The Rules of Backyard Cricket

by Jock Serong

  Tin fences.

  I stare a little harder at the photo. And there, on the right, I can see a spot where the timbers run horizontally, forming a rough capping above the tin fence. And on the horizontal timbers, a series of hand-painted black letters.

  I have to squint to make out the name, but there’s no doubt.

  Hope Sweeney, Bootmaker.

  He’s long gone by now, I imagine. But his grim scepticism about the graceless prodigy who was Darren Keefe, that outlives him.

  An hour later in the courtroom, the magistrate calmly points out that I’m yet to cough up the name of the person who supplied the drugs, and that doing so might be seen as evidence of contrition, but my learned counsel is all over this. He produces a report from a toxicologist to say that the stuff we’d taken, thanks again Craigo, causes severe amnesia in most cases. Of course he’d name such a person, says the barrister over the top of his notes. He wants to see this dreadful stuff taken off the streets as much as the rest of us. But he literally can’t remember.

  The magistrate sighs in a tired way and says things about my public profile, my diminished status as a role model to children, my lack of maturity for a middle-aged man. He says he must impose a penalty that reflects the need for general deterrence, as if there are queues of people thinking about behaving like me. He makes clear that he’s not penalising me for Emily Weil’s death, but for possessing and using the drug that killed her. He fines me two grand and puts me on a bond.

  And there it is: my reckoning with society is complete. Brisk, efficient and entirely devoid of any proper sense of damnation.

  But of course, that belongs on the streets and in the living rooms of the nation, where a fallen sportsman of any hue is a sinkhole for righteous indignation.

  At his insistence, I meet Wally at a café in the CBD. About the public side of things, as he delicately puts it.

  My brother turns up in a suit and sunglasses, his half-hearted camouflage. But he is unmistakeably himself—the set jaw, the square posture, his tendency to duck-walk. People crane their necks as they pass, particularly when they see that he’s talking to me. The bad brother. He deserves credit for meeting me out in the open, for allowing some of the stain to rub off on himself.

  Three seats at a table by the window, a sugar dispenser and napkins in a stand. We order and while he waits he carefully works through the whole thing. I’m leafing through the sports pages of a curled breakfast-shift tabloid while he talks, reading the form guide through a coffee ring. The inattention bothers him, I can tell.

  He wants to know how I met the girls, who their families are. How did they recognise me, or didn’t they? What was the drug? What’s the last thing I remember? I can’t help feeling he’s assembling something, some kind of Meccano assault vehicle for unspecified later deployment. I remind him that these are the very matters I was coached not to talk about under the counsel of the lawyers he hired for me.

  Just as Wally turns the topic to the person he wants me to meet, said person appears. Corpulent, blood-red in the face, silver hair. Maybe fifty-five, with a half-sneer pre-formed under the moustache on his slabbish face. He looks like one of those hideous political operatives. He’s eating a banana, for fuck’s sake. I check Wally as though this is his first-ever practical joke.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yep. Really. You want help here, we do it my way. Alan’s been doing reputation management for the Institute of Sport and he helps out with Cricket Australia from time to time. He’s got some stupid people out of some nasty scrapes.’

  I shake the boneless mass of his hand. ‘Thank God I’m neither stupid nor nasty.’

  The great oaf almost purrs with pleasure, and I can see that my early resistance is part of some inbuilt checklist he encounters with all his clients. The Kübler-Ross of public shame, with me stuck at denial.

  The coffee turns up. It’s scalding hot and milky. Wally pushes his across to Alan, untouched. He gets up and excuses himself, leaving me and the oaf to get to know each other.

  ‘So,’ he begins. ‘Let’s cast an eye over your particular shitstorm.’ He sheafs through some papers with the air of a bored factotum.

  ‘You’ve no-commented the police, which is good. Exercised the privilege against self-incrimination in court and blamed your lawyer outside court, which is also good. You were seen throwing a frisbee at St Kilda beach during the first weekend of the coronial hearing, which is bad. Photo in the Herald Sun wearing a T-shirt with the word schadenfreude emblazoned across it, which is also bad. Do you actually think through the implications of these things?’

  We both decide it’s a rhetorical question.

  ‘You’re yet to talk candidly about what went on, and to some extent you’re prevented from doing so by the very real risk you’ll put your foot in it. I don’t ever want to know who gave you that horse juice, but they’d be feeling tetchy about their customer right now.

  ‘Despite all that, we’ll need you to do a confessional. On tabloid TV, someone soft. We’ll train you up for it. Shed a tear or two, make it clear you want to set the record straight once and for all, yada yada. There’s shitloads of money to be made if you do this right. You understand me? Shitloads.’

  Wally never asked me who gave me the drugs. Why wouldn’t he ask me that?

  ‘What about the girl’s family?’ I ask.

  The oaf is clearly baffled. ‘What about them?’

  ‘Can I approach them? Try to apologise personally? Check how they feel about me doing media?’

  ‘Ohhhh. Sorry, I get you now. No. That would be a fucking stupid thing to do.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, you fat fuck.’

  The insult washes over him without a ripple. ‘You need a prepared statement. To stop you ad-libbing in front of microphones.’

  He opens his computer and fiddles around for a while. Because Wally had been sitting opposite me, he’s plonked himself in a chair almost beside me, and now that Wally’s gone he’s uncomfortably close. I watch the screen as he clicks his way through his various rabbits and hats. A list of folders: assault, bust-up/creative, bust-up/management, bust-up/partnership, chemical leak, financial default, hit and run, infidelity, sexting…

  ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Post-sentence.’

  ‘What are your qualifications?’ I can’t help asking.

  He takes out a cigarette and lights it, drawing thoughtfully. ‘None of your business,’ he exhales.

  ‘Well, do you know what you’re doing?’

  He turns the computer so it’s facing me directly. ‘Go on then, you run it.’ He waves a hand at the keyboard and ashes the smoke, just a touch prematurely. ‘It’s not about age anymore, Darren. Not about fame either. You’re on the scrapheap, and I’m the recycling guy.’

  I watch him sullenly. I’m reflected in the glass door behind his head: deepening valleys forming an arch from the base of my nose, the softening shape of my jaw. There are little silver hairs growing out of my ears. I’ve taken to snipping them in the bathroom mirror. Men with silver hairs in their ears do not belong in nightclubs. Rampant virility is behind me now and I misused it. Oh fuck, is this all there is?

  And the clincher arrives, as I watch this turd working the mouse with his slug fingers. He turns the screen back to face himself.

  ‘Now how do you want it?’ he asks. ‘I can do sullen and wounded, slightly defiant, ambivalent, sincere or grovelling.’

  This is unbelievable. ‘Sincere.’

  ‘Okay. Good choice. How’s this?…aware of my status as a role model…became vulnerable to these influences once I was removed from the disciplinary structures of…what was this one? Oh yeah, first-class cricket… sorry to anyone I may have hurt or offended…Horror and revulsion at my involvement in these tragic events…You like?’

  ‘What about Please respect my family and their need for privacy at this difficult time?’

  ‘That’s for the bereaved.’

  ‘Obviously have a long way to go to regain the publi
c’s respect?’

  ‘Yeah, I can put that in.’

  He finishes typing and snaps the laptop shut. Then, tucking it back into a bag, he leans back and squints into a pull on the cigarette, studying me.

  ‘What?’

  He bares his teeth to hiss out the smoke, offers me a hand. ‘Cool. We’re on. Consider me your misrepresentative.’

  I ignore the hand. He ignores the gesture.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  He smiles maliciously. ‘Oh I don’t care. It’s just that I need to know, so I know how much truth I’ve got to work with.’

  ‘I feel like shit. Now if you’re done, can you fuck off please?’

  He rises with a contemptuous snort, and I’m left alone at the table, trying to piece it all together. I am a man who retains a public profile, but with all the good parts eaten away. Flyblown or something. How I continue through my life in this state is unclear: the talent I had for pleasing people is gone, and if I can’t please them, then the current situation will prevail all the way to the grave.

  Former cricketer Darren Keefe. Disgraced former cricketer Darren Keefe. The most conventional way to defy public expectation from here would be to go religious. Get redeemed, praise the Lord. Find some good clean folk who like to happy clap and dress young. They have such nice glossy hair.

  I wouldn’t last. I can’t sing for starters, and I’m not a stayer. Particularly not when it comes to abstinence, and I’d surely have to abstain from something.

  So assuming the public can never love me again, is there anything worth striving towards? Can I rely on the love of family? Mum adores me regardless, loves us both, in fact. She won’t hear a bad word—said to Wally after the charges were laid that I’d just fallen in with a bad crowd. Bless her—I was the bad crowd. So setting aside for a moment the culpably naive, that leaves an absent father, possibly deceased by now, and a brother who has the hardest job in the nation and is probably a little busy for a hug.

  A man needs friends in such straitened circumstances, and here comes one now.

  Ambling down the street, happy as a lark: Craigo. He’s wearing the work outfit that used to be his everyday before he discovered gangster chic: bomber jacket and jeans with runners. He’s looking into the middle distance, but then swings his big head just at the right moment to clap eyes on me and make a great display of his surprise.

  ‘Daz! Me boy! What the hell? I was just—’

  He points further down the footpath as though some other errand brought him here, then closes in for the obligatory squeeze, leaning over me in my seat as he does so. Smell of aftershave and leather. But his hands are odd: he’s feeling me up, like he’s searching for breasts. Is this sexual? I rear back a little, then he sits himself down, fishing for a menu.

  ‘Just passing by, hey mate?’

  He looks guilty. That hug was weird.

  ‘Yep. Well, sort of.’

  ‘Were you watching me just then?’

  He chooses not to answer, orders a milkshake.

  ‘So who was that guy, anyway?’ he asks. Can’t help himself, the big dill.

  ‘I dunno. Graham or Bernard or something. Wally’s fed me to the PR people.’

  ‘Excellent. At least the quality of the lies should improve.’

  He guffaws and slaps the table hard enough for nearby diners to flinch. Then he closes in. ‘Do they want you to do a confessional? Current affairs telly? Eh?’

  I look down awkwardly and shuffle the condiments around.

  ‘Mate, I know you came under a bit of pressure to, you know, to say where the gear came from. And I know you didn’t say nothin. I appreciate it. Times like, like that night, I just get so excited for ya. So excited. Y’know, I just wanted you to have a great night, do somethin special with the girls. It was for you, mate. For you.’

  ‘Please Craigo, I don’t wanna hear it. I haven’t said anything to anyone and I never will. I just don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s over, okay?’

  ‘Jesus. All right. You’re not gonna cry, are ya?’

  He’s tilted his head, looking up under my eyebrows. There’s a lecture coming, I can sense it.

  ‘The public can’t remember anything for more than a couple of days, my friend. So unless this fuckup’s got some new chapter in it, the whole world just forgets. You can rely on someone to drop their pants, or some Lebo to shoot some other Lebo in St Albans, or a politician to get caught in a public dunny or a ferry to flip over or, or, airliners, fuck! Who’d get in a plane these days? Doesn’t matter what it is. The entire world’s like a budgie with a fucking mirror now. And you, you’re just famous. Doesn’t matter for what. You’re now operating on a level where the crap that destroys ordinary people, it just gets brushed over. Once you get through the apology thing with Ian or whatever his name is, you’ll get a B-celebrity makeover, renovation show, dancing with the wheelchair kids, something, and away you go. People don’t like their celebrities to just disappear. They wanna hold ’em close. Even when they fuck up. They’re still happy if they’re hating them. That’s the modern truth, right there.’

  He seems satisfied, and the dreadful reality is that he’s right. I’ve never seen a moral stand-off in public life that didn’t end in a shambling bloody compromise. Moral insistence went the way of pistol duels.

  ‘I got something for ya.’ He produces a large black briefcase I hadn’t noticed he was carrying. Reaches inside and throws a taped-up plastic bag onto the table. I study it for a moment without taking it. There’s branding on the outside: Hook Line and Sinker—For All Your Boating Needs. Has Craigo ever even been fishing?

  ‘Careful opening that,’ he says, looking both ways.

  I work my way through the tape and plastic. Inside there’s bundles of used notes. The sixty grand. I try pushing it back across the table to him.

  ‘Mate, you earned that money legittermantly.’

  ‘Take it back mate,’ I sigh. ‘I didn’t earn it. I won it in a bet, and it’s a night I’d rather not be reminded of.’

  Craig looks wounded. ‘I can’t. I’m not walking around with it. It’s your money. Mate, if you wanna get through this shitstorm, you gotta be more commercial. Take it to the track, use the on-course bookies—you wanna blend of box quinnies and nose bets for the favourites. Don’t keep the slips, mix it around. You don’t wanna bet consecutive—’

  It seems the chief punishment for my sins is going to be the amount of bullshit I have to endure. I take the plastic bag and walk off on Craigo, mid-sentence—something I would never have dreamed of doing prior to this moment, but the balance of pity between us has shifted. I’ve spent my life pitying the silly fat man: being his famous friend, giving him marquee access to a world his own talents couldn’t command. Now he pities me: it’s time to go.

  I can hear him calling out gimme a ring as I wander off, down the busy city street. Then he’s in his pimped-up Merc, cruising by with his mouth opening and shutting silently behind the clean glass, pleading with me to accept a lift. But I’ve reached a tram stop, back turned on him.

  I wish my brother was here. All of a sudden I really do, as strange as that probably sounds. His dour instinct for what the moment really means. I wish I’d stayed at the table and he had too; and the PR ghoul and Craigo the Affable Fat Man had never materialised. We could’ve just talked it out: me and Wally against the world. Somewhere underneath it all we’re still ourselves.

  The yelling from behind me continues. Pleas and entreaties—louder now because he’s got the window down. Stupid fucker. I get up off the bench and storm into a lane of traffic, causing the nearest car to squeal and slide a bit, and next thing I’m in Craigo’s driver’s window, head and shoulders, right up in his face.

  ‘You can keep your fucking cash,’ I hiss at him, and throw the bag into the back seat.

  He’s snookered. He can’t reach around quick enough to get it, can’t abandon the car in the middle of the road. The last I see of
him is the face of a hurt and confused child.

  Thankfully a tram rolls up, a tram to anywhere. I dart onboard and sit in a corner as it rumbles downhill, people coming and going while I remain, a mute island among them.

  Resurrection

  The carpet’s wet where I’ve been rubbing; a gelatinous slick of my skin and blood. The tape is halfway off, hanging limply from my mouth. I can probably get by with just half of it off—the breaths are deep and good now, but I want complete release. I want to be able to answer back when they get me out, say something witty and daring before lights out.

  Je ne regrette rien, fuckers.

  But I’ve hit an obstacle: I’ve lost face. The slick is too wet to create friction against the tape now. It just slips over the surface and no longer pulls free when I rub my face on the carpet.

  I try for a while to catch the loose end in my teeth, swinging my head back and forth like an idiot. Eventually I catch it, then I have to do some serious thinking about how I can pull on it. I roll my tongue over it, tasting the blood and glue and filling my mouth with carpet fibres. I pull faces, trying to find the purchase that will allow me to rip more of it free. But all of the exaggerated grimaces and pouts and kissy faces are worth only a couple more millimetres.

  My tongue’s cramping. I may have to mumble my last words through half a mouth.

  Within weeks of the conversation with Slimy Al, I’m plonked in a swivelling makeup chair at a TV station. Al’s hovering at my side in the very same suit. We’ve practised my lines half a dozen times. He was disappointed the network wouldn’t give him the questions in advance, but he seems happy with the general tone of the station execs, who assure him they want this to go well, for everybody. The station owns the broadcast rights for domestic cricket. These days they run ads for their lifestyle shows during the game, digitally superimposing pictures of buff young home renovators on the televised outfield. Lifestyle is sport is news: baubles from the same showbag.

  My interrogator will be Elizabeth Brookes, the hard-hitting screen journo who shot to prominence on the back of a rare interview with Taylor Swift, followed by cross-promotional puff pieces on the wedding episode in Family Bay and the winners of the reality quest Café Love. She owns a Sunday seven-thirty slot in soft focus and hasn’t asked a penetrating question in fifteen years.