Playing for the Ashes (47 page)

So Rashadam joined the factory team. It wasn’t long before he singled out Kenneth for special attention. This attention took place at first in Mile End Park, with Rashadam working on Kenneth’s skill with the bat. But within two months, the old cricketer suggested they book a few sessions in the nets at Lord’s.

More privacy there, after a fashion, he would have informed Kenneth Fleming. We don’t want scouts from any other team having a look at what we’re developing here, do we?

So to Lord’s they went, on Sunday mornings at first, and you can imagine what it probably felt like to Kenneth Fleming when the door to the indoor cricket school closed behind him and he heard the crack of bats hitting balls and he heard the
whoosh
of balls being bowled. What he must have felt as he walked along the netted enclosures: nerves making his stomach quiver, anxiety making his palms become damp, excitement obscuring any question he might have asked about why Hal Rashadam was spending so much time and so much energy with a young man whose real future lay not with cricket—Good God, he was already twenty-seven years old!—but on the Isle of Dogs, in a terraced house, with a wife and three children, in Cubitt Town.

And what of Jean, you ask? Where was she, what was she doing, and how was she reacting to the attention Kenneth was getting from Rashadam? I imagine she didn’t notice at
fir
st. Initially the attention was subtle. When Kenneth came home and said, “Hal thinks this” or “Hal says that,” she no doubt nodded and noticed how her husband’s hair was getting lighter with the exposure to the sun, how his skin looked healthier than it had in years, how his movements were more agile than they’d ever been before, how his face radiated an enthusiasm for living that she’d forgotten he once possessed. All this would have translated to desire. And when they were in bed and their bodies were working rhythmically together, the least important question to ponder was where this ardour for cricket was going to lead them, not to mention what potential for unhappiness lay in one man’s simple love for a sport.

OLIVIA

I
imagine Kenneth Fleming kept his deepest and most heartfelt wish a secret from his wife, born as it was from the midnight joining of hope and fantasy. It had little enough to do with their everyday lives. Jean’s time would have been taken up with her homemaking, her children, her job at Billingsgate Market. She probably would have scoffed at the idea of Kenneth’s ever doing anything more than making a name for himself at Whitelaw Printworks and perhaps becoming plant manager someday. This doubt of hers wouldn’t have grown from an inability or unwillingness to believe in her husband. It would have grown from a practical examination of the facts at hand.

It seems to me that Jean had always been the levelheaded partner between them.

Remember that she had been the one to question having sex without the protection of the pill so many years ago, and she had been the one to announce her pregnancy and decide to keep the baby and get on with her life regardless of Kenneth’s own decisions in the matter.

So it seems reasonable to conclude that she would have been fully capable of realistically evaluating the facts when Hal Rashadam
fir
st walked into their lives: Kenneth was fast approaching his twenty-eighth birthday; he’d never played cricket other than in school, with his children, or with the lads; there was a drenched-in-tradition course one took when one hoped eventually to play for England.

Kenneth hadn’t followed this course. Oh, he’d taken the first step and played at school, but that was the limit of his involvement.

Jean would have gently scoffed at the very idea of Kenneth’s playing professionally. She would have said, “Kenny, luv, you got your head in the clouds.” She would have teased and asked him how long he expected to have to wait for the England captain and the national selectors to come round and watch the test match of the century between Whitelaw Printworks and Cowper’s Guaranteed Rebuilt Appliances. But in doing that, she would have reckoned without my mother.

Perhaps it was at Mother’s suggestion that Kenneth didn’t mention his dreams to Jean. Or perhaps Mother said, “Does Jean know about all this, Ken dear?” when he
fir
st told her what was in his heart. If he said no, perhaps she said wisely, “Yes. Well, some things
are
best left unmentioned, aren’t they?” and in doing so established the first of the adult bonds between them.

If you know the history of Kenneth Fleming’s rise to fame and fortune, then you know the rest of the story. Hal Rashadam bided his time while he coached Kenneth privately. Then he invited the committee head of the Kent county side to watch a session in the nets. The head’s interest was piqued enough to make him willing to come to a match in Mile End Park where the lads from Whitelaw Printworks were taking on East London Tool Manufacturers, Ltd. At the end of the match, introductions were made between Kenneth Fleming and the gent from Kent. Kent said, “Care to come out for a Guinness?” And Kenneth accompanied him.

Mother took care to keep her distance. In inviting the committee head of the Kent county side to watch the match, Rashadam was acting under Mother’s aegis, but no one was to know that. No one was to think that there was a Greater Plan at work.

Over their pints of Guinness, Kent’s captain suggested that Kenneth come to a practise session and give their side a look-over. This he did, with Rashadam in attendance on a Friday morning when Mother said, “You go ahead to Canterbury, Ken. You can make up the time later. It’s not a problem at all,” and hoped for the best. Rashadam told him in advance to wear his playing clothes. Kenneth asked why. Rashadam said, “Just do it, lad.” Kenneth said, “But I’ll feel a total fool.” Rashadam said, “We’ll see who feels the fool when the day is over.”

And when the day was over, Kenneth had his place in the Kent county side, in defi ance of tradition and “the way things are done.” It was just forty-eight hours short of eight months since Hal Rashadam had
fir
st watched the lads from Whitelaw Printworks at play.

There were only two problems associated with Kenneth’s playing in the Kent side. The first was the pay: it was just over half what he made at the printworks. The second was his home: the Isle of Dogs was too far from the playing and practise field in Canterbury, especially for a novice about whom the team would have had doubts. According to the captain, if he wanted to play for Kent, he needed to move to Kent.

Essentially, then, Phase One in Mother’s plan for Kenneth was completed. The need to move to Kent constituted Phase Two.

Kenneth would have shared each moment of the unfolding drama with my mother. First, because they worked closely together in the hours he spent in management. Second, because it was through what he no doubt saw as her generosity and her unfailing faith in him that he’d had the offer to play in a county side in the first place. But what, he probably asked her as well as himself, could he do about the problems associated with playing in the Kent county side? He couldn’t move the family to Kent. Jean had her job at Billingsgate Market, which would be ever more crucial to the family’s survival if he were to accept this opportunity. Even if he could ask her to make the long commute—and he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, there was no question of that—he wouldn’t have her driving from Canterbury to East London in what went for the middle of the night, driving an old car that could break down and leave her stranded in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t thinkable. Besides, her entire family was on the Isle of Dogs. The children’s mates were there as well. And there was still and always the problem of money. Because even if Jean continued her job at Billingsgate Market, how could they survive on that when he would be making less than what he made at the printworks? There were far too many
fin
ancial considerations involved. The expense of a move, the expense of
fin
ding a suitable place to live, the expense of the car… There was simply not enough money.

I can picture the conversation between them, Kenneth and my mother. They’re in the third-floor office that she’d made over from my father’s to hers. She’s reading a set of contracts while on the desk a blue-edged white porcelain teapot emits a shimmering plume of Earl Grey steam. It’s later in the evening— sometime near eight o’clock—when the building has settled into stillness, and
fiv
eimmigrant custodians are wielding brooms, mops, and rags among the motionless machinery in the pit.

Kenneth comes into the office with another contract for Mother to look over. She takes off her glasses and rubs her temples. She’s shut off the overhead lights in the office because they give her a headache. Her desk lamp throws shadows like giant handprints against the walls. She says, “I’ve been thinking, Ken.”

He says, “I’ve done the estimate on the job for the Ministry of Agriculture. I think we’ll get it.” He hands the paperwork to her.

She places the estimate on the corner of her desk. She pours herself another cup of tea. She fetches a second cup for him. She’s careful not to return to her chair. She won’t ever sit behind the desk while he’s in the office, because she knows to do so is to de
fin
e the gulf in their relationship.

“What I’ve been thinking of,” she says, “is you. And Kent.”

He raises his hands and drops them in a what’s-there-to-discuss gesture. He looks resigned.

Mother says, “You’ve not given them an answer yet, have you?”

“Been putting it off,” he says. “I’ve a fancy to hold on to the dream as long as I can.”

“When do they need to know?”

“End of the week is when I said I’d phone.”

She pours his tea. She knows how he takes it—with sugar but no milk—and she hands him the cup. There’s a table at one side of the office where the shadows are deepest, and she leads him to this and tells him to sit. He says he ought to be off, Jean will be wondering what’s happened to him, they’ve a family dinner to attend at her parents’ house, he’s late already, she’s probably taken the kids and gone on without him…. But he makes no move to depart.

Mother says, “She’s an independent one, your Jean.”

“She’s that,” he acknowledges. He stirs his tea but he doesn’t drink it at once. He sets the cup on the table and sits. He’s lanky—more so than he was as a boy—and he seems to
fil
l up a room in ways other men don’t. Something vibrates off him, some sort of curious life force akin to restless energy but more than that.

Mother notices this. She’s attuned to him. She says, “Is there absolutely no chance she might find work in Kent?”

“Oh, she could do,” he replies. “But she’d have to work in a shop. Or a caff. And she’d not make enough to offset our expenses.”

“She has no…real skills, Ken?” Naturally, Mother knows the answer to that question. But she wants to make him say it himself.

“Job skills, you mean?” He gives the cup a turn in its saucer. “Just what she’s learned at the caff at Billingsgate.”

Little enough
is the real answer. As is
She’s waited on tables, filled out bills, rung up charges on the till, made change
.

“Yes. I see. That makes things tricky, doesn’t it?”

“It makes things impossible.”

“It makes things…shall we say difficult?”

“Difficult. Tricky. Impossible. Dicey. They all add up to one sum, don’t they? You don’t need to remind me. I’ve made my own bed.”

Which is probably not the allusion Mother would have chosen. Which is probably why she goes quickly on before he can complete it.

“Perhaps there’s another road to consider, one that doesn’t involve quite so much disruption in your family’s life.”

“I could ask for a chance in Kent. I could make the commute and prove it isn’t a problem. But as for the money…” He pushes the teacup away. “No. I’m a big lad, Miriam. Jean’s put away her childhood dreams and it’s time I did the same with mine.”

“Is she asking that of you?”

“She says we got to consider the kids, what’s best for them, not what’s best for ourselves. I can’t argue with that. I could leave the printworks and run back and forth to Kent for years and still end up with nothing much to show for it. She asks is it worth the risk when nothing is guaranteed.”

“And if something were guaranteed? Your job here, for instance.”

He looks thoughtful. He considers Mother in that frank way of his, eyes steady on her face as if he’d read her mind. “I couldn’t ask you to hold my job open. That wouldn’t be fair to the other men. And even if you did that much for me, there’s too many other difficulties to scramble over.”

She goes to her desk. She returns with a notebook. She says, “Let’s list them, shall we?”

He protests, but only half-heartedly. As long as he has someone to dream his dreams with after hours, it doesn’t feel quite as if he’s letting them go. He says that he needs to phone Jean, to tell her he’ll be later still. And while he’s off tracking down his wife and family, Mother sets to work, listing and counter-listing and arriving at the conclusion she’d no doubt arrived at the moment she saw him
fir
st hit the ball beyond the boundary in Mile End Park. Oxford was lost to him, true enough. But the future was still open in another way.

They talk. They toss ideas back and forth. She suggests. He objects. They argue fine points. They finally leave the printworks and go down to Limehouse for a Chinese meal, over which they continue to thrash with the facts. But Mother holds an ace that she’s been careful not to display too soon. Celandine Cottage in the Springburns. And Kent.

Celandine Cottage has been in our family since somewhere round 1870. For a time, my great-grandfather used it to house his mistress and their two children. It passed to my grandfather, who retired there. It passed to my father, who let it out to a succession of farm-workers until such a time as it became trendy to have a weekend getaway in the country. We used it occasionally when I was a teenager. It was currently unoccupied.