don’t you, what hunger burns in their souls.’
But this was our milieu—men who would swallow nails.
Lone cyclists, their front wheel doggedly searching east.
So, what was our trick?
In the ‘Cock and Bull’ over pints of Guinness
to the greengrocer’s daughter Freddy Roberts tries to explain.
‘Really, it has all to do with space, finding new ways through.’
The greengrocer’s daughter smiles. She’s taken a shine to Freddy.
She strokes her finger around the glass rim.
‘If you get my drift.’
‘No. All right
Let me put it this way.
Nope. Better still. Here’s what we do.
Let’s say you and I go for a short walk.’
She led the way to a lightly wooded area and Fred demonstrated the
various ways through—
the course of a spooked hare
the path of angling light in the trees
then, as it happens—as Fred tells it—
in the new dusk
the sky turned black and quivered
over the spired rooftops
as a flock of starlings
switched shape and direction.
‘That’s another thing,’ says Freddy
‘Think of us as fifteen sets of eyes
pairs of hands and feet
attached to a single
central nervous system.’
But she wasn’t really interested
not really.
She asked Freddy if he could kiss her—
was it allowed, he thought she meant
and pictured Mister Dixon emptying his pipe
and its faint disapproving clatter.
She had to ask him again
‘Can I kiss yer?’
And after they did that she asked him to write
‘Freddy Roberts’ where he kissed her
because she had seen his name in the paper.
FOUR
We visited the great universities. At Oxford, a tiny warden in an enormous black hat walked ahead with a lantern and led us through courtyards with grass so beautifully tended that we wanted to roll around in it like happy dogs. ‘So,’ said Jimmy Duncan, like this was what he’d been looking for all this time and might even have passed through these gates years earlier had he known about it. In some of us that possibility expanded and contracted.
Cunningham who knew a bit about masonry ran his finger over the stonework.
Hunter who had planted a garden on the family farm got down on his haunches to dig his fingers and test the quality of the mulch.
Tyler who knew all about line from his boat-building knelt to draw the bead of the lawn.
Mister Dixon horrified us all by walking across the lawn to sniff a rambling rose.
Jimmy Duncan banged out the contents of his pipe on the path then seeing our woebegone faces gathered up the blackened ash and tobacco remains and stuck his hand in his pocket.
Billy Stead gazed with longing at grass greener than Southland. We stood back and admired these squares of lawn framed by ancient stone walls with ivy climbing up from lovingly prepared rose beds.
We thought back to our own shabby grandstands and poorly drained fields. It wasn’t as if we lacked for the same elements.
We had rock.
We had flowers.
Decent enough turf.
We had space and light.
But at Oxford what we realised was this—
it was a matter of arrangement, of
getting the combinations right, and of
questioning why we thought something should be this way and not that way,
in other words, a matter of directing thought and a pair of hands back to a guiding principle.
When we considered the shape of our game
we saw the things at work
that we admired and cultivated
every man’s involvement and
a sharing of burden and responsibility.
When we considered the shape of our game
we saw an honest engine.
‘Even men who have played rugby since childhood and grown grey in its service could not help expressing astonishment. It was all so dumbfounding, so bewildering, almost uncanny.’ We did score thirteen tries so we supposed the
Oxford Times
would say that.
‘It was an even game,’ said one wit, ‘because six tries were scored in the first half and seven tries in the second half …’
After the game we had dinner at Trinity Hall where we sat at long wooden tables beneath arched windows.
But this was our milieu—men who would swallow nails.
Lone cyclists, their front wheel doggedly searching east.
So, what was our trick?
In the ‘Cock and Bull’ over pints of Guinness
to the greengrocer’s daughter Freddy Roberts tries to explain.
‘Really, it has all to do with space, finding new ways through.’
The greengrocer’s daughter smiles. She’s taken a shine to Freddy.
She strokes her finger around the glass rim.
‘If you get my drift.’
‘No. All right
Let me put it this way.
Nope. Better still. Here’s what we do.
Let’s say you and I go for a short walk.’
She led the way to a lightly wooded area and Fred demonstrated the
various ways through—
the course of a spooked hare
the path of angling light in the trees
then, as it happens—as Fred tells it—
in the new dusk
the sky turned black and quivered
over the spired rooftops
as a flock of starlings
switched shape and direction.
‘That’s another thing,’ says Freddy
‘Think of us as fifteen sets of eyes
pairs of hands and feet
attached to a single
central nervous system.’
But she wasn’t really interested
not really.
She asked Freddy if he could kiss her—
was it allowed, he thought she meant
and pictured Mister Dixon emptying his pipe
and its faint disapproving clatter.
She had to ask him again
‘Can I kiss yer?’
And after they did that she asked him to write
‘Freddy Roberts’ where he kissed her
because she had seen his name in the paper.
FOUR
We visited the great universities. At Oxford, a tiny warden in an enormous black hat walked ahead with a lantern and led us through courtyards with grass so beautifully tended that we wanted to roll around in it like happy dogs. ‘So,’ said Jimmy Duncan, like this was what he’d been looking for all this time and might even have passed through these gates years earlier had he known about it. In some of us that possibility expanded and contracted.
Cunningham who knew a bit about masonry ran his finger over the stonework.
Hunter who had planted a garden on the family farm got down on his haunches to dig his fingers and test the quality of the mulch.
Tyler who knew all about line from his boat-building knelt to draw the bead of the lawn.
Mister Dixon horrified us all by walking across the lawn to sniff a rambling rose.
Jimmy Duncan banged out the contents of his pipe on the path then seeing our woebegone faces gathered up the blackened ash and tobacco remains and stuck his hand in his pocket.
Billy Stead gazed with longing at grass greener than Southland. We stood back and admired these squares of lawn framed by ancient stone walls with ivy climbing up from lovingly prepared rose beds.
We thought back to our own shabby grandstands and poorly drained fields. It wasn’t as if we lacked for the same elements.
We had rock.
We had flowers.
Decent enough turf.
We had space and light.
But at Oxford what we realised was this—
it was a matter of arrangement, of
getting the combinations right, and of
questioning why we thought something should be this way and not that way,
in other words, a matter of directing thought and a pair of hands back to a guiding principle.
When we considered the shape of our game
we saw the things at work
that we admired and cultivated
every man’s involvement and
a sharing of burden and responsibility.
When we considered the shape of our game
we saw an honest engine.
‘Even men who have played rugby since childhood and grown grey in its service could not help expressing astonishment. It was all so dumbfounding, so bewildering, almost uncanny.’ We did score thirteen tries so we supposed the
Oxford Times
would say that.
‘It was an even game,’ said one wit, ‘because six tries were scored in the first half and seven tries in the second half …’
After the game we had dinner at Trinity Hall where we sat at long wooden tables beneath arched windows.
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