The Breezes. Joseph O’Neill

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he decided to enter the refereeing profession properly. He bought himself a black outfit, boots with a bolt of lightning flashing from the ankle to the toe, red and yellow cards, a waterproof notebook and the Association Football rule book. Then one day he came home with a flushed face and a paper furled up in a pink ribbon. Wordlessly he handed me the scroll. I opened it and there it was in bold, splendid ink, Eugene Breeze, spectacularly printed in a large Gothic script.

      This is to certify that Eugene Breeze is a Class E referee, the document announced. It was signed by Matthew P. Brett, Secretary of the Football Association.

      ‘Congratulations,’ I said. I was sixteen and laconic.

      ‘I took the exams and passed them straight off,’ Pa said. He retrieved the certificate from me and slapped it against his palm. ‘Do you realize, Johnny,’ he said, ‘do you realize that now I’m qualified?’

      ‘Great,’ I said. ‘You’re in the way,’ I said, leaning sideways to see the television.

      ‘This could lead anywhere.’ He shook the certificate as though it were a magical document of discovery and empowerment, a passport, blank cheque and round-the-world ticket rolled into one. ‘Who knows, with a bit of luck I could be refereeing professionally in a couple of years’ time, couldn’t I, Johnny? I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s possible, isn’t it?’

      That’s right, I said. It’s possible.

      Possibilities! Pa, the numbskull, is a great one for possibilities. Stars in his eyes, he signed up officially with the Football Association and put his name down on the match list. He developed a scrupulous pre-match routine, ticking off checklists, boning up on the laws of the game and the weather reports, checking his studs and, late on the night before, ironing his kit and laying it out on the floor like a flat black ghost. But his dream of ascending the refereeing ladder did not materialize. For a while he took charge of good fixtures, games between ambitious young teenagers playing for serious clubs. But then, after his lack of ability became known and complaints had been made, the invitations dried up. ‘Never mind,’ he said to me eventually. ‘I’ll find my own level.’ That was when he took to wandering around football fields in his kit, haunting the touchlines, his silver whistle suspended unquietly from his neck. He would approach teams that were warming up and say, ‘Need a ref? Look, I’m qualified …’ and he would unfurl his certificate. Usually that was enough to do the trick, and that is how Pa has ended up where he is, officiating bad-tempered confrontations between pub teams and office XIs, ridiculed and bad-mouthed by players and onlookers alike. Even when he does well the abuse keeps coming, because the referee – that instrument of injustice – is never right. And still he persists and still, rain or shine, every weekend finds him out on the heath, looking for a game.

      This state of affairs is unlikely to last for long, because Pa has become truly notorious for his incapability, even amongst occasional teams. One time he so mishandled a game that the players, unanimous in their infuriation, ordered him to leave the field; and so Pa is famous, in the small world of Rockport amateur football, for being the only referee ever to have been sent off. As a result, he is finding it harder and harder to get a game. Increasingly his polite offers of his services draw a blank and he has to content himself with running the line, waving the offsides with his red handkerchief. The day cannot be far away when my father finds that, like it or not, his officiating days are behind him.

      ‘And how about you?’ Pa asked, dropping two fresh beers on the table. ‘How’s it going? How’s the exhibition coming along?’

      ‘Just fine,’ I said, raising my glass to my mouth. ‘It’s all under control.’

      The exhibition. Two weeks tomorrow, on 16 May, my chairs are scheduled to go on show at the Simon Devonshire Gallery. It took months of pleading, telephoning, writing, lying, boasting and begging to get that show. The good news finally came one day last October, when Simon Devonshire rang me in person. ‘Well, John,’ he said, ‘you can’t keep a good man down. A week starting from 16 May, next year, how does that sound to you?’

      I could not believe it. Simon Devonshire himself, patron, connoisseur and big shot, was giving me the nod. This was it, this was the big break. ‘Are you serious?’ I said with a laugh.

      ‘Certainly I’m serious,’ Devonshire said. ‘Now, you’re not going to let me down, are you, John? I’m putting my neck on the line for you. You appreciate that, don’t you?’

      ‘Of course,’ I said breathlessly, ‘of course. Don’t worry, Mr Devonshire,’ I said. ‘You won’t regret this.’

      I was overjoyed. I rang Angela straight away. She was overjoyed, too. ‘Johnny, that’s marvellous!’ She burst out laughing. Her laugh: a wonder, a full, chuckling letting go, a pure unzipping of joy … What a find Angela was. To this day I cannot believe my luck. You hear stories of those poor boys who, steering their goats from thistle to thistle upon some African tableland, happen upon a priceless stone in the dust. Well, that was how it was with me and Angela. It was during my time as a trainee accountant, when I was doing an audit in the offices of a transportation company out in some small wet town in the middle of nowhere. It was my job to make sure that the books balanced, that the debits and credits added up, a lonely, discouraging job, the nights spent on my own in a two-star hotel, the days working away in the small isolated room to which I had been consigned, a hole darkened from wall to wall with piles of thick, inscrutable ledgers – auditors always get the lousiest workspace going. After about a week, the task arrived of checking up on three trucks that the company had listed amongst its assets. It was time to pay a visit to the warehouse.

      It was raining. I walked quickly across the muddy car-park to the Portakabin that served as the warehouse office and introduced myself to the girl who was writing there, her head lowered over her paper. Hello, I said, I’m with the auditors. If it’s possible, I’d like to do a stock-check and … I did not say another word, because suddenly I found myself looking into these two blue rocks.

      ‘Of course,’ the girl said, brushing her hair from her face, smiling. ‘Just go straight in.’ Then she looked at me and laughed, and even now it thrills me to recall that sound and the sight of her head thrown back dramatically, the paper-white teeth shining in her open mouth, the red tongue clean as a cat’s.

      Pa pushed his beer aside, licked the froth from his upper lip and said, ‘Johnny, I’ve been thinking. There’s a lot of people with back trouble in this world. A lot of people need chairs they can sit on without hurting the base of the spine. I’m telling you, you should hear the complaints I get from the people at work. It’s a complicated thing, the spine. A mystery. Even doctors don’t know how it works. Anyway, I was thinking that there must be a market for specially designed chairs for people with back problems. Do you follow me?’ Pa spread his pale, veiny hands on the table. ‘I reckon that if you could come up with something along those lines you’d be made. I read something about it the other day,’ he said. ‘In the paper. They’ve now got chairs with no backs. You just have a seat which is tilted forwards and these pads to rest your knees on. Did you know that?’

      ‘It’s not a bad idea, Pa,’ I said, but I left it at that. In the furniture circles that I move in, it is artistic and not ergonomic considerations that prevail. The people who go to Simon Devonshire’s are not interested in lumbar comfort. They want pieces that make a statement, that provoke discussion. They want chairs with suggestive titles. Take last year’s two successes. The first was a chair called ouch. On its back were carved figures engaged in all kinds of monsterish copulations: goats doing it with men, women doing it with horses, dogs doing it with cats and so forth. But they were not the main feature; that was the wooden phallus which rose from the middle of the seat, so located that you could not sit on the chair without being penetrated by it. But that, СКАЧАТЬ