I Own the Racecourse! by Patricia Wrightson

only there was some way to get to him . . .’ He glanced at Mike; but Mike was staring at the sky, and his face was closed. Joe frowned. Suddenly he said, ‘I’ll see you blokes later,’ and turned abruptly into another street. Matt raised his eyebrows at Terry, but no one said anything.
    The streets were growing dark as Joe wandered on, full of a slow, helpless anger. He was thinking, What do they care? Who cares about Andy Hoddel? He’s only poor old Andy. He’s lucky to have us, his mother says. That ought to be good enough for him, having us—he can’t expect us to do anything for him, can he?
    Then the anger faded into a hurt and disappointed feeling. ‘I would’ve thought you could count on Mike,’ muttered Joe. He always had counted on Mike; counted on him, not only to see the same problems that Joe saw, but to work them out and come up with the right answer. And now, just at the worst moment, Mike closed up and didn’t seem to care.
    â€˜I’ll have to work it out myself, that’s all,’ said Joe, turning into a lane so narrow that there was no footpath at all. Tall fences pressed towards him on each side, and above them rose a shadowy wilderness of back stairs, little balconies behind rotting blinds, lights glowing through coloured curtains, the dark masses of roofs and chimneys and, drawn sharply against the tarnished sky, the sketchy outlines of television antennae. Joe saw none of it. He was trying to work things out.
    The problem, it seemed to him, was to make Andy see what was real and what was not. Joe could see that that might be hard for someone like Andy. Easy enough to know that a house was real, or a loaf of bread, for instance; but what about things like atoms, or Mount Everest, or war? A lot of people never saw those things at all, but they were real, just the same. For someone like Andy, it must often be pretty hard to tell which things were real and which weren’t. If someone came along and told him that he owned Beecham Park, how was Andy to know that wasn’t as real as atoms? All the more reason, thought Joe, for making Andy understand. Some things were real, and you had to live with them whether you liked them or not; other things weren’t and you couldn’t have them even if you wanted to. If you didn’t know which were which, you were just going to waste a lot of time and get in a hopeless sort of mess. That was the important thing; the question was, how to explain it to Andy? Joe went on thinking about it until he found himself at his own front gate without knowing how he came there.
    Andy himself was still sitting near the track and watching the greyhounds training. In spite of them, his face had its sad, lost look. His friends had come at last, and had gone away again. He had tried to bring them into Beecham Park and show them that it was his. He didn’t have the words to tell them about it: about misty mornings and horses silently running; rain-soaked mornings and the flashing wings of seagulls; warm evenings and leaping dogs. He couldn’t describe the excitement of floodlit nights, or the peace inside the quiet walls on a warm afternoon. He could only try to show them. They had laughed, too; but then they had gone away. He had lost them again. He sat there sadly, watching the dogs, and it was some time before he heard voices calling softly from the gate.
    â€˜Andy Hoddel! Hey, Hoddel!’
    When he did hear, he looked to see who was calling. In the dusk he could see Charlie Willis and another boy, Ted Chance, grinning and beckoning in the gateway. Andy frowned. They were not friends of his. ‘I heard you,’ he said loudly. ‘What do you want?’
    â€˜Who said you could go in there, Hoddel? Come on over here.’
    â€˜No one said. I just came. I’m staying.’
    The two boys whispered together for a minute, then crept through the gate and came softly to Andy.
    â€˜I never said