The Rules of Backyard Cricket

by Jock Serong

  Once the initial glow of state selection wears off, the real world asserts itself. For me, this means school visits, clinics. I don’t know how many kids’ arms I have to hold up straight over these seasons. Make a windmill, Joshua. The money’s good, or good enough to keep up the rent on the Richmond house, clubs on the weekends, a new set of wheels through the Big Guy.

  For Wally, his natural tendency towards the monastic intensifies.

  He’s now a graduate in sports science with a diploma in business administration and a master’s degree in sanctimonious bullshit. Nutrition has become his chosen battleground: he demands that the squad staff have everyone pinch-tested for fat.

  He’s gone vegetarian, does yoga, runs long-distance. He and Louise have put a deposit on a house and then installed tenants in it because, God help me, ‘it’s tax-effective’. She’s running the Melbourne office of a global charity, and is one of the only people I know who has a mobile phone. Needless to say, Craigo is another.

  But the differences between Wally and me don’t amount to much in the statistics. And cricket is above all else a dance of numbers. At one in our willingness to crush our opponents, it’s only at the end of a day’s play that our lives diverge: his to puritanism, mine to the piss.

  Four weeks before the final match of the season, I’m asked to turn up to a radio show promotional thing. It’s mid-week, Valentine’s Day in fact, and I’m suspended in space between a hangover and a training session, unenthused. Team polo shirt, runners, the official Victorian team slacks. Neat, short hair with woolly undergrowth sprouting down the neck. Back then, it was the day-off uniform. Appropriate, prestigious. Now, you see a photo and you laugh.

  I wander up to reception at the radio station and they buzz through to the publicity department for someone called Honey. This’ll be good, I think. Honey from Publicity.

  But when the door swings open and Honey from Publicity enters, she’s not at all what I expect. Short, dark, lit up by a smile that seems real. She takes a strand of hair between her fingers and sweeps it behind an ear as she shakes my hand. Just for an instant I forget my name.

  The phone rings again behind the reception desk, and after a brief exchange, the receptionist looks up at me and pushes the phone receiver in my direction.

  ‘It’s for you,’ she says. ‘Your mother.’

  When I take the phone and hear her voice it’s clear that something’s up. Something’s different. She’s worried, maybe, but elated, too. Tense. She runs through a few pleasantries while I wonder what she’s up to. Yes, Mum, I’m doing a radio interview. Yes, I remembered it’s Valentine’s Day. No, I don’t have anyone to take out tonight. It is a lovely day outside, Mum, yes. Eventually I have to pull her up, while giving Honey, who’s standing at a polite distance, an apologetic look.

  ‘So…I’m about to go on air, Mum.’

  ‘Oh.’ Long pause. ‘Well, look. It’s about your brother, Darren. He’s gone and got Louise pregnant.’

  A delicious feeling sweeps over me. Mister Organised. Mister Controlled. Miss Career-Focused. Hilarious.

  ‘Oh Mum, that’s just lovely,’ I say, barely containing my misconceived delight.

  ‘It’s not,’ she says sharply. ‘And don’t be a smart-arse. I’m surprised it wasn’t you, frankly.’

  Her voice changes to a more plaintive tone. ‘They’re just bloody kids. Christ, what was he thinking?’

  ‘Ah, they can get rid of it. Can’t be that hard.’

  ‘We won’t be talking like that,’ she says fiercely. ‘We will not be talking like that.’

  I mumble my way through a confused sort of apology, and end the call by promising to give him a ring.

  As I hand the receiver back to the receptionist, I’m conscious that I had no reason at all to sneer. It could have been me and any one of a number of girls. Of course it wasn’t my place to suggest a termination. Sometimes I’m amazed by my ability to open my mouth and just hear my own unedited thoughts fall out.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I mumble to the waiting Honey. ‘My brother’s pregnant.’

  ‘Really?’ she replies, wide-eyed with amusement.

  She leads me into the studio, leaves and returns with a glass of water. They sit me at a console, put the cans on my head and the panel lights up. A pallid announcer with a Winfield baritone does his pre-fab hocum then introduces me. Victoria’s new star batsman, he says. Big hitting bad-boy, he says.

  Wally and Louise are having a baby.

  A long glass wall lines one side of the studio, over the announcer’s shoulder. Through it I can see the couches of the green room, a couple of large speakers no doubt transmitting our studio. A separate door to the green room opens soundlessly, and from where I sit I can see Honey enter. She plonks down casually on the arm of a couch and watches us, gives me a tiny smile. Her hand rises from her lap and wiggles a little wave. A feeling more complicated than lust is rising within me.

  The announcer’s going through the motions. Favourite ground (no one likes to hear a Victorian say it, but it’s the ’Gabba), scariest fast bowler (Fed Collins), is it true you and your brother fight like cat and dog? (no, complete nonsense), and then the opening I’ve been looking for.

  ‘Okay Darren, seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day, who’s your dream date?’

  I look directly at the window. ‘That’s easy. It’s Honey from your publicity department.’

  I can see her mock-shrieking, burying her head in her hands. The DJ loves it; looks over his shoulder and throws an unrequited high five towards her. Later, she gives me her home phone number, written in neat black pen on the back of a RAD FM business card. She tells me this is the most embarrassing day of her life, and that I owe her dinner.

  And though I desperately want to repay that debt, I carry the card around for days before I can summon the courage to call her.

  So it falls to me to explain how things change over the next two years of my life. How I hit a still point, where the better side of me is given air and water and light.

  Honey Nicholson plays an ingenious hand early on.

  She holds me in suspense, willing captive to the belief that she’s preoccupied, barely finding time for me. She fails to ring for days, then calls and apologises, or turns up late at night, sweeping away my feigned sulking with her soft hands and her mouth. She’s smart enough to stay away from cricket, keeping our interactions on her own terms and within reach of her many strengths.

  I blow up from time to time—please don’t go thinking this is an epiphany. A few all-nighters; half a dozen vehicular mishaps. There are those close to me who find the prospect of a stable, dependable Darren Keefe alarming, and they set about doing all they can to upend me. Spiked drinks and other attempts to start little prank wars, astonishing sexual invitations, emotional manipulations.

  In October, Craig convinces me to head out with a crew of the state cricketers to celebrate the birth of little Hannah Keefe, the tiny pink niece-blob I’ve been cradling at the hospital during the afternoon. The warm blankets on my forearms, the miniature squeaks of her breath, the new light that radiates from Louise: all of it is rewiring me in subtle ways I can’t place.

  She has paperskin hands, Hannah Keefe, and they clutch my little finger. Her half-seeing eyes are trained towards warmth.

  God. I’m an uncle. I’m anuncle. I’m a nuncle.

  You’re not the same these days, the boys slur that night. I laugh and throw beer on someone. There’s a fight with security, staccato conversations with cricketers of the suburban park kind who demand to talk, who skitter and twitch unpredictably behind their speed-fouled eyes. They might be fine. They might also strike from behind for no other reason than to see if they can take down Victoria’s number-three batsman. They evaporate along the way and there’s a walk through a park somewhere in St Kilda, I think alone, then another nightclub.

  Searing jabs of sound and thuddery bass I can’t distinguish from my heartbeat. Blades of light cutting into my eyes, people swaying
like marine growth, no sign of the walls, where are the walls. A kebab, Hindi music with a cab driver, coins spilling everywhere from my discarded jeans, face-first collision with an empty bed. I’ve thrown up somewhere, I can taste it, but I don’t know where.

  The spinning sensation, the tinnitus. The bedside lamp, burning hot and constant until dawn, keeping the dark at bay. I’m afloat on an anaesthetic river of tequila, lit from inside. Like a paper lantern drifting downstream.

  Honey’s smart enough to stay away from nights like this.

  Honey’s got a career, principles. She warms more and more towards Louise, talks to her in female asides that, far from disconcerting me, sound like unimpeachable intimacy. She minds the baby, and does it with ease. The baby is a little sun, the centre of our universe. We talk about her when we’re alone. We wonder if that’s normal.

  Honey darts out when summoned by Louise for comfort, for the howling, clenching nights of mastitis. Often neither Wally nor I am around, called away interstate by the game. But Honey doesn’t see her role with Louise merely as an extension of her relationship with me. She’s from a big family and feels no burden in these duties. Takes no credit for them either.

  At work, Wally is outstripping me in everything but flamboyance. His attitude to practice, his obliging way with the media. His ease with the authorities. He mounts performances on the field with monotonous consistency, until his results make an undeniable case for Test selection. Everyone is talking about his temperament, like he’s a show dog. Wally Keefe will roll over. Wally Keefe will not snarl or bite. Behold his glossy coat: Wally Keefe could be a future national captain.

  One columnist says he’d pay to watch Darren Keefe because something amazing might happen, but he’d bet the house on Wally Keefe, because the necessary will happen. Journalists love the potential clichés we suggest: Cain and Abel, Jekyll and Hyde, Noel and Liam. They know intuitively that we represent something latent on every suburban lawn where a newspaper lands. We are the inseparable siblings every parent worries for: good boy, bad boy. Total connection and fratricidal rage.

  The selectors are in no doubt. In the December of his second state season, just weeks ahead of the Boxing Day Test, Wally is selected for the national side. There is no ugly backyard stand-off between us over the promotion, although my numbers are narrowly better than his. He’s on a plane to a training camp within hours of the call from the chairman.

  He’s in. I’m not.

  We’re at Mum’s for Mother’s Day. Wally’s about to go on tour to England to defend the Ashes. They’ve swept him into their world, and there’s no higher sporting assignment for an Australian.

  Which is why I consider my position to be one of rare privilege. Because I have a hard, shiny taped ball in my hand, and Australia’s number-four batsman a very short twelve metres away, down a pitch I mowed. I know every inch of its surface. I’ve strained a net across two garden stakes behind the stumps so we don’t have to go retrieving missed balls.

  Mum’s inside with Louise and Honey, playing with the baby. They’ll be fine for an hour or more.

  Australia’s number four. He has his own personal physiotherapist and frequent flyer points, but I’ve got the ball.

  He faces up with his usual poise, his weight seemingly on neither foot but on both, his chin slightly raised so his jaw is parallel to the ground. His front elbow high, bottom hand loose.

  There’s a weedy patch in the grass short of a length, just outside off. I dart the ball hard into it and the bounce rears up like a whipping snake, bends past his outside edge high up, around shoulder height. He fends at it; retreats at the last possible instant. It hangs for a second in the net where it hits, then falls to the ground. He scoops and returns.

  He’s in a good shirt, sleeves rolled up. Bare forearms, bare hands. Bare fingers. I’d love to hit those fingers.

  He’s smiling unaccountably. I’ve just beaten him outside off and he’s smiling.

  So I flip the ball over and bend it the other way. Lulled into a false assumption, he fends outside off again, and this one curves back in sharply and finds his ribs, hard enough to elicit a little oof that he wouldn’t want me to hear.

  He smiles again. ‘Nice one. Didn’t see that coming.’

  It must’ve stung like a bastard. So why…?

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah, never better. You want a bat?’

  No, I don’t want a bat. I want to see you bent double in excruciating pain.

  ‘Nah, you’re right. Stay there.’

  I straighten the next one up and he picks it correctly. Defends strongly. Next one’s a careless half-volley. He steps forward and strokes it elegantly into the vegie patch. I can hear broad-bean stalks snapping in there as the ball rips through them. I’m fishing around in the pea straw with one hand to find the ball when he calls from behind me.

  ‘Hey, I’ve asked Louise to marry me.’

  He was talking to my arse. I spin around.

  ‘I said I’ve asked Louise to marry me.’

  No room for a show of emotion here. Keep it cool.

  ‘Oh yeah. What’d she say?’

  He laughs like I’m an idiot.

  ‘Yeah. We’re doing it. Fifteen June—it’s the Saturday night before we fly out for the tour. You free?’

  Of course I’m free. It’s that or two-dollar shots at Chasers with Craigo.

  ‘Um, probably. I’ll have to check.’

  ‘Great.’

  From that moment forward, I start rehearsing my speech.

  About how we’ve always been inseparable. About how I wasn’t sure if there was room in our relationship for this outsider, but that she won us over with her charm. I’ll skite about how I still think she throws like a girl. I’ll remind the room that Wally’s a very ambitious guy, and that she may have to prepare herself for the role of Cricket’s First Lady. Then I’ll pull it right back. Seriously, I’ll say, I’m proud of my brother, my proxy father, his advice not always welcome but invariably right. And I’ll say I love him and I wish them both every success in life. And the girls in the room will go aww, and I’ll smile bashfully before I sweep out my arm and invite him to the microphone. Hug him and slap his back in the virile way that defuses the awkwardness of man-hugs.

  A week later, Wally and Louise come over to Mum’s place for a meeting, the first in a series to discuss the draft running order they’re putting together for the day. Yes, a running order. They’ve got copies for me and Honey and Mum. The baby gurgles and makes little grunts as we get down to business.

  Page one, invitation list. I scan down fast. Familiar names, familiar names. No Craig.

  Page two, the running order itself.

  Five lines down, Best Man’s speech: Tully Welsh. I’m staring at it dumbly like it’s a typo. ‘Who’s Tully Welsh?’

  Louise throws Wally a look: We’ve discussed this. Remember how we decided you’d handle it?

  ‘He’s the player development manager at Cricket Australia.’

  ‘Best man?’

  I’m trying desperately not to betray any emotion.

  Wally sighs. ‘It’s political, okay?’

  No way, brother. Not that easy. ‘So, how long you known him?’

  He rolls his eyes. ‘There isn’t, like, a legal minimum, Darren.’

  ‘Yeah, but how long?’

  Mum’s frowning. ‘Stop it, you two.’

  Louise exhales and tries to move us along. ‘So I was thinking we could do the cake straight after the bouquet throwing? Darling?’

  As my third season in the state side winds to a close, Honey and I move in together and my single life in Richmond becomes a couple’s life in South Melbourne. Just a plain, rented terrace, but it works as a moated citadel against all my baser associates. Craigo won’t come near the place and doesn’t trust Honey, a feeling she plainly reciprocates.

  I can walk to the market to buy—ha!—fruit. We have dinner parties, not parties. I even find myself cursing when the kids wit
h their P-plates take the roundabout too fast. I look back in wonder that I lived across the road from a heavyweight gangster for four years.

  Louise brings little Hannah over every few days. They live in Kew now, she and Wally and the toddler. But Wally’s increasing absences leave her in a strange kind of limbo, one she chooses to fill by wandering the cafés of South Melbourne with Honey and, less often, with me. Hannah can’t say ‘Darren’, and chooses to replace the word with Daddle. Every time she does it, Louise corrects her with an embarrassed smile. But the little girl favours me in everything. When she’s fed, she’s fine in the presence of the women but will kick and squall for me if I’m in the house. Daddle do! Daddle do! Louise shifts her strategy slightly by coaching Hannah to say ‘Uncle’. This works for a while—she reverts to ‘Uggle’, and even develops a singsong chant about Uggledaddle. On the rare occasions that Wally’s in town, he sits through these antics in tight-lipped silence.

  Louise has risen in the development hierarchy in close parallel with Wally. To me, their lives are a sad, repetitive carousel of commitment. I’m sparing you the details of their wedding day because it felt so much like both of them were playing to a crowd, discharging obligations in everything from the invitation list to Tully Welsh’s role as best man, to the name-checking in the speeches. The pay-off is, the gifts are extravagant. Not just toasters and glassware but art, electronics, even furniture. Never mind their vows to each other; it feels as though they’ve formalised a pact with their respective careers.

  Even on maternity leave, Louise is harassed by calls from the aid organisation she works for. Federal budget cuts, trouble in Zambia. Spats over expense spreadsheets, media releases and bank managers. Her version of saving the world sounds deeply bureaucratic. And Wally isn’t there. Over the summer he’s become a face on the television, stripped of personality. He’s a man who smiles and offers soundbites in airport terminals, wheeling his giant bags on trolleys. Even to me, the man inside him seems buried under platitudes.