as shrill as the cry of a pee-wee.

‘Look out, Andy Hoddel!' ‘Watch what you're doing!' ‘Why don't you look where you're going?'

Andy looked. One of his feet was planted on a square of green taffeta and the other poised above a circle of white velvet. These and other scraps of gay materials were laid out on a sheet of paper outside an open gate, where Irene Willis and Noela Black sat with scissors and reels of cotton. Two small dolls of very grown-up shape, with hard, shiny smiles and astonishing masses of silky hair, lay on their backs and stared glassily.

Andy stood still while he took all this in, then backed slowly and awkwardly. ‘I never meant it,' he said, feeling very bad. ‘I never saw. Is it all right?'

Irene was shaking and blowing the green taffeta. Both girls bent over it and muttered together. Neither of them answered him, but Andy was lost in thought. After a while he called to them. ‘Hey!'

They looked up in a hostile way.

‘Do you want a lot more of that stuff?' said Andy, looking at the scraps of material. ‘I'll get you a whole lot more if you want it. Only twenty cents. All different colours.'

They conferred. ‘I haven't got twenty cents,' said Irene.

‘What have you got, then?'

‘Only ten cents.'

‘I'll get you some for ten cents if you want it. You could have had a whole lot for twenty cents; but I reckon you'll get a good bit for ten cents, if that's all you've got.'

The two girls looked at each other. ‘His mother's a dressmaker,' they said, nodding wisely.

‘I've got ten cents too,' said Noela.

‘I'll get two lots,' said Andy. ‘You can go and find the money.' He went loping home to find the bag into which his mother stuffed the small, useless pieces of stuff that tumbled on the floor when she was cutting out. He dumped handfuls of gay scraps on two sheets of newspaper, and when he took the fat parcels back, each of the girls produced a shilling.

This was the most successful of Andy's efforts to earn money, and he still had only fifty cents. Since he could think of no more business deals, he resorted to an older and simpler method. He wandered into streets farther from home and asked strangers for money, making use of his own oddness and the effect it had on people.

A baby that hasn't yet learned to sit up knows a good deal about the people around it—whether to cry for attention or play quietly in its cot. So Andy, living behind a closed window, had learned to read faces through the glass. He knew that some people, children and adults, would rather not see him or talk to him. The children showed it by running away, or by teasing him until he himself was hurt and angry enough to run away. The adults showed it in the impatient way they spoke, or by looking away quickly and pretending not to see him at all. Some people found him amusing at times when he was really quite serious; and he would quickly pretend that he meant to be funny, to hide his puzzlement. Other people treated him with a heavy kindness that made him just as uncomfortable—but he knew how to make use of it, too. Most people were a little more patient and polite to Andy than they were to other boys. He liked that best.

So now he went walking in the busier streets near the traffic lights. He smiled at people, and talked to them whenever he had the chance. If they answered in a cheerful and friendly way, or if they were carefully kind, he asked for money ‘to buy a drink because I'm thirsty'. In two afternoons he had collected fifty cents, enough to make up his third dollar. It was by far the easiest way he had tried.

He put all his money in the pin-box, fastened it with a rubber band and went out to look for the old man with the bottles. It was late afternoon. The sun was no longer pouring heat down into the streets, but the streets themselves threw back a wave of warmth. Andy, loping down Blunt Street, suddenly found the two O'Day boys standing in his way.

‘And where have
you
been all the week?' demanded Mike a little sternly. ‘Have you been dodging us, or what?'

Terry added, ‘Aren't we mates any more?' He and Mike were both curious, having heard from Joe and Matt that old Andy had some scheme for which he needed money.

Andy, brought to a sudden stop, chuckled and shifted his feet. He was pleased to see his friends and glad that they had missed him; but he could see the walls of Beecham Park, and he had the money, and the bees were buzzing in his head. ‘Can't wait,' he said, dodging past. Over his shoulder he called, ‘See you one of these days,' and went loping on his way.

He found the bottom gate of the racecourse standing open, but there was no sign of the old man. A car was parked in the centre of the grounds, and a water-cart drove slowly round the track, watering it. Andy stood in the gateway waiting for the old man, watching the jets of water spraying on to the track, admiring the big empty grandstand and the sheltered quiet inside the circling walls. He could hardly believe that soon it would all be his.

He watched until the water-cart drove off; until a man came and locked the gate, and the car drove off to the other side of the course. He waited until it was dark, but the old man didn't come. Andy went home. The next afternoon he waited again. It never occurred to him to look for the old man anywhere else, and he would have had no idea where else to look. He waited until the western skyline made a pattern of black blocks against the fading gold of the sky. Then, just as he was turning to go home, he saw a pair of old green trousers and a baggy grey jacket come lurching out of the hotel across the street.

It was the same old man. He went slowly and unsteadily up the hill, and Andy followed. Sometimes he came quite close, and then dropped shyly back again. The old man turned into a narrow, angled lane, and Andy was afraid of losing him. Then he hurried and caught up.

‘Mister!' he called. ‘Hey, mister, I brought the three dollars.'

The old man looked behind, swayed slightly, and walked on. Andy grabbed at his sleeve.

‘I got 'em all, those dollars you said. You didn't forget, did you? It was hard work getting them.'

The old man had stopped, turned, and was peering at Andy in a dull, unrecognizing way. His eyes were rather bloodshot.

‘You gotta take the three dollars, mister,' said Andy urgently. ‘You said cheap at the price, because it's a packet of trouble. Don't you want 'em?' He was opening the pin-box, which chinked as he took off the rubber band.

‘Three dollars,' said the old man in a hazy way. Then, to Andy's relief, he seemed to wake up a little. ‘You got three dollars for an old bloke? You're a good boy, a fine, big, strapping boy. Give it here.' He held out his hand. Andy poured the silver coins into it. The old man poked them with an exploring finger.

‘It's all there,' said Andy.

‘I thank you, my boy…I was in the war, you know. The real war, nineteen-eighteen…The holy saints'll make it up to you, boy.'

‘Can I have it now?' said Andy.

The old man closed his fist tightly. ‘You just
give
it to me.'

Andy laughed and laughed. ‘That's the money I gave you,' he pointed out, still laughing. ‘I don't want the money, I want the racecourse. Is it mine now, mister? Can I have Beecham Park?'

‘If you say so,' said the old man. He waved his free hand in a broad and generous gesture. ‘Lock—stock—and barrel, boy. All yours.'

Andy breathed deeply and laughed again with delight.

Andy wandered slowly home in the twilight, chuckling now and then, and muttering to himself. He had raised the money and paid the price; now Beecham Park Trotting Course was his. The first stars were glinting in the blue-black depths of sky, and he could not tell whether they were in the sky or in his head. The hard asphalt under his feet, the cottages squatting in dim rows on either side, were not so real or so close as the quietness and splendour of his racecourse. He thought how surprised his mother would be—then chuckled uneasily when he remembered his empty money-box. He thought, instead, how surprised his friends would be. He wanted to go and tell them at once; yet in another way he didn't want to tell anyone at all. It was so big, his secret. He felt lost in it.

He was very quiet during the evening, and went to bed even before Mrs Hoddel had time to suggest it. Early in the morning he went out and looked at his racecourse. He saw three horses running with their gigs through a silvery, silken mist that lay over the grounds. In the afternoon he looked again, and saw a yellow tractor raking the track level. He was still watching when he saw his four friends going by towards the open park behind the racecourse. Andy loped quickly after them; but then, when he caught them up, he dropped back again with a new sort of shyness.

Matt nudged Terry, who was nearest to him. ‘See who's coming after us?' Terry, Mike and Joe looked quickly back and went on walking. They were a little offended with Andy who had kept away for a whole week, busy on some mysterious project which he had failed to explain. They went on in silence to the storm-water channel, where they hoped to find some useful pieces of timber to make a set of bails and stumps for cricket.

Among the rubbish that came washing down the storm-water channel there were often things worth rescuing: bolts, bits of wire or rope, useful tins or odd lengths of timber. The boys climbed down the cemented sides of the channel into its broad, gently curving bed, which was almost dry except for a trickle of water along its centre. They began to work their way along it, pausing now and then to examine something, lifting aside a sheet of grey and brittle cardboard, rolling an empty bottle into the stream; conscious of Andy, who kept pace with them on the bank above and watched. Where the big willows hung over the channel, they found three or four pieces of timber which they threw out on the bank. Andy placed them in a neat stack while the others climbed out.

‘What you want them for?' he asked.

‘Making a wicket,' said Joe.

Andy chuckled in a pleased and interested way. ‘Why don't you make another skateboard, so's two could go at the one time?'

‘No wheels,' said Mike, climbing into one of the willows. Soon they were all sitting like birds among the branches, while Andy sat contentedly under the tree.

‘I own the dockyards,' said Matt hopefully, looking over the park towards them from his perch.

‘
No
, you don't,' said Mike firmly. ‘I've had them for months.'

‘I thought you might, but I wasn't sure. Just thought I'd have a go. Who's got Pyrmont Bridge?'

‘Me,' said Terry.

‘What are you going to do with it?'

‘Make a toll bridge of it. A bob to go over.'

‘All the traffic'll go through Railway Square for nothing. Who wants to pay a bob to go over Pyrmont Bridge?'

‘Don't be a lunatic. There's enough traffic jams now, when they
do
use Pyrmont. They'll pay.'

The willow dipped and swayed as the boys moved from branch to branch. At the foot of the tree, Andy laughed with secret glee. ‘I own something, too!' he shouted into the branches.

There was only silence from above. They were not going to show an undignified curiosity about Andy's doings.

‘Hey, Mike! Did you hear, Joe? I own something, too! Not just kidding like you do, though.' He chuckled knowingly. ‘You don't really own all that stuff,
I
know. You never paid for any of it. What I own, I bought it.'

‘All right,' said Joe. ‘We heard you the first time.
What
do you own?'

Andy screwed up his eyes and twisted his face cunningly.

‘You needn't tell us if you don't want to,' said Terry cruelly. ‘Nobody said you
had
to be friends.'

‘I'm friends!' cried Andy, deeply hurt…‘Gee, you know I'm
best
friends. I'm going to tell you, aren't I? It's just…' His voice trailed off.

‘Go on, Andy—good old Andy!' cried Matt, almost bursting under the strain. ‘Spit it out, boy. Did you buy it with the three dollars?'

Andy tried to tell them, but the words seemed to be too big for his tongue to manage. ‘I'll
show
you,' he said at last. ‘I'll show you tonight.'

‘I bet,' said Mike, not believing him.

‘You wait and you'll see,' Andy promised, hugging himself.

He was very quiet for the rest of the afternoon, but now his friends saw that his quietness had a waiting, explosive quality like a bomb. Mike and Joe exchanged looks but said nothing. Matt was amused, and made teasing remarks about ‘the big secret' until Terry told him briefly to stow it. There was a feeling of tension building up, and Joe's long quiet face grew more and more serious. Whatever it was that gripped Andy so that everything else was shut out, he had been wrapped up in it for a whole week. What could he have bought for three dollars that could keep him in this state of round-eyed, hushed excitement? It was too much money for Andy, or it was not enough.

‘He's bought a dog,' whispered Matt.

Mike and Joe exchanged a thoughtful look. That was one thing Andy really might have done, about which he might be very excited.

‘If he has, he's been rooked,' muttered Terry. ‘The sort of pup he could get for three dollars, he could've picked up for nothing.'