Taking the Fall
Authors: A.P. McCoy
TAKING
THE
FALL
A.P. McCoy
Contents
December 1979
D
uncan was hauled out of sleep by the sound of his bedside phone. It came into his dreams. As he sat up in bed, someone tapped him lightly on the head with a thirty-two-pound mallet. With eyes still pasted shut, he grabbed the phone and licked his dry lips.
A voice said, ‘Duncan, you dog!’
Duncan made to check his surroundings, but as he moved, he took another light knock from the mallet. He winced. He was recovering from a Young Jockeys’ Christmas party at the tail-end of 1979 that had started with them all getting thrown out of the Lamb and Flag and finished in the Wherever nightclub.
‘What was the last thing I said to you last night, Duncan?’
Duncan smacked his dry lips. ‘Goodbye?’
‘Funny. Think again.’
Duncan actually tried to think sensibly, but his headache discouraged the effort of remembering. His tongue had sprouted a thick-pile carpet and that put him off speaking too.
The voice on the phone said, ‘Platform two for the eight forty-five. Be there, I said. Didn’t I? Well, didn’t I? Now you just listen to this.’
There was a dull roar on the phone. Like the sound of a train approaching.
‘Did you hear that, Duncan? Did you? That’s the eight forty-five coming in, steaming.’
‘Kerry, you don’t fool me. That’s an electric train. Electric trains don’t steam.’
‘It’s the feckin’ eight forty-five whatever you say and I’m on it and you’re not; and you can forget about your ride today. For God’s sake don’t tell me you ended up with that red-headed bird you were flirting with all night.’
Duncan looked over his shoulder. Under the white cotton duvet a sleeping figure lay curled, but all he could see of her was a pale and elegant foot poked out from the bottom of the bed. Her toenails were painted flamingo-pink. He sniffed and delicately pulled back the corner of the duvet to reveal the shiny chestnut curls and slightly freckled brow of a very pretty red-headed girl.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s a blonde.’
‘You’re a lying toerag. I saw her climb into a cab with you when we left the Exchange Bar.’
‘Is that where we ended up?’
‘Oh yes. And she had to put you into the cab with a spoon.’
‘Kerry,’ Duncan said, ‘I’ll make it down for the next train. Sit tight. Wait for me. Be a good pal.’
‘Hell with that. You’re on your own, son. What was the last thing I said to you last night?’
‘Platform two. Eight forty-five.’
‘No, before that. The last thing before the last thing. I said don’t get mixed up with the redhead. Didn’t I? Do you know whose feckin’ daughter she is? Do you? Do you know? Now I’m on this train. You better get your arse there for the first race or you’re on the skids, pal, on the skids. I’ll cover for you as far as I can. Just like I always do. Jesus, man, do you know whose daughter that is?’
‘Kerry, I’ll get there.’
‘You’re a damned nuisance is what you are.’
Duncan heard a whistle blow and then the line went dead.
Both he and Kerry were jocked up for the first race at Doncaster. The last time he’d raced there he’d been pulled up by the stewards for excessive use of the whip, which was just ridiculous because the ride he was on was already dead before they’d dragged it out of the stables. The steward, Pointer, was one of those failed trainers in green wellies: a by-the-book military type with a hatred of every promising young jockey who showed a high seat and a bit of style. Duncan had got lippy with him, and that bit of lip had cost him dear.
He didn’t want to go back to Doncaster. He had the mother of all hangovers and there was a fine-looking girl in his bed whom he’d quite like to meet. No, he didn’t want to go to Doncaster, but on days like this you had to take what you were given.
Unless you were at the top of the game, that is, front of the pack with plenty in hand, and then you could pick and choose. And the top of the game was where Duncan planned to be. Time was – for a while – when that looked to be exactly where he was heading. He’d been one of the most promising – no, scratch that –
the
most promising young jockey in the country. He was hacking up everywhere. Runner-up for the 1978 Conditional Jockey Championship; though he rode fewer winners, his strike rate was ten per cent higher than the champion’s. Everyone knew damned well he was the better jockey. Then when he’d moved on to becoming a fully fledged jockey, he’d found out the hard way that the best jockeys didn’t always come by the best rides, and that had cost him dearly.
There was just stuff in his way. Connections, for example: owner loves you, trainer hates you; or trainer likes you but owner for some reason won’t even let you ride his prize pig. Other things counted too: old friendships, former stablemates, debts being paid, secrets protected. Jockey Club favours. Form; and not the form of the horses, either.
Then there was the darker stuff: arrangements, handshakes, bookies’ specials, say nothin’. The whole lot of it nothing to do with who could gallop down that last straight with their nose in front. It should be so simple, best jockey gets best horse, but it never was. You got what you were given, and if you had a bit of lip and a bit of spunk about you and spoke out of turn just occasionally, you might find yourself saddling a can of Pedigree Chum for all the chances you had.
But Duncan was one for winning rather than whining, and he knew it would come good in the end. He was just going to have to work through it and prove himself. He had the touch. He could feel a ride quicken under him, and not every jockey knew when to tuck in and wait and when to let the horse open up. Sometimes he could even take a horse on the downgrade and flash past a favourite. He had it. He had what it took, and he knew it.
First he had to dig in and ride the gaff tracks, and ten dozen other gaff tracks, and learn to button his lip. His friend Kerry had that lips-sealed thing off much better than he did. Knew when to shut up. He and Kerry went way back, had been Conditional jockeys together, still a rivalry there, but good mates. They had looked out for each other, and after they had finished their time as Conditionals it had been Kerry who’d warned him he’d be disqualified for excessive use of the lip if he wasn’t careful.
But so often he just couldn’t help himself. His gob always ran away with him. ‘Not exactly a pigeon-chaser, is it?’ he might say to a trainer when given an outsider. ‘Why am I so bloody lucky?’
‘Just take the trip,’ Kerry had told him. ‘Ride what you’re given and you’ll get your chance one day.’ But still Duncan would complain and mouth off to the trainer if he was told to do nothing more than get round.
And of course Kerry was right. He and Duncan were both twenty-one years old but still kids as far as the owners and the trainers were concerned. But knowing that you should shut your gob and doing it were two different things. Sometimes it seemed that his mouth worked independently of his brain. It was like there was a little monkey-demon that got inside him and said the things he said, half in fun, half in jest, but usually at some cost to himself. Maybe he should have his jaw wired shut.
And maybe he should have his zipper wired shut, too. He turned to the girl sleeping beside him. Gently he tugged the covers from her, revealing her breasts. He leaned over and kissed a pink nipple and she woke up, blinking at him. She smiled happily and sat up, propping herself on one elbow.
‘Duncan, do it again, will you?’
‘Listen,’ Duncan said. ‘Do you have a car?’
‘A car?’
‘I’m late for a meeting at Doncaster. I was wondering if you could drive me.’
‘Drive you? How could I drive you? I don’t have a licence.’
‘What?’ Duncan’s head pounded again. ‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen. In January.’
Only just the right side of legal. Duncan blinked. At least there wouldn’t be a stewards’ inquiry. ‘You might have told me.’
‘The subject never came up. Anyway, you’re not so much older.’
‘I feel like I’m a hundred this morning. And I’ve got to get to Doncaster.’ He swung his legs out of bed and found his way to the toilet. There was a bathroom scales on the floor and he weighed himself. It was close. He didn’t have a couple of hours for the sauna, so he was going to have to pop a pee pill to get rid of that extra two pounds. He got off the scales and inspected his face in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and he didn’t look like a winner today. But he would, soon. In a few hours’ time he would put on the silk and he would glow and he would fly.
He threw some cold water on his face. When he came out of the bathroom, patting his face dry with a towel, the girl pulled the sheets around herself but in a manner he knew was inviting him to whisk them away from her. She shook her head coquettishly. ‘Anyway, how come
you
don’t have a car?’ she said. ‘You can’t go everywhere on a horse.’
‘It was repossessed last week. I’m sunk.’
‘I can get you a car easily enough.’
‘How’s that, then?’
‘My dad. He’s got loads of cars.’
‘Loads? What is he, the local Ford dealer?’
‘Don’t be silly, Duncan. He’s in the same business you’re in. Racing, I mean.’
‘Oh I remember now.’
I could hardly forget, could I?
he thought
. Major scumbag number one.
‘And,’ she laughed prettily, ‘he’s got about twelve cars in the garage. What do you like? There’s a Lamba . . . Lambra . . .’
‘Lamborghini?’
‘That’s it. And a Porsche. A shiny black one. And some others. He never uses most of them, so he won’t miss one for a day.’
He flicked the towel at her buttock and she squealed. ‘Get dressed. We’re on our way!’
They took a taxi from Duncan’s place to hers, and all the way Duncan tried to figure out a way of asking her name without sounding impolite. After all, if you’ve just had sex vigorous enough to make you lose half a pound, you really ought to know what she’s called. ‘Your dad,’ he tried. ‘Does he have a pet name for you?’
She made a face. ‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘Well, it’s just that most dads have a special name for their daughter, don’t they? I wondered if he called you Bunny or Pumpkin or some such thing.’
‘Bunny?’
Duncan shrugged.
‘You’re weird,’ she said. She looked out of the window at the grey sky. After a while she said, ‘He just calls me Lorna like everyone else. To be honest, he doesn’t care about me enough to give me a pet name.’
Lorna. Of course. He’d thought it was Laura or Lara and it was important not to get it wrong. Now he remembered moving in on her in the nightclub and making her laugh, and Kerry beckoning to him and saying, ‘Now you keep away from that if you ever want to ride for the Duke.’
She’d been wrong about her father. ‘Duke’ Cadogan wasn’t exactly in the same business as Duncan. No more than a soldier fighting in Northern Ireland was in the same business as an international arms manufacturer. Where Duncan was a jockey, Cadogan was a racehorse owner, one further step removed than a trainer. He bought the horseflesh and sponsored a stable the way that a businessman might buy himself into being the chairman of a football team. His nickname had nothing to do with the English aristocracy.