Read Online The Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones - Free Book Online
Authors: Lloyd Jones
Tags: Historical
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breakfast
walking beside a slow-moving river
filled with toast and eggs
not really feeling like victors
kicking bronze-coloured leaves about.
Talk of a kind
‘How’s that knee, Jimmy mate?’
The bigger blokes like Nicholson, Seeling
walking with the detachment of giraffes.
There were the trains
the endless sitting and looking out the window
at the cows and the passing farmhouses.
On long trips, between Durham and Edinburgh, say,
we got so used to looking out at the world that we forgot our part in it.
We forgot that we were really bank clerks, foundrymen, farmers and miners.
We moved across the country and it was like it wasn’t really there, and, we weren’t quite in it.
The unquenchable nature of success sat on us lightly
but it meant routines—
Another train, another hotel, another match
Another speech—honoraries, dignitaries, your highnesses, gracious visitors, His Lord and Lady, the Mayor and Mayoress, ladies and gentlemen
Mister Dixon reaching for the same old card—‘Far be it for me to comment on the quality of the opposition we have yet to meet.’
Toasts, and more toasts
then off into the night with old injuries and new ones
black and blue bruises
the rockabye sway of the horse-drawn wagon
our tired silence
the strange voices that called to us from unseen doorways in the fog a baby’s cry sending Stead’s thoughts to Invercargill
the scrape of a shovel in the coal box fetching Corbett and Cunningham
a dog’s bark causing the ears of Deans and Hunter to twitch
and the exact hour in the hills registering in their eyes.
West Hartlepool. After a month’s absence we found ourselves at the edge of the sea. Booth announced the apple and apricot trees around Alexandra would be coming into blossom now. Dave Gallaher got out his sister’s letter and read aloud a description of her ‘first swim of the season’ and of the ‘salt drying on her arms’. Our thoughts turned homeward, to Mission Bay, fruit salad and the smell of hot sand. We remembered old sunburns, the first plunge off the end of the jetty. Our first kiss. That first parting of the flesh. We thought of these home-baked moments, noting the difference between them and this. In West Hartlepool it was cold and grey, the sea had been spread with a knife and we shivered inside our skulls. Even Mister Dixon who, at times like this looked to ward off homesickness with a clap of his hands or a song, fell quiet. Then Jimmy Hunter broke the silence. ‘How’s this,’ he said.
‘In Mangamahu, on a hot day, the gorse bushes explode.’
Mangamahu
. In frigid Scotland a word didn’t come any more exotic than Jimmy Hunter’s patch.
For some of us Scotland meant going ‘home’. Billy Stead pictures himself knocking on an old wood-splintered door in Girvan. For now though he sits in the carriage practising reef knots with his boot laces, pulling one end then the other, seeing how well his Maori and Ayrshire strands knit together. Part of him is going home. Part of McDonald and Glasgow. Part of Jimmy Duncan. A lesser part of Freddy Roberts. A smidgeon of Seeling and Tyler.
At Edinburgh we stepped from the carriages to the cheers of 300 New Zealand and Australian medical students. We waved and shouted back at one another across the divide of tracks and steam. A lone brisk Scots official found Mister Dixon and pointed the way to where the transport from the station awaited us. Through the shifting vapour and steam we looked around for the dignitaries. Well, what do you know. Edinburgh was the first town where the Mayor failed to meet us.
Scotland was the only union in the United Kingdom to refuse us a guaranteed sum ahead of the match. The Scots had lost money on the Canadian tour the year before and didn’t want to invite the same again. So, at Inverleith, we would split the gate. The Scots had not foreseen the fame that rolled out ahead of us, and all week the English newspapers had poked fun at them for offering us the
walking beside a slow-moving river
filled with toast and eggs
not really feeling like victors
kicking bronze-coloured leaves about.
Talk of a kind
‘How’s that knee, Jimmy mate?’
The bigger blokes like Nicholson, Seeling
walking with the detachment of giraffes.
There were the trains
the endless sitting and looking out the window
at the cows and the passing farmhouses.
On long trips, between Durham and Edinburgh, say,
we got so used to looking out at the world that we forgot our part in it.
We forgot that we were really bank clerks, foundrymen, farmers and miners.
We moved across the country and it was like it wasn’t really there, and, we weren’t quite in it.
The unquenchable nature of success sat on us lightly
but it meant routines—
Another train, another hotel, another match
Another speech—honoraries, dignitaries, your highnesses, gracious visitors, His Lord and Lady, the Mayor and Mayoress, ladies and gentlemen
Mister Dixon reaching for the same old card—‘Far be it for me to comment on the quality of the opposition we have yet to meet.’
Toasts, and more toasts
then off into the night with old injuries and new ones
black and blue bruises
the rockabye sway of the horse-drawn wagon
our tired silence
the strange voices that called to us from unseen doorways in the fog a baby’s cry sending Stead’s thoughts to Invercargill
the scrape of a shovel in the coal box fetching Corbett and Cunningham
a dog’s bark causing the ears of Deans and Hunter to twitch
and the exact hour in the hills registering in their eyes.
West Hartlepool. After a month’s absence we found ourselves at the edge of the sea. Booth announced the apple and apricot trees around Alexandra would be coming into blossom now. Dave Gallaher got out his sister’s letter and read aloud a description of her ‘first swim of the season’ and of the ‘salt drying on her arms’. Our thoughts turned homeward, to Mission Bay, fruit salad and the smell of hot sand. We remembered old sunburns, the first plunge off the end of the jetty. Our first kiss. That first parting of the flesh. We thought of these home-baked moments, noting the difference between them and this. In West Hartlepool it was cold and grey, the sea had been spread with a knife and we shivered inside our skulls. Even Mister Dixon who, at times like this looked to ward off homesickness with a clap of his hands or a song, fell quiet. Then Jimmy Hunter broke the silence. ‘How’s this,’ he said.
‘In Mangamahu, on a hot day, the gorse bushes explode.’
Mangamahu
. In frigid Scotland a word didn’t come any more exotic than Jimmy Hunter’s patch.
For some of us Scotland meant going ‘home’. Billy Stead pictures himself knocking on an old wood-splintered door in Girvan. For now though he sits in the carriage practising reef knots with his boot laces, pulling one end then the other, seeing how well his Maori and Ayrshire strands knit together. Part of him is going home. Part of McDonald and Glasgow. Part of Jimmy Duncan. A lesser part of Freddy Roberts. A smidgeon of Seeling and Tyler.
At Edinburgh we stepped from the carriages to the cheers of 300 New Zealand and Australian medical students. We waved and shouted back at one another across the divide of tracks and steam. A lone brisk Scots official found Mister Dixon and pointed the way to where the transport from the station awaited us. Through the shifting vapour and steam we looked around for the dignitaries. Well, what do you know. Edinburgh was the first town where the Mayor failed to meet us.
Scotland was the only union in the United Kingdom to refuse us a guaranteed sum ahead of the match. The Scots had lost money on the Canadian tour the year before and didn’t want to invite the same again. So, at Inverleith, we would split the gate. The Scots had not foreseen the fame that rolled out ahead of us, and all week the English newspapers had poked fun at them for offering us the
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