The Match

by Romesh Gunesekera

  As if on cue, Tifus put the phone down. ‘Yes. I must be off. It’s not just the excitement, sometimes it is the pressure of memories that mount up at this point in the year. You can only take so much, you see, before you pop . . .’

  The two boys left Delora in front of the TV and took the train to the waterfront of what was once Britain’s industrial anchorage. The water was up and stippled with the tall lights of Liverpool. An icy wind whipped around the floral pavilion decked out in holly and a few spare strings of hopeful Christmas bulbs.

  At the pub, Ranil shouted to him above the sound of popsicle tunes. ‘I called her, but she couldn’t come out tonight.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know? Clara. The girl I was telling you about.’ He seized his lemonade. ‘Remember?’

  Sunny looked around at the girls on the dance floor in their fluorescent white thigh-high boots and tried to imagine this Clara and an overexcited Ranil drinking Babycham and discussing Schopenhauer over the strains of the Osmonds.

  ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘Just down the road. She’s like the girl next door, you know?’

  Ranil said his parents had known hers for about ten years – ever since Tifus had buried her nan. He’d done a good funeral and cheered them up with jokes about waiting rooms and the hereafter which her father, in particular, had enjoyed. They’d met for a seasonal drink regularly after that but Ranil had not noticed Clara until last summer when, after his exams, he got a job in the surgery next to her house. ‘It’s like something that has grown between us. Love grows, Sunny. Right? You’ll see when you meet her.’

  As Ranil had promised, there was a big Christmas party at the Veeraswamys’, another Sri Lankan family living it up on Merseyside. They drove to the house in Tifus’s estate car. ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’ Tifus laughed. ‘You see, this Renault is a fine family car. But, in an emergency, you can snap the back seat down and slide the client in, no problem.’

  Sunny looked over his shoulder, just to make sure the back was clean and empty, and huddled deep into the discount winter coat Ranil had insisted he buy at the Army & Navy Stores in Liverpool.

  ‘I wouldn’t half like a Benz though. You know, for us Ceylon boys that is still the tops, no? Unless we go for the topey-top like Jaguar, Bentley and all that impossible business. And Benz do one that would be perfect – in fact, they use it as a hearse in Germany – but you know, Sunny, people here are a bit funny about German cars. For the older folk, the war was not so long ago, you see, and they are my main clients after all. I don’t like to make them restless. Especially after the final exit.’

  Everything had a roundness to it, the road, the grass verge, the wall of the municipal pissoir, the sky above it, the halos around the street lamps, the branches of the trees beyond, life itself. Sunny looked at Tifus’s round head, set low on his shoulders like a baby’s. It trembled slightly and lifted as the rumble of another laugh reached up into it. ‘Sunny, you ever see snow before?’

  ‘I’m hoping for my first white Christmas here.’

  Tifus laughed and his small hands shook on the steering wheel. The car snaked a bit. ‘I remember my first time. I was so excited. I had not even seen frost, you know. Never been up into the hills back home.’ He glanced at the rearview mirror. ‘You see, I come from a very humble family. We never moved out of our backyard. Ever. Imagine that, eh? Even with the sea just there.’

  Delora tugged at his sleeve. ‘Keep your eye on the road, Tifus. There is ice.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He patted the steering wheel. ‘Snow will fall, I’m sure. You’ll love it. There’s never snow in the Philippines, is there?’

  Sunny smiled in the dark, thinking of Herbie snorting. The alternative Manila of the arctic fox. ‘No. It is like the dry zone in Ceylon. Anuradhapura or somewhere.’

  ‘You say Ceylon still? Not this new business, Sri Lanka? Good old name. But you see, Sunny, I have never been to the dry zone. We never went bloody anywhere.’ He paused as they came to the crossroads. ‘This Philippines is Catholic, no? Ranil mentioned something about crucifixes.’

  There were pine woods ahead tinged with a warm sodium glow. The indicator blinked on the dashboard.

  ‘Yes. The only Catholic country in Asia.’

  ‘I must tell you about my friend. My teacher, actually. He also became a real friend. He went there, you know. To this Manila.’ Tifus slowed the car. ‘Later, when we get inside. I’ll tell you later.’ He parked carefully, on the road but with two wheels raised up on the kerb above a frozen puddle.

  Sunny followed him and the others under the mistletoe and into the redbrick house, imagining the sea route from the mouth of the Mersey to Manila, a merchant ship carrying a cargo of cricket paraphernalia for the Makati XI, circling the globe and drawing his disjointed life back together, healing rifts, smoothing the furrows of anxiety, the knot in his head, turning Tifus’s old buddy into someone he knew.

  The Veeraswamys had a red carpet in their spacious hall and a small unbalanced chandelier of pointed candle lights and tangled glass pendants hanging from a meat hook. Tifus laughed out loud as he shook hands. ‘Put on weight, huh, Veera? Too much Christmas pud, I bet. Better measure you up one of these days.’ He chortled and turned to Mrs Veeraswamy. ‘Just joking, my dear. Just joking. This champion of yours will see us all out. You can be damn sure of that.’

  Veera, a confident portly man in a giddy blue waistcoat, smirked happily. He had a gold front tooth. His wife was much the same comfortable shape as him and sparkled with a diamond nose-stud. She was clearly very fond of powerful scents, although hers did not entirely overcome the smell of chilli paste and hot frying oil lacquered in her hair. She ushered them into the living room. There were too many people for introductions to be made. Sunny found himself a perch by the fireplace from which he could observe the crowd. Ranil was quickly sucked into a bevy of well-powdered Wirral ladies who wanted hear all about London and the Christmas lights on Regent Street and how they compared with Blackpool and what would happen when the country’s power supply was turned off. Delora joined them while Tifus bounded from one group to another, laughing and raising his glass to good health and longevity.

  Despite the winter frost outside, the strained English accents, damp wool and farty tweed inside, the scene with its babble of lubricated conversation was oddly familiar and comforting.

  ‘Well, what do you think of England, young man?’ The question came like a gunboat salvo from a stout, cheery man who smacked his lips approvingly at a dark drink in his hand.

  ‘It’s cool.’

  ‘Winter, eh? Discontent?’

  ‘I mean England is OK.’

  ‘This weather toughens you up. You can go places then.’

  ‘You mean, like migrate?’

  ‘You’ve tried Guinness?’ He raised his big tall glass.

  ‘Looks impressive.’

  ‘Good for the soul.’ He puffed out his chest and brushed some flecks off the lapel of his green cardigan. ‘Like adversity.’

  ‘Yup.’ Sunny began to see why Ranil may have felt compelled to study theology, having grown up with so much spiritual enrichment around. ‘I better go get some then.’

  A bar had been set up in the dining room. Mr Veeraswamy was pouring whisky and ginger ale into a fine piece of cut glass. He gave Sunny a sideways glance. ‘Ranil’s friend, no? Like a jar, or something?’

  ‘Can I try a small Guinness?’

  ‘Small? I don’t know about small. Big is the thing with Guinness. Heavy. By the way, are you a cricketer?’

  Sunny winced. ‘I’ve played a little.’

  ‘Bowler?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘This is the business for it. You see, people think to be a really fast bowler you need to run like a lunatic from the back of beyond. No, sir. You do not need a huge run-up. The speed comes from rhythm, wrist and internal energy. Guinness is the oil for the engine.’ Veera clenched his podgy hand into a fist and moved it like a pist
on.

  ‘Heavy, you said.’

  ‘Precisely. You need weight. The velocity comes from turning that weight into motion. Our Ceylon boys are too skinny to be really fast bowlers. How can they play first-class cricket if they just blow away in the wind? What I say is give them stout. They need a bit of beef on those skinny bones. And weight. You ever been to Nigeria?’

  Sunny raised the glass of brown boiling clouds and took a sip.

  ‘Wait, hold on.’ His interrogator from the other room appeared. ‘You must wait for it to settle, young man. This is a drink that teaches you patience.’ One hand held his Guinness steady while the other fumbled around in his trouser pocket.

  Sunny put the glass down and thought longingly of the simplicities of Coke, 7-Up and calamansi juice. Then remembered his father’s maxim about never rushing. A reverential silence enveloped them as they stood around the quietly seething stout. Conversations in the other rooms welled up and broke apart. Sunny heard the rise and fall of ‘Nowhere Man’ and tried to formulate something interesting to say. Perhaps he could talk about widgets.

  ‘Now.’ The expert bowed, exposing a flaming orange neck.

  Veera unhooked his thumbs from his flamboyant waistcoat and pumped the air with his fist again. ‘Ha. Yes.’

  Sunny took a sip of the thick, dark-brown creamy liquid. It was like the nicotine he used to clean out of his father’s tar-guard; a ritual he had been addicted to until Lester took up the pipe. A rich, seductive, sniffable syrup of slow death that had to be mopped and scraped out of a stubby black cigarette holder with toilet tissue.

  Ranil came into the room and grabbed Sunny’s elbow. ‘Come on. I want you to meet her. Excuse us.’

  At the top of the landing, Tifus stepped out of the lavatory. ‘Boys, how’s it going?’

  ‘Fine, Dad.’ Ranil eased past.

  Tifus placed a hand on Sunny’s shoulder. ‘Sunny, I was thinking about your Manila.’

  But Ranil was in a hurry. ‘Come on. She’s in here.’

  Tifus laughed. ‘All right, all right, boys. Later.’

  Sunny followed Ranil into one of the bedrooms, a kid’s room. The hall light picked out a couple of youngsters by the window. Incense curled out between them in a feeble attempt to disguise the stink of burning weed and charred mould. Ranil stood in the doorway peering, until young Veeraswamy Jr – a sulky fourteen-year old – told him to get in, or get the fuck out and close the door.

  Ranil withdrew. ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Clara?’

  ‘Someone said she was in there.’

  They went back down into the kitchen where Mrs Veeraswamy was ladling chickpeas into a Pyrex bowl. She had hitched her maroon sari up so that the brocade on the hem didn’t touch the floor. Her bare ankles, strapped in glittering plastic, looked like those of a mannequin. ‘Ranil, be a good boy, darling, and run and get me the Crisp ’n Dry from the cupboard outside.’

  ‘Oil?’

  ‘I forgot to fry the onions to put on top. Run, Ranil, will you, dear?’ She placed a frying pan on the stove. She moved in a slightly awkward, robotic way as though everything must run according to a predetermined order. Her omission of the onions was clearly proving traumatic.

  Ranil returned gripping a bottle of Crisp ’n Dry in one hand and the arm of a thin, pale girl in the other. ‘Oil,’ he said to Mrs Veeraswamy. Then, a little more coyly, he turned to Sunny. ‘Hey, this is Clara.’

  Sunny looked at her and a warm tingle ran through his body. Blood began to swirl in his head and the air in his lungs emptied. He put his hand to his chest and stared at her as though he was seeing through her. Her clothes – a white cheesecloth shirt and white jeans – had a kind of transparency that was more ethereal than sensual. Her skin was barely distinguishable: a smooth milky surface puckered only to form the petals of her sensitive lips, a thin but promising nose and a pair of very dark eyes.

  ‘Hi.’ Sunny felt as though even that single syllable might blow a hole through her.

  She smiled shyly, her lips barely parting. The tips of her teeth, just visible, seemed to him pure as snow.

  A moment later Mrs Veeraswamy let out a bloodcurdling scream as her frying pan ignited. Flames whooshed upwards. Ranil was transfixed. Sunny pulled Mrs Veeraswamy back. Clara shouted at him. ‘Quick, wet the rug.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wet it.’

  Ranil looked aghast as Sunny poured his Guinness on the floor. Clara used the sopping kitchen rug to smother the flames while Sunny threw the contents of the washing-up bowl over everything.

  Their reactions were swift but perhaps a little drastic. The flames would have died out without doing much damage. And it was perhaps unfortunate that Mrs Veeraswamy’s silk sari ended up so unflatteringly wet.

  Veera peered in and saw the rug on the stove and the signs of a flood. ‘What the hell happened here?’

  ‘This cooking oil is like petrol, no?’ Mrs Veeraswamy pointed accusingly at the bottle Ranil had brought in.

  ‘Oh, oh.’ Veera stepped back. ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘Outside in the store cupboard.’ Ranil muttered.

  ‘The one with the Everton sticker?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it on the shelf with the chrome polish and the Turtle wax? The big yellow sponge and the WD40?’

  ‘Yes. And the bleach and the Ajax. Everything was there.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Veera glanced away. ‘I am afraid I haven’t sorted that cupboard out yet. I think that bottle better go back. It is not for cooking. With this oil crisis looming, you see . . .’

  Mrs Veeraswamy was steaming from behind and above. Suddenly she exploded. ‘Where’s my Crisp ’n Dry, dunderhead?’

  Veera shrugged. ‘OPEC?’ It was hardly a hoard but Sunny reckoned that every little bit helped.

  ‘My cranberry sauce and castor sugar?’

  ‘All in the bag, my dear, all in the bag. You know, it has been a bit of a rush today.’

  Mrs Veeraswamy snorted and bustled out of the kitchen, trying to hide her damp bottom with a blue and white tea towel commemorating the Royal family.

  Sunny glanced at Clara; the tip of her nose had turned a faint pink.

  ‘So, tell me. What sort of a place is this Manila? Like Colombo, is it? Better than England? This bloody country is getting into such a mess, no?’

  ‘Nothing like Colombo. Hotter, drier, richer, poorer. Like some place between Hollywood and Mexico.’

  Sunny tried to explain the history and the cultural influences that had been drummed into him during countless school sessions of Manila orientation.

  Tifus listened attentively at first, but then became absorbed in a buzz of his own. ‘I told you about my friend, didn’t I?’

  ‘You were going to.’

  ‘He is my friend, but he was my teacher first.’

  ‘Where? Here?’

  ‘No. Not here. Back home. Galle, you know? He was a new young teacher and he thought I was bright enough to do well. Such a good fellow. He gave me private tuition for my senior school examination. Free. My family could not afford anything like that, you know. We are a very humble people. He treated me like a little brother. He got me a scholarship. I came to England because of him. We kept in touch for a while and then . . . lost touch.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘When I was studying here, we still exchanged letters. But then change of tack and all that, everything went . . .’ He blew a raspberry out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You see, I felt ashamed when I had to give up on medicine. Then, a few years ago I heard he had gone to Manila.’

  ‘To do what? Is he still there?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose he must be. There can’t be many Ceylon boys there, no? Hector Ekanayake is the fellow’s name.’

  ‘Hector? Uncle Hector?’ Sunny’s voice rose. He began to tell Tifus about Hector, his Mercedes and the scene in Makati, forgetting for the moment the complicated feelings he had about his former life.

  Tif
us shook his head in amazement. ‘A Benz, eh? The bugger has a Benz. Not an estate car, no?’

  ‘He’s had one of those too. He changes his car every two years.’

  ‘Every two?’ Tifus shook his head again.

  Sunny went on to tell him about the Navaratnams and their Mercedes and the cricket ball he’d hit through the front window.

  ‘Buggeroo.’ Tifus erupted into one of his high-pitched, hiccupping laughs. ‘Smashed the glass? Navaratnam, did you say? Ha. Fellow must have been livid.’ He was most intrigued by the depiction of Urdaneta. ‘So, this village is really a private compound for the loaded?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sunny explained about the high fencing, the gates and the security guards. Tifus listened intently, eyebrows arching towards each other in studious prayer. Veera passed by with some crisps and Tifus called him over. ‘I say, Veera. Come and listen to this. You’ll like this idea. Tell him, Sunny, about this Uruda-net business.’

  Sunny repeated his exposition on the islands of the wealthy and the foreign in Manila, while Veera listened politely.

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes. Tifus, they have these compounds all over the place, you know. Kingston, Jo’burg. Many places. We should do it here. A bit of fencing, you see, will pay phenomenal dividends.’ He hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets and patted the sides of his tummy lightly.

  ‘So, what happened to Kingston then?’ Tifus looked stumped.

  ‘Experiment. Take Manila. Rich place, no? Am I right?’

  ‘In parts.’ Sunny remembered the slums of old Tondo where Herbie went hunting for his poppy seeds and dragon tails. The sour water, the garbage that overwhelmed the small wooden shelters; the deprivation that people had to live with and die in, halfway to nowhere.

  ‘In twenty, thirty years we’ll have them all over Liverpool. In fact, I am thinking about doing something in that vein myself, around here.’ His gold tooth glimmered. ‘If you want to invest, Tifus, this is the time to do it. The dark days are coming, Tifus. Very dark days indeed.’