A jovial Indian supporter took a patty and offered a crispy vegetable pakora in return. ‘Very good,’ he chuckled. ‘We want you guys to play well, you know, before we turn you into mincemeat. We have to show Pakistan what we can do.’
‘Yarr, but we have some scores to settle with you Lankan wankers too,’ one of his friends butted in.
A beer carrier and a curry bucket arrived. The cheerleader leapt to his feet again and tried to wind up the crowd with more insults at Pakistan, England and Sri Lanka. He started on anal dreams and ghee fingers and tried a couple of lewd openly racist taunts. He got a laugh but not enough support. He changed tack and reassured the women in the family near him. ‘We are all good Asian boys, really, Mummy. Don’t you worry, we just need to juice up, no?’
The runs had slowed. The sky was overcast. The Sri Lankan batsmen on the pitch were hunched, looking cold, while the Indian team strutted about in warm, fluffy blue. Sunny needed to calm his nerves. He wanted to find Tina. He couldn’t quite focus on what Clara had been trying to say. What did she really mean? Why get married now, after all these years? Haven’t we been through it all? He wanted to see Mikey and Vicky. Young love. Timing was everything. And there had to be a picture for him here. This was the final day before the deadline. His last chance. He had to be ready for an image to enter the mirror chamber like a ball to the perfectly angled plane of a bat. He took the cap off the lens, ready to roll, and went down behind the stands.
Crowds paraded carrying drums, flags, trumpets and hooters, but there was no sign of Mikey or his friends. He looked for Tina. On several occasions Sunny thought he’d spotted her distinctive face before it dissolved into the shape of some other elongated profile, closer perhaps to that of his mother’s. Age and memory were playing tricks. Fortunately he managed to stop himself, each time, from greeting the wrong person. He took pictures instead. With a camera he could do anything. Held correctly, it made the professional photographer practically invisible. He could go right up to anyone and press the shutter, catching a sari, a flag, a bare midriff or a swaying beer gut. He took pictures of silver belly buttons, cool chakras, hennaed hands. The New Cricket. He didn’t know what he would say to Tina if he found her. He had never told her that he’d gone to Baguio that Valentine’s weekend in Ricardo’s car, only to find she wasn’t there – but that wasn’t it, surely? What could he say now? Maybe he could take her picture instead, pretend she was about to hit a Bollywood six and do a belly roll with Steve.
Overhead, the crowds stomping on the upper tiers went berserk. The Sri Lankan batting had come to an end. The score was 202 for 8. It was not heady stuff but enough, with luck, to make for a tight finish.
Sunny thought of Ranil in his spiritual cul-de-sac on the other side of town. Clara was the one he wanted there anyway. What was it she really wanted? He thought of the moments she’d been happiest. Their lives seemed to be slipping by so fast, he could barely tell which year they were in any more. How could she think they could start again, as if everything would simply get better, as if nothing would age, go sour, decline, erode and slip away? Was it the prospect of menopause? Had there been anything with Alex? Did he care if there had?
He wished he had brought his mobile, then he could have found Mikey at least. He’d never been to a match like this with Lester. Now he and his son were at least in the grounds together. Perhaps it was possible to get what you really wanted. Clara had said once, ‘Much as I love you, I don’t want Mikey to be just another you.’ But he could learn from Mikey, couldn’t he? Or had she said, ‘Much as I loved you . . .’?
Someone on the other side of the ground started a Mexican wave. Block after block of people stood and swayed together, leaning into the next, creating a tidal wave of rising and falling bodies that rippled across the stands. When Sunny stood and swayed and clamoured with the bunch of meat-eating Mummy’s boys led by the young hooligan, it seemed as though they had all become one. The ripple effect went around the stadium six, seven, eight times, stirring it. Stirring up the game. He photographed the movement. A long exposure to catch the human ripple in the low reddish light that had descended. A double exposure to follow. A wave. And then, another wave. A vortex.
Two Indian wickets had fallen; there was some faint hope among the Sri Lankans. Then Tendulkar stepped forward and smashed a long hard drive. The ball, a round, white bullet, shot across the grass towards a few fat pigeons congregated on an empty patch of the ground. The birds were pecking at the earth and waddling about, ignoring the mad momentous game around them, unaware of the tribal needs, the chameleon identities, the laws of science and the art of hitting ducks. The ball sped into their midst and caused a flurry. The bird in the middle didn’t stand a chance. The ball hit it. The pigeon keeled over. Play stopped. The whole of the Oval was hushed. The nearest fielder walked over and picked the bird up as though it were the dove of peace. He carried it slowly towards the boundary. Sunny knew then that this was the picture for him. He ran down to the rope faster than a long leg might streak to stop a boundary ball. He kept the lens aperture small, knowing that in his photograph the sky would be a bowl where newspaper confetti floated like circling buzzards, while in the centre a pair of clasped hands prayed to a dying bird. Its feathers trembled just enough to blur, in and out of perfect focus, like life itself. He clicked the shutter before the groundsman’s bucket swung into view to collect the corpse. He didn’t even need a light meter. There was something significant happening here, he knew, no matter what the outcome of the game would be. Perhaps it was the power to silence that comes with death, however small the life, and our need to overcome it. To find some brief moment of care. Hope. The tender possibility of renewal. This man, this game, this bird was salvation. The timing was perfect. Anything seemed possible: peace, love, joy, life everlasting . . . It was all in the frame. Sunny saw it all. And in that moment he understood something about himself. The life he had and how far it could take him.
More wickets fell. ‘Vindaloo, vindaloo’ became the new cry. ‘Pigeon vindaloo’ the new taunt. A win for India seemed inevitable; the drumbeats and the honking grew louder. Everyone was waiting for the final stroke to mark the end of the day. The sky was turning redder.
The cheerleader lost his grip. He was no longer necessary. His anguished appeal: ‘We want a fuckin’ riot, we want a riot . . . guys. Per-lease . . .’ was completely ignored. When the game ended with a final undisputed boundary for India, he gave a last drowned-out hurrah. A little boy climbed the stairs and the cheerleader hugged him in relief. ‘Hey, little fellow, come to Uncle. How’d you like your first match?’ His answer was lost in the din.
Then, down by the hastily erected podium, Sunny saw Tina. She was in a denim outfit that belonged to the early seventies. Next to her Steve was dancing. He wore a Sri Lankan flag like a sarong around his jeans and carried a beer. They both lurched towards the TV crew gathering around the players. Sunny could have gone down and joined the throng. He could have reached them and made contact, but he didn’t want to any more. He wanted to go home instead. If it had been Clara there . . . Something in his head finally was clearing. He saw how each frame in his life was stitched to another. How he couldn’t be what he was, and where he was, without what had been. Without Tina, Steve, Junior and Herbie in Manila, without Robby and Ranil, without Hector and Aunty Lillie, even Major Brendan, Rudy and Anjuli. Without Bradman, Weekes, Walcott and Worrel, troubadours and cricketers. And his mother and his father. Without Mikey running ahead. Without Clara appearing out of nowhere. Each in their place for ever, and settling him in his. He checked his watch. He put the camera in his bag and took the back stairs to the exit, afraid that somehow once again he would be too late.
The walk to Vauxhall tube was like the aftermath of a rock concert. Fans on both sides swaggered and cheered each other. Drums were beating, horns blaring. Kids roamed everywhere. Sunny caught a glimpse of Mikey and Vicky by the traffic cones before the crowd surged and swallowed them. Our side might have colla
psed, he thought, but we shared the day. It felt good. He knew what it was like to be in the same place at the same time as his own. Next to him a bunch of teenagers sporting Sri Lankan cricket shirts were chatting excitedly in Tamil. Further on another group were singing in Sinhala. Both supporting the same team. Despite the sad defeat, the poor showing all summer, the madness infecting the rest of the world, it seemed that on this June evening some divisions, at least, were close to healing. One suicidal war possibly over. The warmongers tamed. The bloodlust and the hate dissipated. He saw the dead bird become a phoenix. Its image rise from the strip of film and gain a new life. Things could be renewed. He clutched his camera bag tight, fearing his foolishness, fearing the future. Perhaps there is too much greed in the old world to let things become better, for there to be winners without losers. Some new calamity would open other wounds now this one was healing. He thought of his father and his mother and how their world had spun so unpredictably. He thought of Mikey. He wanted him to be able to look back on some happiness. And he thought of Clara . . . how she must know what he wanted to say.
When he got home he found the front door locked. No light was visible through the frosted glass. Clara evidently had not come back. He had paid up for all the rescue services: home-start, roadside assistance, relay, the works. She should have made it home by now no matter what had happened to the car.
He undid the locks and pushed open the door. He had missed the bottom of the frame when he’d painted the woodwork. It needed to be done. He turned and shut the door. The glow in the summer sky above the fretted rooftops of Hornsey filtered through the top window. He could see small birds wheeling high above. The swallows from their nests in Wales.
The answerphone blinked on the hall table. Sunny pressed the button. Static, white noise and then a garbled voice that could have been Clara’s. He tried 1471. The operator informed him that the last number could not be traced.
He wondered how he could reach her. He couldn’t remember where she said Ranil was staying. The words in his head turned, a lateness in his blood.
He collected the empties from around the house and put them away. He got some milk from the fridge and drank it. He didn’t want anything else. Nothing harder. Not now. Maybe not any more. At least, not yet. He went and sat in the room that had been his son’s nursery and then, once Mikey had moved into a teenage loft, a picture gallery and then a music room. Sunny unloaded his camera. There would be time enough tomorrow to develop the film and take it in to the Soho office before the competition closed. Plenty of time for pictures. For images that hold breath. He knew he had the right photograph. It was a good camera. Now he could do nothing but wait for the phone to ring and hope there was still time for words. Time to erase his mistakes and make amends. Time to speak. Time to say yes. Yes, let’s do it. Let’s go now to the Registry Office. Sign the papers, say what we have to say. Renew ourselves. After that, maybe he could begin to formulate the words of the rest of his life. Words that would bring peace to his own mind if not to the world. And possibly, with luck, if the light and the timing were right, create a picture in someone else’s and make his life a little more worthwhile. Words that might make room for hope. Perhaps something more than his father had managed. If only there was a place to start. A halfway house. Too much, it seemed, was too easy to squander.
Then he heard a key turn in the front door. He came out into the hall as the door opened and saw her at the threshold. She had his light meter like a garland around her neck.
She lifted the cord over her head and held it out. ‘I went to the match to find you. I thought you might need this.’
Sunny reached out. Her fingers were cold and, like his, needed warming. He could do it. At that moment anything seemed possible. He remembered seeing fresh fettucine in the fridge. ‘I got the picture.’
‘I know,’ Clara said. ‘I can see.’ Her face opened and caught the last of the warm light spilling from the sky.
A Declaration of Thanks
I would like to thank the players mentioned, on all sides, whom I’ve had the pleasure to watch over the years. Also ‘Anyone for Cricket’ organiser, M. Kentake, for a timely invitation, and the other participants, Mike Phillips and Chris England, for their unexpected leg-spins on the day; the Gunawardenas for a welcome pitch in Colombo to stay in; the Aluvihares ditto for a second innings; my agent Bill Hamilton, and his team at A.M. Heath; Alexandra Pringle, Victoria Millar, Margaret Stead and everyone at Bloomsbury.
My very special thanks, long overdue, for everything from stories to stringhoppers, to my father and mother, Douglas and Miriam Gunesekera; also to Michele, Andy, Liz, Paul, Darin, Chandrika; John and Gwenda Pick. In addition, Jamie, Nissanka, stalwarts both, new fielder Bobby and new runner Charu.
And finally thank you Shanthi and Tanisa, who light up the day, and Helen for more than just the match.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Romesh Gunesekera was born in Sri Lanka and lives in London. He is the author of four books: Reef (shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1994), Monkfish Moon, a collection of short stories, The Sandglass (BBC Asia Award) and Heaven’s Edge (shortlisted for the best book award in the Eurasia region for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2003, and named as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year).
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