The Price

News of the gamble spread fast. The front end of the Wetherspoons, where the inveterate gamblers loiter and banter on any given day – some unemployed, some retired, some manual or office workers and some small-time villains – was soon alive with it. It was brought in by Charlie. Charlie’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. He sells stolen goods, usually clothes and shoes, and peddles drugs. He’s also been mixed up in horse racing and villainy all his life.
There is something pleasingly authentic about Charlie Bird. He’s mid-fifties, with the face of an intelligent thug crossed with a red Indian chief and he dresses well ('All my suits are Savile Row, mate. No cheap shit.'). His speech has elements of the old language of the races, but quite without any affectation. Thus for example he will advise you to get on this good thing in the big chase at Newbury. Sometimes he’ll even say double carpet for 33/1.
Like all proper gamblers he has an inexhaustable well of hope. Not for him the backing of favourites and crowing about winning with them. He wants magic. He wants the price.
He knows people in yards, dodgy trainers and top punter’s putter-onners (the people who lump on bets for people who can’t have their own accounts because they’ve won too much too often).
It’s Charlie who brings the tips in. If he’s particularly excited he’ll run about the pub telling his coterie and anyone else he likes, which includes me and my friends – to whom he gave two free viagra pills on Saturday night, and 86-year-old Kenny, who is five foot nothing and has a face like a walnut and who drinks seven pints of cider a day and still smokes in the pub – by keeping his hand up the sleeve of his anorak with a smouldering roll-up between his fingers. ‘I always smoke in the pub,’ he says to me as he whips the fag out at the bar, takes a drag and whips it back up his sleeve. ‘They’ll never catch me.’
And they don’t. He drove an ambulance during the War, so the story goes. I hope it’s true.
Charlie bowls up. For legal reasons I shall be obscure about where the race was. ‘Here, this horse tonight at ______. I know the trainer. He rung me up this morning (I was in bed with a grumble flick on). He give me one of his horses this morning and it’s pissed up at jacks. I’ve got a fifty pound double on it, enneye. This one tonight’s one of his. It’s 12s. He’s good, he is. He was in the nick, tried to kill someone years ago. Get on it. Get the price. Get the price.’
Jacks is 5/1. Jack’s Alive.
Unless Charlie’s pissed, which he often is, he, like any proper villain, never lets his voice rise to confident conversational level. Everything is conducted as if a policeman was listening nearby.
‘It’ll hose up,’ he continued. ‘If it wins we’ll be on the piss for a fucking week!’
I’m sceptical about Charlie’s tips. I reckon he has a strike rate of about 4 per cent. But he has given me some good winners.
‘Get the 12s,’ he urged. ‘Get the price. It will drop like a stone before it goes off. Back it,’ he said expansively, ‘have a good bet on it.’
He walked away and started to try and sell a fake rolex to someone.
I noticed Kenny hurrying out of the pub and into the betting shop, the location of which – right next door – is mighty convenient for everyone involved: the pub’s owners, the betting shop's owners, and of course, in a way, us bettors.
As I walked past Charlie was talking to someone else. ‘Have a good bet on it. It’s 12s.’
On entering the shop, which as is usual, was filled with Albanians, Somalians, and Afghans playing the Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBs) and British, European and Chinese betting on horses and dogs, I examined the horse’s form. Let’s call him Bird’s Nag. He was a course and distance winner three times, but winless for 18 months and now so far down the handicap ratings that he was indeed either a plot waiting to happen or just a knackered race horse in a rubbish race. He had no weight on him and a claimer on top.
I hazarded ten quid on the nose. I have lately tired of each-way betting.
At 7.45 I went back to watch the race. Charlie was already in there with various others. They stood in a line eight feet back from the screens. Arms folded. Silent. We watched the betting screens. The favourite was shortening and there were nibbles for the others. But Charlie’s last-minute plunge for his tip never came. It stayed at 12s. Friendless.
As soon as I saw Charlie’s Nag I had misgivings. A smallish grey horse with blinkers on. When they came out of the gates I knew he wouldn’t win. There were six other runners, four of which looked as over the hill as Charlie’s Nag. He was going gamely but the favourite and a 16/1 shot looked a different class. Halfway round and everyone knew he was beat but carried on watching, perhaps hoping for a late burst. No impression, as the Form Book has it. The favourite won by a short head from the 16/1 shot.
Our horse came third.
Charlie turned to me. His face never changes much in defeat or victory. He held out his slip, saying mournfully: ‘I had the price though.’
And the price is everything.