White Lines

by Mel Stein

  Mark smiled to himself. It was clear that the England manager was already flexing his muscles in ensuring everybody from the Press upwards knew exactly who was boss.

  ‘Yes, I’m doing the interview myself,’ Mark replied, omitting to add that he would have the boss’s son for company. Even as he spoke he was certain that Jenny Cooper was going to make sure that Kenny Cunningham’s answer to his request was going to be in the affirmative.

  CHAPTER 11

  If Dominique Halid had any cause to show the least sign of gratitude towards her brother and father for getting her out on bail she did not show it. She had lived away from home and she had lived under her father’s roof and there was no doubt in her mind that away was better. The only trouble about away was that it meant no money. No money, in turn, usually meant crashing out on the floor of some squalid flat, without any recollection of how she had got there, no knowledge of where she was and no real plan for how she was going to get home, where the circle would begin all over again.

  All her family said she had a drug problem. She thought she had a family problem and the drugs were a way of making her forget it. She didn’t like any of them, but then there weren’t many people she did like. There was one, of course, but he was a problem as well. Not him, exactly, but the fact she had to find some way of telling him that she was pregnant.

  They’d not known each other that long and she wasn’t sure how he was going to react. Not only that, but she wasn’t even sure that she should bother to tell him. She’d had one abortion before, but then the father could have been any one of half a dozen she’d slept with in the month before. This time around she’d been remarkably faithful. She liked him, perhaps in her moments of greater clarity even loved him, yet, despite that, she couldn’t quite quit her habit.

  If the police thought she was a supplier then they were wrong. Sure, she’d give stuff to her friends; but then for the most part they couldn’t afford to pay for it and if they had to buy it then they’d steal and at least what she got for them was good quality stuff. There were times when she felt a hell of a sight older than her eighteen years. There were times when she thought she had been born as a teenager, that the normal formative years, the years of going out with her parents as a family, of sitting on her father’s lap, of being tossed in the air by loving grandparents, those years had never been experienced by her. Was that true? She could barely remember her mother. Even before her father’s involvement with Susie Carr, her mother had long vanished from the scene. She could recall the day she had left, her bags packed and ready, ready for a return to Tehran, despite all the troubles in that troubled land.

  ‘Your mother’s going home,’ was all that her father had said. No more than that. And after that, silence. No phone calls, no postcards, not even any cards or presents on her birthday. It was as if she did not exist, as if her mother had never existed. It was only when she got a little older that it occurred to her that it was her father who was denying her existence.

  That was her father’s way. He had probably paid her mother off, bought her a large house, given her an allowance, all signed and sealed and delivered by his clever lawyers, all subject to the condition that she did not trouble him again, that she did not contact her daughter. There was nothing her father could not resolve with money, or so he believed. Money and charm, because there could be no doubting that he was a charming man when he wanted to be. Yet neither of those commodities cut any ice with Dominique. He could neither buy her, nor win her around with his honeyed words. She had backed herself into a corner as far as her father was concerned and could not be seen to be coming out other than fighting. All she and her father could ever do now was fight tooth and nail, they simply had no other way of communicating. There were other considerations to be taken into account in their relationship. Nabil was going his own way and the path he trod had no appeal for his sister. Whereas Dominique wanted to be as different from her father as possible, Nabil’s world was built around his efforts to emulate Mohammed. When she confronted him with the truth, he denied it, but then he would. How could he admit to imitating somebody he claimed to dislike when imitation was so clearly the sincerest form of flattery in the Halid family. Dominique would never flatter her father, would never give him any hint of encouragement that sometime in their relationship he might have done the right thing.

  Nabil was the least of her problems. She’d grown up with him and, although they were not particularly close, at least they understood each other. Liked, no, but understood, yes. Susie she did not come close to understanding, nor did she really want to. She could not understand how somebody like her had married Nathan Carr in the first place and certainly could not believe she saw anything in her father other than an open cheque book. Her father was more successful than his ex-partner, that was for sure, so there was one reason for a younger woman to leave one for the other. But was that enough? Living with her father as man and wife was bad enough, but having his baby as well was disgusting. It was all too much for her to bear. For seventeen years Dominique had been the baby of the family herself and although that did not mean as much as it would in a normal family it did, at least, count for something. Yet, a year ago, her father had even taken that from her. He couldn’t remove Nabil’s birthright, that was sacrosanct, but the little she had, the flotsam she clung to from the shipwreck, well, all that could go in one night of conception.

  The birth of Jason had not been a happy day for Dominique. The little bastard was just over a year old now. Wrapped in his golden fleece, his birth had signalled a new wave of excessive behaviour from Dominique. That was until she’d met the man who was the father of her child or who would be the father if she permitted it to be born. If she permitted … The power of life and death. Normally that was a gift only in the possession of gods and authors. And murderers too. Never forget the killers. She let her mind dwell for a moment on the man. She’d met him indirectly through her father. There was something rather dramatic about that although whether it was comic or tragic only time would tell. Susie had tried to be friendly in the early days of her relationship with Mo, but Dominique would have none of that ‘let’s all be girls together’ nonsense. Thank goodness she’d never tried to come on strong as a mother-substitute. If she had done then Dominique would have just told her to fuck off. The approaches for a friendly chat she just froze out, just as she brushed away any of Susie’s pitiful attempts to get her involved in her newfound motherhood. And now she was pregnant herself and Susie would have been the natural person to talk to about it. There was a chance, just a chance, she might not only understand, but actually help.

  There were times when, despite herself, Dominique was very much like her father. For the most part things were carefully planned. She’d launched forth on her campaign of drug abuse in the full knowledge of the effect it would have on her father who, unlike many of his contemporary compatriots, would have nothing to do with drugs. He got his kicks, reached his highs, from succeeding in business. There were times when his particular road to achievement left more carnage than any batch of cocaine. Yet he could not see that, would never see that, so if Dominique was going to discuss her situation with anyone at all, the answer still came back to Susie. There was no way she was going to tell her father at this stage. Oddly enough one of the reasons was that she felt it wouldn’t be fair on him, particularly as this pregnancy had been another deliberate ploy of hers, another example of planning things out. She’d told him she was on the pill, which was true when they’d started their relationship. She’d not lied to him, she’d merely omitted to tell him that she’d come off it. She’d not been able to get enough of him, had been frustrated by the fact they couldn’t see each other every day and as ever she had over-compensated.

  Quite what happened now she wasn’t sure. There were moments when she thought she’d quite like to settle down with him for the rest of her life, raise this baby, raise a few more. OK so she was only eighteen, but her mother had been younger than that when
Nabil had been born. Sixteen, in fact. That was the way of things in the Middle East her father had once said. Well, perhaps it was, but at sixteen could her mother ever have envisaged her life some twenty-three years later, separated from her husband and both her children? Not even Sophie’s choice, no choice at all.

  Dominique lay back on her bed, her hands behind her head. It was a large, sunny room in the Halid house near Henley. She always claimed it was the best room in the house and however long she might be away she always regarded it as her room and guarded it ferociously. She’d picked it for the view of the river, seen off her brother when he’d tried to claim it during the year she’d back-packed around Asia. That trip had brought one or two close calls. In Bangkok when she’d left her stash in her hotel room whilst she’d taken the fire escape out of the building; in Kuala Lumpur when her contact had tipped her off by telling her where a car would be waiting to get her out of the city. Either of those could have seen her facing a death squad or at least a lengthy prison sentence in surroundings from which death could have been a merciful relief. There would have been nothing her father could have done for her there.

  She’d never, in fact, asked him to do anything for her anywhere, but he had and he did. A chief constable with whom he played golf had called off his lads when she’d run into a spot of local bother. An inspector in France, whose sister her father employed in Paris, had arranged for her to be escorted on to the first flight home when by rights she should have been looking at the bare walls of a French prison cell; but this last occasion seemed to have exhausted his patience and his tolerance. It was as if by sending Nabil, rather than rolling out of bed himself or despatching his solicitor, he was sending her a message that he could not relay in words. The message was one of total despair. He was, as ever, killing two birds with one stone by washing his hands of her and setting her brother a new challenge. That was what their whole life with their father had been, a series of challenges.

  The music of Nas played at full volume passed over her in a wave. She liked black music, just as she had-liked black men in the past. Their size was no myth. She remembered teasing one semi-respectable white boyfriend, fresh from university, who’d fancied himself both for his performance in bed and the length of his tackle.

  ‘Hung like a horse. I don’t think so. More like My Little Pony.’ And off he’d gone in a strop, never to be slept with or even to be seen again. They could all be disposed of like that, all of them. Replaceable like batteries when they wore out, the buzz only coming at the start when their power was at its peak. They were a means to an end, a means to satisfy her when she needed satisfaction. None of them realised they were being used until she told them, and then they left, tails and pricks between their legs.

  She had no true friends, not since she had been expelled from her first senior school at the age of fourteen. She had acquaintances with whom she mixed, often druggies like herself. Some she liked more than others, some she pitied, some she feared. At eighteen years of age, Dominique Halid was intelligent enough to realise she was at the crossroads, bright enough to be frightened by what was in store. Pregnant, on bail, feeling terribly lonely, she decided in that instant to confide in her step-mother, Susie, and rolled her legs off the bed. A line from Shakespeare flashed through her mind, probably inaccurate but as close as it needed to be. If ’twere done then were best done quickly. She liked the classical theatre, although even that she would not admit to her father. She did not know if she was doing the right thing, but it was the only game in town short of topping herself, and, curiously for someone with such low self-esteem, that had never seemed a viable option. She opened her bedroom door and called down.

  ‘Susie? Susie? Are you there? Can we talk for a minute?’ And then she was taking the steps two at a time with the effortless confidence of the teenager she really was.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mark had never expressed any real desire to visit Bogota and now, as the plane circled its sprawling chaos for the third time, he saw no reason to change his mind. He was old enough to remember the framing of Bobby Moore, the scurrilous allegations that the late, lamented England captain had stolen a bracelet when he could probably have afforded to buy the whole shop.

  He couldn’t quite believe he was making this trip. So much had happened in the last seventy-two hours, so much to confuse him, to inspire his confidence, to make him wonder just who or what he had become.

  It was the interview with Barry Reed that had made it inevitable that he would be despatched to work on Ball Park’s coverage of the international against Colombia. Jenny Cooper had been true to her word. She’d asked him to drive to the rear entrance of the hotel and then allocated him, the cameraman and the sound recordist a private suite. She’d put her fingers to her lips as she led them in to signal the conspiracy of silence.

  ‘Not a word, Mark. Kenny’s banned all the rest of the media after the Press con for the next forty-eight hours. He says it’s all becoming a circus.’ She deepened her voice into a passable impression of Cunningham’s semi-cockney tone, ‘If one more agent rings one of my players on a mobile to arrange some kind of product placement then I’m going to take both the phone and the product and stuff them up his fucking arse.’

  Mark applauded in appreciation of the performance and Jenny gave him a mock curtsey. She seemed hyped – as if the secrecy had lit a fire deep within her. It was hard at that moment to recognise her as the hard-boiled career woman that she was reputed to be.

  ‘I do appreciate this, Jenny. I’m sure Mo does too.’

  She smiled and wiped ten years off her age.

  ‘I did it for you, Mark, not your boss. From what I hear I don’t know why you need to have a boss at all.’

  ‘I don’t need one. I just enjoy the work. And you’re sounding like Patti.’

  She made a little moue of her lips.

  ‘So that’s what it’s all about. She finds you in the gutter, does the big philanthropic trip, and now you’re back on level terms she can’t cut it.’

  It was a fair summary, but Mark did not particularly like the way it was put. This woman shouldn’t have known him at all. They were friendly when they’d met, had shared the odd cup of coffee, yet, she seemed to know him far too well.

  ‘Anyway, Mark, I’ll love you and leave you.’ Again the smile. ‘I hope you’ll have time for a drink before you leave. Tea, if nothing else.’ She knew that too, knew about his alcoholic past, but then there weren’t too many people in the game who didn’t know that by now.

  ‘I have to catch a lift from the crew. They brought the jeep and I left my car.’

  ‘That’s no problem. I have to drive into town tonight. I’ll give you a ride.’ She waved a stern finger at him. ‘Now, I’m not going to take no for an answer. A bit of company on that grotty drive down the M40 is a small price to pay for the sort of facilities I’ve provided.’ She paused, then added, ‘And might yet provide.’

  Mark couldn’t argue with that and certainly didn’t want to upset a woman who could make life difficult for a television company. He rather liked her anyway. He took her as he found her rather than listening to the comments that went on behind her back.

  ‘You’ve twisted my arm.’

  ‘I’m disappointed that I needed to. My room number’s 201. I’ll see you later.’

  The interview itself had been difficult and Mark quickly realised that if it had been anybody else but himself the boy would have refused to give it. He put the youngster’s reluctance down to the pressure of it all having happened to him so quickly, yet even now, as the plane began its final descent, he was not entirely sure there was not something more to it, something deeper and darker.

  A teenager like Barry Reed, suddenly pushed into the spotlight of the England squad could have reacted in one of two ways. He could have been delighted by his promotion, determined to savour every moment of it, to ensure that everything was retained in his mind for his scrapbook of memories; or he could have gone the way Barry
Reed had done, his face pale and strained, dark shadows under his eyes, testifying to a lack of sleep, his gaze forever wandering as the camera rolled, looking for some invisible escape route. Mark signalled to the two men from Ball Park to stop their filming and recording.

  ‘What’s up, Barry? You look about as confident as a one-legged striker. It’s not like you.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mark. If I were given the chance to go back home then I might just take it up. There’s so many good players here, so experienced. I’m looking about us in training and I’m freezing. I’m not trying things I know I can do in case they don’t work, and I’m scared they will work in case they think I’m flash.’

  ‘Can you leave us alone for a few minutes?’ Mark said to the two technicians, who nodded their assent, pleased to be able to get a drink at the hotel bar on what had become a humid day, more suited to the height of the summer than the early autumn. Barry looked grateful for the break himself, the tension momentarily easing from his jaw. As the door closed behind them Mark thought he was going to open up, but instead the player merely inspected his fingernails as if they held the answer to the mystery of life.

  ‘You’re good, Barry. You’re here on merit. Believe me, if I was the England manager, I wouldn’t just have you in the squad for the experience, I’d actually have you in the starting line-up. You’re a Geordie. There’s a history of your folk succeeding for England. It’s not only the barmy army who’ll be supporting you when you pull on that white shirt for the first time, it’ll be the whole of the north-east and they’ll make more noise than the entire population of England put together. I’ve played up at St James’s Park and I know.’

  ‘I know too, I suppose. Yeah, you’re right, Mark. Get the lads back before they get too many in and can’t focus. Let’s get the interview over so I can get a bit of kip. I’m that tired. By the way, the gaffer said he didn’t want us talking to no one so when’s this going to be shown?’