The Book of Fame

by Lloyd Jones

  They brought to the surface

  hitherto unseen worlds

  Dreams, inner truth

  the essence of things

  and, applied to them—

  names

  colour

  formulae

  We introduced new ideas to Europe

  The 2, 3, 2 scrum formation

  The wing forward, ‘controversial’

  but effective

  A fullback who played with a sun hat on

  and ran outside the wing—

  in themselves, perhaps they’re not much

  but the thought—the thought is what counts

  Back yourself

  Give it a go

  Anticipate

  Draw

  Back up

  Re-invent

  Challenge

  Change

  People flocked to see us

  as they did

  the African pygmies

  sword-swallowing Moroccans

  the bloated Japanese carp

  and Annette Kellerman

  at the London Hippodrome

  We were up there

  with Asia and floating icebergs

  a thing of wonder

  We who had come to discover

  found ourselves discovered

  and, in the process, discovered

  ourselves—

  the solemn faces of Newton and Corbett and the nervousness of their hands whenever dinner plates were set before them

  McDonald’s dainty way of drying himself, first towelling his feet, then each toe—not something you ordinarily see in a big man

  the break-through day that saw huge, uncomplaining George Nicholson send his runny eggs back to the kitchen in Glasgow (how we cheered!) Cunningham’s love of shovelling coal into the stoker of the SS

  Rimutaka

  Seeling’s refusal to do the same

  that time outside Oxford, walking in on Bob Deans alone in the chapel, and Bob turning, quick as you like, to introduce the saints, making it clear a friend of his was a friend of yours, astonished that you hadn’t met before

  O’Sullivan’s ability to bump through almost any opposition cheery Freddy Roberts singing ‘Have I Got a Girl for You’ to lift our spirits while we stood about in the sleet and rain waiting for the Durham boys to take the field

  the hacking cough of poor Mackrell at night and his willingness to play

  Steve Casey giving up the chance of a try in Paris in order to preserve his try-less record

  Getting to know one man’s preference for a bed by the window

  and another’s need for the seat in the aisle, thank you

  Those who preferred black tea with one sugar, and those who take it with milk, and no sugar

  the early nighters

  the insomniacs

  the sleepwalker whose big toe had to be tied by cotton thread to the bed post

  Those who could be relied upon in a crisis (George Smith’s heroics at Inverleith come to mind)

  and those who were prepared to do things differently (Glasgow kicking a conversion out of the mud by placing the ball sideways like a log of wood)

  The impulse of some to stop and pat a mangy dog

  and the single-minded haste of others

  But mostly

  the knowledge gained

  was something more or less

  inexact

  a feeling

  of shape & movement

  that understanding of trees in a high wind

  of knowing what to do

  having been there before & all that

  The simplest of ideas gained & held on to

  from things

  that move together

  in a loose shambling way—or

  what others like to call

  harmony

  As Billy Stead once said, ‘There are moral advantages from combination …’ For instance—

  the time at a hoi polloi dinner that Carbine forgot the word he was searching for & George Smith chimed in

  beautifully

  with a connected subject

  In Limerick, the folded note intended for George Smith from the wealthy Irish widow passing through three sets of safe hands—McDonald’s, Casey’s and Bronco Seeling’s

  The selfless way of Deans, Harper and Hunter dipping into their own deeper pockets each Monday to pool together a couple of quid for one of their less well-off team mates

  Mister Dixon clearing his throat when ‘Hokitika’ Corbett picked up the dessert spoon as the soup was being served

  The silky intervention of Bill Glenn, again at Limerick, when O’Sullivan surrounded by Irish loosies was asked for his opinion on the ‘Irish question’

  The tact and experience of Mister Dixon when Johnston came downstairs without a trouser belt and, on another occasion, in the gents of the Trocadero nuggeting George Tyler’s trouser belt to match his dinner suit

  The writing of fake love letters to those who missed out

  The ‘Taipu move’ in which Jimmy Hunter props inside his opposite and flicks the ball back on his inside; the idea that space can be wooed

  Mynott’s cry of ‘My try, Jimmy’ and Jimmy Hunter, after running through half the Bedford team, handing the ball on

  That moment in Tenerife when pigeons flew out the church doors and Jimmy O’Sullivan had the presence of mind to say, ‘On a wing and a prayer …’

  Smithy mopping Sully’s brow and nursing his temperature down from 105°F aboard the Rimutaka

  Mackrell sick with influenza staying behind in Tyemouth to nurse Bunny Abbott with his poisoned leg

  The way one man’s view and joys complemented another’s—

  the contrasting delights found in the British Library

  For Stead: a letter by Lord Nelson outlining his strategy for Trafalgar For Deans: ‘The Codex Sinaiticus’ or as he told Glasgow ‘The Bible in Greek’

  The way one man filled in a piece of the world unknown to the other—

  Nicholson and Stead bootmakers

  Gallaher a freezing worker

  Billy Wallace a foundryman

  Corbett a miner

  Deans, Hunter and Harper farmers

  Bunny Abbott a professional runner and farrier

  Glasgow a bank officer

  Mona Thompson a civil servant, and so on.

  There had been others—

  one thinks of Roman galleys

  pulling on oars out to the wide ocean

  The Crusaders come to mind

  And those in sailing ships

  peeking around hillsides of ice

  Worlds bound by the same elemental fear & wonder.

  So what of memory? What sticks?

  Thirty years after the tour ends, invited to write a piece of reminiscence Billy Stead recalls the winding lanes of Devon, the secret stairways of Holyrood, the dank corridors of the Tower of London, the dust particles that hung in the air of a celebrated dressmaker’s shop in Paris, and that terrible night outside Cherbourg taking on emigrants from the French tender ‘four in a basket … and shot down an incline on to the lower deck (just like the mail)’. It is an older Billy Stead writing, re-evaluating, reflecting.

  He recalls Gallaher travelling all the way south to Reefton to tell him he’s signed up for the war in Europe. Another campaign. Just the two of them this time, they sat on a rock at the edge of a field, trailing thoughts. In the near distance, two lovers, a boy and a girl, stood by the ruins of an old well: the boy with rolled-up shirt sleeves gamely letting down the bucket, and she—closing her eyes to make a wish, and Billy thinking—‘Everyone seeks the future.’

  With regards to the future that’s another story—

  Gallaher with his head shattered by an exploding shell

  Harper picked off by a sniper in Palestine

  The poisoned appendix that saw poor Deans shovelled into the ground at twenty-three years of age

  One by one, we were tapped on the shoulder by our Maker

&n
bsp; In 1955, those of us still alive gathered at Athletic Park for the camera McDonald is coated up, his hands pinned behind his back

  O’Sullivan on canes

  Nicholson, a silver fern on his lapel, tall, erect as an Anzac morning veteran

  Billy Stead perky around the mouth, but surely his ears have grown

  Bunny Abbott with his hat held inside out

  Fats Newton on canes, elegantly bulked up

  Gillett’s shorn off his moustache & lost his film-star looks to the inflated dimensions of a successful small-town lawyer; a timepiece is sewn in his midriff

  Freddy Roberts looks pin sharp in an elegant dark coat

  Billy Wallace looks intact

  After that, the picture begins to fade

  to a crowded city bar on Lambton Quay

  two old men driven into a smoky corner

  unnoticed

  by rowdy young men with long wild hair, platform shoes, flared trousers and coloured beads

  And then? Well it happens that

  all the old protagonists are dead.

  Seddon who spoke fine words in 1906

  rises in a massive column at the entrance to Bowen Street Cemetery

  A seagull perches on his shoulder leaving its scatological package

  The crowds that filled the wharves and Queen Street have gone

  Crowds in Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Edinburgh, Paris, across America all are gone. Dead. Buried. Silent.

  For a period after, memory drifted

  in and out of plans to build altars

  but nothing ever came of them.

  Across the country’s playing fields

  you saw men with their hearts and mouths open

  while myth sat in its cave

  knees drawn up, eyelids closed.

  AFTERTHOUGHTS

  ‘Our attitude [to individualism] is one of unofficial and very guarded approval.’

  Billy Stead in The Complete Rugby Footballer

  ‘The exhibition given by the New Zealanders surpassed in individual and collective merit anything previously seen.’

  Western Daily Press

  ‘There are moral advantages from combination as apart from actual ones, as, for instance, when a player is making a great and difficult individual effort and is closely attended during this risky period by a trusty colleague ready to take the ball from him at the moment that his own possession of it becomes untenable.’

  The Complete Rugby Footballer

  ‘The quickest road to fame is to play the New Zealanders.’

  Football News

  ‘Com-e-dy, com-e-dy, siss, boom, brek-e-kex, aouei, whee!’

  A phonetic rendering of the haka by an American newspaper reporter for his readers

  ‘… his nose for a gap and sense of timing created a path from boot maker to Prince …’

  Gallaher’s fake obituary for Stead written at the ‘dime obituary tent’ on

  a visit to Dreamland on Coney Island in 1906

  Insults to consider:

  Durham keeping us out in the sleet for 30 minutes before taking the field

  the refusual of the Scots to grant their players ‘caps’ for the game against us

  their decision to dine alone after the match

  & their ungracious demand that we supply the ball

  haggis, nothing but haggis

  the shabby trick of the Welsh to drag Deans back from the try-line after he scored

  the shifting sideline beneath the straw that denied Dunk McGregor his try against Swansea

  the statement of accounts following the match against Blackheath: gross gate 760 pounds less expenses 300 pounds, that included ‘Lunch for the New Zealand team, 27 pounds! for a cold dish or two’

  the drafting of internationals into the Bedford playing XV which included only six bona fide Bedford men

  the questionable invitation from the English Union to have the team properly tailored in coats and blazers after the style of the English …

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ‘We began with myths and later included actual events.’ This charming line appears in Michael Ondaatje’s book of poems, Handwriting. The Book of Fame proceeds along similiar lines.

  The myth of the 1905 Originals precedes this novel, as do various match reports on the games played. Actual events outside of the matches, however, have been harder to come by and where obtainable not that interesting or even illuminating. This is where the imagination slips easily into the gaps. While this book is a work of the imagination it is nonetheless bedded in research. I spent one May in England visiting the old playing fields in Camborne, Exeter, and in Wales, as well as many, many hours holed up in the British Newspaper Library combing the brittle and yellow pages of the period.

  Where possible I tried to follow in the footsteps of the Originals; at the County Ground where Gallaher’s men played their opener I found the field, turnstiles, and surrounding vista of chimney pots and cycle track unchanged; though altered in this respect: a young man was coaching a woman’s rugby team. In Newton Abbot I found the Globe Hotel converted to a drapery, though the hotel columns and the watch-tower outside are still intact. In Taunton the hotel that accommodated the team is now a wonderful bookshop. Another of the team’s hotels, the Great Western outside Paddington, is in the throes of renovation. In Cardiff, the Queen’s Hotel still stands across the road from the old Cardiff Arms Park, and is a bare-boarded haunt of the local fans.

  Closer to home, many hours were spent in the tiny kitchen of the Rugby Museum in Palmerston North combing through players’ mementoes and Billy Wallace’s album. I am tremendously grateful to the Rugby Museum’s Bob Luxford for both his interest and professional help in locating material and for keeping me topped up with tea and biscuits. Similiarly I want to thank Ron Palenski for lending me his copy of George Dixon’s diary, a blow-by-blow account of the matches played on tour; and the staff at the Hocken Library who unearthed Billy Stead’s scrapbooks. I would also like to thank my agent Michael Gifkins and publisher Geoff Walker.

  LLOYD JONES was born in New Zealand in 1955. His books include Biografi, a New York Times Notable Book, Choo Woo, Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance, Paint Your Wife, and Hand Me Down World. His novel, Mister Pip, has been sold to thirteen countries and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He lives in Wellington.