This Sporting Life

by David Storey

  I saw Mrs Hammond again, one Saturday morning, as I was crossing from the flat to the Booth with Maurice.

  I sent him on into the Booth, and waited for her to come up. She was walking near the kerb and looking through the passing crowd at the shop windows.

  ‘Hello, Val,’ I said as she was about to bump into me. She swayed as her head swung round sharply. She had Ian with her. Her face was white and bony, though she had some lipstick smeared on which missed the shape of her lips.

  ‘Hello, Arthur,’ the boy said as if I’d seen him every day of his life. ‘There’s Arthur, Mam.’

  She grunted and pushed by. I followed her a couple of steps. ‘Aren’t you going to stop and talk?’

  She didn’t say anything, and I followed her again. I knew she’d recognized me, knew who and what I was.

  ‘With you in them clothes?’ she said. I was in a new lounge suit. Ian put his hand out to touch it and say, ‘Suit’.

  ‘Come and have some coffee in the Booth upstairs,’ I said.

  She laughed and didn’t stop moving through the crowd.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I told her. ‘Why should you?’

  ‘Hello, Artar,’ Ian said, his head lolling and bobbing in the wake of his mother. A few people turned to watch our procession.

  We were nearly opposite the flat, and when she chose to cross the road it was as if it was the flat she was making for.

  I followed her as she dodged between the traffic, scarcely heeding it. She must have thought I’d given up, or just forgotten that she’d met me, for when I grabbed her arm and forced her into the door she seemed more than surprised. ‘Do you want to see upstairs?’ I said to Ian, and lifting him rushed him up.

  He pressed against me, shy and afraid, and when I put him down he looked round for the door. His mother called from the bottom of the stairs, and he made some attempt to go.

  I took him to the open window and showed him the Saturday crowd and traffic below. The noise drowned his mother’s voice. He watched with his mouth open as the roofs of the double-deckers passed almost within reach.

  She stood in the doorway and screamed at him. ‘Come and get him,’ I told her.

  Ian began to struggle and whimper. ‘If you don’t put him down I’ll fetch the police,’ she said.

  She waited a minute then clattered down the stairs. I let Ian go and he ran after her.

  ‘What did she say?’ Maurice said, when I joined him.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘She said nothing, kid?’

  ‘She’s dead.’

  He looked at me a while, and said quietly, ‘I shouldn’t worry, Art.’

  ‘Worry!’ I said.

  He must have mentioned this episode to Judith—I’m not so sure he didn’t stop in the Booth doorway and watch me—for it was one of the first things she mentioned when I went up to the Mayor’s Parlour, as they now called their house.

  ‘Do you see her much?’ she said, half-concerned.

  ‘I don’t see her at all,’ I told her, and she didn’t mention her again.

  They had Shirley out on a rug on the back lawn and we spent the Sunday afternoon playing with her. ‘Come on you little bastard,’ Maurice would say and the kid’d giggle like hell. ‘Yes—you I mean. You funny little bastard you,’ and he tickled his stubby finger into her belly.

  ‘He’s always calling her that,’ Judith complained to me.

  ‘Well, she nearly was,’ Maurice said seriously. He rolled over and over with her, holding her like a precious ball.

  ‘He ought to be in a circus with her,’ Judith said. ‘Come on, Tarzan, you and me’ll go in the house and get some beer.’

  When we were alone she said, ‘Do you think Morry likes being married? You know—right at bottom. Do you think he’s got over it?’

  I didn’t think she’d have asked me if she wasn’t sure herself. ‘It’s the only way he’d ever have got married. He’s the luckiest man to have tumbled with you.’

  ‘But I think he’s beginning to find it a bit of a strain. It’s only natural for a man like him to be laying a different woman each night.’

  ‘You’re soft with him, Judy. You have to treat Maurice hard—to get anywhere.’ I was irritated by her for flaunting Maurice like this—showing off her security. She was a different woman from the one I’d known in the shop doorway. Marriage had ‘made her’.

  ‘You’ve found that?’ she said. She opened the fridge door and pulled out the beer. She watched me open it, and we both poured it into glasses. ‘What’s he like now, with other women?’

  ‘They call him daddy.’

  ‘Do they? Really?’ She laughed.

  ‘Don’t let him know,’ I told her, since it wasn’t true. But Maurice was behaving well, and I didn’t have the heart to make Judith disbelieve it. We went back with the beer. His small stocky body crouched over the kid.

  Later on that evening Maurice and me went for a walk up the lane to Caulsby Castle. He ticked off each house as we passed them, knocking the occupants down into County Hall, Ed Philips-secret-athlete, and teacher types. He liked to keep them that way, then he could make out he was different. We were both laughing when we vaulted the stile, and fell in the long grass in a funny, private hysteria. How long we sat laughing I don’t know. We rolled about like a couple of tramps, pushing each other or just pulling faces to start off another peel of screaming. When a couple passed us on their evening stroll, Maurice had only to point to them and say, ‘Teachers’ and the screams started all over again. We staggered around, pulling each other up, pushing each other down, holding together to keep upright, fighting, and making noises, until, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped, and we sat cross-legged, exhausted, the laughter dying down in shallow simpers.

  We climbed the mound of the castle with our arms wrapped round each other. It was warm. From the top of the hill the valley and city were being swallowed in a low mist, reddened by the dead sun as it dropped in the valley top. Red hot penny in the slot.

  ‘What had you thought of doing after you’ve finished laking football,’ Maurice said, sobered and looking at the sun as if it was a person. ‘Still carry on at Weaver’s? Open a pub?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought. It’s a bit early yet.’

  ‘I’d been thinking on starting a business.’

  The big red disc seemed to be the right place for him to look.

  ‘When?’

  ‘As soon as I’ve got enough capital. How d’you feel about joining me?’

  He dug at the ground with the toe of his shoe. It was stone dust from the keep. He could never stay still.

  ‘Whose idea is it?’

  ‘The old man’s—you know, father-in-law. He’s even prepared to come in with us. He thinks I should make a start now, so I can build up something well before I’m due to finish.’

  ‘What sort of business had you got in mind?’

  ‘Locational transport—conveyors, maybe working up to coal screening plant, and that kind of thing.’

  I laughed, and he added, ‘Parkes has a lot of experience with that sort of thing. He says it’s not half as difficult as it sounds. It’s something he’s always wanted to do himself.’

  ‘He might be right so long as you’ve a fortune to start off with.’

  ‘You don’t need that much, Arthur. Not to begin with. All we need to start with is a good-sized prefabricated building, a bit of transport, and maybe two or three men. It’d be all assembly work at first—contracting, for tenders.’

  ‘But you’d still need some money.’

  ‘I’ve some—you’ve some. Parkes has a drop.’ He looked at me suggestively, but I couldn’t see what he was getting at in those dark eyes.

  ‘What about the other thirty or forty thousand?’

  ‘Don’t be shy, Art. You’ve got a bit stacked away—I’m n
ot that badly off. Parkes—he’s got a pile, I’m almost sure. While we’re still playing we’ve got a chance to start something like this. Don’t you agree? We could live off football to begin with. We wouldn’t have to worry about making a living. And that’s a big start. Otherwise—it’s going to be a pub or oblivion. Look at the way Frank’s having to hang on. He daren’t stop playing—he’s got used to the money, and he finds he won’t be able to manage without.’

  ‘If you’d said a sports shop I’d have been ready to believe you.’

  ‘That’s no good. A shop’s no good. The country’s overflowing with bloody shopkeepers. We want something big, where it’s either bust or zoom.’

  ‘Supposing I said all right. You still haven’t said where all the money comes from. All we could buy is the desk for the office.’

  ‘Aw now don’t be that thick, Art.’ He looked at me with assumed disappointment.

  A long shadow, from the remnant of the castle, curved over the hill we were on. In the air around us a few swallows darted and swayed, and below, in the dark green pool of the small moat, pebbles splashed where a couple of kids were playing.

  ‘You mean Slomer, I bet,’ I said.

  ‘He’s the money, Art.’

  His look of shared confidence only increased and his feet fidgeted in the dust. ‘What’s the matter? He’d raise a loan. I know for a fact he would. He’s done it for all sorts of different people afore.’

  ‘I’ve sold myself enough, Maurice. Five hundred quid I got. That’s all the share I need. He’d want all of you. Don’t you know what Slomer’s like? You want to ask Ed Philips. Slomer’d want the lot.’

  ‘He’d want to make interest. That’s what he’s like. He’d want a good investment, and we could give him it. That’s the great thing with Slomer. It doesn’t matter who you are so long as you work his way. And his way’s to make a profit.’

  ‘He’s a sick man. He’s not like other men. You should see the way he behaves—the way he acts and talks to people.’

  ‘It’s his money we want. Not his photograph. … Come on, Arthur. I bet you could carry a lot of sway with him. He’s a big man. He’s the one big string you can pull. I know. And it can take us right out of the ditch.’

  I didn’t argue with him. We went back, our arms still wrapped round each other, talking about last Saturday’s match and the way Mellor played.

  He was quiet the rest of the evening, and Judith said to me suspiciously, ‘Just what have you been telling him, Tarzan, about me?’

  4

  Johnson had aged quickly in the last year. Whenever he passed below my window—at which he’d give an occasional stare—I’d remind myself how fast the years had caught up and overtaken his appearance. His hair no longer stuck out in a tuft to the left of the neb of his flat cap, and whenever he took the battered thing off a few hairs fluttered out. He’d stopped the rot for a while by gnashing his mouth about in a smart set of false teeth—when they smiled they put his age back maybe five years.

  He still came to all the home matches, and had a reserved seat in the stand. When I told him about Maurice’s idea he said, ‘That’s the best thing to do with money. You remember the days when you had none?—and we used to travel up to Primstone on the bus, and to Highfield on the 10. Well, Arthur—we certainly pulled it off. I can’t tell you how much I enjoy seeing you run on to the pitch at Primstone and remembering how we first started. You remember the night you signed on? And you kidded me about it? I’ve laughed many a time at yon. I bet it’s a long time since you went up to Primstone on a bus.’

  ‘We used to do a lot together then, Dad.’

  ‘You and that Mrs Hammond, Arthur,’ he said, and gave half a laugh. ‘She was an old cow—wasn’t she a real cow? I could never bear the sight on her.’

  ‘Maurice’s asked me to go in with him—in this business,’ I told him.

  He slotted his pink and white fittings between his thin lips. ‘That’s you all over, Arthur. Stepped out big all the road up—why should you stop now?’

  ‘There’s the question of raising all the money.’

  ‘Money?’ he said as though he didn’t see what this had to do with it.

  ‘Maurice has the idea I should go to Slomer for it. He thinks I could raise a loan there.’

  A small bubble came out of the corner of his mouth, and burst. ‘You don’t think it’s a good idea?’ I asked.

  ‘Nay, don’t ask me about that. But you know how I feel about people like that.’ He wondered what impression he should give me, and why I’d asked him. ‘You’d make a big mistake going to Slomer for anything,’ he decided.

  ‘I’m glad you said that,’ I told him. ‘It’s what I said to Maurice myself. The whole thing’s a washout.’

  Two weeks before the season started I took a holiday with Maurice, Judith, and the kid, Frank, Elsie, and their Ken, We all went to Scarborough. Frank and his family came in my car and Maurice in his. We raced there through York and Malton in a couple of hours, and stayed at a hotel George Wade had booked for us. He came over himself with his wife on the Sunday to see how we were and to work out the set moves we’d devised during training.

  I liked Scarborough. We sat in deck chairs on the beach at South Bay and watched Shirley’s first efforts with the sand and Kenny bathing near the shore. It smelt of work. But it was full of the sea. The smell of the sea and the smell of work shrouded the place. The smooth misty curves of the man-cliffs, big and amiable and intimate, the stumpy little harbour curled round the fishing smacks, wallowing in rows, the silver scales of the fish jewelling the pier, the black seaweed rocks and the sand—it was an old comfortable smell. I leaned back in the chair and let it come right in my body, and felt it there. I felt the bay inside me, the rocks and the sand. It was old, and it had been lived in by hard people; they softened each other. Scarborough was a mellowed place.

  ‘I forget to mention it afore,’ Frank said suddenly and deliberately, ‘we’re expecting another.’

  Elsie looked up sharply and giggled. ‘He meant to keep it a secret,’ she said. ‘But he’s been bursting his buttons to tell you all along. Don’t you think he looks a bit shy?’

  ‘He looks a bit out of pocket to me,’ Maurice said.

  ‘Congratulations,’ George Wade said, and pulled the lead of the dog gently. He leaned round the expanse of his wife’s front, who was giggling too as if she already knew. ‘What do you want this time, Frank? Another doctor, or a nurse for a change?’

  ‘Oh, it better be a girl this time,’ Elsie said. ‘I want a bit of company myself in the house.’

  ‘We’ve to come to the day when we see you married, Arthur,’ Judith said.

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ Maurice told her in a murmur. He’d covered Shirley’s leg with sand, imitating her gurgle.

  ‘I thought he was the most eligible bachelor in town,’ Elsie said. ‘I’d have thought. …’

  ‘It isn’t that they don’t like him,’ Maurice explained, watching me carefully. ‘But Arthur believes in falling in love.’

  ‘I should hope he does,’ Elsie said. ‘Why else should he get married?’ Then she blushed and tried not to look at Judith.

  ‘There you are, then,’ Maurice told her. ‘All explained.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get married, Arthur?’ Elsie asked. ‘Don’t you believe in it or anything like. …?’ Her head lolled forward so she could see me along the row.

  ‘Don’t be so daft,’ Frank told her, lightly. ‘Maurice’s only having you on, Else.’

  ‘No, but I’d like to know,’ she said. ‘You do believe in marriage, don’t you, Arthur?

  ‘Yes,’ I said, blushing for her, and at Maurice’s amusement.

  ‘Well then, Maurice,’ she said. ‘What’re you trying to say?’

  ‘I wasn’t saying anything no different,’ he told her. ‘I just said he believed in
love.’

  Elsie was quiet, thinking how far the joke went.

  ‘Have you thought any more about that offer?’ Maurice said to Frank.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked him. ‘You haven’t been asking Frank for money as well?’

  Maurice pulled a face. ‘How could I do that? I asked him how he’d like to work with us, that’s all.’

  I looked at Frank, who was watching Shirley intently as she crawled between his feet. ‘I hope you haven’t been taking him seriously?’ I said. ‘Because there’s no way of raising the money. When it comes down to it’s going to be a sweetshop.’

  ‘We’ll have the money,’ Maurice said, dryly. ‘You don’t have to worry over that, Frank.’

  ‘You’re listening to a magician as far as I’m concerned,’ I told him. ‘Where he’s getting it from I don’t know—and I’m supposed to be one of the partners.’

  Frank leaned down and picked Shirley up and sat her on the thickness of his thighs. ‘It’s not that I’ve anything against the idea,’ he said. ‘But for me, Maurice, I’ve got to have a solid sort of security.’

  ‘And so have I!’ Maurice pointed fiercely at Shirley.

  ‘I know that, Maurice. But you’re just starting. Kenny’s well on the way now. We’re in it right up to the hilt, and we can’t go changing about unless we know we’re moving to something pretty definite. I hate the bloody pit, but at least I know where I am with it. With a scheme like yours—I’m not saying you shouldn’t go on wi’ it—things mightn’t turn out as you’d planned.’

  ‘But don’t you see, Frank, you’ve got the chance here to do something different, reaching a position you’ll never reach down a pit. You’d never have to work underground again.’

  ‘Aye,’ Frank said. He stroked Shirley’s legs. Elsie looked at him anxiously. ‘I’d give almost ought to get out on the pit. You can see how it all strikes me.’

  ‘He’s holding you a carrot,’ I told him. ‘I don’t see why you take it so seriously.’