‘Oh. No, no, I don’t think I shall want those. No, I’ll just stand here until the gun goes off.’
‘A standing start, Carney? How wise. What an original touch, too, if I may say so. I don’t think anybody’s started a sprint from the standing position since about the eighteenth century. So. Here’s your line. Cameras running?’ He slipped on a pair of headphones. ‘It’s yours, Starter.’
None of those actually watching, as opposed to peering into viewfinders, could say exactly what happened when the gun went off, but it was truly extraordinary. One moment the middle-aged figure was standing on his line in an archaic, faintly pugilistic stance, for all the world like a motheaten housemaster demonstrating how he had once knocked down an utter cad for calling his sister ‘a bit of stuff, and the next he was at full tilt, moving faster than anyone there had ever seen a person move. Carney Palafox was running for a number 5 bus which had got rather a good head start. But he needn’t have worried; he caught it in exactly eight and a half seconds. The world record had been shattered, and it was all on tape.
‘There’s just got to be a trick to it.’ Bob Struthers was talking to his colleagues from Action Replay. ‘I mean, it’s totally ludicrous. Look at him.’
Down on the track Carney Palafox was diffidently scuffing his gym-shoe toes in the cinders; occasionally he yawned. From the pocket of his sports jacket he took a small notebook and made an entry.
‘You saw it, Chief,’ said one of the track-suited clones. ‘The guy ran from here to there in eight-point-five. Maybe we’d better measure it again. Suppose he slipped down here last night and somehow altered the markings to seventy metres …?’ His voice trailed away before the look Bob Struthers gave him.
‘I’ve been looking at tracks all my life, lad,’ he said. ‘That’s a hundred metres all right. But when this is finished I’m going over that film frame by frame. Maybe that’ll tell us something. Well, let’s see what else Superman can do. Ahoy down there!’ he shouted. Carney looked up. ‘What’s next?’
‘I don’t know. Have you got any of those round things?’
‘Dear God, now what’s he on about?’ asked Bob Struthers plaintively of his colleagues. He raised his voice again. ‘What exactly do you mean, Carney? Discus?’
‘No. Cannonballs, like on those porridge packets.’
‘You want to do some shot-putting? Why not, indeed? Come on, everybody, it’s field-events time.’
The weight of the shot seemed to surprise Carney. ‘I say,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t want to drop this on your toe. Can I use both hands?’
‘Yes,’ Bob Struthers told him. ‘There’s a limit to the amount of wind-up area you’re allowed, but I don’t think there’s anything in the rules about how many hands you’ve got to use. In fact you could probably lie on your back if you wanted to and do it with the soles of your feet. But I should imagine that over the years people have tried all sorts of bizarre ways of throwing this weight as far as they can without mechanical assistance and the present technique which has evolved has been found better than most.’
‘Still,’ said Carney judiciously, ‘I think I’ll try it with both hands all the same. It’s a bit late for me to start learning new techniques…. Which reminds me – I’m going to refuse if you ask me to do pole-vaulting or ski-jumping. I’ve not the slightest doubt I could do them if I tried, but I might break my neck in the process.’
‘We don’t want that,’ said Bob Struthers.
Eventually, his feet planted firmly apart and holding the shot in both hands between his bent knees, Carney Palafox straightened up as if hydraulically operated. He was aiming to get a number 5 bus which was waiting at a stop a good way off and to his pleasure he did – plumb on the roof. The faces of startled passengers appeared at the upstairs windows like a row of distressed moons.
‘That’ll dent the bugger,’ he said happily.
‘Rather more than a dent, Carney. You’ve actually smashed it to smithereens.’
‘What’s that?’ asked the athlete, returning to earth.
‘The world record. Wasn’t that what you were after? They’re measuring it now, but it looks like a clear two metres, which is just plain ludicrous. Is there anything you can’t do?’ Bob Struthers asked in a tone of voice which was to become very familiar to Carney Palafox over the next few months. It was a mixture of exasperation and plain awe.
‘I’m a lousy cook,’ the new world record holder admitted. ‘And as a brain surgeon I was lamentable, as I found out during a short stint in Burma.’
And so far still was Bob Struthers from grasping what was happening he found himself asking incredulously, ‘You, Carney? You were a brain surgeon? In Burma?’ before he noticed the back of the sports jacket shaking as if from some Parkinson’s tremor. He felt his face burn. ‘Third choice, Carney,’ he said brusquely. ‘Let’s get this farce over with.’
‘I don’t know,’ said the champion, bending down and inserting the tip of his ballpoint ruminatively into the split which was opening between upper and sole of one gym shoe. ‘You choose.’
Eventually he was handed a javelin. Bob Struthers was evidently learning, because he had predicted to himself that Carney would scorn anything as conventional as a run-up. Instead the radical athlete stood foursquare on the line, grasped the javelin in both hands above his head, bent backwards until the tip almost touched the ground behind him, then hurled it so as to spear a number 5 bus which was moving diagonally away from him like an okapi on the plains of Serengeti. It was a bull’s-eye. The spear smashed into the window immediately behind the driver, pierced the bulkhead and transfixed the driver in his seat. There was a distant wail of agony. The bus swerved in a cloud of dust, teetered, then overturned with an immense crash, wheels still spinning. ‘Got you!’ he said.
‘So, gentlemen,’ Bob Struthers addressed the stunned witnesses as they packed up their equipment. ‘In the last hour and with our own eyes we’ve seen the utterly impossible happen not once but three times. I thought when I came here this morning we’d at least rumble his trick but I can’t honestly see how he can be pulling one. The man’s incredible. We have a sporting phenomenon on our hands, no question about it. Cancel the rest of today,’ he instructed his PA. ‘We’ve got a press conference to hold.’
*
And so began a public career which completely dominated the world news for most of next summer. It was a phenomenon which scandalised some, demoralised many, riotously entertained most and riveted everybody. It had the awful hypnotic appeal of watching the lava-flow from a cataclysmic volcano. Day by day on the world’s television screens it was viewed from all angles and with absolute fascination as it rolled on, engulfing ancient monuments and living heroes. ‘What’s Carney goin’ to trash today?’ was a question which might be heard on a Detroit building site, just as unseasonably early snowfall in Austria was blamed by jocular locals on the ‘Karnei Effekt’. In each case there was no doubt what was being referred to.
In its early days, of course, it began with widespread incredulity. The video pictures of Carney Palafox in a sports jacket putting the shot produced international hysterics. The only people not laughing were the athletes and their trainers who had laboured for years to be able to throw the thing two metres less far. General opinion was that it was a hoax: a brilliantly conceived and wonderfully executed leg-pull. But the videos and the recordings and the measurements withstood the closest scrutiny. ‘The Carney Tapes’ – the record of his first morning’s work near Twickenham – achieved a notoriety and a level of bar-room debate on a par with the Nixon Tapes of a generation earlier. Then came the day when he was invited to represent England in a friendly fixture against the East Germans’ third team, and his selection made it suddenly clear that somebody somewhere was taking him seriously.
He had consistently refused to be interviewed after the initial ‘Palafox Challenge’ recorded with Bob Struthers. He seemed to have become semi-fugitive, nomadic, glimpsed here and there but never when not diffidently scratching
the back of his head with a preoccupied frown or patting his trouser pockets as if he had come out without his keys and loose change. It was well known he had written a respectful letter to the chairman of the selection committee thanking him for his confidence and saying he would be delighted to appear for the games, although he had one or two conditions to stipulate. The first was that he was not going to take part in any sort of training sessions and the other was that he would wear what he chose. Otherwise he was not taking part. The reply had also been made public: he would be excused the training sessions but ‘team clothing’ was mandatory under rules which would not in any circumstances be waived. Regretfully, a substitute was found. The interest and consternation can be imagined, then, when Carney Palafox turned up at the games and actually spoke into a microphone which was thrust before him.
‘Do you intend to take part, Mr Palafox?’ the reporter asked him.
‘Yes and no,’ replied Carney mysteriously, but would not explain further.
‘You are aware that your name has been withdrawn from the England athletics team.’
A short silence fell.
‘Mr Palafox?’
‘I’m so sorry, I hadn’t realised that was a question.’
‘Are you aware of that?’
‘Of course I am, you half-wit. The letter was in plain English and I can read.’
The reporter seemed momentarily taken aback by this reply. It was not often that someone was addressed on camera as a half-wit. Meanwhile Carney Palafox strode away and was lost in the crowd.
He reappeared to general amazement just as the 100 metres finalists were under starter’s orders. He positioned himself next to the innermost runner, but off the track. He clearly intended to run up the grass verge, which he did, a pair of black patent-leather ballroom-pumps twinkling on his feet. He passed the level of the finishing line a generous two seconds before the foremost athlete and turned away to write something in a small notebook. His performance was, of course, not officially recognised but it had been witnessed by thousands of spectators, would be by millions of viewers later that evening, and had not gone unnoticed by the unfortunate East German who was awarded the winning medal. A general sense of discomfiture and demoralisation set in, seeming to affect the British athletes as much as their opponents. The games proceeded, but in some peculiar way the heart had gone out of them. It was clear that everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for Carney Palafox’s next impromptu performance. Word got around that something unusual was happening and regular radio programmes were interrupted for short bulletins on the games’ progress.
Nothing untoward happened for the best part of the day, however, and the spectators had all but lost hope of witnessing another historic intervention by this weird counter-athlete. Then just before the start of the final event, the men’s 4 x 400 metres relay, a figure whom everyone had taken for one more of the press corps was noticed assuming the increasingly familiar pugilistic stance on a level with the inside runner. By the time a thousand fingers had pointed and a thousand voices had mouthed his name it was too late to do anything. The starter’s gun fired, and Carney was off. This time, in deference to the need for disguise, he was wearing a bright green nylon anorak with the hood up, a complicated-looking camera bouncing on his chest; but there was not a soul present who did not recognise the twinkling black pumps, and a great cheer went up.
Carney kept pace with the lead sprinter, but it was obvious he was not exerting himself overmuch. Now and again he would pull out a lead of several paces and then glance back with a sympathetic shrug and allow himself to be caught up. By the time the first baton changed hands Carney was adjusting his speed to match that of the new leader, a powerful-looking blond German who tore away, stabbing the air with his baton. It was dawning on the spectators that Carney Palafox was planning to run the entire relay race solo and win. Every so often marshals would appear in his path on the outer edge of the green central oval, arms outstretched and shouting inaudibly; but each time Carney evaded them with deft footwork and the elusiveness of a rabbit. Just before the last baton change, however, a murmur began growing. The pace was evidently beginning to tell even on Carney Palafox. His twinkling feet were settling somewhat flatter on the turf; his head had begun to roll. As the leading team’s last sprinter took over from his exhausted colleague, Carney stopped dead. The cheers mixed relief with disappointment. He produced a handkerchief, mopped his brow, blew his nose, glanced at his watch, shook his head and took off like a bullet. The cries became a roar.
It seemed certain he had overplayed it; the sprinter already had a fifty-metre lead. But to everybody’s amazement the gap decreased rapidly. From the stands above the track it was less as though a fast runner were being caught by a faster than that the man in the lead were being somehow pulled back by what was on his heels. The weight of contempt which was implicit in every stride Carney took in his dancing shoes appeared to attach itself to the heels in front of him, slowing them down. With eighty metres to go Carney overhauled the man, glancing sideways at him as he did so like an anxious parent on school sports day worried about their child’s overdoing it, then shot past. He was far enough ahead at the finish to stop a few feet short and walk the rest, still crossing level with the line a metre or two in front of the winning East German. The crowd were hysterical.
Immediately after the games had ended Carney was mobbed when spotted trying to sneak out of the stadium. In return for the promise of an escorted passage home he condescended to give a short press conference. In a stuffy room behind the royal box he faced some of the world’s less distinguished sports correspondents who had been delegated to cover what had been supposed was a minor friendly fixture while the luminaries of the microphone were commenting on more prestigious events elsewhere. As it turned out, and thanks to the serendipity which watches over the careers of the undeserving, these correspondents – who were mostly either rookies working their way up or hacks drinking their way down – found themselves present at one of the more significant sporting interviews of the century.
It began as a bear-garden, a barrage of simultaneous questions which Carney sat out. Sometimes he glanced at his watch, sometimes at his pocket notebook. Once he took off one of the patent-leather pumps and studied the inside thoughtfully. Finally there was a lull. Then spontaneously it started again as each reporter tried to steal a march on his colleagues.
‘Mr Palafox, why did you take part in the games today when you had been officially replaced?’
‘Mr Palafox, what training have you had as an athlete?’
‘Do you have a special diet?’
‘Are you on anabolic steroids?’
‘Are you a member of a religious sect?’
‘Are you really forty-one?’
‘Who is your trainer?’
Carney raised a hand. The voices gradually subsided.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, and his voice was so quiet they had practically to stop breathing in order to hear him at all, ‘let me just give you the odd fact about myself. I will then answer a question or two providing they are sensible and then, I’m afraid, I’ll really have to be off; I have a cat to feed.
‘As to who I am, quite a lot of you will already have seen my name countless times on television, but only in the credits so it probably won’t have registered. As has been rumoured, I am a scriptwriter with the television company whose logo you see on the side of that camera there. If you wish to check further, I am the deviser of a series which I deeply regret is entitled Up Yours! currently being shown on, I believe, Wednesday evenings, although I myself have never watched it. I am indeed forty-one years old. I do not smoke, I am not a homosexual, I detest all religions and especially Christianity, I despise the monarchy, I’m strongly against capital punishment and vehemently in favour of putting all pensioners back into useful employment at the earliest opportunity – possibly down the mines since most of the miners seem currently to be busy practising to be pensioners. Oh, and I’m fond of cats but not p
athologically so. Does that help any?’
There had been some nervous laughter at these sotto voce declarations. The correspondents were clearly unsettled by their interviewee’s twin roles as amateur sports phenomenon and professional comic writer: it seemed devilish hard to separate them out.
‘Can we quote you on all that, Mr Palafox?’ asked a voice. A look of exasperation crossed Carney’s face.
‘I understood that was the entire purpose of press conferences,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it would be easier if you went away and just made it all up as usual? Then I could go home.’
‘Mr Palafox,’ broke in another correspondent, ‘I think what a lot of people would like to know is where have you been all this time? Why do you decide now to make your extraordinary talents public?’
‘That’s a very reasonable question,’ said Carney. ‘Why, indeed? One of the answers would be that I have only lately had them revealed to me. Don’t,’ he said quickly, ‘don’t misinterpret me. Perhaps “revealed” is the wrong word since it smacks of religious lunacy. The Holy Ghost did not pay me a personal visit in my bath one night and whisper to me divine revelations of gold medallions. More accurately, I suppose, I realised what I could do comparatively recently. I can tell you truthfully that it was running for a bus that convinced me, but you probably won’t believe it.’
‘But now, of course, you’ll concentrate on a sporting career?’
‘Good heavens, no; indeed, I shan’t. I have no interest whatever in sport of any kind, which I suppose is why it took me so long to discover I could do it.’
‘You can’t be serious, Mr Palafox. We believe you have three world records pending official confirmation and all in different events.’
‘I assure you I’m entirely serious.’
‘Could you comment on the suggestion that you’re in it for the money?’
‘Easily. I’m not “in it” and I’ve neither received nor wish to receive a solitary penny. I do what I do entirely for my own amusement. You may say I’m in it for laughs if you like.’
The View from Mount Dog Page 7