This Sporting Life

by David Storey

  ‘Christ! I wish you’d stop saying that!’ Maurice said.

  Nobody said anything for a while. We watched a couple trying to row a boat through the breakers. Then George said, ‘I think you’d be unwise to start anything like that now. You both should wait until you’ve finished playing football—and I hope that’s many years ahead.’

  ‘You’d offer Arthur a job as trainer, then where would we be?’ Maurice said.

  Judith lifted Shirley off Frank’s knees as she began to cry. ‘Come on baby, then.’

  ‘He might be better off doing that.’

  ‘You’re talking as wet as Arthur, George. The advantage of starting now is that we’ve got our football money to live on.’

  ‘And that never did any footballer any good—living off his football earnings alone,’ George said. ‘It’s just not a good proposition. Straight after the war—and I’d have said yes. But now—you need a lot of luck.’

  ‘I’ve got lucky fingers,’ Maurice said.

  ‘For football. I don’t say for anything else,’ George said.

  ‘You see, Elsie,’ Maurice suddenly turned to Frank’s wife, ‘the woman Arthur wanted—well, he couldn’t keep her.’

  ‘He couldn’t?’ she said, unaware of the venom. ‘Who was it, Arthur?’

  But nobody could tell her.

  A couple of days later when the thought struck me I asked Maurice if he’d touched Weaver for a loan. ‘He wrote back straight away,’ he admitted. ‘Said he couldn’t stand a strain that size, and in any case he’s retired from providing general public assistance. He didn’t think the idea was a bad one though.’

  ‘How much did you ask him for?’

  ‘He said when we did get finally started we ought to have a site near Primstone—good publicity and that. He thought we might get cheap labour, maybe volunteer labour, to clear the site and get the building up.’

  ‘But how much did you ask for?’

  ‘You don’t like Weaver much, do you, Art?’

  ‘I’ve never said that. What I don’t see is how you can reckon on the faintest chance of anyone backing you. You’re not considered to be a reliable person, Maurice. That’s what Frank was trying to tell you the other day. You think I’d make a better impression on Slomer so you ask me. But it’s still no good. Slomer doesn’t have his eyes closed all day. …’

  ‘You’re a wet rag, Art. Where’ve you got to? I can’t see you any more since that Hammond woman dropped you. Where d’you drop your guts?’

  ‘Don’t get me too excited, old dear.’

  ‘You’re the big boy, Arthur. Me—I just get pushed about. I drop the job right now. I’ll choke if I as much as mention it again.’

  It was one of the restrained arguments we had during the holiday. We were both toying with the idea, and Maurice was the only one to admit it. The next couple of days marked out our differences more clearly than ever before. We both knew how much we were considering the scheme, and we were both cut up because I did nothing about it. Something held me back—a memory of already having had my fingers trodden on. But Maurice saw nothing but my dumbness.

  It only once developed into a fight, when the two of us and Frank had gone out in a rowing boat with the idea of fishing. Maurice started swimming as soon as we were a couple of hundred yards out, and circled the boat, trying to tip it. When I jumped in after him I caught my foot on the side, and Maurice could scarcely keep afloat with laughing as I threshed around, spouting water. When I caught him we quickly became intense. And Frank, seeing we were seriously concerned with drowning each other, brought the boat over and lifted up the oar. ‘I’ll crack thee on the skull, Art, if you don’t break away,’ he said. I strengthened my hold on Maurice, and the next thing I knew something had crashed against my shoulders and numbed my arms. I let go and floated on my back, dazed. ‘Now get into the boat, Maurice, and grow up for Christ’s sake,’ Frank shouted at him. He pulled the bag of muscles on board, then drifted the boat over to me and lifted me under the arms. ‘You’re like two bloody babies,’ he said as he rowed back. We lay breathless on the bottom. He didn’t say anything else till the boatman caught the bow and dragged us on to the sand.

  ‘You’re a right pair of partners,’ he said, and went ahead to join the women. An hour later we were all on Castle Hill finding out who could drain a pint bottle of ale first.

  We came home determined we’d all go to Scarborough together the next year. I’d just got back from running Frank and his family out to Stokeley when I found George Wade already waiting at the flat. He told me Slomer had died.

  ‘It was on the Sunday I was with you at Scarborough. I got to hear of it as soon as I arrived back—I’d thought of sending you a message. Then I thought it might be better to wait until you’d got back. I want you and Frank to represent the team at the funeral, tomorrow.’ It was only the second time I remembered seeing George without his dog.

  Slomer had pulled a plug out somewhere. I heard myself repeating contracts, orders, details of building construction, questioning employees about the tenders that’d gone out, the contracts we had on hand. George watched it all emptying away and said, ‘Naturally, Slomer didn’t really mean anything to us personally. There’s nothing like that involved, Arthur. It will just be a straightforward appearance by you and Frank. You needn’t hang about there afterwards. Well. …’ He gave a big sigh, and sat down, taking off his homburg. ‘It’s the hand of Fate, I reckon. That business Maurice was talking about. The hand of Fate sure enough. What do you say?’

  ‘Yes, George.’

  ‘I think this is one of the most important days of my life,’ he said pointedly—looking at me with some appeal.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well—it goes back a long way, Arthur. Some time before you could remember what Primstone was once like. But I’ve always looked at the club—the ground, the people in it, those who were responsible for running it—as a sort of society. I like to think I’ve taken a hand in running it. Do you know what I mean? It’s been a place I’ve been partly responsible for governing. I know it sounds a bit of a shut-in attitude. But right from the beginning, over thirty years ago, that’s how I’ve looked on it. And for as long as that it’s been dominated by one individual or another. One minute Weaver, the next Slomer, and so on, squabbling and changing about. Now they’ve both gone. One of them—well, he might just have been disillusioned—the other one has died. You could say Weaver tried to be too kind, and he was abused, and that Slomer didn’t have the physical strength. But there it is. They’ve both gone now. And for the first time we’ll have a committee running the club.’

  He stared at me to see if this meant anything to me, then he picked his hat up from his side and swivelled it on his hand.

  ‘The way you’re talking, George, I’m beginning to think you’ve been looking forward to this.’

  ‘No. I don’t think anybody could say that. I’ve tried to be fair all along. Naturally, of the two I preferred Weaver. But that was just my personal choice. I can’t say I’m very sorry or grieved that Slomer has died. But on the other hand, I’ve never looked forward to it in the way you’re suggesting. If anything, you could say it was something I’d been expecting.’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t something I was expecting.’

  ‘I don’t know about you, Arthur. You’re one of those people who usually keep a tight band round their emotions. I could never tell for instance whether you were relying on that business venture or not.’

  ‘We hadn’t a chance, George. You’ve no need to worry.’

  ‘It’s things like this that can ruin a team, particularly at the beginning of a season.’

  ‘Slomer should have left it that bit later?’

  ‘Now lad. …’ He stared at me thoughtfully, unsure of how I felt. But any observation he wanted to make was thwarted by Maurice’s knock and his gay rush into the roo
m. I suddenly realized how brown the week’s holiday had made him.

  ‘Well, well, well, what do we find here?’ he said. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That’s a point,’ he told me. I couldn’t make out why he was so gay if he’d heard. ‘But … are you listening to this, Arthur? … any moment today, or tomorrow, or—at the very very most—the day after tomorrow, I’m expecting just a teeny message from Slomer to say. …’

  George’s eyes opened wide, then his mouth, and he let out a huge bellow of laughter. He dropped back in his seat and shook like a jelly. I even started smiling myself when I saw Maurice’s bewildered face.

  ‘Oh … don’t let me stop you. …’ George said between fits. ‘I didn’t mean to act like this. It was just you … on top of everything else.’

  ‘Where’s the drink?’ Maurice said, looking quickly round the room. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got George to start drinking?’

  ‘No … it’s all right, Maurice, really,’ George assured him. ‘You go on, lad. Take no notice of me.’

  ‘Well, I was going to say —’ Maurice said, discouraged and puzzled.

  ‘Do you mean you got in touch with Slomer before we went away?’ I asked him.

  ‘That’s what I’m telling you, Art. It’s all fixed—all being well. He seems to have the liking for you. When I mentioned you were in with it … this’s on the phone, I’m telling you about. I wrote him a letter, after laying the whole thing out … I didn’t tell you while we were away because I wanted it to be a surprise. Then when I got home and found no message I thought he might have dropped it here. …’ He was looking from George to me with growing bewilderment, thinking his long, breathless explanation should have cleared everything. George, meanwhile, had got control of himself, and sat in jowelled severity, urging me with his look to tell Maurice.

  ‘Slomer’s dead, Maurice,’ I told him. George was nodding. ‘Last Sunday. While we were away.’

  There were two things with Maurice—never show any real feeling if it’s to do with pain, and if you have to then wrap it up in a smile. He smiled cheerfully. ‘Well, that clears it up, Arthur,’ he said. ‘What d’you say?’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s dead—not shamming or ought?’ he asked reflectively.

  ‘The funeral’s tomorrow, Maurice,’ George told him. ‘Arthur and Frank are representing the team. I’ll be there for the committee.’

  ‘And very nice too,’ Maurice said. ‘The only trouble is the real people who lose by it won’t be there at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ George tried to sound severe after his laughter.

  ‘Nothing. … He picked a good time to drop off the branch.’

  ‘If you want to come,’ George said, ‘that’s perfectly all right by me.’

  ‘You won’t find me in church at a time like this. I drown ’em not drip ’em.’

  ‘You’ll get over it,’ George told him quickly. ‘I’ll be going Arthur—you two can get over your disappointment together. You might ring me later. We can arrange where to meet tomorrow. I’ll let Frank know myself.’

  Maurice said, ‘It’s all right, Doctor. I’m coming too.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to stay a bit, Maurice?’ I asked him.

  ‘What? …’ He waited for George to get out of the door and down a few steps, then said, ‘Stay with you, cock? What for? So we can grow old together?’

  ‘We might talk.’

  ‘Talk. Talk. That’s all I ever did with you. Arthur. Talk. If it hadn’t been for all your talk and hanging around we’d have been set up clean and fine now. As it is. … Hell! What am I staying here for? I just don’t know you any more.’

  He was gone. I heard George’s voice talking to him quietly on the stairs. I locked the door.

  The funeral was a procession. It seemed the town stood back when Slomer died, and nobody was quite sure what it meant or what should be done. The result was that hardly anything was not done, and all the big businesses sent representatives, and all the taxi firms sent all their cars. The hearse was a solid mass of flowers, from which seemed to protrude only the four wheels below and the driver’s head on top. The haphazard and instinctive spectacle brought out large crowds, and the whole thing went off in an atmosphere of awesome bewilderment.

  George, Frank, and I shared a taxi with a couple of other men who’d known Slomer slightly, in a business way. One of them, impressed by the number of people who ducked down as we passed to peer in the window, was saying, ‘It’s the end of a way, you know.’

  George lifted his shaggy eyebrows, and looked lost without the dog. ‘How do you mean?’ he said patiently.

  ‘With Slomer gone,’ the man told him, ‘you’ll find all the big combines finding it easier to move into town. You mark my words. There’ll be no king-pin any more. We’ll become like all the other big towns—socialist, impersonal, anonymous. The only thing we’ll be known by’—he waved his gloved hand at me—‘will be the standard of our football team.’

  He stared out at the crowd as the column wound up Market Street towards St Teresa’s. It was hot. ‘Just look at that,’ he said. ‘There won’t be any more funerals where half the town lines the streets to watch the passing of a man they hardly knew. …’ He flicked his gloved fingers. ‘We’ll have a football team.’

  George fingered his tight collar. ‘And thank God for that,’ he said.

  5

  I dropped back into a hole in the ground, and just thought about football. Living was a formality to be got through without looking too closely. I trained more and more each night, running miles, skipping for so long I went dizzy, shadow-boxing till I seemed to beat my own shadow. I was on the move all the time, until I felt I’d driven all feeling out of my body, and it just acted like it’d been trained. I found I’d lost interest in scoring, and was going out of my way to hurt and cause trouble. If I scored, it was all right, but I was taken up completely with running with the ball, and stopping tigers as if they’d run into a cliff. I imitated and didn’t play football. It was wrong to be alone, and I reckoned I didn’t notice. I told myself I’d been right all along: I had no feelings. It was no good acting any longer as if I had.

  When the letter came I took it as just another piece of slush from a schoolgirl. I picked it off the shelf at Primstone where most of the fan mail was left and at first I stuck at the single word written on the top: Sunday. I reminded myself this was Tuesday, and wondered why anybody should put the day on a letter like that. It said Mrs Hammond had been taken to the Riding Hospital. Emma Compton wasn’t sure whether I’d be interested in knowing. Those taken to the Riding weren’t expected to live.

  I told Dai about it and left before training began. I drove straight through town to the Riding which stood on the ridge overlooking Highfield.

  I had a glimpse of her. She was either asleep or unconscious. A small amount of argument produced the sister and a lot more brought out the doctor. A small, square Scot, around my own age, he took me into his office when he heard who I was. ‘Arthur Machin—you play for the City,’ he told me. ‘What’s your interest in the patient?’

  ‘She used to be my landlady. What’s gone wrong?’

  ‘She has a clot of blood on the brain,’ he said eventually, after he’d told me how he watched the City now and again. ‘There’s little we can do about it at the moment,’ he added.

  ‘How will it affect her … You know—is it serious?’

  ‘Serious? … Yes, it’s serious.’ He looked at me directly, assessing how much I was involved.

  ‘Will she die?’

  I expected him to smile at my naïveté. ‘No, of course not,’ I expected him to say with a reproving slap on my shoulder. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say.’ He took in a deep breath through his nose, and wondered if it wouldn’t be more interesting to talk about football. ‘I know w
hat you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘But that’s how it is at the moment. You’ll appreciate that she’s critically ill.’

  ‘How soon will you know what’s happening?’

  ‘Let me put it this way. The clot, we believe, is in the more dangerous part of the brain. It might clear up without any effect whatsoever. On the other hand it could be fatal. I’m sorry it has to be like this, but it’s better than just an opinion, don’t you think? You’re no relative of hers?’

  ‘No—she was just my landlady.’

  ‘So you’re not emotionally involved.’

  ‘Does that make any difference?’

  ‘It’s always useful in a case like this.’

  ‘You can give me an opinion as well as the facts, then?’

  ‘If you want my opinion, I don’t think she has much chance of living. That’s the face of it. …’

  ‘Can I fix a private room for her?’

  ‘Well. … It might be possible for you.’ He looked me up and down as if my body was directly concerned in this. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Unofficial, Arthur, as it were.’

  ‘Are you full?’

  ‘We’re always full. But we’ve a pretty rapid turnover of places, so to speak. I think I can arrange it. I’m fairly new here myself.’ He smiled slightly, friendly, admiring the fact he knew me and that I played Rugby League the way I did. ‘I hear you’re scheduled to go on tour to Australia this summer.’

  ‘I stand a chance. I doubt if I’ll go. Have you any idea what caused her to be ill?’

  He suddenly felt I wasn’t appreciating his sympathy and friendliness. I felt I was cheating him: he was decent.

  ‘How long have you known her?’ he asked.

  ‘Something like four to five years.’

  ‘And recently?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her to speak of for over a year.’

  This eased the situation for him.

  ‘The primary cause, I should say, is an exceptionally low morale. If you haven’t seen her for the past year you mayn’t know anything about it. She’s weak all through, and to be frank that’s the reason, together with the position of the clot, I don’t think she’ll live. She hasn’t the strength, and more important I doubt if she even has the will.’