IVON

by Michael Aylwin

Just get through the match, Ivon.

  No words are exchanged on the march up to the arena, just the odd comment in their heads from Coach White. ‘We will be working the fringes. We will be operating off 8 and 9.’

  Ivon has been excluded. What kind of a team treats its fly-half as a peripheral figure? The insult is bracing and ridiculous.

  ‘You’re to kick goals, 10. Kick goals and tackle.’

  They step out into the arena of the Headingley Dome. Ivon bristles, despite himself. The people in the stands wear the same colour. It is white. Is this place bigger than Twickenham? To Ivon it seems so. He can garner no sense of the numbers in the stands, but the whiteness is vast, rising up all around through four tiers of white and flashing metal. High above them, stalactitic cables drip from the rafters. That metallic thunder fills the air.

  From out of the ground on the far side, the Yorkshire squad file out. Most file towards seats in the stand, but fifteen of them take to the field. The two teams line up either side of the halfway line, black against white, each man facing his opposite number. The Yorkshire fly-half is shorter than Ivon, but his eyes are quick and intelligent.

  Ivon’s attention, though, cannot but gravitate towards the man two to his left. Olympus Dan, the Yorkshire No. 8, is indeed the biggest man he has ever seen. As the two teams step in to shake the hands of their opposite numbers, Ivon can see the air exhale in short bursts from Mike Bulstrode’s chest. Ivon takes the hand of the Yorkshire fly-half, but he watches Bulstrode shaking the hand of Olympus Dan. He pulls the hand of the taller man into his chest, holding it firmly, flexing his muscles, staring up into the eyes of his opponent. Olympus Dan is unmoved. When it is his turn to pull his hand in, Bulstrode comes with it, refusing to release the lock in his elbow. The heads of the two men collide, Bulstrode’s scar-swelled brow butting gently against the mouth of Olympus Dan. As quickly and as eerily as in London, the stadium falls silent in advance of the match. The otherworldly panting of Ivon’s teammate intensifies.

  Yorkshire have been assigned the kick-off. The ball hangs high in the air before descending on Bulstrode. He takes it safely and a maelstrom of converging players crashes round him. His head and shoulders jut above the seething maul. The match is under way. Oympus Dan waits in the open field.

  Ben the scrum-half clears the ball into touch – no chance of him passing it to Ivon. It’s the last London see of the ball for the next five minutes. Yorkshire bombard them with ball-carriers, granite-hard, dispassionate ball-carriers, who do not utter so much as a whispered oath in contact or in the lawless moments after it. Not a dig, not a fist, not a hint of personality. Neither Yorkshireman nor Londoner indulges in the nefarious. Even Bulstrode seems clean. Why doesn’t he treat some of the opposition the way he did Ivon just before they came out? Ivon knows the answer. Because he would be penalised. It would cost his team.

  Plenty of pain, though. These men hurt. Coldly, relentlessly, legally. Olympus Dan takes the ball only once in the early exchanges, crunching into Michael the centre. (Doesn’t anyone in England have a nickname?) Ivon is a couple of feet away and hears the weighty slap of flesh on flesh, the exhalation of air. Michael has gone low and brings the gargantuan down, then leaps to his feet and resumes position with the exaggerated eagerness of a man in pain.

  Yorkshire are pounding their way to London’s 22, but the London line is holding. It is not long before Ivon must play a part. His first tackle is on the Yorkshire inside centre, a three-quarter of the bristling, pugilistic kind. He reminds him of Chunk Jordan, the Cardiff centre who sees the ball as a permission slip to charge at someone and performs a little jump whenever he is given it. This guy does not jump, but charges at Ivon as if he has been pre-programmed to do so, which he probably has. Ivon tries to hit him in the midriff with his shoulder, but the centre’s forearm is like a weapon of war and strikes him in the face. Falling backwards, Ivon manages to grab the centre’s torso, pull him low and take out his legs as he rampages through. He takes another blow to the face, the centre’s knee catching him on the nose, but he brings the man down, even if it is his opponent who has dominated the collision. Yorkshire have won a few more precious metres, and Ivon knows he was the one to yield them.

  He scrambles to his feet, his brain reverberating like a struck bell. He sniffs hard on his smarting nose and tastes the blood in his mouth. The world lists for a second. He sees Olympus Dan patrolling behind the frontline. The point of engagement has moved infield, and Ivon is taken by a powerful impulse to sprint round to the other side of the next ruck. It is ProzoneX. He is already sprinting before he has time to think about it. As he arrives in position, his opposite number is darting for the gap between Ivon and the next man along. Ivon is just in time to tackle him round the knees and avert a defensive crisis. Without ProzoneX’s instruction, he would never have made it.

  A heat is rising in him, his disengagement dissolving. All avenues to warmth and home may be closing down off the field, but his despair recedes now, forced out by a deep-rooted instinct. It is pride. It is competitiveness. He is weak like this, reliant on a computer to keep him up to speed. He will sink into mediocrity, anonymity, if he does not respond.

  A Yorkshire ball-carrier knocks on. The ball is hastily whipped out by one of London’s flankers to Ivon, who follows ProzoneX’s prompt to boot it into touch, just as he is clobbered by Yorkshire’s punchy centre. He is ruffled.

  Yorkshire build another attack from the line-out. Ivon starts to bark orders to his teammates, trying to marshal the defence, but he is wasting his breath. These men respond to another calling. Their silence is unnerving him.

  Mike Bulstrode manages to rip the ball from a Yorskhire ball-carrier, but he knocks it on. A metallic voice in Ivon’s head announces a scrum to Yorkshire. The two packs gather on the London 22, left of centre. Ivon takes up position a few metres away. He looks around the stadium for a few seconds, the vast, still whiteness of a crowd larger than any he has ever known. And quieter. They murmur gently, minding their own business. Around the mouth to the changing rooms, Ivon sees a phalanx of security guards, striking a contrast in black. They are, at least, looking towards the action. Ivon recognises among their number the men who accompanied him earlier in the day.

  The scrum is formed, the ball fed in. A hiss of exertion rises from the struggle. The scrum twists, so that the London back row turns away from Ivon – and Yorkshire’s towards him. Olympus Dan picks up the ball at his feet and erupts off the base. He is coming at Ivon. Don’t look at his face. Don’t look at his arms, his torso or the ball. Just focus on the legs. Bring him down. The legs are mighty and ripple as if something inside wants to get out. Ivon crouches on the balls of his feet. He closes his eyes and throws himself in the path of Olympus Dan. His left shoulder takes the blow. The pain explodes across his chest, into his neck and down his left arm. He feels himself tossed backwards and to the side. He cannot hope to cling on to whatever part of Olympus Dan might be within his grasp, because for a moment he cannot be sure where he is. By the time he has hit the ground, he knows his man has gone. He knows that Olympus Dan has scored. A siren sounds and is almost immediately drowned out by the roar of the stadium.

  The searing pain down his arm subsides after a few seconds. Ivon lies on his back, gazing up to the rafters high above and the cables that droop down from them like the timeless vines of a jungle. He imagines for a moment they are lifelines, by which he might lift himself out of here and away to Wales. If only he could reach them. But his arm is numb and weak.

  ‘You have suffered transient neurapraxia of the brachial plexus,’ says a voice in his head he does not recognise. ‘It is trivial. You may resume.’

  Ivon sits up slowly. With a speed that does not feel natural, the strength returns to his arm, which he lifts to shoulder height and rotates gingerly. He looks towards the London enclosure for clues to his recovery but sees only the security guards, some of whom have begun to agitate. He wonders if they can arrest him for missing a tackle.

/>   Back behind the posts, no words are spoken. Some teammates crouch on the line, ready to charge at the conversion, others stare into the middle distance. Ivon looks towards Mike Bulstrode, but he is turned away from the team and stands stock still. The thunder of the stadium dominates them all.

  As the minutes tick on, Ivon’s passion builds. It is clear he does not feature in London’s game plan. He has learned to appreciate when the ball is due to come his way – a kind of déjà vu gathers in his mind, which is consummated by the arrival of the ball in his hands and the execution of the skill he has been tasked with. No such impulses are forthcoming now, other than the occasional positional prompt from ProzoneX. Ivon’s prison is closing in. Frozen out off the field and now on it. His temper rises. The soul-renting din from the stands buffets him on all sides, tightening its grip, heightening his mania.

  London have the ball on the halfway line, but the passage of play that Ben the scrum-half has been developing among the forwards has come under pressure from the ferocity of the Yorkshire hits, and the move threatens to unravel. Ivon knows he is being called into play, because an impulse moves him to drop deep quickly and provide Ben with an option behind. He feels a premonition that he is to kick for the corner. He is to kick his life away.

  He follows the impulse, quickly retreating behind the pack. He sees Ben prepare to whip the ball to him. There are Yorkshire forwards in close attendance, grappling for the scrum-half. As Ben picks up the ball, one of the Yorkshire forwards breaks rank to charge at Ivon. Ivon sees an opportunity behind the defender’s aggression and with a monumental force of will he overrides the impulse conferred upon him.

  Roaring with the effort, he drifts to the left, calling to Ben that that is where he is going. But this is not the mystical relationship he has with Ceiron Reeves at Swansea, where words are no more than the casual confirmation of what they both know the other is going to do. Here he screams at Ben from the depth of his soul.

  ‘Left! Left!’

  Ben is too taken with ProzoneX instruction to be able to respond, and the ball comes back to where Ivon is meant to be standing. Ivon knows this and has left some of his balance behind him, so that he can reach back to take the ball one-handed. He has to break his stride. The Yorkshire defender is on him, but Ivon’s manoeuvre is so improvisational, so outlandish to rugby by computer, that the defender is thrown, and Ivon steps boldly out from under his nose.

  The Yorkshire computer is manoeuvring its defence in expectation of a kick. The calculation has been undone. Ivon has breached the pattern. He has beaten the first defender, and in so doing he has beaten his own computer. He feels free all of a sudden. That fleeting, precious freedom that is granted maybe just once a game against the best. He is back at home, in Gower, by the sea. The ball is in his hands, like a flaming sword. The opposition start to turn this way and that. He offers the ball to a teammate, bamboozling one defender. Bang! He comes off his right foot, then ghosts between two more off his left. Going away, he tucks the ball under his left arm to fend off the flailing arms of another. Olympus Dan crouches before him, his massive arms spread wide. Ivon sees the try line beyond. He shortens his stride and slows to confront him, holding the ball out again in two hands, daring him to strike, then with a hitch-kick he arcs away to his right. The acceleration is devastating. He calls on full power and full power responds. As he sweeps past him, he sees Olympus Dan frozen, as if shot, his mind wanting to go both ways, his body a hapless victim of the warring desires. Olympus Dan puts one hand to the floor, his balance tipped, and Ivon is past him.

  The try line awaits, 30 metres away. Ivon looks round. One winger and the full-back are closing in on him from the sidelines. He thinks he can beat them, but he searches for supporting teammates, just in case. One of his centres is working hard to get with him. For now, though, he is too far away. The rest are still coming to terms with the broken pattern. Olympus Dan has regained himself and joins the gathering tide of players in pursuit.

  Yorkshire’s points have been pumped through, and abruptly the stadium falls silent. Ivon turns to the try line again. He will do this alone. No one is going to catch him. He crosses the 22. He is inspired by the feeling that beyond the try line his freedom awaits. Wherever he may go, whoever he may take on, it will always come to this. Ivon, the ball, the imperative to play, the talent. Let science seek to dissect and smother, nature will not be contained. With this try he will prove it. With this try he will free instinct from its chains. He will free sport. He will free himself!

  Ten metres out, he is taken very suddenly by the impulse to slow down and look for support. It catches him unawares.

  ‘NO!’ he screams, as he turns his deceleration into a sidestep.

  The covering Yorkshire winger buys it and flies past. The try line is still open to Ivon, and, summoning every last fibre of body and soul, he accelerates again.

  His efforts are futile now, and he knows it. He hears the crescendo of the full-back’s feet behind and is sick at the inevitability of his felling, even before the peremptory cut of his legs from under him. The sting of the full-back’s weight across his knees is sharp, but as nothing to the damage inflicted on his soul. He tries to reach out for the line, but it is five metres away. He brings the ball back within his bosom and cradles it tightly, as if it were his life. His eyes are closed, as he curls up on the ground. Two mighty hands seize the ball and pull. Ivon will not let go. The hands pull again, ruthlessly, unanswerably. The ball is lifted clean off the floor, and Ivon with it. He opens his eyes, as Olympus Dan raises him skyward and holds him to the air above his head, like a weed uprooted.

  A harsh buzzer sounds in Ivon’s head. ‘Penalty,’ says an automated voice. ‘Tackled black 10 not releasing ball.’

  Ivon is brought to ground. He looks about him imploringly. ‘What the fuck was that?! I was in! You know I was! Did you not want me to score?’

  ‘You were not in, 10,’ says Coach White. His voice is firm and amplified in Ivon’s head. ‘ProzoneX calculated that the 11 would cut you off.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  ‘We needed you to look for support. We needed to keep the ball.’

  ‘There was no support!’

  ‘It was coming, but you didn’t look for it. You went for the line again. And all this after you defied ProzoneX’s instruction to make the break in the first place. There’s nothing I can do for you now.’

  Ivon looks around him again, like a hunted animal. ‘What? What? What does that mean?’

  He walks a few paces towards the sideline, towards four security guards who wait for him, but it is not of his own accord. ‘No,’ he says, and he makes himself change direction to fall in among his teammates, as they wait for the penalty. Again, he finds himself turning towards the sidelines; again, he overrides the impulse and stays among his teammates. The security guards are coming towards him now. ‘No,’ he says once more, a whisper this time. He runs – to where he doesn’t know – but he turns and runs.

  He has taken barely five paces when it strikes. A seizure of unimaginable pain, like that which pulsed down his arm for a few seconds when he tried to tackle Olympus Dan earlier, only more intense, constant, and everywhere, throughout every nook and cranny of his body. It is the pain that visited him in Alanis’s flat. He screams in agony, but there is nothing to grab at, because the pain is all over him, a white sheet of suffering, so he sinks to the floor and brings his hands round the back of his neck to where the chip is, to where he let them in.

  The pain subsides, leaving him weak, and two pairs of hands hoist him to his feet. He is escorted from the field, his head hung low. His replacement jogs the other way.

  Yorkshire kick for touch.

  It’s over. Ivon lies on the floor, his cheek against the white. His legs are tucked under his arms. He is travelling at high speed towards London in a floating box. No noise. No motion. It could be an underground cell. He will never play again.

  He will be transferred to the Institute of Correcti
on. And there taken for Assimilation. He will be turned into one of them. The perfect sportsman. The dead human being.

  A premonition of finality crushes him. The end. He doesn’t know why he feels this way. The perfect sportsman. Hasn’t he always striven for that?

  ‘You will never play again,’ says Dad, over and over again in his head.

  ‘You are playing at it,’ says Marcus Apollo.

  His mood is black, just like on the worst days. The paralysis is upon him. A sickness sits in his stomach. The emotional grown physical. He is unmanned, about to be perfected. It is the end of all that he has known. He will never play again. The dark nights under soaking floodlight. The sunny afternoons. The breeze. The song. The love that runs through it. His teammates. His girl.

  It’s over.

  Dusty saunters to a stop a hundred metres away from The Cricketer. The mighty statue is always best viewed from the edge of Regent’s Park. Just here, the poise between substance and elegance is at its most exquisite.

  He allows himself to sink into reverie. He can remember now the very year The Cricketer was erected – 2125, their third title in a row. Dusty was at the peak of his powers, or the high plateau, for wasn’t it the case that his excellence endured season after season? He thought nothing of it at the time. When an athlete’s focus is forever on the Next Match, he doesn’t mark the trail he leaves behind. There are no matches ahead for him now, but he clings to the new dimension he has discovered in the things behind him, as if to let go would be to unravel. He remembers how the smooth, bulbous walls of that stadium-generator beyond used to thunder with the runs he scored. What productive times they were! Could it even be that The Cricketer is a tribute to him?

  He turns away. Misalignment. Do they not have a point, the forward-seeking architects of the Perpetual Era? What is there for him in these memories? Had he a future, they would not wield the pull they do. Were he as responsible as he should be to the needs of London, indulging in their recollection would be abhorrent.