day!"
I'd forgotten I'd told them about what I did. Probably forgot to tell you I told them, too.
"No sweat, guys. How are ya, Delby."
"Cheers, m'friend---welcome back to me-liquid loonch counter!"
"No lunch fer me, man. I'm meeting a girl, and then we're headin' out for the races."
"Goodwood is it? Bloody-fine, lad. Listen, I'm right sorry 'bout those things we said
about Frieda. No 'arm done. 'Fact is we all loves the ol' bird---'specially me a'course! When y'go back fifteen bloody years, 'can't 'elp feelin' somethin'. The pubs, they notorious 'bout spreadin' stories true an' otherwise! Pay no attention."
"You the man, Delby. I'll pay no attention."
"It's joost'er last 'usband din' treat 'er too well. Left 'er in the lurch, y'might say. Took off an' din' say boo 'bout leavin' 'er the big 'ouse. Left 'er quite a bit o'money as well. Ask me, the ol' tart made a ruddy-good business deal. Bu' natch'ly I could empathize, lad---wif some blokes, when they wants to go, they go!" And that drew a hearty laugh from all within earshot. It was weeks of going into English pubs before I knew 100% what the hell anybody was talking about.
(Remember to keep in mind that with some of this dialogue that I'm referring to my
notes, which are apt to be a little sketchy. Some days I'd forget to jot down anything at all.)
I must've put away four beers in the next hour. My shattered body was crying out for fluids. I didn't get the chance to pay for any of it, either. When those old boys want to buy you beer, you're better off just letting them. Then the boys got into an arm wrestling derby, and as you might expect with those hamhocks of his Delby was beating everybody. They wanted me to challenge him for championship of the civilized world, but I explained to them how I couldn't risk injury to my right arm in case I got a job anytime soon, and I think I was able to convince them (or should I say explain to them) how important my right arm was to my career. We crowned Delby "Arm Wrestling Duke of Sussex" with an upside-down ashtray. He was a good guy, Delby. I gave him my carphone number, in case he ever wanted to go out drinking on one of his nights off. When she appeared in the doorway I remember looking at her face. Her face was smiling, but it wasn't the mechanical, contrived perkyness I usually associate with the effort it usually takes for a girl to smile. It was natural radiant energy, an expression of pure joy, bubbling up from somewhere deep down inside her, her feelings I mean, the same energy inflicting her body with an irresistible stage-presence that pulled every eye in the room. Wow. And man, that's a hell of a trick for an ordinary girl to pull off! I remember she was framed in sort've a golden sheath of light that bordered her like a thin painted outline, the simple skirt, the peach-colored tank top, the face. It was obvious that the face was smiling for me. It was more than flattering; it made me////well, made me happy. Sometimes, when I'm alone with my empty head, I think about the way she looked standing in that doorway. It was the only time I ever remember thinking she was pretty.
She walked right up and put her arms around me, tip-toe, leaning flush and snugly up
against me in that thorough yet completely inoffensive way of hers. Then she kissed me.
I should say a little something about that kiss. It was special. Time-wise it lasted probably less than two seconds, and it might not have looked like much, but every guy in the world who hasn't spent his whole life in a monastery knows the kind of kiss I mean. The kind that you can feel sort of crawling up from her stomach, her chest, up her throat, into her lips, and the lips clutching you, just for an instant, just long enough for her fingers to play ever-so-briefly with the hair at the back of your head. This type of kiss, by its very definition, must of course come very early in a relationship. You know what I mean? It must have that neat nervous newness to it. And she must make that sound. I don't think you chicks even know you're making it, if you want my opinion. It's that sound you make at the apex of the kiss, somewhere between a soft moan and a hum. Only lasts a second. Loud enough for only two people to hear (Jane made that sound better than almost anyone I can remember.). And that's the best part of it; the way a chick makes that moany hummy sound and at the same time takes hold of your lower lip just long enough so that you know. How she feels. A guy probably only gets three or four kisses like that.
"Hello again, me-long and swarthy one!"
I've just got to get to a dictionary and look up swarthy....
"Hello to you too, my little Brit sex slave," I said.
"Oh! I do think I like that!"
Just then she saw good ol' Delby behind the bar, and she sort of went crazy. She ran
around and jumped into his arms like they were long lost somethings, and in her excitement I think she almost bit off a chunk of his left ear.
"Janie, ol' girl!"
"Delby, my love!"
(then kissing and hugging and Delby humping and Jane play-slapping him and various
needlessly-dramatic gestures)
"I knowed it, I bloody-well knowed it! You've come back t'sail away wif me f'reve'---
like I done beg ya 'million times!"
"When I'm done with blokes within a century me-own age, perhaps---oh, I'm just so
happy to see you!"
"Aw, that's low i'tis. That's low. You 'urt me deep, ol' tart, I'll neve' make it back
t'shore."
I don't know why, but right about then I walked up behind her and put my arms around her stomach from behind, like we were practically engaged or something. I don't know why I did that.
"So you took me-advice, I reckon?"
"I did?"
"About London! If I know Janie, it was in Cheers y'pulled 'er!"
"Oh right---I guess I did. I'm starting to get the feelin' that there aren't too many of the
weaker sex around here you don't know, Delby."
"Roight nice 'you t'say, m'freind. So you two youngsters off t'Goodwood?"
"Is it worth our valuable time?" I asked with a smile, wedging my chin in the crook of
Jane's hot, sticky neck. I was acting really weird, I admit. But I was loving every minute of it.
"Serious are we? Hell, if this weren't me-own poxy business 'ere, I'd close up'n go wif
ya!"
"Dear Delbert is quite the heavy gambler, you know."
"That true, Delby?"
Just then, in direct response to my bland, rhetorical question, our mutual friend the sailor-turned- innkeeper proceeded to stuff a ten-pound note into my hand, and urgently spit out a series of detailed instructions to bet it all on the nose of something called "Waajib" in the "Golden Mile". He even spelled it for me. Then he glanced about his own pub as if in fear of hidden eavesdroppers. I nodded my agreement that I would make his bet for him. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not. About the nervous glances I mean. Gamblers....
"Del, you shouldn't. You know what 'appens."
The innkeeper suddenly resembled a sheepish, disobedient child. No wonder; it's one of
the few times I can remember Jane actually dropping an h.
"Aw, joosta one, love. I 'eard somethin'."
"Heard something. Oh, honestly...."
"C'mon, Jane," I finally cut in. "If we're gonna do this we should get goin'."
She frowned Mother-Superior-like at both of us, kissed Delby good-bye, and led me out
the door.
Down the A-285 we roared. Windows down, sunroof open. I could tell she was impressed with an American's ability to shift with his left hand. When I wasn't shifting she couldn't wait to hold it. My hand, that is.
My carphone freaked her out, too. On her income, you can bet it was the first time she ever held one. "Can I call Daddy real quick?" she said. "I'll pay you!" And she actually started reaching into her bag for some dough. I started laughing. It was so cute. I must've been in a hell of a mood that day, because it seemed like every little thing she did hit me just right. "Keep yer money," I said---"Don't you know we all got tons of the stuff?" And now she laughed. And I sta
rted laughing again. It was a goddam chain reaction.
"Daddy? Are you there?" I guess with some people the idea of a cordless phone inside a car going eighty miles an hour is pretty frickin' weird, and that there might be a natural inclination to assume it's not going to work: "Daddy? It's me! Are you alright?...Guess what....I'm calling from a car....from a car!...a bloody car telephone i'tis....no, Daddy!...now listen, love, it's expensive---you are coming, aren't you? For the two-thirty?... smashing....Tattersalls gate, then....what's that?....no....no! It's a nice bloke!...all the way from---oh Daddy, you should be ashamed!...oh now that's truly diz-gusting, that's diz-gusting even for....I'm hanging up now. Daddy....promise me you'll....promise? Alright, then. See you there."
She hung up. Or as they say over here, rang off.
"What was that all about?"
"If you stay here long enough I suppose I'll bloody corrupt you!" she said. (Don't you
just love it when chicks answer a question by totally changing the damn subject?)
"I'm more corrupt than you think," I said.
"What you are, is wunde'ful."
And as you've probably come to expect from Jane, she then leaned over and hugged my left arm. And put her head on my left shoulder and closed her eyes and didn't say another word for ten miles. If you think there's anything in the world that could've made me waste my left arm downshifting, short of slowing down for some stupid congregation of nutty livestock in the middle of the road or something major like that, you're crazy.
We were almost down to the English Channel, just shy of the important "cathedral city" of Chichester, when Jane, her eyes still closed, suddenly whispers for me to turn right at the next unmarked road. Most racetracks in England are planted right smack in the middle of cities or shoe-horned neatly within their heavily-populated suburbs, but the beauty of Goodwood--- I should probably take a little time to mention---is that it is right in the friggin' middle of the biggest chunk of nowhere in the whole goddam South of England. We drove west on that straight narrow road for about four miles, essentially through a four-mile corridor of sunlit trees, until the corridor finally opens up into a clearing. Or should I say into the huge, pine-tree- framed, sprawling valley of rolling green called The South Downs. Nothing but fields and forest and green wheat surrounded by a giant ring of pine trees as far as the eye was allowed to see. Not a house in sight. Jane says it's virtually the only place, the only open countryside in Sussex where you can stand in the middle and not see a single house for five miles in any direction. And right in the middle of this glorious valley is situated, in a rare example of the perfect execution of a human idea, the racetrack known as Goodwood.
Turns out, this five-day meeting at the end of July is the centerpiece of Goodwood racing during the year, and that's why they call it "Glorious" Goodwood. Any other time of the year I guess it's only "regular" Goodwood. If you ever come to England (and I suppose my ego demands you do just that), you must see Goodwood. To find a place so definitively commercial, like a racetrack, hidden in an unspoiled wonderland of such flagrant, uncommercialized beauty....well, it affected me, anyway, and I'm not even what you'd call sentimental.
The parking lot was just a giant grassy mound. I wasn't surprised. They don't pour concrete at the gates of heaven, jack! I gave the parking lot kid two of those fat one-pound coins---to which he said "cheers, knobby!"---veered back toward the grandstand and joined the trickle of cars crawling slowly up the crest.
But when I topped the crest I let 'er go. I popped the clutch, slammed it into third, and we literally flew by all those careful cars content to merely roll through the pot-holes and dips and bumps, we were bouncing to beat the band, airborne as much as not, man it was like riding one of those bumper cars in an amusement park! And Jane loved it. I suppose it was a little dangerous, but I was in a great mood, and I didn't know when I might ever get another chance to drive around in a grass parking lot again. I can tell you one thing, though; the other skinny teen-age parking lot kid, the one at the bottom of the hill, whose job it was to line up the cars in rows as they came down the crest, he wasn't too amused. When I hit the brakes we were skidding, mud was flying up, we were fishtailing all over the place, it was awesome. I think he thought we were going to run right up his pasty-white rump. As we were slowing down against the stop sign of his right hand, I think I remember saluting him.
When I got the car completely stopped Jane jumped out right away. I repeat, she jumped out right away, without waiting for me to run around and open the damn door for her. What class. "Wait here, poppet---I'll run'n check for me-dad down by Tattersalls," she said. God, I loved that about her! I told her so, too. The thing is I hate women that expect you to open the door for them. I don't mind doing it, mind you, I just hate it when they expect it from you. Like we were put on this planet just so there'd be somebody to open the friggin' door for them. Like if we don't open the door they'll never let us get in their pants ever again. It's a form of prostitution if you ask me, except that because it's so downright accepted and expected it's even worse. "I'll wait right here," I said. I'm convinced that's why she ran off like that; so she'd have an excuse to bolt out of the car before I had a chance to think that she might expect me to run around and open the door. Why do you think a girl runs off and leaves a guy stranded in the grass parking lot of a goddam racetrack he's never even been to before? Class.
....while I was waiting for her something funny happened....
I was just standing there, sort've whistling and leaning against the side of my MG, watching the thickening waves of cars rolling in eagerly over the grassy field I'd just had so much fun flying over, when all of a sudden this ruddy-faced little old man wearing a blue stocking cap appears out of nowhere:
"G'day, chief!"
Friggin' scared the hell out of me.
"Woah! Jesus, you scared the fuck outa me, man!" I said. I remember it exactly; it sticks in my mind, those rare times I acshully go and get God mad at me.
"So sorry, chief, so sorry. Racecard?"
He handed me a little booklet which turned out to be the day's program of races. His fingers were pinkish red and broomhandle thick, like maybe a few centuries ago he might've been a boxer.
"Sure, fella. Thanks a lot," I said innocently.
"Tattersalls?"
"What?"
"I said do y'fancy reg'ler admission, chief?"
"Oh. Well, uh....yeah, I g---"
"Good show. Roight that way an' down," he rattled on, pointing to what looked like the General Admission turnstiles at the Sports Arena or the Forum or probably any L.A. racetrack for that matter. Hardly earth-shaking information. About what you'd expect from a guy who wears a stocking cap in the summer.
"Thank you again," I said with a friendly smile.
I started to walk a few steps away, you know, to try and get a few feet clear of this joker, when he up and grabs my sleeve, pulls me down a few inches, and then, glancing around just like Delby did back at the pub, he spit-whispers not three inches from my face, "I go' a luvly winner 'fyou...."
"You what?"
"I said I go' a roight luvly winner t'give ya!" he bark-whispered this time.
"A winner?"
"Can't miss, chief. Can't miss. Ten quid'll do me. Can't miss, chief."
"Hey, what's yer problem, Mac?" I finally snapped. Y'know a guy can only take so much. I mean this guy was right in my face. And his breath! It was bad, man, and I actually think, oddly enough, that the fresh sweet hint of booze hiding somewhere in the middle of it was the only thing that saved me. Midday drinking is a very popular custom in England.
"Ev'ryone needs a winner at Glorious Goodwood, chief. Spesh'ly the tourists. Yore a Yank---you go' no way a-nowin' what's the nap out 'ere. Bu' I does know. I go' a roight luvly winner, I tell ya. All I needs is ten bloody quid fore me-trouble. Can't miss."
I'd just about figured him out when I heard this sharp, "Daddy!"
And wouldn't'cha know the old man went and hid behind me
!
"You come out from behind that poor boy, you beautiful filthy old man!"
"Ignorance! I pleads a loifetime of ignorance!---save me, chief---save me---she's a monster, she is!---she don' care 'bout me-rotten childhood, me-hard loife---a monster!" Then we all started laughing and she gave the old guy a hug. Truthfully, he looked old enough to be her grandfather.
"Love, this is my old dad. Nigel."
"We sort've already met!" I said.
"Cheerio, moy good man!" the old fellow roared. His voice (with his cover blown he unleashed its full throaty power) was full and rounded and gravelly, but guttural is probably the best word to describe it. Jolly and guttural, like he was hiding a marble below his tongue: "No 'arm done. Just makin' a livin', lass, 'mericans can understand that!" He shook my hand. It was like shaking hands with a closing elevator door. The other shovel-like thing he simply pounded twice against my right shoulder, and he belly-laughed exactly as if these hard claps of flesh were the funniest noises in the world. My poor shoulder stung for ten minutes. That so-called "hard life" of his had evidently left him a scrap of human iron. I admired the guy right away, but I didn't much like him knocking me around like that. With all the bruises I'd picked up the previous night, I was in no hurry to add to the total.
The Basketball Expatriate Page 10