Alas for theory! Alas for abiding fears! Attend to the sequel. A chance for athletic distinction, as I thought, presently offered itself. The occasion was the annual Isabella Imperial sports. It was clear to me that I stood every chance of winning the hundred yards, the two-twenty and the four-forty in my group. The reasons were special and are now not quite clear in my own mind. It had to do with the entry date or my birthday or a combination of both — one day or so either way would have made all the difference; and to this was added the fact that the kindergarten of Isabella Imperial, abolished some years before, then briefly revived, had just been finally abolished and the toddlers incorporated into the main school. For them there were two groups, one under eleven or under ten the other under thirteen or twelve. It was in this last group that a unique chance had placed me. And in this group I was like a giant. Because of the stop-and-start intake of the kindergarten I was competing with children who were fifteen or eighteen months younger. The childish, blotted signatures of entrants on the notice-board confirmed this happy fact.
I took up athletics. I made my mother get me running shorts and I practised assiduously in the college grounds in the afternoons. I imitated the older athletes. After a practice run I did not simply stop. I ran myself down slowly, reining myself in, so that at the end I was like a dancer, elbows high, lightly clenched arms extended and working in rhythm with the high-lifted legs. It amused me to see my juvenile rivals, a scramble of brittle little limbs at one end of the playing field, also practising in this way. They too rubbed themselves down with Canadian Healing Oil or Sloan’s Liniment, like me, like the older athletes with developed, hairy legs.
My new character did not pass unnoticed at home. It was put down to the influence of Cecil and aroused distaste in my father, quiet pleasure in my mother, and pride and relief in my sisters who, having given up my father, had no close male to lean on or talk about. The women liked the running shorts, the exposed and massaged limbs, the promise of a manhood which, with my ‘nervousness’, must have seemed to them somewhat delayed. My father’s distaste I interpreted as jealousy; it gave me an unpleasant feeling. Unpleasant too was the interest of the women. Isabella Imperial had been divided some time before, quite arbitrarily, by a headmaster fresh from England, into houses, the idea no doubt being that the division would encourage team spirit and competitiveness. The idea had fallen flat. But the houses and their emblems, devised by this same headmaster, had remained. They came to life once a year, on sports day. My mother began to embroider the red emblem of my house on my running vest. She worked on it with love, elaborating in her own fanciful way on an already fanciful design. She worked on it evening after evening, as a woman works on baby clothes. The baby-clothes preparations at home were matched by the week-long preparation of the ground at schooclass="underline" the marking out of lanes, the sticking up of little flags, the erection of tents and marquees. I began to feel that my endeavour was not only unimportant but was being taken out of my hands. I finally lost my temper when I discovered that my sisters had begun to assume that they were going to the sports. I objected. They insisted; they had been making their own preparations. I became abusive. They abused me back. To punish me, they decided they would leave me alone and have nothing more to do with me. I was relieved: it had been a close thing.
The day came. Breakfast astonished me. We usually breakfasted simply, just cocoa or tea with buttered bread and sometimes avocadoes or plantains. Now I was given orange juice, corn flakes, eggs, toast and jam. To me such a breakfast was associated with high days and for this reason was slightly repugnant. All ritual embarrassed me, and I was doubly embarrassed that this day should have been deemed a high day. I was jumpy and it was only when I was alternately crunching and squelching through the corn flakes that I recalled, with shame, the dream I had had. It was a double dream, the dream within the dream, when the dreamer, fearful for the reality of his joy, questions himself whether he is dreaming and decides he is not. I had dreamt that I was a baby again and at my mother’s breast. What joy! The breast on my cheek and mouth: a consoling weight, the closeness of soft, smooth flesh. It had been at dusk, in a vague setting, no lights, in a back veranda, all around a blur of dark bush. My mother rocked and I had the freedom of her breast. A dream? But no, I was not dreaming. What pain then, what shame, to awaken!
Seeing her now, the embroiderer of my house colours, so unsuspecting, I felt secret added to secret, weight to weight. But with lucidity and the ordinary light of day the shame passed. Just before lunch I put on the vest with the red badge and covered it with my shirt. And I was surprised by a feeling of high pleasure when, after kissing my mother on the fern-hung veranda of our old-fashioned timber house, I stepped out into the street and was alone, free of mother and sisters, without a father: myself alone. The camera was in the sky. I was a man apart, disentangled from the camouflage of people. The street, usually to me so dull, was now an avenue to wonder.
But when I came to the residential area in which Isabella Imperial was set, something of the Saturday-afternoon lassitude of silent, wide-open houses made itself felt. My jumpiness returned; I was powerless to check it. And as soon as, entering the college grounds by the side gate, I saw the tents and the marquees and the carefully dressed men and women and boys and girls — hundreds of preparations like my own — I felt again the unimportance of my endeavour. My courage ebbed and was replaced by a type of weariness.
The sports began and the grounds were presently a confusion of unrelated and apparently private activities. The patient long distance runners plodded on unnoticed as if fulfilling a vow; there were practice sprints and practice starts and real races at the same time; you turned here and saw the long jump, you turned there and saw the high jump. Scattered about the bustling semi-nude were calm, fully dressed groups conversing or drinking. I saw my rivals. Many had their parents with them. Many were already stripped and displayed embroidered badges as fussy as my own, which was still hidden by my shirt. So many private preparations! When the announcement came, and the boys ambled over earnestly to the starting line and one or two made stylish practice starts, I knew I would never join them, not for that race or the others. They lined up; a master looked them over with a revolver in his hand. My decision was made; my weariness and feeling of unimportance vanished. The revolver was fired and the race was run. It was the hundred yards; it was over quickly and aroused little attention. The master was already himself running off somewhere else, silver whistle in his mouth, his tie flapping, a scribbling pad in one hand and the revolver in the other. I joined the traditional scrimmage for free ice-cream. Then I wandered about the marquees. After some time relief turned to insipidity and at the end, out of boredom as much as anything else, I took part in the four-forty handicap for the whole school — a free-for-all, no entrance fee or signing on required, small boys given a hundred or even two hundred yards’ distance — and so with the whole school, a moving multicoloured mangrove of legs, I ran, one pair of legs among many, my house badge still below my shirt. I dropped out and melted unnoticed into the crowd at the centre. Some of the carefully dressed men were now a little beaten up with drink and indulging in a final boisterousness; the girls were tired; the faces of the women were shining. But amid the traditional clowning of the four-forty there was still a pocket of official gravity, much shuffling of papers and comparing of notes: the prize-giving was to follow. The crowd was drifting towards the tent with cups and trophies.