The Pavilion

From the novel “When Things Go Bang”

By three, the sun had lost most of its bite. I got bored with bowling into the net and wandered across the clipped grass towards the boundary. Beyond, I sank down gratefully in the cool of the long grass and played at making a rope from stems.

A trickling sound of running water attracted me.

The ditch was half-empty. I looked into the water and saw movement. Tiny minnows, silver and gold, swam in and out of the bullrushes.

A faint creaking sound made me look up. It came from the old pavilion, half-hidden by brush and scrub, uncut since the end of last year’s games. ‘Pavilion’ was a rather grand name for it. Really it wasn’t more than a shack. The cricket club built it from half inch planking, then whitewashed it. Two windows, sans curtains, squinted and flyspecked, glared at the field.

A few rickety wooden steps led up to an open walkway. I stepped to the left, on a whim, and pulled the doorknob, the one on the door marked ‘visitors’. The door swung open, so I walked inside.

He was sitting in the corner. The room had a distinctive smell of wood, old cricket pads, and dead flies, judging by their dessicated bodies, lying in droves on the windowsill.

He wore cricket shorts, cricket shoes, white socks, no pads. One of those white V-neck sweaters. He wasn’t old. He wasn’t young, either.

Why was he dressed for cricket? I looked around. Wooden locker doors hung open. Sunlight glowed through the window, sending a pattern of the frame and panes across the springy wooden floor. It had been a long time since anyone had painted the place. Dull white flakes of old paint lay in drifts in the angles between walls and floor.

“Hello. Where are you from?”

“Oh – the village. You know.” I gestured vaguely in the direction of the cinder road, perhaps a hundred metres down a rough track. “Been playing, have you?”

“Not for a while. Gammy knee.” He pointed to his left knee. “Look – you can see the scar.”

I moved closer. There seemed to be a puckering of the flesh there, a line –

“Come and sit here. See this?” he pointed at his left knee, “motorcycle crash. Couldn’t walk for a couple of months. I can still bat, but I can’t field too well. Here – ” He took my hand and put it on his knee. “You can feel the bone is not the right shape, can’t you?”

Feeling uneasy, I took my hand off his knee. “Yeah. Must’ve been a bad accident. What speed were you doin’?”

“Whatever, it was too fast.”

There was silence for a moment. Then he said, “Mind if I ask you a question?”

“A question? Yeah, sure.” I sneezed, without warning; the place was so dusty.

“Why do they come here to die, do you think? Why don’t they see what happened to the others?”

“What?” I was still wondering why someone’s knee could make me uneasy.

“The flies. All summer they come, and die like all the rest. Maybe it’s the same thing that makes men run to war.”

The evening sun, a deep ruby, slanted in through the window painting his face. I saw a pattern of lines etched across his cheek, etched deeply at the corners of his eyes. He looked up.

“Do you like to touch yourself? Down there?”

The silence stretched between us. Cold dropped through dusty air to settle on my arms as gooseflesh. “No.”

“Liar.” His faded cornflower eyes stared through me, through the planks, across the fields and far away. “Frogman liked to touch us down there. In the showers after the game. Play up and play the game, Jennings.”

“The game?” Despite my knowing it was foolish to speak, weren’t you supposed to humour crazy people? Something made me ask that question.

“Oh, the great game, the greatest game of all.” He stood up and went to peer out the window. “It’s going down.”

I thought I’d better be getting out of there. Still I hesitated, unwilling to precipitate the knowing –

But he moved to the door, the boards creaked on the verandah, his shadow there against the dying sun, just for an instant, then gone.

I sat there in silence until the first flight of ducks came over from the salt marsh.