The Sugarlump Man

Dan Cavendish was shovelling shit at dawn when he first met the Sugarlump Man. Maybe things would have been different if he’d been grooming a chestnut mare to a high polish shine. Maybe even picking out her great saucepan hooves would have left Dan feeling like he had the upper hand. The point was moot. He had been shovelling shit when the Sugarlump Man had wafted into the yard, a faint perfumed wisp to Dan’s heaving, reeking frame. What was done could not be undone. 

Dan eyeballed the Man, but not unkindly. He saw the expensive looking camel coat that hung neatly off of thin, stooped shoulders. Such an unusual shade of grey. Almost lavender. He took in the meticulously manicured nails, and the spotless brogues, gleaming like a bloody penny in the churned mud of the yard. His eyes even lingered over the sprig of harebell, surely out of season, tucked in the gentleman’s buttonhole.  Unluckily for Dan, it wasn’t in his nature to be suspicious. Not since he took that tumble.  

“Can I help you?"

“I just wanted to give the gels some sugar lumps. Thassall.” The man slipped a thin, papery hand into the breast pocket of his coat, jostling gently. The soft rustle and click of paper and sugar filled the silence between them

Dan snorted. These were thoroughbred racing horses. The upkeep for each one was more than Dan’s rent. They ate better than him, and their diets were meticulously monitored by the stable manager, and some bigwig equine nutritionist the Boss had gotten in. He’d wouldn’t be surprised if some of the horses in his care had never seen a sugarlump. Might make them loopy. He said as much.  

The Sugarlump Man chortled. “More than your job’s worth, eh?” 

Dan hadn’t even thought about that. 

He pictured the look on the Boss’s face if he found out that one of his precious mares had been fed on sugar cubes.  It wasn’t pretty.  They were only a fortnight out from race day. The Boss was a superstitious man, everything had to be just so. He reminded Dan of this often enough. 

But the satisfaction of knowing something the Boss didn’t…well. That was its own kind of sweet. Nobody else was about to see.

“Go on then. I don’t see why not.” 

The Sugarlump Man smiled, and moved from stable door to stable door, palms flat, fingers outstretched in offering. Soft huffs of approval came from each of the horses in turn.  Their white breath hung in the cold morning air, adrift like strands of candy floss, or seaweed. 

***

Since the fall, Dan knew he had lost things that he couldn’t fully remember having had in the first place. He knew people hadn’t always talked to him the way they did now, with syrupy slowness and thinly veiled impatience. Dan knew he’d been a sharp customer at some point. It wasn’t like he was dim now. Just slower. His body still knew how to handle a spooked horse. But now every thought and feeling came softly, indistinct, a headlight through fog. 

Maybe that was why he wasn’t too surprised when he saw the Sugarlump Man again. 

So it went, each dawn the two men would meet at the stable yard. By the third day there wasn’t even much in the way of words passed between them, just a small smile of complicity, a little jostle of the pocket, an imperceptible nod of permission. Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d granted permission to someone, rather than seeking it. It was delicious.

On the third day, the horses were waiting by their stable doors for the Sugarlump Man. By the seventh day, they were pawing and thrashing impatiently even before the sun came up.  By the thirteenth day, a strange calm had come over the whole yard, and brought with it a smell Dan did not know. 

Dan had only started to have misgivings on the ninth day, when he found not one horse had touched its hay. He knew it was too late to change tack by then though. He didn’t fight it. He became like a blade of grass dropped in a river - insensible to the course ahead, allowing himself to be carried forward. 

***

Race day was pandemonium. Dan loved it. The jersey colours, the chatter and roar of the crowds, the rich smell of the sweat of jockeys and horses alike - it brought everything back to him. Through the fog Dan was faintly aware of the dull ache of longing, and something that might have looked like panic, if he could have seen it clearly.

The stables were awash with chatting grooms, trainers and jockeys. The thrum of gossip usually washed over Dan, but a few hoarsely whispered snatches of it grabbed his attention now;

“...purple coat…”

“...funny old bugger…”

“...five hundred quid?!..”

“...can’t have been the same guy, you’re miles away from us…”

An old acquaintance of Dan’s, Curly, spotted Dan’s perplexed face and deftly rounded him into the tight circle.
“What about you Cavendish? Did you have that old kook with the purple jacket try paying you off to feed the horses?” There was a note of disquiet in Curly’s voice. “What did you end up taking from him? 500? 1000?”

Through the fog, Dan began to feel quite ill. The others started prattling to fill the brief silence immediately. They were scared.

“It was just a bit of sugar though!”

“Yeah what’s the harm?”

“And even if it isn’t … if everybody’s been at it…well, it all comes out in the wash.”

Dan suddenly found all eyes on him. He nodded mutely, and turned on his heel. The Boss’ favourite gelding, Letsby Avenue, was in the next race, and Dan suddenly felt very strongly he would not want to miss this. 

***

The starter took to the rostrum, his flag lowered to invite the jockeys and their steeds forward. Everyone under starter’s orders, the flag is then raised. 

Nothing unusual in the run up to the first fence - maybe the horses all seemed unusually light on their feet. Maybe that was just Dan’s own adrenaline. Every horse cleared the first fence, even Curly’s boss’s broodmare, the one that everyone agreed was probably overdue for glue. The second fence was even more of a spectacle - Dan could have sworn each horse rose off the earth in unison and hung there, held aloft by air and betting slips. 

The first crack of a jockey’s whip rang out, louder than the pummeling hooves, louder than the jeering crowd. This was what Dan would always remember as the true start of that race. 

The jockey was the tightlipped lad from Limerick who was riding for Dan’s Boss. Where the lad had given Letsby the stick, the grey gold pelt of the horse’s flank had split like the skin of an over ripe peach. The horse did not slow for his injury, galloping harder as the hide peeled raggedly from his back. Nor did the jockey seem inclined to retire. Rather, he thrashed the poor creature all the harder - Dan could see the whites of terrified, rolling eyes, man and beast alike. Agape, he waited for the inevitable rearing of the horse, to see the wiry frame of the rider tumble, to hear that familiar crunch - but the fall never came.

It took Dan a few moments to realise what he was seeing, and a few moments longer to realise that he was screaming. All the riders had begun using their sticks. Some were thrashing around their horses’ faces. Some were trying to pry their lead hands off of the reins, with no success. But the horses were of one mind - all galloping in unison, all splitting their skins where the whips glanced off of them, shreds of bay, chestnut and grey littering the racecourse like discarded bunting. 

By the fourth fence, they were all unveiled for the betting public to see. Eyes rolled like white marbles in skeletal heads. Fat, slick black bodies pulsed wetly under the stricken jockeys, now fused to the hides of their ghastly steeds like flies in a web. Fins erupted from fetlocks and manes, pulsating like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly. 

That wasn’t enough to deter the crowds though. High rolling ladies out for a flutter. Dedicated trainers. Backers up to their eyeballs in debt. Dozens of them spilled out onto the racecourse, hands grasping, bellowing for the horses to slow down. They all stuck, some managing to clamber in the saddle, others being dragged through the churn in their suits and fascinators. 

At the fifth fence, the meet moved as one and took a sharp right off of the racecourse. Security barriers and staff were swept aside or trampled. The kelpies were making straight for the nearest body of water. 

The golf course had never seen such a violation. All those hooves tearing up the green. Strings of bodies, some howling, some silent, dragging through the sand traps after the parade of gasping horses. More than one caddy shed a silent tear for the landscaping as the grotesque procession finally made its way to the water hazard. 

There was barely enough space for all twelve creatures and their casualties in the ornamental lake, but the nature of the beasts demanded they feast in the nearest body of water. A golfing party of hedge fund managers looked on awkwardly as the kelpies bared their teeth. Slowly, methodically, the kelpies made more space in the lake. The fountain sputtered, ran red. A dozen muzzles let out contented sighs before sinking lazily below the foaming waterline, to finally rest.

“Play on?” asked one of the hedge fund managers, uncertainly. 

“I don’t see why not,” smiled the aging caddy, reassurance his middle name, popping a single sugar lump into his mouth.