The Book of Fame (15 page)

Eddie Booth produced a London Underground ticket

from the day

we entered the earth like moles

at Waterloo

to re-emerge at a place

called Shepherd’s Bush.

One by one we had come up to street level

straightening ties, re-setting our caps.

Between Waterloo and Shepherd’s Bush

we’d temporarily left the world

and McGregor and Gillett had checked their timepieces

until Mister Dixon confirmed that time

had indeed marched on.

We shared out tobacco and gathered round to exchange lists of ‘firsts’—

the Negro shiphand on the SS
Rimutaka

the Atlantic as seen in naval paintings

afternoon tea that time 376 feet up the Eiffel Tower

meeting the King at the Royal Cattle Show and Bubs Tyler shaking his hand

French latrines

promenading (Jimmy’s word) in the Gallery of Battles at Versailles Carbine’s wind-assisted monster field goal against Swansea

the music grinder outside Paddington Station with his shirt open to a chest tattoo: Jesus RIP

the cruel metal spikes on the rafters at Paddington Station to discourage pigeons from roosting

ice hockey

a Turkish bathhouse in Chicago

the ‘suicides’ propped up in chairs at the Paris morgue

the dappled giraffe led by a man in a turban past the smouldering

bonfires of the circus’s camp in Putney

the farcical acts of the Italian Circus: jugglers fumbling tea cups, and time and again the soaring acrobat missing the outstretched hands of the red-nosed clown

We crossed the Nevada desert

climbed down the Grand Canyon

searched for old Indian arrowheads

traversed the Rockies

wound in and out of fruit orchards and cornfields

and after six days and seven nights on the train

in Port Richmond we boarded a ferry

and shipped across the bay to a city

back-lit by a bejewelled light.

We toured Chinatown,

a Chinese boot factory

soaked in saltwater baths at the Olympic Club.

At Berkeley, the authorities ploughed up a perfectly good playing field in the mistaken belief that the game conditions required mud … and at the last minute we switched the contest to a nearby baseball field where we twice beat All-British Columbia before a crowd of fifteen hundred, including newspapermen—

‘…there were plenty of plays that could be styled brilliant. Long runs, with difficult passes at just the moment when the runner was tackled, made the exhibition more than a pretty sight to see. It was beautiful …’

We’d left Harper and Glenn in London. They had chosen to tour the continent before sailing home via Suez. We left Seeling in London to nurse Massa Johnston who was too sick to travel. In Frisco we shed two more players. A ship’s doctor said Freddy Roberts was in too bad a way to continue. Mister Dixon asked for a volunteer to stay behind to nurse Fred and Billy Wallace stuck up his hand.

A doctor in the city had cut out Fred’s tonsils without anaesthetic. And Fred, though he didn’t complain, hadn’t reacted all that well. His weight dropped to nine stones. He couldn’t eat, drink or talk. He couldn’t raise himself out of bed. Fred didn’t care where he was for the time being so long as no one moved him. It scared Billy Wallace half to death just to look at him. Fred’s white face. His raw throat bled into the third day. Billy stood at the door asking Fred if he could do anything. Poor Fred had to shake his head on his pillow, and as he did so, the blood leaked and dribbled from the corner of his mouth, a bright red trickle of a kind that caused Billy to stand straighter and take his hands out of his pockets.

To show Fred there’s nothing to be alarmed about he begins to reminisce. ‘Hey Fred, remember that dive you did off the upper deck of the ship at Tenerife? You’re lucky to be here at all. Lucky to be alive, mate. And that’s the God-honest truth.’ Fred manages a smile. He’s turned his head to the wall, and Billy thinking that he’s delivered Fred to the sunny harbour at Santa Rosa, murmurs into the dusky light this final thought: ‘Sunshine, pineapples and whatnot.’ and closes the door.

Out in the street the afternoon fog is rolling in from Ocean Beach. Already he has that local knowledge; like in London, always knowing the whereabouts of Hyde Park, and in Paris the river; in New York sticking to Broadway and looking for the straw boaters; here, in San Francisco, city of light, it is the fog that turns his head in the direction of Ocean Beach.

The busy sidewalk pedestrian traffic parts either side of him. Women with happy flowers in their black bonnets look to either side, none with a spark of interest in him. So this is what it’s like to be a nobody in an unfamiliar city. He could be anyone. Why, he could be a Polish Count. He smiles at that thought, and at the thought of the boys carousing south on the Sonoma, and thinks how scattered they’ve become. Billy Glenn and Eric Harper in Egypt by now, gazing up at the pyramids. Massa Johnston and Seeling in London. He pictures Massa in his sickbed, his bored face staring at the pale London sky in the window pane, drifting in and out, waiting for Bronco to enter the room from the world of big movement and noise, a hot lemon drink breathing through its lace cover in his big dumb hands, that gash over his right eye.

He wonders if they will ever meet again.

In Jones Street, Billy Wallace climbs aboard the tram that’ll run him out to Ocean Beach. He’s told the boys he intends to ‘see them off.’ He’s promised them that if he sees the ship stuck on the horizon he’ll give the stern a little tap to free it on its way south. He had better do what he said he would do.

At Pago Pago we were rowed ashore by the natives

The air was made up of banana and coconut—and

when Corbett idly mentioned the mud and bog at Middlesex

we strained to remember that world.

Cunningham played marathon games of draughts with a missionary. In the thick afternoon heat we listened to the click and snick of the draughts and Cunningham’s clerical summing up—‘That’s one hundred and thirty-five games to your hundred and thirty-three.’ We’d see the
missionary come out of the shade and blink in the dazzling light, and rest his hands on the ship rail to try and find resolve out to sea.

Now that we’d left the great continent behind we slid down the long sloping banks of the Pacific for home.

There were the usual shipboard games—skittles, quoits, cards. But we had given up deck running, blind boxing and pillow fights. We did nothing to improve our conditioning. We took to deckchairs and waited for home to show on the horizon. That was the life waiting for us. The other we’d left behind in Europe. We were somewhat betwixt, lame in our deckchairs, like old folk sharing memories.

We laid out our mementoes, our exotic trinkets, old match programmes, postcards in which we featured, newsclippings—this story we’d created for ourselves, this new idea of ourselves

We didn’t have an exact word for it

not yet we didn’t

but we thought we knew it when we saw it

and began to amass examples—

The closure of the Great Western Railway Workshops for the afternoon, in Gloucester, and for none of the traditional reasons, the funeral of a Royal, the marriage of a Royal, the Coronation of a new King or Queen, but to see ‘us’

In West Wales, just before kick-off, rainclouds had come no farther than the river

The afternoon the birds around Crystal Palace retired from the air, content to sit and watch when the silver ferns took the field

The French, delirious with joy, celebrating their first try with head-stands, handsprings, Catherine wheels and somersaults

In Oxford, the scholars stood dazzled by the new design and form of play that came and went, like rare speech describing new concepts heard once and never after repeated

The request of the small paralysed boy to George Smith to sign his name over his dead limbs

At Blackfriar, a beggar girl selling matches running to light Jimmy Duncan’s pipe

Up and down Elephant & Castle Bridge unsainted women lifting their skirts to offer themselves

The marriage proposal to Smithy with the caveat—‘if not him, then one of the other backs’

Arriving to the ground at Lansdown Road to find touts selling five shilling tickets for 45 shillings

A professional wizard, a predicter of fortunes, a seer, and three witches were driven out of town following the Irish defeat at Lansdown Road

The English shoeshine manufacturer’s brilliant new brand—‘All Black Nugget’

The way the New York skyline appeared out of the sea mist, highly charged, knowing, in anticipation of travellers with new tricks

The shoving match between chaffeurs outside the hotel in Paris for the right to drive Gallaher, Duncan and Mister Dixon to Parc des Princes

Applause! Applause! Wave after wave of it

The quiet applause of the dazed Leicester players walking back to their goal line after conceding another try

The night Annette Kellerman interrupted her 100th performance of the ‘Lady Champion Swimmer’ to introduce Gallaher, Stead and Billy Wallace to the rest of the audience at the London Hippodrome

The two old country women who, recognising their faces, gave Gillett and Harper a basket of hard-boiled eggs for free

The Duke of Portland’s gift to Billy Wallace, a number of chestnut hairs from the tail of Carbine, winner of the Melbourne Cup in 1890

The 35,000 telegrams sent out by the Cardiff Post Office following our only defeat at Cardiff Arms (normal Saturday load: 800 messages)

Declaration of a public holiday the day Hartlepool met us on the field

Birds in Cardiff falling from the sky hopelessly disoriented by the fifty thousand singing ‘Men of Harlech’

French girls running alongside our cars, shouting, and holding up the hems of their dresses, following victory at Parc des Princes

Five-shilling tickets selling for five quid the day of the match against England

Entering the New Brighton Theatre and the audience rising to their feet to cheer and demand a haka

Calling cards from Madame Tussaud placed under the doors of Carbine, Jimmy Hunter, and Dave Gallaher

At Taunton, sunlight catching the white throats of the largest crowd ever to see a match in Somerset

The non-verbal humility of world strongman Eugene Sandow and his assistants studying us in our baths following victory over Middlesex

Heading the bill at Crystal Palace, Dec 2, 1905

roller skating in the centre transept

David Garrick Theatre 4 pm & 8 pm

Leoni Clarke’s Cats, 3.30 pm, 5 pm, & 7.30 pm

Hire Wire Act noon & 1.15

NEW ZEALAND v ENGLAND 3 pm

Inside the magnificent Crystal Palace, China and Tunisia shared a pavilion, Persia was lumped with Asia, while we were given the whole field on which to display our conventions and ideas

‘Vous êtes l’homme, Stead, oui?’
A stranger turning round from the Venus de Milo in Paris

‘The way the New Zealanders conquer space …’
The artist in conversation with a reporter from the
Figaro
on his new Cubist manifesto

The staunch refusal of potato sellers under the archways of the London
Tower to accept payment for their baked potatoes

Gallaher & O’Sullivan munching baked potatoes by the river and filthy pick-pocketing urchins keeping a respectful distance, and for the first time in their short lives sensing ‘fair game’ out of bounds

To take the field and know already, like highwaymen, the shape of future events

Those to whom the inexplicable attaches itself—

defeat to Wales

the crowing of witches in the Cardiff fog

The street fights that broke out for printed fliers promoting a biscuit manufacturer’s brand with a photo of the team

The proud Welsh adopting our ways for the match at Cardiff Arms

Following a visit by Nicholson & Stead the sudden and overwhelming demand for boots made under the Empress brand by the Midlands firm of Kempton, Stevens & Co

Our being the first party to have the privilege of a reserved car on the Metropolitan line en route to Oxford

The red-bitten fingers of the autograph hunters waiting with their bits of paper in the cold for our arrival at Folkestone

For the first time in the streets around Headingley the hawkers of bananas were outnumbered by vendors of ‘All Black cards’

The reserving of seats for the players near the choir for ‘divine service’ in Westminster Abbey

Every colliery in the Forest of Green closing on the day we played Gloucester

In Hartlepool when shops and schools closed, the roofs around the ground were black with spectators, the top of the fort was blue with artillerymen, and enthusiasts climbed to the top of the lighthouse to catch our style

Achieving the biggest gate in Gloucester’s history

The afternoon we paid a visit to Rectory Field and the Albion and Torquay players stopped play and joined the general spectator mêlée swarming towards us

In South Wales where we were compared to tea leaves: ‘… the New Zealanders have won great fame! Maypole Tea has done the same!’ And toffees too: ‘Like the New Zealand team, Turners cream caramel toffee is carrying all before it.’

Our appearance on a poster for Jason’s Underwear. ‘It may interest you to know that Jason Underwear has given general satisfaction to many members of the New Zealand footballers …’

Glasgow feeling sick and someone opening the window for him to dunk his head into the second floor air—and from afar came the sound of the Welsh victory hymn.

The creation of moments never forgotten:

‘Suddenly I had the field to myself …’
Durham’s P. Clarkson recalls the first try scored against us for the newspapermen

And, ‘Hunter dived, dodged, and twisted clean through practically all the opposing side within twenty yards of his own line. It was a splendid meteoric flash, and fairly held the ranks of Richmond dumb …’