Introduction

 

 

 

Tod Sloan (American jockey 1874 - 1933) was famous for the introduction of the forward seat style of riding to Britain when he began riding there in 1897. He rode with a very short stirrup and very short rein, and crouched over the horse’s neck - this in complete contrast to his peers who rode tall in the saddle with a straight back.   

 

His seat in the saddle was initially mocked as monkey crouch or monkey on a stick style of riding. Though not the first to adopt the modern jockey crouch even in his homeland, Sloan was the most successful exponent of the style and rode with great success in the US before being enticed to relocate to England. Although initially ridiculed, Tod Sloan was to revolutionise the sport worldwide.

 

Tod Sloan was not only a pioneer and star sportsman of his time, he is also remembered in popular culture as the "Yankee Doodle" immortalised in a Broadway musical, and as the basis for the Ernest Hemingways short story, My Old Man.

 

The name, Tod Sloan, has also left an enduring mark on the English language. So popular was Sloan when riding in England that Tod Sloan was adopted into Cockney rhyming slang to denote someone being alone - (rhyming) Tod Sloan/on your own. Later this was reduced to simply: on your tod. 

 

This book is a work of fiction and as such is not an exploration or literary adaptation of the life and times of the flamboyant Tod Sloan.

 

Truth is stranger than fiction, with the improbable life of Tod Sloan a testament to this adage. 

 

But now, let us follow our monkey on a stick through the looking-glass and into his world of strangeness.

 

In fact, and in fiction, we are all mysterious creatures. 

 

 

Chapter One: As delicate as a rice paper ribbon

 

 

Duncan, in a fog of nervous expectation at his impending visit, glimpsed the entry road to the park at the very last moment. Too late, too fast, a rapid correction (and too sharp the change of direction), a crash and bump, a gutter jump. The airborne Mercedes fishtailed on landing upon the loose gravel footing of the access road, slithering from gravel road to grass verge with uncontrollable sideways momentum, slamming hard against the white perimeter rail of the football oval, striping black panel with white band and mimicking the colours worn by the local football team.

 

This afternoon - the same as every other of his working life - Duncan’s stomach was near to empty, apart from a sliver of dry breakfast toast and strong black coffee. A tiny raft of sustenance floating upon a vast ocean of hunger. His stomach a pit of chronic anger.

 

Duncan slid from the leather seat and settled hands and knees on damp turf, retching, reaching deep inside an empty stomach for something; anything to expel. He gagged on viscous balls of phlegm, the product of his sucking and swallowing of many bitter thoughts. With two twitches of his whippet back, and a God Almighty roar, the full weight and worry of his sickness was purged. It was over again. The last time he had the need to return to Greensborough Duncan managed to park with more decorum, driving down the length of the gravel road without accident before disappearing into the toilets, there to deposit his spit and disgust before continuing on to his family dinner. Much - and very little - can change in five years.

 

Several minutes later, creased and stained and an awkward imitation of composure, he stood between his car and her gate, teetering on a seesaw of fear and fate. Then the curtains moved. Options were now denied as saving face became his propulsion, forcing one reluctant foot past the other.

 

Six, seven, eight,

The rusty garden gate,

Three seconds there to pause and reflect,

To genuflect before the tin and timber, tumbledown cottage.

 

Then into the home straight.

 

Each heavy step (remarkably so, considering Duncan’s own light body weight) towards the door was a brush with history. He would have flown, had he been able, electing to distance himself from his past, as he usually did; but his wings were clipped and the ground he travelled soft as a sponge, soaking him up. Slow progress. Waiting for him was the mother who boasted of bestowing upon her son the gift of independence, the freedom for a tiny boy to traverse the Hurstbridge train line, twelve stops from Clifton Hill to Greensborough, to and fro, alone and unattended. But for Duncan, there were only tears at travel and heartbreak at destinations end. Duncan remembers not the gift of precocious freedoms, but the imposition of fear, both in transit and as an outcast under grandmother’s care. He remembers cold people, cold places; he remembers whispers on the wind and twig talons carving cruel intentions on a tin roof. No comfort from these childhood memories.

 

Duncan viewed this cottage and his past through tainted light, seeing a relic devoid of grace, bereft of the charms of the ancient. This house was neither fob watch nor a treasured fossil, only ramshackle and disgusting like frayed and stained spats, noxious chamber pots filled to overflowing, or spittle streaked spittoons. Paint peeled from the walls in rancid butter balls and the corrugated iron roof as always a dappled, rust-red, thatched the very colour of those Pengilly. He could not be impressed by the ivy gently winding around veranda uprights, or the terracotta pots daubed and bejewelled by various vibrant flowers. These were decorations and make-up, a mother’s deception; things of the surface not things of the heart. At the door he stood; there to knock with a minimum of force; gently, gently, twice only, counting the seconds to her arrival while being serenaded by a rusty wind chime: horses in collision, three, four, wait no more.

 

They smiled at each other, mother and son, one reciting a name while the other recited a rank. An invitation to enter was given, and accepted, in polite and measured tones, language conducted on a low flame lest conversation catch fire and burn them both. And they had been singed before, that was obvious in their manner, in their constraint. There would be no hugging for fear of friction, and no honesty for fear of ignition. By the time they had walked the corridor of ghosts, Duncan had grown painfully timid once again and his mother’s dyed hair seemed to have reverted to the blood-red of her prime; not the bottle-bright strawberry of this porch greeting, but rather the clotting red treacle of their very first meeting. He sat on the edge of the couch, sombre grey twill with pristine white lace overlays set on both armrests and where a back might lean in a comfortable recline. The same couch that had always stood there and would most likely stand there forever, like a monument, a marker, and his little legs marked time, swinging in the breeze of cold memories and barely scraping the carpet surface. He felt himself becoming smaller and saw his mother growing younger. If this was true it would not surprise him after the events of recent days. He shut his eyes tight, so tight that he caused himself pain, and when he opened his eyes again his feet were firmly anchored on the ground and his mother stood before him and presented him with the reason for his visit.

 

Duncan rested the album on the coffee table, opened to a page at random and hovered above the profusion of cherubs and waifs, searching for a face, any familiar face, not necessarily the one which now bedevils him, but any face which he could recognise as a starting point from which to seek and scan. “This is what you requested...you did ask for your school photos?” his mother asked, knowing full well that he did and being amused by his confusion.

 

“These are...my...school photographs, aren't they?"

 

"My God, Duncan, of course they are! How many children do you think that I raised? Look at the blackboard, 1C Westgarth Central, 1960. There you are...in the front row...you were always in the front row...don’t you recognise yourself? Would you like a coffee now?”

 

Secret knowledge. Enlightenment. She possessed everything that he needed. Not that Duncan understood this at this moment. Right now all he wanted was to see the girl, find her, exorcise or excise her from his life. But he could feel the undercurrent of the moment, feel the tug of the undertow as it tentatively informed him of the depths to be fathomed in this mystery called his life. But it was too soon to dive. First a starting point. An inspection. Duncan failed to recognise a single child as himself and his shoulders shrugged of their own accord in a universal gesture of ambivalence. He knew that he would turn up somewhere. He always had before.

 

“How do you like it?”

 

“It’s fine...very well preserved.”

 

“I had meant, how do you like your coffee: white with two sugars?”

 

“Black. I drink it black without sugar.”

 

“You are the second boy from the left. Black and white photography does little justice to red hair. I’ll bring a tray and some food."

 

Duncan was having difficulty lately believing that he had ever existed in continuity. Baby. Boy. Teenager, Adult. Many memories insisted upon his presence, assumed his participation, yet he could not vouchsafe the verity - grant the simple fact. They were more similar to memories of movies than memories of self. For instance, the recurring memory of Aunt Sophie, Wagnerian in amplitude and amplification, belting out inspirational tunes in church. But he puzzles as to how this could be so, considering the fact that like he, his mother is an only child. Could dreams be made real by repetition? Duncan now recognises true memories of his childhood by cross-referencing dreams and anecdotes with his wife, Julie - and she remembers neither aunt nor diva. Without verification his memory was proving to be nothing more than a headache. He knows (and has spousal verification) that his mother was a harlot; that his grandmother was a witch; that he is a bastard. He suspects that Nick’s cock was so long that it fell to his knees; that babies can’t hold their breath for very long under water; that people change. He suspected much and knew so little. That is why he instigated this visit. The past had caught up with him, overtaken him, dashed his head against the concrete and added to the addle of his brain. He was going back so that he might begin again. Forward was the only option.

 

The conversation and teacake (there had been no biscuits stored or specially secured for the occasion) had continued stale and dry. There was only talk of safe subjects and zero curiosity from both camps. He was fine, she was fine, they were fine - the weather, too, had been fine. He promised to return the album when he had finished with it, although he had no idea when that would be, no care, and no compunction for his hollow promise. His needs and wishes were his only concern, an attitude in equal parts self-interest and payback. Both he deemed necessary. His mother smiled far too much all through the visit, enjoying something other than his company, suppressing a giggle at his parting promise. She made him uneasy, as he had expected, as he had remembered. Their bond as delicate as a rice paper ribbon. As Duncan reached the door and turned to say his goodbye, and perhaps kiss her but most likely not, he jettisoned a poisoned thought that had festered for years in his logical mind:

 

“Were you ever a fat man?”

 

She might have thought him insane or insulting, though you would never know by her response. She chose silence as her voice, never missing a blessed beat and all the while smiling while her son’s cheeks bubbled and boiled with his embarrassment and turned the colour of their hair.

 

“God, I’m really sorry...must be the piss pills...yes...piss pills...damn diuretics...they make you as crazy as a loon, they do. So sorry, Mum.”

 

 

 

Chapter Two: Always a beauty, regardless of circumstance or crime

 

 

 

Cigarettes are a tool of trade for jockeys. A calorie free food replacement. Inhale exhale. A banquet of plumes and a feast of fiction: sustenance. 

 

The Pengilly dinner table seldom boasted banquet or laughter. Simple undressed lettuce and tomato salads, followed by cigarettes for dessert, the usual fare for Duncan. He would always finish eating first and then quickly erect a barrier of smoke between himself and Julie. His first cigarette taken with his coffee a barrier and blow, white wisps of separation erected around him as rapidly and fervently as might the walls of an Amish barn be constructed when the community was engaged in the process of a barn raising. Though this a solo effort. Impermanent. Imperfect, and with no foundation.

 

Julie would often still be finishing a serving of chicken or pasta, her food dressed for flavour and not stripped bare by circumstance and necessity. Although recently, Julie started making two identical meals. This Duncan found distracting. They finished eating almost as one - and his silence over coffee now amplified by the absence of the simple sound of cutlery and plate, spoon and bowl. This just another recent change that caused him concern.

 

Julie broke the deadlock, broached the subject, spoke the name and asked the question:

 

"How did it go with your mother?”

 

"Okay...but nothing much has changed...she's still the same."

 

And so are you, she thought.

 

Duncan could read her thoughts. Or so he believed. Two people living so long together will often have all the answers and opinions of the other in mind, in memory, in duplicate in triplicate in memorandum in tedium in perpetuity. All is known. The incomplete sentence made paragraph. The indefinite expression known, its meaning set in stone. 

 

Cold.

 

It had been salad after all. 

 

 

 

 

 

Julie had not visited her mother-in-law for more than twelve years, since the day of the Christmas dinner, the last supper of the family Pengilly. Dinner was at the castle, the sobriquet given by some in the local community to the ramshackle shanty set high atop a Greensborough hill, and at this time the domicile and domain of madam matriarch Pengilly. Invitations were begrudgingly accepted by the trinity of relative strangers, three generations brought together once a year out of a misplaced sense of duty (twinge of guilt or sting of shame; mothers do beg forgiveness). Julie was tolerated by the mother, but despised by the matriarch who blamed her, unreasonably so, for the loss of her best friend.

 

“Has she been looking after your diet, dear?” his grandmother asked, dollops of mock devotion lavished upon Duncan while his wife was pushed aside, peripheral to every question or discussion. Julie could be observed but never entertained.

 

“Always,” Duncan replied, eyes upon Julie, completing the circuit. 

 

Julie seethed, her teeth entangled in slivers of overcooked lamb, lamenting the difficulty of baring fangs for the fray with meat irritatingly wedged between her teeth.

 

“And when, if ever, dear, will you be starting your family?”

 

Broad red fingers of blush clenched Duncan’s neck and pinched his cheeks. His face was aflame. Theirs was an unusual union, in figure and in fact. Julie fixed him with a crinkled-nose smile, a piece of lamb caught between her front teeth lolling over a pursed lip like a lizard’s tongue. She felt the tickle on her skin, and giggled, at this or at that, then pulled the sliver out and flicked it, between finger and thumb, in the direction of the grandmother. It landed atop a roast potato, curled and coloured the picking of a nose, sitting proud in all its glory. Grandmother gagged, cheeks puffed and hands were cuffed around her mouth. She burst from the room in a shuffle of robust arthritis, leaving guttural animal noises, a toppled chair, and giggling kin (some fought harder than other to suppress a sound) with eyes focussed on their plates, stewing in her wake.

 

Duncan had secretly planned on this day to use this sham of harmony as an excuse to sever all ties with his family. It was his fondest wish to ultimately cut the cord, cut the bitches, decry their name as shit and denounce false motherhood. He had pleaded with Julie to attend, promised her more than he was prepared to give to have her there as his witness. But Julie had been impatient, spurred on by the old woman’s hatred of her and the comic contentious issue of her constant raising: Julie's lack of will, or ability, to fall pregnant. The speech so painfully crafted and many merry times practised was swallowed on drawn breath, inhaled instead of spat, and blown over roast dinner and Christmas pudding. Though she had not known so, his grandmother had wounded her grandson more than her target. His dreams of glorious victory denied. 

 

Duncan’s mother took her eyes from the intricate patterns of the lace tablecloth and smiled weakly at her son and daughter-in-law.

 

“Whether or not we are blessed with children is in the hands of God,” she told them, as she attempted to appease a mother now out of earshot. 

 

“No, it’s in my hands...my hands,” announced Julie, forming defiant, fighting fists and raising them to touch each other beneath her chin, then easing the knots apart so that they easily slipped into a clasp of prayer. Duncan, downcast, studied the tablecloth.

 

“If you say so, dear,” his mother said, rising from the table and setting forth to follow after her own mother.

 

What was intended as a final victory had turned into an embarrassing rout. Julie had once again proven herself to be the strong one, the one of action and not merely thoughts and censored words. It would be Julie who struck the fateful blow as it had been Julie who had acted unexpectedly on his words many years ago.

 

Mothers whispered words of spite or support in other rooms. Husband and wife departed, at intervals and in silence. There would be no winners from this battle. 

 

Duncan believed himself to be a reasonable son. After all, he always did attend the annual family gatherings, and he always returned his mother’s telephone calls, even if the conversation was limited to a few safe platitudes recited (reflected and deflected) by the two. And wasn’t it enough that he had not changed his name by deed poll (though he toyed with this proposition over many sleepless nights, finally putting it to rest when his name started to become well known) to a surname less repulsive: say, Hitler or Hess. He could accept his fate and could (with effort, when now allowed) forget his past. His grandmother’s tears bewildered him when considering that his own had always warranted a reprimand and lecture.

 

He considered himself to be a reasonable husband. He had hit Julie just once, a push a prod a punch that was propelled more through anguish than any anger. But she would remember it in fracture and in multiples. A single crack radiating from a single (sore) point into an interconnected web of hurt. The captured and the captive. Their web. He didn’t love Julie, he never had, but history and events contrived to join them in partnership, a reasonable partnership built on their childhood shared together as de facto brother and sister. Their marriage would never be anything but perverse, the bonds and animosity of being a sibling, the unimaginable prospect of producing a child. It was as if they never truly left home, and all hell would break loose if one or the other were reminded.

 

 

 

 

 

Angela Alexandra Pengilly died on Christmas Day, 1977, three days after the traditional, early Christmas dinner with her blood relations. Christmas Day she would always share with her preferred family, Father Patrick Doolan and the spinster sisters Watson: Faith and Genevieve. When Father Doolan arrived with the good ladies, Faith on his arm and Genevieve keeping pace with a walking frame, it was not the aroma of turkey, ham, or Christmas pudding that greeted them at the door.

 

The evening after her irritation, Angela had been woken from her sleep by someone, of indeterminate gender, calling her name.

 

“Heather?...Duncan?...who is it? It would’ve done to telephone, you know,” she said, climbing from her bed and reaching for the heavy dressing gown which had been draped across the quilt as an addition to the blankets. No matter what the season she was always cold. “Are you both here then?” she asked of the voice. She reached instinctively for the walking stick resting against the chest of drawers, selecting this and darkness as effective props with which to greet her recalcitrant family. It was only as she took her final steps down the corridor that she realised that the call was not coming from beyond the door, but was in fact pulsating blood and an echoing embolism rushing to and fro around her brain. “Jesus?” she cried, as a flash of light as bright as a new day burst before her eyes and the evening and everything she had ever believed or imagined died. 

 

Father Doolan knew by habit and expectation the smell of a Pengilly feast. He also knew by painful experience the smell of death. He turned the ladies away from the door before bothering to knock.

 

“I think that you ladies should rest back in the car. I fear that Mrs Pengilly will not be able to share a Christmas feast with us this day,” the father said.

 

The elderly sisters remarked about a lack of consideration and how they so look forward to this treat every year. The father shook his head and found that words escaped him.

 

Duncan persuaded Julie to attend the funeral through equal measure of incentive and spite, the push and shove of obligation and elbow ruled the discussion of the night, while the promise of a holiday in Surfers Paradise - alone (he would be far too busy to take a break) - made breakfast all the more bearable for both. Duncan did not believe himself to be the hypocrite which he had been labelled, but rather, ambivalent, curious, and in the broader context, morally correct. Julie carried her disrespectful mien throughout the long day, avoiding other eyes and seeking to witness only stone or sky, and barely uttering one intelligible word to anyone who attempted to engage her in a consoling conversation. This disembodied performance entitled her to many heartfelt hugs and condolences from the ranks of the mourners. Father Doolan eulogised of dear Angela’s devotion to the Church. Parishioners wept openly in genuine displays of grief. Duncan masqueraded a giggle as a nervous cough. 

 

In the funeral car, as Duncan sat gazing out of the window, he was surprised to find a trickle of a silent tear rolling down his cheek. His mother seized upon this indiscretion and reached across Julie to hug, comfort and caress him. He sat very still and closed his eyes ever so tight until the strange phase passed. With eventual release he blinked away the remaining tear and performed a slow sweep of the cabin. Julie sat motionless, seemingly emotionless, though he suspected otherwise. He leaned forward to gain a better view of his mother, who had dressed from top to tail in mourning black, while he and Julie had compromised on grey; neutral grey. Several strands of red hair had worked free from his mother’s scarf and had settled as a sparse fringe on her forehead. Always a beauty, regardless of circumstance or crime...always a beauty, he thought with great conviction, perhaps too much conviction, interrupting her reverie and being rewarded with a warm, surprised gaze. Duncan sat transfixed and quiet, always the child in his mother’s eyes, and breathlessly watched as her bright, clear eyes of aquamarine changed in shade and shape to the powder-blue hue of a mother removed. He might have died from suffocation had not an errant elbow from Julie set the bellows working once again.

 

The memories which he now struggles to classify and contain are trying to convince him that her eyes had changed colour more than once before. But it is an old and unreliable memory and perhaps nothing more than a dream. Julie claims that his mother’s eyes are grey (when clearly they are not) and have always been so. On this and other matters they do not see eye to eye.

 

After the funeral his mother duly shifted into the family home, skin and psyche of the bequest. She accordingly grew plump and rediscovered religion. These changes did not substantially alter Duncan’s opinion of the woman or her role. It was inconceivable that even the death of the matriarch could draw them any closer together than poles apart, be Heather the reformed Mary Magdalene, or the silk and satin harlot of his formative years. Either identity, at any time, she was always and forever his mother and his blight.

 

Duncan had no hesitation in calling his mother a harlot, and would have done so in polite conversation had the subject of one’s mother’s morals ever been broached, though Duncan hardly ever engaged in chit-chat, and on those few occasions when he did the topic of his mother's morals had never been raised.

 

Harlot is a harsh word, a cruel word, but he would never substitute a euphemism to alter what he saw as the grubby, sexual-acrobatic facts of the act. His family and financial circumstances had always been unusual. There was never (or hardly ever) a visible breadwinner; yet their home was always full of the latest appliances; food was abundant; toys multiplied in magic cupboards. They lived a comfortable working-class-life with no obvious means of support. Clues mounted with the years and the intensity and complexity of his questions. Friday afternoons his mother would begin to prepare herself, transform herself, shedding her (what was it that she did?) workaday clothes and emerging at the end of the process as not-my-mother, a princess clothed in gowns and jewellery that would defy inattention; as did her unfettered, lustrous red hair. Even a child is in awe of, and captive to such beauty. But then the princess would send him away so that she might save and keep her family. This he could not understand. This he still battles with in constant revision and reminder.

 

After dining upon salad and smoke, suffering the indigestion of the incomplete meal, the incomplete fact, Duncan retired to his den and shut Julie out and himself in. He knew that she would not breach his privacy, once his desire had been stipulated by a more tangible barrier of solid wood. Not for arson, pillage or rape would she dare intrude. Serve him right, she would think, if the house should burn or be burgled, or if somebody might fuck me properly, face to face and with the appropriate dose of feeling. Duncan did not reach for a videotape to study, nor a file or newspaper; neither did he settle down to the leisure and pleasure of reading. Rather, he pulled the album from his tote bag, fingering with a soothing motion the vinyl edges that had lifted and frayed, petting his past, showing friendly intent - then he dropped it from a height upon his desk. Slap! Friends, yes, but never the victim again, never again!

 

Duncan sat in self-satisfied reverie for only one moment, but nonetheless a moment far too long, and was rewarded for his optimistic smugness by the insistent, intrusive image of the child. She drew a tiny finger across her painted lips, an arrow to their bow, which she released and aimed at his heart. His whole body jerked with the thud as he felt his flesh tear and his breastbone part. In a panic, he closed his eyes and drew his first breath for many seconds, drinking too deeply and dribbling bubbles from the corner of his mouth. Minutes later he wiped his lips with the back of a sleeve and then proceeded to open the album with an extravagant, supplicating sweep of his hands (a plea, a prayer, his life laid bare).

 

He saw Her straight away. It had been premature and foolish of him to believe that possession of his memories would render this process safe. These memories were dangerous and insisting upon a place in the present. These memories were not content to be past, to be forgotten, to accept cataloguing as a once-in-a-blue-moon recollection. His past demanded recognition.

 

Duncan turned the page to an earlier time, Grade Two, Westgarth Central School, 1961. He found himself (now that he knew himself) sitting cross-legged in the bottom row, seeded in a field of rustling children, every child in bloom, animated by excitement, each expecting their time in the sun, nourishment and nurturing. He had been no exception, which explains the difficulty he had in recognising the image of optimism in himself. The children return to haunt him. First it had been Leo, his fleet-o-foot young friend, who returned to pole axe him with his now adult frame of vulgar proportion sent hurtling around corners without the control of an adequate brain. His head and heart both broke at their reunion. And soon, Pauline did follow. He vaguely remembers the child, and has no conception of the woman - yet they beckon. He turned pages backwards and forward, adding and subtracting, and always, always Pauline. Always Pauline.

Chapter Three: I can make this horse a champion

 

 

Springtime: it is the racing season redolent with the romance of wealth and intrigue. There was a time when Duncan Pengilly enjoyed the prominence bestowed upon his profession during these hallowed months, but following the usual youthful brush with ego masturbation, tedium too soon became the price of the misplaced adulation. His spring had no room for romantic notions, only space for the accumulation of wealth and a dance in the shadows of intrigue which blurs the fine line between that of profit and theft. Not that he would fix a race or not try to win - no, none of the above - his cunning lay in marketing, advertising his wares, making all and sundry hang in anticipation of his services, procuring secret whispered words and notes stuffed thick inside manila envelopes. There has always endured a myth about the camaraderie of jockeys. It is a unicorn, a fable. They all smile at the cameras, call outsiders (to their faces) "Sir", and the other boys "mate"; but that is part of their showmanship just as a clown’s greasepaint smile is a veneer of the expected and appropriate: the face of performance, not the true face of the person. Duncan sees himself and his peers as lying little bastards, each looking for a winning edge, each ready and willing to shaft or shove aside anybody who might happen to stand in their way; a microcosm of capitalism and wilful exponents extraordinaire.

 

Duncan had only committed himself to one definite ride for the Spring Carnival (though many had already been offered, cases pleaded, presents promised). It was Venerable, a three-year-old in his classic year, and a horse believed by Duncan to be the best he had ever ridden. Last campaign Venerable won just a minor two-year-old handicap, with Duncan not at his best (truthfully, close to his worst ride ever), missing the start through a combined lack of concentration, steering into a pack (the mobile herd) in aggravation, then wobbling around the home turn before storming down the outside rail with jockey coaxing, cuddling, kissing the breeze, and the thoroughbred rejoicing in its birth.

 

Duncan was in love. It was a love of self as much as another; it was the love of feeling special, exempt, apart and together. But it was love and therefore something worth pursuing. He slid from the saddle, stumbling to the turf, both hands frantically massaging his left instep.

 

“Barrier accident at the jump...do you know what you’ve got here? I would like to talk to the owners a bit later, Brian. I have some ideas, something to share...could you arrange it?” Duncan would ask (and in equal measure tell) the trainer after securing his sympathy with his pretence of pain. The trainer, Brian Adamson, a struggling country circuit battler, patient, tolerant and caring of his horses, but completely devoid of the art and craft required to communicate with (excite and appease) his human client base, could only shake (a nod, yes) and shrug with trepidation. He knew what was to follow. Brian had promised his friend (though merely adequate jockey) Gary that this horse, broken-in and educated by them both, would be the making of their careers. 

 

Promises linked with ponies fall easily from the tongue, but fade as soon as spoken. Reality intervenes. 

 

The owners entered the jockey’s lounge after the last race. Three young men wearing suits with much discomfort, shirt collars tight and colours not nearly bright enough, with the long casual locks of their hair rebelling against conservative combing and curling unattractively at odds and ends at the tips of their shoulders. The trios enthusiasm at meeting the champion jockey was as barely contained as their grooming. From the country they come with stars in their eyes. Daydreamers. 

 

“I can make this horse a champion...oh, I know that he won well today, but he still makes so many mistakes...you know that...Brian knows that. I think that I have the trick to him. A gentleman’s agreement that I have first option to ride him in any major race and I believe that we can turn this fellow into a top class performer.”

 

Before Brian could mumble a feeble protest of promises earlier made, handshakes were exchanged and deals were done. Duncan knew the horse to be exceptional. It was the owners on this occasion who needed education (who needed to be trained and directed). Jamie Leeson, mournfully departing after the failure of his one solitary ride for the day, walked begrudgingly past the assembly of optimisim and hope, his suitcase and saddle dragging in his disappointed hands. Duncan smiled at him as he clenched one young man’s hand. “I’ve agreed to ride Venerable in all the major races he contests,” he told Jamie, who was somewhat surprised at being addressed by Pengilly the prick, as the others would call him behind his back. “Yeah, right,” he said, with a glance, with no interest, but a witness to an agreement nonetheless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Venerable was a short priced (6 to 4) favourite for Saturday’s Caulfield Guineas, a five hundred thousand dollar race which would net Duncan nearly thirty-three thousand dollars, not including bonuses. The trainer would receive the same, though he had earmarked five thousand dollars compensation, conscience payment to his jockey friend; though he was no longer sure if it would be accepted, now, after the fight and falling out. Duncan planned (everything in his adult life is planned, regardless of excuse or insistence) to ride as he did last week, away quickly, full use made of his (now) customary early speed, and there to settle just behind the pace, resting, biding time. He would be second or third on the turn for home, accelerating as they wheeled and opening up an unassailable lead. Something might finish well for a placing, a fruitless withering burst, spectacular but no better than second. He loved his horse, the slip of leather and the instant quicker gear; methodical, machine-like, unbeatable. 

 

Thinking constantly about racing had ensured that he had a near perfect preparation for his most important assignment. Pauline (her fiction, fact and nascent form) had remained as manageable as an itch that could be tolerated or quickly deferred with a rapid scratch. But relaxing his guard under the massage of a hot shower the waif had managed to bring herself back to the fore. Front and centre. This time, however, she was greeted with relish, ravished and blown away. He had feared that she might be there, ever present and insistent. But she waited in the shadows, appearing only when his guard was down and the invitation (half) given. And she was a guest, not some unannounced cold canvasser of extraordinary wares or services. After all, she was only returning a call.

 

Duncan was confused, at a crossroad, ready to go this way or that. He could not admit to himself that it had been he who had drawn the X. He preferred to believe that this was fate, kismet, demanding a change of direction. Mid-life crisis would sound too mundane. There were fantastic external forces working upon him, working against him, and he was powerless to fight against their whim.

 

I am Duncan Pengilly.

Seven sevens are forty-nine.

Horses have four legs.

I am a bastard.

These things I know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leo had effortlessly picked Duncan up and carried him home in his arms as if he were nursing a baby. Duncan resented his pose and posture; resented the fact that Leo knew where he lived. He neither knew nor cared to know where other people lived. It riled him to think that people knew, or even felt the need to know so many personal details of his life. He didn’t give a shit about them! Why should they care so much about him? 

 

Lumbering Leo had been out maiming the footpath and innocent unwary runners with a fat ripple and foot thud that he called jogging. Corners were taken with acceleration, abandon, the element of thrill during a half hour of torture. Once before he had collided with someone, a stranger this time, athletic, balanced and poised but not prepared for the hurtling hulk with no means of, nor thought for evasion. Leo, giggling with delight at his power, bent down and picked the fallen runner up, dusting down imaginary crushed concrete with a fat and forceful hand. 

 

“All right, mate,” he stated, not asked, dismissing his dazed prey and sauntering away with a series of fat plods and throaty chuckles. Leo was about to perform a similar service the day he crushed Duncan under breast, belly and foot. He leaned down to pull the wounded little man to his feet, with much the same manner and resolve as would a darts player remove his dart from the centre of the board, only to splutter a suppressed giggle in a spray of saliva and withdraw his hand as quickly as he wished he had those many years ago when a cane would thrash tender flesh. He recognised his old school friend and at once became embarrassed - and excited. Many times he wished he had the nerve to telephone Duncan, call and say hello, renew an old relationship and bask in his friend's fame. Leo knew everything about Duncan - his address (obviously); his history of success; near enough his exact bank balance (worked out weekly, losing ride and winning percentages added together, a pyramid effect, and a guesstimate of 15% in the form of gifts and gratuities); he was in awe of this unexpected success; and jealous, so deliciously jealous that the sourness tasted sweet and was much anticipated. With his friend in his arms, undusted, he carried him one hundred metres down the hill back to the modest home that he knew to be his. Duncan, semi-conscious, whispered sweet nothings into his ear. Words with a simple emphasis, hiss, kiss and Miss:

 

"Not your arms - I want her lips." 

 

 

 

 

 

Duncan was placed into bed by his bearer and a story was told of boyhood friendship to a woman who believed such a situation impossible. Leo telephoned his wife to arrange to be driven home, though when she arrived the two women were instantly and instinctively drawn together into a friendship (romance) just as they once may have when naive girls in the company of a cute guy who seemed to say all the right things.

 

The family Sims would continue to return, the women eager for each others companionship, but the old friends discovering nothing now in common. In Duncan’s estimation, Leo was a failure, less of a man than he was a boy; his dreams unfulfilled and his life frozen. And Leo would not disagree.

 

As Leo sat leafing through past issues of Racetrack magazine, Duncan mentioned, in a throwaway, conversational manner, that Venerable would easily win the Caulfield Guineas. He had only been chatting, exercising a restless tongue, poking at flies and tasting the air; but the large man’s square and solid jaw dropped a storey or two and pulled a widewide smile from his thick, petulant lips. Duncan had simply been talking aloud, breaking a torturous silence and mouthing a spiel in anticipation of a call from the press - but Leo felt himself admitted to the inner sanctum of racing knowledge. His brow furrowed as Duncan’s statement was bludgeoned into that part of his brain that stored secret, special information. These words were neither secret nor special, but in turn they did nestle beside other information that was vital to our Leo. Strange bedfellows. Confident now of his inclusion, delighted by the sudden, unexpected turn of events, a softness swept across the coarse chiselling that was Leo’s face. It was like watching an afternoon shadow sweep across a craggy vista.

 

“You’ve gotta play around with me,” he babbled, in obvious exchange of gifts.

 

Duncan was shaken from his comfortable complacency by this offer. Gratitude, even misplaced gratitude, he could accept and bear. But this? This sexual favour which was no favour at all, thank you very heterosexually much! This mobile Easter Island man, hands in lap, God knows what monstrosity hidden beneath the fidgeting fingers and cloth, now sitting at his feet, staring up with glistening varicoloured eyes, quite besotted by his friend's importance and the pearls of wisdom tossed into his lap...and now offering? 

 

Duncan’s mind had not been his own for many weeks. There had been many thoughts and images creeping out and seeping in...he held truth in abeyance, no longer certain of his powers of clarity or observation, and sought reiteration as his only option and defence.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“A day...any day...I’ll take time off work...”

 

“Sorry?” And he was. Dry-throated, testicle-tucking, shit scared!

 

“I’m a member at Rosanna. We could play at your club if you want...I don’t really care. A round of golf...you do play golf, don’t you...I mean all jockeys play golf, don’t they?”

 

“Jesus Christ! Thanks for that!”

 

Duncan’s cry of relief was also his unwitting arrangement to play a game that he thoroughly detested. A simple penance, he thought.

 

“Don’t mention it, mate. My pleasure...my pleasure.”

 

Chapter Four: I know a yodel layatee

 

 

Sunday. 

 

Duncan tried to recall Saturday and was rewarded with a lash of pain for attempting such a folly. It was not the first time that he had ever been unconscious, but at five minutes duration, this was by far the longest. He thought about death quite often, as might a racing car driver or a combat soldier, death always being a possible conclusion to their day and end to their days. He often wondered how the world would remember him, his slice of fame, the name of D. Pengilly reproduced in racing results and fact and paragraph or chapter biographies in coffee table books. Memory is intriguing, unstable, untrustworthy. If he had died on Saturday he would never have known. The memory of the day is lost to him now, as quite easily would have been the memory of a life. He lay in bed, a nurse afoot with chart and writing hand. Vision is double the picture is blurry; sound is incessant; babble. Babel. Babble on. 

 

“You’re fucking dead, you is, mister Pennywilly...and nobody cares...not your father or your sister or brother,” the nurse might have said.

 

“Only my mother...only a mother,” he deliriously says.

 

“You got fat ones and thin ones and fucking mothers suckling little pigs. You don’t know fucking nothing Mr Pencil Dick! Dream on. Dream on.”

 

A first year nurse moved to his side with creeping steps, looking left and right for someone, anyone with the right advice. She wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of her hand and leaned down to whisper into his ear: “How can I help you?” She had earned her fees for university by working at a fast-food chain, but never, ever before, had a customer screamed so loudly with pain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julie sat beside his bed and reached across for his hand. She began stroking the fingers of his right hand from knuckle to fingertip, drawing her own finger so gently over his that they barely touched. It was the closest they had been for quite a long time.

 

“You looked to be travelling easily in fourth spot on the home turn...just waiting for a gap to appear between the leaders...but the gap must have closed before you could get all the way through and he dipped, disappeared, and Bob’s your doctor. It looks ghastly on TV.”

 

When she had finished her description she withdrew her hand and set it firmly in her lap. Both partners blushed at their lapses in behaviour, Julie at her easy intimacy, and Duncan at his wish that it might continue, that things might be different. Julie never mentioned Venerable at all during the course of her visit.  Her omission Duncan knew to be a statement of fact. He was dead; knackered; dog meat. They all meet the same fate, every four-legged one of them, even the champions that they promise to bury in pretty rose gardens end up as pet meat in a can. 

 

Duncan had other visitors to follow, those who stood shoulder to bony shoulder, solid, rehearsed, star players and extras from the wings with a novel adaptation. The deputation of jockeys first presented him with a basket of fruit on behalf of the Jockeys’ Association of Victoria, and a load of shit on behalf of themselves. Harry Black, the president of the JAV, was narrator for the cast of six, all of whom having performed in the earlier tragic drama. This was comedy. They all nodded ardently, in unison, as Harry expressed concern about Duncan’s health, with wishes that he should make a complete and speedy recovery. There were the largest nods and resonant backing hums that accompanied Harry’s adamant insistence that the fall was an unfortunate accident and part and parcel of the racing game.

 

“The stewards have taken no action, mate. We all looked at the replay after...I mean there was enough room for you to go between...nobody squeezed you up or nothing...your bloke just dipped and fell. He was a good little pony that bugger. That’s racing though, ain't it, it’s always the good ones that seem to go and kill themselves.”

 

Duncan nodded and hummed. His horse had committed suicide? There had been no warning signs, no reason to suspect depression, the black dog, the black horse, and suicide. 

 

“Get the fuck out of here, will you Harry! And take your fucking fruit as well!” A banana he tossed struck Jamie Walters on the back of his neck, splitting its peel and plopping yellow ejaculate over Harry’s cheek. It too

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.07.2014
ISBN: 978-3-7368-2339-6

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