Playing for the Ashes

by Elizabeth George

  He released me. I raised my arm to my breasts, held it between them. I rubbed where his fingers had been. I stared at him, my back beginning to ache with the burden of the rucksacks, the muscles in my right leg beginning to twitch. He went back to his apple, finished it off in three bites. He let Toast sniff the core and reject it before he tossed it across the galley and into the sink.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” he said. “You challenge me. You get on my nerves. You make me better than I am.”

  I walked to the sink. I fished out his apple core. I threw it in the rubbish.

  “Livie. I want you to stay.”

  Through the window I could see the street lamps casting their lights onto the water of the pool. In the floating ovals of illumination, the trees from Browning’s Island were sketched. I looked at my watch. It was nearly eight. By the time I battled my way to Earl’s Court, it would be almost nine. My right leg was beginning to quake.

  “I’ll be like a rag doll,” I mumbled. “Like an overcooked marrow with arms and legs.”

  “Would you walk out if it was me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I do.”

  I heard him get up from the table and cross the galley. He removed the rucksacks from my body. He dropped them to the floor. He put his arm round my shoulders. He put his mouth against my hair.

  “The love’s different,” he said, “but the fact of it’s the same.”

  So I stayed. I kept up my programme of exercise and weight-lifting. I saw healers who suggested that I was suffering from a cyst, developing a mass, failing to mobilise energy, reacting to a negative atmosphere. When in the first year, the disease hadn’t progressed beyond my legs, I told myself that, like Stephen Hawking, I was going to beat the odds in my own peculiar way. I felt confident of that fact and I remained buoyed by it until the day I looked down at a grocery list and saw what my fingers were doing to my handwriting.

  I don’t tell you all this in a play for your sympathy. I tell you all this because while having ALS is a curse, it’s also the reason I know what I know. It’s the reason I know what no one else knows. Except my mother.

  There was gossip aplenty when Kenneth Fleming moved in with Mother in Kensington. Had Kenneth not begun his career playing for England with such a humiliating performance at Lord’s, it might have taken ages for the tabloids to suss out what his living circumstances were. But when he achieved that memorable and mortifying golden duck, he fixed the attention of the cricket world upon himself. When that happened, Mother came under scrutiny as well.

  It did make good press: the thirty-four years that stretched between the cricketer and his patron. What was she to him? they wanted to know. Was she his real mother, having sent him off to adoption at birth, only to track him down in her old age when she was lonely? Was she his aunt, choosing him from among myriad East End nieces and nephews to be the recipient of her largess? Was she a fairy godmother with money on her hands, a woman who searched through the boroughs of London to find a promising life over which she waved her magic wand? Was she a new patron of the England team, one who took her responsibilities to heart by means of intimate involvement in the ostensibly troubled lives of the players? Or was it perhaps something a trifle nasty? An Oedipal thing on the part of Kenneth Fleming to which Miriam Whitelaw’s Jocasta responded with more enthusiasm than was wise?

  Where did each of them sleep? the press wanted to know. Did they live in the house together, alone? Were there servants who might reveal the true story? daily help who made not two beds but one? If they had separate bedrooms, were they on the same floor? And what did it mean that Miriam Whitelaw never missed a match that Kenneth Fleming played?

  Since the real story couldn’t possibly be as interesting as the speculation, the tabloids stuck with the speculation. It sold more copies. Who wanted to read about an erstwhile English teacher and her favourite pupil in whose life she had become involved? That wasn’t nearly as intriguing as the titillating insinuations suggested by a photograph of Kenneth and Mother, emerging from the Grace Gate under a single umbrella, his arm round her shoulders, her smiling face held up to his.

  And what of Jean? You may already know. She talked to the press rather more than she should have done, at first. She was an easy target for both the Daily Mirror and the Sun. Jean wanted Kenneth back at home, and she thought that the press would help her put him there. So there were pictures of her at work in the cafe at Billingsgate Market, pictures of the kids on the way to school, pictures of the family sans Dad sitting round the red oilcloth-covered kitchen table with their bangers and mash on a Saturday evening, pictures of Jean awkwardly bowling to Jimmy who had dreams—she confided—of being just like his dad. “Where’s Ken?” some of the tabloids demanded while “Left Behind and Heartbroken” declared the others. “Too Good for Her Now?” queried Woman’s Own as Woman’s Realm pondered “What To Do When He Leaves You for Someone Who Looks Like His Mum.”

  Through it all, Kenneth held his tongue and concentrated on cricket. He made periodic visits to the Isle of Dogs, but whatever he said to Jean about her dealings with the press, he said them in private. His life-style may have been unconventional, but “It’s for the best at the moment” was all he ever went on record saying.

  What and how things were between Kenneth and Mother during this time, I can only surmise. I can fill in the blanks of the tabloids’ speculations, naturally, with details like the sleeping arrangements: different bedrooms but on the same floor and with a door adjoining them because Kenneth took over what once had been my great-grandfather’s dressing chamber, which was actually the second largest bedroom in the house. There was nothing questionable in that. Those few guests we’d had had always slept in that room. With details like who was in the house with them: no one, with the exception of a Sri Lankan woman who came in to clean and do the laundry twice a week. But the rest, like everyone else, I can only guess at.

  Their conversation would have been multifaceted. When Mother was facing a decision at the printworks, she would have solicited Kenneth’s advice, presented theories and considerations to him, listened closely to what he had to say. When Kenneth saw Jean and the kids, he would have talked about them, about his decision to remain apart from them, about why he hadn’t asked for a divorce. When the England team travelled out of the country, he would have reported to her the details of his journey, telling her about the people he’d met and the sights he’d seen. If she’d read a book or seen a play, she’d have revealed her reactions. If he’d developed an interest in national politics, he would have shared this interest with her.

  However it happened, they grew close, Kenneth Fleming and my mother. He called her his best mate in the world, and the months he lived with her merged into a year and the year into two years and all the while they ignored the gossip and the speculation.

  When I first heard about them, it was through the newspapers. I didn’t much care because I was hot and heavy with ARM, and ARM was hot and heavy into raising as much of the devil as could be raised at Cambridge University. Nothing could have given me more pleasure than becoming a clot in the bloodstream of that pinch-nosed place, so when I read about Mother and Kenneth, I shrugged them off and used the newspaper to wrap potato peelings in.

  When I thought about it later, I concluded that Mother was engaged in some active replacing. First it seemed that she was replacing me. She and I hadn’t had contact in years, so she was using Kenneth as a surrogate child, one with whom her mothering skills could be a success. Then, frankly, as speculation was fueled by the silence of the principals themselves, I began to think she was replacing my father. It seemed ludicrous initially, the thought of Mother and Kenneth going at it under cover of darkness, with him trying to ignore all the places where she bagged and sagged and her trying to keep him hard enough to complete the act to their mutual satisfaction. But after a while, when Kenneth’s name was connected to no other, it was the only explanation that made any sense. As long as he stayed m
arried to Jean, he could fend off the attentions of women his age, using, “Sorry but I’m a married bloke,” as an excuse. Which would keep him free from entanglements that might threaten his real entanglement with Mother.

  She was, as he said himself, his very best mate. How difficult would it have been for best mate to transform to bed mate on an evening when the intimacy of their conversation called for an intimacy of another kind?

  He would have looked across the drawing room at her and felt desire and horror at desire. Jesus, she could be my mum, he would have thought.

  She would have received his look with a smile and a softening of her face and a heartbeat pulsing at the tips of her fingers. “What is it,” she would have wanted to know. “Why have you fallen silent?”

  “Nothing,” he would have said and touched his palm to his forehead in a quick wiping movement. “It’s only…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. It’s daft.”

  “Nothing you say is daft, my dear. Not to me.”

  “‘My dear,’” he would have mocked. “Makes me feel like a child, that does.”

  “I’m sorry, Ken. I don’t think of you as a child.”

  “Then what? What do you…How do you think of me?”

  “As a man, of course.”

  She would have looked at the clock. She would have said, “I think I’ll go up. Are you staying down for a while?”

  He would have got to his feet. “No,” he would have said, “I’m going up as well. If that’s all right…with you, Miriam.”

  Ah, that hesitation between right and with you. If it hadn’t been there, his meaning would have gone misunderstood.

  Mother would have passed him, paused, briefly twined her fingers in his. “It’s perfectly all right,” she would have said. “Perfectly, Ken.”

  Best mate, soul mate, thirty-year-old bed mate. For the very first time, Mother had what she wanted.

  OLIVIA

  It was Max who first brought up the subject of telling Mother. Ten months after the diagnosis, we were eating Italian just down the road from Camden Lock Market where Max had spent an hour pawing through boxes of what appeared to be jumble posing as antique clothing in that large warehouse where they display everything from gum machines to velvet settees. He’d been looking for a pair of suitably tattered plus fours to use in an amateur theatrical that he was directing, whether as a prop or a costume he wouldn’t say. “Can’t disclose company secrets, boys and girls,” he declared. “You must see the production for yourselves.” I’d been using a cane for some time now—which didn’t much please me—and I tired more quickly than I would have liked. When I tired, my muscles fibrillated. Fibrillation often led to cramps. Which is what I was experiencing by the time my spinach lasagna was set in front of me, steaming aromatically and bubbling with cheese.

  When the first cramp formed that rocklike knot just below and behind my right knee, I gave a little grunt, put my hand to my eyes, and bit down hard, teeth into teeth. Chris said, “Bad, is it?”

  I said, “It’ll pass.”

  The lasagna continued to steam and I continued to ignore it. Chris pushed back his chair and began the massage, which was the only thing that ever provided relief.

  “Eat your meal,” I said.

  “It’ll be there when I’m done.”

  “I can cope, for God’s sake.” The spasms intensified. They were the worst I’d ever had. It felt like my entire right leg was being gnarled. And then my left leg began to fibrillate for the very first time. “Shit,” I whispered.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  His hands moved expertly. The other leg’s vibrating began to increase. I stared at the table. The cutlery shimmered. I tried to think of other things.

  “Better?” he said.

  What a bloody laugh. I said in a tight voice, “Thank you. That’s enough.”

  “Are you sure? If there’s pain—”

  “Piss off, all right? Eat!”

  Chris dropped his hands, but he didn’t turn away. I could imagine him counting from one to ten.

  I wanted to say sorry. I wanted to say, “I’m afraid. It’s not you. I’m afraid, I’m afraid.” Instead I concentrated on sending impulses from my brain to my legs. Imaging, my latest healer had called it. Practise mental pictures, that’s the ticket, you’ll see. My mental pictures were two legs calmly and smoothly crossing, covered in black stockings, finished off by high heels. The cramps and fibrillations continued. I clenched my fists at my forehead. My eyes were squeezed shut so hard that tears dribbled from their corners. Screw it, I thought.

  Across the table from me, I could hear that Max had begun to eat. Chris hadn’t moved. I could feel the accusation behind his silence. I probably deserved it, but that couldn’t be helped.

  “Goddamn it, Chris. Stop staring at me,” I said from between my teeth. “You’re making me feel like a two-headed baby.”

  He turned then. He picked up his fork and thrusted it into a twisted mass of pasta and mushrooms. He twirled the fork too savagely and ended up hoisting a ball-of-yarn mound of pasta towards his mouth. He dropped the mess back into his plate.

  Max was chewing rapidly and moving his eye from Chris to me to Chris to me. It was a cautious, bird-like look. He put down his fork. He dabbed at his mouth with a paper napkin printed, as I recall, with the words Evelyn’s Eats, which was odd considering that we were in a restaurant called the Black Olive.

  He said, “Girlie, have I mentioned? I read about your mum again last week in our local lemon-hued rag.”

  I made an effort and picked up my fork. I stabbed it into the lasagna. “Yeah?”

  “Quite the woman, your mum seems to be. The situation’s a speck unusual, of course—her and that cricket bloke—but she seems the proper lady, if you ask my opinion. It’s odd, though.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve never mentioned her much. Considering her growing notoriety, I find that a bit…peculiar, shall we say?”

  “There’s nothing peculiar in it, Max. We’ve been out of touch.”

  “Ah. Since when?”

  “Since a long time.” I took a deep breath. The vibration continued, but the cramps were beginning to ease. I looked at Chris. “Sorry,” I said in a low voice. “Chris, I don’t mean to be…how I am. Like this. Like any of this.” He waved me off but said nothing. I went on uselessly with, “Oh shit, Chris. Please.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I don’t mean to…When things get…I get…I stop being myself.”

  “It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. I—”

  “Understand. That’s what you’re going to say. For God’s sake, Chris. You don’t need to be such a martyr on the spit all the time. I wish you’d—”

  “What? Smack you? Walk out? Would you feel better then? Why the hell do you keep trying to push me?”

  I threw down my fork. “Jesus. This is nowhere.”

  Max was drinking from the single glass of red wine he allowed himself daily. He took a sip, held it on his tongue for five seconds, then swallowed appreciatively. “You’re attempting the impossible, you two,” he noted.

  “I’ve been saying that for years.”

  He ignored my comment. “You’re not going to be able to handle this alone,” he said to Chris, and to both of us, “You’re fools to think so,” and to me, “It’s time.”

  “What’s time? What?”

  “She needs to be told.”

  It wasn’t exactly tough to put this remark next to his earlier questions and comments. I bridled. “She doesn’t need to know anything from me, thank you.”

  “Don’t play games, girlie. Game-playing’s unbecoming. This is terminal business we’re dealing with here.”

  “So send her a telegram when I’ve dropped off the hooks.”

  “You’d treat your mother that way?”

  “Tit for tat. She’ll recover. I did.”

  “Not from this.”

  “I
know I’m going to die. There’s no need to remind me.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of you but of her.”

  “You don’t know her. Believe me, the woman has resources louts like us only dream about. She’ll pass off my passing off like it was rainwater she was shaking from her Burberry brolly.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But that’s discounting the possibility that she could be of help.”

  “I don’t need her help. I don’t want it either.”

  “And Chris?” Max asked. “If he does? Both need and want? Not now, but later, when things get rough? As you know they will?”

  I picked up my fork. I dug into the lasagna and watched the cheese ooze between the tines like vanilla toffee.

  “Well?” Max said.

  “Chris?” I said.

  “I can cope,” he replied.

  “That’s that, then.” But as I lifted my fork to my mouth, I saw the look that Max and Chris exchanged, and I knew they’d already spoken about Mother.

  I hadn’t seen her in more than nine years. During the time that I was on the game near Earl’s Court, it had been unlikely that our paths would ever cross. Despite her renown for social good works, Mother had never been one to involve herself with elevating the hearts and souls of the city’s flesh peddlers, and that being the case, I’d always known I was safe from the potential unpleasantness of running into her. Not that I would have cared much had I done so. But it would have put a crimp in my business to have had a middle-aged harpy at my heels.

  Since leaving the street life, though, I’d placed myself in a more precarious situation with regard to Mother. There she was in Kensington. There I was fifteen minutes away in Little Venice. I would have liked to forget about her existence entirely, but the truth is that there were weeks when I never left the barge by daylight without wondering if I would see her somewhere along my route to the zoo, to the grocer’s, to inspect a flat needing Chris’s attention, to the lumberyard to pick up supplies for finishing and fixing up the barge.

  I can’t explain why I still thought of her. I hadn’t expected to. Rather I had expected the bridge between us to remain thoroughly burned. And it was burned physically. I’d burned my half that night at Covent Garden. She’d burned her half with the telegram informing me of Dad’s death and cremation. She hadn’t even left me a grave to visit in privacy, and that, in my mind, was as unforgivable as the means by which she’d informed me of his dying. So I had no intention that my world should ever again intersect with hers.