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That's me, sharp, clear vision; I can see the wood as well as the trees - not like some. Barney Phillips for instance, who, you might say, was my benefactor. Food and clothes were still rationed then, fivers were big white things you aspired to owning, and fiddling was the only decent living. OK, I used Barney, but he had money to burn and I was potless.
Like me, he was an Eastender, but, unlike me, Barney dodged national service. He went down to Kent to become a miner, being probably the only bloke in Limehouse who knew where coal came from. He sneaked back during the blitz, escaping death by a whisker when his house was the only one left standing following a doodlebug raid. The other nineteen were flattened, while I was stuck in Bletchley Park deciphering codes, missing all the action. But it's all about luck, ask any punter.
After the war he used his contacts in Kent to make a killing in black market beef. I resented that. I mean, I was the brainy one, yet all I could aspire to was bookie's runner, while Barney was coining it so fast, it was criminal.
We would meet in the George & Dragon, just off Commercial Road. He might've been a great darts player, but he could only finish on double tops. Twenties, you see. Being little and podgy, numbers below the bull would've be easier to hit, but Barney was obsessed with that house number. Left on any other finishing double, his shoulders drooped and he lost interest.
When I took his first wager to the betting shop, I thought he was having a laugh - or testing me maybe. Not that I'd blame him, not since the Miracle Yankee. You see, although I don't bet, I know quite a lot about the nags. I started taking notice just after this fella Titman - a nom de plume, in case the betting slips were impounded by the Old Bill - started using my services. I'd meet him in the café every morning about ten and he'd hand me the betting slip and eleven shillings stake money. My routine was to collect bets, then take them to Ernie Tabor's back street shop about twelve. When he'd checked the wagers with the cash I'd collected, he'd bung me my commission. I'd meet up with him next morning and he'd give me the winning tickets and payout money. All I had to do was put a face to the aliases, reimburse the lucky punters, and collect more bets.
Titman seemed to have a knack for picking losers, consistently: not a brilliant achievement I admit, but he had a run of three months with nothing back but a few bob for non-runners. So I studied the Sporting Life and Timeform until I knew all there was to know about the game. Titman's money went straight into my hip pocket, unless I could see that any of his selections had the remotest chance of winning.
Six months on came my daylight nightmare - Titman's four no-hopers first past the post, at odds of ten to one through to thirty-threes - six doubles, four trebles and a four-horse accumulator! With shilling bets, it would've come to well over a grand, reduced to a monkey by Ernie Tabor's make-them-up-as-you-go winnings limits.
I was struggling to keep my eyes open so I could wash down the last of the sleeping tablets with bootleg malt whisky, when Ernie's heavies broke my front door off its hinges.
It's a slippery slope, trust me. And the top man wants your money, not your life. So I had to duck and dive even more, for no wages. Titman got his five hundred smackers, and I got a deadline I couldn't meet.
Gullible Barney was my first incentive to consider fiddling again, after my disastrous middleman-takes-all initiative. The bruises healed quickly, but the fractures were taking longer. Janette, Ernie's cashier, felt sorry for me and took me to the pictures occasionally; I think she liked dark places. I mean, we were just getting over the blackout, yet there she was working in a windowless, illegal gaming shop! Still, she was my insurance against another pummelling, through her insider knowledge. So I allowed myself to think of Barney as a means of clearing my enormous debt.
It was slow going. For one thing Barney would only bet on handicaps with twenty or more runners. Did he go for number twenty on the card or the horse drawn twenty, or should he wait until both numbers matched? "Twenty on the card," I insisted, forgetting to tell him about the 'high numbers in handicaps' watchwords, which restricted his selections to the lower weighted gee gees. They have low weights because, firm or soft going, they're 'also rans,' with form figures like a row of duck eggs - the donkeys of the equine world.
Still, I played it safe. OK, Barneys bets never reached Ernie's till, but I kept a few quid under the lino - dreading another Titman phenomenon.
We were in the George when he sprung it on me. "Change of plan, Tom." He handed me his betting slip. "I've had a tip. I sold a few carcasses for cash to a bloke who knows a trainer in Newmarket. Put it on the nose eh?" He handed me a wad of big ones. "Not a fiver today - five hundred! Better check it out with your guv'nor."
I let him hear me verify the bet - with Janette. It was a bad line. I asked for the odds on offer. Totally unfancied, worth the risk.
-----ooooo-----
Walking the beach near our tumbledown shack on the rain-lashed Outer Hebrides, Janette and I still argue about it.
"For the last time, Pet, when I said 'what's Effintime?' I meant what price! Maybe your watch said twenty to one, but Effintime was five to effin' one favourite. A racing certainty!"
Ends.
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