The Greatest Tiddlywinks Player MP3
Read by Gloria Sanders
As loud as the words on the poster were, it was his face that grabbed me: that of a plump-chinned, red-cheeked wizard with an open-tooth grin supporting a floor-brush moustache and eyes so wide and white they only needed wolves howling at them.
Beneath this expanse of face, two tiny hands sprayed a flurry of coloured discs while a pair of silhouetted spectators watched in Munch-esque disbelief. In tomato-red capitals, above the menagerie:
THE GREATEST TIDDLYWINK PLAYER IN THE GALAXY!
£2 A MATCH, £5 FOR BEST OF THREE!!
I would’ve happily dwelled on this for some time had the speeding Astra not nearly broken my pelvis with its wing-mirror. Steadying myself against the office complex door, I caught the names on the intercom: a divorce lawyer, a hypnotherapist, the campaign team for the local Green candidate – and there, five down, one G. Tiddlywink P.
I had seven pounds twenty. The meeting was at two; it was now quarter to one. Karen was usually late and I was always early. This was an itch I could afford to scratch.
I punched the button for Mr Player. A stern voice buzzed through:
‘Room 209.’
The room was carpeted a well-trodden aquamarine. A long table held the centre, draped with a balloon-printed party-cloth and a large patch of green felt, topped with a plastic cup. The ghosts of old books lingered in a dry odour.
Silence, save for the hum of traffic.
‘Magnifique!’
The door thumped shut. Somewhere a tinny, triumphant pomp and circumstance blared as a plume of coloured fabrics whirled past my shoulder, materialising at the table in the form of the Player, arms aloft in a long, ill-fitting cloak speckled with multi-coloured circles.
‘Welcome!’ he boomed. ‘Stranger in a strange land, I see. No woman of winks. No hand for the squidge, these. Rather, a lady of business – but winks are my business, good lady, and business is excellent, and mine the finest among men.’
I had a strong feeling the cartoon had undersold him.
‘You are today’s challenger?’ He lunged forward, lowering his body and circling me like a hyena, his cloak tails dragging on the carpet. ‘Do I have sport?’
‘I… guess?’
The music cut out. He seized the cup, pouring into his hand a cache of discs, bringing them to his nose and breathing deep. ‘My bow and arrow. My shield and sword.’
‘You play here?’
‘Here, there, everywhere – homes, fairs, tournaments – followed each way by my loyal team. My manager, my promoter, my financier, my coach…’
He motioned to the door. Confused, I turned and doubled back at the sight of four men, all in the same costume as his, only with aviator-shaded faces that regarded me like I’d walked something in.
‘We’re thirsty for practice. The Middlesex Open starts in three weeks, the most prestigious tiddlywink tournament this side of the Channel. I’ve participated twice myself, and twice I’ve emerged victorious, as my spoils would say for themselves if they could.’
A sweep of his arm directed my attention to a small glass cabinet on the far wall, wherein squatted two matt-bronze trophies the size of milk cartons. ‘Is that your—?’
‘My assistant, Gladys. My handler, my muse. She also sets the tables and chooses my outfits.’
I couldn’t tell what he meant, until I realised that the grinning cardboard standee of a circus trapeze artist, propped next to the cabinet, was a real person.
‘I just came up here out of curiosity. I don’t even know the rules.’
‘I’ll teach you. Yes – a student. How would you like to take the role of my apprentice, disciple… successor?’
My intrigue was waning, but he was already measuring his flight path. I was handed my ‘squidger’, as he called it, and my winks were laid out. He played first: with a click the wink flew in a neat arc straight towards the cup, spinning on the rim before dropping daintily. His team applauded as he took a bow.
I wondered if the game was already over before he motioned for me to take my turn. I’d played a good deal of pool in the student bar back in university, and as the first wink flew free from the squidger’s grip with a satisfying pop, warm memories of cheap beer and terrible dance music flooded back.
The memory was cut short by a gasp – the wink had flown clean into the cup.
‘Ah?’ He nodded slowly. ‘Impressive start. We may be in for a good game ahead of us, and I have been starved of a true threat.’
He took another shot – straight in. He was good. The wink looked as though it had been pulled by string. Perhaps it had, but I was in no position to make accusations. Besides, I’d already paid.
I took my shot. It was a little too casual and I expected it to fall short, but no – right in again. His eyes widened in surprise, wonder, pride – fear. All at once, knocking against each other, fighting for space. Soon his winks had filled the cup – as had mine, and there were none left to squidge.
‘You’re quite gifted. I thought we might have been touched with a brush of beginner’s luck.’ A lilting tone, relieved – or disappointed. ‘But no, there is talent in those winky fingers of yours.’
‘Did that count as a game, then, if we drew?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Let’s say it didn’t.’
We played another game. And another. And another. Winks zipped through the air, smacking the lip of the cup, spinning a brief pirouette before the fall, one after the another. He didn’t speak a word, although he whispered a few bad ones.
I kept checking the clock. What felt like hours were apparently mere minutes as we played what could have been anything between two and twenty games, all lost in a blizzard of winks.
‘Well,’ I finally said, ‘I have a meeting at two—’
‘You go nowhere.’
‘No, you see, it’s the board of directors of a major pharmaceutical company. We need this contract. If my colleague and I don’t give our presentation—’
‘No. We play until I win.’
‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’
‘The student does not match the master so easily. There is a process… yes. An education. You are talented. You have passion, but you are not ready.’
I checked the clock again. Call it altruism, call it boredom, but I thought this man should get his winks back.
Strangely it took me until the third draw to realise I could resolve all this by botching a turn – but I had to make it convincing. So, I let a couple swoop into the cup – or rather, some hand of providence guided them in, as I still didn’t know how I was managing any of this – before deliberately misaiming a few, placing the squidger too far into the wink …
But nothing worked. Each stray shot seemed to catch an elliptical orbit and ride it down. On one instance I succeeded in skidding the wink across the table, only for it to hit a dormant wink, shoot upwards, strike the ceiling and plummet in a perfect column into the mouth of the cup.
By now he was panting, shoulders tense, eyes screaming, nostrils so wide and hot with rage they could scorch a crème brûlée. And it only took one flicker of that same rage, convulsing through his fingers, just as the squidger pressed flat against the wink, to send it fluttering wildly, glancing the rim and spiralling to the floor.
The quiet collapsed into a deeper well of silence, while the greatest tiddlywink player in the galaxy lost his cartoonish fervour.
‘So…’ I said. ‘Do these tournaments have cash prizes?’
His shoulders fell. ‘Enough,’ he gasped. ‘No more.’
‘Hang on, we can play again. I only won one game.’
‘One game!’ he cried, crumpling in agony. ‘What is one thrust of the sword to a gladiator, if it be the thrust that cuts through his heart? One move of the pawn, that which checkmates the king? One—’
‘You said you wanted to train me.’
'Yes, but you weren’t supposed to—to—’
‘To?’
‘To win!’
Each syllable fell with a weight that shook the room. I could only shrug. ‘You probably should’ve mentioned that earlier.’
He shuddered. ‘Remove the poster from the outer wall. Have the trophies melted and donate the copper to some well-deserving electrician. Gentlemen, Gladys, it’s been good knowing you.’
I wanted to laugh, giving his team a ‘can you believe this’ look I thought might earn at least a nod of sympathy. But they remained stone-faced. One of them was trembling. I looked at Gladys, leant against the wall, head in hands. As she lifted them I saw tears streaming down her puffed-red face, stammering with silent sobs.
The Player put the wink to his lips.
‘Now, hold on a minute…’
‘It is Tiddlywink Code. A master must fall on his sword when the student surpasses him.’
‘You’re not seriously going to choke on one of these?’
‘Perhaps I won’t. My fingers have not served me well today. Whether they deliver this final wink fair and true, that which cost me my fatal defeat… it was this one, wasn’t ‘The green one, I think. – Oh, damn! Look, if I could just—’
‘A captain goes down with his ship. They said the Titanic couldn’t be sunk, not even by God Himself. This—’ and he held his arms aloft, ‘this is my Titanic. And you, madam, are my iceberg. And here, the iceberg must remain to witness the destruction it wrought.’
His team had formed a wall against the door. Stone itself would’ve been easier to move. ‘How about I forfeit? Nobody has to know.’
‘But I will know! My life’s work…’
‘But what is life? Is it measured in trophies, contests, transient adoration?’ I waved my arms like he did. ‘Or is it measured by the craft? The game? And what is a galaxy? A mess of stars, a flurry of distant, white-hot winks? Could I master those? Could I squidge the sun itself? No. A master could, but even masters are apprentices for a time, and what is time to a vast galaxy? Don’t tell me, sir, that you have forgotten your ambition, your hunger – the wink!’
I could see the debate in his eyes, at least, the confusion, the ache, the want, and that was all I needed. The pressure of the room was my squidge. My feet, the winks. His hand, the cup…
At least, that was the idea. I still don’t know whether I managed to knock the deadly wink from his hand, though I did gain a bruised elbow – and it had the effect of disassembling his panicked wall of goons. As they scrambled I darted for the exit, storming down the staircase, five steps at a time, walls, doors and corridors flashing by in a thunderous wash of sound and colour…
Straight into the road – and there was Karen, my angel of mercy, bristling behind the wheel of her Clio: ‘The hell have you been?’
‘Just drive. I’ll explain later.’
Which I did, not that she understood. We didn’t get the contract either, though we hung onto our jobs, and within a few weeks we’d closed a £40k deal that kept us in the black.
I never saw the Player again, though rumours persist to this day of a gaggle of magicians occupying the tallest hill in town during the evenings and tossing plastic discs at the afterglow.
As for myself, I’ll see you in Middlesex.
(c) Adam Lewis Smith, 2018
Adam Lewis Smith has an MA in Creative Writing from Bangor University and, be warned, will find a way to work that into conversation. He lives in Conwy and hopes to write the Great Welsh Novel, as soon as he can prove Wales has a rich heritage of gunslinging vampires.
Gloria Sanders’s work includes audio-book narration for the RNIB and collaborations with Cabinets of Curiosity. She has performed her devised one-woman show with Hide and Seek Theatre, The Clock, at the Brighton Fringe, the Pleasance, Islington, & the Ghent Artscene Festival. She’s fluent in Spanish.
Lovely short story. I felt like I was being drawn into some kind of parallel universes alternative Olympics. Particularly enjoyed 'the squigy' and the line 'The quiet collapsed into a deeper well of silence...' cheers Adam
Posted by: MR G R HOLMES | Jul 02, 2018 at 07:22 AM