Jonny: My Autobiography (4 page)

A female presenter fires questions at us. How did you get into rugby? Dan is a bit more confident than I am and plays the lead role; I have a bit of a blank and a panic but recover enough to mention the international players I like watching on TV and how I try to imitate them. I think I do pretty much OK.

When I get home, I explain this to Mum. I tell her some of the questions, particularly the one about getting into rugby. What did you say, she asks. So I tell her and she says well done, and did you mention your dad?

Suddenly, it dawns on me. I didn’t mention my dad, the guy who is responsible for everything, who is the reason I started playing rugby, the guy I watched playing rugby, the guy who put the ball in my hand when I was three, who has coached me since I was four and has been there always.
I cannot believe I have done this. How ungrateful can I be? I cannot believe I have let my father down in such a way. After everything he has done for me, I’ve not given him the credit. My heart is going into overdrive; I’m in full panic mode. I have a real feeling of desperation. Mum, I need to go back to the radio station because I didn’t mention Bilks.

Mum says oh, it doesn’t matter. People will have forgotten by now anyway. No, I say, I need to go back. I can feel myself welling up. I have to get back there and put this thing right or else life will never be OK.

Mum says she has the answer. I’ll write them a letter, she says, to ask them to put the facts right. That kind of helps but not for long. I cannot get this thing out of my system. The next day after school I am no less desperate. I am in tears again. I can’t believe I let Bilks down. I feel devastated. I go to my room and think about what to do. I write my own letter to the radio station. Would it be possible to re-air the interview but allow me to add in a different answer?

I write a lot of these letters over the coming days. I don’t send any of them. I spend most of the time in tears, just writing these things, screaming at Mum and Dad, saying that I have to change it, that I have to do this. I have to do something. It’s as though something incredibly serious has happened, the end of the world.

Bilks says don’t worry. He tells me over and over that he is not bothered. Not at all. But that doesn’t really help. It does die a bit over time, but occasionally it comes back, haunting me, like a ghost. I’ll be playing basketball outside with Sparks and suddenly I am miles away. I feel the panic and I know I need to go inside because something’s not right. I stop the game. I need to go and say sorry to my dad. Sorry about not mentioning you in the interview. And maybe I could ring that radio station.

Mum, I ask, weeks, months later, did you send that letter? Do you think they’ll say anything on the radio?

It is not long before I find my next reason to flip out.

I come home from school and see a blackbird on the ground, struggling, half-dead. It must have flown into the window. Wouldn’t it be great to pick it up and take it inside, help it out? So I do. Mum helps me put it into a shoe box, padded out with tissue, its own little living room. Then I go upstairs for a bath, and afterwards mess around in my room, forgetting about the bird, until Mum calls me for supper. When I go downstairs, the bird is dead.

It’s dead because I wasn’t there to help it. I was too busy having fun to care. This is my fault. I have killed the bird. I am overwhelmed by what I have done. The tears, the screaming, are back. This bird was my responsibility and I have let it down. How can I make amends? Mum, what can I do? I have killed the bird.

Don’t worry, she says. You did your best. It would have died anyway. There’s nothing more you could have done. But I have to atone. I cannot live with this. I start writing letters again. Most of them are to God. Sorry. I am so sorry I didn’t look after the bird better.

I cannot stand this intense, choking feeling. Mum, I let the bird down. I am screaming. What if I have to live with it for the rest of my life? I can’t do it, I can’t do it. I have to get rid of this feeling somehow. Mum and Dad and Sparks all say the same thing. This isn’t achieving anything. Everything will be all right. You need to forget about it and move on.

But I am not just obsessive about kicking rugby balls. I can grapple with this problem pretty single-mindedly, too. I cannot put aside the image of the bird and my responsibility for its death. I have to try to work it out, find a solution to a situation that doesn’t have one.

Sparks and I have a strange fascination with my left calf. It has got a massive bruise on it and the feeling in it has kind of gone.

It happened down at Farnham Sports Centre on the bouncy castle. I bounced off and landed on the floor and then this big guy, who must have been six years older than I am, landed on top of me. He was supposed to be in charge, monitoring the kids and general behaviour on the castle, but instead he was bouncing around, and the moment I bounced off, he came off too, both knees flat on my calf with all his bodyweight.

It hurt big time and took ages to get up and walk. But I managed it, and somehow I managed to get through an Under-11s tennis tournament the next day. I wore a big tubey grip bandage on my leg, which made me feel very proud.

Now my calf is swollen, and the sensation in it is a little weird. So, in our bedroom before bedtime, Sparks and I are sitting on my bed playing a game to test it out. It’s a simple game – we just hit the calf with our knuckles to see how hard we can do it before it hurts too much. Sparks has a go and then it’s my turn. It’s hilarious how hard you can hit your leg when the feeling in it has gone.

But in the night, I wake up with serious pain. I get up and hobble through to Mum and Dad’s room. They look at it. We’ll get on to it first thing in the morning, they say. About an hour later, I’m back. It’s really, really hurting, I say.

So off we go to Aldershot Military Hospital. The doctors explain that I have burst a blood vessel, there has been internal bleeding into the calf, and an infection in the blood has caused an abcess. It is poisonous, pussy and generally horrid. And they need to cut it open. I’ll have to stay overnight, and for the next two nights as well.

I look at Mum. I’m not staying overnight on my own. I can’t stay on my own. Mum understands the problem. OK. We have a deal. Mum stays, too.

Eventually, we get home and I am carried into the house like a wounded soldier, taken to the annex and laid down on the sofa, which has been pulled out as a bed. The doctors’ instructions are simple and specific – rest, please, no exercise at all. Perfect for me because Wimbledon is on the TV. Awesome. So I settle in.

But there is only so much Wimbledon you can watch. After a while, I wonder about my toilet-roll balls; could I kick them? That would be pretty harmless, wouldn’t it? I’m sure I could do that. I get one out and try. Not too bad.

Mum catches me in action. She’s not too impressed. You’re not supposed to be doing that, she says. I know, I know.

I know she is right. I settle back down to Wimbledon. But then I get up and kick my toilet roll again. How can I become a better kicker if I don’t?

Normally, when Sparks and I play games, we find a way of playing on the same team. We like helping each other out. We get a massive buzz out of it. But I am obsessing a bit about a computer game we have for the Commodore Amiga 500 called Speedball II. You have a team dressed in big, metal robotic suits and you have to throw a ball into a hole at the other end of a wall. I spend ages learning all the moves and controls. I work out all the different and elaborate ways of scoring points and when I think I have perfected it, I ask Sparks, who has hardly played it, for a game.

Sparks doesn’t take it as seriously as I do. In fact, he spends the whole time laughing and taking the mickey. So I play this tremendous game, build
up a massive lead and even start feeling sorry for Sparks. Then, at the last minute, he exposes a monster flaw in the game. He tries punching all the buttons on the joystick and the result is that his character on the screen starts grabbing the ball, throwing it to one of my players and then, just as they catch it, he punches them clean out and takes it back. Sparks scores three times by doing this, while laughing hysterically.

This really annoys me. It shouldn’t be allowed. It gets down to the last seconds, the last play of the game and I’m still ahead, but only just. He lays out all my players and then turns to my goalkeeper.

Don’t do it, Sparks. I tell him. Don’t you dare. But he does. He drops my keeper with a massive left hook and, on the buzzer, hammers the ball home for the winning goal. And I just want to explode.

My frustration level is probably as high as I have ever known. I don’t know whether to scream at him, fight him, or what. So I storm out of the back patio doors and down to the bottom of the garden to the rhubarb patch. I sit on the concrete slab by the rhubarb and work out my plan. I’ll stay here until he comes and apologises. He has cheated me out of victory. He has to apologise. Has to. I won’t let it go, I cling on to it. I can hold on for a long time.

So I stay by the rhubarb for a good two hours. And Sparks doesn’t apologise. In fact, he seems to have forgotten I’m even down here. Mum says what on earth are you doing down there? Come in for your dinner.

The rugby coach at Pierrepont is keen on working both my feet. From the left-hand side of the field he has me kicking conversions with my right foot, and from the right-hand side with my left foot. He says it is important for
me to be able to push myself with my skills, and put myself under pressure. I probably put myself under enough pressure anyway.

We are a good team, but our pitch is not of the very best quality. There is farmland all around the school grounds and our first XV pitch is quite uneven.

In one game, we score a try in the corner. On a full-sized field, this is a long kick for a prep-school boy, and that’s without taking into account the ball, which Mr Wells likes to inflate really hard so that it is possible to hear my teeth clatter each time I strike it. It doesn’t help that, because the kick is from the touchline, some parents are standing right behind me. So while I’m lining up my conversion attempt, I’m thinking it’d be pretty amazing if I get this. The parents next to me will think I’m brilliant. With this positive image in mind, I commence my run-up.