This Sporting Life Read online

  I felt cold towards Johnson. For some reason I couldn’t stick the sight of him standing up there against the Batley skyline. I spent some time in the bath and even longer dressing, but he was still waiting when I got outside. He thought I’d been injured, and his anxiety only added to the general effect.

  ‘We’re just going,’ I told him. ‘I didn’t think you’d wait.’

  ‘Just to see if you were all right, Arthur.’ He looked me up and down to see if I was all there.

  ‘Where’re you going now?’ I tried to hide how I felt.

  He shrugged, but when I got hold of the door handle to swing myself into the bus he caught my arm. ‘The bus isn’t going yet,’ he said. ‘Come and have some tea.’

  ‘They’re only waiting for me. The lads want to get back to town.’ I nodded at the row of dazed faces behind the bus windows. Everybody was tired, aching, wanting to get away.

  ‘Are you coming to the King tonight?’

  ‘I can’t get.’

  ‘You can’t?’

  ‘I’m going out.’

  He began to measure some of my feeling towards him. He pushed the tuft of grey hair that always stuck out from his cap back under the peak. ‘When’ll I see you then?’ He tried to push in some reproach by looking up sullenly from beneath his cap, giving his eyes a half-dazed look. ‘Just say a day, Arthur. You know me. I’ll be there.’ I got into the bus.

  ‘If I don’t see you before,’ he calls out, ‘I’ll see you up at Primstone. That’s honest. That’s a bet. After training. Tuesday night.’

  As the bus pulled out of the yard I waved and bent down to see how he’d taken it. He was by himself in the middle of the dusty area. Programmes were blown in the wind. The pitch was grey-green flat mud. He was waving hard.

  ‘He asked me if he could come in the coach,’ the trainer said over my shoulder. ‘But you know how it is. One starts and they all want to come.’

  ‘It’s all right by me, Dicky. He’s a bit of a nuisance.’ I felt Johnson should keep his age to himself.

  ‘Okay then, Art.’ He slapped my back and we sat down. The bus swept through the early evening back to town. The sky glowed with the last daylight; the limestone hills stood out purple and bare.

  Six of us played brag on the back seats. I lost three quid, and a bit of silver.

  It was almost twelve when I got back, and the house was in darkness. I tapped lightly on the front door. Within a minute I heard her on the stairs. The passage light went on and she unlocked the door. She didn’t say anything as I came in. She fastened the door and started back up the stairs.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ I told her.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’

  She had her coat on over her nightgown, and held her hands with cold. ‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said quietly, and stopped where the stairs merged into darkness.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I got on at Batley?’

  ‘Do you play until this time?’

  ‘It’s some way. We didn’t get back till late. I went dancing with some of the lads.’

  ‘I didn’t know you liked dancing so much.’

  ‘I don’t. Not that much. But we go to the Mecca now’n again.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Pretty fair.’ I didn’t want to sound too enthusiastic. As it was I leant against the wall with the strain of looking up at her.

  ‘You’re drunk!’ she said. ‘You’ve come back here drunk!’

  ‘That’s no bloody crime. You’re not my mother, my … something or other. What’re you getting at me for? I tell you—I’d like it a lot if you’d let me call you sunshine … Valerie.’

  She’d started up the stairs. But she stopped, and half-turned as if she wasn’t sure what I’d said. ‘Sunshine.’ I told her, and belched.

  She shot upstairs and I heard her door close.

  Johnson was waiting outside the changing room, in the tunnel, so I couldn’t miss him. He’d been on the touchline all evening watching the training and making his usual signs of encouragement. ‘Is he your dad or uncle like?’ one of the players said as we came out together.

  ‘No. He got me a trial here, that’s all.’

  ‘Good neighbours? It’s all right if you can get it.’ He winked, slapped my shoulder, and went off chewing his gum.

  ‘You were in good shape tonight, Arthur,’ the old man said. ‘How d’you feel after last Saturday?’ He was looking at me carefully to see if I was in the same mood.

  ‘Just getting used to it,’ I said, and felt myself shaping up to encourage him.

  ‘That’s right, son. That’s right.’ He was concentrating on detecting a note of friendliness. ‘It’s keeping at it regular: that’s the secret. Training and more training. You can’t do too much, Arthur. You know what I mean? You’ll never beat it. After that you can take it all in your stride.’ Now he was looking me up and down to see any change that might have taken place since he last saw me. ‘There’s many a good player been ruined … really ruined, because he was too damn lazy to train. You know what I mean? Because he could play a couple a blinders in a row he thought he needn’t train. It goes to their heads. You see them walking about as if they owned the place. …’ He went on pleading, his old tired body hurrying and lurching as it kept up with mine, until we’d reached the bus stop. ‘I was wondering,’ he said, his voice loud enough for the other gum-chewing player to hear, ‘if we couldn’t go up to your place. We could take some fish and chips. It’d be no bother to your Mrs Hammond—I’d like to meet her again.’

  I looked at him to see why he’d like to meet her again. What did he want to see her for? ‘She’s busy tonight, Dad. And she’s a bit touchy at the moment about bringing things on without notice. She likes to be told.’

  ‘We’d be no trouble, Arthur. We could all buckle in. … We’d have a little party. Take along some ale and a drop of stout. She drinks stout, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Some other night, Dad. She’s on edge at the moment. Has been for the past week. We’ll try some other time.’

  I sounded pretty definite, but we’d no sooner got on the 10 bus than he started again like a small boy. ‘I can’t see what harm it can do.’

  ‘Why’re you so keen all of a sudden?’ I asked him.

  ‘Why? Well, we’re sort of related. I didn’t think she liked me the last time.’

  He looked at me to tell him the truth.

  ‘She’s not keen on having people in, that’s all.’

  ‘But she didn’t like me.’

  ‘It wasn’t that. It was the fire. We put too much bloody coal on or something. She’s touchy.’

  We passed those squat rows of houses before the bus goes over the river. Little black hutches nailed together by those big pegs of chimney. A barge had been hauled up out of the river and the kids slid down its sloping deck: a lazy, stupid animal, with its gaping, vacant hold. Two coal lorries were parked by the coal slip, ready for the morning. The lights were sucked down into the river, until they disappeared in a quick thin dribble. Johnson said, ‘Do you like staying there?’

  ‘Like it? I don’t mind. It’s cheap. Why?’

  ‘She struck me, you know—as being a bit peculiar. That sort of moony look she has on her face. What were them boots in the hearth? They’re not yours, are they?’

  ‘They belong to her old man. That’s why she’s a bit queer. He was killed not long ago, at Weaver’s.’

  He was still not satisfied. He tried to say one or two things about feeling sorry. But he was more uncertain than before: he couldn’t make out why I stayed there. When it came to it, neither could I. I spent an hour with him in the King William.

  At Thursday night training I was told George Wade wouldn’t be travelling on Saturday with the first team to Wakefield, but was saving himself
the journey and watching the ‘A’ team. I took this to mean he was watching me, though there were four other trialists in the team. In the changing room before the match I acted like the Big Frog around the place. I rubbed on other people’s vaseline, tied other people’s shoulder pads and bandages, did a lot of shadow boxing in the corner. There was no doubt what I was aiming for. And for the first time the weather was fine.

  I heard my name go out over the loudspeaker, then the roar of the crowd as the visiting team went out first. Dicky, the trainer, gave us his last instructions, we lined up, and moved down the tunnel. The front of the line broke into a trot. The boots clacked on the concrete, then slurred, and were suddenly silent as they prodded into the bare earth just inside the tunnel mouth.

  The darkness broke away. The light blinded for a second, mingled with the shock of the crowd’s roar. I seemed to inflate as I ran on to the field. The loudspeakers blared ‘The Entrance of the Gladiators’ as we ran quickly, importantly, to the middle of the field, and swerved aside to make a circle. The tune changed to a crackly fanfare as the captains tossed up.

  The teams spread out, filtered across the pitch, and stood still, red and blue in the worn brown and dusty green patches of the field. We waited, quiet, for the whistle. It blasted. The ball rose into the air.

  Fifteen minutes of the first half passed and I’d never even touched the ball. I was aching with activity, and blowing hard. It took me most of the first half to realize I was being starved of the ball by my own team.

  It was the hooker, Taff Gower, who was organizing it, I decided; a quiet little frog working out his last days in the game with the ‘A’ team. With his scarred, toothless face, his short bow-legged figure stumped alongside me in each movement and casually diverted the ball whenever it came my way. I gathered he mustn’t like me. I might be keeping one of his mates out of the team, stopping a wage. I didn’t worry about this. I just saw an early end to my ambitions. As we folded down for the next scrum his face was further forward than mine. ‘Why’re you keeping the ball from me?’ I asked him. His head was upside down, waiting for the ball to come in, but he was grinning, fairly politely. I could see the back of his throat. When he spat I couldn’t move my head. I didn’t think he could like me.

  I waited three scrums, to make him feel relaxed and also to get the best opportunity. I kept my right arm loose. His face was upside down, his eyes straining, loose in their sockets, to catch a glimpse of the ball as it came in. I watched it leave the scrum-half’s hands and his head buckled under the forwards’ heaving. I swung my right fist into the middle of his face. He cried out loud. I hit him again and saw the red pulp of his nose and lips as my hand came away. He was crying out really loud now, partly affected, professional pain, but most of it real. His language echoed all over the ground.

  The scrum broke up with the ref blowing his nut off on the whistle. ‘I saw that! I saw that!’ he shouted, urged on to violent mimes of justice by the crowd’s tremendous booing. They were all on their feet demonstrating and screaming. Gower had covered his face with his hands, but blood seeped between his fingers, as the trainer and two players directed his blind steps off the field.

  ‘You’ll be nailed for good for this, you dirty little swine. You’ll never play again,’ and all that, the ref was shouting. He pointed with real drama at the opposing hooker. The crowd’s response reached a crescendo—far more than it would provide for, say, the burning of a church.

  The young hooker shook his head. ‘I ne’er touched him,’ he said, looking round for support from his own team. ‘I swear to God I never touched him.’

  ‘You can tell that to the league chairman!’

  The hooker was beside himself with innocence. ‘Nay, look at my bloody fist,’ he said. ‘Look, there’s no blood on it.’

  ‘I’m not arguing.’

  The ref took his name and sent him off.

  I’d never seen such a parade before. The whole ground throbbed with rage as the young figure in his little boy’s costume passed in front of the main stand.

  ‘They’re not fit to be on a football field,’ the ref said to me, since I happened to be standing nearest. I didn’t know whether he meant the crowd or men like the hooker. The free kick put us two points ahead.

  We stood around the tunnel mouth at half-time, drinking from the bottles and listening to Dicky tell us a few yards of mistakes. We were quiet. It was a fact that since Gower had gone off I’d been getting the ball just as I liked it, and as often as not in openings. I was looking up, trying to pick George Wade’s homburg out in the committee box, when Dicky came over to me. He took hold of my hand and looked at the knuckles.

  ‘Got some nice bruises there, owd lad,’ he said. ‘What got into you?’ He didn’t look at me, but at the other players.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Taff Gower—you could see it plain as day from the bench.’

  ‘He was keeping the ball from me.’

  ‘Come off it, owd cock. Nobody lakes that game here.’

  ‘Not now they don’t.’

  He grimaced, annoyed I should try to be smart. ‘You’ll do just fine at this club,’ he said. ‘Any rate, I’m not saying a word about it, ’less Wade asks me in private.’

  ‘You’re on my side,’ I told him.

  ‘Get this, lad. I’m on my own side.’ He winked, importantly, and banged my shoulder. ‘Keep it up, Art,’ he said in a loud voice, and went over to advise the full-back.

  As we stood on the field waiting for the second half kick-off, I examined everything with real care, telling myself I ought to savour every second of this feeling. I had my eyes fixed on the twin buds of the power station’s cooling towers, and watched a cloud of white steam escape across the valley and come over the pitch. The ball rose towards it, and in a slow curve fell towards me. I gathered it cleanly and, beating two men, ran to the centre of the field. Somebody shouted for the ball. I kept it. I found myself in an opening and suddenly thought I might even reach the line. I went straight for the full-back, and when he came in I gave him the base of my wrist on his nose. The crack, the groan, the release of his arms, all coincided with a soaring of my guts. I moved in between the posts keeping my eye on the delight of the crowd as I put the ball down.

  Everything was luminous, sparkling. The houses beyond the stadium turrets, the silhouetted trees at Sandwood, the ice-blue sky, the mass of people—they were all there intent on seeing me. I was carried along in a bag full of energy, no longer aware of effort, ready to tear anybody into postage stamps and at the same time smile for the crowd. I came off the field fresher than when I went on, and still waiting for some damn thing to tire me.

  Although George Wade wasn’t in the tearoom, Johnson was. He devoured me with a rapturous gaze and slipped his little arm round me, swaying and chanting, and bringing a lot of eyes in our direction. ‘What a game, Arthur! What a blind!’ He talked so much wind I’d to take him to the bar to try and quieten him down. He immediately danced off to the lavatory: he’d been holding himself till he saw me. I ordered two beers.

  ‘Allow me,’ a voice said over my shoulder. I turned round to see the soft features of a smiling face. ‘No, allow me. I really do insist,’ the man went on, and although I wasn’t supposed to know I knew this was Weaver. He held my money away from the barman and slid a quid note in its place. He took off his hat and ordered a beer for himself.

  ‘You had a good game today, Arthur,’ he said, intimately—as if we were good friends. ‘How do you like the City?’ His little protruding lips parted to small, even teeth, which weren’t, yet looked, artificial.

  ‘It’s my third game. It’s going all right, I reckon.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘So I gathered. You seem to have made a good start. If you don’t mind me saying so.’ He nodded towards the frosted glass of the committee room. ‘Wade’s been talking about you in there. I imagine it was just t
he day for it.’ He nodded this time to the window overlooking the pitch. ‘Do you like a firm going?’

  ‘I must do.’

  He laughed extravagantly. I saw Johnson emerge from the lavatory and stand some distance away. I beckoned to him but he didn’t come.

  ‘Have you played for any other club … any of the Intermediate League?’ Weaver asked, and took no notice of my attempt to attract Johnson. I shook my head.

  ‘I didn’t think I’d heard your name before—Machin.’ He made it sound fairly common. We stared at one another with an instinctive sort of reaction. ‘It’s a great pity about Taffy Gower.’

  ‘What’s happened? I didn’t see him after the match.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. They’ve taken him for an X-ray. Gone to hospital. I heard it was a broken nose. For a little fellow … their hooker’s got quite a punch.’ He was smiling, almost laughing, and blinking his blue eyes.

  ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘It is.’ He picked up his hat and left his beer undrunk. ‘I better be pushing along. You’re not signed on here yet?’

  ‘I’ve another game before they make up their minds.’

  ‘I don’t think they’ll have much difficulty there, do you?’ He blinked his baby eyes again, folding them up in those fleshy encasements. ‘’Bye, Arthur.’

  As soon as he’d gone, I turned to Johnson.

  ‘Who was it?’ I asked him.

  ‘You should know, Arthur.’ He knew I knew.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Guess. … Go on, have a guess.’ The grin on his face showed he was enjoying the game.

  I got hold of his hand, just above his thumb, and squeezed it hard.

  ‘Who was it, Dad?’ I was surprised myself that Weaver made me act like this. It seemed the only way I could control my excitement.