He nodded and then stretched out his legs and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He pulled out a handful of notes. ‘Here.’
She took the notes and counted them: Two tens and four twenties. ‘What’s this? Where did you get it?’
He leaned forward and stroked the dog. Ruby noticed with some alarm how natural this gesture looked. She couldn’t help thinking how useful the dog was, as an excuse, as a reason to ignore everything.
‘Did you borrow it?’
‘I won it in a bet, in a pub.’
She rolled the notes up into a tight wad. ‘It’s illegal to bet with people you don’t know in pubs. You can get arrested for it.’
He smiled. ‘I’d fucking burp and they’d have me for noise pollution.’
Her eyes returned to the television screen. ‘I’m just telling you.’
After a short pause he said, ‘You’ll be needing some new sunglasses.’
‘You lost them?’
He shook his head.
‘You broke them?’
‘No. I ate them.’
She focused on his face. ‘You ate them?’
He nodded. ‘For a bet.’
‘I bought those on the Kings Road. I liked them.’
‘I only ate the lenses. The frame was still intact, but I couldn’t see any point in bringing that back.’
‘You’ll be ill again.’
‘I won’t. I vomited them up straight away.’
‘You hate vomiting.’
‘I hate a lot of things, but I still do most of them.’
The money. She felt it in her hand. What was he after?
They both stared at the television for a while. Eventually she said, ‘You didn’t do anything special with the hat, then?’
He picked up his bag. The hat was squeezed into one of the front compartments. He pulled it out and tossed it at her. It
landed on her lap and she stared at it without moving. He pulled open the main flap of the rucksack, took out a record from the back and passed it to her. She took it from him and pulled the corners of the cover straight where they had become bent in the course of his journey. Ray Charles. It wasn’t new.
‘This is a completely different record. Thanks, anyway.’
He located his toothbrush in his bag and sprang up. ‘I’m just going to brush my teeth.’
She handed him the roll of notes. ‘Stick these into the coffee jar in the cupboard above the sink.’
After he’d done as she’d instructed he went into the bathroom.
She wondered where the rucksack had come from. What exactly had he been doing all day? The dog looked all right. Tired, though. She picked up one of her paws. The pads looked fine.
Vincent returned and sat back down on the sofa. ‘What’s this about?’ He was holding the registration booklet.
‘Bad news.’
‘Why?’
‘Read it.’
Inside he found a betting slip; on it, some notes. ‘I wrote those today,’ she said, ‘in a spare moment.’
‘Is she any good at racing?’
‘She came in the first three during her maiden race, which I think is good. But she’s raced badly since.’
‘How many races?’ He looked at the book.
‘Too many. She could race well if she felt like it, but she doesn’t seem to want to.’
He inspected her betting slip. ‘What’s this mean?’
‘Things that might help. I listed them.’ She pointed. ‘That says “weight”.’
‘She needs to lose a few pounds? Well, that’s straightforward enough.’ He battled to read on: ‘Hurdles, handicap, distance and positioning.’
‘She hasn’t raced over hurdles before. I thought she might be good at it.’
He frowned. ‘If she can’t be bothered running in a normal race, how’s making her jump things going to help?’
‘It’s complicated.’
She stood up and went into the kitchen, opened a bag of dog biscuits and tipped them on to a plate.
Vincent was still reading her notes. ‘What does handicap mean?’
She picked up a can opener and stuck it into the top of a tin. ‘Sometimes she interferes with other dogs. That’s a really bad sign. Greyhounds aren’t bred to be aggressive. Bitches especially. So if you have a greyhound that snaps at other dogs - even though it’s usually only because of friendliness or boredom - the racing manager gets really upset about it.’
‘I asked about the handicap.’
‘Well, if she ran in a handicap race her trap would be at the front. Because she’s crap they’d give her a head start.’
‘And so?’
‘When she’s released she’d have the advantage of a few extra seconds on her side. She’d be able to see the hare without being put off by other dogs.’
‘You’ve written “positioning” here in capital letters.’
‘Yep. It’s connected.’
She mashed up the meat from the tin with the biscuits, put the bowl down for the dog and took off the muzzle. ‘I bought two bits of fish on the market this afternoon. Maybe you could make dinner?’
‘I know that some dogs run wide and some run close to the fence.’
‘The rails.’ She grinned.
Vincent caught her expression. ‘Well, fuck you!’
She walked back over and sat down again. ‘OK.’
He pushed his toothbrush behind his ear, as if it were a pen, and folded his arms.
‘There are six traps. The first four traps are chosen in a kind of draw. The first trap is usually the best trap for most dogs because the distance that dog ends up running is much shorter, I mean, if it stays close to the rails.’
‘Why?’
‘Think about it. The dogs run an oval course. The inside of an
oval is going to be a shorter distance than the outside. Anyway, if a dog is a good railer and a fast trapper and it’s in trap one, it’ll be hard to beat. In the bookies, if anyone’s going to bet in forecast doubles, most punters will bet the combination one and six. They’re the two best traps.’
‘Why six, then? The dog in that trap’d be running the longest distance.’
Ruby nodded. ‘True. The two outside traps, five and six, aren’t included in the draw. Dogs that are well-known wide runners are always given the outside traps to save on injuries.’
He was frowning again. Ruby jumped up and hunted around for a pen and some paper. She found a small red pen and the back of an electricity bill. She sat down and drew a large oval and then six small boxes on the oval which she numbered one to six, then moved up closer to Vincent to show him what she was doing. He felt her leg touching his, could smell her hair.
‘If a wide runner was placed in any of the four inside tracks, he’d come powering out when the trap opened and go shooting towards the hare, smacking into several other dogs in the process. The speed they go, he’d probably end up hurting either himself or one of the other runners. What it comes down to is the fact that a wide runner will always chase the hare.’
‘Hold on …’ He was confused. ‘So if they’re all chasing the hare, what about the railer, the dog in trap one?’
She smiled. ‘Dogs are like people. They do stuff for different reasons. The strains of dogs from which most of today’s greyhounds are bred were strains that just ran for the sake of it. They’ll chase anything. For a railer, it’s more the running than the chasing that excites them. If a dog is a good railer, then it isn’t that bothered about catching the hare. It’s canny. It knows how to win a race.’
‘So,’ Vincent took the pen off her and pointed it at the two boxes numbered five and six, ‘what about these dogs? They’re just stupid?’
‘Nope. The distance around the track is longer from these two traps, but at the same time they’ve got much more room to really stretch out. Racing’s all about negotiating bends. A dog that’s
railing has a much tighter bend to negotiate, and the other dogs will be crowding him more. But the wide runner can really stride out and he’s less likely to be bumped.’
Vincent rubbed his forehead. Ruby noticed. ‘It gets even more complicated when you try and think how your own animal fits into the whole thing.’
Buttercup had finished her dinner and was now lying across the kitchen tiles. Vincent turned his head and stared at her. ‘What sort of a runner is she?’
Ruby took hold of the registration booklet, opened it, pointed. ‘That there is the first race she ran. Her time …’ She ran her finger down the column, calculating out loud. ‘She was at least five or six seconds faster in that race than in any of her others.’
‘Which trap?’
‘Two. Which makes you think she’s going to be a railer, but in fact I know she runs fairly wide. She’s never been in traps five or six, but they’ve run her in all the others and she hasn’t done anything.’
Vincent was staring at Ruby’s ear as she spoke. He said, ‘Did you have all those holes made in your ear at the same time?’
‘What?’
She frowned at him. He scratched his nose. ‘If you think about it, there’s no point in considering this stuff tactically unless you’ve actually seen the race.’
She closed the book. ‘And how d’you work that one out?’
‘Well, a race isn’t only about how one dog performs.’
‘But I’m only interested in one dog.’
‘I’m saying that a race isn’t about how one dog performs, it’s about how six dogs perform. Maybe she is a wide runner.’
‘So why her best performance from trap two?’
‘Well, maybe in that race she came out of the trap faster than the other dogs to her right, was able to see the hare, unhindered, and move outside before the other dogs overtook her.’
Ruby thought about this. ‘I don’t think she’s a particularly fast trapper, which means she doesn’t usually come out of the trap all that quickly.’
She threw the book down and stood up. ‘I’d better get dinner on.’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Fish.’
‘Not for dinner, for the dog.’
He stretched out his arms across the back of the sofa; his fingers nearly reached her as she leaned on the arm. ‘You’ve written out your lists and you said she’s got a race on Thursday.’
Ruby stared at her finger-nails. She was wearing a transparent polish that made them shine, but they still looked ragged.
He said, ‘I think we should take her down to the track right now and experiment.’
‘How? What good would that do?’
‘You’ve got to offer her some kind of incentive.’
‘Like what?’
‘Greyhound racing originated with coursing, didn’t it? Dogs chasing live hares?’
‘In Ireland.’
‘She’s probably just bored. She isn’t stimulated, so she won’t perform.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘I was telling you how these strains of dogs chase anything. Usually they’ll run after anything because that’s how they’re bred.’
‘So?’
She thought for a moment. ‘In coursing I know for a fact that dogs never interfere with each other.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Lots of reasons.’
Vincent grinned. ‘Deviants are always more intelligent, so they get bored more easily.’
Ruby considered this for a while. Eventually she said, ‘We can’t just go down to the track. They might have speedway on tonight. Anyway, I’m tired and she’s just eaten.’
‘In the morning, then.’
She stood up. ‘I suppose I could phone and ask if it’s all right to take her down early.’
‘If we get there for eight, you’d have a full two hours before work.’
Ruby went to the phone and picked up the receiver. She didn’t feel very enthusiastic herself, but any enthusiasm, from any source, no matter how misplaced, was better than none at all. She was about to dial and then stopped.
‘Why all this sudden interest in the dog? I didn’t know you even liked dogs.’
He was staring at the television. ‘I don’t. But I do like plans.’
Ideas. To have an idea, he thought. To think and to do. What could be better?
She stared suspiciously at the back of his head before dialling. He was full of shit.
Sam sipped her lager and waved a hand in front of her face. Someone nearby was smoking and holding their cigarette too close. She shouted, ‘Well, everything’s relative, isn’t it? I mean, your position is always going to be affected by where you stand, who you are and your sex.’
She couldn’t help thinking how smart Sarah looked. Her hair was drawn back away from her face and she wore very little make-up, except for black liquid eye-liner on her top lids and some mascara which made her eyes look enormous. Sam couldn’t believe she’d managed to persuade her to come along tonight. She felt honoured.
Sarah put her lips close to Sam’s ear: ‘Yeah, that’s fair enough, but sometimes that sort of argument gets you out of everything, if you see what I mean. Relativism’s often just an excuse for not committing.’
She was stopped, mid-flow, by someone pushing past her who tipped up her drink. It spilled down her shirt and drenched her breasts. She swore and tried to wring it out ineffectually with one hand. ‘It’s too bloody full in here,’ she shouted, ‘and it’s too LOUD.’
Sam grabbed hold of her arm and steered her towards the nearest exit. ‘It shouldn’t stain if you give it a quick rub down.’
Sarah indicated the stage with her hand. ‘Won’t Connor be on soon? It’s been at least half an hour since the last lot played.’
‘They’ll be doing loads of songs. I don’t think we’re obliged to see every one.’
Sam threaded a route around the bar, towards the ladies’ toilets.
Inside were two or three women. It was cramped, even in here. Sam turned on the warm tap at one of the sinks and beckoned Sarah over. ‘Splash some water over it. There’s some liquid soap if you want it. Then hold it under the hand dryer.’
Sarah tried to bend over the sink. ‘It’s right down the front. I’ll end up even wetter this way.’
Outside Sam could hear the taped music stop and a loud cheer as people waited for the imminent arrival of the band on stage. She said, ‘I’ve always really hated this place, but it must be exciting to play here. Connor’s played here loads.’
She walked to the door and opened it, standing on tip-toe to try to see the stage. But the crowds were too dense and her angle too oblique. The three women who had been in the toilet repairing their make-up and brushing their hair pushed past her. Sarah shouted from inside, ‘What’s happening?’
She walked back in. ‘They’ve come on. I can’t see them, though, only hear them.’
Sarah cocked her head to one side and listened. ‘I can just hear a kind of roaring noise. Is it them or the toilet cistern?’