This Sporting Life Read online

  ‘That’s mean, Arthur. That’s mean.’

  I squeezed it harder, and the old stump of his hand went white. ‘That’s mean,’ he groaned.

  I let go and he rubbed his wrist slowly, watching me.

  ‘Why d’you do that, Arthur?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He couldn’t cope with all his mounting reproach. ‘Why d’you squeeze my wrist like that?’

  I shook my head. ‘Was it Weaver?’ I said.

  ‘You hurt me. Is that why you squeezed my wrist?’ He bandaged it with his other hand. ‘Just because it was Weaver?’

  I found it odd that he, Johnson, should resent being hurt; should resent my hurting him. He seemed to be somebody who always had been hurt, and who was always going to be hurt, whatever he might or might not do. I didn’t like hearing him complain to me. If I didn’t hurt him somebody else would. Why should he blame me for it—making me out to be a bully?

  ‘You’re too excited,’ he said, tired, stroking the inflamed skin. ‘I thought you knew it was Weaver.’

  ‘I was surprised him talking to me like that. Isn’t that something—when he comes up to you and starts talking just like that. He must have been impressed.’

  Johnson was sulking. He wanted to quarrel but he didn’t know how. By hurting him I’d cut him out of the afternoon’s success: that’s what he felt. I left him and set off to walk into town. Lights were springing up with silent explosions. It was the time of the evening when everybody starts pressing the switch. I could trace the lights up the valley as far as Highfield estate, row after row of them, like a big army camp, stretching up to the confused mass of the Riding hospital on the ridge above it. A mist was spreading from the river and covering the valley, beyond the park, whose central hill stood up in isolation, its thick bushes and trees dark shapes squatting like animals on its slopes. When I turned round I saw Johnson following me fifty yards behind.

  I couldn’t make up my mind where to go. I hadn’t a book on me: I’d left Toreador at home. I fancied a car ride out in the country. I bought a sports paper, and after a lot of searching found a small report of the match on an inside column and sure enough, only an hour or so after the final whistle, my name printed in capital letters. Going by lathe standards they’d be a sixteenth of an inch high. Not very big. But I could make them grow.

  When I got into town the only thing I could do was catch the 10 bus.

  She was in the kitchen, bent over the sink. Lynda and Ian were playing on a chair near the fire. They were making a big noise. Ian had no pants on. I gave his bare arse a spank and sat down, annoyed, like a visiting inspector, to find her still stuck in her den of unventilated air, cluttered spaces, unused rows of crockery, completely unaware of the success I brought into the room. ‘Have you had some tea?’ she asked.

  ‘I had some after the match.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Are you interested?’

  ‘Not really … now what is it?’ she said as Lynda broke into a wail. She dried her hands to settle the fight, and gave them both a little pat. They both looked at me a minute; then, sensing a drop of sympathy in my stare, started a double wail of unhappiness. ‘Now what are you laughing at?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t you find them funny?’ I said.

  She went back to the sink where she was washing a pair of Ian’s peculiar home-made trousers. No doubt she was thinking of all the time she spent with them, every day and all day, and why she couldn’t find them funny. ‘Sometimes I do,’ she said.

  I dug myself a seat from the newspapers, dolls, torn books, washing, frayed cushions, bricks, and tin cars. ‘I met my employer half an hour ago,’ I told her.

  ‘And who may that be?’ She turned on a tap. ‘Who do you mean?’

  I called Weaver’s name over the running water. She nodded as if the word meant nothing to her.

  ‘Where d’you meet him?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘At the match. He seems to think I won’t have any trouble signing on.’

  ‘That’s good of him. He’s a man you can trust, I suppose.’

  ‘Nay, he was impressed. I could tell. And he bought me a drink.’

  ‘What happened to your other friend today—Mr Johnson?’

  ‘He bought him a drink too.’

  ‘He knows who his friends are, then.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking—on the way back here—why don’t we go for a walk? We can take the kids if you can’t dump them.’

  She stopped the tap, and for some reason Ian stopped shouting­, then Lynda. ‘What on earth for?’ She looked at me in amazement. ‘What do you want us to go walking about in the bloody pitch dark for?’

  ‘You never seem to get out of here. I thought some fresh air might do you good. I like to talk to somebody when I’m walking. Your problems sort of. …’

  ‘I can look after my own health, thank you very much,’ she said.

  The fact was I felt like walking, but not alone, and she was the only person I felt like walking with. I couldn’t explain that to her. I just wanted to talk to somebody. She waited for an explanation. She might even have been glad of this opportunity to show her independence. When nothing else came from me, she said, ‘You must be mad to think I’d go out there … walking with you.’ She was thinking what those two rows of people would say, lining both sides of the street for every action that went on in it. ‘I think we ought to get it clear once and for all, Mr Machin. Whatever private lives we have, we keep. I don’t want you poking your nose into my affairs. And you won’t find me poking into yours. I don’t want you mixing with us—in that way. I’ve got some pride left, in case you didn’t know.’

  There was nothing to say. I wanted to tell her about the afternoon, about Gower, about what I thought my chances were; show her the bit in the paper where I’d scored.

  ‘What’s the matter, don’t you want to be happy?’ I said.

  ‘Happy—’course I want to be happy. You must think I’m miserable just because. … If I’m left alone I’m happy. I can settle my own affairs. I don’t need you pushing in.’

  ‘I’m not pushing in. I’m just trying to be friendly. The other night you seemed pretty glad you could talk to me.’

  ‘You’ve got plenty of friends. You don’t have to be friendly here. Why don’t you pester them?’

  ‘But how can you be happy here? Just look at it. You never go out. You’ve no women friends with the neighbours. Not what you’d call friends. What, sort of pleasure do you get, stuffed up here all day? Don’t tell me you’re happy.’

  ‘I’m happy.’

  ‘You say that. You say you’re happy. I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to believe me. Remember who you are, pray. You’re not running this place like you run that little man Johnson. I’m not your servant. I’m not running round all day with a grin over my face just to make you think I’m happy.’

  ‘I don’t mean laughing all the time. I mean just looking happy. You: you don’t look happy. It’s not a question of laughing.’

  ‘You make me sick. Aren’t you going out?’

  ‘Yeh, I’m going out. I’m sick of living here, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, well that’s easy settled. Don’t. Just don’t live here. You must think … I’d go down on my knees to make you stay. That’s the easiest thing I ever heard of. Just stop living here. We’ll be better off without you.’

  I banged the door on the way out. The house trembled. I could imagine how she felt when all her house trembled. I crashed it twice, and walked round till late evening, then went and filled in time at the Mecca, and tried to pick up a sample.

  It wasn’t difficult to see during the next week that she was in two minds to ask me to leave. For once I wasn’t sure which side she’d choose. When I got back from work on Wednesday she’d put on her grey wool dre
ss. The table was set for tea, and Lynda and Ian had already been fed.

  ‘Are you going out tonight?’ I asked her.

  ‘We’ve just got back from the park,’ she said, and making a point of it added, ‘We’ve been for a walk and we haven’t had time to change. They’re tired.’ She nodded at the kids half asleep under a blanket on the couch. She watched me eat. Probably she wasn’t aware how closely she did it, and I tried to be natural.

  ‘I’d been meaning to ask you,’ she said.

  ‘About me leaving?’

  ‘You know—making things work out here.’

  ‘You’ve been thinking of asking me to leave?’

  ‘I don’t think I want that,’ she said, as though she still hadn’t made up her mind. ‘One or two things want clearing up. Don’t you think so?’ She looked at me openly, self-absorbed; a healthy sign for her. The dome of her forehead gleamed with the same intensity as her eyes, like an Italian mother in an American film. ‘I mean, do you know why I asked you to pay so little board at the beginning?’

  ‘I’ve helped in the house. I thought I had.’

  ‘I’d no experience of running lodgers. I had a woman in mind, you know. But what woman would come here? Until you came all the callers had been Irish. But don’t think I’m grumbling about the way you’ve helped.’

  ‘How much does it cost you to keep me?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. It doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘Aw now, you know you ought to charge more rent. You can’t keep me on less than three quid.’ Her face turned hard at the actual mention of money. ‘Some landladies charge up to five quid a week. I might as well tell you when I first came here I thought I’d fallen easy.’

  ‘I don’t want a list of my shortcomings.’

  ‘I wasn’t giving you one, I’m trying to show you where you’re hurting yourself most. Can’t I talk to you as a person for once? If you listen to what I’m saying I can put you right.’

  She stood up to control herself. We were both trying to be kind, sympathetic, and at the same time careful we didn’t give too much away too soon. Her feelings always looked like poses to me. So I could never tell how deep each one went.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t always try and work me into a fit,’ she said. ‘I’ve asked you, over and over again, to leave me alone that way. I can’t stand it.’

  ‘I’ll go out,’ I told her.

  The pitch alone depressed me. It formed the centre of a dog track. The club was one of those that had difficulty paying its ‘A’ team, with the result that most of its players were drafted up for the afternoon from the next door colliery. The atmosphere of neglect was dictated by this condition. Some kids had collected for autographs as we stepped off the coach. Their eyes followed our gaze as we took in the crumbling stadium, the uncut grass, the worn track, the uneven pitch. Nothing of the town was visible over the low unambitious terraces, since the pitch was on the summit of a slight rise created by a denuded slag heap.

  As I gave my autograph I found the signature of Charles Weaver already scrawled in the corner.

  ‘Where d’you get this?’ I asked the kid.

  ‘Off a chap on the stand. We asked him.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Just now. A few minutes sin’.’

  It wouldn’t be unlike Weaver to give autographs. I put my name below his and took a look along the stand. It was empty; the crowd wouldn’t collect for another twenty minutes. What did he want to come here for? I couldn’t think of any reason, other than I was the hero. I followed the others into the small unheated dressing-room at the back of the bookies’ row. They were already stamping about, knotting their hands in their armpits, arguing, waiting for the names to be read out by Dicky.

  ‘Can’t we ever cancel this match?’ somebody said. ‘It’s the same every bleedin’ year. They freeze you solid, then they knock your head off. It’s like coming to a mortuary.’

  ‘You should know, yer dead-head,’ Dicky said.

  He has a right sharp wit, Dicky.

  ‘I’d give ’em winning pay just not to come.’

  ‘Hear thy herald angel sing.’

  ‘When you’ve come here as many blinding years as I have, owd lad. …’

  ‘Why not lake in the first team then?’

  ‘Oh Christ, kid. Give over.’

  Even Dicky looked sad. Once we were on the field we jumped about, ran round the posts, passed the ball, and got no warmer. There was no sign of Weaver on the stand. The only place he might have been was in the starter’s box. But it was in shadow and I couldn’t see inside.

  The game started with a brawl and didn’t develop. I was more or less all right, but for the ’backs, in spite of their padding, it wasn’t anything I’d have done for the same money. Miners if nothing else are strong. Trying to miss their fists and boots was dancing in between raindrops.

  Towards the end of the game I was short-arm tackled, right on the bridge of my nose. The ball was torn from my hands and I lay on the ground, smelling the slag, waiting for Dicky to run on with the sponge.

  ‘What’re you playing at?’ he said. He was more than angry.

  ‘Bloody football.’

  ‘You walked right into it. Now you know what it feels like, maybe you’ll be satisfied. Reckon to be hurt and walk off with me.’ There wasn’t much else I could do. As it was he’d to hold me up and I walked as if I’d got five legs. ‘It’s your special day today. You want to take care of yourself.’

  ‘How d’you mean, Dicky?’ I tried to look at him.

  ‘Keep out of trouble, and keep your fists down,’ was all he’d say. ‘They can see you swinging a mile away.’

  ‘I’m not the only one. There’re twenty-five others.’

  ‘If the ref catches you then you will be the only one. He can stop you three matches. Take my advice. Just fill in time till the whistle and keep out of trouble.’ He shoved my head in the bucket, gave me an ammonia sniff, and I went back on.

  I took a lot of care to keep out of the way, to make sure I was second man into the tackle, and never under the ball when it came down. For the first time I was frightened of being hurt. My whole face ached and throbbed, as if the bones were riddled with pins.

  ‘I’ve ne’er yet seen a game of football on this ground,’ Dicky said as we dragged back into the changing room. ‘Am I glad that load’s over. It’s the same every year. They just come up to fight.’

  ‘If you ask me, Dicky, they don’t know the bloody Romans ’ve left.’

  We had tea in the hut overlooking the track. Nobody was speaking. Faces, hot and red and gleaming from the bath, peered silently out of the streaked windows. Everyone wanted to get back to town, to the Mecca, to feel civilized.

  Before the winter sun had set we were on the forty-mile journey back, across the flat plain, to the valleys, our guts gradually rising. I’d seen no sign of Weaver.

  Most of the players got out in the Bull Ring.

  ‘Can you stay on, Arthur?’ Dicky said. ‘We’re taking the kit back to Primstone. They want to see you up there.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I reckon you know more than me. Stick tight. We won’t be long.’

  I was shown into the committee room by one of the groundsmen who’d been waiting for the bus. The first person I recognized was Weaver, though he was at the back, staring at a gallery of photos of City teams. Then I saw the dog, and George Wade. The dog slept by the fire.

  ‘I hear you’d quite a rough passage this afternoon,’ Wade said. He considered a smile, and held his hand out. ‘I expect you know why we asked you up here, Arthur.’

  ‘I didn’t think it’d be so quick,’ I told him.

  Wade thought about this, then said, ‘Quite. That’s right, lad,’ and we shook hands. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

  There wer
e five men. Apart from Wade and Weaver there was red-faced Riley, the secretary, and two committee men I hadn’t seen before. We sat round the polished oak table. Weaver turned from the photos and started smiling right away, at me and at Wade, at the dog, the wall, and the table.

  ‘You’ve met Mr Weaver before, or so I gather,’ Wade said. ‘And this is Mr Riley the club secretary. These two gentlemen, Mr Glover and Mr Thorpe, they represent the committee’s interest.’

  I looked at Weaver for some sort of reassurance. He stared back familiarly. ‘How have these four matches suited you, Arthur?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve enjoyed them.’

  Wade said, ‘You won’t be used to the professional game. I suppose you find a bit of difference.’ He was out to minimize my position and sounded confident about it. ‘You’ve never played the game reg’lar.’ When I hesitated he looked shrewd and added quickly, ‘We’ve been looking up your records. You know—past stuff. You haven’t played regular since you left school. That’s six or seven year back.’

  Weaver gazed at me as if he could be slightly bored, perhaps interested in how I’d answer rather than in Wade’s criticism. I didn’t answer and Wade said, ‘Course, you won’t mind us laying the facts down, Arthur, so we can see our meal afore we eat it. So to speak. We’ve checked up on you, just as you’ve had four week to check up on us. I hope you don’t think we’ve gone behind your back or ought. You see that, don’t you lad?’

  They were expecting some sort of performance from me to begin any minute, and I was looking round my mind to find one I could use. All I had was what Maurice had told me when he heard I’d got a trial: keep your hole shut and just say how much you want. ‘That’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘We see you’re not married.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And where do you live?’

  ‘In Fairfax Street at the moment.’

  ‘Isn’t that near the works?’ Weaver asked.

  ‘Yes. I work at your place, Mr Weaver.’

  He looked at me carefully. ‘Do you? I’d like to have known that before.’