Hedging Bets
Simon Lee
Copyright © 2011 by Simon Lee
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My sister was one of those women who somehow always seem to connect with the wrong blokes. There was a succession of these, such as this poncy architect who at almost forty was still living with his mother in an expensive Potts Point unit and who she thought was going to marry her. When it came down to the crunch, however, Mummy didn't want him to marry beneath him. In fact Mummy didn't want him to marry at all.
At 22, Jan was three years older than myself, and for that matter, I suppose, in one way the two of us were no different from Paul and Mummy in that we lived alone together - except that the old fibro house we had inherited when our parents died was a long way from the elegance of Potts Point living.
Oh, yes. And socially beneath him? Jan was a typist and I was in my first year at Sydney Teachers College.
Where does Harold come into this? Harold was perhaps the cream of the crop as far as bludgers go, or more precisely, the bottom of the barrel. He too was about 40 years old and a small-time country bookie; Paul, the architect, had been 38; Jan had this thing going for older men. Goodness knows where she met him; probably at the law-firm where she worked, and where he had gone trying to get someone to cheaply defend him for some shady deal that had gone arse up.
I'll say this for him, he could turn on the charm, and Jan was a sucker for this. Before long he had moved in with us; just temporarily, you understand, until he got a few things sorted out.
“Your sister is a wonderful cook,” he said, wiping the gravy from the corner of his mouth with the carefully-ironed serviette she had placed on his bread-and-butter plate. “I've had meals in 5 star restaurants all over the world and never had a better meal than this, Petal.”
Jan swelled with pleasure at the compliment.
“Big mistake, Jan,” I told her afterwards. “I don't trust him. He's too smooth.”
“Ash, you're too hard. Too cynical. He's a fine man. He's having a tough time at the moment, due to some very important hush-hush business deals that haven't yet concluded and needs a bit of help. He's a connoisseur of good food, a world traveller, very sophisticated and clearly used to better things and ... “
“And meantime he's spongeing off you.”
I could afford to say this without embarrassing myself because I was contributing my share of the bills and food by working nights coaching kids in maths, English, or whatever other stuff the head of the Good Enterprise Coaching College doled out to me.
During the long summer holidays coaching virtually stopped, so, to continue my income stream, I ran learn-to-swim classes at nearby Ramsgate Pool at five guineas for ten individual half-hour lessons, with a guarantee that at the end of the ten lessons the child would at least be able to confidently dive in and swim across the pool at the deep end without fear, or I'd give the money back. In the two seasons I'd been doing this, I had never had to give a refund. One reason for this is that before I started I tested each child out. If he or she was clearly frightened, not yet strong enough, or lacked co-ordination, I told the parent to come back next year. This hardly ever happened because most kids were eager to learn. Seven days a week I gave individualized tuition from 8am to 5pm, stopping only for a half-hour lunch break. For me, time literally was money.
Additionally, in the two weeks leading up to Christmas, for the past two years I had signed on as an all-night temporary mail-sorter in at the Sydney GPO along with another College student, my mate Chalky White.
As a result of this, I had accumulated about £300 when Harold put his proposition to me. As usual, he was flat broke. Temporary circumstances, you understand, as he put it. As soon as his business deals were completed, money would flood in. I asked him what was the nature of these deals, but he simply put his finger up alongside his nose and gave a conspiratorial wink and gave me what he imagined was a knowing smile. For a hundred quid investment, he said, as though he was doing me a favour, he would take me on as his bagman at the next race-meeting at Newcastle. I said I knew nothing about what this entailed. “No problem”, he said. “You can count, can't you? Just collect the money from the punters when they place their bets, and if there's a pay-out on a win or a place, you just hand me whatever cash I ask for. As a trainee teacher, you would be able to handle that, wouldn't you?” he said. I replied that I thought this would not be beyond me.
“I need a clerk, though,” Harold says. “Someone who knows the business. Of course if the worst came down to the worst, I could do it myself, but it would be a lot easier if there was someone else reliable who could do it.”
I told him that Chalky's old man had been a rails bookie at Randwick before he retired (and managed to drink himself to death) and that to earn a few bob, the under-age Chalky sometimes illegally acted as his clerk while he was still at school. At this, Harold perked up, and said that for another hundred he would be prepared to take on Chalky sight unseen “You're sure he's done this before, aren't you?” he said..
“That's all very well, but even if Chalk's got a hundred, why should we give you two hundred quid, just for the privilege of working for you?”
“Ah. Sorry. I should have mentioned that before. Of course you'll both get a substantial amount of the winnings.”
“How much does 'substantial' amount to?”
“Well, seeing that I'm the bookie and taking all the risks, and you're only minor players, to be fair, what about 25 per cent each?”
“To be fair, seeing that you are putting bugger-all into the kitty and taking no risk and we are lending you a hundred quid each, what about splitting it up equally three ways – after giving us back our two hundred?”
After humming-and-ha-ing about this, when he saw that I wouldn't budge, he finally agreed.
“Has this mate of yours Chalky got a car?”
“As a matter of fact he has. An old Triumph. So what?”
“Well, instead of going up by train, maybe we could drive up.”
“I dunno whether he'd be happy about doing that,” I said doubtfully. “Why?”
“Think about it for a minute. I've got my stand to display the odds and a big bag with my name and registration number on it, so that any halfwit can see I'm a bookie.”
“And on the way back, hopefully that bag will be full of money.”
“I see what you mean. Okay I'll put it to him.”
On the day it was money for jam, really, as far as my part went. Chalky was busy working out the odds, but with his mathematical mind and experience, it was a breeze for him too. When we finished our day's wor
k, we had £1,645. I'd never seen so much money, and, moreover, a third of it was mine.
“Not bad, eh, fellas? Almost five hundred and fifty each!”
“Hang on,” said Chalky. “Two hundred of that doesn't count in the tally. Our loans, remember? The profit on the day is £1445. That's £480.13.4 for you and £580.13.4 each for Ash and me.”
“What!”
“Take it or leave it. That's the way it goes – unless you want to walk home - and if you ever want us to work for you again. And remember; Ash's still holding the loot.”
He was very angry but in the end he agreed grudgingly. “Let's not quibble over a fiver, though. Stupid to divide it up with thirteen shillings and fourpence each. That's too ridiculous for words. You two take your 480,' we looked hard at him “ – and your 100 stake, of course,” he added hastily, “And give me 485, okay?”
The next week the races were at Wyong and Harold asked me to line up Chalky again (We'll knock 'em dead again, eh, sport?). However Chalky told me he wasn't interested.
“We just got out by the skin of our teeth last time.”
“How come? How do you work that out? We came out with nearly five hundred quid each.”
“Look, Harold's not a bookie's bootlace. He's a punter. He doesn't know how to lay the odds to cover himself. If it hadn't been that he put almost all we had left on a roughie on the last race, which by a lucky fluke came in at 50 to 1, we'd have lost the lot.”
When I told Harold that Chalkie had told me about our narrow escape and that as a result neither of us would go again, he tried to bluster his way out of it.
“Bullshit! There was never a problem. I had a sure-fire tip. Amazon Girl had been given a little 'impetus' that the stewards weren't able to detect, and all of us in-the-know made a killing. Stuff the both of you, then. I can manage on me own,” he said, “I'll get a couple of my mates” - and he emphasized the noun - “and they'll work for regular rates.”
For the rest of the week he wouldn't even speak to me.
“What have you said to upset Harold?” Jan asked.
“Nothing. We're just not going to Wyong races with him.”
“Is that fair? He feels that you've let him down,” she said accusingly.
“Well, I'm sure he'll get over that.”
Late on the next Saturday afternoon, Jan came to me and said, “Harold needs your help.”
“Oh?”
“He needs a loan – just a temporary one. He's really desperate or he wouldn't trouble you.”
“I'll bet. He's never even deigned to call me by my name all the time he's been staying with us and now he wants my help. What's happened?”
“Due to a mistake made by his clerk, he doesn't have enough cash to pay all the punters, as he calls them.”
“This is why we didn't go,” I told her. “He's a gambler, not a real bookie.”
'How can you say that when he won you almost six hundred pounds each?”
“Is that what he told you? After we got back our hundred each that we had lent him, we made four hundred and eighty each, not six hundred. Oh yes; and he took the extra fiver.”
“Well be that as it may, he still made you a lot of money, so you owe him.”
“How much does he want?”
“He said that three hundred and fifty would just get him out of debt.”
I was sure that he was inflating the figure, so to make peace with Jan I said, “The bank is closed but I've got two hundred in cash which I kept back to give you to pay the rates on Monday. I'll lend him that. How will you get it to him?”
“Oh he's been allowed to leave the course on the promise that he'll make good his IOUs tomorrow. If he doesn't, they've told him that he'll lose his licence. He's coming around to collect it tonight.”
I had been right about him exaggerating the amount he needed. He took the two hundred without trying for more.
“Thank you, Ash,” he said, wringing my hand, “I won't forget this,” and he was gone.
That was the last Jan and I ever saw of Harold. And my two hundred.
About the Author
Simon Lee, now retired and living on the Queensland Sunshine Coast with his wife and two daughters, has enjoyed an adventurous life. An enthusiastic traveller, as a young man he backpacked through Europe, became a crocodile hunter in the Northern Territory and later worked as a freelance journalist in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East. He speaks fluent Spanish and Mandarin.
His five novels available as ebooks are:
The Rainbow of Dreams
Subsequently (sequel to The Rainbow of Dreams)
Riley Street
The Motorbike
Serve the People
He has also written a children's story called Claude Cricket and the Pirates and a series of short stories.
He is currently writing (very slowly!) The Amorous Adventures of Byhold, about an ingenuous peasant boy in the Middle Ages.