All of a sudden, he is through.
‘Dusty, what can I do for you?’ The words of Lana Defoe, Manager for Cricket, ring voicelessly throughout his brain.
‘I’m at the Fence, about to re-enter England.’
Lana does not offer any comment. Dusty had hoped, in light of the mysterious messages he’d been receiving, that she would know what to say, but instead he can all but see his old friend studying him coolly from under a cocked eyebrow. ‘And?’
‘I’ve spent the last couple of days in Wales, and I’ve seen something extraordinary. I’m bringing someone back.’
‘Someone?’
‘He’s Welsh.’
Dusty is taken aback to hear laughter. Lana doesn’t do laughter. He can tell from the resonance that she is laughing out loud, not in her head. But purity of transmission is resumed when she speaks voicelessly after a second’s pause. ‘You can’t bring a Welshman back to England. That’s unheard of!’
‘I can. I have a permit for him.’
‘How?’
‘That I don’t know. It was waiting at the border. I received an anonymous pulse that said it would be.’
‘Anonymous?’
‘Yes.’
More silence.
‘You’ve not been briefed on this then?’ Dusty resumes.
‘No.’
‘Well, I have the permit here, but nothing else. Look, I don’t know who’s sending me these messages, but I’m telling you, even without them, I want to bring this boy back. Lana, you and I have seen a lot of cricketers in our time. Trust me, I’ve not seen anyone like this.’
‘You’ve never been beyond the Fence, Dusty. They’re quite different over there.’
‘And his rugby… It might be even better. He contests in both.’
‘This is highly irregular.’
‘We’ve got to find him somewhere. I think he could be a great asset. If we don’t take him, rugby will.’
‘That’s fine by me.’
‘Just have a look at him.’
Dusty kicks more gravel into the river.
After a pause, Lana’s tone is softer. ‘There will be population matters to address.’
Dusty beams and turns towards the Fence, pacing in the direction of Ivon and Alanis, who talk against the smooth, shimmering backdrop behind them. ‘Of course. He’ll become an elite. I have no doubt of that.’
‘So I assume.’
‘But we can start him off in the tertiary class, if that helps with the population management.’
‘He’ll need to take a central chip, of course.’
‘Yes. Yes, I’ll talk to him about that.’
Lana sighs. It’s another voiced interjection, and this from the meticulously contained Manager of Cricket. ‘I’m very uncomfortable with this. The idea of a Welshman in society, it strikes me as dangerous. I don’t know who you’re getting these messages from – evidently someone in a position of authority.’
‘Whoever it is will make themselves known.’
‘So we must presume. You have the permit. He can come in. We’ll find him accommodation for now, but he’ll have to be tested like anyone else.’
‘I’ll get him tested tomorrow.’
Dusty is back at the border by the time the comm is ended.
‘I’ve spoken to the Manager, and everything’s in order.’
There is a glint in Ivon’s eye. ‘Were you just speaking to her then?’
‘Yes.’
He laughs. ‘I knew it! I could tell you were talking to someone. But your lips didn’t move! So it is true!’
‘What?’
‘You English, you can talk telepathically!’
Dusty smiles and pats the back of his neck. He is pleased that Ivon has broached the subject himself. ‘It’s all in here. The central chip, which is not the same as the identity chip they’ll be inserting into your hand in a minute. Through your central chip, you can communicate neurally with anyone else with a chip. Which means anyone in England.’
‘Oh, I want me one of those!’
‘Well, that was the next thing. A condition of entry is that you take one.’
‘Sweet!’
‘They’ll need to insert it into your nervous system. It’s a delicate procedure, and it’s normally performed on three-year-olds.’
‘An operation, do you mean? Oh, that’s fine. I did my AC joint in ’40. I’m good with ops.’
The enthusiasm – the energy – exuding from Ivon is compelling. Dusty looks at him and feels distantly familiar feelings stir. He thinks he felt them once. He recognises them as youthful, joyful, the exuberance that must be tempered by discipline. For a moment, as Ivon stands on the threshold of a new world, Dusty is able to share in his excitement, before he ushers him towards the gleaming Fence that towers over them.
Ivon remembers those long journeys they took to the mountains when he was a boy. He in the back of the car, Mum and Dad in the front. The air would be alive with talk and laughter, opinion and anger, talk and laughter, their tempers rising and falling as seamlessly and beautifully as valley and peak on the swell towards Snowdonia. Oh, how he loves the mountains!
‘Are there mountains in England?’ he says.
Dusty and Alanis, in front, exchange a glance.
‘There are in the north,’ says Alanis, looking over her shoulder at him with a smile.
Ivon grins at her. ‘Oh, good! Everyone needs mountains, don’t they!’
Alanis turns round to face the front again, glancing at Dusty once more on the way.
Ivon fingers the skin on his left hand, where they inserted his identity chip at the border. There is a lesion in the webbing between his first two fingers, a pinprick. He imagines the tiny chip beneath his skin and tries to locate it with the thumb and index finger of his other hand, but can feel nothing. Yet it will locate him for anyone with the right equipment. And then there’s this other chip they’re going to insert in the back of his neck. He can’t wait to get one of those. He’s always hated phones and the way people pace around like robots controlled by them.
‘So, how’s it going to work, Dusty? When we get to London.’
‘We’ll find you a room in the Cricket Academy for now. Then we’ll have a meeting with the Manager for Cricket tomorrow. She’s a friend of mine.’
‘Cool! And what about rugby?’
The easy curves of Alanis’s body have drawn Ivon’s attention on this trip as much as the peculiarities of England, and he wonders if he detected a faint quivering in them for a moment as she looks away from him out of her window.
‘Let’s just see how we get on with the cricket,’ says Dusty. ‘My contacts in rugby are not extensive, but we’ll see what we can do. You do know you’ll have to choose one sport, don’t you?’
‘No problem.’
Another flare of adrenaline bubbles through him. Ivon takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. They say the crowds in England are 100 000 strong.
He pictures his father shaking his head. ‘Don’t believe anything you hear about England.’ Well, he won’t have to now. He’s going to see for himself.
Dad. Ivon knows he’ll be furious when he finds out where he’s gone.
But I’m doing this for you, Dad. Not just for me. Were we not, all three of us, rejected by the English? Me before I was even born. You after you’d helped win so many matches. Turned away. Refugees of sport.
They made a terrible mistake, the English. What might Ricky, Dee and Ivon have achieved if they’d stayed? There can be no nobler crusade than to show them.
Ivon loses himself in such reverie in the back of a silent car, which floats at high speed towards London. Then, as the road flies in from the west, he marvels at the gathering towers of glass that present themselves in the distance, layered but unified, like the pipes of an organ, before the road sweeps down to be among them.
‘These results are highly impressive. Incredible, even.’ Lana looks up from her tablet. ‘You’re telling me this man was natu
rally conceived? He’s had no formal training? He’s from Wales?’
‘Yes.’
‘And yet these are the scores of a pure-breed elite…’
Dusty hesitates. How can he bring up the matter of Ivon’s progenitors without disconcerting Lana – or, worse, offending her? She would have known Dee. They would have been comrades for a while.
‘There was a cricketer,’ he says. ‘In elite women. Her name was Dee Januarie.’
Lana looks up at him. ‘Yes,’ she says, her face rippling with the effort of recall, or just the surprise of it. ‘Yes. She was a prem dep, wasn’t she?’
‘Except she wasn’t.’
Lana sits back in her chair, awaiting enlightenment.
Dusty shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He has set in motion something he cannot control. And yet he relishes the recklessness of it.
‘You remember Ricky Tribute?’
Lana looks blank.
‘He was also announced as a premature departure. Except he wasn’t, either. They are both alive in Wales. This man, Ivon, is their progeny.’
‘So he’s one of ours.’
Dusty smiles. ‘Not exactly. Ricky and Dee applied for a procreation certificate but were turned down. In the end, London exiled them.’
‘They sent two elites away to Wales? Together?’
‘I know.’
‘And tried to pass it off as premature departure?’
‘They said Ricky had a defect of the heart. In reality, they were worried about the closeness of their relationship.’
‘So they sent them off to Wales, so they could get really close? I’m sorry. I don’t accept that. Why would they do that to two assets of such value? Surely they would try Assimilation first.’
‘It’s odd, but they’re out there, alive and well.’
‘It’s more than odd. And you saw them on your trip?’
‘I stayed in their home.’
Lana shakes her head in disgust. ‘Of all the depravities practised by the Welsh, the persistence of co-habitation in their culture alarms me most. With all we know now about Crowded House Syndrome. What were you doing staying with them, Dusty?’
‘Ricky drugged me with Alcohol and carried me back.’
‘You see, if what you say is true, this man – for all these cat scores – comes directly from such a culture. Have you had any more of these anonymous messages? Because I’m far from convinced there’s a place for him here. Or even that we should try to find him one.’
Dusty takes this slight against Ivon – against Ricky and Dee – as if it were directed at Dusty himself. ‘Lana, you’ll have to trust me. I’ve seen him in action.’
‘In Wales, Dusty! In Wales! You’re not seriously trying to tell me there’s any comparison?!’
‘No, of course not. But you’ve seen his scores. They’re even better than I’d thought they would be. He’s already on a par with the new DGF cricketers, and they’ve come through the academies.’
‘It’s not his technique I’m worried about. It’s the mental side. He comes to us as a savage, fully indoctrinated in the ways of the Welsh. If he were a child we might be able to condition that out of him. But, as an adult, these instincts won’t be so easy to rectify.’
‘Oh, come on! There’s always Assimilation.’
As soon as the words are out, Dusty hangs his head for a moment. He could never wish Assimilation on Ivon. Assimilation would mean defeat, because it would mean the end of Ivon as he is.
Lana’s secretary appears at the door. ‘Ivon is here.’
‘Show him in.’
‘Yes, Manager.’
Dusty walks over to the window wall of Lana’s office and looks out at the reassuring curves of Lord’s. The statue of The Cricketer holds its elegant pose in the foreground. A cover drive perfectly executed. The angles, the balance, the sense of tension unwound, yet of motion suspended. Dusty will always feel an affinity for that statue, which will remain always a part of him. Around the base a handful of passers-by cross to and fro, lending perspective to it and the even vaster stadium behind.
Dusty turns to watch Ivon’s progress into the room. He is fresh-faced from his exertions in the test chamber, the results of which Dusty and Lana have been perusing. The doubts that have been plaguing Dusty since their return from Wales are lifted when Ivon approaches Lana and shakes her hand as if he’s been a Perpetual citizen all his life. Dusty knows Lana well enough to see she is disarmed. And for a moment he feels stupidly proud of Ivon, as if the boy were somehow his.
‘How are you finding London, Ivon?’ asks Lana, inviting him to sit down.
‘Loving it! These suits are amazing!’ he says, drawing his hand across his chest. ‘The bloke told me I’d never have to put a jumper on again, and I laughed. But it’s true! I can actually feel it change temperature. How does that work?’
‘One of the many applications of perfect insulation. Your suit will draw heat from your body and resupply it, as required. It’s true – we don’t have jumpers in England.’
‘What do you do for goalposts?’
‘We’ve been looking at your results. They’re impressive. Tell me a bit about yourself.’
With a little glance across at Dusty, Ivon repositions himself in the chair. ‘Well, my name’s Ivon.’
Lana closes her eyes with a weary smile and nods once.
‘I love sport. It’s my life. Any sport. You name it; I’ve played it. I don’t know anything else. The rugby club got me a job selling cars, but it’s just shaking hands, really. All anyone wants to talk to me about is sport.’
‘But you’re here for cricket?’
Ivon shifts in his seat. ‘Yes. Definitely. If you say so…’
‘You’ve submitted test results across the board, I see, which is unusual. Batting, swing bowling, catching, throwing… Your scores would qualify you for elite status in each, but your batting is particularly strong. Is it as a batsman that you’re offering yourself?’
‘I’m an all-rounder. Definitely.’
Dusty winces. The room is silent. He sneaks a glance across at Lana, whose crystal-sharp jaw remains unmoved.
‘I did tell you, Ivon,’ he says gently, ‘that you would have to choose a discipline. We operate in a culture of specialism here.’
For the first time, as Ivon turns his eyes on him, Dusty sees a flashing defiance in that boyish countenance. He sees Ricky, and remembers what became of him.
‘You told me I’d have to choose a sport. You said nothing about choosing a discipline within a sport.’
‘It would be impossible for you to pursue more than one discipline in cricket,’ rejoins Lana from behind her desk. ‘The academies are separate; the training’s separate.’
‘How can they be separate? You can’t have a batsman without a bowler. You can’t have a bowler without a keeper.’
‘You can’t have an athlete maximise their productivity in more than one specialism.’
‘An athlete?’
‘The biomechanics of a batsman are totally unrelated to the biomechanics of a bowler, who is different from a fielder or a wicket-keeper. The techniques are separate and worked on separately. In different places and with different people. You cannot be in all those places at once. And, even if you could, you would be sacrificing degrees of proficiency in each specialism to strive for proficiency in all. It would not do.’
‘But there are eleven players in a team. They’ve all got to bat; they’ve all got to field.’
Lana looks across to Dusty with her eyebrows raised. He’s wasting her time. Dusty seethes with indignation at the mere idea, but he cannot deny that Ivon’s protestations are making him look a fool, making both of them look fools.
‘This is not the Lapsed Era,’ says Lana. ‘We have a batting squad, a bowling squad and a fielding squad. Every contestant is a specialist.’
‘But that’s not cricket! It’s a fucking abomination! You can’t give a kid a bat and a ball and tell him he can only use one
of them!’
‘Infants in the cricket crèches are given a bat or a ball.’
‘No, I can’t. I won’t. Just give me a chance. As an all-rounder. I bat; I bowl; my throwing arm’s the best in Wales.’
‘I’m afraid that would be impossible. I am prepared to offer you a provisional post at the University of Cricket, London as a batsman, based purely on these cat scores and on the testimony of Dusty here, who seems to think highly of you.’
‘You’re telling me I’ll never hold a cricket ball…’
Lana cuts across Ivon’s protest. ‘But I have to warn you I’m in two minds. It is clear to me you suffer from the peculiarly Welsh delusion that aptitude belongs to the individual. If you are to have any hope of surviving here, you will quickly learn the fallacy of that conviction. I have tried to welcome you gently by suggesting you might like to volunteer yourself as a batsman, but the truth is that such a decision is not yours to make. This notion that you, the individual, own a range of skills that should be deployed as you see fit is hopelessly primitive and, you will soon discover, offensive to Perpetual society. Because it is society that owns them. You are nothing but the medium through which they are transmitted.’
‘Bollocks! I’ve spent my whole life practising. Hour after hour. As soon as I could walk, I had a bat in my hands or a ball at my feet. I put those hours in. Not you. It is my decision!’
‘And do you suppose the inclination to practise belongs to you, too?’
‘Yes!’
‘The inclination to practise is a character trait conferred at birth – just like the ability to swing a bat accurately – and the fulfilment of it is a function of circumstance. Either way, it is an inheritance and not something you elected to take on in some sort of neutral waiting room outside life.’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa!’ Ivon shakes his head, laughing. ‘Are you trying to tell me that it wasn’t me? When I practised my ball-striking for hours on end because I knew that Dafydd Bennett was doing the same and I wanted to be better, was it not me at all? Fucking society, was it? Or staying out until I’d hit the base of a sapling from 50 metres three times in a row.’
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