‘Now, Jos!’
And another voice, further away, bellowed:
‘Now, Jos!’
And still more distantly the grim warning shot forth from the crowd:
‘Now, Jos! Now, Jos!’
The nearer of the white dolls, as the red one approached, sprang forward. I could see a leg. And the ball was flying back in a magnificent curve into the skies; it passed out of my sight, and then I heard a bump on the slates of the roof of the grand stand, and it fell among the crowd in the stand-enclosure. But almost before the flight of the ball had commenced, a terrific roar of relief had rolled formidably round the field, and out of that roar, like rockets out of thick smoke, burst acutely ecstatic cries of adoration:
‘Bravo, Jos!’
‘Good old Jos!’
The leg had evidently been Jos’s leg. The nearer of these two white dolls must be Jos, darling of fifteen thousand frenzied people.
Stirling punched a neighbour in the side to attract his attention.
‘What’s the score?’ he demanded of the neighbour, who scowled and then grinned.
‘Twoone–agen uz!’ The other growled. ‘It’ll take our b——s all their time to draw. They’re playing a man short.’
‘Accident?’
‘No! Referee ordered him off for rough play.’
Several spectators began to explain, passionately, furiously, that the referee’s action was utterly bereft of common sense and justice; and I gathered that a less gentlemanly crowd would undoubtedly have lynched the referee. The explanations died down, and everybody except me resumed his fierce watch on the field.
I was recalled from the exercise of a vague curiosity upon the set, anxious faces around me by a crashing, whooping cheer which in volume and sincerity of joy surpassed all noises in my experience. This massive cheer reverberated round the field like the echoes of a battleship’s broadside in a fiord. But it was human, and therefore more terrible than guns. I instinctively thought: ‘If such are the symptoms of pleasure, what must be the symptoms of pain or disappointment?’ Simultaneously with the expulsion of the unique noise the expression of the faces changed. Eyes sparkled; teeth became prominent in enormous, uncontrolled smiles. Ferocious satisfaction had to find vent in ferocious gestures, wreaked either upon dead wood or upon the living tissues of fellow-creatures. The gentle, mannerly sound of hand-clapping was a kind of light froth on the surface of the billowy sea of heartfelt applause. The host of the fifteen thousand might have just had their lives saved, or their children snatched from destruction and their wives from dishonour; they might have been preserved from bankruptcy, starvation, prison, torture; they might have been rewarding with their impassioned worship a band of national heroes. But it was not so. All that had happened was that the ball had rolled into the net of the Manchester Rovers’ goal. Knype had drawn level. The reputation of the Five Towns before the jury of expert opinion that could distinguish between first-class football and second-class was maintained intact. I could hear specialists around me proving that though Knype had yet five League matches to play, its situation was safe. They pointed excitedly to a huge hoarding at one end of the ground on which appeared names of other clubs with changing figures. These clubs included the clubs which Knype would have to meet before the end of the season, and the figures indicated their fortunes on various grounds similar to this ground all over the country. If a goal was scored in Newcastle, or in Southampton, the very Peru of first-class football, it was registered on that board and its possible effect on the destinies of Knype was instantly assessed. The calculations made were dizzying.
Then a little flock of pigeons flew up and separated, under the illusion that they were free agents and masters of the air, but really wafted away to fixed destinations on the stupendous atmospheric waves of still-continued cheering.
After a minute or two the ball was restarted, and the greater noise had diminished to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like a delicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat and manœuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intention or its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful or not, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had passed beyond morality into religion.
Then, again, while my attention had lapsed from the field, a devilish, a barbaric, and a deafening yell broke from those fifteen thousand passionate hearts. It thrilled me; it genuinely frightened me. I involuntarily made the motion of swallowing. After the thunderous crash of anger from the host came the thin sound of a whistle. The game stopped. I heard the same word repeated again and again, in divers tones of exasperated fury:
‘Foul!’
I felt that I was hemmed in by potential homicides, whose arms were lifted in the desire of murder and whose features were changed from the likeness of man into the corporeal form of some pure and terrible instinct.
And I saw a long doll rise from the ground and approach a lesser doll with threatening hands.
‘Foul! Foul!’
‘Go it, Jos! Knock his neck out! Jos! He tripped thee up!’
There was a prolonged gesticulatory altercation between the three black dolls in leather leggings and several of the white and the red dolls. At last one of the mannikins in leggings shrugged his shoulders, made a definite gesture to the other two, and walked away towards the edge of the field nearest the stand. It was the unprincipled referee; he had disallowed the foul. In the protracted duel between the offending Manchester forward and the great, honest Jos Myatt he had given another point to the enemy. As soon as the host realized the infamy it yelled once more in heightened fury. It seemed to surge in masses against the thick iron railings that alone stood between the referee and death. The discreet referee was approaching the grand stand as the least unsafe place. In a second a handful of executioners had somehow got on to the grass. And in the next second several policemen were in front of them, not striking nor striving to intimidate, but heavily pushing them into bounds.
‘Get back there!’ cried a few abrupt, commanding voices from the stand.
The referee stood with his hands in his pockets and his whistle in his mouth. I think that in that moment of acutest suspense the whole of his earthly career must have flashed before him in a phantasmagoria. And then the crisis was past. The inherent gentlemanliness of the outraged host had triumphed and the referee was spared.
‘Served him right if they’d man-handled him!’ said a spectator.
‘Ay!’ said another, gloomily, ‘ay! And th’ Football Association ’ud ha’ fined us maybe a hundred quid and disqualified th’ ground for the rest o’ th’ season!’
‘D—n th’ Football Association!’
‘Ay! But you canna’!’
‘Now, lads! Play up, Knype! Now, lads! Give ’em hot hell!’ Different voices heartily encouraged the home team as the ball was thrown into play.
The fouling Manchester forward immediately resumed possession of the ball. Experience could not teach him. He parted with the ball and got it again, twice. The devil was in him and in the ball. The devil was driving him towards Myatt. They met. And then came a sound quite new: a cracking sound, somewhat like the snapping of a bough, but sharper, more decisive.
‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Stirling. ‘That’s his bone!’
And instantly he was off down the staircase and I after him. But he was not the first doctor on the field. Nothing had been unforeseen in the wonderful organization of this enterprise. A pigeon sped away and an official doctor and an official stretcher appeared, miraculously, simultaneously. It was tremendous. It inspired awe in me.
‘He asked for it!’ I heard a man say as I hesitated on the shore of the ocean of mud.
Then I knew that it was Manchester and not Knype that had suffered. The confusion and hubbub were in a high degree disturbing and puzzling. But one emotion emerged clear: pleasure. I felt it myself. I was aware of joy in that the two sides were now levelled to ten men apiece. I was mystically identified with th
e Five Towns, absorbed into their life. I could discern on every face the conviction that a divine providence was in this affair, that God could not be mocked. I too had this conviction. I could discern also on every face the fear lest the referee might give a foul against the hero Myatt, or even order him off the field, though of course the fracture was a simple accident. I too had this fear. It was soon dispelled by the news which swept across the entire enclosure like a sweet smell, that the referee had adopted the theory of a simple accident. I saw vaguely policemen, a stretcher, streaming crowds, and my ears heard a monstrous universal babbling. And then the figure of Stirling detached itself from the moving disorder and came to me.
‘Well, Myatt’s calf was harder than the other chap’s, that’s all,’ he said.
‘Which is Myatt?’ I asked, for the red and the white dolls had all vanished at close quarters, and were replaced by unrecognizably gigantic human animals, still clad, however, in dolls’ vests and dolls’ knickerbockers.
Stirling warningly jerked his head to indicate a man not ten feet away from me. This was Myatt, the hero of the host and the darling of populations. I gazed up at him. His mouth and his left knee were red with blood, and he was piebald with thick patches of mud from his tousled crown to his enormous boot. His blue eyes had a heavy, stupid, honest glance; and of the three qualities stupidity predominated. He seemed to be all feet, knees, hands and elbows. His head was very small – the sole remainder of the doll in him.
A little man approached him, conscious – somewhat too obviously conscious – of his right to approach. Myatt nodded.
‘Ye’n settled him, seemingly, Jos!’ said the little man.
‘Well,’ said Myatt, with slow bitterness. ‘Hadn’t he been blooming well begging and praying for it, aw afternoon? Hadn’t he now?’
The little man nodded. Then he said in a lower tone:
‘How’s missis, like?’
‘Her’s altogether yet,’ said Myatt. ‘Or I’d none ha’ played!’
‘I’ve bet Watty half-a-dollar as it inna’ a lad!’ said the little man.
Myatt seemed angry.
‘Wilt bet me half a quid as it inna’ a lad?’ he demanded, bending down and scowling and sticking out his muddy chin.
‘Ay!’ said the little man, not blenching.
‘Evens?’
‘Evens.’
‘I’ll take thee, Charlie,’ said Myatt, resuming his calm.
The whistle sounded. And several orders were given to clear the field. Eight minutes had been lost over a broken leg, but Stirling said that the referee would surely deduct them from the official time, so that after all the game would not be shortened.
‘I’ll be up yon, to-morra morning,’ said the little man.
Myatt nodded and departed. Charlie, the little man, turned on his heel and proudly rejoined the crowd. He had been seen of all in converse with supreme greatness.
Stirling and I also retired; and though Jos Myatt had not even done his doctor the honour of seeing him, neither of us, I think, was quite without a consciousness of glory: I cannot imagine why. The rest of the game was flat and tame. Nothing occurred. The match ended in a draw.
IV
We were swept from the football ground on a furious flood of humanity – carried forth and flung down a slope into a large waste space that separated the ground from the nearest streets of little reddish houses. At the bottom of the slope, on my suggestion, we halted for a few moments aside, while the current rushed forward and, spreading out, inundated the whole space in one marvellous minute. The impression of the multitude streaming from that gap in the wooden wall was like nothing more than the impression of a burst main which only the emptying of the reservoir will assuage. Anybody who wanted to commit suicide might have stood in front of that gap and had his wish. He would not have been noticed. The interminable and implacable infantry charge would have passed unheedingly over him. A silent, preoccupied host, bent on something else now, and perhaps teased by the inconvenient thought that after all a draw is not as good as a win! It hurried blindly, instinctively outwards, knees and chins protruding, hands deep in pockets, chilled feet stamping. Occasionally someone stopped or slackened to light a pipe, and on being curtly bunted onward by a blind force from behind, accepted the hint as an atom accepts the law of gravity. The fever and ecstasy were over. What fascinated the Southern in me was the grim taciturnity, the steady stare (vacant or dreaming), and the heavy, muffled, multitudinous tramp shaking the cindery earth. The flood continued to rage through the gap.
Our automobile had been left at the Haycock Hotel; we went to get it, braving the inundation. Nearly opposite the stableyard the electric trams started for Hanbridge, Bursley and Turnhill, and for Longshaw. Here the crowd was less dangerous, but still very formidable – to my eyes. Each tram as it came up was savagely assaulted, seized, crammed and possessed, with astounding rapidity. Its steps were the western bank of a Beresina. At a given moment the inured conductor, brandishing his leather-shielded arm with a pitiless gesture, thrust aspirants down into the mud and the tram rolled powerfully away. All this in silence.
After a few minutes a bicyclist swished along through the mud, taking the far side of the road, which was comparatively free. He wore grey trousers, heavy boots, and a dark cut-away coat, up the back of which a line of caked mud had deposited itself. On his head was a bowler hat.
‘How do, Jos?’ cried a couple of boys, cheekily. And then there were a few adult greetings of respect.
It was the hero, in haste.
‘Out of it, there!’ he warned impeders, between his teeth, and plugged on with bent head.
‘He keeps the Foaming Quart up at Toft End,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s the highest pub in the Five Towns. He used to be what they call a pot-hunter, a racing bicyclist, you know. But he’s got past that and he’ll soon be past football. He’s thirty-four if he’s a day. That’s one reason why he’s so independent – that and because he’s almost the only genuine native in the team.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Where do they come from, then?’
‘Oh!’ said Stirling as he gently started the car. ‘The club buys ’em, up and down the country. Four of ’em are Scots. A few years ago an Oldham club offered Knype £500 for Myatt, a big price – more than he’s worth now! But he wouldn’t go, though they guaranteed to put him into a first-class pub – a free house. He’s never cost Knype anything except his wages and the goodwill of the Foaming Quart.’
‘What are his wages?’
‘Don’t know exactly. Not much. The Football Association fix a maximum. I daresay about four pounds a week. Hi there! Are you deaf?’
‘Thee mind what tha’rt about!’ responded a stout loiterer in our path. ‘Or I’ll take thy ears home for my tea, mester.’
Stirling laughed.
In a few minutes we had arrived at Hanbridge, splashing all the way between two processions that crowded either footpath. And in the middle of the road was a third procession of trams, – tram following tram, each gorged with passengers, frothing at the step with passengers; not the lackadaisical trams that I had seen earlier in the afternoon in Crown Square; a different race of trams, eager and impetuous velocities. We reached the Signal offices. No crowd of urchins to salute us this time!
Under the earth was the machine-room of the Signal. It reminded me of the bowels of a ship, so full was it of machinery. One huge machine clattered slowly, and a folded green thing dropped strangely on to a little iron table in front of us. Buchanan opened it, and I saw that the broken leg was in it at length, together with a statement that in the Signal’s opinion the sympathy of every true sportsman would be with the disabled player. I began to say something to Buchanan, when suddenly I could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behind us, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. All that my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the blue arc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green papers were snowing down upon the
iron table far faster than the eye could follow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me away and carried off the green papers in bundles, but not more quickly than the machine shed them. Buchanan put his lips to my ear. But I could hear nothing. I shook my head. He smiled, and led us out from the tumult.
‘Come and see the boys take them,’ he said at the foot of the stairs.
In a sort of hall on the ground floor was a long counter, and beyond the counter a system of steel railings in parallel lines, so arranged that a person entering at the public door could only reach the counter by passing up or down each alley in succession. These steel lanes, which absolutely ensured the triumph of right over might, were packed with boys – the ragged urchins whom we had seen playing in the street. But not urchins now; rather young tigers! Perhaps half a dozen had reached the counter; the rest were massed behind, shouting and quarrelling. Through a hole in the wall, at the level of the counter, bundles of papers shot continuously, and were snatched up by servers, who distributed them in smaller bundles to the hungry boys; who flung down metal discs in exchange and fled, fled madly as though fiends were after them, through a third door, out of the pandemonium into the darkling street. And unceasingly the green papers appeared at the hole in the wall and unceasingly they were plucked away and borne off by those maddened children, whose destination was apparently Aix or Ghent, and whose wings were their tatters.
‘What are those discs?’ I inquired.
‘The lads have to come and buy them earlier in the day,’ said Buchanan. ‘We haven’t time to sell this edition for cash, you see.’
‘Well,’ I said as we left, ‘I’m very much obliged.’
‘What on earth for?’ Buchanan asked.
The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1 Page 66