Read Online The Horse With My Name by Bateman - Free Book Online Page B

nodded again. It had been much easier to make a connection than I thought. Maybe he was a changed man. Maybe he had mellowed. Maybe I was nicer, better with people, maybe I should stay up all night drinking more often.
    As the horses came thundering past, a dozen of them, chucking up muck and grass, their diminutive jockeys with legs clamped to flanks and their arses in the air, I glanced at McClean, his eyes narrowed, a picture of absolute concentration.
    ‘Ah, now, Danny boy,’ he said when they’d passed,‘there’s no substitute for this, getting up at dawn, coming down here. For all the science involved, the blood tests, the weighing, the working on the split times, it can all still just be down to watching the horses, like this, having that knack for knowing when they’re going to hit the top of their form.’
    ‘And you have that knack?’
    ‘Sometimes. And when I haven’t, I buy a man that has.’
    I nodded after the departing horses. ‘Which one was he, then? Dan the Man.’
    ‘The fast one.’
    I’d not noticed, but I nodded anyway. ‘Did you really name him after me?’
    ‘Somebody told you that?’
    ‘I heard a whisper.’
    There was no reaction; I didn’t really expect one; he was an old pro. He gave a little shrug. ‘Well it must be true then,’ he said, turning and nodding to the men by the Land Rover. They pushed themselves straight and pulled open the doors. McClean put his hand out to me and we shook. ‘I’ll see you up at the house around one if it suits, Dan. You can have a proper look at Dan the Man and we can have a chat about the book. Good to see you.’ He climbed into the vehicle. One of his men was behind the wheel and the other in the back. The passenger window was already rolled down. As the engine was started I said, ‘Why the guns, Geordie?’
    He flicked the end of his cigar out of the window and it landed at my feet. ‘Dan, remember the boxing? You thought it was full of sharks? Well they were fucking goldfish compared to this.’ The Land Rover moved forward. He winked and said, ‘Toodle-pip then.’
    I watched him speed off down the lane and thought for a moment about what I might be getting myself involved with. It wasn’t the thought of shotguns, sharks or goldfish,or even the horse shit on my trousers. It was dealing with a grown man who said toodle pip .
    I stopped off at a diner in the village that was advertising a full Irish breakfast. The woman serving didn’t give a second glance to my shit-spattered trousers but she looked confused when I asked for an Ulster fry. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I forgot I was south of the border, down Mexico way.’
    Her brow crinkled like the bacon she brought. And the egg and the sausage. It was nice, but it lacked what makes the northern fry special: potato bread, soda bread, pancake, and I pined quietly for it. I shouldn’t have been eating any of it, of course. It is not the modern way. But then I’ve never been particularly modern, you only have to look at my record collection to see that. In my book, if it’s not fried, battered or covered in chocolate, it’s not worth eating.
    The thing is, I’ve never been Mr Fatty. Quite the opposite. I’m dead thin. This occasionally helps me to delude myself that I’m actually quite healthy, but deep down I know that cholesterol gathers just as handily in the arteries of a thin man as a fat; that if I continue the way I’m going the day will come when I’m sauntering down to the pub for lunch and I’ll just explode. Like a lot of fools, I have conned myself into believing that anything with the word Diet on the side must naturally be good for you, and that the more of it you take, the healthier you will be. It amazes me that the marketing people haven’t yet devised Diet Benson & Hedges as a marketing ploy, because they do make you thinner, eventually.
    I picked at my fry. I’d gotten out of the way of healthy eating in the past few months – being sad and lonely was enough