He was silent for a moment, then he shuffled the papers together.
‘OK, Patrick,’ Charlie said finally. ‘You’ll do. We’ve just had to let a groom go, so we’re shorthanded here at present. Can you start immediately?’
‘Indeed I can, sir,’ I said, smiling broadly at him. ‘And please call me Paddy.’
‘All right, Paddy,’ he said, handing me back the Green Card. ‘You’ll be paid minimum wage and half of it will be withheld for your room and board.’
I had looked up the minimum wage. I hadn’t been particularly impressed.
‘Where do I sleep?’ I asked.
‘Keith will show you. He’s the barn foreman so you do as he says.’
Keith had been standing next to me throughout the short interview.
We were in an office at the end of a training barn on the backside of Belmont Park Racetrack in New York. It was Wednesday morning, four days after the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, and two days after every racehorse trainer in the United States had received a strongly worded letter of warning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement concerning the employment of illegal immigrants.
‘And Paddy,’ said the assistant trainer as I turned to leave, ‘Mr Raworth expects absolute loyalty from his staff. You will do as you are told without question. You will not discuss your work with others, and you especially will not speak to the press about any of the horses. Do you understand?’
I turned back to face him.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
Keith and I went outside.
‘Where’s your stuff?’ Keith asked.
‘Me life’s all in here,’ I said, indicating the canvas holdall over my shoulder.
Keith led me round the side of Raworth’s barn to a two-storey building that was desperately in need of a coat of paint.
‘In here,’ he said, pushing open the door. ‘Do you want to share with a Mexican or a Puerto Rican?’
‘You keeps half me wages and then you makes me share a room?’
‘Take it or leave it. We have others after jobs, you know.’
‘The Mexican,’ I said, for no particular reason.
Keith showed me into a room that reminded me of a prison cell as depicted in a British TV sitcom of the 1970s. It was uniformly grey with a set of bunk beds taking up almost half the available floor space. In the corner, at the foot of the beds, were two wooden lockers stacked one upon the other, plus a hard, upright wooden chair. And overlaying everything was the smell of cheap disinfectant mixed with the characteristically pungent ammonic ‘horsey’ aroma.
There was no sign of my roommate.
‘Yours is the top,’ Keith said.
‘Bed or locker?’ I asked.
‘Both.’
‘And the jacks?’
He looked at me quizzically.
‘The jacks, man?’ I said. ‘The bleeding lavvies?’
‘If you mean the bathroom, that’s down the end of the corridor. You share it with four other rooms.’
It made my former life in the army look rather luxurious.
‘Dump your kit and I’ll show you the rest of the place,’ Keith said.
I tossed my bag onto the top bed and followed him out.
The ‘backside’ at Belmont Park was not actually in the back of the racecourse but to the side, situated around a second exercise track set close to one end of the main racetrack.
The barns were similar to those at Churchill Downs insofar that they were long thin structures, but these were enclosed at the sides rather than open, perhaps reflecting the fact that New York was further north than Louisville. And, whereas Churchill barns were white with green roofs, those at Belmont were the opposite.
Keith and I walked down alongside George Raworth’s barn. There was little chance of confusing his barn with any other. The initials GR were emblazoned everywhere and there was already a workman screwing a white sign to the green outside wall that read, Home of Fire Point. Winner of the Kentucky Derby.
‘That was a great day last Saturday,’ Keith said. ‘Now for the Preakness.’
‘Is Fire Point here?’ I asked.
‘Sure is,’ he said. ‘We flew back together from Louisville on Sunday afternoon. He’ll stay here now until he goes down to Maryland.’
‘Will he fly there?’ I asked.
Keith shook his head. ‘He’ll go by truck. It’s only two hundred miles from here. We could probably go down only the day before the Preakness but Pimlico demands that all the horses are down there earlier. It helps them market the race to the public. I expect we’ll go Monday. That would be usual.’
‘Does Mr Raworth have his own barn at Pimlico?’ I asked.
‘No. He did once but they’ve closed the barns there now, except for during the actual meet. I expect we’ll use the Stakes Barn.’
A Stakes Barn was where a trainer would keep a horse brought in especially for a big race when he didn’t have a barn of his own at the track. It would normally be shared by several trainers.
‘Do you think Fire Point will win?’ I asked eagerly.
‘Sure, he’ll win,’ Keith replied with unshakable confidence. ‘He’s in great shape. He’ll win the Belmont too.’
We walked over to a blue pickup truck.
‘Get in,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll show you around and get you registered.’
First we went to the backside office where I was issued with a groom’s photo ID card on a lanyard that I was expected to wear round my neck at all times, and handed a printed sheet of rules and regulations that mostly consisted of dire warnings not to smoke anywhere near the barns.
Next, we set off round the site. The backside at Belmont Park was considerably bigger than that at Churchill Downs, the barns being more spread out and separated from each other by smart white railings. It was like a small town with a recreation hall, learning centre, chapel, medical facility, even a bank branch where employees could cash their pay cheques and wire money home. But there was also the quirky side to the place — roosters pecking at undigested oats on the dungheaps, tethered goats acting as lawn-mowers on the grass between the barns, and dogs and cats lying out, warming themselves lazily in the mid-afternoon sun.
Add the occasional neighing of the horses and it was more like a tranquil rural oasis than the actual reality, squeezed as it was between a busy suburb and a six-lane highway of a major metropolis.
‘You eat here in the track kitchen,’ Keith said as we pulled up in front of it. ‘You get tokens from me for basic meals. If you want extra, you pay for it.’
We went inside and Keith introduced me to Bert Squab, the manager. ‘Paddy here has just joined Raworth’s,’ Keith said to him. ‘Usual system.’
Bert nodded at him and at me. ‘Supper at six-thirty,’ he said without much friendship in his voice. ‘Don’t be late or it’ll be gone.’
I smiled at him, trying to break through his icy exterior, but without response. In spite of working in a hot kitchen, Bert was solid permafrost.
Keith and I went outside and climbed into the pickup. He drove us back to Raworth’s barn.
‘Here, take these.’ Keith counted a number of plastic discs into my hand. ‘These are meal tokens. These will last you until Sunday. You’ll get more then with the others.’
I put the tokens in my pocket.
‘Evening stables are from four to six,’ Keith said.
‘Which horses do I do?’
‘That’ll be decided by Mr Hern.’
‘How many?’
‘Four or five horses to a groom, it depends on how many we have in. Our barn is one of the larger ones here. It has thirty-two stalls and we’re usually pretty full — today’s count is twenty-eight. We also have two other permanent barns, one at Del Mar in California and the other at Gulfstream in Florida. Mr Raworth splits his time between the three, the fall at Del Mar, winter in Florida and the rest of the time either here or upstate at Saratoga where we all go for six weeks in the summer.’