This Sporting Life Page 3

  We left together and caught a bus outside the ground. An early winter darkness had already settled. The lights of the town glowed hazily in the valley. We sat at the front of the bus and watched the grey stone walls and buildings slip away either side. I took out the paper book I’d been trying to read on the way up before the match. Johnson’s elation was beginning to drain now it was all over. He made occasional comments, glancing at me with a new type of possessiveness. In the same mood we got off the bus in the Bull Ring and caught the 10 bus along West Street to Highfield.

  ‘I’ve read that,’ he said, touching the book, then laying his finger across the page to stop me reading.

  ‘What’s it about?’ I asked him.

  ‘A boxer.’ He coughed, and blew his nose through his fingers.

  ‘You can tell that from the cover,’ I said, showing him the picture on the front. He stared at the painted face and the two big red gloves.

  ‘Do you like the book?’ he asked.

  I shrugged, said something casual: I didn’t want to show him I was impressed by this tough hero. Eventually, as if he’d got fingers clamped round his throat, he let out what had been occupying him since the match. ‘Do you want me to come home with you?’

  He looked at me with a bewildered sort of anxiety; acting.

  ‘It’s no trouble—no trouble to me,’ he added.

  ‘If you like. Come and have some tea. Mrs Hammond won’t mind.’

  He didn’t say anything else. We rattled on through the pools of lamplight, past the estate, to the more isolated extremity of the town below the hospital ridge.

  There was no one in the house. Mrs Hammond was out with the two kids. Probably on purpose. We sat in the kitchen at the back and waited. Johnson started off about the match again, glancing now and again at the pair of brown boots in the hearth, digging at the fire with the poker, and adding more coal. He tried to make himself at home.

  It was at the fire, and its now huge blaze, that Mrs Hammond’s eyes flashed the moment she was in the room. She stared angrily at me and one of the kids said, ‘I’n it warm, Mam?’

  ‘Warm!’ she said, then caught sight of Johnson struggling to his feet in the corner of the room. ‘It’s like an oven,’ she added bitterly. ‘You know we can’t use all that coal, Mr Machin.’ She ignored Johnson and waited for me. Her resentment turned from the fire to Johnson: I shouldn’t have brought him in.

  ‘Mr Johnson came home with me,’ I told her aimlessly. ‘We’ve just got back from the match. This’s Mrs Hammond,’ I told him. They said something to each other. Johnson stayed by his chair.

  ‘We haven’t much in for tea,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t boast about it,’ I told her. ‘Mr Johnson might get the idea we’re poor.’

  She was close to tears or to breaking out in threats. She’d no feeling left for anything. I helped her to empty her bag. I saw it was a big mistake bringing Johnson back, and I found I wasn’t blaming her. I was blaming him. I put the few packets on the table, and wondered why she’d bothered buying them.

  ‘I’ve just been shopping,’ she said. ‘It’s awful weather.’

  ‘It is,’ Johnson said. ‘Nowt but drizzle and mist.’

  She fussed round the table, content I should help her, wanting Johnson to see that I did. She filled the kettle. The kids were still standing by the door. They sensed their mother’s resentment and glowered at Johnson’s figure.

  ‘You sit down,’ I told him.

  He slid into the chair and sat upright, alert, watching me. Mrs Hammond said, ‘How did the match go? Did you win?’

  There was no need for her to hide her interest; she wasn’t at all concerned. I made some reply, then Johnson almost cried out, ‘He played a blinder, missis!’

  ‘Did he?’ She looked at me for a second. ‘And how much have they signed him on for?’

  ‘It’s not as quick as that. He’s another three matches to play afore they settle ought like that.’

  ‘I’d have thought,’ she said, lighting up at Johnson’s concern, ‘if he was as good as that they’d have signed him, right off.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He sounded pompous. ‘They’ve to have a safeguard—you know, where so much money’s bound up.’

  ‘He’s another three matches to play for nothing then.’

  ‘Not for nothing. He gets thirty bob; amateur pay. It’s a sort of safeguard.’

  ‘That’s very good,’ she said. ‘Thirty shillings.’

  ‘It’s nowt really,’ he told her. ‘He’ll be able to ask for anything he likes after four matches like today’s. It won’t pay them to refuse him, Mrs Hammond. I’nt that right, Arthur?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll give him it, Mr Johnson.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes watering in the heat. ‘He’ll sail away.’

  ‘You’ll be very pleased,’ she said with even greater tartness, and looked at Johnson with increased surprise.

  We were outside the front door, in the street, when Johnson suddenly touched my arm and whispered, ‘I forgot to tell thee. Slomer was there today.’

  I pulled away from him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I forgot. He left before the end. It’s not often he comes to watch an “A” team match.’

  ‘What did he think?’

  He smiled. ‘Nay, he didn’t talk to me.’

  ‘Couldn’t you tell by his face? He’s a cripple, isn’t he? Where was he sitting?’

  ‘Behind me. A few rows back.’

  He suddenly regretted having mentioned Slomer.

  ‘Where are you going now, Arthur?’ he said, and looked behind me into the lighted passage distastefully. ‘Come on out. We can go down to the King.’

  ‘I feel tired.’

  ‘We can be down there in a minute. We can catch a bus.’

  When I moved aside the light showed up his small anxious face; an irritated mask in the darkness. Behind me I heard Mrs Hammond in the passage. ‘I’ll come tomorrow, maybe. Around dinner-time,’ I told him, and stepped back inside the door. ‘I’ll see you then, Dad.’

  ‘You don’t mind me helping you? Do you, Arthur?’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’ His face disappeared, replaced by the worn top of his flat cap, as though he’d scraped under many roofs with it on.

  ‘I was hoping … you know, that you didn’t think I was pushing in, interfering,’ his hidden face said.

  ‘No. …’ I began uncertainly.

  ‘Because I want to help you—you know what I mean? If I’m in a position to help I think it’s only right. …’

  ‘Yeh. That’s right, Dad.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘No,’ I emphasized. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Thanks for everything.’

  ‘That’s all right, Arthur. Any time. Any time at all.’

  He waited for me to close the door on him.

  Mrs Hammond was clearing up in the kitchen. I remembered that particular look on her face for a long time afterwards. ‘Since the fire’s so high we don’t want a light,’ she said.

  ‘I only want a rest,’ I told her. ‘It’s all right by me.’ I sat by the fire and didn’t make a sound.

  ‘Why don’t you go to your room if you’re tired?’ she said when she saw me getting out Blood on the Canvas. Her voice was half strangled. The flames moved about on her.

  ‘I couldn’t rest there. I don’t feel like sleeping.’

  ‘Aren’t you going out? I’d have thought you’d be wanting to enjoy your fame.’

  I gave a big sigh to show how really tired I was.

  ‘You could do something then, to help out.’

  ‘As you
like.’ Ted Williams was telling his woman about the fight. She was stroking his hair, laying it on thick, making him feel it was worth it, for her. He was wincing with pain. But he was tough. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You could wash up. Everything seems to have piled up today. One thing and another.’ Her voice had no tone—that is, it had only one tone, dull, as if she were suppressing some big internal pain.

  I went to the sink and put the tea things in the bowl, then the dinner things, then the breakfast things, then the plates from last night’s supper. ‘Leave that Johnson’s cup on one side,’ she said. ‘I’ll wash it out later myself—scald it. There’s some water in the kettle for washing.’

  I poured it out, steaming, but when I had to cool it from the tap she said, ‘Don’t put too much cold water in. You might as well not have used the water from the kettle.’

  ‘Where’s Lynda and the kid?’

  ‘They’re upstairs. I’m putting them to bed in a minute.’

  ‘It’s early for them.’

  ‘They always go early on Saturdays.’

  I clinked a few cups and wiped the mist off the mirror so I could see myself, and she added, ‘If they don’t they’re kept awake by the drunks, and they never settle down.’ She watched me wash the first cup. She waited for the second, then said, ‘If you rinse the cup under the tap after you’ve washed it you get the soap out—it’s cleaner. I don’t want to keep bothering.’

  When she came down from shoving the kids to bed the pots were standing on the table ready to put away. I was sitting by the fire, getting a dose of what Williams’s domestic routine was like after a big fight. I wondered why they didn’t put a picture of his blonde sample on the front cover. Say in the background, behind one of those big red gloves, just to the right of his ear. She could be draped on this sofa she had in her flat. It’d look pretty neat, him stuck out front, taking the knocks, and she waiting behind, all ready with a big load of comfort. What it must be like to be Williams! All those samples to choose from. Nobody to beat his left chop and that killing right hook. His left chop—

  ‘You can smoke if you like,’ Mrs Hammond said, and after examining the plates to see how much grease I might have left on them, she began carrying them to the cupboard.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘I say—you can smoke.’

  ‘But what’s all the fussing, the telling, about?’

  ‘Now the children are out of the way. I don’t like smoking when they’re down here.’

  ‘You never mentioned that before.’

  ‘Well, now you know.’ She messed about in the cupboard, making some noise. Then she said, ‘It’s hardly a wage.’

  ‘You mean this afternoon?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘They make it one when they sign you on,’ I told her.

  ‘And will they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The old man seemed pretty sure … He treats you like a son.’

  I turned to look at her. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ I thought about what she’d said. ‘I only call him Dad because he’s old.’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The way he treats you—ogles you. He looks at you like a girl.’

  ‘Aw, don’t come with that. He’s interested that’s all.’

  ‘I’d say excited.’

  ‘Excited then. What’s the matter with that? There isn’t much for him to get excited about at his age. He’s done a lot for me.’

  ‘That’s what I mean—it’s unusual.’ She hung the cups on their respective hooks in the cupboard as if her argument fell into place in the same easy way.

  ‘If you don’t take an interest in football yourself, just how do you know what way it affects other people? Most of them that do get excited over it are his age.’

  ‘Not personal, though. It’s personal with him.’ She’d come to stand with her hands flat on the table.

  ‘Look—I know you’re tired and I shouldn’t have brought him back here. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.’

  ‘I’m not tired. I don’t care if you bring him back or not.’

  ‘What are you getting at, then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘He hasn’t a son of his own. Do you know him or something?’

  ‘I might do.’ She’d tensed across the table, with the firelight flickering on her. ‘How much would he get if you did sign on?’

  I tried to act hurt. But she wasn’t noticing. It seemed to me she was trying to keep up with me, and ahead of Johnson. I put the hurt tone into my voice. ‘He’d get nothing. I’ve never even thought of it.’

  ‘I bet he has.’

  I suddenly felt there might be something in Johnson’s friendship I ought to protect.

  ‘He’s not like that,’ I told her.

  ‘Isn’t he. He’s never had a job in his life.’

  She was really bitter. I wondered how Williams would have handled her. Beaten her up? Slapped her down—he’d at least have done that. That could be the smart way a tiger acted. Rough. ‘And how do you know he’s never worked?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve got eyes. Just look at his hands. He’s never done a day’s work. He’s got awful hands. They’re all soft.’

  ‘What the hell have his hands got to do with it?’ I took a quick look at my own. ‘He’s got awful hands. I’ve got awful hands. We’re not all women. I don’t even know if I will be signed on. He doesn’t know either.’

  ‘He seems to have a good idea.’ She sounded casual. ‘I heard him mention Slomer.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I heard him mention Slomer.’

  ‘So you heard him mention Slomer. You’re talking like a kid. What’re you talking about? That’s what I’d like to know. Slomer helps to pay for the club. In fact, he probably is the club. At least a good half of it. He’s got a lot of money.’

  ‘And you’re satisfied with that sort of money? He’s a Catholic.’

  I wondered how far that should affect me. After all, in this street, in the next street, in all the streets, the battalions of them you could see from the hospital ridge over the valley, a Catholic more or less represented a foreign agent. They might be on your side. On the other hand they might not. It was better to treat them all as enemies, then you could be sure. If you made every one of them a tiger then you couldn’t go for wrong. With Slomer I felt somehow it should be different. He had money. He was a punter. I’d have thought that’d cancel out any other affiliations he might have had.

  ‘From what I hear,’ I told her, ‘I don’t approve of Weaver. But I still work at his factory. You think I should change my job?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’ She seemed pretty pleased at having provoked me. The fire had sunk too low to read by, and she wasn’t having the light on. She even began to polish the boots in the hearth with a little yellow duster, kneeling in the fire-glow.

  ‘I gather your husband worked at Weaver’s,’ I said, and sounded formal, as if making an important announcement about some trouble with which I wasn’t personally concerned.

  ‘Who told you that?’ she said, but didn’t look up. She had her forefinger inside the duster and was rubbing in the creases round the lace-holes.

  ‘This bloke. He happened to ask where I was living. And I told him. He said your husband used to work there.’

  ‘He must have told you something else besides. You wouldn’t be bringing it up if he hadn’t … I suppose you told him how you were living for next to nothing with old Hammond’s widow.’

  ‘No. But I told him what I paid, and said I made up the rest by helping round the house.’

  ‘I bet he thought that was very … chivalrous. Helping round the house—is that what you told him? What did he say?’

 
‘You reckoned it was nothing to you what people said.’

  ‘It isn’t.’ The fire’d subsided to a fierce knot of glowing coal. It made red streaks on the brown leather of the boot in which she’d buried her hand. ‘It’s bringing Eric’s name into it I don’t like,’ she said.

  ‘I shouldn’t have mentioned it.’

  ‘I don’t mind them talking about me. They always have done. When he died they said … well it doesn’t matter. I don’t like anybody dragging his name in like that.’

  There were kids playing over the backs. Their feet crunched on the ashes outside the door. They cried and screamed in the dark. Young Farrer in the next yard was revving his motor-bike engine, making it splutter and cough, then die. It was a circus going on out there. I stood up to go out.

  ‘What do they say about him at Weaver’s?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve only heard him mentioned that once.’

  ‘You must have been talking about him—bringing it up like that.’

  ‘No. I’ve never mentioned him. …’

  She took her hand out of the boot, and put it down beside its partner. ‘You see when Eric died … well, all my world went out.’ Her silhouette was framed against the glow, bowed. ‘He used to say he didn’t know why he was living. He used to say—why was I ever made alive? When he went like that, I felt I hadn’t been proper to him. I hadn’t made him feel that he belonged. …’ She looked up. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, should I?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t mind. …’

  ‘No, I mean with you being what you are. Self-reliant. I suppose that’s what you’d call it. All that cockiness. You don’t seem worried like Eric was.’

  ‘I only mentioned it because you started polishing them boots.’

  ‘Is anything the matter with me polishing them? Don’t you like to see me do it?’

  ‘No … as I said, I don’t mind.’

  I saw she was crying. I got out before anything started.

  I found the second trial game easier than the first. For one thing I hadn’t a great deal to do: this big character comes round the blind side every time there’s a scrum. He carries the ball loose. All I do is stand in his way, and he’s never looking. I get my shoulder under his jaw and he goes down like a child. I start counting the times he comes round this way. Fourteen. I’ve hit every part of his face. The fifteenth time they carry him off. How thick can you get? This shows I’m good at defensive play.