Grand National

Walker walked with a limp. His clothes were dirty, his face heavy and dark with grime, his teeth crooked and yellow. He carried a plastic bag and, though he stooped, he held with great effort his chest up towards the sky. The morning was early, the streets dim grey, the sky about to break with rain.

“It’s going to rain!” Walker was shouting across the road, it was not clear to whom, but an elderly black man who walked opposite, clutching his trolley, replied without turning.

“Yes, it is.”

“I saw it on the weather. It’s going to rain this afternoon.” Walker had now reached the pavement and started to limp some distance behind the man. The man only grunted his consent.

“Have you backed a winner in the Grand National?” Walker said, still not level with his subject.

“I don’t like the Grand National.”

“I’ve put all my money on the winner.” Walker stopped limping, appearing to have lost interest in the man ahead of him. The man continued to push his trolley into the distance. Walker looked about himself. The street was empty. Though the sounds of city could be heard, they appeared somewhat distant, as though they occupied a different reality. Walker did not move for some time, only kicked his feet absent-mindedly on the pavement. At length, he appeared to consider his location and set off in another direction. He came onto the main street, where a few grey shoppers moved with their heads down in the overcast morning. Here, he rested against a wall where a younger man was smoking. Walker wheezed heavily as he leant.

“It’s the Grand National today,” he said to the younger man when he had retrieved his breath.

“Yes,” the young man said. Absentminded. He was looking the other way.

“Have you backed a horse?”

“Nah, mate.”

“I’ve backed the winning horse.”

“How do you know?” The young man stubbed his cigarette on the wall.

“I put all my money on it,” Walker continued, wheezing as he spoke.

The young man looked at him without speaking. Shortly, he turned and disappeared through a door. Walker looked about himself. There were several people on the street, but all walked quickly with their heads down as though to hide from the darkening sky. Walker coughed and spluttered. When this short fit was finished, he pushed himself with some effort from the wall and limped across the road to a bookmakers store. It was quiet inside. He limped across the shop to the cash desk where he put down his plastic bag carefully. Grubby coins rattled onto the counter.

“When’s the race?” he asked an older man behind the glass.

“Which race?”
“The Grand National.”

“‘nother hour.”

With effort, Walker picked up his empty plastic bag from the counter and limped to the other end of the shop. He sat alone and looked first at the screens, then at the street beyond the window. Now and again, he coughed and sometimes descended into spluttering.

The shop remained empty. At the time of the Grand National, a few of customers entered and stared up at the screens.

“Who’ve you got your money on?” said Walker to the man closest.

“Red lightening,” the man responded.

When he said nothing more, Walker continued, “I’ve got all my money on the winner.”

The man did not respond.

After the race, the few customers disappeared and the shop once more was empty. Walker stood, coughing again. The man at the cash desk examined his ticket closely and then disappeared to the back.

“That’s ten thousand pounds,” he said when he returned, and he handed Walker a cheque.

Walker coughed for a moment, then folded the cheque and dropped it into his plastic bag. He limped out of the shop and into the street where he stopped to look about himself.

Shortly, he began to limp back down the main street, always with his chest and his head up, as though trying to catch the attention of others. He came to a small square where some benches were set out. In the thick grey afternoon, the square was almost empty. One man sat on a bench, clutching a can of lager in his hand, his face in his hands. Walker sat noisily beside him, coughing and spluttering, and with effort placed his plastic bag on the floor.

“It’s going to rain,” he said to the man.

The man grunted but didn’t speak.

“I would have put my money on it going to rain, but I couldn’t, because I put it all on the Grand National.”

The man didn’t speak, nor give any impression he had heard.

“I won,” Walker continued into the silence.

The man took a swig from his can, tilting his head back as far as it would go. When he had finished, he crumpled the can in his hand and dropped it to the ground. It made a loud sound because the streets were quiet, probably due to the rapidly darkening sky. The man took out another can from beneath the bench and opened it.

“Fucking twat,” he hissed at a youth walking past. He continued to mutter beneath his breath for some time. Walker could not hear what he was saying, but he listened none-the-less, and he stared out into the darkening street.

Some time later, perhaps hours, the man had finished drinking all of his cans and, leaving the empties strewn about the floor, he stood, muttering to himself, and appeared to vanish into nowhere. Walker was sitting alone. He looked down at his hands as though they were troubling him, and soon entered into a coughing fit which lasted some time. Afterwards, his eyes were watering. He wiped them with a grubby sleeve and then, grasping the bench with two hands, took some time to push himself up. Realising that his plastic bag was still on the ground, he stooped and grunted as he fumbled to collect it. When at last he was done he stood still to catch his wheezing breath. He wiped his eyes, which still watered, and took his sleeve to his face to blow his nose. Suddenly, he had cause to look up and stare at the sky, his wet eyes squinting despite the darkness of the late afternoon. A speck of water had landed on his cheek and promptly, another fell.

Walker looked about himself but there was nobody in sight.

“I said this morning that it was going to rain,” he said aloud. Nobody heard him.

He began again to limp again. It did not appear that he was going anywhere.