The Gift of Speed

by Steven Carroll

  It is almost as though he hears the sound before he feels the pain. He hears it go off like the crack of a rifle at close range. And then the pain, as if, indeed, he has been shot in the back. And this pain is so immense, he knows immediately that the damage is as immense as the pain. This is not the dull pain of the past that everybody expects and that soon goes away. This is pain the likes of which he has never felt before, and he knows without question that something is wrong in a way that it has never been wrong before.

  The ball tumbles from his hand and lands just a few feet in front of him, and he grasps his back as if preventing himself from snapping in two. It is not possible for him to stand alone without crumbling to the ground and soon he is being supported by arms, either side of him, and is being led from the training nets. It has all been both fast and slow — the long explosion of pain, the spectacularly slow tumble of the ball from his fingers, the creeping exit from the nets — and yet all over in a devastating flash. It is only then, as he is being led from the nets, the crack of the rifle shot still ringing in his ears, his face creased with the pain, that he notices for the first time that heads are turning.

  Away from the nets he attempts to lie back on the soft, glowing grass. Someone is asking him where the pain is. He touches his lower back, then adds that it is everywhere. And as he is talking to these two senior players one of them suddenly points to his boots and says, what are they? And Michael replies that they’re his boots and the senior player says he can see that — but adds that they are batsman’s boots. Doesn’t he know that? They are not made for bowling and he should not be bowling in them. Michael nods and as he is nodding the player asks him what crook sold the boots to him and Michael says nothing.

  Someone brings his bag. Someone else takes his boots off, and Michael feels the weight drop from his feet, instantly wishing he’d bowled in his sandshoes and cursing Webster’s ten-pound note. Soon the boots are in his bag and, in time, he is able to limp from the ground, slowly and uncertainly, every turn of the head, every step that he takes executed with the deliberation of an old man. He steps slowly over the gutter at the boundary, off the field and back onto the concrete race he had walked up less than half an hour before, when everything was still in front of him and the ground glowed in the late-afternoon sun, the way ovals glow in books.

  That evening Michael is standing in his yard staring at the back fence. The white paint representing the three stumps is old now and the paint is an over-milked tea colour in the dull, orange light. The pain in his back is not so bad if he doesn’t move, but he forgets this and leans quickly, impulsively to his right to peak through a hole in the fence where the paling has cracked. Through the gap he can see the children in the house behind his playing in a portable, plastic pool, splashing and spraying water into the air, chasing each other around the lawn, their bodies twisting into all sorts of impossible positions then snapping back to normal with elastic ease. As he watches them tumbling in and out of the plastic pool, he feels old at sixteen. Nobody should feel old at sixteen. But the elasticity has gone from his body and he feels at that moment as if all his summers are over.

  The sounds of the suburb crowd round him. Mrs Barlow is quiet, their house is quiet, apart from the occasional low coughing of Mr Barlow and their television floating through the opened windows and across the yard to where Michael is standing. Somewhere a flyscreen door slams just that little harder than it ought to. There is a sudden gust of canned laughter, a chorus of squeals in the night, the distant rattle of the city-bound train that always sounds empty. His summer is over, and he hears them all now, these distractions that he ought not to hear because there is nothing to concentrate on. And he suddenly feels not only absurdly old, but lonely. And not the kind of loneliness that makes him wish that Kathleen Marsden were still there. It is not that kind of loneliness — if he were to summon her up and have her stand with him now, he would not be any less lonely. This new kind of loneliness would still be with him, and his summer would still be over, no matter who was standing with him.

  47.

  The Lesson of Fred Trueman

  Early the next morning, his slipped discs back in place, Michael is sitting in Black’s rooms and the doctor is pointing to an X-ray of his back. Black is saying that Michael’s back shows the signs of wear that one might expect to see in a back fifteen years older — or more. And a labourer at that. Not a sixteen-year-old student. He turns from the X-ray and asks — with a clear sense of incredulity — what on earth the young Michael has been up to. And Michael says, quite calmly, that he has been playing cricket.

  Black stares at Michael for a long time, calculating the sheer frequency and intensity of playing required to do this kind of damage, then nods slowly to himself. He knows the family. He knows the house, Vic, Rita and their dying grandmother in the spare room who thinks she’s got a summer cold. He knows them all and continues nodding before speaking in a quiet, unemotional voice. Did Michael not feel pain before the discs were thrown out? his doctor asks. And Michael nods, with the same, quiet calm, that he did feel pain. Yes. A certain amount, but adds that everybody expects a certain amount of pain, that you can’t have speed without pain; but even as he says it he knows that this is the talk of the old Michael — the Michael who desired speed enough to almost break his back.

  Black shifts and swivels in his seat and offers one, simple piece of advice.

  ‘Stop.’

  But it is said in such a way that Michael is left in no doubt that it is not a piece of advice, but an order.

  ‘Stop playing.’

  A week before, even a few days before, obeying such an order would have been unthinkable. Black might just as well have asked him to stop breathing. But today Michael takes it calmly, and stares at the floor, nodding.

  ‘Give it up now,’ Black continues, ‘this … madness. Unless you want to be a cripple at thirty, or forty.’ He shrugs. ‘Whenever it all finally catches up with you and you find yourself shuffling about like an old man when you’re not. Oh, by all means,’ he goes on, ‘play for fun. For amusement. But whatever you’ve been up to, give it away now.’

  Michael could say that he has never played for amusement, or just for the fun of it. And there is a part of him that now acknowledges that he really ought to have been. It is then, in Black’s surgery, with the X-ray of his prematurely aged and worn back pinned to the screen, that the face of Fred Trueman comes to mind. For it was always the face of Freddie Trueman that caught his eye, not the bowler’s style. It was a face that was always grinning, or always seemed on the point of a grin. A face that was always entertaining the possibility of a harmless little prank that might amuse everybody — or a childish and stupid one that wouldn’t amuse anybody but Freddie Trueman himself. He imagines the face of Fred Trueman out there on the ground, a joker with a fight in his eyes, a grin all right, with the street fighter not far behind. Michael had no doubt there would be days when you would hate Fred Trueman and his stupid larking about, but the hatred wouldn’t last. Trueman’s face reminded you that amid all the training, the effort, the long days in the field that never seemed to end and the sheer slog of it all, there was fun to be had. And if you weren’t having fun, then what were you doing?

  Looking at the game through the eyes of Fred Trueman, everything seemed like a giant lark. Oh, you never took it easy and you never stopped giving everything you had — he has the face of someone who loves every second that he is in the game — but it’s also the face of someone who would be quick to tell you not to leave your grin at the gate when you go out to play.

  This is the lesson of Fred Trueman. But is it Fred or Freddie? For Trueman has two names, it seems to Michael. Fred for when he’s got the ball in his hand and he’s running straight at you with that crazy look in his eyes, as if he’d dearly love to dispense with the ball altogether and just keep running, past the popping crease, down the pitch, right up to you and knock your block off. Dispense with the ball, the bat, and all the jolly nice t
alk that comes with the game that merely gets in the way of what you really want to do — knock the batsman’s block off. Just once. That’s Fred. Freddie, Michael imagines, is the bloke with his hands on his hips with plenty to say after he’s made you look pretty silly. He hasn’t knocked your block off. All the same, he’s got plenty to say, and in such a way that suggests one day he just might.

  Michael has never met Fred Trueman and he never will, but this is what the face of Fred Trueman tells him when he looks at it in books and magazines. As he is walking to the railway station from Black’s surgery, he wonders why the lesson of Fred Trueman never sank in until this day. And, with that, he wonders if it had sunk in a little earlier, whether it would have made any difference. Whether he would have been up to the lesson of Fred Trueman — who had the gift of fun — and whether he would have relaxed every now and then and made things just a little bit easier on himself. Whether it would have mattered, and whether his long run to the crease would have been changed, minutely, but minutely enough to give him the gift he’d so desired but never won, because he forgot to laugh along the way.

  48.

  A Salute

  There are many summer smells to Michael — the reek of sweet chewing gum in a crowded car; the stench that follows when a pub door suddenly swings open; the perfumes and the aftershave that drenched the air before all the parties of his youth, the parties that started well and always ended up wrong. These are the smells of summer that will always remain sad ones. That he is aware of too often. But this morning the smell of summer is good, in spite of the X-rays depicting his damaged back he’d seen an hour before in the doctor’s surgery. Perhaps it is because of this, because he is released from it all now, that this morning the smell of summer is good as it floats through the low hanging trees and across the lawns towards Michael. It is early morning and the real heat hasn’t arrived yet. The park sparkles and a light breeze, carrying with it the rich scent of damp lawn where the sprinklers have been, floats through the trees towards him.

  The high brick walls of the Melbourne Cricket Ground rise up before him. Puffs of cloud come and go and the coloured flags on top of the stands flutter under a slowly moving sky. It is Wednesday and Michael has skipped school. The crowds haven’t yet arrived but Michael is not here this early to beat the crowds, which he knows will come for this last day of the series. Nor has he come this early so that he may secure a good seat. Behind the red brick of the Members Stand, enclosed by a picket fence, is the open quadrangle where the practice nets are. The players from both sides come here before each day’s play and Michael has come to watch.

  Small groups of spectators — fathers and their children, boys in the school uniforms, who, like Michael, have taken the day off, and loners — gather near the nets even though the players have not yet arrived. The day will be a stinker, the crowds will come and the ground will barely contain its many guests. The city will, for the day, have the look of an evacuated town. He carries his school bag over his shoulder and is aimlessly wandering past the nets, staring up at the Members Stand, when a door opens. He hears a ripple of comment, and from the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of flannels and colour. When he lowers his gaze he is staring directly at the faces he knows so well from television, books and newspapers. But they have never looked so far away as they do, right now, in front of him.

  A close group, they talk softly as they make their way to the practice nets. Michael stands perfectly still and watches them pass by in front of him. Their heads are lowered. There are no smiles. They are serious. They could almost be a group of businessmen going to work, not cricketers, not the lucky ones who have been lifted up and swept away from their streets and suburbs into the great, wide world of speed. Not those who have known what it is to enter that world, where dream and reality meet as sweetly as a red leather ball coming off the middle of a well-oiled bat. But these players do not resemble the lucky ones who have heard that sweet sound. As he begins to distinguish the individual faces in the group he picks out Worrell at its centre. And the first thing he notices is that he looks tired. As he walks across the open space in front of Michael to the practice nets, Worrell looks like a man with very few steps left in him. Like a man who has in him only those steps required to get him through the day, before he sits down and closes his eyes for a very long time. While Michael is contemplating this, the door beside the Members Stand opens a second time and two more players step out into the morning sunshine. The shorter one he doesn’t immediately place, but there is no mistaking the gleaming, golden crucifix that hangs round the neck of Wesley Winfield Hall. One of those to whom speed comes as naturally and easily as a grin.

  Whether it is simply the way he is looking at things, or that the players are simply so tired that they are moving ever so slowly, he doesn’t know. But they seem to be passing across in front of him for far, far longer than the journey from the dressing rooms to the nets should really take. And during this dreamy procession he seems to have ample time to reach into his school bag and remove a pen and a scrap of paper — some unread, anonymous notice from the previous day’s school — and hold it into the air. This sudden movement disturbs the quiet calm of the morning and the players turn as one towards the source of the disturbance and see a tall teenage boy in his grey school uniform holding a scrap of white paper aloft. The group halts as one, Michael steps forward and watches in silence as the paper and the pen are passed round and the entire team signs the blank side of the school notice.

  Throughout, nobody speaks. And it is only as he steps back a pace, while the group is still standing as one before him, that he feels the need to respond. Feels that he can’t simply stand there in that tremendous silence and let the moment pass without comment. But he can think of nothing to say that might be compressed into the few words there is time for. And in the same instant it occurs to him that a gesture — not words — is required. That it is only through gesture that he can speak as quickly as he must. And, without knowing why, without having time to weigh up the wisdom of the action, he feels his feet coming together and the rest of his body snapping to attention as he would at school assembly. At the same moment his right arm rises, his open hand is lifted to his brow, and he offers his salute to the quiet group of players miraculously assembled in front of him. And it is at that point, while the rest of the group is looking quizzically at the boy, that the tired frame of Frank Worrell, who seems only to have a few steps left in him, stands to attention at the centre of the group and returns the gesture. He has no sooner lowered his arm than his tired face breaks into a grin as crisp as the morning sun, and he and his team are gone.

  Suddenly everything is that much faster. The procession has passed, a crowd has gathered at the practice nets, and the familiar clock clock of bat and ball punctuates the gathering sound of traffic and trains. And as Michael folds the school notice and places it back in his bag, he knows that this is as near as he will ever get to that world he once imagined as his. It passed before him, this world, and was then gone, pausing just long enough for Michael to glimpse what they have become — those for whom dream and reality have merged, but who have forgotten in their tiredness that this has happened.

  49.

  Frank Worrell Sheds His Loneliness

  Amid the swirling hum of the arena, the crackle of the loudspeakers and the metallic rattle of applause, Frank Worrell is alone. He has been alone throughout the summer. But now he is at the point of shedding his loneliness. It is late in the afternoon, the match is completed, the series over. The crowd — men in suits, women in floral hats and best dresses, boys and girls in school uniforms — fills the arena. In the years to come more people will claim to have been here on this afternoon at the MCG than could possibly have been. But, in a sense, it is true, and in a sense it will be right for everyone to say they were there the day Frank Worrell shed his loneliness.

  He is alone when the metallic rattle of applause ceases. He is still alone when the slight figure of Bradman
steps up to the microphone with a trophy in his hand, while the Australian captain stands beside him in the shadows of the stand — the Australian captain, whose eyes miss nothing, and whose eyes are still on duty even though the tour is over. And even when Worrell steps to the microphone and is stopped before he can speak by a chorus of song and three loud, emphatic cheers that could be heard for miles outside the ground on this calm summer afternoon, he has still not shed his loneliness.

  But when he finally speaks his voice is fragile in a way that it has not been all summer. His words are good, delivered with all the grace of a perfect stroke, one that is written into a moment and brings to the world the distracting beauty of a perfect act. But the voice is fragile. It is fragile because the loneliness is leaving him. And as he speaks to the crowd, the loneliness departs, word by word. But it does not finally leave him until he turns to the Australian captain, his offerings in hand. The captain’s cap, which he hands to Benaud, is, he says, his scalp. The small white necktie that follows, his neck. His deep crimson blazer, the upper half of his body. He does not offer the lower half of his body because his legs are too tired to be of use to anyone. Frank Worrell hands the items to the Australian captain. And this, written into the moment and there for all to recall forever after, throughout all the summers that will follow, is his final gift. The gift of grace. He hands them all to the Australian captain, then steps back into the shadows of the stand from which he emerged. With the cap, the scarf and the blazer, he is also handing over the weight of the summer, that part of him that couldn’t be shared — until now. As the weight of the cap, scarf and blazer leave him, so too does the loneliness.