face.
Shit, I thought as I fell to the ground, I’m being robbed. Didn’t this idiot know that it had been a dreadful day for the bookies? There was precious little left to steal. He would have done better to rob me on my way into the course this morning when I’d had a few grand of readies in my pockets.
I was down on all fours with my head hanging between my shoulders. I could feel on my face the warmth of fresh blood, and I could see it running in a bright red rivulet from my chin to the earth below, where it was soaking into the grass.
I was half expecting another blow to my head or even a boot in my guts. My arms didn’t seem to be working too well, but I managed to maneuver my right hand into the deep trouser pocket where I had put the envelope containing the small wad of remaining banknotes. Experience had taught me that it was better to give up the money early rather than to lie there, taking a beating, only to have the cash taken later anyway.
I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and threw it on the grass.
“That’s all I have.” I could taste the saltiness of the blood in my mouth as I spoke.
I rolled over onto my side. I didn’t really want to see my attacker’s face. Experience had also taught me that a positive identification usually leads to a further kicking. However, I needn’t have worried. The young man, and I was sure from his strength and agility that he was a young man, was wearing a scarf around his face, and the hood of his dark gray sweatshirt was pulled up over his head. Identification would have been impossible even if he had been facing towards me. Instead, he was facing half away, standing in front of my father.
“Here,” I shouted at him. “Take it, and leave us be.”
He turned his head slightly towards me, then turned back to face my father.
“Where’s the money?” he hissed at him.
“There,” I said, pointing at the envelope.
The man ignored me.
“Go to hell,” my father said to him, lashing out with his foot and catching the man in the groin.
“You bastard,” hissed the man with anger.
The man appeared to punch my father twice rapidly in the stomach.
“Where’s the bloody money?” hissed our attacker once again.
This time, my father said nothing. He merely sat down heavily on the ground with his back up against the hedge.
“Leave him be,” I shouted at the hooded figure. “It’s there,” once again pointing at the white envelope on the grass. The man simply ignored me again and turned back to my father, so I screamed at the top of my voice, “Help! Help! Help!”
Parking lot two was mostly deserted, but there were still some after-racing parties taking place in the owners- and-trainers’ area. Heads turned our way, and three or four brave souls took a few steps in our direction. No doubt, I thought ironically, they would probably come and help with the beating if they knew the victim was a bookmaker.
The man took one look over his shoulder at the approaching group and was off, running between the few remaining cars, before disappearing over the wooden fence on the far side of the parking lot. I sat on the grass and watched him go. He never once looked back.
The envelope of money still sat on the grass next to me. Not much of a thief, I mused. I leaned over, picked up the envelope and thrust it back into the deep recesses of my pocket. I struggled to my feet, cursing at the green grass stains that had appeared on the knees of my trousers.
Three of the vested revelers, still clutching their champagne glasses, had arrived.
“Are you all right?” asked one. “That’s quite a cut on your face.”
I could still feel the blood, now running down my neck.
“I think I’ll be fine,” I said. “Thanks to you. We were mugged, but he didn’t get away with anything.” I took a couple of steps over to my father. “Are you OK… Dad?” I asked him. The sound of the word, Dad, was strange to my ears.
He looked up at me with frightened eyes.
“What is it?” I asked urgently, taking another couple of steps towards him.
He was clutching his abdomen, and now he moved his hand away. The cream linen jacket was rapidly turning bright red. My father hadn’t been punched in the stomach by the young man, he’d been stabbed.
The ambulance took an age to arrive. I tried to dial 999 on my mobile phone, but, in my panic, my fingers, feeling more like sausages, kept pressing the wrong keys. Eventually, one of the champagne revelers took the phone from my hand and made the call while I knelt down on the grass next to my father.
The blood had spread alarmingly right across his abdomen, and his face had turned ashen gray.
“Lay him down,” someone said. “Put his head lower than his heart.”
Quite a crowd had drifted over from the various parking lot parties. Somehow it seemed absurd for people to be standing around sipping champagne whilst my father was fighting for breath at their feet.
“It’s OK,” I said to my father. “Help is on the way.”
He nodded very slightly and then tried to say something.
“Keep still,” I instructed. “Save your energy.” But he continued to try to speak.
“Be very careful.” He said it softly but quite distinctly.
“Of what?” I replied.
“Of everyone,” he said in a whisper.
He coughed, and blood appeared on his lips.
“Where is that damn ambulance?” I shouted at no one in particular.
But it was the police who arrived first. Two officers appeared on foot. They were probably more used to dealing with race-day traffic than a violent stabbing in broad daylight, and one of them was immediately on his personal radio calling for reinforcements. The other one knelt down next to me and tended to my father by placing his large, traffic-stopping right hand on the wound and pushing down.
My father groaned.
“Sorry, mate,” said the policeman. “Pressure is the best thing.”
Eventually, the ambulance arrived, with the driver apologizing for the time taken. “Going against the race traffic,” he explained. “Jams everywhere, and half the roads made one-way-the wrong way.”
My father was rapidly assessed and given oxygen through a face mask and intravenous fluids via a needle in his forearm. He was lifted carefully onto a stretcher and loaded into the vehicle, the pressure on his stomach being maintained throughout.
I tried to climb in with him, but was stopped by one of the policemen.
“You wait here with us, sir,” he said.
“But that’s my father,” I said.
“We will get you to the hospital shortly,” he said. “It looks like you need a stitch or two in that head anyway.”
The paramedics closed the ambulance doors and bore my father away just as the police backup arrived in two blue-flashing cars.
I spent much of the evening in a hospital, but not the one where I had planned to be.
I knew my father had been alive when they had placed him in the ambulance at the racetrack-I’d heard him coughing-and, according to one of the nurses, he’d still been alive when he’d arrived at the hospital. But he didn’t make it to the operating room. The combination of massive shock and drowning in his own blood had killed him in the accident-and-emergency department reception area. So sorry, they said, there was nothing they could have done.
I sat on a gray-plastic-and-tubular-steel chair in a curtained-off cubicle next to the body of my dead parent, a parent I hadn’t known existed until three hours previously, and wondered how the world could be so cruel.
I was numb. I had grieved for my father when I was about eight, when I was just old enough to begin to realize what I was missing. I could still remember it clearly. I had seen my school friends with their young mums and dads and, for the first time, realized that my aged grandparents were different. I could remember the tears I had shed longing for my parents to be alive and with me.
