Dedication
To Leo
Contents
Cover
Dedication
PART ONE
1. The Strathaird Docks in Perth
2. French Windows
3. A Players’ Chorus
4. On the Fairway
5. Webster’s Factory
6. Frank Worrell Alone
7. The Girls’ Home
8. In the Nets
PART TWO
9. Lindsay Hassett’s Sports Store
10. Gannon
11. Webster is Restless
12. An Ambulance Arrives
13. Two Photographs
14. Hay Ride
15. Father Unknown
16. Miss Universe
17. Joe Solomon’s Cap
PART THREE
18. Frank Worrell Alone
19. Webster at Work
20. Shame
21. Kathleen Marsden Alone
22. A Diesel at the Mill
23. Frank Worrell Went Down on One Knee
PART FOUR
24. An Unfortunate Maturity
25. A New Way of Walking
26. Inside St Catherine’s
27. Driving to the Match
28. The Lesson of Harold Larwood
29. Webster at Home
30. The Stain Spreads
31. Frank Worrell and the Long-Legged Fly of Thought
32. The Postcard
33. The Last Train
PART FIVE
34. Nat’s Barber Shop
35. Tracing the Black Line
36. The Blessed Years
37. The Gift of Kathleen Marsden
38. A Few Words
PART SIX
39. A Private Country
40. The Empty Home
41. A Thief in Your Own Home
42. Lindsay Hassett’s Sports Store
43. The Distinguished Guest
44. Mrs Webster at the Bedroom Windows
45. Speed
46. A Bowler in Batsman’s Boots
47. The Lesson of Fred Trueman
48. A Salute
49. Frank Worrell Sheds His Loneliness
50. A Self-Taught Woman
51. A Bad Time to be Talking
FINALE
52. Finale
P.S. Ideas, Interviews & Features included in a new section…
About the Author
Meet the Author
Life at a Glance
Off the Shelf
About the Book
The Inspiration
The Critical Eye
Read on
Find Out More
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Steven Carroll
Copyright
Part One
21ST — 22ND October 1960
1.
The Strathaird Docks in Perth
The Strathaird glows on the television screen, shimmering on the water the way things from faraway places do, for it has the look of a boat that has come a long way to be here. Michael, currently sprawled on the floor in front of the television, doesn’t know how long it takes to cross the world, but it is possible that the Strathaird has been travelling all through the winter just to be here for the spring. It is even possible that it brought the sun. It has power and grace and it moves through the water as if barely touching it.
A small pilot craft goes out to greet it and the passengers look down from the high decks of the liner and wave at the toy on the water below. All the time a crowd moves restlessly about on the dock. In the balmy mid-spring, they are dressed in suits and hats, starched shirts, ties, dresses and frocks. And this is something else that Michael notes about this boat — it has the power to bring people out of their houses. These people have left the ease and comfort of their lounge rooms and kitchens and backyards. They may have travelled a long way to greet it. But they have all recognised that this is a boat that deserves to be greeted, one that commands a welcome. For it announces itself, the way important people are announced when they walk into a room. With the smoke from its funnels curling into the morning sky and its horn echoing across the docks, it is acknowledged by everybody around that this is an event. This boat brings with it the spring, summer and autumn sun. It brings music and laughter. It brings with it the cricket.
The players, whose names and records he has studied again and again, are on that boat. Or were, since this is the evening and the events he is watching took place that morning. They are on land. They are here. In a swollen exercise book that should contain school work is a list of all the players in the touring side, with photographs, cut-outs from newspapers and magazines all pasted in, along with quotes and descriptions carefully written beside them. As he compiled the book, Michael came to know the side more and more. And with familiarity, came affection. Until a part of Michael was drawn to the thought of playing with this side, not against it. But they are the opposition and so he has dossiers on every player, noting their strengths and weaknesses, as if, indeed, he were about to play against them. Which is not far from the truth. There will be two series played this season, the one out there on the grounds of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide, and the one played inside Michael’s head. He knows how he would bowl to Worrell, Sobers and Alexander. And so when he sees their photographs in the newspapers over the following weeks or sees them on the television during the evening news, he will already have a feel for them in the same way that some detectives know their suspects, or the way generals know their opposite number.
A worn cork cricket ball revolves in Michael’s fingers as he sits now in his room. He spins it into the air then catches it. Again and again he watches the ball revolve in the air and wonders if — somewhere out there — the fingers of another hand are idly tossing his little world into the air and watching it spin through the heavens of another room. And beyond that the idle fingers of another hand, and another. It goes on forever, worlds within worlds, it’s all distinctly possible in Michael’s sixteen-year-old mind — and all somewhere out there beyond this pancake suburb.
Numbers, a voice comes back to him from earlier in the day. Numbers. And Michael pictures the lean, thin, bony face to which the voice belongs. Numbers, this voice is saying, are the perfect language. The speaker turns from the blackboard — figures and equations etched into every spare space — and smiles as he speaks. But it is the smile, it always seems to Michael, of a torturer or someone who collects insects for the pleasure and satisfaction of pinning them down. The perfect language, his mathematics teacher says again, the same smile still on his face. He knows that nothing he says means anything to the roomful of blank faces staring back at him. He is speaking to the class, but he is really thinking out loud, for his own amusement. When he says that numbers are the perfect language, he slows down as he always does for his good lines. He rarely leaves the blackboard as he scribbles equations on it, pausing to admire them in the same way that the art teacher pauses to admire the coloured slides of famous paintings in the art room.
‘Perfect,’ he says. ‘Absolute precision.’
He then pauses and inspects the faces in the classroom before him, row by row, the smile never leaving his thin lips. But there is no smile in his eyes. His eyes are glancing from face to face and it seems that he is on the point of pinning one of his insects down with a question, but he doesn’t and the room relaxes when he goes on.
‘We’re not talking sums here. We’re not talking arithmetic,’ and he accents each syllable. ‘No, if you’re good — any of you — you’ll go beyond all that. And you’ll know when you’ve gone beyond all that when the numbers look perfect, and you can see beauty in equations.’
>
And it is at this point that Michael starts to listen. Not simply look as if he is listening, but really listening. He knows nothing of numbers or equations or figures but he knows what his teacher means, for the idea of perfection had entered Michael’s mind long before. The idea that something can be done with such precision that it becomes perfect, and beautiful, is not strange to him. The perfect language. The perfect ball. The ball that Michael will one day bowl. The ball that will become known all across the suburb as the ball that Michael bowled. It is all the same. And if they are the same he will know he is getting somewhere when the rhythm of his run, the stretch of his delivery stride, the roll of his arm and the sight of the ball moving through the air all become beautiful.
That afternoon, when the classrooms had emptied and everybody was home, he went to the wire nets of the school that was once Skinner’s farm, and bowled his worn cork cricket ball as he does every day after school. And each time he bowled he waited for that moment of perfection — like the perfect equation in the perfect language — to pass through him. Perhaps just a hint of it was all he wanted, just to know it could be done. But he never felt it. Not once. Today he was ugly. Today he was disgusted with himself. And so he bowled for longer than he usually would, to get the ugliness out of him. But it didn’t go and he walked home exhausted. He slumped onto the floor in the lounge room and said nothing to anyone. Then he looked up and that was when he saw the boat.
He has left the lounge room now; his parents, Vic and Rita, are talking quietly in the kitchen, and that luminous boat has long since faded from the television screen. He throws the ball into the air and watches it spin. Then he drops it onto his bed and steps out of his room and into the backyard. The flyscreen door snaps behind him in the night. The branches of the plum tree stoop to the ground, brushing the lawn. The apricots, passionfruit and lemons are all on the way. Above him the night sky is clear and wide. The moon sails through occasional puffs of cloud. At the bottom of the yard he can see the three white stumps painted on the fence, then he glances back up at the sky, half-expecting to see that boat sailing towards him through the Milky Way.
Then his yard is no longer his yard, but a vast green playing field. It is neither day nor night. The green of the field is deep and the white clothes of the players standing upon it glow in the half-light. They do not notice Michael. They are playing cricket. They are intent on what they are doing. There is a low, white wooden fence surrounding the oval and the only way onto the playing field is through a small gate in front of him. The gate is closed and he knows that it will only open for him if he has the gift of speed. And if he does, if he can bring that gift with him, then the gate will open at the lightest touch, and he will join that company already gathered out there on the playing field. But for the moment he can only stand and watch. The players on the field do not notice him. They are intent on what they are doing. They are playing cricket.
2.
French Windows
The next day a builder visits the house. His plans are laid out on the lawn, secured with a couple of empty teacups. The plans are simple, easy to follow, as the builder explains them to Vic and Rita. At first the builder addresses himself to Vic, but it doesn’t take long before he turns to Rita.
It is early afternoon. Vic’s golf buggy and clubs are in the driveway. He is eager to leave and isn’t concentrating, besides he’s got the picture. The broad picture. Rita wants the details. A light breeze rattles the new green leaves of the silver birch in the centre of the lawn, and the sun plays on them like it would on water, the green waves of new foliage gently rising and falling. It is a perfect day to be out on the fairway and Vic has stepped back from the conversation like a man who has already handed over any say in the whole business.
Rita wants the details. The builder rises from the plans, ignoring Vic by now (and Vic is happy to be ignored), and walks towards the lounge-room wall. He looks back at Rita still standing on the lawn, points to the frame of the lounge-room window, then draws an imaginary vertical line all the way down to the ground. He does the same for the frame on the other side.
‘Nothing to it,’ he says, standing by the window. ‘Like slicing bread.’
Rita and Vic nod as the builder speaks. But they are different nods. Rita is nodding with a slight squint. In a simple, yellow summer dress, she is looking hard at the front of her house, imagining what the new windows will look like. It is a nod of involvement. She is a study in concentration. Vic is nodding like a man who is already standing on the first tee. His gaze takes in the bright, white weatherboards of the house, the window, the builder, but his mind is elsewhere. He doesn’t need to look any more. He’s got the picture. They’re getting French windows. He knows what that means. Fancy little numbers. Like they have in fancy little French villages in those magazines Rita buys that put all sorts of fancy ideas in people’s minds — like sticking up French windows where there’s already perfectly good ones. And, there will be lace, there will be curtains. There might even be shutters, for Christ’s sake. Little white shutters, and long windows that open out onto the street like doors. And, in the end, that’s where the idea falls down, he thinks, nodding to himself. You can put up as many French windows as you like — and you can sit behind them and imagine you’re in some cosy, colourful French village and not the dull, flat place you’ve got no choice but to call home — but those windows, however fancy, are always going to open out onto the street. And, of course, the street is going to look back at the French windows and nod knowingly. Her — they will say — her doing. And they’ll be right, because the windows have Rita’s name written all over them. Just like her dresses, these windows are a bit too good for the street. And the street doesn’t like that. And already, he’s feeling just a bit embarrassed about the whole caper, because he knows it will be a conversation piece. The street will talk about the changes to the house and he will be called upon to explain all this to his neighbours, for, unlike Rita, Vic knows the neighbourhood and talks to them. It will happen. And just as Vic did when Rita first raised the matter the street will hear a new term: French windows. And the very word ‘French’ will have them all nodding. And they will, no doubt, all of them, look about their street in such a way as to suggest that French windows might be all right in France, but this isn’t France. Vic will read these sentiments in their eyes and whoever, whichever one of his neighbours he may be speaking to at the time will nod slowly, again and again, repeating the phrase that he or she has just learnt: French windows.
It was the same with his mother’s piano, back there in that poky little hole in South Melbourne, years ago before his mother followed them up to the country where she still lives. The best room in that poky little hole was barely big enough for a couple of armchairs, but she insisted on having a piano. She paid it off week by week for years. Not that she could play it. Not that he could. Nobody could. Not a note. But she polished it and cleaned it. And every year she brought the tuner in. And when his friends dropped by they’d see it standing up there in the best room, dominating a whole wall like some cathedral organ come down in the world, and they’d say to Vic, ‘C’mon then, gives us a tune.’ But Vic couldn’t play it. And then they’d say, ‘Well, c’mon, Mrs C, you give us a tune.’ But she couldn’t and neither could any of his mates. And so they all had a chuckle about that, every time. It was a running joke. But everybody agreed it was a wonderful piece of work. ‘German,’ his mother would say, her eyes falling fondly on the instrument, completely untroubled by the fact that it had never been played. Still, she kept it tuned, in case some day, someone dropped in who could play and the house would ring with the sound.
The builder takes three paces forward and Vic returns to the present. The builder then draws an imaginary line across the lawn with his foot.
‘There, that’s where it reaches to.’
‘Where what reaches to?’ says Vic.
The builder looks up at him as if having completely forgotten he was there.
> ‘The patio,’ says Rita, as if it were obvious.
‘Patio?’
Vic knows nothing about this and he thinks about going on with it, but Rita shoots him a quick look and he drops it. Besides, the look she shot him was probably right. ‘That’s what you get,’ it said, ‘for not listening.’ But, even so, as the builder paces it out this patio is starting to look enormous and already he is starting to wonder how he can explain this to the street.
Soon the builder rolls his rough plans up and Vic is free to go. But before he does Rita turns to him.
‘Well?’
‘Looks good,’ he says. ‘Big,’ he adds, in that special way he has of using the word ‘big’ — meaning special. Grand. Then he grins.
The wheels of his buggy crunch on the gravel of the driveway. From the driveway entrance he sees the rotted golf-course gate through which the great Arnie Palmer strode the previous spring. The great Arnie Palmer, who had the even, glowing tan of an American god come to town and a smile that came from a lifetime of teeing off on crisp, brilliant mornings, with the dew still under your feet. And with the tan, and the smile, came the kind of golfing cardigan you just couldn’t buy here. Not that Vic would want one. Cardigans like that belong to the Arnie Palmers of this world, not weekday pretenders. It is a short walk to this broken gate that is now sacred. Vic takes in the gums, the direction of the wind, and Rita can tell he’s happy. He waves briefly as he leaves. He’s happy, all right. It’s always the same. He always looks happiest when he’s leaving. And his walk is the same as it always has been. His body leaning forward as if labouring into a chilly wind. A winter walk in summer.
The builder hands her the rolled-up plans and soon Rita is alone in the middle of the lawn holding onto the plans and admiring the house as if the windows were already there.
She knows what they all think — Vic, the neighbours, the street. The damned, bloody stupid street. Well, she thinks, this will give them something to talk about. What does she care for the street anyway? She barely talks to anybody. The trees are starting to grow and the tarred roads and concrete footpaths have made a difference, but this place will always remain a backwater. She will always remember the street the way it was when they first came to it — raw and exposed. Bare wooden houses, bare muddy blocks and barking dogs — like something out of the Dark Ages. It’s a hot afternoon but she shivers at the memory of it then turns back to the house and notes that it doesn’t look too bad. White. There’s nothing like a white house. She always wanted a white house and now she has one. The street might not be the end of the world as it once was, when she felt that if she weren’t careful walking back from the station on dark nights — and they were always dark because there were no streetlights — when she felt that if she strayed from her usual path she could easily fall off the edge of the earth altogether. She would forever be dragging the street after her. She couldn’t change any of that, or Vic, for that matter, but she could change the house. And when she came back at nights after work she would have something to contemplate now on the walk home from the station. When the job is done, the fresh white paint will gleam under the garden light — because a garden must have a light, just as a house must be illuminated when viewed from the street. The new windows, the brass fittings, the painted patio, will all be waiting for her, sparkling in the night so that anybody passing in the street will pause to look.
The Gift of Speed Page 1
