Lazy Eye by Donna Daley-Clarke

Author:Donna Daley-Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2009-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wind easterly fresh to strong: February 1971

Not now, but the first time, it looked like one big, big space; green, green with men like ants running in different directions. But I relaxed my eyes until the chaos turned into football pitches, over a hundred of them as far as I could see, all sides and on each grass oblong the men were connected by movement; running in the same direction, or they all have their hands on their hips and are leaning first to one side and then to the next, or they are a huddle of listeners all ears trained on one talker.

I link one arm through Hindy’s and one arm through Leighton’s, using them as sideways shields from wind whipping round the flat ground where there are no buildings to protect the body parts sticking out – nose, ears, fingertips. I watch a swell-bellied man pulling his socks up two pitches down.

The bodies here, all shapes and sizes and colours, are not for TV coverage; they belong to The Lions of Judah, Epping Accountants, The Lahore Londoners, Old School Boys, even The Fatboys. Their wives could leave them, their bosses sack them, they could find out the children they been raising are not their blood, no matter, all of them with talent and without will step on to the pitch every Sunday anyway.

Leighton whispers in my ear. ‘I’m going to run you a hot bath when we get home. Rub your back.’ He drops his voice until I can barely hear him and raises his forehead when he says ‘Rub your back.’ Leighton is a low talker, not feeling the need to shout. His words are to take or leave and he doesn’t seem to mind which. He whispers private thoughts for sharing, not making others move in closer, concentrate harder. The first time I heard his voice he was whispering.

I met Leighton at a shebeen in Tottenham. The walls were covered with egg boxes, stuck floor to ceiling to soak up sound. I was standing next to Dolores when he approached Hindy and whispered in her ear (he had to do that to be heard over the music). She pulled away, no thanks and took back her hand (I thought slowly, on purpose, so he could see her wedding band) and carried right on sipping a Cherry B. He moved along the line to me. Soon as I saw you I knew you would do for me was what he whispered. I didn’t refuse him for asking Hindy first – I was accustomed to coming second, but I objected to his ‘would do for me’ comment. I knew about ‘making do’, it was another way of saying ‘substitute’, which is what I did if the recipe said butter but I only had Stork margarine, and when the cake baked and I tested it the flavour vexed me and left me wishing I’d waited for the real thing.

Later that same year the three of us was at the

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