Playing for the Ashes

  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 first 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 first 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 defiance of tradition and “the way things are done.” It was just forty-eight hours short of eight months since Hal Rashadam had first 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 financial considerations involved. The expense of a move, the expense of finding 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 five immigrant 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 define 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 tabl
e and sits. He’s lanky—more so than he was as a boy—and he seems to fill 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 first 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 farmworkers 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.

  What if, Mother suggested, Kenneth used Celandine Cottage as a base of operation? That would take care of his need to be in Kent. What if he renovated what needed renovating at the cottage, gardened what needed gardening, painted what needed painting, plastered what needed plastering, and otherwise made himself useful to the place? That would take care of his need to pay rent. What if he worked at the printworks when he was able and compiled bids for printing jobs on his own time? Mother would pay him for doing so, and that would take care of at least part of his money troubles. What if Jean and the children stayed in place on the Isle of Dogs—where Jean could keep her job, where the children would have their extended family as well as their mates nearby—and Kenneth brought them to the country at the weekends? That would minimise the disruption in their lives, keep the family together, and give the children the opportunity to romp in the fresh air. This way, if Ken didn’t have a real chance of making his way in the world of professional cricket, at least he would have tried.

  Mother was Mephisto. It was her finest moment. Except that she meant well. I do believe that she truly meant well. Most people do, at heart, I think….

  Chris calls out, “Livie, have a look at this,” and I scoot my chair back and cant my head to see round the galley door into the workroom. He’s finished the hutch. Felix is exploring it. He gives a hesitant hop and a sniff. Another hop.

  “He needs a garden to scuff about in,” I note.

  “Quite. But since we haven’t got a garden, this will have to do until his lodgings change.” Chris watches Felix hop inside and go to the water bottle where he drinks. The bottle rattles against the cage like the clicking of rail carriages against a track.

  “How do they know to do that?” I ask.

  “What? Drink out of a bottle?” He returns nails to their appropriate containers by size. He puts away his hammer and neatly sweeps sawdust from the workbench into a bin. “Process of observation and exploration, I should guess. He susses out the new digs, bumps into the water bottle, explores it with his nose. But he’s been in a hutch before, so he probably knows what to find inside anyway.”

  We watch the rabbit, I from my chair in the galley, and Chris from his position in front of the workbench. At least Chris watches the rabbit. I watch Chris.

  I say, “It’s been quiet lately, hasn’t it? Telephone hasn’t rung for days.”

  He nods. We both ignore the phone call he’s received only an hour ago because we both know what I’m talking about. Not social calls, not business calls, but ARM calls. He runs his hand along the top front edge of Felix’s hutch, finds a spot that’s rough, applies sandpaper to it.

  “Is there nothing in the works, then?” I ask.

  “Just Wales.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Beagle kennels. If our unit takes them on, I’ll be gone a few days.”

  “Whose decision?” I ask. “Whether to take it, that is.”

  “Mine.”

  “Then take it.”

  He looks at me. He wraps the sandpaper round his finger. He tightens it, loosens it, examines the tube he’s created and rolls it back and forth on his palm.

  “I can cope,” I say. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be perfect. Ask Max to drop by. He can walk the dogs. We’ll play cribbage afterwards.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “When do you have to decide?”

  He replaces the sandpaper. “There’s time.”

  “But the beagles…Chris, are the kennels getting ready to ship them?”

  “They’re always getting ready for that.”

  “Then you must—”

  “We’ll see, Livie. If I don’t take it, someone else will. Don’t worry. The dogs won’t go to a lab.”

  “But you’re the best of the lot. Especially with dogs. And they’ll be looking for disturbance, the kennel owners, if the puppies are getting old enough to be shipped. Someone good needs to go. The best needs to go.”

  He clicks off the fluorescent light above the workbench. Felix rustles round in his hutch. Chris comes into the galley.

  “Look. You don’t need to watch over me,” I say. “I hate that. It makes me feel like such a freak.”

  He sits and reaches for my hand. He turns it in his. He scrutinises my palm. He bends
the fingers closed. He watches me open them. We both know how I concentrate to make the movement smooth.

  When my fingers are unbent, he covers my hand so that it’s completely enclosed by both of his. He says, “I’ve two new members in the unit, Livie. I’m not certain they’re ready for something like Wales. And I won’t risk the dogs to feed my ego.” His hands press mine. “That’s what it is. It has nothing to do with you. Or with this. All right?”

  “New members?” I say. “You never said.” I would have known at one time. We would have talked it over.

  “I must have forgotten. They’ve been with me for about six weeks now.”

  “Who?”

  “A chap called Paul. His sister. Amanda.”

  He holds my gaze so unflinchingly that I realise she’s the one. Amanda. Her name seems to hang between us like a vapour.

  I want to say, “Amanda. How pretty a name.” I want to go on breezily with, “She’s the one, isn’t she? So tell me about it. How did you fall in love? How long was it before you took her to bed?”

  I want him to say, “Livie” and look uncomfortable so that I can go on with, “But aren’t you breaking a few of your rules?” as if I couldn’t be less bothered with the knowledge. I want to say, “Doesn’t the organisation forbid involvement? Isn’t that what you always said to me? And since members of a unit—not to mention members of the entire bleeding group—know only the Christian names of other members, doesn’t that put a crimp in your love affair? Or have you two exchanged more than just bodily fluids? Does she know who you are? Have the two of you made plans?”

  If I say all that and say it quickly enough, I don’t have to picture the two of them together. I don’t have to wonder where they do it or how. I don’t have to think of it if I can only force myself to ask the questions and to put him on the defensive.