Steiner and the Hypnotic Cue

CHAPTER 4 Showdown at Rileys

Rileys in Dunfermline is a spotless-looking snooker club offering pool or snooker, and two hours tuition for £4. The table are squashed in as tightly as rabbits in a warren. Like a rabbit’s home, the club is underground, smells damp and light drops in from overhead.

During the opening hours at the weekends, you will find at one of the tables an almost famous snooker player, but now economics  teacher, David Noble. David wears a waistcoat, famous for its ruby sparkles. When standing upright, David stands 6ft tall, and he was the man to beat. Not that anyone had in a long, long time.

To here it was I decided to return. I had a large number of lessons at Rileys, but I struggled with working out the number combinations of moving to red, to pink, to black…. Oh my! This is another reason why I never took darts seriously … the maths!

Rileys seemed like the best place to repeat the  pool competition.  It was really a test of my sanity, after all.

Something very strange was happening. My opponents had become dull witted and played terribly. In contrast,  I was sharp and played superbly. This was great, but what of the unexplained events?

Where had the video clips gone? Why could the teacher  remember nothing?  What ability did the  Yoga Teacher possess whereby she could see me take the books,  when they hadn’t moved?   She talked about Chakras and Kundalini, in her lessons, and as far as I could see, that was  magic; so, mabye that was the key—people with magic, or psychic powers could see things others could not.

Damn it! I was thinking again. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. “Why  can’t I just be like everyone else?” I thought.

It had been almost four months since I had last been at Rileys. I just couldn’t cut it and gave up. The school staff told me never to ask again. They had gone the extra mile in organising the lessons, and were not happy with me. 

But my recent dumping of school snooker ‘champ’ into ‘chump’ gained me favour, and Scott Milne (school staff), agreed to take me along for the Sunday Morning/Afternoon session.

By the time we got there, David Noble (also known as ‘The Boy Noble’ in Rileys), had already chalked up a series of five impressive wins, handsomely supplementing his over-inflated income for the week.

If I could beat Noble, I knew something special was happening and that I was perfectly sane, or at least not completely mental.

The trick was getting his attention.

I put my £15 winnings on the table, and almost immediately a boy about my age, set eyes on it. He swaggered over to my table, “I’ll play ye pal n’ at, like.” he offered in a nasally, whiney tone that was obviously a fake Glaswegian accent.  Perhaps it was designed to intimidate opponents, but I just felt sorry for the boy.  I always take pity on  Fife lads pretending to be from Glasgow and acting ‘Wide’, as we call it. 

Now, Reader, you might not understand what ‘Wide’ means. So, let me put it like this, in the nicest way I possibly can: take a boy who is  stupid, unfunny and lacking charisma, and watch him try to be the opposite. Now imagine such a boy looking  twice as stupid as he did before—that is acting ‘Wide’.

He broke first and to be fair he was pretty good. He notched up 12 points. He swooned, delighted by his own genius and glared at me. He was a clear cut bully, all right, and his tactics worked.

My hands were shaking  as I took the cue out of its case and assembled it.  Mr. Glasgow set his eyes on the cue and his face went blank.  Now he really did look like a Glaswegian.

I relaxed and took my shot. I angled the white off the side cushion and it just glanced off a red, nudging it into the middle pocket.

Flushed with confidence, I potted the pink, before slotting all the balls away—a break of 84.

The place was in silence.  But more importantly, I had gotten David Noble’s attention.

The ‘Glaswegian’ slinked back to his corner, with a red face and empty pockets, only to be greeted by sneering glances from his friends, or so-called friends.

I put my now £30 on the table. David Noble barely glanced at it. A paltry sum such as that would never interest him, but he looked at me and the cue, hungry to take me on.

“That’s all I’ve got,” I said apologetically, sheepishly even.

Noble held out stoically, poker face in place waiting for a higher wager.

“I’ll help you out, son,” Scott announced as he placed £50 on the table. Well I hadn’t expected that. There’d been a bit of gossip in the School (I try not to listen, but staff have such loud voices, don’t they?) about the state of Scott’s finances. Well I think it was that. It was always the same old things, “Scott … bankrupt … no paying tax … broke … no see Rangers playing any more …  that Ali McCoist”. I worked out that things must be bad if a ‘Rangers’ fan like Scott couldn’t afford to see his team playing again. But what really worried me was why  would  Scott, Fife born and bred, support a Glasgow team anyway? What’s wrong with Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy? They must have been a lot cheaper to watch.

The £80 on the table was still far lower than ‘The Boy Noble’ would normally play for—his minimum was £250 per game. He would only stoop that low on a  shaky streak, or if he had a bit of a hangover from the night before.   Today he was as  sober as a Benedictine Monk on the Sabbath. I know nothing about Benedictine Monks and Sabbaths, but it’s a common saying in certain parts of Fife and East Lothian.

The three of us stood there in Mexican stand off. I suppose it must have looked quite comic in its own way.  Later, Scott said  it reminded him of that Spaghetti Western in which  Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie  waited in a circle for each other to ‘Draw’. Like the movie,  Noble ‘Drew’ first. He picked up his cue and walked towards his favourite table and put down £500.

“The boy can’t match that,” Scott protested glaring at the ‘Boy Noble’.

“If he beats me, he can take the lot. I’ll settle for what he’s got,” he said in a restrained tone,  with a voice raspy and broken by too many late nights, bottles of blended whisky and cheap cigars—just like a cowboy in the old movies.

“The boy can break!” he gently ordered, full of disdain.

“No!” I protested. “Let’s toss a coin for it, the proper way, like!”

“It’s Ok Steiner. It’s ok!,” Scott butted in, with a hint of excitement in his voice, sensing history was about to be made. “Just take the break!”

The pair of them  stared at me,  and a crowd gathered round to watch. So, what could I do? I went to the table to take the break.