Postscript
Formalities and societies
P. J. Kavanagh Walking under the stands at Lord's before the start of the day's play in the Test match, I marvelled at the order and clarity of it all. The attendants were standing chatting at the entrances to the stands, the mowers were going precisely up and down, the cushion-sellers with their comfortless little plastic biscuits were already calling 'A day's comfort for forty pee', and the magic cry, remembered from boyhood — 'Scorecard!' — was beginning to go up. I knew I was reverting to boyhood but plenty, it seemed, were doing the same, and I acknowledged how much of the pleasure that I felt, and anticipated, was due to the formality of others. I never would have erected this vast stadium on a priceless piece of real estate, would never have formulated the intricacies of the Laws of Cricket or discussed its finer points far into the night. I would have had too much humour and not enough sense. For it is absurd, of 'course, but it is precisely the seriousness with which it had been treated over the years that has let the poetry in.
Those generations of pompous men in the Pavilion — a few of them doubtless were, and are — have done me and my kind a service. We may safely laugh at them but they have created a predictable frame inside which the unpredictable can safely happen. It is almost a nursery sense ot order, but within it I can achieve a sense of holiday difficult to find anywhere else.
But at the end of the day the ground, or rather the stands around the ground, are amazingly filthy. It is as though humankind can stand just so much order and then must put its dirty footprint on it, for sanity's sake. As I moved to the back gate in the evening I was ankle-deep in thousands of beer-cans, smashed plastic glasses and mounds of half-eaten junk food. Those biscuit-cushions were flying about, too, there was loud laughter, the mood was drunken, but reasonably friendly. And outside the ground, 'at the exit of the Members' Car Park, propped against walls or lying on the pavement, muttering, shouting, or staring blankly nowhere, the Members' cars nosing slowly between them, occupants looking neither to right nor left, were the drunkards and derelicts queueing to come in and clear up the mess.
The shock of the contrast is great. Inside there are the white seats and white flan- nels, the green formality of the grass, the violence of the game, contained within society, and outside, waiting, are those who for one reason or another have been incapable of playing society's game. True, there is the bridge-passage of the muck to prepare you, but they are still a shock. Nursery holidays within a sense of order are not allowed to last for long. Their names are taken at the gate and, if sufficiently sober, they are presented with a broom or shovel. These they hold proud- ly; like staffs of office, talking rather formally in small groups. We all need some formality, some society. They are unsuit- ably dressed for their work, clearly in their best clothes, to help them pass the inter- view at the gate. When one of them topples over he is cheerfully escorted back to the gate and called by his Christian name 'Come on, Paddy, you're no good tonight. 'I was tripped, Son, tripped!' Many of them are Irish. The English do not like excuses, but Ireland is an agricultural country and a big city is sometimes too much for that country people. It is some- times too much for me. It was distressing to watch them; some had bloody scabs on their faces from falls, or fights, some had faces that seemed to have collapsed frorn inside. It is a kind of hell. 'I never get used to it', said Gareth Williams, who organises them. 'Always think, "There but for the grace of God . . .".' He treats them firmlY and well, knows many of their names, for some come back again and again, there is competition for the work, at two pounds all hour. The order and morning clarity of Lord's depend on these.
One addresses me, broom on shoulder: 'You meet interesting ones here. That Brian Johnson, he's a nice man.' I say I believe he lives near the ground. 'How do you know that?' He is suspicious, perhaps wondering if I am one of the 'interesting ones'. I doubt that, I am too uneasy. I can only with difficulty bring myself to meet his eyes.
Previous page
