The Book of Fame (10 page)

The toasts and speeches came between courses.

‘Your Worships & other dignitaries, His Lordships, ladies & gentlemen … please be upstanding … to toast the greatest team to ever visit England’s shores …’

Was there ever the time

to do anything other

than march under the banner

feed the horses

see to their shoes

sharpen weaponry

and make sure everything was in good working order?

We had Sunday afternoons

‘down time’

on the edge of the Serpentine, say

smoking our pipes

and watching the ducks ski on to the ice

on their orange plaid feet.

Despite the comical spectacle

the ducks did not appear to crave a crowd—

there was no scoreboard, no tally

no one particular touchdown sticks in the memory.

The ducks simply came in and took off again.

Came in and took off again.

They were ducks, and

content to be ducks.

On to the Hippodrome

to see ‘ “Savade” in the silvered grille with his lions

tigers, bears & dogs

ALSO

Fishing Cormorants.

A real demonstration of the art of fishing.

Real Cormorants from the East.

Real Chinese fishermen.

Real water.’

We grew tired of who we were

the way complete strangers advanced with an outstretched finger.

‘You’re ’im, aren’t you?’ The stranger’s face lighting up. ‘It is you.’ Then, turning to his friends with his discovery. ‘Look who I’ve got here. It’s him.’

The way their ruddy faces closed in and trapped you with their pints held to their chests to talk about the game against Middlesex, say.

‘That Jimmy Hunter … he’s a cheeky wee bugger.’

A tall man with a parson’s nose enquiring after Glasgow’s weight: ‘I hear ee’s seventeen stones. Can that be right?’

The unexpected way that praise could drag on the heart. ‘Thar Billy Wallace. I mean the man’s a marvel. Jackett don’t move like ee does. Jackett’s a corpse compared to your Billy Wallace.’

The difficulty of transactions in the public gaze; at last you’ve caught the publican’s eye but when he asks, ‘What will it be then?’ the drinkers chorus, ‘No Stuart, good God, man. You don’t ask this man to pay.’

To be pulled from our seats in the audience—‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have with us tonight …’

To be summoned by a wealthy farmer needing our opinion of his apple cider. It was good, but ‘good’ wasn’t the word he was after.

‘A glass of water is good,’ he said, so we upgraded ‘good’ to ‘the best we’d ever tasted’.

Halfway through dinner his daughter made an appearance. We gazed at her for she was the most beautiful of creatures.

Eric Harper tried to make eye contact. Frank Glasgow coughed for her attention. But the daughter did not appear to see us. She only saw her father. There were no introductions. At a nod from the farmer she disappeared as she had come without a word or glance for us.

‘And now,’ said the farmer, laying down his mutton knife, ‘I have one or two paintings I would like you to see …’

The way others sought you out to lecture you.

Savade the Lion Tamer comes to mind

with his long black boots and silver hair

and grand moustache, and

the casual way he laid his whip in his lap.

The way he and his lions seemed on the brink

of sharing an ear-splitting joke.

He had asked some of us back following his show.

We were offered a sweet green tea.

The lion tamer said he’d seen us beat England.

So, he had been at Crystal Palace.

Did he enjoy the game? Did he understand what he saw?

Yes. Yes.

But now we saw him drag a finger along his moustache.

‘There is just a question about the presentation.

I wonder if I might advise you on crowds,’

and for the next five minutes he spoke of their character, how they worked.

‘It is not so much what you do but how you do it …’

He asked Jimmy Hunter to demonstrate the act of scoring a try.

Jimmy said he would need a ball so a small sequinned cushion was found.

Jimmy spins it in his hands, and after he has jogged around behind the ‘posts’ to place the cushion the lion tamer pushes himself up from his lion tamer’s chair. ‘Jimmy, I have a suggestion. May I have the cushion?’ Jimmy flicks him the cushion as he would to the flying Booth or Wallace. The lion tamer does everything Jimmy did, only after placing the cushion he thrusts out a finger to each section of the crowd. North. South. East. West. Shouting at us, ‘Bring the crowd into it whenever you can. Share your joy.’ Then his arms fell at his sides. ‘It is only a suggestion.’

One of the acrobats who had been watching now took the cushion and after placing the ‘try’ launched into a series of amazing backward somersaults. The lion tamer was scathing. ‘We are not trying to add wonder. We are exploring ways to work the crowd!’ The acrobat sloped away with an injured look. To Jimmy the great Savade was more solicitous. ‘Jimmy, I hope you don’t mind my.’

‘No, no,’ says Jimmy.

The Bohemian tightrope walker was next. After scoring the ‘try’ he snapped his feet together and raised his arms as if to enter a swallow dive. The lion tamer closed his eyes and muttered under his breath, ‘Thespian.’

Now it was the clown’s turn. He ran a short distance, placed the ball, then ran open-mouthed to each section of the crowd. The lion tamer folded his arms and stifling a yawn slid down in his chair. ‘I am not moved. Are you, Jimmy? Mona? Billy? Dave? No, I thought not.’ Finally it was the ringmaster’s turn but his effort was so funereal it didn’t warrant a comment.

Lorenzo, the failed juggler, could not place the ‘ball’. Each time he tried to his foot got in the way, and so on.

Having no space to call our own

we began to hunt down monasteries

and castles

to slip down an ancient alleyway

and sink back against centuries-old stone

and close our eyes

relieved to orbit in our own little world

as bootmaker and foundryman.

Two days after victory over England the crusade moved on to Cheltenham and the familiar din of carpenters’ hammers rushing to put up temporary stands and the familiar Sunday dead of schools and businesses closed for the big occasion. We did that—we changed people’s lives just as the abnormality of an eclipse saw flowers close up in the mistaken belief night had fallen. In the hard light of the empty street you saw shopkeepers blink, and the stretched faces of grinning children. There was the familiar emptying out of the countryside. The new timetabling to handle the load. Trains arriving from as far away as Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff. At Cheltenham, for the first time we heard the high-pitched sing-song of the Welsh come over the border to get a look at us.

We did our thing and in the morning left for Birkenhead. At midday we presented our shop-worn smiles at a reception hosted by the commercial men of the Stock Exchange.

We ran all over Cheshire and the local newspaper wrote: ‘Individually [they] were incomparably superior. Collectively they were ridiculously superior.’ But we knew that, and our dulled eyes looked for something new. At the station the Cheshire boys turned up to see us off. As the train doors began to close, they felt in their pockets for something to give, then tore cufflinks from their sleeves.

We arrived in Leeds to glorious weather and another huge crowd on the platform.

The goodwill gestures and promises made at the last stop washed off us as we made new acquaintances. On the field we bagged ten tries and sloped off to the train to meet another itinerary.

Then, the long journey from Bradford to Cardiff

Yawning in the dry carriage air

The sound of a water cracker breaking; Tyler brushing crumbs off his lap

Jimmy Duncan banging his pipe on the window sill

and all those tiny moments that fill in departure and arrival—cows, hedges, grey slate roofs, grey slate cottages, the usual talk—

‘Leg all right?’

‘Ribs in good nick?’

‘Knee coming right, is it?’

‘Organise you a cup of tea, shall I?’

We got out our old letters, opened them up at their creases and reread our favourite passages—to do with home the old school house, washing lines, goalposts, and kite-flying—that time she held the string in her teeth to tie on a ribbon.

Those who sat back with eyes closed enabled others to note the strain on their faces; the poultice over Gallaher’s neck boils; Smithy half-turned in his seat to protect his injured shoulder; others with crook legs dangled into the aisle, the flesh hard and swollen around the infected area that had still to be lanced.

Our hospital train silence.

When we looked up again, England had passed into Wales.

Mister Dixon leant across Corbett’s folded arms to clear a circle in the misted window, and through it passed the shingles and boards of Newport’s businesses—tobacconists, collieries, herbal remedies, biscuits, tailors and laundries.

Wales. This is how Wales arrived in our window. With a squeal of wheels locking, followed by a hiss of steam. A single figure raced by. Then another. And as we came to a halt the figures in the window appeared to go backwards. Then in the condensation on the glass you saw a man’s wild eye, someone else’s mouth; and like a quarter moon stood on its end a woman’s face and her mad delight. Fists pounded against the carriage and the window. We heard our names being yelled out. Our names in the mouths of folk we didn’t even know. As we began to move out and a hand clawed the window we found ourselves wondering about this mad human undertow—on what did it feed?

George Nicholson turned away from the window with an ashen face. In the top third of the glass a line of yellow lights clicked by, then the night came and we sat back. Mister Dixon with his timepiece in his hand. Jimmy Duncan staring blankly down the aisle. Some of us took out our tobacco then did nothing with it except to let it lie in our lap.

We had heard that the newspapermen had gathered from every corner of the Kingdom, some from as far away as the Continent.

We heard it said that if the Welsh beat us the players would never again want for medicine, food or a roof.

From travellers we heard about the Welsh kneeling their children before their beds to pray for victory.

Wales. We were too tired for Wales.

We pulled into Cardiff just before midnight. We braced ourselves for a repeat of the Newport scenes but as we hobbled out to the platform with our suitcases and football boots there were only officials waiting to lead us to the drays and horses. Billy Wallace swung his kicking foot at a moth.

The sickest of us drew back to that quiet cave within and counted numbers or did whatever trick worked best to make the time go between the station and Queen’s Hotel in Westgate Street.

The ambush came in the poorly lit streets around the railway station. We were half asleep, our chins bobbing against our chests, when they flew at us with their goblin language. They reached up wanting to touch us, shouting and shoving, and we had to pull our legs clear from their grasping. The front horses fought with the reins, twisted their heads and the bit. The startled face of Thompson looked back, then he disappeared around a corner and the space between filled with people shouting and waving.

The horses reared up and we saw the white terror in their eyes. We saw the clenched faces of the police wrestling the crowd back, and we held on to our seats with grim smiles.

A crowd of twenty thousand was later mentioned.

But can that be right? That many?

What did a man say to his son or wife?

‘I might just pop down to the station to see if their train’s come in?’

Away from the delirious hearts and famished stares we discussed what it might be that they desired.

Steve Casey recounted this incident—he had been enjoying his soup in the Loaded Bull when he’d looked up to see a pigeon tapping its beak and thrashing its wings against the window.

Says Steve, ‘You can see what is going on in Mister Pigeon’s head—the soup urn with its floating bits of crab and mussels is just there the revolving cake stand with its butterfly cakes is just there.

Everything you could ever want is just there almost within easy reach but for that window pane.’

The Welsh had not lost at home for six years.

advertisement in
South Wales Echo
, December 13, 1905

We heard later …
they turned up in their droves, men and women of all ages, some elderly on sticks, mothers with infants who tied prams to the railings to get their message to Dai to read when the coal hulk got in to
Skye. The front door to Owen’s place stayed open all afternoon through the night to the early hours. People said you entered a front room and found Owen bent over his desk, papers and ink. People queued from his front room, along his hall, out into the street and down as far as Westgate. Some with the advertisement torn from the newspaper. Others glancing up from the address written in the palm of their hand. No two instructions were alike.

A man sailing for Faroe asked the result to be telegraphed to the Department of Revenues in Lisbon. Lisbon was two days’ travelling time from Faroe and he wanted to receive the news as new. But also desiring an element of suspense he asked for the half-time score to be followed a day later by the full-time result.

A number of wedding parties in the north requested half-time and final scores to be phoned through during the later toasts. There were numbers for Prague, St Petersburg, Russia; Sydney, Australia; New Zealand of course; a Welsh doctor/missionary working in Leopoldville, Africa. Port Said was another, the customs office there; one of a bridge party heading for Port Said had played on the wing for Neath.