Love in Revolution Page 9

  He was right. I didn’t want to watch it either. Instead I looked at Skizi, staring and staring, trying to imprint her face on my retina. I thought of what she looked like when we slept together – mouth open, a crease between her closed eyes – and the shape of her body, small breasts, thin sinewy limbs . . . I thought about the smell of her bed, the musty blanket and indoor–outdoor smell, and about the drawings on her wall, beautiful and primitive, like cave paintings . . . I shut my eyes and tried to remember exactly what it had been like the first time we kissed. It made my heart beat faster just to think about it, and the hard, cold weight in my stomach softened. Somewhere a long way away the crowd applauded half-heartedly, jeered a little, muttered and unwrapped sweets and flapped their programmes. There was the thud of the ball, then a pause, another thud, shoes skidding on clay, more muttering . . . The referee said, ‘Thirty-five love . . . love thirty-five . . . thirty-five love . . . forty-love . . .’

  ‘He hasn’t got a point yet,’ Martin said. ‘Come on, Corazon, go for his head, like you did with the Bull . . .’

  I tried not to listen. Skizi, I thought. Skizi . . .

  ‘Forty-five love,’ the referee said, as if he was bored, and then, ‘Game, Mr Jelek.’

  Martin caught my eye, and grimaced. ‘Best of five, Esteya,’ he said. ‘There’s hope yet.’

  ‘Not the way he’s playing.’

  ‘He’s only a kid, anyway. Maybe he’ll win it next year.’

  I shrugged. Opposite me, Skizi was watching Angel. She looked very serious, as if she was praying. Suddenly I realised that the grass stains on her shirt were in a wide band, across her chest, like a sash: she’d stained her shirt on purpose, because she hadn’t got any green material. I felt a surge of something like amusement and jealousy, mixed.

  ‘Second game, Mr Corazon to serve. And . . . play.’

  To my surprise, he served well, and Jelek only just managed to get his hand to it. It smacked against the wall and came back wide, where Angel could lunge for it and send a gentle little lob looping back against the wall. It grazed the stone – just brushed the stone – and then dropped, dead weight. Jelek had run forward, but he swiped at the ball too soon, and hit it too hard. It shot past Angel, and bounced beyond the baseline.

  The referee cleared his throat, and said, ‘Ten love.’ He sounded relieved.

  The crowd cheered, although there was an ironic note underneath the encouragement.

  ‘There, you see?’ Martin said. ‘It’ll be all right. He was just nervous.’

  But he was still nervous; in fact, he looked even more tense, as if that point had reminded him of what he was playing for.

  He lost the serve on the next rally.

  I glanced sideways. Martin was chewing his bottom lip, his chin propped on his hands. On the other side of me, Leon was glowering. And in the stands opposite, Skizi was sitting still, so still . . .

  At least now I’d stopped hoping. I forced myself to breathe slowly, not to feel anything, while Jelek tore Angel apart. Jelek wasn’t even playing that well; it was just that Angel was like a rabbit transfixed by a weasel. I watched in a kind of miserable trance. That game passed very quickly. The final score was fifty fifteen.

  The excitement had gone out of the crowd now. They’d wanted to see Jelek win, most of them, but not like this, not so easily. A couple of people shouted insults as the players had their break. Angel glanced up, hunching his shoulders as if the words were missiles. And if it went on like this, someone probably would throw something – an apple core or a tomato, if he was lucky; a penny or a glass bottle, if he wasn’t.

  ‘Time, please. Mr Jelek to serve. And . . . play.’

  I watched the players walk back to the middle of the court, and wondered dully whether we’d be able to get an earlier train home than the one Mama had decided on.

  Jelek’s serve was sloppy, and spun away out of the court. His second serve was a little better, but it was out too. It was Jelek’s first double fault, and the crowd whistled and booed, as if they couldn’t believe that now he was playing badly too.

  A man in the stands opposite, just in front of Skizi, stood up and shouted something. He brought his hand up, jerked it forward in what I thought was the Communist salute, and then –

  But it wasn’t the Communist salute.

  And the bottle he’d thrown spun end over end so fast I only caught a glimpse of it, curving through the air towards the players.

  No one seemed to see it. No one reacted. The world stood still, and the only thing moving was the bottle, flashing in the sunlight, blurring, lethally fast. From where we were sitting, you couldn’t tell which player it was aimed at – where it was going to land, which face it was going to smash –

  I saw Skizi’s mouth open, her whole body jerk forward as she yelled. I couldn’t hear her voice, but her lips made the shape of, ‘Angel!’

  And somehow, magically, he looked round.

  I have never seen anyone move as fast as Angel did at that moment.

  Suddenly he was there, next to Jelek, with his hand in front of his face as if he was shielding his eyes from the sun.

  And the bottle was in his hand, intact.

  There was a moment of stillness. Jelek stared at him, his eyes wide. Then he glanced up at the stands, taking in what had happened. His mouth opened, and then closed again. He cleared his throat. In the silence it made a hoarse, dry sound.

  He said, ‘That would’ve hit me . . .’

  ‘Oh,’ Angel said. He hunched his shoulders and bowed his head, as if he’d done something wrong.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jelek said. He looked at the stands and back at the bottle in Angel’s hand. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said again, shaking his head. ‘If you can do that, then what the hell . . . ?’ He started to laugh.

  Angel frowned, and he followed Jelek’s gaze, staring at the bottle in his hand as if he was seeing it for the first time. He said, in a small voice, ‘I just . . . thought . . .’

  Jelek was still laughing. And slowly, with a kind of warm rumble, the audience joined in. Angel raised his head, and you could see that for a moment he thought everyone was laughing at him. Then the cheers began, and someone in the top of the stands started to chant: ‘Ang-el! Ang-el!’

  Jelek’s grin faded, but he slapped Angel on the shoulder and winked at the audience, as if Angel was a fan who wanted his picture taken with him.

  The referee blew a short blast on his whistle. The audience subsided, but they were still clapping, and Angel was looking round with an incredulous expression in his eyes. You could see he was confused – as if, as far as he was concerned, he hadn’t done anything special – but he had colour in his face now, and a spark in his eyes.

  And Hiram Jelek, I noticed, was looking definitely tight-lipped.

  ‘Love all,’ the referee said. ‘Mr Corazon to serve.’

  Angel served. It was a soft, wide-angled serve, that seemed to bounce off a hidden dent in the wall, and just clipped the line. Jelek hit it back, with a grunt, and Angel’s return was straight and low. The rally went on, shot after shot, the longest of the match so far. Jelek was suddenly having to fight; and he didn’t like it. He grunted again and smacked the ball, aiming for the corner of the court, and it flew over the line and hit the referee’s chair.

  ‘Five love,’ the referee said.

  And slowly, without doing anything spectacular, Angel went on getting points. I wouldn’t have recognised the way he played – nothing fluky, nothing clever – but it worked, all the same. Ten, twenty, thirty . . . Jelek was getting rattled, and he made mistake after mistake, while Angel just kept on playing.

  And between the points, there was a new note to the audience’s noise: a kind of hum of surprise and pleasure. They might see a decent game, after all . . .

  ‘Forty five,’ the referee said.

  Angel served. It was his first really fast serve. Jelek didn’t move: he just stared at the little puff of paint where the ball had landed on the line, and shrugge
d, shaking his head.

  ‘Forty-five five.’

  And the same serve again, precisely; except that this time Jelek scowled, and spun on his heel to walk back to his bottle of water and his towel.

  And the audience erupted.

  ‘Game Mr Corazon,’ the referee must have said, but no one heard him. ‘Mr Jelek leads, two games to one.’

  ‘My God,’ Martin said, shouting above the noise. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  Leon turned and said, ‘It’s just Jelek, being surprised that he can play at all. Once he’s got used to the idea, he’ll start playing properly again. You watch.’ He added, almost to himself, ‘They always underestimate their opponents, the upper classes . . .’

  But Jelek didn’t get used to the idea. When they walked back into the middle of the court he seemed distracted, and when the audience yelled he looked round, scanning their faces. He kept smoothing his moustache.

  And the next game went quickly. It was funny, because Jelek wasn’t exactly making mistakes any more; it was more that he seemed to be moving too slowly, not quite matching Angel’s pace.

  ‘Forty twenty,’ the referee said. His voice had taken on a new authority.

  The shouts of ‘Come on, Hiram!’ and ‘Come on, Angel!’ built to a crescendo and then died away. There was quiet again, only broken by the claxon of a police car a long way away.

  Martin whispered, ‘Breathe, Esteya.’

  Angel served. Jelek returned it. Then Angel sent it skimming vertically up the wall – it looped high over Jelek’s head – and it dropped just inside the baseline. In.

  ‘Game Mr Corazon. Two games all . . .’

  The noise smashed into us, so loud my ears were hurting.

  The referee let the players take a longer break than normal. Jelek took a gulp of his drink, gargled and spat, then wiped himself vigorously with the towel; but Angel only wandered over to the wall of the court and stood staring at it, without even remembering to have a drink.

  The referee took a deep breath, and said, ‘Final game. Mr Jelek to serve. And . . . play.’

  Angel turned and walked back to the middle of the court, still staring over his shoulder at the wall, as if he was trying to learn it by heart. Jelek stared at him for a long time. Then, with his jaw clenched, he took the ball from the official and served.

  Jelek wasn’t in the lead any more, but he wasn’t the best player in the country for nothing. When he served you could see, just from that one shot, that he wasn’t going to go away.

  But Angel was playing well now. No, not well. He was playing . . . unbelievably. It took a player like Hiram Jelek just to hang on to him. Everything seemed to be on his side: the ball, the sidelines, the wall . . . He did things that looked impossible, shot after shot, so even the people who hadn’t seen him play before started to realise that he wasn’t fluking anything. It wasn’t the devil’s own luck; it was genius.

  But Jelek was good, and he didn’t give up.

  The roar at the end of each point was deafening; and then it dropped into a silence so dense that it seemed as loud as the noise had been. I couldn’t breathe. My throat was dry and aching, and I realised I’d been shouting, along with everyone else. I couldn’t look anywhere but at the court, at Angel . . .

  The serve swung back and forth. Twenty twenty-five. Twenty-five twenty. Twenty twenty-five . . .

  When the score finally changed – thirty twenty, Angel’s serve – the roar was so loud I felt the vibrations in my bones, like thunder right overhead. I was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear my own voice. The stands were trembling under our feet, as if the noise could split them apart like a ship in a storm. Two more points, two more points . . . but there was no room to think, only to watch with my heart in my mouth, holding on to Martin’s hand as if I was in danger of being washed away. My pulse was shaking my whole body, saying: oh please, oh please, oh please . . .

  ‘Quiet, please,’ the referee shouted, pounding on his desk with his fist over and over again until, gradually, the crowd subsided.

  And then the silence was like nothing I’d ever heard before.

  I didn’t want to watch – I couldn’t watch – but I couldn’t close my eyes or look away either. Angel took the ball from the official, took a deep breath, and then served. He snatched a little at the serve, as if he didn’t want to think about it too much, but Jelek wasn’t quick enough to do anything more than smash it back against the wall. And neither player seemed to want to take a risk: shot after shot went into the middle of the court, bouncing at an easy height.

  It was Jelek who made the first move: suddenly, as if he’d had enough, he sent the ball spinning off the wall and into the far corner of the court. But Angel was there, smacking it back, dancing out of Jelek’s way to avoid a collision.

  I held on to Martin’s hand, hardly realising I was doing it, while the shots got more and more outrageous, the returns harder and harder.

  Martin hissed, ‘Esteya, let go of my hand, will you? I might need my fingers, one day.’

  Jelek’s next shot took the pace out of the ball, so it bounced off the wall and dropped dead weight to the ground. Angel did well to get to it, but he didn’t even seem out of breath. He knocked it upwards, almost vertical, so it brushed the wall and looped back over his head towards the back of the court. I thought it was going long, but Jelek jumped and smashed it back before it bounced.

  And missed.

  ‘Forty twenty,’ the referee said.

  Angel served. Jelek returned it. And then – as if he was just playing against the church wall somewhere, mucking about with a friend – Angel knocked the ball against the wall, straight and low, and sent it wide. It shot sideways, almost parallel with the wall, and hit the line in a puff of white dust.

  Jelek stood in the middle of the court, his shoulders sagging.

  The devil’s own luck, I thought. But it wasn’t luck.

  The referee said, ‘Final game and match, Mr Corazon.’

  It was like being in the middle of an explosion. The noise clawed at my eardrums, shook my bones, made the stands shake, like an earthquake. I was shouting – I couldn’t help myself – but I had my hands over my ears, trying to keep out the uproar.

  And Skizi was shouting too, with one fist in the air, as if she was giving the Communist salute.

  It went on for so long I thought it might never stop. But in the end it faded: not stopping, but receding a little, as if the tide had gone out.

  Jelek had gone over to his chair and was wiping himself down, flicking the towel furiously, as if he wanted to hit someone with it. But Angel was standing in the middle of the court, his mouth open and eyes blank, totally still. He didn’t even look happy; just completely stunned. A few photographers had raced to the front of the stands, and tomorrow Angel would be on the front of all the papers.

  ‘He looks like the village idiot,’ Martin said. ‘Honestly, he’s practically dribbling.’

  The referee got down from his chair and nodded to the official, who disappeared into the red-and-green tunnel and then re-emerged, holding the King’s Cup. It was smaller than I expected, but the wide, two-handled bowl shape was familiar. I could have drawn the King’s Cup with my eyes shut.

  And when Angel saw it, he unfroze. A slow, wonderful smile spread over his face, and he made a tiny movement with his hand, as if he couldn’t wait to touch it.

  Martin asked again, ‘So who’s going to present it? If the King isn’t here?’

  And the same question seemed to have occurred to the crowd, as the murmur grew louder again, with an aggressive, mutinous note to it. Jelek glanced round, up at the box, and then shrugged. He didn’t care; it wasn’t as if he’d won the Cup . . .

  The referee said something quietly to the official, and then announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I will now, as His Majesty’s appointed delegate, present the –’

  But he didn’t finish the sentence. The buzz of anger got louder and deeper. The crowd was supporting Angel now: after th
e game he’d just played, they couldn’t believe the referee was going to present the Cup . . . An apple core flew from the back row and landed damply on the baseline of the court.

  And then there was a bottle, and another, smashing on the clay like little glass bombs. The referee drew back, pulling the official with him, and glanced over at the ranks of policemen who had been guarding the ticket gates. They had their hands on their truncheons, and one of them nodded at the referee.

  But the crowd on the east side was overflowing the stand, surging and pushing at the barriers, catcalling and raining pennies and bits of rubbish on the court. A tomato hit one of the policemen, and he swung round, scowling.

  I was glad Skizi was in the stand opposite, not on the east side, where the trouble was. In spite of the sun I felt cold.

  The referee took the Cup from the official, and said, ‘On behalf of His Majesty, it’s my duty and honour to present the –’

  Angel took a step forward, beaming. But the noise from the east stand was overwhelming. The barrier was being battered down, and at the back of the stand there was a group of young men throwing everything they could get their hands on. The policemen were shuffling and glancing around, as if they were waiting for an order from someone.

  There was a shout from the royal box.

  The referee turned to look; so did the players, and the policemen.

  One of the young men – a kid really, a skinny, shaggy kid in a brown shirt – had climbed into the box somehow, and now he was standing on the throne, dancing a little jig of defiance. He shouted something, his whole face distorted, and then swung his arm back and threw a coin. One of the policemen cried out and stumbled back, blood running down his face. There was a crack, as if one of the stands had given way, and the kid in the box dropped to his knees, with a dark patch on his shirt.

  Not everyone noticed. The barrier fell with a crash, and people surged on to the court, shouting, pushing the policemen, trying to grab their weapons.

  But I saw the blood spread out from the bullet wound in the kid’s chest, and the policeman at the far end of the line look down at the gun in his hand in amazement, as if it had fired on its own.