I dreamed the winner. Clear as day. Not that I have much of an interest normally. I prefer a good game of tennis. But you can’t argue with fate. When I woke up, there it all was, the whole scene, still in my head, as if I was seeing it all for real. Feeling it, hearing it, breathing it. The horse, pounding over the turf, storming over the line, drenched in sweat, head stretched forward, sinews tight and tense, moving like the wind, lengths ahead of its rivals. A cloth, with a number ten on it, flapping in its own speed-created breeze, emblazoned like an indelible brand on the side. The jockey lifting his arm in salute, and dressed in that bright vivid unmistakeable blue.
I ran down the stairs two at a time, almost tripping over the trailing hems of my baggy pyjamas, and grabbed the paper from the mat. Rustled through it, quick, quick, quick, as if wasting just a second could make it all slip away. It happens with dreams, doesn’t it? They go away. Fade like mist. We forget.
But, no, not this time. I must hang on, to every detail. It was a sign. An omen. The end to all my troubles. I sat in Dad's old chair, the newspaper spread open on my lap, and scanned every race, searching, searching. And there it was. Number ten. The little drawing of a jockey wearing that glorious unforgettable blue. Shirt and cap, maybe even his eyes, who knows? Ridden by Frankie Dettori. Yes, I’d heard of him.
I had to do it. Something somewhere was telling me to. For a fleeting moment I thought of Dad. Felt his presence ere in what was always his chair,. Remembered him with the pencil tucked behind his ear, picking his winners. Pictured him the way he was, all through my childhood, every Saturday, placing his fifty pence each way on some old nag that inevitably came in last. Shaking his head and downing a pint and saying Never mind, maybe next week. And laughing it off and knowing there was still money in his wallet to get him through the week. No real risk. Just a flutter. As much as he could afford to lose, and no more.
This was Dad’s doing, I just knew it. He’d come to me in my dream, from somewhere beyond the grave, and offered me the one thing he knew I needed so badly right now. The one thing he’d never really had. The lucky break. The big winner. The sure thing. The dead cert. Number ten. Four o’clock. Epsom. The Derby. What could be better?
I tried to calculate how much. Just how much could I afford to bet? How much, as Dad would say, could I afford to lose? But I wasn’t going to lose, was I? That was the difference. This was going to happen. Definitely. I just knew it. So how much could I afford? became how much do I have?, and then, as time ticked by, how much can I get my hands on?
I spent the day emptying everything. My wallet, and my bank account, and my overdraft, and the electric fund tin, and I borrowed a tenner from Madge next door. Told her I was short of cat food, and she fell for it. Couldn’t see an animal starve. I even found fifty pence down the back of Dad's old chair, under the sagging cushion that still moulded to the shape of him, long after he had gone. Well, that just proved it was him, didn't it? Telling me. Urging me.
Every pound, every penny, I could pull, beg, borrow, or scrape together. All on number ten. To win. Of course. To win. On the nose, as they say.
I dreamed of what I would do with the winnings. All that money. All mine by five past four, when I could pay all the red bills lined up on the fireplace, drink myself silly on champagne, buy the biggest Toblerone the shops had to offer, treat the cat to salmon, maybe even nip down to the travel agents – they’d still be open for another hour or so.
I dreamed of Caribbean holidays and clothes and fancy restaurants and early retirement and handsome men and enormous boxes of chocolates and lots and lots of shoes.
I dreamed of the life I knew I should have had, if things had only been different. Just as I had once dreamed of marrying a prince, and working in fashion, and winning Wimbledon, and waking up with perfect eyesight so I could throw away the glasses, and a perfect body so I could throw away the size eighteens…
I dreamed so many things, when I was young and thin and everything was possible. When there was still hope. When I still believed. Before Dad died and left me all alone, with nothing of his to touch and smell and breathe, but an old chair.
I clung, my knuckles hard and white, to its threadbare arms as I watched the race that afternoon, felt the wood through the fading upholstery beneath my elbows, smelt the tobacco that had seeped out of him and into the cloth, the greasy mark of his Brylcreemed hair forever there behind me on the back. One thing I would not replace when I won would be this chair. It would sit proudly in my mansion and remiind me of this fateful day, and of him. Always.
I dreamed of a horse, and a number ten, and a beautiful beautiful blue. It was Derby Day, the sun shone, and the world I wanted was waiting to be taken, grabbed, pulled towards me, with both hands. It waited just around the corner. Just out of reach.
But dreams aren’t real. They’re not the same as ambitions or plans or achievements or wishes or hopes. There’s nothing we can do to make them happen.
I lost everything. Lost all my money, and quite a lot of that was never even really mine to lose. My home. My reputation. All my worldly goods. Except the chair, I suppose. That old tatty chair that I couldn't give away if I tried, let alone sell. My last trace of a link to my solid sensible loser of a Dad. And lost all that was left of a long but fragile friendship with Madge next door. A tenner is a tenner after all. Even the cat went hungry. And it was all my fault. Not Dad's. Clear as day. A beautiful bright blue vividly unforgettable day.
Because horses don’t always run like the wind, and dreams don’t always come true…
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.