Sarah looked bewildered. ‘I thought that was an honour.’
‘It depends,’ said Jik, sneering happily. ‘Passable artists with polished social graces get elected in their thirties. Masters with average social graces, in their forties; masters with no social graces, in their fifties. Geniuses who don’t give a damn about being elected are ignored as long as possible.’
‘Putting Todd in the first category and yourself in the last?’ Sarah said.
‘Of course.’
‘Stands to reason,’ I said. ‘You never hear about Young Masters. Masters are always Old.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Sarah said. ‘Let’s go to the races.’
We went slowly, on account of a continuous stream of traffic going the same way. The car park at Flemington racecourse, when we arrived, looked like a giant picnic ground, with hundreds of full-scale lunch parties going on between the cars. Tables, chairs, cloths, china, silver, glass. Sun umbrellas optimistically raised in defiance of the rain-clouds threatening above. A lot of gaiety and booze and a giant overall statement that ‘This Was The Life’.
To my mild astonishment Jik and Sarah had come prepared. They whipped out table, chairs, drinks and food from the rented car’s boot and said it was easy when you knew how, you just ordered the whole works.
‘I have an uncle,’ Sarah said, ‘who holds the title of Fastest Bar in the West. It takes him roughly ten seconds from putting the brakes on to pouring the first drink.’
She was really trying, I thought. Not just putting up with an arrangement for Jik’s sake, but actually trying to make it work. If it was an effort, it didn’t show. She was wearing an interesting olive green linen coat, with a broad brimmed hat of the same colour, which she held on from time to time against little gusts of wind. Overall, a new Sarah, prettier, more relaxed, less afraid.
‘Champagne?’ Jik offered, popping the cork. ‘Steak and oyster pie?’
‘How will I go back to cocoa and chips?’
‘Fatter.’
We demolished the goodies, repacked the boot, and with a sense of taking part in some vast semi-religious ritual, squeezed along with the crowd through the gate to the Holy of Holies.
‘It’ll be much worse than this on Tuesday,’ observed Sarah, who had been to these junkets several times in the past. ‘Melbourne Cup day is a public holiday. The city has three million inhabitants and half of them will try to get here.’ She was shouting above the crowd noises and holding grimly on to her hat against the careless buffeting all around.
‘If they’ve got any sense they’ll stay at home and watch it on the box,’ I said breathlessly, receiving a hefty kidney punch from the elbow of a man fighting his way into a can of beer.
‘It won’t be on the television in Melbourne, only on the radio.’
‘Good grief. Why ever not?’
‘Because they want everyone to come. It’s televised all over the rest of Australia, but not on its own doorstep.’
‘Same with the golf and the cricket,’ Jik said with a touch of gloom. ‘And you can’t even have a decent bet on those.’
We went through the bottleneck and, by virtue of the inherited badges, through a second gate and round into the calmer waters of the green oblong of Members’ lawn. Much like on many a Derby Day at home, I thought. Same triumph of will over weather. Bright faces under grey skies. Warm coats over the pretty silks, umbrellas at the ready for the occasional top hat. When I painted pictures of racegoers in the rain, which I sometimes did, most people laughed. I never minded. I reckoned it meant they understood that the inner warmth of a pleasure couldn’t be externally damped: that they too might play a trumpet in a thunderstorm.
Come to think of it, I thought, why didn’t I paint a racegoer playing a trumpet in a thunderstorm? It might be symbolic enough even for Jik.
My friends were deep in a cross-talking assessment of the form of the first race. Sarah, it appeared, had a betting pedigree as long as her husband’s, and didn’t agree with him.
‘I know it was soft going at Randwick last week. But it’s pretty soft here too after all this rain, and he likes it on top.’
‘He was only beaten by Boyblue at Randwick, and Boyblue was out of sight in the Caulfield Cup.’
‘Please your silly self,’ Sarah said loftily. ‘But it’s still too soft for Grapevine.’
‘Want to bet?’ Jik asked me.
‘Don’t know the horses.’
‘As if that mattered.’
‘Right.’ I consulted the racecard. ‘Two dollars on Generator.’
They both looked him up, and they both said ‘Why?’
‘If in doubt, back number eleven. I once went nearly through the card on number eleven.’
They made clucking and pooh-poohing noises and told me I could make a gift of my two dollars to the bookies or the T.A.B.
‘The what?’
‘Totalisator Agency Board.’
The bookmakers, it seemed, were strictly on-course only, with no big firms as in England. All off-course betting shops were run by the T.A.B., which returned a good share of the lolly to racing. Racing was rich, rock-solid, and flourishing. Bully for Australia, Jik said.
We took our choice and paid our money, and Generator won at twenty-fives.
‘Beginners’ luck,’ Sarah said.
Jik laughed. ‘He’s no beginner. He got kicked out of playschool for running a book.’
They tore up their tickets, set their minds to race two, and made expeditions to place their bets. I settled for four dollars on number one.
‘Why?’
‘Double my stake on half of eleven.’
‘Oh God,’ said Sarah. ‘You’re something else.’
One of the more aggressive clouds started scattering rain, and the less hardy began to make for shelter.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and sit up there in the dry.’
‘You two go,’ Sarah said. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because those seats are only for men.’
I laughed. I thought she was joking, but it appeared it was no joke. Very unfunny, in fact. About two thirds of the best seats in the Members’ stands were reserved for males.
‘What about their wives and girl friends?’ I said incredulously.
‘They can go up on the roof.’
Sarah, being Australian, saw nothing very odd in it. To me, and surely to Jik, it was ludicrous.
He said with a carefully straight face, ‘On a lot of the bigger courses the men who run Australian racing give themselves leather armchairs behind glass to watch from, and thick-carpeted restaurants and bars to eat and drink like kings in, and let their women eat in the cafeterias and sit on hard plastic chairs on the open stands among the rest of the crowd. They consider this behaviour quite normal. All anthropological groups consider their most bizarre tribal customs quite normal.’
‘I thought you were in love with all things Australian.’
Jik sighed heavily. ‘Nowhere’s perfect.’
‘I’m getting wet,’ Sarah said.
We escalated to the roof which had a proportion of two women to one man and was windy and damp, with bench seating.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Sarah said, amused at my aghastness on behalf of womenkind. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘I thought this country made a big thing about equality for all.’
‘For all except half the population,’ Jik said.
We could see the whole race superbly from our eyrie. Sarah and Jik screamed encouragement to their fancies but Number One finished in front by two lengths, at eight to one.
‘It’s disgusting,’ Sarah said, tearing up more tickets. ‘What number do you fancy for the third?’
‘I won’t be with you for the third. I’ve got an appointment to have a drink with someone who knows Donald.’
She took it in, and the lightness went out of her manner. ‘More... investigating?’