by David Storey
She came across and gave me a strong kiss, and held on to my shoulders tight. ‘I truly am.’
‘To do with what?’
‘With you looking the way you do.’
‘You’d nothing to do with it,’ I told her, and for some reason kissed her so hard she gave half a moan. We let go and started watching the kettle.
‘How are the girls at the Mecca these Saturdays?’ she said. ‘I don’t like putting my nose in now, and they seem to find it a bit of a chuff coming all the way up here to see me.’
‘They don’t change. One leaves to get married, another comes back from being married.’
‘They don’t change, do they? I thought J never would. I could see myself turning out every week with all those man-hunting women. You know at one time I had my eye on you, Tarzan. Most of the girls did, I suppose. But I thought I suited you most. We used to discuss it in that powder-room. If you heard the things those women talk about in there! What put me off in the end was the thought of us in bed. Somebody mentioned what a frightful crush it would be. I like to curl up to sleep. With you, there’d be no space.’
‘You’ve got a material mind.’
‘But what woman hasn’t when she’s thinking of getting married? I know, I can laugh at it now. But you don’t know what those girls go through every Saturday night at the Mecca. It’s more or less an auction sale, and they’re terrified of going to the wrong bidder. They all want to be bid for—you’ve got to have some prestige. But in most cases they take what they can while they can.’
‘I’d have thought the men were in more danger,’ I said, thinking one reason I might have taken to Mrs Hammond was because she wasn’t a shark of this order.
‘Still, you get used to it,’ Judith said, her mind wandering off somewhere else. ‘I’ve been surprised myself at the way I’ve got used to Morry’s habits. He’s amazing to live with. I often laugh over it when I’m on my own. Last Saturday he was at a loose end and I said, “The garden wants digging. Why don’t you do that?” and he looked at me. He looked at me and said, “Do you really mean it?” and I said, “Yes. It looks as though it hasn’t been dug since the house was first built.” You know. And once he was sure I wanted it digging he went out there and dug it all day. He wouldn’t come in for a meal or anything until he’d finished it, and then it was dark. He thinks he doesn’t know a thing about marriage—he likes to think he doesn’t—and he likes me to tell him everything he should do. He acts the little innocent, at times. I sometimes think it’s only to make me feel guilty.’
I wasn’t sure whether she was reassuring herself or just me. It could have been a way of talking about Maurice she’d adopted with her parents. By this time she’d made the tea and we went into the front room again. It was Weaver’s habit she’d taken up of calling him Morry.
‘If I don’t see him today it won’t matter,’ I told her. ‘We start training next Tuesday—I’ll see him then.’
‘Oh, he isn’t going back to Primstone,’ she said. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’ She studied my look of surprise and added, ‘He’s asked for a transfer and two or three clubs are interested. That’s how he hopes to get the car—from the backhander he’ll get.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘What’s the reason for him going?’
‘Well, I know you two haven’t hit it off together. …’
‘But he’s not moving because of me? I might never play again.’
‘What he said to me was—he lived so close to Primstone he didn’t think he’d enjoy playing there any more. That’s all I know.’
‘You are staying here, then? You’d not thought of shifting out of here as well?’
‘No, of course not. Now don’t look so worried, Tarzan. Let’s leave football out of it for a while. I’m pretty sick of it myself. No—the only thing he hasn’t got used to is my High School accent. He writhes when I say mummy and daddy. Mam and Dad is the way he wants the kid to talk. Doesn’t it sound awful? And whenever I try to talk broad he thinks I’m just taking it out on him. He gets really wild at times, you should hear him.’
She gave a cry, jumped to her feet and rushed to the room door. ‘He’s here! Hide so he can’t see you, for a surprise … course, I forgot—he can see your car. Let him come in by himself and find us drinking tea, and see what he says.’
Maurice came round the door quietly, pulling off his jacket. ‘Hello, Arthur. Never expected to find you at home.’ The car had given him time to get over his surprise.
‘I thought I’d come up and see how you’d settled.’
He nodded quickly and made a ceremony of going out to hang up his coat. ‘Have you been here long?’ he said, coming back.
‘Long enough for him to have a chat with me, Morry,’ Judith said happily. ‘I’ll pour you a cup of tea. Had your dinner? See—I didn’t say lunch.’
‘I had a grill in town.’
‘Where you been? Billiards?’
‘How d’you like the house, Arthur?’ he said in the same quiet voice. ‘Does it suit you?’ He looked changed, a bit nervous.
‘Judith’s been showing me …’
‘He didn’t know you were asking for a transfer,’ she flung at us before going out to make some fresh tea.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘It’s news to me.’
‘I’ve been thinking of moving for a long while,’ he said. ‘Now I’ve got this settled and the job, I thought I might as well get it all over with in one go.’
‘Get all what over with?’
‘Breaking away from the past life.’
We thought about what this meant. ‘Are they putting you on transfer?’ I asked.
‘I’ve just heard this morning—they’ve had an offer of three thousand. I might lift a few hundred backhand from that if I try.’
‘I can’t make out why you’re wanting to move now you’re settled so close. There’ll be all the travelling if you move.’
He worked his tongue thoughtfully inside his mouth, then said, ‘I’ve got tired of playing there, that’s all. And Frank Miles is leaving. They’ll have to start building up a fresh team very nearly. It’s too long. I’ll be an old man before they get a seasoned side. I want to get in the Great Britain team this year.’
Judith came back and was pleased we were talking. ‘Do you want me to leave you two alone?’ she said.
Maurice twisted round sharply. He’d a boil on his neck, covered with plaster. ‘What for?’ he said.
‘So you can have a talk with Tarzan. That’s all, Morry.’
‘Why should you think you ought to go?’ he insisted as if he was suspicious there was some proper rule of behaviour involved. ‘You’re not a bloody secretary now.’
Judith looked at me to notice this. ‘No, dear,’ she said, and sat down beside him. ‘Anybody would think you were having the baby,’ she told him.
‘Why?’
‘You’re so damned nervous.’
‘You can see she still acts the lady,’ he told me coldly.
‘And you’re living like a gentleman,’ I reminded him, and he pulled a face as though his boil hurt.
We talked, with a cautious interest, for half an hour, then I decided to go. As we stood in the drive Maurice said, ‘They didn’t send you up here to make me change my mind, did they?’
‘No, they didn’t!’ Judith told him. ‘What a way to talk. He was as surprised as I was when I first heard of it.’
‘You don’t know Arthur like I know him,’ he said meanly, ‘because there was some talk of him taking over from Frank this season.’
‘Yes,’ I told him, realizing this might have been one reason for him leaving. ‘But I don’t think you left much chance of that happening now.’
I got into the car, Judith waved, and I drove off.
A lot of trouble was saved at Primstone, when pre-season training started, by Frank
’s decision to stay on. I knew how he felt about giving up the game, and I wasn’t surprised he put it off for another year.
Surprisingly I found myself welcoming training, even enjoying it. I hadn’t realized how much on my own I’d been the past few months. Things had settled down now, just as they might before a final and conclusive upheaval.
I even felt confident enough to walk round those parts of City Road I’d been avoiding, and one Sunday I went as far as Fairfax Street. I walked down it and looked at the door a while. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been using it for so long. It was still the same. Still the brown door with the dark greasy handmarks round the knob. The small iron letter-box through which nothing ever came, yet ready to snap your fingers off. I knocked. She wasn’t in or she didn’t answer. I tried the door and it was locked.
My mother and father had both taken it for granted I’d given up all idea of going back there, and I didn’t mean to spoil their illusion until I was once again in my old room. But one day, after my first attempt to see her, my mother bumped into Mrs Hammond in town, and with some bright notion of patronizing her stopped to talk. She’d listened quietly to my mother’s gossip, then she’d gone off without having said a word herself. My mother took it as an insult, instead of what it might have been—an emotional necessity—and she told me about it in a confident voice of justifiable anger. ‘And another thing,’ she added, believing it had worked me up in the same way, ‘the clothes she was wearing—the way she was dressed. I didn’t recognize her at first. It wasn’t until I got opposite her and saw that sly look of recognition in her eyes that I realized it was her. She looked like one of the town poor.’
‘Perhaps that’s what she is.’
‘The way you treated her she must have felt a queen.’
‘I think she must have at times.’
But I didn’t hate my mother for saying this. I’d already seen that she just didn’t understand Mrs Hammond. She thought everybody was in most ways responsible for how they were—she applied this rule to everyone, and she always had done. She said, ‘I’m granting she does a job few women could do. But I’m sure she could get more assistance than she appears to be getting now if she tried.’ But I was so angry I could never answer her.
‘Mothers, mothers. Always mothers. Women are never anything but mothers. There’s never a wife been born yet. I hate all these bloody mothers and their stinking brats. Can’t women ever be anything without kids, kids, all the time? You’re not just animals. Mrs Hammond—she’s a woman. Somewhere she’s a woman.’
She was quiet before she said, almost whispering, ‘I’m glad you came away when you did, Arthur. … And I’m sure I mean the woman no harm when I say that.’
‘Mothers or prostitutes—that’s women.’
The second time I walked round Fairfax Street, a Sunday afternoon, I was more determined I would see her, even if I had to beat the front of the house in. I knocked loudly, and could fairly hear the scurrying to windows in the other houses as the sound echoed down the Sunday-dead street.
Knowing she’d take the precaution of looking out of the front window, I stood flattened against the door until I heard her slow feet the other side. She didn’t look surprised, only older.
I had to decide then, at that first glance at her eaten face, whether I was going on.
‘I came to talk,’ I told her. But the words themselves, no longer intimate, showed the distance that a few months had put between us. They nudged something inside her, gave her a recollection she couldn’t quite grasp. She looked just another woman with the weight of the world’s dirt on her shoulders. Ian stood behind her and looked round her skirt, much bigger, paler, and more bloated than I could remember. ‘Shall I come inside?’
‘I’m cleaning. It’s untidy.’
‘I’m used to that,’ I reminded her. ‘Or can you put your coat on and we’ll go for a walk?’
The idea was beyond her. She could never understand how I liked walking with her. She frowned, and suddenly looked uncertain. ‘Is there anything you want?’ she said.
I was about to explain it all. Somebody walked past behind me, I said, ‘No.’
I looked at her once more to encourage her to make an effort. All that was there seemed a residue of what I’d known. This wasn’t Val. It wasn’t Mrs Hammond. It wasn’t even the woman my mother knew. It was the petered out uniform which Mrs Hammond had once worn. I walked away. Later I began to wonder if she’d recognized me.
Frank Miles made me vice-captain, even though the team didn’t usually carry one, and I started playing football harder than I’d ever played before. It was Frank’s job to teach me the fundamentals of leadership, though this only meant that at the beginning of each match he’d say, ‘Watch me, Art.’ But apart from that I was under his care. He lined me up and put me back on my feet.
I took his gesture seriously. More seriously than I’d done any other. I trained every night, apart from official training Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and would run round the estate in a track suit like a great hooded bear. My mother would have a bath ready when I got back, and afterwards my father rubbed liniment into my legs in front of the fire. The feeling of fitness, as I went through a routine of weight-lifting and exercises each day, was a big consolation. I felt myself changing more and more into the professional athlete, the super ape beyond reproach, the type I’d resented in other players. I drew it on like a welcome disguise. I ran in one or two races at Stokeley Stadium on Sunday mornings against other pros.
I used to see this physical superiority reflected in the eyes of those tigers I was going to tackle or run through. I watched their eyes with a distant interest, as if I wasn’t really taking part in the game, and I ran towards them and overpowered them with the same detached satisfaction.
I began to enjoy running with the ball, really to want it, lust for it, like I never had before, moving to openings and breaking through and running with my elbows and knees high so that it really hurt to hold me. Added to this was the agility of all my persistent training, and almost every time Frank served the ball to me he was putting me into a gap and I was doing something spectacular. I developed a good hand-off—I banged each time at the tiger’s nose with the base of my wrist, and the sound of that tiny crunch gave me the satisfaction a mechanic gets from the sound of machinery coming into place at the right time. I found when I had to cover I could cross the field running fast yet feeling poised at the same time, and taking most wingers in my stride I’d throw them neatly over the touchline and against the concrete balustrade. This became such a habit and crowd-pleaser that they’d leave all the wingers for me—to turn their heels in the air and crack their nuts against the low wall. It was a sort of professional signature.
By this time, the beginning of spring, I’d moved from home to a flat in the centre of town with which the dub suddenly found it necessary to provide me. It was over a small women’s department store, just off City Centre—furnished by the club, it must have set them back four or five quid a week. It meant I’d to be always at home to people like George Wade, Riley, occasionally a quickly ageing Weaver—on Saturday mornings it became something of a meeting place for all the ‘sports’. We collected there for a few drinks, a talk, then drifted over, one big happy family, to the Booth. Maurice, who’d moved to another club, came twice. The first time was just after I’d moved in, and he brought Judith, perhaps as a safeguard. They’d left Shirley, their baby girl, with Judy’s mother.
The second time he came alone. He was beginning to regret having moved from Primstone. We were third in the League, and I knew he’d have welcomed a move back. Like me, he hadn’t made the national, or even county, side.
‘I’ve thirty miles to travel every Thursday for my pay, and thirty miles back, and the same over again Sat’days,’ he explained. On Tuesday nights he had leave from his club to train at Primstone.
‘You made something like a bi
g mistake ever moving.’
He shrugged his over-padded shoulders. ‘What d’you think they’d say now,’ he said, ‘if I asked to come back?’
‘They weren’t pleased on you leaving. They thought it had something to do with you getting married … and that. Anyway, why don’t you ask Weaver?’
‘I don’t like asking him—I reckon he was upset at me moving and he’s done enough for me already. I couldn’t ask him. I’ve to make them give back three thousand quid.’
‘It sounds big.’
‘You could make them do it, Art,’ he said directly.
‘How?’
‘You and Frank—you’re the draw up there these days. You’ve only to breathe different and they’ll fit in.’
‘That’s why you’ve come to see me?’
Being Maurice he didn’t want to admit it. He shook his head. ‘I can’t go and ask them straight to their faces. Imagine Riley’s face for one. I’ll lose money over it as it is.’ He frowned and pulled a beaten face.
He didn’t say anything when I told him I’d do what I could. He went to the door, nodded his head, and went on out.
I watched him from the window as he jostled in the Saturday crowds, unnoticeable, making his way back home.
Weaver’s announcement of his retirement coincided with Maurice’s arrival back at Primstone. Everyone knew his move to have been a failure. They blamed it on him getting married. Young Kelly, the scrum-half who’d taken over Maurice’s place, was a long way from first team experience, and had difficulty in learning fast. When he dislocated his shoulder from being too slow and too keen at the same time, Maurice’s return was speeded up.
He came too late to be eligible to play in the Cup matches, which meant, with the ‘A’ team scrum-half, we lost to Widnes and were knocked out of the Cup. It was a big disappointment after a good season, and some people blamed Maurice for arsing around. In the Top-Four play-off we were beaten in the final. We had a collection and gave Weaver a plaque with the club records on and a list of signatures. Neither Maurice nor George Wade could tell me why Weaver had suddenly chosen this moment to retire to Torquay, but George was clearly upset, and turned up twice to training without his dog. When I went to say good-bye to Weaver he gave me a watch.