Pelota
By RICHARD USBORNE THERE were four casualties in the pelota game that evening, and I was the first. The Guitary first team were playing a Biarritz "A" team at Gu4tary. I was sitting on the steps of the mairie in the 100-francs-a-seat section, thirty yards or so from the front wall. The 200- franc seats were nearer the front wall, and that was much more dangerous. Five minutes after the start of the match a Biarritz player swinged the ball hard and fairly low against the front wall from the right, and it came raking down the spectators on the left. It was " out," but only just, and it took me sharply on the shin-bone on the half-volley. It hurt about as much as a direct hit from Alec Bedser's bowling on the unpadded shin would hurt. I have the remains of the large bruise still. I made light of it at the time, smiling, like Andromache, through my tears. The ball is the weight and size of a school-size cricket ball, but covered and stitched like a real-tennis ball. It hurt like the dickens.
The mairie seats at least had no trees over them. It meant that there was no protection from the sun (fierce) and rain (drizzling) that alternated that evening. But you did have a clear sight of the ball if it was dropping towards your head. The other side of the court flanked the road, and the seats were shaded by a neat and thick-foliaged row of plane- trees. Artistically charming. But the next hard crack going wide went to the right and came from higher up the front (in fact, the only) wall. It was as impossible to judge as a high catch at cricket coming through the branches of a summer elm-tree. We, from our side, saw where it would probably land if it didn't get deflected by a branch. The spectators in the danger area ducked as one man, and shielded their heads with their hands. I didn't see the ball fall. But there was a flick as it lashed into the trees, and then all the spectators but one straightened up and took their hands from their heads.
The one, an Englishwoman obviously enough from her clothes and from the pipe of her husband on the one side and the school-blazer of her son on the other, stayed ducked, and sagged lower. The• blood ran swiftly between her fingers. The ball had taken her above the right eye. The local doctor (I knew him because we had called him in three days earlier for a severe case of over-eating by my daughter) fussed around, and eventually escorted the English family to the exit. He came back twenty minutes later.
The next casualty was just near us again.. A girl took it on the side of her knee. About the same Bedser-like speed as my own crack. But she was wearing shorts, so nothing broke the impact. She had a fine holiday sun-tan. Her face turned a grey-green through it, and she was hurried off to the very handy mairie lavabo to be sick. The last wounding was of a small boy of about four. He was up in the 200-franc area (though I bet he hadn't paid), with a gang of other small barrackers and cheerers. He suddenly and foolhardily decided, during a rally, to join some chums on the other side of the court. Slightly less dangerous than crossing the course at Aintree where and while the Grand National field comes to the first jump. But only slightly. Luckily the little idiot fouled an espadrille in mid-court and fell on his face. The rally cannoned around him for a few shots, and then was won when the ball bounced false and the Biarritz half fluffed his catch. The little idiot was picked up, blubbing, and with a skinned knee. As far as I could tell, the players didn't count it a let.
Every town and village in the Basque country seems to have its pelota court. If there's no room for a proper deep field (the Guetary court stretched over 100 yards back from the wall), then the court is still useful for a game of something like rackets, but with hard wooden bats ; or, closer in still, for a handball game, with a hard rubber ball, similar to Rugby fives. The lads and boys of the village get up games among themselves much as they do cricket on the sides of village pitches on summer evenings in England. But pelota is the big game, and equipes, professional and amateur, travel about, and there is a lot of betting on results.
Pelota is played three aside. Each player wears a banana- shaped basket-work scoop attached to a glove on his right hand. He catches the ball in this, full toss or first bounce, forehand or, rather awkwardly, back-hand. He then slings it back on to the wall, forehand or back-hand according to which side he has taken it. The game proceeds much like rackets or squash, and the scoring goes up to-sixty, each winner counting a point, though the service changes when the side is put out. The same man (the forward, if you can call them forward, half and back) serves for the side throughout. He stands up within a yard or two of the wall, does a strange pas-de-seul, bouncing the ball with his left hand, catching it in his basket on his right, and then, with all his body behind it, lacing it against the wall. It 'comes humming back, just past his ear, and should lob sixty or seventy yards into the deep field, to the opposing back. The back has plenty of time to get under it for the catch. He prefers to take it full- toss, because the back field has only a hard gravel floor, untrue compared with the fore-court, which is concreted. The back returns the ball, and the ball is likely to travel at speed between back and back for an exchange of five or six shots.
If you pace out the court, you.find that the backs may have been throwing the ball eighty yards up to the wall, and that the ball has come back another eighty yards. A considerable throw. But, though the backs are the biggest men in the teams generally, and sweat the most, this 160 yards aller-et- retour is clearly no particular strain on their muscles. But sooner or later the return is intercepted by the half, and he probably tries to kill it by throwing it hard and low. Some- times the two forwards exchange a blistering volley or two, and then the barrackers and cheerers start The " tin " is 2 feet 8 inches from the ground, and it is exciting when the forwards get started on close-slinging. It is then, too, that the 100-and 200-franc customers are in greatest danger. None of the players got hurt that evening, and I understand they don't. Nor, the doctor told me, do the players ever endanger the spectators with their direct swinges. They soon learn to get those straight to the wall. But there were moments when the halves had to take hard, low shots from which we were cringing in our seats. They would reach their baskets for them, and whistle them back across our noses. A slice from the basket at that speed would have made a very sickening thud on a skull, and it would have called for the pompes funebres and left the doctor to enjoy the rest of the game.
The game went on for about seventy minutes. The doctor told me that they were all good players, and that Biarritz would have won if they'd had their proper half. The English- woman had needed three stitches in 'her eyebrow. She'd have a very black eye for a week. Did I like pelota ? He thought it the best game in the world, and he'd play more of it himself if he had time. When he Was a medical student before the war, he was quite a chap at the game. How was my young daughter ? O.K., I assured him, and stuffing just as much as before her illness. He laughed. " That would be all right in England," he said. " But hdre it may mean another fee for me." " Well," I said, " there's not the same temptation to stuff in-England ; nor possibility." " No ?" he said. Then . . . " You don't play pelota in England ?". " No," I said, " but we have a game called rackets which is not dissimilar. Also something called fives, and lacrosse. I started trying to explain rackets in French. Very quickly his eyes glazed, and he remembered he had a patient waiting at his surgery,
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