Sovran king

M I C HAEL S M AL L, W RITER MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2011

SOVRAN KING From the Members Stand Dick Mead’s port-wine face mellowed in pleasure as he followed Langtree’s smoothly accelerating run-up, the broad back heaving with threat and power. The bowler’s left hand pointed high forward, forming a pure diagonal line from the fingers across the body to the right hand. Then with the final leap came the full, rhythmic swing of those wide-set shoulders delivering the ball at the highest point of the vertical arc.

The batsman, Godfrey Greenleigh, led with his left shoulder and elbow in unison with the thrust of his left foot towards the ball. His prowess with the willow was evident in his manner of executing cricket’s grandest stroke, the drive. His wrists were cocked for high backlift, then the bat smote through with flashing grace. One sweet chock, and the ball was racing between cover and mid-off. But already breaking into elastic stride, even before the bowler had completed his run-up, Shuwalow had anticipated its path and with limber arm, he swooped, swivelled and shied in falling straight over the bails.

The octogenarian puckered his red-veined nose and gave warm but frail applause.

Such majesty of movement and skill effected in the twinkling of an eye. Here was cricket at its finest. He dipped his panama to close out the harsh sunlight.

At the cricket, Mead’s heart opened like his beloved Hampshire tulips in a northern spring. Almost deaf as a sheep-hurdle, he could still sense the buzz of unbridled exhilaration, still feel a lump in his throat at the sheer verdancy of the outer field, the kaleidoscope of white gladiators, the batsman late-cutting wristily, the scudding red bullet bisecting slip fielders diving forlorn.

The old buffer recollected, when good Queen Victoria was yet alive, sitting outside the Bat and Ball Inn sipping ginger beer, whilst his grandfather in hoary voice discoursed with farmers whose faces were as brown as nutmeg as they stooped over their staves about coach and packhorse days, when contemporary clod-stumpers of

Hampshire were not deemed compeers of a tip-top batter like the late John Small the elder, who had milled the bowling of divers All England Elevens and had been as active as a hare at his station of middle wicket; how William Fennex, game to the backbone, begat forward play by getting in at the ball to counter the bounding cannonades of David Harris; how red leather shaved daisies when William Beldham – Silver Billy cut with a crack like a pistol shot, as lissimer on his feet as a hobby hawk skimming a hedge; what a mayhap that Thomas Taylor was shabby enough to use his leg deliberately when sitting on the splice; how keeper Tom Sueter ran ten notches off one hit.

And Mead could conjure in his imagination the scarred, shattered claws of gnarled, arthritic cricketers clasping their pewter mugs of barley-corn ale that flared like turpentine, and their skin like a stalwart oak’s rind staring at their round of beef. And he saw with his mind’s eye the white legends of Broad-Halfpenny Down sporting their velvet caps on May green: The Gentlemen in breeches and silk stockings; Tom Walker pitching a crop of stumps; the curved blade of Nyren bludgeoning a sneaker to the long-field; the favourite comment of Lambert, The Little farmer, as his twister all but grazed the sticks: “Ah! It was tedious near you, sir;” Noah Mann cantering twenty miles to practise Tuesday-morn so that the stout oaks of Hambledon could prove themselves the better men than those other tars on horseback.

The tock of leather on willow echoed over greensward through the secluded vale. And beyond the big, ancient yew across the undulating sweep of beeches and elmy gardens, beyond the half-wild orchards sprinkled in the bottom, loomed the glistering waters of the Wight and the blue hills and chines of Tennyson’s primrose isle.

Then Mead saw the scrag-of-mutton frame of his grandfather seize up a staff and demonstrate ‘Upon my life!’ to these apple-john, back-bent yeomen how Felix held the long pod over his shoulder and was thus found vulnerable to a quick shooter. And his grandpapa would with bluster ‘Two Lovely Black Eyes’ and more tenderly ‘Barbara Allan’ before the fire ablaze in the taproom, as a rapt young Richard sat upon the settle, his feet barely touching the floor, while the old gaffers were tamping their ‘Nigger Head ‘ baccy into their pipes.

His slack-jawed smile died as a rip-snorting bouncer kicked at Greenleigh’s helmet,

turning him spinning round with a resounding clang, the Throat ball at which the crowd sighed a loud, long drawn-out ‘Ooh!’, and suddenly he held a vision of the ruined windmill and a bleak wilderness of docks, thistles and nettles that was old Broad-Halfpenny run to seed. There’d be no more tents pitched for long matches, no more glees sung at the little brick inn, no more lusty hits as the leathern orb flew away like an eagle on the wing.

Slummockin on bleachers, legs gallomped on concrede crud, Gil Fuller’s flaccid face fleered, leered ad a blowsy, bobbin bint, flauntin flagstones wiv cum-uppance, concupishence.

‘Oi-oi-oi-oi!’ brayed der bod ad der flouncing floozie. Langous eyes rolled round der blubber bulge uv blue badershorts ter cool eskie. Blippin der lid, Gil blinked ad der beady can flounderin on der shiverin slivers. Is airy and donked kubes ter lift der last lager. Fubsy fingers fumbled der sullen seal. Phut! Phizz! Psssh! Flecks uv fwoth n beer bamboozlin.

‘Pssshit!’

‘Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!’ soughed der crowd n crowed, snowed. Gil lapped der looks n laughed n flushed, refweshed; swigged, den flagged. Bleary Langtwee billowin in, flappin, a flail uv arms n ganglin limbs n blur uv whirrin red clunked der burly blade. ‘’Ave a go, yer mug!’ Gormless Gil glugged, gazin at Langtwee stridin, surgin, whirlin round, snarlin sound, fwiskin in, flittin in, a flurry uv bustle n muscle n dust pall, a blazin ball bloopin high n higher in der sky.

‘Yahoo! Knock ‘is bloody ‘ead off!’ blurted Gil, gladdened by balloonin bounceroo snuck in der careerin keeper’s mitts. Der dunderhead drooled spittle floss, phlobbed a blob uv clag on flags awash with flume uv spume n crush uv mush; crinkly wrappers sckraped; glasses glinked; glinking cans clattered der flags.

Der sleepy slob, girth great wiv gas n gob, guzzled n goggled. ‘Garn, yer Pommie bastard1’ e slobbered. ‘Kirk, yer mug, grab a bucket! Fuck it!’ E sleeved der slaver n joined der jeers, scwabbled icsh – pebbles in fweezing fist n flingin em zingin ter

whingeing yobboes, yahoos, stumbled, crumbled mum over benchwood backward, humbled.

Zonk! Zonkered!

Gil’s beery gob belched bile. Shpurts uv greenish anguish splashed der flags, a fluve uv limey slime lingerin on lips all liverish. A blind uv bwight, white light tightened der slack uv sallow flesh n seared, persevered.

Noddle nodes nobbled, quirky aches uv stomach aches, lumpen limbs uv leaden lode, tongue uv queasy sponge quite wrung, ands crabbed n crankled, Gil’s huge hulk uv cranky crust scuppered.

SnooZ Z Z Z!

So the stage is set for the final over of this amazing Test Match. No one has left the ground as far as I can ascertain, apart from a couple of dozen rather excitable young men under police escort. For those of you who have just switched on, Australia requires to capture just one wicket from six deliveries to regain the Ashes. The game is delicately poised.

So now it’s with Langtree, running in with that long, loping stride of his past Umpire Creeks, bowls, and. Ooh, I say. Greenleigh, with the dead face of the bat, watched it circumspectly, almost suspiciously, and committed himself to an indiscretion. Now and again he does have a rush of blood outside the off peg. A lesser player would have got a touch. That one moved away off the seam, slightly short of a length, but Greenleigh tucked himself well in behind it, then saw it zip away as it left him.

Anyhow, he’s still on fifty-one. Runs don’t matter one iota to England at this stage, of course. But just as a matter of academic interest, England’s target is a further two hundred and eleven runs to win. Which mathematically, it goes without saying, is just not on.

Now Langtree is in earnest conference with his skipper, Kirk, and they’ve decided to bring up Hopper from the square leg boundary to join the slip cordon. Real pressure stuff, this. That’s what it’s all about. So Langtree has four slips and a gully, a silly

point, a backward short leg, a man slightly backward of square, another man slightly backward of backward square, as he bounds in, past Umpire Creeks, bowls, and. I think there must have been a touch! At the very least, a definite tickle. All the Australians go up. Keeper Boggis asks the question. Not out, says the Umpire. My goodness, the tension is unbelievable. Unbearably so. That one got up, short of a length, a brute of a ball fizzing six inches, ten centimetres in the old money, over the stumps to Boggis standing back. It may conceivably have nicked Greenleigh’s chest because I can see him rubbing it vigorously with his hand, his right as opposed to left, looking ruefully down at the pitch, pensive as ever.

Now there’s some extra activity in the outer. A flight of seagulls are strutting inexorably, one might almost say unflappably, towards the wicket, their feathery, white heads bobbing forwards in that characteristic way of theirs, as Langtree turns at the completion of his run, flicks at a vagrant fly, licks his fingers, shuffles six halfsteps, breaks into a gallop, now he’s flowing in full stride and purpose past Umpire Creeks and. Ooh! It’s off the edge. A little uppish. He’s gone! No, dropped! Oh dear, oh dear! Even my mother-in-law would have bagged that one. Dropped uncharacteristically by Kirk, of all people. What a beautiful pair of hands he possesses normally! So England breathes again. The Australian skipper is left to squat disconsolately on his haunches, wondering what might have been. Greenleigh remains unruffled. Like the pigeons. He walks down the pitch to examine where that one pitched, prods meticulously at a divot or two. I can see through the glasses that he’s still calmly chewing his gum. What a fine temperament! Now he’s finished gardening and returns to his crease, ruminatively, to take watchful guard.

Three balls left. Unless there’s a no-ball, which is not beyond the bounds of credibility. Or a wide, of course. The seagulls are still moving in, but now it’s with Langtree, storming up, really bending his back as he warms to his work, past Umpire Creeks and. Ooh! That one is straight through him. There may have been almost a suspicion of an inside tickle, but he certainly didn’t know much about that one. He was in all sorts of diabolical. It was a beautiful ball, pitched just outside off stump and swinging in at him just a little off the seam. He shaped up to half-glide, half-steer it down to third man, but by heavens a fraction more deviation and he was history.

Greenleigh, at twenty-nine one of the youngest members of the England party, has shown lots of promise and tons of endeavour and coming in with the score at a

calamitous four wickets down for thirty-three his has been a knock of great character and restrained aggression, gritty not to mention gutsy, holding together the tatters of this England innings.

It’s getting a little fresher now and there’s some cloud on the horizon. Nimbus, I think. The seagulls are still strutting about in an arc from mid-wicket to mid-off. I can hear the six o’clock chimes of the distant clock, and the hard-grooved hum of trams, as Langtree flows in, Greenleigh watching him like a hawk, sights him in the outer commencing this long run of his, all of forty yards, metres, he’s almost there, past Umpire Creeks, bowls, and. Phew! That’s the bouncer. Boy, didn’t he really unload that one, that . . . that mortar shell. Greenleigh withdrew his head just in the nick of time. He was plumb in line with the flight of the ball, well short of a length, as it flew harmlessly by his nose at ninety-five miles an hour to Boggis – what a lovely gloveman he is! – who immediately releases the ball to Kirk at second slip and it loops round the slip cordon in an anti-clockwise direction and now it’s with Cuttes, who underarms it to Langtree, already striding back to his mark eager to get on with it and rejoin the battle, hostility etched all over his moustachioed face. No fast bowler knows how to express himself to greater effect. Everything now depends on Greenleigh. If England can save this match, as now seems reasonably possible, we shall have witnessed a miracle. But cricket’s a funny old game, you know, full of surprises. Anything can happen. A game’s never won till the last ball’s bowled.

Greenleigh’s mind was shotholed absolutely with the urgency of concentrating on every delivery, watching for swing through the air or seaming off the pitch, picking up the head-high bouncer or the low trajectory of the yorker momentarily lost against the dun colour of the strip and the elongating shadows of the close-fieldsmen.

His body was wilting in that pressure-cooker. Under his helmet, which seemed to starve him of oxygen, his scalp itched with tics. Owing to a twinge on the left side of his neck, his stance became slack-shouldered, no longer classically straight, whilst his chest and abdomen were damp beneath the chest guard and thigh pads. In his running between the wickets, the flaps of his pads occasionally bumped each other.

Greenleigh endeavoured to block out the white sheet draped over the long-on fence: LANGTREE THE MESSIAR & HIS TEN DISIPALS

Must concentrate, focus. Dig in to hold this end down. Just three more balls to go.

‘C’mon, Aussie, c’mon. C’mon, Aussie, c’mon.’

Langtree was already charging at him, grim-jawed, bullet-headed, sinews wound up like Sylvester Stallone, legs stretching out, a blur of white, a desperate lunge . . .

The ball pitched outside off stump, fizzing. Greenleigh got his bat, body, feet behind the line, but it swerved away. Instinctively, he made to follow its line.

‘Owzat!’ demanded Boggis, staring daggers at the Umpire, shouted Langtree, cavorting down the side of the track, then glaring round, arms lofted in supreme salute like the champion he was, forefingers raised to the heavens in ecstasy.

‘Oooh!’ A murmur of distant thunder drummed round the ground. ‘Ow wozzee?’

Umpire Creeks looked down and away, then back to his counters. Strictly taciturn.

‘Boooo!’

‘Why don’cha walk?’ muttered Boggis, thumb cocking towards the pavilion. ‘They must’ve heard the edge in Jolimont.’

‘Lucky bastard,’ griped Kirk between his teeth, spitting onto his palms.

Greenleigh bit down on his gum. Mustn’t succumb to this riling. Eased off his helmet to wipe the perspiration from his forehead with a glove, running the nodes through his matted hair.

‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’

At that moment the sun was overshadowed by clouds and the sky darkened.

Greenleigh blinked, scewed his eyes, dilated them, focused on the sight-screen. Then he backed away, giving himself time to adjust to the variance of light.

‘Cut out the time-wasting, Greeners!’

Rhythmic clapping erupted, boiling louder, louder.

‘Git on wiv it! Face up, mate! I’ve gotta train to catch!’’

The batsman resumed stance, but was unsettled by his less than satisfactory vision.

Langtree was storming back to his mark, rubbing the venom into his red-stained thigh, then shuffled half-a dozen steps, lowered his torso.

‘Lang Tree! Lang Tree! Lang Tree!’

Momentarily, Greenleigh was distracted by the shadow of Kilmuir, who was titupping in, half-crouching. Those gimlet eyes in his helmet were more unnerving.

He could hear the breathing of the slips cordon, sense them hitching their creases and going down on haunches, feel the cold, steely thrust of their will, their desperation, their merciless hostility on the nape of his neck. He saw Langtree tearing down on him, tearing through him, his mouth a grimace of contempt.

The clapping mounted in intensity and speed, as insistent as rifle-cracks; the chanting slurred into baying. There was no mistaking the heavy pulsing of bad blood, the anger in the sky, the aura of bad energy, Langtree’s snarl as he about to hurl his thunderbolt, the hunters breaking into a stealthy scamper, now running in to trap him.

‘Kill the pig! Bash that Pom! Kill the pig! Bash that Pom!’ Langtree fired with all his pent-up might.

From the split second that the bowler unleashed the missile, Greenleigh was incapable of co-ordinating his defence. It was not the fear that ninety thousand pairs of amber eyes were riveted on him, that millions more armchair executioners were willing him to lose his wicket, were smashing through his guard. Or the fear of that terrible din of mass hysteria; or animal dementia. Or the malice twisted on the faces of the fielders. The shmuck of all those negative energies he had resisted before time and time again.

Rather that as he squared up that second time, he became conscious of a doubletake, of re-living exactly what he had done twenty seconds before, as if he had stood outside time itself, so that he suddenly became aware, as never before, of his own personal ritual: the tugging on the peak of his helmet, four taps of his bat against his right boot, the ever so slightly narrowing his eyes, the drawn-out sniff of resignation, the grinding of his teeth. The routine was unchanging, predictable, monotonous: as the gargantuan moan of the crowd, as the sledging from the enemy, as the sneer on the face of Langtree. This was no longer play, for everything had been rehearsed; he was being trained or enticed to display a repertoire of mindless, mechanical attitudes. For what? And all to prove that he could prevent a scrap of leather, cork, rubber and twine from skittling not just three lumps of wood but his own limbs, his own brain.

The arena was fiery with goblins gyrating for blood amid a tumult belonging to trench warfare. The cult of sensationalism at any cost, even as far as witnessing pain.

How could he have missed all his professional years something so hideously elemental? He could only see himself now as a mere comical ring-in, not as an heroic participant, with a club in his mitts, puffed out with preposterous padding and disguised by visor, whilst the Slinger aimed to decapitate or disembowel him with unchivalrous charge. History was ever thus.

A blinding blow on the temple reels fells Greenleigh. Red cherry grows monstrous explodes. The stands yaw, the plane of grass rears up to butt him.

‘Take 4. Give us the batsman on the carpet. Zoom in 4.’

‘Take 7. Crowd of hoods waving fists, stubbies, cheering.’

‘Take 4. Close-up on Greeno’s face.’

‘Take 5. Right profile on injury and blood.

‘Stats on head injuries, fatal injuries, Greeno’s dislocations, broken bones, wire surgery, career injuries, dietary susceptibilities.’

‘Slow-motion replay of strike from 5. From 6. From 7.’

A shiny, silver tube is thrust at the mouth of the unconscious batsman.

‘Amplify sound of hearbeat.’

Blood-red cherries slingshot through the sky hundreds and thousands through sky through sky through sky . . .

‘Here’s a fistful of mega dollars for the exclusive rights for The Sporting Echo. Was there a blood feud between you and Langtree? Had he threatened to kill you before?

Did you ever consider becoming a quadraplegic?

Another silver tube is pushed up Greenleigh’s nostrils. ‘Talk us through the pain, the agony. What did it feel like to be pole-axed? How seriously will the injury affect your brain? There must be a big question mark against you ever playing again???

‘Or remembering how to walk, ha ha ha?’

Lilywhite fielders leaping like dervishes, contorting round to sneer, advancing on him with a rictus of hate, circling. A knife flashes. He’s lying there in pools of blood. ‘Noo-o!’ He kicks out. Strains. Tenses. ‘Don’t cut me down there!’ S-s-nip! A sliver of vomit curls down his chin. Langtree holds up two testicles, like cherries, dangles them over his ear. The hoods are wrestling for the stumps.

‘Let’s stick the pig!’

‘No-o-o!’

Like an automaton, cool as you like, the leader of the hoods skewers the middle stump into Greenleigh’s navel, the centre of the universe.

‘Aaagh!’

Gives it a twist.

Aaakkk!’

‘Bor Ring! Bor Ring! Bor Ring!’

‘Wot ta loada rubbish! Wot ta loada rubbish!’

‘Take 4. Writhing in close-up.’

‘Take 5. Pan the yobs.’

‘Ready 6. Show yob wielding bat in case he strikes.’

‘I mean, like, what did it feel like to be actually killed? Like, were you aware of being watched by an international audience of millions? And what was it like going over to the other side? Mr . . . er . . . Mr Greentree? Can you tell us about any particular amusing incidents on the way? Anything at all, like?’

‘Congratulations! Here’s a one million smackeroos bonus! The ratings slammed through the ceiling. You gotta endorse our Magnum Jumbo polymer bats, pal, you just gotta. You sure got crowd appeal, sex appeal, youth appeal, so we’ll give yah twelve and a half per cent of all the rake-in if you’ll sign up here, right on the dotted line, ha-ha, for a grudge re-match, if you’ll go all the way for revengerama. Like, wayout, man! The public just loves a good old-fashioned celebrity feud. More deaths means better spectacle means bigger interest means more ads means more dough means more dosh means more brass means more loot means better n better n bigger n n . . . like, wow . . .‘ Langtree Himself in his Bunsen Datbird JJ 8.27 litre Camshaft Special revs up throatily, powers away in state from the M.C.G., dazzling the media with silverdent scowls. Dancing inside the rear window, Mickey Mouse bounces his shoulders up and down as he raises two fingers in salute.

‘Who yer contracted to fight for next time, Lango?’

Michael Small 1976/7; 1984

published Her Natural Life and Other Stories, Tamarillo, 1988 P O S T E D B Y MICH A EL A T 02:41 EMAIL THISBLOGTHIS!SHARE TO TWITTERSHARE TO FACEBOOK

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SNUFFLING FOR BLACK GOLD

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THE SCORN OF BECKY PILBEAM

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THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR

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WHERE THERE’S A WILL

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A LEGEND LAUNDERED

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BRIEFED FOR BERLIN

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ROAD TO KAROL BAGH

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CYCLONE CORAL

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PUSKAS

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THE ODD FLUTTER

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SOVRAN KING

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