AFTERTHOUGHT
JOHN WELLS
As I was three when the last European war broke out .and-nine when it ended, I still have a rather romantic notion of what was then referred to as Peacetime. In Peacetime, I was told, there were unlimited supplies of ice- cream—in Wartime I was allowed it only when I had my tonsils out—and real bananas, as opposed to imitation bananas made with soya beans and banana essence, or the bunches of Fyffe's plaster bananas that still hung in the greengrocers'. There were also apparently nostalgically remembered holidays in Paris or in Spain, and even I had a vague and prob- ably fictitious memory of perpetual sunshine on beaches with blue sea and without barbed wire, flags flying on the bandstand, and shop windows free of criss-cross strips of sticky brown paper, full of prewar quality goods. In Peacetime, either tomorrow or yesterday, there would be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover, and Johnny would go to sleep in his own little bed again. Life, as in The Wizard of Oz, would be full colour, and no longer in Wartime black and white.
I still get this feeling, on special occasions, about the present. I felt it particularly strongly on Saturday afternoon at Wembley during the Cup Final. During the war I had a hand- cranked film projector, and almost the only silent film I had with it, except for a Mickey Mouse cartoon and a newsreel of a parade in Delhi, was of a prewar peacetime cup final. I always used to think, winding it through faster or slower, so that the thousands of white faces, probably most of them dead even then, would bob up and down in unearthly slow motion or in a comic frenzy, that they must on that particular afternoon in peacetime have been experiencing some secret exaltation, some experience of life in the golden freedom of peace, that was perceptible even in a silent black-and-white newsreel, and that we could never share. And strangely enough, despite the incessant intrusion of dull reality into the original dream, Wembley did feel like peace- time on Saturday.
For one thing, the fragile nature of the present peace was emphasised by the headlines in the newspapers about war in the Demili- tarised Zone, war in the Middle East, and war in Hong Kong. A man opposite me in a Chinese restaurant in Wembley before the match seemed weary of trying to understand it. 'It's ridiculous, when you come to think of it, the Chinese walloping our lads in Hong Kong and us sitting here in a Chinese res- taurant. You can't weigh it up really, can you?' But the slow-moving crowd of thousands going up the avenue towards the two domed towers of the Stadium like a scene in a mam- moth 'thirties epic was obviously a peacetime crowd. The only people in uniform were the police, standing firm in the middle of the road as the Chelsea supporters in blue-and-white scarves and blue-and-white paper hats flooded round them on either side, and the bandsmen in red tunics pulling faces back at the crowd as they were driven up to the Stadium in pri- vate cars.
Other more opulent fans and visiting diplo- mats being driven up the avenue in Rolls- Royces and Bentleys found the insults mouthed at them through the windows too much to bear, and one man in particular was sitting among the deep upholstery with his head in his hands, blushing with embarrassment. Shouting crowds of Spurs supporters were waving walking-sticks at the motor-coaches and trying to impede their already slow progress, exhaling a warm smell of stale beer. On either side of the road stallkeepers waited in caravans or ice-cream vans, barking at the passers-by in a variety of accents or leaning gloomily on the hot-dog saucepans watching them go by. Favours were offered, not only for Chelsea and Spurs, but also for England and Scotland, with a shout of 'support a side,' and banners in antique script, faded gold on, faded brown, were lifted above the heads, 'Repent, for the Coming of the Lord draweth Nigh.' Unheed- ing, the peacetime crowd continued its way up to the Stadium.
Inside the gates and under the stands, Wembley Stadium has still something of the grandeur of amphitheatres associated with gladiatorial combat or with the bullfight, de- Spite the unmistakable Englishness of the litter on the floor and the solemn, ever-moving queues of men progressing with the slowness
of the damned four abreast in and out of the Gents. But inside the arena itself any re-
semblance with the bloodstained sand of the bullring or the pagan splendour of a ruined amphitheatre immediately ceases. Not only is
there the direct contrasts of the green grass and the fluttering flags, but there is a difference in atmosphere that makes the bullring seem abnormally grim and devoted to death by com- parison, and, strangely enough, the Guards Band in their scarlet-uniforms and black bear- ckins epitomise England in peacetime.
There were certainly moments on Saturday Mien this full colour manifestation of the arts of peace was in danger of being dimmed and the illusion spoilt. Just before the game began a heavy shower blackened the sky above the Stadium and rattled on the corrugated plastic roof, rain drifted in grey sheets across the pitch and threatened to render the military music purely pathetic. The man who came on to conduct the Daily Express community sing- ing--Abide with Me," according to the text as printed if you please'—had to come on in a grey plastic mackintosh over his white suit. Later, when the sun had come out and the teams had come on, there was a moment when a Tottenham player in white appeared to punch a Chelsea player in blue behind the ear after a tackle, and there was a rumble of distant war.
But as the Spurs team in white deployed itself and became dominant, developing one pattern of attack after another, or as the Chelsea team in blue emerged rather less fre- quently in a mobile framework, as the crowd of 100,000 applauded one feat of astonishingly disciplined ball-control after another, or rose from their seats with a great roar as the ball finally smacked into the net, it seemed that this was after all one of the highest forms of peaceful conflict, and that focusing the energy and partisan enthusiasm of millions of spectators on such a skilful and bloodless clash was possibly one of the best things about peace- time. It is strange that Association Football does not exercise more fascination for the in- tellectuals—not simply as an opportunity for cleansing immersion in the mass, but as an art--in the way that bullfighting once did and to some extent still does. Perhaps its Heming- way is still to appear. Over to you, Bernard Levin.
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