The Mighty Walzer (13 page)

But where did this leave me? Ought I to be deliberately netting my returns to thank him for netting his? Where did reciprocity end in a situation like this? I looked to Aishky. ‘Dave Hancocks is one of ping-pong’s gentlemen,’ he whispered to me. ‘He isn’t looking for any favours. Just play your game.’

Twink too had some advice for me. ‘Don’t insult the guy by holding back,’ he said.

Easier said than done. I was falling in love with the man. He had saved me from humiliation. He had stuck it to Gershom in the most demonstrative way possible, short of smacking him in the face. And he praised me, once I had recovered sufficiently to be able to play some shots, in a manner that sent little warm shivers — love-warm, not shame-warm — down my legs. ‘Shot, kid,’ he said, and I tingled. ‘Unlucky,’ he said, shaking his head and smiling, and I fear that I tingled even more.

There was something of the foot soldier about Dave Hancocks. Strong stocky legs, a low centre of gravity, resolution, dependability. You could imagine him walking across the Alps with Hannibal, carrying the General’s sandwiches. He had a Roman profile too. And a head perhaps a little too large for his body. Anyone wanting to be picky about Dave Hancocks’s appearance might have wondered whether he wasn’t too much like a
dwarf — not exactly a dwarf but too much like one — to be considered handsome. For my
part I
can only state that I have always admired the Roman-dwarf look on a man. I suppose I was responsive to the shape because it was a refined and more mobile version of my father’s side. I had been brought up to believe that a big head on a square squat body was a mark of manliness.

Under other circumstances, later in my career, and without Gershom around to vex the chemistry, I would gladly have lost to Dave Hancocks. ‘Unlucky,’ he would have said, ‘unlucky, kid,’ and I would have gone soft inside his strong consolatory handshake. Of course I didn’t know at the time that I wanted to yield to him. What I am describing comes to a man only after many years of reflection; and I refer to it for no other reason than that it is interesting to me to realize that the corrupt germ of voluptuous defeatism was lodged in my system so early.

As it was, I had to make do with the lesser voluptuousness of beating him. It was plenty to be going on with. ‘Very well played,’ he said, looking up at me, shaking my hand and bowing. He was wonderfully courteous. A postal clerk by day, a little dark top-heavy troubadour of ping-pong by night.

‘Yes, very well played,’ Aishky and Twink chorused.

We all knew what we knew. That I’d beaten Gershom Finkel as well as Dave Hancocks.

When he’d finished filling out the scorecard, Gershom Finkel came over to where I was sitting with my towel on my head. I felt it go dark around me. ‘I don’t mind spending a bit of time helping you to get that serve right,’ he said.

I didn’t come out of my towel. I felt very calm in there. Very calm for me. It was as if I’d been born with ringing ears and suddenly they’d stopped. I could hear the world clearly at last. I heard Aishky taking the net down. I heard Twink zipping up the legs of his tracksuit and humming ‘Che gelida manina’ to himself. Then, ‘Fuck off, Gershom,’ I heard myself say.

It’s a wonderful moment in the life of a shy young person when
he swears at a fully grown adult for the first time. It’s like a miracle cure. It’s like waking up with strong legs on your second morning in Lourdes. Speaking for myself it was as though I had all at once become a man.

So I stayed under the towel a little longer, just in case it wasn’t true.

I had a lot to trawl through before I could get to sleep that night. The perfect loveliness of winning. The confirmation of that old Walzer conviction — that I was destined for great things. My storm-resistant forehand chop, which I actually replayed as I lay on my bed, chopping at shadows. The kindness of my friends. My acceptance, signalled by the consideration shown to me by the Roman dwarf, into the affections of men. But most of all I kept saying over and over again, because they were sweeter than any words I had ever previously heard myself utter, Fuck off, Gershom … Fuck off, Gershom … Fuck off, Gershom …’

THIRD DIVISION NORTH

LEADING INDIVIDUAL AVERAGES

Manchester and District Table Tennis League, Official Handbook,
Season 1956/57

THAT WAS HOW the season went for us. Forgive the sin of pride. But percentages are percentages.

Having come of age against the Post Office I never lost another league match. What the figures don’t reveal is that I was never once taken to three games either. And never once to deuce. I was unbeatable. Until I took my revenge against him at home, Jack Cartwright was sitting pretty on top of the averages. Played thirty, won thirty. All without raising a sweat. The first of those subsequent ten defeats was inflicted by me. 21–5, 21–3. Funny
how some scores you always remember. He must have had trouble forgetting too; he made the averages by the skin of his clicking teeth and retired at the end of the season. Fall to your prayers, old man.

Yes, there was needle in it. Aishky had made the brave but wise decision not to play Sheeny in the return match against Allied Jam and Marmalade. The Miles Platting Affair, for which Cynthia Cartwright had received neither compensation nor apology, still rumbled on. ‘When I see that little pervert Waxman again I’ll break his bloody nose, rules or no rules,’ Jack Cartwright was reported to have been going round saying.

This confirmed Selwyn Marks’s darkest suspicions. ‘There you are, didn’t I tell you? Nose. “I’ll break his bloody
nose.”
Didn’t I say they were anti-Semites?’

‘Selwyn, everyone’s got a nose,’ Aishky said.

‘Yeah, yeah. And everyone’s got a chin too. But he isn’t saying, “I’ll break his chin,” is he? He’s saying nose.
Nose.’

To be on the safe side Aishky rested Selwyn as well. We were running hot, heading the table, certain of promotion. We could afford to risk Louis and go in a man short. We’d forgotten what it was like to lose.

Even with Sheeny and Selwyn out of the way the confrontation turned ugly. Our opponents came wanting to find fault with us, and to be honest that wasn’t difficult to do. For a start we were never well supplied with match balls. As Club Secretary it was up to Aishky to see to it that there was always a box of new *** balls to hand on match night. Week after week we ran out, discovered that the box was empty, or that it was full of used balls and cracked balls, balls of a lower denomination, two-star, one-star, no star at all, balls with dents in them or with ill-fitting seams, balls through which you could see a pin-prick of light, balls which inexplicably rattled or sighed, balls which seemed all right, which defied the most scrupulous investigation and testing, but which plocked hollow the moment you struck them. It wasn’t meanness that
stopped Aishky going out and stocking up with new match balls. It was indifference. He no more understood the reason for a high quality ball than he understood why Twink needed to play in a Fred Perry shirt and short hasen. He himself could have played with a hard-boiled egg and not noticed the difference.

Two plocks into his knock-up with Twink, Jack Cartwright was asking for a new ball. Aishky emptied a long box of used and grubby pills on to the table. Jack Cartwright rolled each of them in turn with his bat, round and round as though he were trying to get an ancient stain out of the table, his ear cocked like a wise old rat’s, pressing until the table threatened to give way and his pimples squeaked. A golf ball wouldn’t have survived that kind of treatment. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Nope … nope … nope … nope.’

‘Those are all we’ve got,’ Aishky laughed.

Cartwright went over to the patchwork of leather elbow protectors that was his jacket and brought out the rule book from its inside pocket. It too was well worn, like a miser’s cashbook. ‘Balls …’ he said aloud, leafing through. ‘Balls …’

It was Twink who felt the humiliation most keenly. He had been skipping around the room during Cartwright’s interrogation of our stock of balls, running on the spot and practising attacking shots, anxious to keep his muscles stretched and his temperature even. Now he was furious with Aishky. ‘How many times have I told you about this?’ he said.

Aishky shrugged. Tomorrow he would need a long lie down, but tonight he could shrug. ‘If balls are so important to you,’ he said, ‘why don’t you carry some around yourself?’

‘You know why,’ Twink said.

‘Yeah — because you’re a nudnik. Because you like kopdreinish.’

Twink shook his head. ‘Believe me, Aishky, if you think this gives me any pleasure …’

‘If it doesn’t give you any pleasure, then stop. You look after the balls. I nominate you. Theo Starr,
Ball Shamess.’

‘Aishky, please. Keep your voice down. You know why I can’t carry balls in my kit.’

‘Say it. I want to hear you say it.’

Twink lowered his eyes. He could be very girlish. ‘The dog.’

‘The dog!’ Aishky looked at each of us in turn. Our friend was a madman. Did we hear? ‘The dog!’ Then of Twink himself he asked, ‘What’s the dog got to do with it?’

‘You know what.’

‘I want to hear you say it.’

Twink fluttered again. ‘I’m frightened of the dog swallowing a ball,’ he said. ‘You know what happened to Jackie Strulovitch’s dog.’

‘Moody-merchant! That was a marble.’

‘No it wasn’t, Aishky. It was a table tennis ball. Jackie Strulovitch’s dog choked to death on a Barna ***.’

‘So because I don’t have a dog I’ve got to shlepp boxes of balls around with me?’

‘Aishky, you’re the team captain,’ Twink said. And then with slow and awful deliberateness, ‘Go. And. Get. A. Box. Of. Balls.’

He had that wild Bug and Dniester us-and-them look in his eyes. When one of
us
looked like that it was in the belief that we could magic words and that none of
them
would hear what we were saying.

Aishky consulted his watch. ‘It’s eight o’clock at night. Where am I going to get a box of balls? The off-licence?’

‘Aishk, get in your car,’ Twink said. ‘Drive over to the Maccabi. And beg them for a box of balls.’

Aishky threw him the keys.

‘Aishky, I’m in my shorts.’

‘So? Put your hasen on.’

‘Aishky, I suffer from asthma. You’re asking me to go out in the cold in my shorts when I’m sweating?’

‘You want the balls, you go for them.’

‘Aishky, you know I can’t drive.’

Now Aishky stood up. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He reminded me of my father. ‘Thank you for admitting there is something you can’t do.’

And he drove to the Maccabi on Middleton Road and begged them for a box of match balls.

Then there was the problem of the slippery floor. Why the floor of a room that was used only for table tennis, storing mops, and a once-a-year Chanukkah party had to be so highly polished that even a twelve-year-old could admire his moustache in it, no responsible person at the Akiva was able to explain. They were nice old boards and the caretaker took pride in them. Ask the caretaker … except don’t. The club had never had a caretaker who took better care. Just loz him ein. Leave him alone. Who can understand the mind of a caretaker? What he did, he did. You don’t upset the shaygets.

We’d got used to the problem ourselves. We’d spit on the floor between points and rub our shoes in the puddle. For visiting teams we provided a wet cloth. Only tonight Aishky had mislaid the cloth.

‘On my life, Aishky,’ Twink said, the minute Aishky was back from the Maccabi, ‘if you don’t find that cloth I’ll rip the shirt off your back.’

‘Don’t do that, Sonny Jim,’ Jack Cartwright said. ‘Just wait till one of us goes over and breaks a leg, then we can sue you for all you’ve got.’

It was a good job Selwyn had been told to stay at home. ‘Did you hear that?
Sue
you for all you’ve
got!’

And as if the balls and the floorboards weren’t enough, we slipped up on refreshments as well. At the best of times hospitality wasn’t our strong suit. A cup of weak tea and a sweet biscuit each was the most we were usually able to dig up. Once again the problem wasn’t meanness. Aishky just wasn’t a fresser. He liked a big lunch, and there was always something hot waiting
for him when he got home to his mother after a match, otherwise he didn’t think about food. ‘You want delicatessen, you go and buy delicatessen,’ he told Twink. But Twink wasn’t much of a picker either.

Tonight though — and what made it worse was that the A. J. M. was famously hospitable: milky Nescafés, PG Tips, hot chocolates, Lucozades, bitter lemons, club sodas and all the jam fancies and marmalade doughnuts you could eat — tonight, though, the element in our kettle had broken and because Passover was in the wind all we had to offer in the way of solids was a box of dry matzos and a bag of kichels. In fact a kichel is a delicacy, provided you have the right expectations of what it is you are eating and are given a strong cup of tea or a glass of sweet red wine to dunk it in. But there was no tea and no wine.