The Book of Fame Read Online Free

Then a local happened to ask him a question and Bill took a backward step, fright took hold of his face, he shook his head and hurried away back to the hotel lobby. Jimmy Duncan wandered at leisure to a park bench by the watch tower. He yawned into his hand and plopped himself down, crossed his legs and lay his head back to bathe in the early morning sunshine. It was a lesson to us all.
    We took heart from Jimmy’s lead and soon were a familiar sight about Newton Abbot. We were invited out to musicals and theatres, to publicsmoking concerts. At the invitation of Lord Clifford and the Earl of Devon, Gallaher, Jimmy Duncan, Billy Stead and Mister Dixon went for a ride in a motor car and came swaggering back to the Globe with shining faces. They’d travelled over one hundred miles into the English countryside. The rest of us walked. Or we cycled. We cycled through the green countryside to Teignmouth, Totes, Paington. Along the Devonshire lanes we saw elements of ‘time’ and ‘order’ bundled up in thick hedgerows, backed by wide-spreading elms, fern, ivy, mosses and wild flowers. And when you looked at those elms and mosses and wild flowers you found yourself looking past them to the gorsey clay hillsides of home. In one you saw the start of something and in the other the pretty finish.
    Did we feel at home? Among the English, and English things?
    But we had these things too: sparrows, thrushes, macrocarpas. Tea and potatoes.
    On the coast walk between Carbis Bay and St Ives, we found the odd patch of gorse, even cabbage trees.
    We recognised the mould from which we’d been cast. In the mannerisms and transactions of the people, we saw ourselves—
    the way a barman with one neat action sweeps the bar top dry before setting down a pint of Guinness
    the chirpy skill of the fruiterer filling the bag with apples and spinning it to a twist at the opening
    the matey banter of the cabbies, and the tenderness with which they spoke to their horses: ‘Go on ’ome with yer Samantha’
    the knowledge of oceans contained in the faces of the Devon and Cornishmen
    the same measuring sideways glance out the corner of an Irishman’s face when a leg-pull was on
    and this! the same nutty obsession for the state of the weather
    and that English silence aboard trains, wily as trout
    the choreography and fair play of the English in numbers; first, the
    women and the children, then the gentlemen
    the time given to the discussion of dogs
    or, on the stillest of mornings, with the world hanging by a thread, the maniacal urge to laugh at the top of our voices
    That was us as well.
    Time and time again, we’d catch them looking at us,
    measuring and evaluating.
    They felt our biceps
    asked us to step up on the scales
    stared down our throats
    counted our teeth
    and challenged us to Indian arm wrestles.
    Then that first game in Devon
    Played in golden farmlight.
    On the train up to Exeter we hardly spoke to one another.
    Our attention wandered out the carriage window but nothing caught
    our interest.
    A sail boat.
    An elderly couple, the man with only one arm holding a fishing rod.
    A dog wagged its tail.
    The world didn’t look a serious enough place for our mood.
    Where the train left the coast to follow the edge of a marshland Mister
    Dixon got to his feet; he scratched himself and looked perplexed. Hewalked up and down a few times. He fossicked in his pocket for his speech notes and tips on VIP greetings.
    In Exeter we visited the great cathedral and walked around the city streets. We were supposedly taking an interest but O’Sullivan and Stead kept needing to find a toilet, and Mister Dixon kept disappearing into the graveyard with his speech notes.
    After lunch at the Half Moon Hotel, our two coaches followed the river to the County Ground. We crossed the river, passed under a bridge and turned down a narrow street of houses. At the end of the street we could see long lines of people passing through the gates, the men in caps and top