In a Land of Plenty Page 11

  ‘Dad,’ Lewis moaned, ‘me and James have got to practise keeping the ball up.’

  ‘And if James wants to help dig a few spuds he’s welcome.’

  James and Lewis exchanged pained looks. ‘See you tomorrow, Lew,’ James told him with a twinge of guilt: there were limits to friendship, and gardening was one of them.

  So, since he derived little pleasure from his own company, James found himself spending time with the girls. At first Laura’s presence tempered his enjoyment: her being there emphasized his being the older brother at a loose end, trying to worm his way into their games; and there was also something in her manner, her self-confidence and composure, that he felt reproached by. He couldn’t pretend he didn’t know why: it was because she made him feel immature, which he knew he was. He was impatient, for one thing: he could never suck a sweet for more than a few seconds before biting and crunching it up and swallowing, no matter how hard he tried not to; while Laura could make hers last for hours, and would stick out her tongue to reveal a shard of barley sugar still undissolved upon it. And James still loved running along the corridors of the house for no reason, just for the sake of it, although growing pains were a regular ache in his hips. And he enjoyed pretending to have nosebleeds with the aid of tomato ketchup, and telling terrible jokes.

  ‘What’s the difference between a buffalo and a bison?’ he asked at tea in what he imagined to be an Australian accent. They all ignored him.

  ‘You can’t wash your hands in a buffalo!’ James declared.

  ‘Arghh,’ Simon groaned.

  ‘It’s not funny, you idiot,’ Robert said, as James laughed at his own joke.

  ‘It’s not that funny,’ Simon agreed.

  ‘What’s the joke? I don’t get it,’ Alice complained.

  ‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Simon.

  Only Laura smiled, wanly. ‘I think it was very clever, James,’ she told him. And that shut James up. He preferred being ignored to Laura’s patronizing indulgence. Still, it was a small irritant. He liked showing them the best trees to climb in the garden and how to hide in the pile of autumn leaves and jump out and surprise old Alfred the gardener wheeling another barrowload towards it. He liked helping them shell chestnuts for Edna at the kitchen table.

  ‘Why have you got red hair, Alice?’ Laura asked her. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’

  ‘Robert told me I was found in a dustbin in Gath,’ Alice replied, unperturbed.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of him,’ Laura reassured her. ‘He’s horrible.’

  They played endless games of Monopoly on winter afternoons in Laura’s room, games in which Alice lost interest: she went off to the lavatory and forgot to come back, so James and Laura finished on their own. James taught her to play chess with a set Mary had once given him when he was ill, and their relationship found a happy balance: Laura was engrossed by the game, while James was gratified by the fact that he could beat her, and so discarded his inferiority complex in her company.

  Once or twice thirteen-year-old James fell asleep on Laura’s bed, with the chess set scattered between them; when Alice found them there she yawned, and joined them.

  ‘Well, I think it’s sweet,’ Mary assured Charles, having made the mistake of telling him.

  ‘Sweet?’ he repeated. ‘He’s not a bloody girl, woman! At his age he should be trying to crawl into bed with nineteen-year-old women, not nine-year-old girls! And his own sister at that! Can’t anyone keep an eye on things when I’m away?’

  Charles gave all three a dressing-down and they were forbidden to share a bed, but the next morning Alice was found in James’ bed, which was a first. They were worried that she’d inherited the sleepwalking propensities of her mother, but it was just that she couldn’t understand what it was they’d been doing wrong and her father’s tirade had only upset her. Simon had to explain that it wasn’t wrong, just a question of custom, which Alice accepted. She didn’t do it again; she wasn’t a sleepwalker. That particular characteristic would, as it turned out, jump a generation.

  It was a Saturday afternoon in October 1969, a quiet weekend. Charles was away. Stanley had taken Robert with him, in matching flat caps, on a shooting expedition, after rabbits on Jack’s farm: Robert was too young for a shotgun like Stanley’s, but he had his own air-rifle. The girls had gone to the children’s cinema club and been invited by Zoe to a farewell tea afterwards in Agatha’s flat above the projection room. She’d come to the house in the morning, just to say goodbye to James. He was confounded by the compliment.

  ‘Why me?’ he beamed.

  ‘’Cos you’re my favourite, sweetheart,’ Zoe told him, taking a drag of her herbal cigarette. ‘Didn’t you know that? I mean, you lot are all hopeless, with that bully of a father and your strange mother.’

  ‘Strange?’

  ‘But you’re the best of the bunch, James. Anyway, I’ve got a favour to ask you.’

  ‘What?’ he asked, while wondering whether he should tell Zoe that just about everyone at school thought she was the weirdest person anyone knew. She never did any school work, but was always reading odd and forbidden books.

  ‘Keep an eye on my grandma, James. She won’t admit how old she is and she won’t stop working twenty-four hours a day. Dad’s useless, he doesn’t notice anything, but I have. And if she goes too batty, you write and tell me. I’ll give you my address.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The Pyrenees. It’s in France. Dad knows some groovy people on a commune there. He just wants to check it out, but I might hang out for a while.’

  ‘What about school, Zoe?’

  ‘I’m seventeen now, James. I don’t have to go any more if I don’t want to. And I don’t.’

  When she left she gave him a hug that smelled of caftan and patchouli. Her bracelets tinkled and she had to extricate her glasses from his curly hair.

  ‘Take care of yourself, sweetheart,’ she told him.

  James forgot to point out to Zoe that he didn’t go to the cinema much any more, since the Saturday matinées clashed with football.

  Garfield drove James and Lewis to their game that afternoon against the Northtown Boys at the top of Stratford Road. James wasn’t looking forward to it. He loved football more than anything else in the world, and he found it hard to admit how much he’d come to dread their Saturday matches. Within two years he’d been transformed from the star player in their primary-school team, the fastest runner, a boy for whom walking was unnatural because he had impatient limbs and his body would rather be running, into a tubby, slow, ungainly lurcher in almost permanent discomfort. And not only was his no longer the first name put down on the team sheet, he knew that if things carried on the way they were, soon he wouldn’t get into the team at all.

  Lewis, ironically, was moving in the opposite direction: he’d not improved as an athlete but he’d learned to compensate with anticipation, using his brain to get to where the ball was likely to arrive before boys quicker but less intelligent. He was also so much taller than opposing attackers that it never occurred to them that he didn’t know how to head the ball, and they rarely challenged him. Above all, though, he’d already begun to display the qualities of leadership: without its being obvious how, or why, it just began to happen that other boys would follow his advice, gather round him in the playground, and generally seek his favour. The games teacher, Mr Rudge, wisely perceived Lewis’s standing and made him captain above more gifted players, and thereby Lewis’s place in the team was assured.

  James knew – his father had warned him – that he had gone from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pool. Charles exhorted him to work as hard as he’d once done. ‘Life’s a race, James,’ he continued in language he thought James would understand. ‘It’s vital to get an early start.’

  James also knew that the fat that swelled upon him was bound to have slowed him down. ‘Look at the two of you!’ Garfield chuckled at James and Lewis. ‘You growin’ in oppos
ite directions. Slow down, boys!’ he laughed. ‘Funny thing is,’ he added, ‘you’ll prob’ly end up the same size.’ Which was no consolation to a boy trapped in the present.

  But these were minor factors, he knew above all, compared to what everyone called his growing pains. Since they’d begun a year or so before they’d been getting steadily worse, changing from an occasional ache into a permanent one, and recently he’d been startled by stabbing, breathtaking pains that shot out of his hips. At the previous Wednesday’s training session after school they had begun with the circuit-training Mr Rudge had brought with him from the army, a punishing series of push-ups, press-ups, jumps and squats, which ended with twenty sit-ups: each one made James wince with pain. By the time the others were completing theirs James had managed only ten. His eyes were closed and his teeth were clenched.

  ‘I’m watching, lad!’ He heard Mr Rudge’s voice, and knew it to be directed at him. He’d positioned himself at the back, behind Dave Broomfield, their big goalkeeper, but Mr Rudge’s eagle eyes could pick him or anyone else out among fifteen straining boys. James carried on: twelve, thirteen. He could hear the noise of the other boys’ exertions cease around him; now only the gasping of them getting their breaths back. Fourteen.

  ‘Come on, lad, put some effort into it!’ He could tell from the voice that Mr Rudge had come forward and was standing above him. James had his hands clasped behind his neck. He touched the ground behind him and he took a deep breath and thrust his head and torso up and forward towards his knees. The sharp pain – a raw nerve pincered between bones – attacked again and he let out a brief whimper.

  ‘Oh, we’re crying now, are we, lad? Did you hear that, boys? It must pain poor James here more than it does any of you.’

  James did another sit-up and it hurt even more, but he bit his lip to stop any sound escape his mouth. Sixteen. His eyes were shut fast inside his clenched face, but he felt tears seep into the sweat running down his cheeks.

  Seventeen.

  Mr Rudge, who missed nothing, saw them too. The boys’ parents marvelled at his patience with their sons and they appreciated the discipline he instilled. He also had a way of both castigating and exhorting boys at the same time that let them know he expected more of them than they were giving. He believed in them, that they had more to give, and his imprecations generally stoked a boy’s self-belief. But he was an old soldier, and the one thing that irritated him was weaknesss.

  ‘The poor boy’s suffering, isn’t he, lads? Come on, James, that’s it, push!’

  Eighteen.

  James didn’t think he was going to make it, but even in the midst of the pain that engulfed him there was still something inside him shouting to be heard, not a voice exactly, not even a thought, but an inarticulate, unformed force at the centre of his being. If it could have spoken itself in this moment of crisis it would have been shouting: ‘I can do it, I’ll show you you big bullying fucker.’ But it came out as a groan of anger through his clenched teeth: ‘Aaargh!’ Nineteen, as his torso broke through the wall of pain that it hit when it reached a certain angle in its arc towards his knees. His brow touched them and then went falling back.

  ‘You’re soft, lad, aren’t you?’ came the voice from outside. And the voice inside yelled back, ‘Aaargh!’ as James broke the pain again, the last time. He’d made it, his hands behind his head snapped apart and slapped the ground either side of his legs as he leant back, sweat pouring, heart pounding.

  James opened his eyes: beyond his own two feet were two much bigger ones, spread apart.

  ‘What’s wrong, lad? What’s the matter, eh? Why are you having so much more trouble than the others?’ the voice boomed down.

  James tried to catch his breath to answer, but it kept bursting out of him before he could grab it.

  ‘I can’t hear you, lad. I asked a question: what’s the problem?’

  James leaned back a little, still looking at the ground. He gulped a draught of air. ‘It’s my legs, Mr Rudge,’ he spluttered. ‘My legs hurt. Growing pains in my legs.’

  ‘Ah, growing pains, is it?’ Mr Rudge said with bombastic sarcasm. ‘Growing pains, again?’ Then the voice abruptly changed. ‘Every boy has growing pains. Yours are no worse than anyone else’s. You have to fight the pain, lad; that’s what’ll make you a man. Now,’ he added as to James’ horror he saw those two big football-boot-shod feet step forward and onto his ankles, the studs biting into his flesh, ‘now, since you enjoy sit-ups so much, you can do five more for us. Give the other lads a proper idea of how it’s done, eh?’

  James wanted the ground beneath him to soften, soften, to gently give way and let him sink into it. The other boys were sitting and standing around, watching, enjoying this humiliation. They don’t know, he thought. They don’t know.

  ‘Come along, lad, we’re waiting,’ Mr Rudge declared, grinding the studs of his boots a little into James’ ankles. ‘We don’t have all day.’

  James closed his eyes as he fell back, feeling his eyeballs slide upward in their sockets, and he clasped his hands behind his head. You’re right, Mr Fucker, he thought, his willpower finding its inner voice. I’ll do it, as his brain blazed. I’ll be a man!

  Now, as Garfield drove Lewis and James towards the game that James was dreading, he admitted to himself that on Wednesday evening he’d named his growing pains for the first time in months, and only then under extreme duress. Earlier he’d stopped complaining about them because no one took them seriously and he didn’t want people to think he was a moaner. But they’d continued to get worse and at some point the reason he didn’t mention them changed: he knew that something was going wrong inside him; something serious.

  It was an undistinguished game. Mr Rudge put James on the right of midfield. ‘You may not be fast, lad, but anyone can run up and down. Help out the defence, support the attack. I want to see some work.’

  So James tried to work as hard as he could. But the play swirled around him and the ball was always running a yard away, just out of reach. And although the pain got steadily worse through the first half it only stabbed him once when he stretched to keep the ball in play, and once when he was forcefully tackled.

  At least James was playing on the far side of the pitch from Mr Rudge, who as usual was pacing up and down the touchline and issuing a non-stop litany of barking orders: ‘Don’t mess about with it back there, Sean! Get rid! Good boot, boy! Now – up! Up! Move up! Ah, getstuck in, lad! Now back behind the ball! Back, Kenny! Get back!’

  But in the second half he was right there, a few feet away, patrolling the touchline, and James could almost feel his raging breath on his neck: ‘Get in there, James! Hit him, boy! Good lad! Now get rid! Not backwards, boy, hit it upfield! Give it distance! What’s wrong with you?’

  When James caught sight of the substitute Steve Halliday taking off his tracksuit trousers while Mr Rudge peppered orders in his ear, he knew with absolute certainty that he was about to be taken off. He’d never been substituted before. Wretchedness, anger and relief fought within him. Then he realized the ball was coming in his direction.

  The ball was flying across the pitch, directly along and above the half-way line, tracing it like a plane about to land. It was just another miscued or thoughtless pass into nowhere. But it was coming towards him.

  ‘Good boot, lad!’ he heard Mr Rudge’s voice calling. James could see that the ball was going to bounce on the half-way line and sail off into touch a few yards ahead of him, and he set off towards the spot. An opponent was approaching from the opposite direction.

  I’m going to get it, James decided. I’m going to show him, as he ran with all his strength, tracking the flight of the ball as he did so, and seeing out of the corner of his eye the other boy running. The ball hit the ground and bounced up and continued on its mindless course James struggled forward, the other boy got nearer, the ball was coming across from the side.

  Time is elastic. When a football’s pinging around the penalty box time’s all
panicky and rushed and there’s no time to think. Now, though, time was expanding. Every muscle and sinew of James’ body was straining to reach the ball before his opponent, just feet away now, but time slowed and his mind was lucid even as his lungs and limbs burst and he realized that, yes, he could reach the ball a fraction of a second before his adversary. The ball would be two or three feet up in the air but James could stretch his leg and toe it away; but, just as surely, a moment later the other boy’s boot would come up and kick his from below. And because James would be at full stretch already, the impact would shoot up into his hip and bite like a clamp into his nerve-ends.

  Time was elasticated. James could see clearly what was about to happen if he carried on. He had plenty of time to consider pulling out and in fact it wouldn’t matter if he did, because not only was the ball in an insignificant area of the pitch, but also he – or indeed the other boy, whoever reached the ball first – would be unable to do any more than toe-poke it into touch for a throw-in to the other side and, anyway, he was about to be substituted. It even occurred to James that he could pull out at the last possible moment with a flourish, like a matador, exaggeratedly making it clear to everyone that he’d outsmarted his dumb, lunging opponent, and trotting smugly off to retrieve the ball for his throw-in. But that, he knew, would have been to fail to meet the challenge of the moment.

  So James lunged forward, straining, stretching his leg out, urging his foot towards the flying ball as the opposing boy charged towards him. His toe just reached the ball before the other boy’s boot came crashing up into James’ foot: he felt a piercing, sickening jab of pain and he heard his own yelp of animal agony as the world spun out of control, and then he hit the ground.

  Steve Halliday was already trotting onto the pitch when Mr Rudge helped James off.

  ‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Well played, son. Good tackle. That’s what we like to see.’

  James glanced back over his shoulder and saw one of the opposition take the throw-in: he hadn’t even gained a free kick for the team for his moment of futile courage. Mr Rudge patted him on the head and turned back to the game, instructions resuming instantly, automatically, from his lips. James started limping towards the dressing-room. After a few paces he heard Mr Rudge’s voice directed towards him.