I Own the Racecourse! Read Online Free Page A

sort of club-room of Ma Eaton’s tiny back room. Those of Joe’s and Mike’s age could rarely fit inside it, but they stood about on the pavement outside to listen to the juke-box and observe their elders. Charlie and Greg Willis were there now, lingering watchfully outside the narrow door. Inside, an unshaded globe threw a yellow light over the room. Rhondah Blessing and Lexie Harris were bending over the ‘Whirlwind’ machine where little lights were flashing on and off—red, yellow, blue and green. Rob Regent was hopefully feeding a leather belt into the ‘Jungle’ machine while the two older Perkins boys looked on. The group on the pavement watched with interest, but the belt didn’t seem to be having any effect.
    Andy hung back in the shadows. Charlie and Greg Willis were not friends of his. They had a bouncing, confident way that he distrusted.
    â€˜Saw you riding down Blunt Street,’ Greg was saying to Mike. ‘You want a board that is a board. Let you have a go on one of ours tomorrow if you like.’
    â€˜No thanks,’ said Mike stiffly. ‘Ours’ll do us.’
    â€˜Not bad for a home-made board, I’ll give you that. Just a bit long in the back. She’ll tip up backwards one of these days.’
    Terry curled his lip like a dog. ‘You wouldn’t know, Willis. The only board you’ll ever have is one out of a shop.’
    Matt chuckled. Joe grinned slowly. Andy wandered off into the dark. The giant voice from Beecham Park began to intone another race. Andy thought he would go to the next corner and look at the white-coated man in the street beyond.
    He reached the corner and saw the gleam of cars under dim street-lights. The white coat of the attendant was a ghostly shape far down the street. There was a lot of cheerful noise from one of the houses where a party was going on, and Andy went down to listen. He stood outside the house for some time, laughing in the darkness at the gaiety inside.
    Suddenly a voice shouted at him. ‘You! What are you hanging round for?’ The white-coated man was coming back, calling to him. Andy was startled. He slipped across the street and into a dark little passage between two rows of houses.
    He stumbled over stones and rubbish, feeling along the wall of one house. He had been here once or twice by daylight, but never at night. It was quite black in the passage, but he felt his way towards a greyness at the other end until he came out in a place he scarcely remembered.
    There was rough grass under his feet, and in front a wide darkness scattered with distant lights. Behind him was the row of little cottages with front doors to which no caller ever came and front gates opening on no street or pavement. Only a strip of rough, grassy ground, with outcrops of sandstone, lay in front of the houses; and beyond this the curving edge of a cliff. Andy could see, twenty or thirty feet below, the windy, lamp-hung tree-tops and green stretches of the park leading away to the docks and the far lights of the city. A wire mesh fence guarded the edge of the cliff at this end; but farther along, where the cliff curved back, there was no fence. He turned that way, stumbling over rough ground in the dark. There was noise and light and movement down there, where the grandstands of Beecham Park Trotting Course rose between this cliff and a matching one beyond them. Andy reached the edge of the cliff and looked down, into the circle of high walls and buildings, into the glowing, lively magic of Beecham Park on a race night.
    There were the great stands edged with strings of lights, and the white oval of the rails, with the brown oval of the track lying inside it. A restless crowd of people drifted before the stands and washed along the rails. There were huge boards where red lights flashed and numbers rose and fell. Over the track hung a ring of floodlights, spraying misty showers of light; and a band in dark uniforms