1. ALF GETS STUCK IN
It was ten o’clock on a typical summer night in the large manufacturing town of Greystone and the rain was lashing down when Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track, left Charlie Chipping’s plumber’s shop, where he worked as a plumber’s mate, and locked the door behind him. Alf had been working overtime on an urgent pipe welding job and now was eager to get his teeth into a big fish and chip supper. As he was folding the evening paper over his head to keep his shaggy brown hair dry he glanced up the street and saw the muffled shape of a man lurking in a shop doorway on the corner. He didn’t like the look of the shadowy figure, but was not scared, either. He was an international athlete and as fit as a butcher’s dog and he knew he could handle himself.
Alf’s hobnailed boots rang on the pavement as he approached the man, then drew level. Suddenly he felt a hand plucking the sleeve of his raincoat and he automatically spun round, adopted a boxing stance and put up his fists.
“Don’t hit me! “ cried the man. “It’s me, Father Foley!”
“Lummy, Father,” said Alf. “Don’t go doing that. I nearly planted one on your nose. What the heck are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you, Alf. Can we go somewhere for a quiet talk?”
“I was on my way to the chip shop,” said Alf. “You can join me if you like.”
Father Foley was a man of sixty with a round pink face and thin white hair like lard spread over a piece of bread. He was the Superintendent of Greystone Mount Orphanage, where Alf had lived for the first ten years of his life, before being adopted by the woman he knew as Auntie Meg. The priest had been hard but fair on Alf, and Alf respected him.
Sam Kessick’s little cafe near the railway viaduct was stiflingly hot, with a succulent perfume of boiling fat and fried fish and chips. They sat at a corner table and Alf ordered six penn’orth of chips, a battered haddock and a big mug of strong tea with six sugars. The priest made do with a cup of tea.
“What’s up, Father?” Alf asked through a mouthful of chips.
“It’s about the race on Saturday - the Greystone Mile. I heard a rumour that you might be pulling out.”
“That’s right,” said Alf. “There’s a big international meeting at the White City in London next week and I don’t want to risk getting injured in the Greystone Mile. So I’m going to scratch from the race.”
“Please, Alf, don’t do that, I beg you,” said Father Foley.
“What’s it got to do with you?”
“I’ve bet a big sum of money on you to win.”
Alf spluttered and a chip flew out of his mouth and splashed in the priest’s tea. “Well, you’re a blooming fool,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I never took you for a betting chap.”
“Alf, my boy, I’ve been forced into it. You know the orphanage playing field ? We’ve been renting that piece of land for 25 years, but now the owner’s putting it up for sale and a big business man wants to get his paws on it to build a factory. The owner says we can have it for five thousand pounds, but all we have to spare is one thousand. Then somebody mentioned that the bookmakers were offering odds of five to one against you winning the Greystone Mile. And like an idiot I bet our thousand pounds on you.”
“Well, you’d better get your money back, “ Alf snorted, “because I’m scratching from the race.”
“But that’s the trouble!” wailed the Superintendent. “The bookie won’t give it back. If a runner scratches from a race the money is lost.”
“This is a marvellous blooming pickle,” said Alf, waving his arms and knocking over the vinegar bottle. “I hate people betting on races. It makes folks greedy. Runners have been known to be nobbled or bribed to lose. You get gangsters involved and no end of trouble. Athletics is a sport, not a blooming business.”
“Please, Alf, I’ll be ruined if you don’t do it,” said Father Foley, gripping Alf’s shoulder and looking pleadingly into his eyes. “I’ll probably go to prison.”
“Prison’s what you deserve,” Alf growled. “Well, I won’t make any promises but I’ll sleep on it.”
He slept badly. He won his first race on that playing field - the sack race, when he was six. And afterwards he had trained there for more important races. What about today’s kids? Were they to be robbed of a place to play and train? But he hated bookies and betting. It went against everything he believed in. How dared the blighters use him as a tool in their money making games?
RACE DAY DAWNS
Saturday morning came and when Alf entered the plumber’s shop, carrying the familiar brown paper parcel containing his running shoes, shorts and vest, Charlie Chipping raised his ginger eyebrows and said, “I thought you weren’t running today.”
“Oh, I might as well give it a go,” mumbled Alf.
The race was at three, but at 1.30, just as Alf was about to put his tools away and leave, the telephone rang, Charlie answered it, then turned to Alf.
“Alf, I hate to ask you this, but there’s a lady with a bad leak flooding her house. It’s on the way to Greystone Stadium, so do you think you’d have time to call in on your way? It should only be a ten minute job.”
“I’m on my way, boss,” said Alf.
He picked up his tool bag and parcel of running kit, left the shop and hurried towards the stadium, munching his jam and marge sandwiches on the way. The house was in a posh part of town with three red brick storeys, big bay windows and well tended flower beds. A “for sale” sign stood by the gate. Alf's ring on the bell was answered by a tall, thin woman of about 50, with grey hair screwed into a painful looking bun at the back.
“Take those boots off before you come in,” she ordered in a voice like vinegar.
The customer’s always right, thought Alf, even though she looks like a nanny goat and has the manners of one. He removed his boots and entered in his bare feet. He never wore socks.
“Where’s the leak, lady?”
“It’s up in the attic,” she said, staring at his feet and then pointing to the stairs door.
Alf climbed three flights of stairs, pushed open the attic door and entered a cluttered room lit by a fanlight in the ceiling. He looked everywhere but could find no leak, no water, not even a water pipe. He searched the rest of the upstairs rooms without success. Deeply puzzled, he started down the stairs. At the bottom he met an obstacle. The door would not open. He hammered on it with his fists but nobody came to let him out. He yelled at the top of his lungs, but still nobody came. It was getting on for 2.15 and Alf was growing anxious. He felt like kicking the door down, but his boots were outside on the doormat. He knocked and shouted some more. Then he sat down on a step, scratched his shaggy hair, and thought furiously. He jumped up, opened his tool bag, and got to work on the lock with a chisel and screwdriver. After ten minutes there was a satisfying click and the door swung open. Nobody was about. The house seemed empty. “There’s something fishy going on,” he thought, scowling.
It was 2.25, the stadium was a mile away and he had to be there in ten minutes to sign in for the race. He pulled his boots on. They felt damp and sticky inside. He dashed out of the house and ran up the road, through crowds of people heading for the stadium. Blue and silver sparks flew from the hobnails under his boots. His heavy tool bag banged against his leg and slowed him down. People stepped in his path.
“By gum!” cried a voice. “That’s Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track!”
“Make way for Alf!” cried another. And then the cry was taken up all the way to the stadium and the crowd parted like the Red Sea for Moses.
Alf dodged through the athletes’ entrance and pelted up to the starting line and the race officials. He scrawled his ragged signature on the entry form, then sat on the grass to change into his running kit. He pulled at his boots but they would not come off. Nearby, a fellow competitor and old rival, Lanky Len Lymer, looked at him and sniggered. Alf tugged at his boots repeatedly. They were stuck. Two officials strolled over and tried to help. Each one took a boot in his hand and pulled, but the boots refused to budge.
Alf's mind suddenly jumped back to the house with the non-existent leak. Boots off at the door. The wasted journey upstairs. The locked door at the bottom. The damp and sticky boots.
“Lummy, I’ve been nobbled!” he yelled out loud. Then he thought - super glue! Somebody put super glue in my boots!
Somehow he managed to struggle out of his trousers and into his shorts, but he knew he looked ridiculous and that all hope of winning the race had gone. He was about to walk off the track and go home when he saw the anguished white face of Father Foley leaning over the barrier as if he were about to be sick.
“You don’t intend running the race in hobnailed boots, do you, Tupper?” asked one of the officials.
“Yes, I blooming well do,” growled Alf.
THE GREYSTONE MILE
The stadium was full and the ice cream man was busy. The Bantock hills in the distance kept changing colour as the sun passed in and out of the white clouds. It was a perfect summer afternoon. But a puzzled murmur was running through the crowd. “Alf’s still got his boots on! Why is he keeping his blooming boots on?” And Alf realised that many of the spectators must have backed him to win and he groaned and cursed the entire race of bookmakers.
Alf eyed up his rivals. It was a decent field, but none but him had run the mile in less than four minutes ten seconds. Lymer had done four eleven, so must now be considered favourite. Lymer, a police inspector with the Greystone force, was six foot six with a marvellous long stride but he lacked stamina and his tactics were laughable. Alf reckoned he’d have been a good runner if he’d trained a bit more and had a brain transplant.
The pistol cracked and they sped away. For the first quarter Alf and Lymer jogged side by side at the back of the field. Suddenly he heard Lymer’s voice: “This is one time you won’t beat me, big head! Those boots are made for walking, not running!”
“Save your breath, lad,” growled Alf. “You might need it.”
But as they started the second quarter Alf was already suffering. The pounding of his boots was breaking up the red shale of the track and coating his legs with fine red powder. He was running in his own red cloud and it was making him cough and splutter. The boots were chafing his ankles and the glue was pulling the skin off his feet. He had to bite his bottom lip to stop crying.
Lymer glanced across and grinned. “You’re too big for your boots, Tupper. No wonder they won’t come off, even without super glue. The bookies have got me at twenty to one and me and my pals are going to make a fortune out of this one!” he yelled. “So long, fat head!” And he surged away, leaving Alf gasping for breath at the back of the field. Alf tut-tutted to himself as the policeman overtook the field like a hundred yard sprinter and went half a lap into the lead. What stupid tactics! He’d burn himself out.
Alf weighed up his own possible tactics. He knew he had no sprint finish in him with these diving boots latched to his feet. But if he could run at an even pace he might make it to the tape and avoid complete dishonour. Alf had never pulled out of a race in his life. He stepped up one gear and caught up with the pack. Slowly, agonisingly, he picked off the field, one by one, until only Lymer was in front of him.
In the midst of his agony, a sudden thought flashed into Alf’s mind. How did Lymer know about the super glue? And then the whole picture seemed to unfold before his eyes. He’d been nobbled and Lymer was in on it. The house where he’d been locked up was for sale and probably uninhabited. The grey haired woman didn’t live there at all and was an accomplice who had lured him there with the story of the leaking pipe. Then they doctored his boots with super glue to remove Lymer’s rival from the race and win a fortune. Blimey, how he’d been had! The thought filled him with such a furious sense of injustice that he hurled himself into a tremendous burst of speed that brought him within a couple of yards of the policeman, who glanced back, saw Alf, and assumed an almost comical look of horror and disbelief.
That mad burst of speed almost finished Alf. He had racking pains in every bone, every limb, every muscle, and his lungs were bursting. Drops of blood spattered from his boots with every stride. It was like running on razor blades. He slowed down, staggered, nearly fell, but struggled on. But Lymer was slowing, too. Through a fog of pain and anger, Alf gazed at Lymer’s back and dug deep into his knowledge of runners and running, and instinctively knew that the policeman was slowing down not because he was all in, but to give himself the energy for a sprint finish. And Alf himself was totally incapable of such a finish. On the last bend, Lymer allowed Alf to move up on to his right shoulder and yelled across, “Well, I really put one over on you this time, Tupper! Think of me when I go to collect my winnings from the bookie! So long, old cock!”
At that moment Alf’s left boot somehow drifted inwards and somehow stamped down hard on Lymer’s big toe with a sickening crunch that made even the Tough of the Track wince, and suddenly the policeman was lying on the track and rolling in agony as Alf staggered through the tape to win the Greystone Mile.
Shortly afterwards, Father Foley came up to Alf holding a briefcase bulging with bank notes. “Thank you, Alf,” he said. “You saved our playing field. But tell me something. Was that an accident?”
“Let’s just say I put my foot in it,” growled Alf.
THE END
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Alf’s hobnailed boots rang on the pavement as he approached the man, then drew level. Suddenly he felt a hand plucking the sleeve of his raincoat and he automatically spun round, adopted a boxing stance and put up his fists.
“Don’t hit me! “ cried the man. “It’s me, Father Foley!”
“Lummy, Father,” said Alf. “Don’t go doing that. I nearly planted one on your nose. What the heck are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you, Alf. Can we go somewhere for a quiet talk?”
“I was on my way to the chip shop,” said Alf. “You can join me if you like.”
Father Foley was a man of sixty with a round pink face and thin white hair like lard spread over a piece of bread. He was the Superintendent of Greystone Mount Orphanage, where Alf had lived for the first ten years of his life, before being adopted by the woman he knew as Auntie Meg. The priest had been hard but fair on Alf, and Alf respected him.
Sam Kessick’s little cafe near the railway viaduct was stiflingly hot, with a succulent perfume of boiling fat and fried fish and chips. They sat at a corner table and Alf ordered six penn’orth of chips, a battered haddock and a big mug of strong tea with six sugars. The priest made do with a cup of tea.
“What’s up, Father?” Alf asked through a mouthful of chips.
“It’s about the race on Saturday - the Greystone Mile. I heard a rumour that you might be pulling out.”
“That’s right,” said Alf. “There’s a big international meeting at the White City in London next week and I don’t want to risk getting injured in the Greystone Mile. So I’m going to scratch from the race.”
“Please, Alf, don’t do that, I beg you,” said Father Foley.
“What’s it got to do with you?”
“I’ve bet a big sum of money on you to win.”
Alf spluttered and a chip flew out of his mouth and splashed in the priest’s tea. “Well, you’re a blooming fool,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I never took you for a betting chap.”
“Alf, my boy, I’ve been forced into it. You know the orphanage playing field ? We’ve been renting that piece of land for 25 years, but now the owner’s putting it up for sale and a big business man wants to get his paws on it to build a factory. The owner says we can have it for five thousand pounds, but all we have to spare is one thousand. Then somebody mentioned that the bookmakers were offering odds of five to one against you winning the Greystone Mile. And like an idiot I bet our thousand pounds on you.”
“Well, you’d better get your money back, “ Alf snorted, “because I’m scratching from the race.”
“But that’s the trouble!” wailed the Superintendent. “The bookie won’t give it back. If a runner scratches from a race the money is lost.”
“This is a marvellous blooming pickle,” said Alf, waving his arms and knocking over the vinegar bottle. “I hate people betting on races. It makes folks greedy. Runners have been known to be nobbled or bribed to lose. You get gangsters involved and no end of trouble. Athletics is a sport, not a blooming business.”
“Please, Alf, I’ll be ruined if you don’t do it,” said Father Foley, gripping Alf’s shoulder and looking pleadingly into his eyes. “I’ll probably go to prison.”
“Prison’s what you deserve,” Alf growled. “Well, I won’t make any promises but I’ll sleep on it.”
He slept badly. He won his first race on that playing field - the sack race, when he was six. And afterwards he had trained there for more important races. What about today’s kids? Were they to be robbed of a place to play and train? But he hated bookies and betting. It went against everything he believed in. How dared the blighters use him as a tool in their money making games?
RACE DAY DAWNS
Saturday morning came and when Alf entered the plumber’s shop, carrying the familiar brown paper parcel containing his running shoes, shorts and vest, Charlie Chipping raised his ginger eyebrows and said, “I thought you weren’t running today.”
“Oh, I might as well give it a go,” mumbled Alf.
The race was at three, but at 1.30, just as Alf was about to put his tools away and leave, the telephone rang, Charlie answered it, then turned to Alf.
“Alf, I hate to ask you this, but there’s a lady with a bad leak flooding her house. It’s on the way to Greystone Stadium, so do you think you’d have time to call in on your way? It should only be a ten minute job.”
“I’m on my way, boss,” said Alf.
He picked up his tool bag and parcel of running kit, left the shop and hurried towards the stadium, munching his jam and marge sandwiches on the way. The house was in a posh part of town with three red brick storeys, big bay windows and well tended flower beds. A “for sale” sign stood by the gate. Alf's ring on the bell was answered by a tall, thin woman of about 50, with grey hair screwed into a painful looking bun at the back.
“Take those boots off before you come in,” she ordered in a voice like vinegar.
The customer’s always right, thought Alf, even though she looks like a nanny goat and has the manners of one. He removed his boots and entered in his bare feet. He never wore socks.
“Where’s the leak, lady?”
“It’s up in the attic,” she said, staring at his feet and then pointing to the stairs door.
Alf climbed three flights of stairs, pushed open the attic door and entered a cluttered room lit by a fanlight in the ceiling. He looked everywhere but could find no leak, no water, not even a water pipe. He searched the rest of the upstairs rooms without success. Deeply puzzled, he started down the stairs. At the bottom he met an obstacle. The door would not open. He hammered on it with his fists but nobody came to let him out. He yelled at the top of his lungs, but still nobody came. It was getting on for 2.15 and Alf was growing anxious. He felt like kicking the door down, but his boots were outside on the doormat. He knocked and shouted some more. Then he sat down on a step, scratched his shaggy hair, and thought furiously. He jumped up, opened his tool bag, and got to work on the lock with a chisel and screwdriver. After ten minutes there was a satisfying click and the door swung open. Nobody was about. The house seemed empty. “There’s something fishy going on,” he thought, scowling.
It was 2.25, the stadium was a mile away and he had to be there in ten minutes to sign in for the race. He pulled his boots on. They felt damp and sticky inside. He dashed out of the house and ran up the road, through crowds of people heading for the stadium. Blue and silver sparks flew from the hobnails under his boots. His heavy tool bag banged against his leg and slowed him down. People stepped in his path.
“By gum!” cried a voice. “That’s Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track!”
“Make way for Alf!” cried another. And then the cry was taken up all the way to the stadium and the crowd parted like the Red Sea for Moses.
Alf dodged through the athletes’ entrance and pelted up to the starting line and the race officials. He scrawled his ragged signature on the entry form, then sat on the grass to change into his running kit. He pulled at his boots but they would not come off. Nearby, a fellow competitor and old rival, Lanky Len Lymer, looked at him and sniggered. Alf tugged at his boots repeatedly. They were stuck. Two officials strolled over and tried to help. Each one took a boot in his hand and pulled, but the boots refused to budge.
Alf's mind suddenly jumped back to the house with the non-existent leak. Boots off at the door. The wasted journey upstairs. The locked door at the bottom. The damp and sticky boots.
“Lummy, I’ve been nobbled!” he yelled out loud. Then he thought - super glue! Somebody put super glue in my boots!
Somehow he managed to struggle out of his trousers and into his shorts, but he knew he looked ridiculous and that all hope of winning the race had gone. He was about to walk off the track and go home when he saw the anguished white face of Father Foley leaning over the barrier as if he were about to be sick.
“You don’t intend running the race in hobnailed boots, do you, Tupper?” asked one of the officials.
“Yes, I blooming well do,” growled Alf.
THE GREYSTONE MILE
The stadium was full and the ice cream man was busy. The Bantock hills in the distance kept changing colour as the sun passed in and out of the white clouds. It was a perfect summer afternoon. But a puzzled murmur was running through the crowd. “Alf’s still got his boots on! Why is he keeping his blooming boots on?” And Alf realised that many of the spectators must have backed him to win and he groaned and cursed the entire race of bookmakers.
Alf eyed up his rivals. It was a decent field, but none but him had run the mile in less than four minutes ten seconds. Lymer had done four eleven, so must now be considered favourite. Lymer, a police inspector with the Greystone force, was six foot six with a marvellous long stride but he lacked stamina and his tactics were laughable. Alf reckoned he’d have been a good runner if he’d trained a bit more and had a brain transplant.
The pistol cracked and they sped away. For the first quarter Alf and Lymer jogged side by side at the back of the field. Suddenly he heard Lymer’s voice: “This is one time you won’t beat me, big head! Those boots are made for walking, not running!”
“Save your breath, lad,” growled Alf. “You might need it.”
But as they started the second quarter Alf was already suffering. The pounding of his boots was breaking up the red shale of the track and coating his legs with fine red powder. He was running in his own red cloud and it was making him cough and splutter. The boots were chafing his ankles and the glue was pulling the skin off his feet. He had to bite his bottom lip to stop crying.
Lymer glanced across and grinned. “You’re too big for your boots, Tupper. No wonder they won’t come off, even without super glue. The bookies have got me at twenty to one and me and my pals are going to make a fortune out of this one!” he yelled. “So long, fat head!” And he surged away, leaving Alf gasping for breath at the back of the field. Alf tut-tutted to himself as the policeman overtook the field like a hundred yard sprinter and went half a lap into the lead. What stupid tactics! He’d burn himself out.
Alf weighed up his own possible tactics. He knew he had no sprint finish in him with these diving boots latched to his feet. But if he could run at an even pace he might make it to the tape and avoid complete dishonour. Alf had never pulled out of a race in his life. He stepped up one gear and caught up with the pack. Slowly, agonisingly, he picked off the field, one by one, until only Lymer was in front of him.
In the midst of his agony, a sudden thought flashed into Alf’s mind. How did Lymer know about the super glue? And then the whole picture seemed to unfold before his eyes. He’d been nobbled and Lymer was in on it. The house where he’d been locked up was for sale and probably uninhabited. The grey haired woman didn’t live there at all and was an accomplice who had lured him there with the story of the leaking pipe. Then they doctored his boots with super glue to remove Lymer’s rival from the race and win a fortune. Blimey, how he’d been had! The thought filled him with such a furious sense of injustice that he hurled himself into a tremendous burst of speed that brought him within a couple of yards of the policeman, who glanced back, saw Alf, and assumed an almost comical look of horror and disbelief.
That mad burst of speed almost finished Alf. He had racking pains in every bone, every limb, every muscle, and his lungs were bursting. Drops of blood spattered from his boots with every stride. It was like running on razor blades. He slowed down, staggered, nearly fell, but struggled on. But Lymer was slowing, too. Through a fog of pain and anger, Alf gazed at Lymer’s back and dug deep into his knowledge of runners and running, and instinctively knew that the policeman was slowing down not because he was all in, but to give himself the energy for a sprint finish. And Alf himself was totally incapable of such a finish. On the last bend, Lymer allowed Alf to move up on to his right shoulder and yelled across, “Well, I really put one over on you this time, Tupper! Think of me when I go to collect my winnings from the bookie! So long, old cock!”
At that moment Alf’s left boot somehow drifted inwards and somehow stamped down hard on Lymer’s big toe with a sickening crunch that made even the Tough of the Track wince, and suddenly the policeman was lying on the track and rolling in agony as Alf staggered through the tape to win the Greystone Mile.
Shortly afterwards, Father Foley came up to Alf holding a briefcase bulging with bank notes. “Thank you, Alf,” he said. “You saved our playing field. But tell me something. Was that an accident?”
“Let’s just say I put my foot in it,” growled Alf.
THE END
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