The Rules of Backyard Cricket (30 page)

‘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.

‘You know she'll flirt,' says Alan.

‘Okay.'

‘You'll flirt back, right? And cry. The minute she gives you an opening, fucking go for it. You understand? You're not live. They can cut it while you recover. Snot, makeup everywhere, I don't care. Just get the fucking waterworks going, okay?'

I nod, causing the makeup brush to stray onto my hair. The technician sighs irritably.

‘That's my boy,' he says, clapping me on the back as he leaves. I call out after him as he retreats into the gloom.

‘I'm not your fucking boy.'

But right now, I most certainly am.

Elizabeth Brookes is there in the small studio when I enter. Power suit, cloud of hairspray as she reads her notes. She's elegant and sternly beautiful.

She flicks the hair-sprayer away and stands to shake my hand, a heavy gold fob swinging on her wrist.

‘Darren! Thanks
so
much for coming on.' Her voice is confident and unexpectedly deep. ‘You wouldn't believe the level of interest in this.'

She looks to the heavens like I'm manna from them.

‘It's a pleasure,' I reply, then lower my voice to a conspirator's whisper. ‘You know we specifically asked for you.'

She looks at me sidelong with a painted nail hanging in the air, eyes narrowed. Then she throws back the head and horse-laughs. ‘You're a charmer, just like they said! Let's get down to it, hey?'

She resumes her seat and the crew closes in around us, silently raising and lowering the cameras. There's a soft lamp beside us and a small table between our knees with two glasses of water. The lamp is purely for effect—there's lighting rigged everywhere. Someone calls action and her pupils dart. I realise there's a teleprompter behind me, but none behind her. In the darkened depths of the room, Alan's propped against a door jamb, watching.

‘Darren Keefe, thank you for joining us.'

I focus on the two words Alan has hammered:
grave and subdued
.

‘It's a pleasure, Elizabeth.'

‘I want to start way back, Darren, and ask you: what were the first indications that you had a special talent for the game of cricket?'

She smiles generously. I'm safe here.

‘Well I'm not sure that I did have, Elizabeth. But if you play enough backyard cricket against the future captain of Australia, some of it probably rubs off.'

She laughs. ‘Well, you say that, but the numbers suggest otherwise—sixteen thousand first class runs, thirty-two centuries, the fastest fifty in domestic history…these are amazing statistics.'

‘I faced some awful bowling, you know.'

The laugh again. ‘You once hit—I'm reading here—you hit an English county bowler onto the roof of the Glamorgan Members' Stand. No one's ever hit a ball that far in the history of cricket. I mean,
how
? What's the magic?'

Oh, you dreadful sycophant.

‘That was 1992 or '93, I think. It was downwind, okay? People have exaggerated that over the years.'
No they haven't. I hit the fucking cover off the thing
. ‘It was a bit lucky. You put it up there and sometimes it sort of lodges in a jetstream and…' I make a rocket motion with one hand, ‘it just keeps going.'