That evening Michael sits in his room examining the ten-pound note. He has seen ten-pound notes before but never owned one. The note had been slipped into his shirt pocket almost as an afterthought, but he knows it isn’t. The question Michael goes over and over again in his room is what to do with the money. He could give it to the club, to the team. He was, after all, collecting for the club, and had it not been for the club he would not have been on Webster’s property in the first place. So the club should get it. Really. But there were two payments, he points out to himself while dragging the edge of the note across his cheek as if he were shaving (which he now does irregularly). One for the club, one for Michael. And even when Webster had called him a good team man, it was said in such a way that suggested Webster had found, in Michael, one of his own, someone who goes alone and prefers it that way. A tone that suggested a man would be a fool to play for the team, that if he had any brains at all he would take the money and keep quiet, and that he best looked after the team by looking after himself. Webster, had never played for the team — which is why he is Webster and everybody else is just everybody else. He could call it Webster’s gift, but it is not a gift. Webster does not give gifts. Although he doesn’t know the Websters of the world, all the other Websters, that is, he knows that they’re out there and that they don’t give gifts.
He will give the coins to the club and keep the paper for himself. It has fallen into his lap with the neatness of something that was destined. It is out of his hands. The money has a pre-determined purpose and he will see that it meets its destiny.
Outside, through the open louvre windows of his room, the voice of Mrs Barlow carries across the fence, across the yard, and across the whole suburb for all he knows. The house is wrong, she wails. The street is ghastly. The suburb is stuck out on the edge of the world. She is ashamed of the address. Ashamed of him. It is always the same. He knows it all by heart now. Further up the street Bruckner’s dog howls periodically in the still night to the accompaniment of Younger’s hammer. He is out late, Albert Younger, with nothing better to do than piece the scraps of his house together.
Michael snaps to his feet, slips the ten-pound note into the old brown wallet he inherited from his father, and places the wallet on his bedside table. The club clinic, the training session for which he has practised throughout the summer, is now only days away. The ten-pound note has fallen into his pocket with the neatness of things destined to be. So when he steps out onto that wide, green oval in two days he will have feet. And with the feet will come speed, and everything else.
The next day the basement shop is cool and quiet like a library. Summers will come and go, but the smell of this shop in the years ahead will always be synonymous with the smell of summers past and of afternoons that stretch out forever and drive people underground. Michael has come straight from school. He knows what he wants. As he moves through the shop the radio voice of Hassett blends with the sleepy tranquillity of the place. He passes the sleeveless sweaters that can only be found here, passes the trousers and caps and socks, and stops at the boots.
They are white, new and crisp, and the rich smell of fresh leather rises from the boxes before him much as it does from a new football. He knows exactly which boots he wants, drops his school bag on the floor and soon finds them. But something is wrong. Some part of him suspected throughout the day that there was always going to be something wrong because it was so late in the season. As much as he tries he can’t find his size, the boots that were here the last time he was in the shop are gone. There is no size even near his. They are either children’s boots or giant’s boots. He lightly stamps his foot on the floor, enough to disturb things.
He hears Hassett’s voice and wonders who the question might be addressed to when he realises that Hassett is standing beside him.
‘Can I help you?’ he is saying, and Michael turns slowly towards him attempting to simultaneously register the nearness of Hassett as well as the content of his question. Hassett is patient, a quiet smile in his eyes, and Michael is surprised and pleased to see that the twinkle the newspaper articles refer to is there in life. It is while he is contemplating this that he suddenly blurts out a two-word response to the question.
‘The boots.’
‘Yes?’
‘They’re too big, or too small.’
Hassett nods as he eyes Michael’s feet, then checks the sizes printed on the remaining boxes.
‘That’s right. You’re a common size.’
‘Do you have any more?’ Michael persists.
‘No.’
‘But you’ll get more in?’
Hassett shakes his head.
‘You’re out of luck, I’m afraid.’
How can Michael tell him that all summer he has contemplated those boots. That if he is to have feet, he must have them. For a moment his annoyance — the same helpless childish rage that consumed so many of his father’s boozy Saturday nights — controls him. For a moment he forgets that he is talking to the man who was once captain of Australia. For a moment the patience and genial understanding of Hassett threaten to drive Michael up the walls of his crummy little basement shop — as does the famous twinkle in Hassett’s eyes, and suddenly Michael is behaving as if Hassett were just another shop assistant who doesn’t know his job.
‘Why not?’ Michael stammers, rousing the curiosity of the shop.
Hassett remains calm, his manner still genial, the twinkle still in his eyes, as he shakes his head a little sadly.
‘It’s the end of the season.’
Michael stands, his hands on his hips, staring at the floor, without speaking.
‘You’re a bowler?’
‘Yes.’ Michael doesn’t even look up.
It is in the short silence that follows, while Michael is looking down at the floor, that he sees them. Boots. Not the boots that he wants, but his size and he wonders why he didn’t notice them before. He impulsively reaches out and holds one up.
‘These?’
‘They’re batsman’s boots,’ Hassett says, all patience and geniality.
‘Does it matter?’ Michael asks, but Hassett shakes his head.
‘They’re too heavy. Look, there’s no spikes in the heels. They’re batsman’s boots.’
Hassett takes the boot from Michael as if removing an unnecessary temptation and places it back in its box. He looks up from the boots with a smile on his face.
‘You’d be a fool to buy them. And I’d be a crook to sell them to you.’
It is then that another customer catches his eye and he is gone. The matter of the boots is concluded.
But Michael doesn’t move. He must have them. When nobody is watching him he tries them on. They fit. Even with his grey school socks they fit. He places them back in the box and waits until Hassett is occupied at the other end of the shop discussing bats. He is talking to a man of his own vintage, and from the tone of their conversation he can tell that they will go on for some time. It’s enough for Michael to slip quietly up to the counter, where an assistant is standing at the cash register. Enough to pass the ten-pound note across and slip out up the stairs.
In the late-afternoon glare, Michael places the boots in his school bag, and as he walks up the street to the gaping mouth of the station, he carries more than boots in his bag. He carries his feet in his bag. The feet that will give him speed. The speed that will turn heads.