The Book of Fame by Lloyd Jones Page A

they drop from the ends of the branches overhanging the ground. A cap fell off one and as the man bends to recover it suddenly Jimmy can see hundreds of them. Hundreds are climbing the trees and dropping over the fence then picking themselves up. In another direction he can see the top hats of the crowd moving slowly along the fenceline for the entrances. The entrances are too few, and as the lines back up more and more people are climbing up those trees. He’s watching them, small as ants, when the sound of a bellbird echoing from afar, across oceans, has him looking past these English trees to the heavily dressed branches of an elm brushing back the hurrying brown water of the Wanganui; the elm and the water, home and a girl he knows, and about now, Eric Harper presses down on his shoulder, and says, ‘It’s time, Jimmy Hunter.’
    In our tiny changing shed
    our thoughts turned to all that glass above
    and the weight of silence
    We found comfort in our routines
    The noise of the players banging their pipes
    The team bowl filling with cinders and ash
    Now the hanging up of pipes
    The tucking in of shirts
    Now stamping warmth into our chilblain feet
    ‘Gentlemen,’ says the official at the door
    Freddy Roberts spins the ball through his fingers (Freddy, as always, like a dog at a gate)
    George Gillett, apart, stares off to a distant sunny day
    Deans fussily folds his trousers along the crease
    Billy Wallace smiles at what he already professes to know
    ‘Right then,’ says Gallaher, his lead-dog eye picking up each one of us
    ‘One final thing,’ says Jimmy Duncan. ‘Remember who we are.’
    We’d beaten the Scots.
    We’d beaten the Irish.
    We told ourselves, ‘We must not lose.’
    We told it repeatedly—‘We must not lose’—
    until it began to sound like a direction.
    ‘Go to the end of the street but there you must not turn right …’
    It had its own logic. Its own ring of truth.
    But at 2.45, when we walked out to the pitch and looked up and saw all those people, our hearts dropped. No one had ever seen a crowd like it. In the stand the tall hats of the gentry; to the sides of the stand the numbers were packed in, up and down the banks, and across the field we saw figures on the skyline, perched on the ends of branches, others hugging the trunks. And who were we they’d come to see? A bank clerk clutching his leather headgear, a couple of farmers, a farrier, a couple of miners and a bootmaker.
    We looked to Gallaher for a lead. We saw his gaze circle in a smaller space than that which had threatened to overwhelm us. He clapped his hands, winked at Freddy Roberts, gave Frank Glasgow’s shoulder a pat, said to Billy Wallace and O’Sullivan, ‘Don’t forget what those English bastards did to your Irish forebears.’ One by one Dave patched us up and by the time of the national anthems we were back intact.
    The English tactic was a variation on the Irish one of deploying the giant Basil MacClear in the midfield to create a kind of log jam. The English stacked their backline with five wing three-quarters.
    They hadn’t thought about the blind side, though, and while they guarded the front entrance we ducked down the alleyway, Freddy Roberts scampering crossfield to draw the English wing and flick on to Dunk McGregor who crossed for four identical tries. The second one saw Billy Stead draw the winger to create the space for Dunk. The English were so slow to catch on we shook our heads in disbelief. We told ourselves, ‘You’d think they’d know by now.’ The English didn’t seem to know what to do. They scratched their moustaches and tried to look bemused. It could have been worse for them. Deans got across but was called back for a forward pass from Jimmy Hunter. Then Billy Wallace was over but the referee judged that he had knocked on. Debatable. Highly debatable. Still, it didn’t alter the outcome. A greasy ball and the inability of Billy Wallace to kick out of a bog saved England from an