The Book of Fame (17 page)

‘Can’t hear you.’

‘Come on, Billy … Say something to us … Give us some words.’

A light rain begins to fall but not a single umbrella reveals itself. Look how the turned-up faces grow shiny. Then, horrifying him as it happens, his thoughts skate off to Paris, to the Venus de Milo. There is no logic in his disembodied self. But he goes with the thought for the few seconds it takes. He and the excitable Cooks man are at the Louvre and Billy’s just asked after the Aphrodite’s missing limb. The way the shoulder is twisted: he has an idea she might have held something and the Cooks man is able to confirm this. Aphrodite had held a mirror in her hand. A gift from Alexandros, the sculptor, her maker. ‘So,’ he says, ‘she could see for herself how she had been entirely shaped out of the desire of another.’

And that’s it, of course. The connection made, Billy smiles. His lips part and instantly the crowd falls quiet. Their faces go still. This is the moment they have come for. They are surprised by the smallness of his voice and the obviously tired corner from which it has roused itself.

‘Thank you,’ says Billy Stead. ‘Thank you for everything.’

For the record, we scored 830 points and conceded 39.

Einstein and Matisse caused a stir

that year

Freud came later

They brought to the surface

hitherto unseen worlds

Dreams, inner truth

the essence of things

and, applied to them—

names

colour

formulae

We introduced new ideas to Europe

The 2, 3, 2 scrum formation

The wing forward, ‘controversial’

but effective

A fullback who played with a sun hat on

and ran outside the wing—

in themselves, perhaps they’re not much

but the thought—the thought is what counts

Back yourself

Give it a go

Anticipate

Draw

Back up

Re-invent

Challenge

Change

People flocked to see us

as they did

the African pygmies

sword-swallowing Moroccans

the bloated Japanese carp

and Annette Kellerman

at the London Hippodrome

We were up there

with Asia and floating icebergs

a thing of wonder

We who had come to discover

found ourselves discovered

and, in the process, discovered

ourselves—

the solemn faces of Newton and Corbett and the nervousness of their hands whenever dinner plates were set before them

McDonald’s dainty way of drying himself, first towelling his feet, then each toe—not something you ordinarily see in a big man

the break-through day that saw huge, uncomplaining George Nicholson send his runny eggs back to the kitchen in Glasgow (how we cheered!) Cunningham’s love of shovelling coal into the stoker of the SS

Rimutaka

Seeling’s refusal to do the same

that time outside Oxford, walking in on Bob Deans alone in the chapel, and Bob turning, quick as you like, to introduce the saints, making it
clear a friend of his was a friend of yours, astonished that you hadn’t met before

O’Sullivan’s ability to bump through almost any opposition cheery Freddy Roberts singing ‘Have I Got a Girl for You’ to lift our spirits while we stood about in the sleet and rain waiting for the Durham boys to take the field

the hacking cough of poor Mackrell at night and his willingness to play

Steve Casey giving up the chance of a try in Paris in order to preserve his try-less record

Getting to know one man’s preference for a bed by the window

and another’s need for the seat in the aisle, thank you

Those who preferred black tea with one sugar, and those who take it with milk, and no sugar

the early nighters

the insomniacs

the sleepwalker whose big toe had to be tied by cotton thread to the bed post

Those who could be relied upon in a crisis (George Smith’s heroics at Inverleith come to mind)

and those who were prepared to do things differently (Glasgow kicking a conversion out of the mud by placing the ball sideways like a log of wood)

The impulse of some to stop and pat a mangy dog

and the single-minded haste of others

But mostly

the knowledge gained

was something more or less

inexact

a feeling

of shape & movement

that understanding of trees in a high wind

of knowing what to do

having been there before & all that

The simplest of ideas gained & held on to

from things

that move together

in a loose shambling way—or

what others like to call

harmony

As Billy Stead once said, ‘There are moral advantages from combination …’ For instance—

the time at a hoi polloi dinner that Carbine forgot the word he was searching for & George Smith chimed in

beautifully

with a connected subject

In Limerick, the folded note intended for George Smith from the wealthy Irish widow passing through three sets of safe hands—McDonald’s, Casey’s and Bronco Seeling’s

The selfless way of Deans, Harper and Hunter dipping into their own deeper pockets each Monday to pool together a couple of quid for one of their less well-off team mates

Mister Dixon clearing his throat when ‘Hokitika’ Corbett picked up the dessert spoon as the soup was being served

The silky intervention of Bill Glenn, again at Limerick, when O’Sullivan surrounded by Irish loosies was asked for his opinion on the ‘Irish question’

The tact and experience of Mister Dixon when Johnston came downstairs without a trouser belt and, on another occasion, in the gents of the Trocadero nuggeting George Tyler’s trouser belt to match his dinner suit

The writing of fake love letters to those who missed out

The ‘Taipu move’ in which Jimmy Hunter props inside his opposite and flicks the ball back on his inside; the idea that space can be wooed

Mynott’s cry of ‘My try, Jimmy’ and Jimmy Hunter, after running through half the Bedford team, handing the ball on

That moment in Tenerife when pigeons flew out the church doors and Jimmy O’Sullivan had the presence of mind to say, ‘On a wing and a prayer …’

Smithy mopping Sully’s brow and nursing his temperature down from 105°F aboard the
Rimutaka

Mackrell sick with influenza staying behind in Tyemouth to nurse Bunny Abbott with his poisoned leg

The way one man’s view and joys complemented another’s—

the contrasting delights found in the British Library

For Stead: a letter by Lord Nelson outlining his strategy for Trafalgar For Deans: ‘The Codex Sinaiticus’ or as he told Glasgow ‘The Bible in Greek’

The way one man filled in a piece of the world unknown to the other—

Nicholson and Stead bootmakers

Gallaher a freezing worker

Billy Wallace a foundryman

Corbett a miner

Deans, Hunter and Harper farmers

Bunny Abbott a professional runner and farrier

Glasgow a bank officer

Mona Thompson a civil servant, and so on.

There had been others—

one thinks of Roman galleys

pulling on oars out to the wide ocean

The Crusaders come to mind

And those in sailing ships

peeking around hillsides of ice

Worlds bound by the same elemental fear & wonder.

So what of memory? What sticks?

Thirty years after the tour ends, invited to write a piece of reminiscence Billy Stead recalls the winding lanes of Devon, the secret stairways of Holyrood, the dank corridors of the Tower of London, the dust particles that hung in the air of a celebrated dressmaker’s shop in Paris, and that terrible night outside Cherbourg taking on emigrants from the French tender ‘four in a basket … and shot down an incline on to the lower deck (just like the mail)’. It is an older Billy Stead writing, re-evaluating, reflecting.

He recalls Gallaher travelling all the way south to Reefton to tell him he’s signed up for the war in Europe. Another campaign. Just the two of them this time, they sat on a rock at the edge of a field, trailing thoughts. In the near distance, two lovers, a boy and a girl, stood by the ruins of an old well: the boy with rolled-up shirt sleeves gamely letting down the bucket, and she—closing her eyes to make a wish, and Billy thinking—‘Everyone seeks the future.’

With regards to the future that’s another story—

Gallaher with his head shattered by an exploding shell

Harper picked off by a sniper in Palestine

The poisoned appendix that saw poor Deans shovelled into the ground at twenty-three years of age

One by one, we were tapped on the shoulder by our Maker

In 1955, those of us still alive gathered at Athletic Park for the camera McDonald is coated up, his hands pinned behind his back

O’Sullivan on canes

Nicholson, a silver fern on his lapel, tall, erect as an Anzac morning veteran

Billy Stead perky around the mouth, but surely his ears have grown

Bunny Abbott with his hat held inside out

Fats Newton on canes, elegantly bulked up

Gillett’s shorn off his moustache & lost his film-star looks to the inflated dimensions of a successful small-town lawyer; a timepiece is sewn in his midriff

Freddy Roberts looks pin sharp in an elegant dark coat

Billy Wallace looks intact

After that, the picture begins to fade

to a crowded city bar on Lambton Quay

two old men driven into a smoky corner

unnoticed

by rowdy young men with long wild hair, platform shoes, flared trousers and coloured beads

And then? Well it happens that

all the old protagonists are dead.

Seddon who spoke fine words in 1906

rises in a massive column at the entrance to Bowen Street Cemetery

A seagull perches on his shoulder leaving its scatological package

The crowds that filled the wharves and Queen Street have gone

Crowds in Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Edinburgh, Paris, across America all are gone. Dead. Buried. Silent.

For a period after, memory drifted

in and out of plans to build altars

but nothing ever came of them.

Across the country’s playing fields

you saw men with their hearts and mouths open

while myth sat in its cave

knees drawn up, eyelids closed.

‘Our attitude [to individualism] is one of unofficial and very guarded approval.’

Billy Stead in
The Complete Rugby Footballer

‘The exhibition given by the New Zealanders surpassed in individual and collective merit anything previously seen.’

Western Daily Press

‘There are moral advantages from combination as apart from actual ones, as, for instance, when a player is making a great and difficult individual effort and is closely attended during this risky period by a trusty colleague ready to take the ball from him at the moment that his own possession of it becomes untenable.’

The Complete Rugby Footballer

‘The quickest road to fame is to play the New Zealanders.’

Football News

‘Com-e-dy, com-e-dy, siss, boom, brek-e-kex, aouei, whee!’

A phonetic rendering of the haka by an American newspaper reporter for his readers

‘… his nose for a gap and sense of timing created a path from boot maker to Prince …’

Gallaher’s fake obituary for Stead written at the ‘dime obituary tent’ on

a visit to Dreamland on Coney Island in 1906

Insults to consider:

Durham keeping us out in the sleet for 30 minutes before taking the field

the refusual of the Scots to grant their players ‘caps’ for the game against us

their decision to dine alone after the match

& their ungracious demand that we supply the ball

haggis, nothing but haggis

the shabby trick of the Welsh to drag Deans back from the try-line after he scored

the shifting sideline beneath the straw that denied Dunk McGregor his try against Swansea

the statement of accounts following the match against Blackheath: gross gate 760 pounds less expenses 300 pounds, that included ‘Lunch for the New Zealand team, 27 pounds! for a cold dish or two’

the drafting of internationals into the Bedford playing XV which included only six bona fide Bedford men

the questionable invitation from the English Union to have the team properly tailored in coats and blazers after the style of the English …

‘We began with myths and later included actual events.’ This charming line appears in Michael Ondaatje’s book of poems,
Handwriting. The Book of Fame
proceeds along similiar lines.

The myth of the 1905 Originals precedes this novel, as do various match reports on the games played. Actual events outside of the matches, however, have been harder to come by and where obtainable not that interesting or even illuminating. This is where the imagination slips easily into the gaps. While this book is a work of the imagination it is nonetheless bedded in research. I spent one May in England visiting the old playing fields in Camborne, Exeter, and in Wales, as well as many, many hours holed up in the British Newspaper Library combing the brittle and yellow pages of the period.

Where possible I tried to follow in the footsteps of the Originals; at the County Ground where Gallaher’s men played their opener I found the field, turnstiles, and surrounding vista of chimney pots and cycle track unchanged; though altered in this respect: a young man was coaching a woman’s rugby team. In Newton Abbot I found the Globe Hotel converted to a drapery, though the hotel columns and the watch-tower outside are still intact. In Taunton the hotel that accommodated the team is now a wonderful bookshop. Another of the team’s hotels, the Great Western outside Paddington, is in the throes of renovation. In Cardiff, the Queen’s Hotel still stands across the road from the old Cardiff Arms Park, and is a bare-boarded haunt of the local fans.