Three years ago, when I started to make some real money as opposed to all that other stuff I’d been making, my father hit bad trouble on the tables and the track and he… Do you know what he did, that funker? He submitted a bill for all the money he had spent on my upbringing. That’s right — he fucking invoiced me. It wasn’t that expensive, either, my childhood, because I spent seven years of it with my mum’s sister in the States. I still have the document somewhere. It was six sheets of foolscap, thumb-typed. To 30 pairs of shoes (approx.)… To 4 caravan holidays in Nailsea… To share of petrol to same … He tabbed me for everything, pocket-money, ice-creams, rug-rethinks, everything. He enclosed a cover note, explaining in his clerkly style that it was of course only a rough estimate, and that I wasn’t beholden to reimburse him penny for penny. Inflation had been taken into account. I’d cost him nineteen thousand pounds.
Anyway, we both behaved in character — the same character. On receipt of my father’s letter, I got drunk and sent him a cheque for twenty grand. On receipt of my cheque, my father got drunk and put the money on a horse running in the Cheltenham Golden Shield called, I don’t know, Handjob or Bumboy or whatever. The horse was young for a chaser and didn’t have much in the way of form — but Barry had a hot tip. 100—8 looked good to him. He placed the bet by messenger. One of his villain mates, Morrie Dubedat, set up the deal and vouched for dad’s punt … Ten minutes later Barry panicked and tried to cancel. But the bookie was already out hiring frighteners and the bet had to stand. Jacknifed over the whisky bottle, Barry listened to the radio commentary in closing-time light. Sure enough, Bumboy came lolloping out of its stall, each leg going somewhere different, neighing and dumping in its blinkers and Dobbin hat. Eventually flogged into submission by the iockey, Bumboy set off after its vanishing playmates. The horse received the odd joke mention from the commentator, until my father smashed the radio, finished the whisky, and suffered a near-fatal nosebleed.
Barry has since acquired a video recording of the race and still gloats over it even now. Bumboy not only won: it was more or less the sole survivor. There was one of those churning, drowning pile-ups at the penultimate jump. Bumboy tripped snorting through the chaos — and was clear with one fence to beat. The lone horse pranced flimsily on. It didn’t leap that last hedge: it just munched its way through. Then, with only flat green ahead, ten yards from the post, Bumboy fell over. The jockey, who was all whipped out by now, tried to remount. Some of his grounded colleagues got the same idea. After about ten minutes — several riderless horses had skipped over the line by now, and another contender had cleared the last jump, and was gaining — Bumboy was finally scourged out of a series of circles and flopped over the line, home by half a length.
Now this bookie was a middleman, not legal, and my dad took Morrie Dubedat, Fat Paul and two shooters when he went to collect his winnings. Also, I had sobered up by then and caused some complications by trying to stop the cheque — until my father came squealing on to the line. He got his money, after a month of gang warfare — not the full whack by any means, but enough to pay his debts, buy out the brewery, gut the Shakespeare, instal the pool table, the stripper and the strobes… He says he’s going to repay me, one of these days. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. I’ll never get over the grief of that wound. And I don’t think he ever meant me to.
I settled the bill — a pretty useful one, what with the line of brandies I had moodily consumed. I returned to my flat and packed a case and started going back to America.
5
the AUTOCRAT moved fast and softly through chintzy prefabs and the continuing scenes of black family life, with its leagues of brothers and stand-offs in the basketball courts, and mothers’ shapes behind the insect mesh, calling. Spooked planes buzzed the limo roof at the black spread of water near La Guardia. Ped Xing, No Shoulder, Unlawful To Cross White Line, Traffic Laws Strictly Enforced, Stay In Lane, Upgrade — Maintain Speed. Does My Chauffeur Need To Be Told All This? Wouldn’t drive do the trick? We came out of the beach-hut belt and slid down on to the barrelling freeway. Now — here it comes again — the gnashed, gap-toothed skyline, the graphics, the artwork of New York.