A Sporting Chance

I pick up the entry form from the pile on the table and start to write:

Name: Wesley Hammond

Race: 400 metres (under 19s)

Hospital: Loxley Central

Department: Administration

The form takes all of eighteen-point-four seconds to fill in. I know because I time it. But already, I’m crumpling it in my hand and doing a rewrite, aiming to shave off a couple of seconds. I don’t succeed, merely whittle point-seven seconds from the original. I leave it at that.

The race organiser, a middle-aged woman, smiles brightly. ‘Good luck,’ she says.

I give what I hope is a friendly shrug and hand her the entry form. At least the writing’s legible.

Now if she’d asked me those four simple questions, she could’ve been looking at a good minute before she got a reply. The wait could even be as much as three. And on a bad day she might not get an answer at all.

It’s all about access. The words in my head are perfectly formed, it’s just leaving my mouth they stutter and stumble, drip letters and smear the sense of what I’m trying to say. I hate them for their betrayal.

‘You’re just like your father,’ my mother often tells me. ‘He’s never uttered a scrap of sense either.’

I’ve been working at Loxley Central Hospital for three weeks now, and today’s the annual sporting event with Loxley’s sister hospital, St Margaret’s. My manager suggested I attend. He has ambitions of putting his department on the sporting map.

‘Training, that’s the key. Bit late this year, Wesley, lad, just do your best. Next year we’ll really show ’em. Get a group together, eh?’

He thinks I’m a team player. I listed sport as a hobby on my application form. But that’s a lie. I’m a runner, and everyone knows running is solitary.

Not that I told him. There’s no explaining some things, and my treacherous words could never begin to describe half of what I feel. Those grey mornings when the mist hits cold and damp against my face. The steamy afternoons when my sweat’s running before I am. Windy runs that snatch my breath, or the rainy ones, drenching me clean. I can’t choose between them. I run them all. They allow my thoughts to sprint a circuit of their own, while my eyes feast on the horizon, a distant blue haze, where my dreams are aimed.

My race starts in one hour, two minutes, and twelve seconds.

I don’t know where I get my preoccupation with time. Maybe its relentless march reassures me. The days, the nights, the weeks, even the years broken into practicable units. One disaster might follow another but the clock ticks on, ever forward, no looking back over its shoulder. It challenges me to do the same, but sometimes that’s impossible.

Fifty-seven weeks and three days ago, Doris, my grandmother, died. Her death changed everything, shading my memories with uncertainty. I can no longer think of that small figure in her large apron, doling out cups of builder’s tea and chocolate cake—burnt on the edges—as the real Doris. That memory’s been snatched away. Along with the platitudes that fell from her mouth with astonishing regularity.

‘Grab each minute, make every second count.’ Or, another favourite: ‘Life’s an adventure, Wesley. Remember that.’

The first time she told me that, was sixteen hours before a big sports event at my new school, when I begged her to write me a sick note. My stammer had taken hold that summer term and I could barely string two words together. But I also knew I was the fastest runner and didn’t want any attention focused on me.

‘So lose,’ she scoffed.

‘I can’t.’

‘No, you can’t, because it’s a lie. Just like I can’t lie to your teachers.’

Instead, she came and watched, and cheered loudly at my win.

Life’s an adventure seemed a good motto back then, but now it feels like the biggest lie of all time. Doris could hardly have been dwelling on life’s adventures when she ended her own life.

She was found in a room of a local hotel, wearing only a leopard-skin leotard and my grandfather’s watch. The glass face was smashed and the hands placed at twelve. The significance worries me. Did she mean midday or midnight? My mother refuses any discussion.

‘Wesley, stop being a freak,’ she says, or, ‘fr-fr-freak,’ when she’s in a really bad mood.

She’s never forgiven Doris for dying, or rather, dying that way. She shouted and cried and hurled abuse into the fiery furnace of our back boiler, all the while poking the offending leotard into the flames, erasing any trace of the wildcat hidden behind Doris’ mild exterior. My mother’s stark pain coloured her skin to raw dough. Only her words flamed red.

‘How dare she have this secret. This wild side,’ she screamed in my face. Her fingers clutched my shirt sleeve, twisting the material as if to squeeze answers from the fabric. ‘Why wasn’t she brave sooner? When it mattered? When she could have saved me?’

I play with time. Three thousand seconds till my race.

The sun struggles to break through an overcast sky and finds a chink in the cloudy armour, transforming the pavilion into a jaunty, colourful marketplace. Stalls heave with books, bric-a-brac and T-shirts in primary colours with slogans in bold lettering. A long queue forms around a table full of traybakes, coffee cake and chocolate brownies, all donated by the Women’s Institute.

‘Willing Idiots,’ Grandfather Jim called them when Doris became a member. She’d rolled her eyes at me, but only when she was sure he wouldn’t see.

Whoops and cheers drift over from the children’s area, where a three-legged race is in progress. Doctors, nurses, porters, and admin workers are indiscernible from one another, but there’s no one I know. Still, I’m not worried. Life’s an adventure, Wesley.

My mother would’ve liked adventures. She wanted to run away and leave us all. She said so often enough. She was hard pushed to decide which was the bigger irritant, her Ne’er-Do-Well Husband—she actually called him that—or me, her Fool of a Son. From time to time, she included Doris and Jim in her shrieking tirade, but as it turned out those angry outbursts were just idle threats, for it was the Ne’er-Do-Well who beat us all to the finishing post.

That’s right. The only adventurer in the family turned out to be my father. He left for work two days before my seventh birthday and never came home again. He went to stay with a woman who signed herself as “Auntie Jean” on the birthday card that arrived on the doormat a week later. My mother tore it to bits. I think she would’ve shredded it into a million pieces if she could.

‘How dare he let that tarty cow contaminate this house? The cheek of the slag, writing to you.’

I didn’t know what my mother was talking about, but I swear that was the moment my vocal chords shrivelled away. They didn’t stand a chance in the scorching heat of her indignation.

Forty minutes, forty seconds still to go.

I walk over to the far side of the field to look at the trophies. The four-hundred-metre trophy is an impressive piece, an Oscar of the sporting world, but I prefer the relay winner’s prize: a dishevelled woman, her hair flying, arms outstretched, reaching for the baton. I touch the tip of her toe, peeking from under her resin-cast gown. I like what she represents. Team spirit. Fellowship. Unity.

I remember my first win for the school team. It was especially sweet, because I beat TJ Black by a whole thirty-three-point-six seconds. I suppose I should’ve thanked him. Years of having TJ hot in pursuit—hot breathed, hot on my heels—gave me a certain incentive to speed up. Strange how life rewards you when all you’re doing is coping with its dirty tricks. But no matter how fast I ran, I could never quite outdo his taunting cries.

‘I’ll get you, W-W-Wesley, you prick…’

W-W-Wesley. Even I think of it as four syllables. That’s the trouble with names: they define you.

My mother’s name is Loretta. What were Doris and Jim thinking? A name like that has expectations. If only they’d known they were setting little Loretta up for disappointment. She didn’t want to blend in, she yearned for the exotic and thought she’d found it in the Ne’er-Do-Well with his smart chat and fancy suits. She should have known better when he called her Ett.

‘Get us a cuppa, Ett.’

Then he called her “Twisted Bitch” and “Nagging Cow” before he upped and left.

‘Ett her up and spat her out,’ I overheard Doris saying, not long after he had gone.

Only ten minutes, thirty-four seconds left to wait.

I start a warm up jog on the spot while I watch the women’s one-hundred-metre sprint. A nurse from A&E wins.

Then the freckled little red-head from my department comes in next, one-point-two seconds later. Our manager will have something to say about that.

My jogging’s interspersed with stretches. Nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds to go. The race is all I can think about. I guess running’s in my blood.

The year I was chosen to run for the County, I discovered running was indeed a peculiarity to our family. What a shock to find I wasn’t the only sportsperson within our ever-decreasing band of nonconformists. I followed in the unlikely steps of my mother. Of course it wasn’t my mother who told me this, that would’ve been too much like having a conversation. It was Doris who broke the news while we were chewing our way through her badly made sandwiches—too much margarine, too little jam.

‘Your mother used to run. Won ribbons she did. Ran for the County, just like you.’

My mother ignored her. ‘Drink your tea, Wesley. It’s time we were off.’

Until then I’d never considered running as a family trait, unless the Ne’er-Do-Well running out on us counted.

Certainly Grandfather Jim was no athlete. He was a smoker and a drinker, although he did stop for a while after his first heart attack. He remained red-faced and breathless though, probably due more to bad-temper than lack of oxygen. He had another heart attack when Doris was found.

It was guilt that killed him. He was a spendthrift and a womaniser, if there was any truth in Doris’ sad little exit note.

‘You are a spendthrift and a womaniser. I can’t stand this life anymore. I should have married someone who made me laugh.’

The note came to light when we were sorting through her stuff for the local charity shop. It was squashed into one of her shoes. Her favourite black ones with the silver buckle that she said went with everything. I always thought they were something of an oddity, but then, as we found out, so was she. I didn’t show it to my mother. She’s disappointed enough with her lot in life. Losing her father after Doris, silenced her, which was as disconcerting as her explosive anger.

I think Grandfather Jim did the decent thing, dying quickly, no lingering. He saved me the effort of having to sit by his bedside, hold his hand, and pretend I’m sorry to see him go. My mother thinks she loves him, but he doesn’t deserve her devotion. He’s never said a kind word to her.

In twenty-two hours, I’m moving into the small bedsit that comes with the job. I won’t be sorry to leave the house we were forced to move into after the Ne’er-Do-Well left, and saying good-bye to the bedroom that housed my possessions for the past eleven years, five months and three days won’t be difficult.

My mother isn’t one for comfort, she’s a functional mother, but when I told her I was moving out, she seemed to diminish in size. She’s always thought of me as the burr on her jumper, one of those sticky little buggers that won’t pry loose. Guess she’s not so sure now.

I can see she’s tired of losing people—Doris, Jim, the Ne’er-Do-Well, herself—and wants it to stop. There’s sadness in her eyes when she looks at me, and she’s taken to tapping her lips to stop her words spilling out.

I want her to know I’m here for her but I’m not such a fool of a son as to tell her. I write my new address in her phone, along with my working shifts. She’ll read it when she’s alone, browsing.

I hope she comes and visits. Loxley Central has the best sporting facilities in the area, and the track is open to family members. Who knows, maybe Loretta isn’t as lost as she thinks she is.

My watch beeps. It’s time. A voice booms through a loud speaker asking the entrants for the four hundred metres to make their way to the starting line.

I walk onto the track. We’re a small handful, an odd assortment of departments joined in a common cause. We shuffle into position. I crouch, hunched over a million hurts. The past whispers in my ear: F-f-freak... Prick... You’re just like your father...

A peal of thunder rumbles around the sky and causes a false start. My opponents grin at me and one another. ‘Good luck,’ they say.

I’ve entered a charmed circle where there’s comradeship. I like this feeling.

‘You too,’ I manage without a stutter, and feel immense relief at not breaking the camaraderie.

Then we’re off. I hear the others panting, short puffs, as they get in their stride. I’m surrounded, but soon our huddle disperses. I upgrade my jog, leaving them behind. I’m not part of them no matter how much I long for it.

Suddenly my name rips through the air, tearing the day into fragments. ‘Go it, Wesley, lad. Show ’em how it’s done.’

My manager’s guttural tones are as big as the thunder, and drag me to a place of belonging. A warmth flickers through my stomach and my isolation drops to the ground like a shroud. The past moves away as soft as a breath, yet as loud as the end of the world. The air stings with anticipation.

Life’s an adventure, Wesley.

My feet are fluid. No stuttering footsteps. I’m running freely now, running towards the future. And just when I think nothing will ever match this, there’s more. Unexpectedly, the far-off horizon, where my dreams are aimed, isn’t blue or hazy. It’s blinding me with its clarity, and there, so close I can almost touch it.