'Ron Cunningham' - The Jockey

[dem bones]

'Ron Cunningham' - The Jockey (NEL, July 1970)

Blurb

A story of fast horses — the men who train them and the men who ride them. THE JOCKEY is a story of the racing scene that probes beneath the glossy surface.

Joe Standish rides his way to the top — ruthlessly and skilfully — but finds his success turns bitter. Doping and bribery shatter his career and his wife's death completes a personal tragedy.

Joe's other love is women. He's broken in by a stable girl but the trainer's wife shows him more expensive pleasures. The rich and frustrated women who follow racing also follow Joe. And he doesn't often say 'No'.

The first two pages are so, well, normal i began to wonder if Justin had made a mistake in attributing this to Moffat, but nope, fool i was for ever doubting.

Horse-loving Joe Standish, 15, comes from gardening stock dating back to 1780, but he's desperate to buck tradition. His mum convinces dad Tom to give him a year to prove he can become a jockey before he takes up the trowel and flowerpots. So it's off to Brackhaven Lodge with him where Tom introduces him to the trainer's wife, attractive twenty-something Laura Lechlay whose ever swelling breasts, need you ask, are "marvellous". Laura feels Joe's biceps and assures Tom that his son will a top rider, secretly wondering to herself if their might be something of providence about the youth's arrival. But her conscience warns her to be careful. "If Tom Standish ever suspected what she was ....

Don Lechlay sets the boy to forking straw, and before long he's attracted the unwelcome attention of seventeen year old Mary Bennett ("enormous"), stable girl and vociferous advocate of free love. Joe has always been frightened of women, but when Mary breaks into his room and introduces him to the delights of bad sex, he realises there's maybe more to life than mucking out thoroughbreds. And what's this Mary said about the amorous Mrs. Lechlay having a thing for stable-boys ....?

to be seriously continued ...

[fritzmaitland]

Superb! 'Forking straw' indeed! I have one of Mr 'Cunningham''s novels - Washington International, but it's a hack mystery story instead of this sort of thing (More's the pity). As I believe someone mentioned before, it does boast 'his voice reminded me of a skinhead I once knew in London.'

[dem bones]

Joe wins his first race on 'Falloun Prince' and to mark the occasion, Laura Lechlay hotfoots it to the stables to smother him with her "strawberry-tipped globes". Joe feels guilty and ashamed - after all her husband has done for him! - but then Mrs. Lechlay represents "everything seductive in the female - a vixen about to feast herself on some unsuspecting morsel - a Black Widow ready to consummate and devour."

Impressed by Joe's performance on the track, horse owner Lt. Colonel William Presser-Meld of the Gloucester Hunt insists on Joe jockeying his pride and joy 'Military Genius' at Cheltenham. Presser-Meld was a respected rider and insatiable bedroom athlete in his day, and he still has an eye for the ladies ("dashed fine filly there!") though, much to his dismay, he doubts he still has the stamina to keep up with the young 'uns. Well, there are still seventy pages for him to give it a go. Meanwhile Raichel Penderghast, 35, even more beautiful than Laura Lechlay, has just scooped a record £400, 000 on the pools thanks to her psychic cat. Now she has the country mansion sorted, Raichel is determined to buy herself a championship winning horse ....

No product placement so far, although to compensate Moffat name-checks half the shops in Prestbury - "Waghorne for good meat, Newmans for sweets and tobacco, Sumptions for newspapers and comics and stamps, Stevens for pharmaceutical prescriptions", etc., - and it's possible he may have known the interior of The King's Arms. Incidentally, via Raichel, a Moffat-eye view of football at the close of the 'sixties: "She seldom watched football games on television - they bored her with those petty fouls, the players arguing with the referee, the sneaky methods employed to gain a few yards when taking a throw in. She got wild when she watched blatant injustices overlooked by a tolerant referee and wished that football had a system of 'sin-bin' penalties similar to ice-hockey. It would cut down on pettiness, she thought, if prima donna stars were sent to cool off in a special sanctum sanctorum for ten minutes or so."

[fritzmaitland]

Mar 29, 2010 20:13:05 GMT dem bones said:

her "strawberry-tipped globes". ...Meanwhile Raichel Penderghast, 35, even more beautiful than Laura Lechlay, has just scooped a record £400, 000 on the pools thanks to her psychic cat.

Where would you find this kind of stuff today? Nowhere.

Good to see Moffatt invoking his Canadian heritage with the ice-hockey reference.

[dem bones]

Mar 29, 2010 21:25:48 GMT fritzmaitland said:

Good to see Moffatt invoking his Canadian heritage with the ice-hockey reference.

You'll be glad to know he also introduces a resilient character named Jim the Canadian, expert cardsharp, who waltzes through doors 'strictly forbidden' to common or garden race-goers. At Ascot, he's invited to drink with people you and I can "only read about in the social columns of The Daily Express" and, from their unguarded comments he accumulates "fantastic knowledge" of the track.

Oh, and it looks like Lt. Colonel Presser-Meld is about to get his end away with Raichel the pools winner. Dirty old goat!

[dem bones]

Damn, it's been so long since I finished this, can't remember much of what happened after the randy lieutenant colonel pulled the pools winner. Don Lechlay finds out that Joe the Jockey has been knocking off his nympho wife and reluctantly dismisses him, whereupon the youngster embarks on rising and falling in double-quick time. Remember thinking it was more tightly plotted than we're used to from Moffat, but I guess that really ain't saying a whole lot. Not started this next yet, but it promises to be very much in the same vein (and I'll bet The Footballer is virtually identical: anyone read it?).

Ron Cunningham (James Moffat) - Don Grey: Racing Commentator (NEL, Jan. 1971)

Blurb:
Don Grey has become one of the world's foremost sportscasters. As racing correspondent for the leading Australian newspaper and a commentator with a roving commission covering every top racecourse in the world, he was riding the pinnacle of his career.

But inside racing, Grey was loathed — with an almost homicidal. intensity. More than once he was guilty of romancing another man's wife, and many trainers, owners and jockeys had tried to put him out of com­mission for life. But Grey was courageous — and a dynamic fighter.

Ron Cunningham, author of the bestselling and authori­tative "THE JOCKEY", has created a totally absorbing adventure of the racing world that thunders with the spirit of the turf.

[franklinmarsh]

Blimey! You're digging 'em out! I think I still might have Ron's 'Washington International' somewhere. Not exactly great, but interesting for Moffatisms. 'The Jockey' seems far superior, and I bet the 'The Footballer' is too. Watch out for Lager and Tomato Juice!

[dem bones]

Richard Allen

Been hoping this would turn up online for so long that i stopped looking for it and what do you know! Ian MacMillan's documentary Skinhead Farewell (BBC, 1996), celebrating the literary career of 'Richard Allen'/ 'Ron Cunningham'/ 'Etienne Aubin'/ James Moffat etc., is available to view in seven parts via a chap named Albert Hoffman's YouTube channel (when you get there, just type 'Richard Allen' in the search box and you'll be OK). Have just watched four of the 7 minute clips and MacMillan is to be commended on rounding up some seriously top notch interviewees including Mrs. Jim Moffat, Peter Haining, Bob Tanner, Sandra Shulman (on writing the orgy scenes for The Degenerates) and Peter Cave who reveals that some Hells Angels were less than happy with Chopper). We also catch Nigel Wingrove on a Redemption video shoot, tons of NEL youth cult paperbacks, and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from the Tubby Isaacs Seafood Stall in sunny Aldgate.

Peter Haining

Sandra Shulman

Peter Cave

[noose]

Brilliant documentary - just watched it all, that's made my day Dem, cheers for that.