The Day of the Griffiths
BY ANTHONY HARTLEY IHAD had a lot to drink for lunch. That was very neces- sary. Going to the first rugby football match I had ever attended seemed to make any excesses in this respect the merest prudence : only thus, I felt, could I pass an even remotely enjoyable afternoon. As 1 took the train for the Stade Colombes, I saw that my foresight had been amply justified. For the train was packed. Wedged between two sportifs in an atmosphere thick with garlic, Gauloises, and Toulouse accents (most of France's rugger-roving public come from the south- west with the sonorous names), it was a vague aftertaste of armagnac (another and, to my mind, a better product of the Midi) that kept me sane and ready to tackle the fifteen-minute, walk between the station and the stadium.
Meanwhile I brooded on ,the strange and significant fact that truffles, the Albigensians, M. Vincent Auriol and Rugby foot- ball all come from the same quarter of France. There must, I felt, be a fatality in it.
Soon the doors opened, some of the sportifs fell out, and we were at the station. Colombes lies beyond thd Seine to the north-west of Paris. It has that air of having been struck by a heavy-bombardment common to all the suburbs of the city. All around there are dusty unpaved streets, half-finished blocks of flats, and empty spaces filled with tin cans. There was a fair wind blowing, and through the clouds of dust I saw the crowd streaming down a road towards what looked like an immense corrugated-iron fence. Someone told me this was the stadium. On either side loomed forces of police and gardes republicaines of proportions usually reserved for the ratification of the Paris Agreements and events of similar public importance. There were even mounted gardes republi- caines, but they were not riding their horses. They were taking it easy among the tin cans, and their brass helmets with the horsehair plumes hung in a melancholy surrealist row on the palings of a dilapidated fence, swaying in the breeze like so many paintings by Chirico. It was at thit point that I became aware that the Welsh were present. Small bands of men in red and white tam-o'-shanters and favours, with a lurching walk and cheerful expression, were making their way in the same direction as myself. Some of them stopped off to buy leeks in a local greengrocer's. The• patron expected them to consume them raw and on the spot, but they didn't. They stuck them in their buttonholes instead.
At the stand the tribune de presse was full of alert-looking men with slouch hats pulled down over their eyes and ob- viously expert at shorthand. From the roof TV and newsreel cameramen swung and gesticulated like monkeys. To my horror I saw the people around actually beginning to take notes and draw complicated diagrams. Was this really neces- sary? I decided not and smoked Gauloises moodily. Soon the two teams popped up out of a hole in the ground (I am told this is quite normal, bu* it gave me a nasty shock at the time), 'God Save The Queen' was loyally sung by the English sporting journalists, the `Marseillaise' ignored by the French, and the game began.
The odd thing is that it was quite interesting. Perhaps that was due to the emotion of the crowd. A little man next to me pounded the desk with his fist and yelled, 'Vas-y Jean Prat, vas-y mon viex !' while faint but pursuing there came the competing ery of, 'Go it, Alan Thomas. go it. man And down below, on the field, beneath all the faces, the blue shirts and the red wove pleasant patterns against the turf which, oddly enough, was coloured green. Suddenly these evolutions ceased and I realised it was half-time. This, of course, posed a prob- lem, and it was with some horror that I realised there was no bar attached to the press stand. Going in search of one, I found myself locked out when I returned ('C'est bien la France, ca,' said a fellow-sufferer) and that the game had begun again in my absence.
This time the patterns were different. Blue was at the near end and red at the far. Everyone around me was writing like mad (what a pity that the Londoners never got into print after all that effort!), but I found that the whole thing was having a rather hypnotic effect on me. The roar of the crowd, the ceaseless weaving of the •players, the heat of the day—was I falling asleep? But then a thought aroused me: I should have to get back to Paris, and the crowds coming would be as nothing to the crowds returning, But if I left fifteen minutes before the end. . . . For a time desire struggled with duty. ,I need hardly say which won. Feeling like a criminal, I slunk past my intent colleagues, past the gates of the stadium, past the helmets, past the tin cans—to wait fifteen minutes for a train at the station.
Next day I read in France-Dimanche that Wales had won.
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