'Better than Ascot, I'd say.'
Heads nodded.
'They have bunk beds at Ascot, not singles, like this.'
The hostels at Newbury and Ascot were, it appeared, the most comfortable in the country.
'Anyone would think the bosses had suddenly cottoned on to the fact that we're human,' said a sharp- faced lad, in a belligerent, rabble-raising voice.
'It's a far cry from the bug-ridden class houses of the old days,' nodded a desiccated, elderly little man with a face like a shrunken apple.
'But a fellow told me the lads have it good like this in America all the time.'
'They know if they don't start treating us decent they soon won't get anyone to do the dirty work,' said the rabble-raiser.
'Things are changing.'
'They treat us decent enough where I come from,' I said, putting my things on an empty bed next to his and nerving myself to be natural, casual, unremarkable. I felt much more self-conscious than I had at Slaw, where at least I knew the job inside out and had been able to feel my way cautiously into a normal relationship with the other lads.
But here I had only two nights, and if I were to do any good at all I had got to direct the talk towards what I wanted to hear.
The form books were by now as clear to me as a primer, and for a fortnight I had listened acutely and concentrated on soaking in as much racing jargon as I could, but I was still doubtful whether I would understand everything I heard at Bristol and also afraid that I would make some utterly incongruous impossible mistake in what I said myself.
'And where do you come from?' asked the cheerful boy, giving me a cursory looking over.
'Lord October's,' I said.
'Oh yes, Inskip's, you mean? You're a long way from home…'
'Inskip's may be all right,' said the rabble-raiser, as if he regretted it.
'But there are some places where they still treat us like mats to wipe their feet on, and don't reckon that we've got a right to a bit of sun, same as everyone else.'
'Yeah,' said the raw-boned boy seriously.
'I heard that at one place they practically starve the lads and knock them about if they don't work hard enough, and they all have to do about four or five horses each because they can't keep anyone in the yard for more than five minutes!'
I said idly, 'Where's that, just so I know where to avoid, if I ever move on from Inskip's?'
'Up your part of the country…' he said doubtfully.
'I think.'
'No, farther north, in Durham…' another boy chimed in, a slender, pretty boy with soft down still growing on his cheeks.
'You know about it too, then?'
He nodded.
'Not that it matters, only a raving nit would take a job there. It's a blooming sweat shop, a hundred years out of date. All they get are riffraff that no one else will have.'
'It wants exposing,' said the rabble-raiser belligerently.
'Who runs this place?'
'Bloke called Humber,' said the pretty boy, 'he couldn't train ivy up a wall. and he has about as many winners as tits on a billiard ball. You see his head travelling-lad at the meetings sometimes, trying to press gang people to go and work there, and getting the brush off, right and proper. '
'Someone ought to do something,' said the rabble- raiser automatically: and I guessed that this was his usual refrain: 'someone ought to do something'; but not, when it came to the point, himself.
There was a general drift into the canteen, where the food proved to be good, unlimited, and free. A proposal to move on to a pub came to nothing when it was discovered that the nearest was nearly two bus less miles away and that the bright warm canteen had some crates of beer under its counter.
It was easy enough to get the lads started on the subject of doping, and they seemed prepared to discuss it endlessly. None of the twenty odd there had ever, as far as they would admit, given 'anything' to a horse, but they all knew someone who knew someone who had. I drank my beer and listened and looked interested, which I was.
'. nob bled him with a squirt of acid as he walked out of the bleeding paddock. '
'. gave him such a whacking dollop of stopping powder that he died in his box in the morning. '
'Seven rubber bands came out in the droppings…'
'. overdosed him so much that he never even tried to jump the first fence: blind, he was, stone blind. '
'. gave him a bloody great bucketful of water half an hour before the race, and didn't need any dope to stop him with all that sloshing about inside his gut. '
'Poured half a bottle of whisky down his throat.'
'. used to tube horses which couldn't breathe properly on the morning of the race until they found it wasn't the extra fresh air that was making the horses win but the cocaine they stuffed them full of for the operation. '
'They caught him with a hollow apple packed with sleeping pills…'
'. dropped a syringe right in front of an effing steward. '
'I wonder if there's anything which hasn't been tried yet?' I said.
'Black magic. Not much else left,' said the pretty boy.
They all laughed.
'Someone might find something so good,' I pointed out casually, 'that it couldn't be detected, so the people who thought of it could go on with it for ever and never be found out. '
'Blimey,' exclaimed the cheerful lad, 'you're a comfort, aren't you?
God help racing, if that happened. You'd never know where you were.
The bookies would all be climbing the walls. ' He grinned hugely.
The elderly little man was not so amused.
'It's been going on for years and years,' he said, nodding solemnly.
'Some trainers have got it to a fine art, you mark my words. Some trainers have been doping their horses regular, for years and years.'
But the other lads didn't agree. The dope tests had done for the dope-minded trainers of the past; they had lost their licences, and gone out of racing. The old rule had been a bit unfair on some, they allowed, when a trainer had been automatically disqualified if one of his horses had been doped. It wasn't always the trainer's fault, especially if the horse had been doped to lose. What trainer, they asked, would nobble a horse he'd spent months training to win? But they thought there was probably more doping since that rule was changed, not less.
'Stands to reason, a doper knows now he isn't ruining the trainer for life, just one horse for one race. Makes it sort of easier on his conscience, see? More lads, maybe, would take fifty quid for popping the odd aspirin into the feed if they knew the stable wouldn't be shut down and their jobs gone for a burton very soon afterwards.'
They talked on, thoughtful and ribald; but it was clear that they didn't know anything about the eleven horses I was concerned with.
None of them, I knew, came from any of the stables involved, and obviously they had not read the speculative reports in the papers, or if they had, had read them separately over a period of eighteen months, and not in one solid, collected, intense bunch, as I had done.
The talk faltered and died into yawns, and we went chatting to bed, I sighing to myself with relief that I had gone through the evening without much notice having been taken of me.
By watching carefully what the other lads did, I survived the next day also without any curious stares. In the early afternoon I took Sparking Plug from the stables into the paddock, walked him round the parade ring, stood holding his head while he was saddled, led him round the parade ring again, held him while the jockey mounted, led him out on to the course, and went up into the little stand by the gate with the other lads to watch the race.
Sparking Plug won. I was delighted. I met him again at the gate and led him into the spacious winner's unsaddling enclosure.
