The Book of Fame Read online

  Christmas Day. Corbett woke with boils on his neck. Smithy’s shoulder was playing up again. Bill Mackrell lay in bed coughing. Gallaher was unable to straighten his leg. The back of Freddy Roberts’ hand was black from a stomping. A poisoned area on Steve Casey’s back needed lancing.

  We limped down to Christmas dinner, toasts, crackers, bonbons, cigars and coffee. We presented Mister Dixon with an umbrella engraved with all our names. Each of us received a Christmas card and a portion of Christmas cake neatly packaged in a small china bowl from a Mr and Mrs Clifford of Blenheim, Marlborough, New Zealand.

  We stayed in that evening. Bob Deans led a small church service. We stood in a circle and the flames from the fire cast shadow and light over our faces and made our silence devout, and Bob intoned for us, ‘God be in our thoughts and in our words …’

  Boxing Day. Fifty thousand packed into Cardiff Arms. We sat in our shed with our pipes while the bloodshot crowd roared out the song to commemorate Teddy Morgan’s try in Wales’ victory.

  Jimmy Duncan got up and looked angrily out the door. Whoever was more or less fit filed past Jimmy out to the middle where the Cardiff players in their hooped jerseys stood waiting for us. Within minutes of the start, O’Sullivan broke his collarbone and we played the game a man short, Dave Gallaher switching to the front row and Frank Glasgow to Sully’s place on the side of the scrum. Dave’s move to hooker took him out of view of the crowd’s heckling. With Dave hooking and Billy Stead feeding the scrum we won more ball than we knew what to do with.

  We should have been first on to the scoreboard but Deans failed to take in a long ball from Jimmy Hunter, and the honour instead fell to Cardiff. From a lineout Gabe drifted through our lines to hand on to Nicholls who crossed over unopposed. It was too easy, too sweet, heart-breakingly close to what we had done throughout the months of September, October and November. Then when the conversion struck an upright and clumsily dropped over the crossbar the glances of the big men especially—Nicholson, Seeling and Glasgow—sunk into the mud at their feet.

  Near half-time Mona Thompson ran on to a flat ball from Deans and went over in Winfield’s arms in the corner. That part of the field was so densely packed that the spectators had to stand and move their chairs back to open a lane for Billy Wallace to line up his conversion attempt. A spectator coughed as he moved in but it made no difference. The ball spun through the uprights and Billy had his hundredth goal on tour.

  Midway through the second half, a dribbling rush saw Seeling kick past Winfield. He and Nicholson gave chase as the ball rolled into the dead ball area. Bush who was back covering had plenty of time to force the ball dead. He had all the time in the world, so much time that he thought he would look up and appraise the situation. As he did so he saw Nicholson and Seeling bearing down on him, panicked, took a fly kick at the ball, missed, and Nicholson ‘gathered in that ball as if it had been a long-lost sweetheart’ to score.

  Hurray. Hurray. We limped back across Westgate Road with a two-point win.

  They said the better team lost that day. We heard it all night and the next day. We saw it written in the newspapers and on the faces we passed in the streets of Cardiff.

  Three days later we fronted up to play Swansea—our thirty-second match.

  A wind howled down the field. The spectators huddled next to each other with eager faces. We felt the weight of their hope. The very wind bore it into our faces. For twenty-five minutes Swansea pounded our line before scoring. Duncan McGregor quickly replied for us. But, but … no. The linesman has raised his flag. He is pointing to where Dunk put a foot into touch. No, no. Surely not. The ground had been covered with hay to protect it against frost and when we cleared it away to find the touchline we discovered Duncan had been inside the field of play by several yards. By now, however, the ball was adjudged ‘dead’ and the try was lost to us.

  We changed around at the half down 3–nil. We had the wind at our backs but were too exhausted to make much use of it.

  Billy Wallace proved the difference. Our last scoring moment in the United Kingdom comes as Billy fields a line kick on our halfway. He juggles the ball in his hands, sways back from the touchline. Now he starts infield on an angling run. The rest of us are looking on with detachment and a sense of possibility—wondering is this a lone mission or will we be called on to help—when Billy lets fly with a field goal off his left boot. His left boot! From that angle and in those winds!

  The crowd rose and it was like their tongues were wrenched out. They looked at one another. Billy Wallace had done it to them. Billy had saved our tucker.

  They mobbed us at the railway station. They shook our arms off. Slapped our backs. They liked us after all. When the train pulled into Cardiff twenty minutes later, another huge crowd were waiting for us. Their faces crammed into the window. They sang Sospen Fach through the glass and we rocked the carriage with a haka. The Welsh followed up with another song and we stomped our feet for another haka. And as the train moved off towards England we fell back in our seats dead with exhaustion.

  For our one-point win over Swansea

  The Times gave us 75 lines, longer than

  ‘the crisis in Odessa is over’

  longer than ‘the suppression of the Moscow Revolt’

  longer than ‘St Petersburg strike at an end’

  We’d done our bit and held on to our reputation

  Throughout the night, at railway stations across England, men, women and children waited up to cheer us as the train came through. They lined the station platform and threw their hats in the air. Nodding in and out of sleep, we woke to cheers and urged one another to our feet for another haka. Then as the train sought the darkness of the countryside we fell back into our seats and pulled our hats over our faces and tried to sleep.

  At 4 am, we chugged into Paddington. We staggered out with our boots and suitcases to be met by a line of station porters who threw their caps into the air and raised three cheers.

  We got in a few hours’ sleep in the Great Western, then it was back on to the train for Folkestone, the boat, the English Channel and France.

  SEVEN

  Women? Parlez-vous français?

  There was Freddy Roberts’ greengrocer girl to whom he introduced ideas of space and longing

  George Smith and the Irish widow

  George Smith and the lion tamer’s daughter

  The chambermaid who drew the outline of her mouth on an apple which she placed outside Steve Casey’s door

  The French waitress whose eyes turned corners

  The Glaswegian kitchenhand who sent Frank Glasgow a love letter in the shape of a heart concealed in his egg yolk

  The Irish widow

  The Dorset widow

  The proposals that arrived in the mail—‘I am five foot two inches and weigh eighty-six pounds …’

  Mister Dixon’s insistence that they answer every letter

  The destitute Glaswegian widow to whom Bob Deans gave twenty-five pounds when we passed around the hat to buy her a washing machine so she might take in washing to earn her keep

  The way women isolated us to whisper in our ears—‘Are you the number 3?’—when they thought you might be George Smith and how, after looking around to make sure George wasn’t about, we always answered, ‘Yes, I’m he, I’m your man’

  The wives of officials who moved like ships leaving their berth, a rustle of skirts, a hand presented

  The French girl who stuck her tongue down George Gillett’s throat

  The cheeky theatre girls we met backstage who sat on our laps whispering disgraceful things

  Mister Dixon’s blind eye

  The wink in Jimmy Duncan’s

  The night-time assignations

  The lonely path back through the park to the hotel; and the boys milling outside the hotel steps in the distance: Massa with the newspapers, Mona in his bowler hat, Jimmy bowing his tea-cosy head to light up his pipe, Cunningham in his black sea-man’s jersey with the ribbed coll
ar blowing hot air into his big hands, Freddy Roberts with one foot up on the step, hands in pockets; the way they appeared to move together, like a herd bound by a solid core that knows and only wants itself for company.

  The things that women later wrote or shared with newspapers: ‘They were hopeless at fielding a compliment. In a crowded room they sought the walls and looked for doorways … They drank too quickly. I said to him once, “No one is going to take your glass,” and he just looked at me, then at the glass in his hand. Like I said, “slow charm”.’

  Winter flattened the fields right to the grey walls of farm cottages.

  Out of that scene Paris arrived: between looking down and up again a whole city appeared.

  Paris was caught in a freeze.

  We stood outside Gare du Nord, stomping and breaking up the ice and watching the cabbies try to pick up their fallen horses.

  Our ears pricked up at the names we heard—‘Anand, Suzette, Catérine’.

  The horses looked prettier than ours.

  We decided we liked Paris.

  We liked it for not being Wales or England.

  We especially liked the way women in the streets kissed men on both cheeks.

  We thought we could get used to that.

  There were no brass bands.

  No officials.

  No policemen on horses.

  No gaping crowds.

  There were the usual snail and frog jokes & jokelettes; lively discussion on what we were prepared to eat and what we would point blank refuse, and so on. Corbett, usually a retiring debater, made violent gestures of swiping the tablecloth and throwing down his table napkin in disgust outside the Gard du Nord.

  But that evening at dinner, we found ourselves making odd announcements; Cunningham, for example, waving a slice of tomato on the end of his fork and declaring, ‘Now this is a tomato.’ But we knew what he meant; Corbett, Glasgow, Newton, nodding, their mouths too full of tuna flakes and oil and chopped spring onions for them to speak.

  Mister Dixon treated us to cognac, and afterwards, in the lounge of the St Petersburg Hotel, we smoked our pipes and drifted off until some hours later we woke to him standing over us, frowning at the timepiece in his hand. Then he looked up and his face burst with a big generous smile. ‘Boys,’ he said. ‘Welcome to 1906.’

  New Year’s Day we breakfasted in bed, spoke a pissabout Maori/franglais and used up all our ‘mercis’ and ‘beaucoups’ to organise a pot of tea since none of us drank ‘café’.

  Midday we dragged ourselves from bed, shaved, and packed our boots for the car ride out to Parc des Princes. A car ride! It was the second time we’d driven to the park on match day.

  It was bitterly cold but a crowd of 12,000 turned up with their white kerchiefs and black umbrellas. Whoever was fit to play pulled on the jersey:

  The French front row sported beards and as far away as wing and fullback the helpless giggling of our front rowers could be heard.

  The ground was a gravel pitch with very little turf.

  Bunny Abbott started the scoring. Then the French scored. Bravo! Bravo! We were happy for them. Yes. Cessieux dived over for France and 12,000 umbrellas were thrown in the air. ‘Le brave! Cessieux, Cessieux! Un essai, un essai!’ The French players did handsprings and hugged one another. We grinned like lizards. Dave Gallaher passed the word round to let the French score again.

  The French forwards took play into our quarter, whereupon our backs wandered out of position or looked up at the Parisien skies to help Jerome find space. ‘Just before the line he stopped and looked back to make certain the whistle hadn’t blown, then dived over.’ Again, umbrellas went up around the ground. Waiting on the conversion Dave said, ‘That’ll do them,’ and we set about collecting six tries ourselves.

  We liked the French

  We were surprised to discover that we liked the French

  We had an inkling that we were not supposed to

  The after-match dinner ‘offert dans les salons du Restaurant Champeaux’—

  Consommé aux Quenelles-Bisque à Ecrivisses

  Suprêmes de Barbue à la Dieppoise

  Aloyau à la Nivernaise

  Faisans sur Croustades

  Parfait de Foie Gras Truffé

  Salade

  Haricots Verts à la Maître d’Hôtel

  Corbeilles de Fruits

  Vins

  Chablis—Médoc

  Château Margaux 1896

  Café. Liqueurs

  Afterwards, we strolled through Montmartre

  listening to our alien voices

  gauging our mystery.

  In Paris—how we liked saying that—

  In Paris we visited the sights:

  acted the goat along the Champs Elysées

  put a scrum down before the Arc de Triomphe

  wandered the halls of Versailles

  explored the Grand Trianon, the palace

  Louis XIV built for his mistress.

  We marvelled that a private affair

  could materialise

  into such a monumental thing.

  Here, in the Tuileries, you saw how trees grew

  wanting to do their best.

  You saw spires

  and understood that where thoughts went to

  was exactly the same place where ideas were fetched down.

  In Paris, we let our eyes wander the fabled skyline.

  In Paris, the clouds moved sedately

  like debutantes

  very aware, we felt, of where they were

  as we were.

  In Paree—how we liked saying that—in Paree, we saw our own ideas promoted in art. In England we were celebrated for never producing the same move twice in a match while in Paree, we saw the same idea magnificently expressed in the stained glass window of Saint Champelle where no two panels of glass are alike.

  In Paris, we went our different ways—

  The loosies went off with O’Sullivan

  to soak up the atmosphere

  of Place de la Concorde

  where the heads of aristocrats had rolled.

  A man from Cooks, a scholar of Latin and antiquities

  escorted Billy Stead to see the ‘green woman’ by Matisse

  & the Venus de Milo

  in the afternoon Billy sat at Emile Zola’s desk picturing the Aegean filled with sailing vessels

  their decks crammed with statues—Zeus, Hermes, Apollo roped to a mast, Diana playing her harp on the bow of an Albanian schooner.

  History. It felt good to work yourself into that old story.

  George Smith and Eric Harper posed for their photo beside a statue of one of Napoleon’s generals.

  Carbine, Massa, Bunny Abbott, Eric Harper and Jimmy Hunter went off with a horse and guide and came back with a horrific tale of dashed hope. They were driving along the Seine when the driver stopped the dray outside a nondescript building. Jimmy says they were expecting more works of art. But no, presently they enter a room where a dozen people are sitting around in chairs. It’s cold as hell, and already Massa is looking for the door back to the street. The air is a bit strained. A waiting-room type of silence. No one saying anything. Bunny says ‘Bonjour’ to one Frenchman, but is given the cold shoulder. About then Jimmy notices a stream of water running down the front of those sitting down. Then he notices that each one is tied to the chair. And it’s left to Massa to burst out, ‘They’re dead!’

  The driver who has brought them to the Paris morgue looks the least surprised. His hands are held respectfully at his sides. His fawn-coloured eyes sympathise with a woman in a nightdress. She has on a hotel doorman’s jacket and one slipper. Her foot looks solid, like blue porcelain, and her eyes have the shattered quality of coloured church glass. The director of the morgue, an immaculately dressed man, cane, bow-tie, moved out of the shadows to rest a hand on the woman’s shoulder. ‘Ma petite chère.’ And made a tsk-tsk sound as he shook his head.

  In a chair next to her sat a man with a dr
ooping moustache and sad bags beneath his eyes. Bunny thought he looked depressed—as if between jumping, falling and landing he’d changed his mind three times.

  ‘Ah oui,’ said the director. A tragic case of an inventor hoping to impress the world and in particular, a young woman from the sixth arrondissement, with a special chemical solution that made short men taller.

  It worked! No, listen. It worked but with a depressant side-effect.

  They found the spurned lover with the wings. There was a rib of built-up scar tissue where the wings had been attached.

  They tiptoed around the other suicides, looking in their faces, searching for clues. Then, it was time to leave; all the way back to the hotel they talked among themselves of opportunities, lost chances and spilled ball. Hearts not really in lunch, apparently.

  ‘Cheerful lot, aren’t we?’ said Jimmy Duncan, and stood up to distance himself. We were back at the Gard du Nord waiting for the train to Calais. To buck us up Mackrell said he’d seen a pigeon resting on the tipped wing of a sculpted angel. But no one could get their thoughts away from the morgue.

  Then Bill Glenn said he’d seen a sailing boat transporting an automobile across a lake.

  No one could be bothered with taking this up.

  ‘Quite odd, actually, when you think about it,’ Bill said. We could accept that too and sank back into our silence.

  Jimmy Duncan, jiggling his pocket change, said, ‘You know today I saw a bald man selling eggs.’ No one believed him. A bald head. Eggs. A bit obvious, Jimmy. ‘Down from the hotel a bit, on the boulevard,’ he added, and out of obligation our interest shifted back to Bill Glenn’s sailing boat and the automobile. What kind of automobile? How big a boat? Which lake? Until Jimmy said, ‘Bugger it, I’m going to go and try some of that French café.’

  We slipped back into London without fanfare and with two weeks to fill before we set sail for New York, we went our separate ways—