The Book of Fame (13 page)

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.

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 collar 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’—