Page #43 & 44 - final installment of “OUT OF IT” a novel by Michael O’Leary

week against N.S.W. I think he made a half century – anyway he’s looking furious with himself as he storms off the Park.”

When I hear the word cricket I reach for my revolver!”

“The New Zealanders will be pleased with the lower run-rate, as the tail-end has barely wagged, and with only two overs to go and the weather improving all the time, they might be feeling that they’ve got a game on their hands.”

Hey man! You some kinda out of it fuckwit or what. You know I was with the Blacks – why you take a hit at the Mob Member for – eh! He push the P.S.M. almost over.
You just a trash, man! The Malone is loose and confused and left alone he is on his way. He looks for Golly and Paul and Rewi but he can’t see beyond his eyes. He is walking up now past the Shamrock rest home and his eyes are full of tears and aloneness and he doesn’t know who he is or where. He is on a train which takes him further away from New Lynn. But he is already there – away! And he turned on the radio and it said that the Out of It score had been 222 or Nothing and that James Joyce had taken two overs to score the Nothing and Janis Joplin had scored twenty-four – there had been ten extras – read all about it!

The Malone walked across the Beach and into the Station Hotel, everywhere were telephones which had his number in New Lynn written on the inside of the receiver but he knew that to have a drink would be easier, more courageous thing to do and so he sat or stood best he could all day and into the evening. He, the Patrick Sean Michael Malone, danced, sang, played pool, kissed women – all with the tear in his eye and then as the darkness descended and the cold came on to the world like a blanket, invisible and perceptible at once. Malone looked at the money he had left and walked back across the Beach to the Railway Station where he bought a single ticket to the Wellington and as he walked towards the train which waited for him until 7.30 pm he could see next to the small Post Office two telephones into which all he had to put was two ten cents (which he had) and he would be connected – he glanced back at the telephone as he headed for platform one and with the tear in the eye he boarded the south-bound train which pulled out from the station not long after and he, the Malone of the North, inheritor of the tradition of the ashes – in up to his ankles – defender of the faith, went to the dining car and drank whiskey for they didn’t sell whiskey into the night during which nature finally called in her remorseless way and he went to the end of the dining car where the toilet was situated, the carriage was dark, for it was by now the middle of the night, he, the bladder-full Malone opened the door and walked through…….