by David Storey
Maurice’s big coat gives him the passing appearance of an invalid. ‘It’s not me, old cock,’ he answers. ‘It’s Arthur here.’
The dentist leads the way into his surgery. ‘Sit in the chair,’ he says. ‘I’ve a member’s ticket. That’ll be how you traced me. Though I haven’t seen a match this season.’ He says this as though it should have disqualified him from helping. ‘Where’s Mr Weaver?’
‘In the car. He’s not in control of his knees. Isn’t that right, Arthur?’
I nod, lying back in the chair and staring at the frosted glass covering the surgery light. The ether turns my belly over after the dank smell of the changing room and the plush warmth of the car. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ the dentist says, and trots off down the stairs.
‘You know what’s the matter with him,’ Maurice says. ‘I reckon it might be up to me to remove those molars, Art.’ He fingers the instruments, vibrating the wires on the drilling machine, and has just found the forceps in a drawer when the dentist starts pounding back up the stairs.
‘He’s coming,’ Johnson says urgently from his corner.
‘How much do you think he’s touched Weaver for?’ Maurice asks.
‘A fiver.’
‘Fiver at least. Remember whose birthday it is.’
The dentist’s panting slightly; he glances at the forceps in Maurice’s hand. ‘You managing all right on your own?’ he says. ‘Or do you want my advice?’
‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of professional opinion,’ Maurice says behind my head.
‘Well it’s this: don’t meddle.’ He sounds more than angry, and since Maurice doesn’t answer I guess it might be serious. I half turn, but he’s already holding my head. I open up and shut my eyes. His breath comes hot and fast, with an unprofessional smell. He makes a sound of irritation.
‘It’s a mess,’ he says. ‘Is it hurting?’
‘Not much.’ I hear noises of anxiety from Johnson; they correspond with a flow of blood from the gum.
‘They might behave themselves for a few days yet without giving serious trouble,’ he suggests. ‘You could go to your own dentist then—this is a children’s clinic, you know.’
‘What needs doing?’
‘They’ll have to come out, of course. Six of them. You might save one with a bit of trouble. In any case they should keep until Wednesday. You’ll find a public dentist open by then.’
‘Hasn’t Weaver paid you enough?’ I ask him.
I feel him draw back and I open my eyes. ‘How do you mean?’ He suddenly has a thick, natural Yorkshire accent. Maurice has moved up.
‘If he hasn’t paid the right fee we’ll pay you the rest. I can get it out of him later. How much is it?’
‘That’s not the point,’ he says. He hasn’t yet, if he’s ever going to, put on his white overall, and he looks something like a bank clerk caught with a threepenny default. ‘It’s the plate that’s going to be the trouble. I presume you’ll want a set of upper dentures.’
‘Yes, he will,’ Maurice says.
‘Then it’s going to make it a little awkward if he goes along with six recent extractions and asks a completely new dentist for dentures. Because I can’t give him them myself.’
‘Why not?’ Maurice wonders, preferring an argument to nothing at all. ‘You’re just arsing around. Kids have false teeth. I know one who has myself.’
‘Do you?’ The dentist’s nodding.
‘You can fix it with one of your mates. You do the pulling and he does the plate.’
‘I’m prepared to turn you out without even a sedative,’ he says eventually. ‘You’re doing me no favour in coming here.’
I’m sweating, feeling sick. Johnson has now moved up to look at my face. ‘It’s no party here,’ I tell them. ‘Let’s get it over with whatever the bloody price.’
‘You see,’ Maurice says. ‘He’s in pain.’
‘It’ll be five guineas,’ the dentist says to me. I wonder whether to tell him what a mean stinking frog he is. I imagine some of the reprisals he could take. He asks, ‘Do you want it?’
I tell him ‘yes’ and Maurice says he’ll pay for the time being, and the dentist watches the money laid out. He puts it into an inside pocket. ‘It’s not as lucrative as you might think, working for a local council,’ he says, pulling on a white smock. ‘You won’t find anybody else coming out at this time. It’ll have to be gas. Have you eaten recently?’
‘Not since dinner time.’
Maurice adds, ‘And you’ll fix it with a pal for the plate?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And would you mind waiting in the next room? You can leave the door open if you want to watch. But I don’t want you in here.’
In a minute he’s putting the mask over me. I begin to panic, and shout to Maurice. National Health, a stink of whisky. Let me out of here. Johnson’s funny hollow face. And there’s Johnson’s sick face.
2
Why worry about him? That’s the first thought I had when I found myself wondering about Johnson. After I’d used him it seemed odd I should try to find out all I could about him. At first I’d relied on him entirely, so I didn’t look too close in case I saw how fragile his support was. Yet when his usefulness had expired I began to wonder who he was. Perhaps I’d never come across a man who was quite as broken down as Johnson. I might have been a bit startled by his limitless simplicity. How small does a man get? I wondered every time I saw him stumping along.
I’d known of Johnson when I was a boy. He was fairly conspicuous to all the women and kids on Highfield estate because when all the men were at work Johnson would still be seen walking about the streets, the only man in sight. I suppose solitariness encouraged him to the idea of premature age—he pretended to be ten years older than he really was. This of course was added to the oddity of his persistent idleness. I think for a while, perhaps a couple of weeks, he’d been a park keeper.
When I was in my last year at school, and in the Rugby League team, Johnson got on to the committee of the City Rugby League Club up at Primstone. He wasn’t there very long, yet it wasn’t so short I didn’t keep the impression of him as a person of some significance. This was a mistake, in every respect, yet it was to my advantage. How he got there, unless it was because he had more spare time than anyone else in town, I still don’t know.
I didn’t really get to know him until I was twenty. At that time I’d followed a newspaper advert to 15 Fairfax Street. Two years previous to this I’d been exempted National Service because of bad feet; my right ankle was misshapen from a football accident at school. I’d lost interest in the game. I’d got stuffed with living at home with my parents, and I’d been on the move from one Irish house to another.
Mrs Hammond could have been the four-eyed monster for all I cared. She was providing board and lodging for thirty-five bob a week, with a room to myself; it seemed she was wanting to keep me. I couldn’t have made better conditions myself. I was the only lodger and she was a not-too-young widow and the house was in a terrace: it was natural that her reaction should be what it was, for she’d only recently been deprived of a fairly happy youth. Always standing in the hearth was a pair of brown working boots.
I’d been working at Weaver’s for two years when I went to her place. She hated my guts, my parents hated her, the kids were yelling their nuts off all day. I didn’t care. I’d just got my own lathe at Weaver’s, and I spent most of my time watching Maurice Braithewaite who worked in the same shop. I found it interesting to see the sort of feelings he aroused. He was admired and he was detested. It wasn’t difficult to decide who felt what. He’d given up using the works’ canteen and went to a nearby transport cafe with a couple of pals. He looked pretty special, I thought. And he was only my age.
By playing Rugby League he kept his head above the general level of crap, and that to me was the main thing. I could barely keep mysel
f afloat. It was he who explained the need for a backer or a talent scout when I suggested I’d like a trial at Primstone. I didn’t seem to know anyone, and he made it clear he wouldn’t push me, so I mentioned Johnson. ‘Never heard of him,’ he said. ‘But you ask him. You’ll have to have somebody to vouch for you.’
So I went to see Johnson. I didn’t go thinking he’d be able to help me. I just went to see what’d happen if I asked him. When I knocked on the door he came out and peered at me, and I was in no doubt at all that his wife was right behind the door. When I began to explain what I wanted he blurted out, ‘But you can’t come knocking at my door!’ It struck me as being right funny and I laughed. He didn’t know what I was laughing at, but he came one step down and whispered something about the ‘King William’. I went away holding myself up. I leant against hedges, gates, and lamp-posts. I felt I’d never seen a funnier man than Johnson. I met him in the pub. It was the only time I did laugh at him.
I was soon discouraged by the start I made. The year of waiting while Johnson made his devious, laborious efforts to get me started at Primstone benefited him a lot more than it did me. He knew it too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he spoilt his own efforts so’s to postpone the time when I could act on my own. He began to show signs of relying on me that I wasn’t sure I liked. His footsteps seemed to follow me down every street. Why not find some other means of getting in at Primstone? I’d been hoping Maurice Braithewaite might change his mind and give me the little push I needed. But he gave no indication of wanting to help. There was a long queue of prospective forwards demanding trials; I had to rely on Johnson exclusively to take me to the head of it.
When I ran on to the field it was almost dark. A heavy mist hung over the valley and enclosed the ground in a tight grey wall of drizzle. It was bitterly cold. The players ran around in groups, small and unreal beneath the half empty flanks of the terraces; insects released in a space. I felt sick and frightened, uncertain why I’d come up to Primstone at all, why I’d spent a year getting there. Everything outside the dark wreath of the crowd and the wooden pinnacles of the stadium was hidden. We were isolated; all that was familiar, encouraging, had vanished, leaving us in the shell of the stands. I wasn’t sure any longer what the performance was for.
Johnson had been at the tunnel mouth as I ran on to the field. How he’d fixed up the four trial games I didn’t know. But this was supposed to be his hour of triumph. He stood sullen and dejected when I passed him. I could still see him, as we waited for the emergence of the other team, climbing slowly up the centre steps of the main stand. Then the tunnel mouth erupted with a stream of white jerseys flooding on to the field.
I’d asked Mrs Hammond to come, but she’d refused and made it plain she didn’t want to be pestered about it.
‘Aw, it’s my first game. I need somebody there to cheer me.’
‘You can cheer yourself. You won’t catch me up there in the cold, freezing to death for an hour.’
When I tried to soften her up she said, ‘You don’t have to do it.’ Her whole face glistened with animosity.
‘It’s only a job. If I play well I might collect three or four hundred quid.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t doubt they’ll give you all that.’
‘That’s just the sort of encouragement I need. But I’d still like you to come.’
‘I’m not going,’ she moaned. ‘If I wanted to I would. I’ve said it. I don’t want to go.’
‘Wish me luck then.’
‘All that’s coming your way. I don’t wish you my luck.’
I jumped up and down on the spot, restless, trying to recollect her face as I left the house. There’d been a look of suspicious interest, clouded by a lot of self-pity. I was glad she hadn’t come. In any case it didn’t look very impressive: a couple of hundred people, two reserve teams playing, Johnson now waving his spider arms. But her aggressive sort of indifference roused in me a kind of anger, a savageness, that suited the game very well. I lost all sense of caution. By half-time in the first game, as we filed off the pitch, I’d realized this wildness was essential to the way I played. Although it seemed to correspond to my personality, it didn’t please me to admit that this slower, unskilful way of playing, the use of my advantage in size and weight, were the only assets I had to offer.
We lined up for the second half under a thin persistent drizzle, shrouding one end of the ground from the other. I was suddenly happy, relieved, full of air. I didn’t put it down to anything at that moment; I used it to encourage myself. Afterwards, I recognized it as a preliminary feeling of power. I was big, strong, and could make people realize it. I could tackle hard and, with the kind of deliberation I took a pride in later, really hurt someone. I was big. Big! It was no mean elation.
I listened to the tune of the crowd, a sound I’d never heard before. I tried to conduct it, for a minute, for two minutes; for quite a while I raised noises from them as I might have done from a tamed animal. I was big!
In the last quarter of an hour the elation gave way to a weariness I’d never imagined before. I never wanted to play again. The cold and dampness reached the very centre of my body; my hands and feet disappeared. Now a wall had been built between me and the crowd: I couldn’t hear them. The field had grown, its limits disappeared into that suffocating mist. The ground continually surged up to absorb me. I listened to the thud of my vanished feet as they pushed automatically against the earth. I hated the crowd making me suffer like this. My eyes hung out, my mouth hung open, the air dropped down my throat like lumps of filed lead.
All this was unnecessary. I was running round the field like a big tart, dropping my guts out with every stride I took, when I could have been ambling along easily. Even in the space of four trial games I learnt to save energy just for those moments when I could use it most effectively. But I never felt so exhausted and relieved as after that first match. I didn’t care if I never played again. Just to get on my backside was enough. I never wanted to move again. I lay soaking and gasping in the bath, the water clinging to my chest in a suffocating grip, my skin convulsed as the heat burnt at its broken surface. Behind me I could hear Johnson’s excited voice; around me the laughter and chatter of communal relief.
Somebody held a towel and rubbed my back, then the trainer was dabbing yellow liniment on my arms and legs. Johnson was standing by the door, his eyes glowing and fixed on me with pride and fascination. He was making signs of approval. When I was half dressed he found the excuse to rush over.
‘You played a blinder,’ he stated quietly, waiting for me to license his delight.
‘You enjoyed it.’
‘Aw now, Arthur,’ he said softly, shaking. ‘Arthur, it was the best game I ever saw. They’ll be all over you.’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so.’ His eyes widened as he encouraged himself. ‘I was sitting right in the middle of the committee,’ he lied. ‘I know them, the way they think. You played just right, just the right game. Didn’t I tell you?’ He started off on several incidents I never knew occurred.
‘Don’t make it sound too good,’ I told him, because his voice was beginning to carry, and several people were smiling too openly.
‘Too good!’ He pulled his hand away in feigned injury. ‘They looked like schoolboys the way you played.’
‘They didn’t feel that young. Don’t get so excited, Dad. We’re still in the dressing room. How d’you get in here, anyway?’
‘They don’t mind me,’ he said. Then he whispered, ‘There’ll be no holding you, Arthur. You’ll be able to ask any price you like.’ He looked at me carefully. ‘But don’t I know? Wasn’t I on this committee here before you could even hold a football? You know—you’ve been able to take my word for it so far. Don’t you think so, Arthur?’ He took hold of my arm.
‘They won’t all feel the same way as you do, Dad. Try and see it from their view.’
‘You’ll find them no different from me.’ He looked sick. ‘Maybe they won’t show it. Naturally—they won’t show it like me.’
He let go of my arm and waited for me to dress. He looked round the room and made a few obvious comparisons between me and the other players, looking at their legs and their chests, and then at mine. I joined them round the fire for a while to make sure Johnson hadn’t lost me anything by his loud mouth. Then he showed me up to the tearoom.
‘There’s nobody important here,’ he said. He sounded confident.
‘Aren’t any of the committee you mentioned?’
‘No. In any case George Wade, the chairman, ’s with the first team at St Helens.’
We helped ourselves to some tea and sandwiches. ‘What’s Wade like?’ I asked.
‘He’ll be the one who decides. I’ve seen him about you. He’s hard but he knows his business. He’s been in the game for as long as you’ve lived.’
I felt tired of Johnson. I wanted to talk to the other players, to find out how hard they were, what the layout was, how well I’d played. I was already tired of the old man and his big looks at my body. I watched his little mouth opening and closing and wondered what it was made him do that. Why go on talking, little man? I meant to ask him. And all this froth, too. Instead I said, ‘What about Weaver—or Slomer?’
‘How do you mean?’ He looked puzzled, slightly worried.
‘Don’t they have a say?’
He shook his head. ‘They provide the money. Wade provides the football. You don’t want to think about them.’
‘What’s Weaver like?’
I don’t think he heard. I shouldn’t think he’d have understood if he saw me more interested in Weaver than in playing football. The tearoom filled, and after ten minutes emptied again. No one was interested in staying. I waited on my own while Johnson wandered round the room distributing opinions and confidences that raised a few eyes in my direction and even more eyebrows in his. He had little black boots on that made his feet look like stubs.