A Natural

by Ross Raisin

  Apart from the scholars, with whom he tried to appear confident and senior, Tom seldom mixed with the other reserves. Instead he increased his efforts to be around the first team. Ever since that fuzzily remembered night at the club he found that he could hold the attention of most for brief conversations while stretching or taking fluids or changing. He joined the back of huddles to look at images on phones, laughed, hand-clasped, always feeling like a fool and a fraud but reasonably certain that nobody noticed.

  He ensured that he was one of the last to board the first team coach to Southend and sat himself with a rehearsed nod next to Richards, who nodded back but did not take his headphones off. When, nearly an hour into the journey, he did finally lift them from his ears, Tom was careful not to speak to him immediately, instead continuing to look at his laptop for a short time before turning towards his neighbor. “You seen this? It’s fucking class.”

  Richards leaned in to look at the YouTube video that Tom had picked out the previous evening: a rival squad cheering and dancing in their training-ground lounge after hearing their manager had been sacked.

  Richards laughed. “Yeah, I can guess how that feels.”

  They watched a couple more videos together, then Richards got up to join the group of players standing about the back stairwell, idly watching the Sky match on the monitor while they queued for the microwave to heat their Tupperwares of Mrs. Davey’s chicken pasta.

  —

  They lost. Afterwards Clarke refused to speak to them—in the tunnel, the dressing room or on the coach, where Tom, like many of the others, sat alone, staring out of the window at the burnished golden estuary mudflats.

  Because of the length of the next away journey, to Morecambe, Tom did not this time intrude on Richards. He sat instead across the aisle from the table of card players, occasionally joining in a game of brag and, in the quiet spells between their playing and betting, offering them funny videos that he had spent several evenings finding on the Internet.

  “What’s that faggot’s problem?” Easter pointed at Lewis, a few rows down by himself. “You and him have a tiff or something, Yatesy?”

  “Maybe his shrink’s told him to steer clear of us.”

  A few days earlier Lewis had let slip that he had started visiting a sports psychologist. To help him prepare mentally for games, he had explained while they fell about laughing.

  “Hey, CL,” Price shouted. “Your shrink told you yet why you never score any goals? It because your daddy never loved you?”

  Lewis’s head appeared above a headrest. “He does have a theory about it, as it happens.”

  “Go on. Enlighten us.”

  “He says it’s because our midfield is shit.”

  Lewis, to a hail of peanuts and an energy bar, ducked out of sight.

  The goalkeeping coach had arranged, by calling in a favor, for them to use Blackpool’s academy base that afternoon, then there was an hour for a nap at the hotel, followed by dinner. On these Fridays they were the perfect guests: quiet, preoccupied, sober. They ate all together around three large tables in the restaurant before going up to their rooms just after nine o’clock, leaving the traveling directors to eat and drink themselves into a state of pink untucked recline in the hotel lounge.

  Tom still roomed with Easter. He knew that this continued arrangement was to do with the manager, and he wondered sometimes if it was the main purpose of his place in the traveling party. They had established a routine: on going up to the room after dinner, Easter would immediately leave again, sometimes for a short while, sometimes for longer. Tom would switch Easter’s bedside light on for when he came in—quietly if Tom was asleep—to undress in the bathroom. In the morning they used Easter’s phone to wake them, then Tom went first for a shower while Easter sat on his bed and drank coffee, watching the television. They did not speak much, but Easter did not seem to resent Tom’s presence. He was quiet, considerate even. Tom suspected the reason he had grown not to mind the arrangement was because Tom left him alone. He had come to understand, with a certain amount of hidden pride, that there was a side to Easter, reclusive, reflective, that only he among the squad knew about.

  So it came as a bit of a surprise that night when Easter got into bed and leaned over to hold out his phone.

  “That’s my son.”

  Tom looked at the bug-eyed thing on the screen. He did not know what to say.

  “He’s big.”

  Easter appeared not displeased with this response. He looked at the phone himself, smiling. “Fat little bastard, isn’t he?”

  Tom was in two minds about whether or not to laugh at this so he took the opportunity to go and get them each a glass of water, staying in the bathroom until he was sure that the color on his cheeks had died down.

  They were both on the substitutes’ bench. Tom was not used, but Easter came on to score the equalizer, a frantic scrambled effort inside the six-yard box, in reaction to which he sprinted the full length of the pitch towards the eighty away supporters and, in the fervor of the moment, turned round once he was before them to stretch down his shirt and thumb blindly at what he intended to be his number, but was in fact the lettering above it: YDV FINANCIAL SERVICES.

  —

  With no league wins, five draws and seven defeats, firmly planted at the bottom of the table, out of the League Cup, attendances dwindling and the board increasingly agitated, Clarke pulled off, as he himself described it to Peter Pascoe in the local paper, something of a coup. He signed a very reputable higher-division midfielder, Andy Jones, on a three-month loan. He did not state openly that he was signing the player to replace Easter, but the interview with Pascoe left nobody in any real doubt: “Andy is somebody who will run through walls for you. I’ve had him at previous clubs and I’ve always made him run through walls. That’s exactly what we’re needing now. I’d love to sign him permanent come January but the budget’s not there for it yet. If we can clear some of the wage bill by then, hopefully we’ll see what we can do with Andy.”

  These words caused apprehension to ripple through the squad. Even the established first-teamers who played in different positions to Jones became unsure of their places. The January transfer window, still over two months away, loomed ahead of them, and they viewed Jones with caginess because, in their eyes, he had arrived as the embodiment of it.

  Jones needed no time to settle in. He took charge straightaway, demanding the ball constantly during practice matches. He let them know if they were not working hard enough. He injured a scholar. He stayed behind after the rest of the squad had left the field to talk privately with the manager, and returned to the dressing room to plunge into the vacated ice bath, wincing and groaning in there for longer than anybody else ever did before rising enormous, glistening, his skin blue and purple with bruises that gave him the appearance, under the stark dressing-room lighting, of butchered meat.

  He marked his debut by galvanizing the team to its first victory of the season. Tom, next to Easter in the away dugout, applauded Jones’s first goal but did not stand as the others did, yelling, slapping the roof. When they settled back down Tom looked round at Easter. His elbows were raised, head clamped between his fists, obscuring his face. For a second Tom thought about catching his eye, but the idea immediately dissipated and whatever sympathy he might have tried to communicate remained unexpressed save for the hot squash of their thighs, minutely increasing.

  Upon Jones’s second, decisive goal the tight pocket of Town fans came alight—dancing, jumping on seats, rushing down the aisles towards the pitch, and a steward sprinted all the way from his position by the dugout to accost a young boy on the grass in front of the advertising hoardings. He caught the boy unawares, lifted him in a bear hug and began dragging him across the side of the pitch towards a solitary policeman, all the while pursued by a group of fellow stewards who had realized, along with most of the crowd and the overjoyed away dugout, that the detained youngster flailing in the big man’s arms was not in actuali
ty an away fan, but a ballboy.

  Hope grew that the team’s fortunes might be on the turn. Training sessions took on a new competitive edge. Every player apart from Jones lived under the permanent threat of being bombed out if Clarke thought they were not keeping up to the new standard. Even Boyn was punished, judged not to be running fast enough between cones during a doggies drill. The squad all stood and watched him walk over to the scholars, who paused their session under the huge balding sycamore tree to let him join their number. When the squad turned back to resume the drill Clarke glared, with a slight smile, at Easter. Easter did not meet the challenge but continued to stretch, waiting for his turn to sprint. The others had begun keeping their distance from him in the dressing room and around the ground. If Clarke was present they avoided speaking to him, or even, except in the moments that he and Jones fought for the same ball, looking at him at all.

  The improvement in the team did not bode well for Tom’s standing either. Finch-Evans had played well in the win, replaced by Tom for only the last three minutes. Not enough for Tom to get into the game, barely enough to touch the ball. He had come in at the final whistle with his kit unmarked, ashamed to shower. A few days later he was not even picked to start in the next round of the Johnstone’s Paint despite his convincing performance in the first, which seemed to him now like a dream, and he walked off the pitch at the end without joining the celebrations of the others following another victory. In the showers afterwards, rinsing off a cursory lathering of soap, he realized that Easter, under the neighboring shower head, was laughing quietly.

  “What’s the fucking point?” He did not move his gaze from the wall. There was nobody else left near them, and Tom could not tell whether Easter was speaking to him. “Seriously, what’s the fucking point?”

  “Showering?” Tom said.

  Easter turned to look at him. “Yeah, if you like, showering.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “No, me neither.” He moved away and reached for a towel to wrap about his waist. Tom did the same. “Seriously. Tell me. What kind of operation is it he thinks he’s running here?”

  “Van hire?” Tom said on a whim, a remark that Easter found improbably hilarious, stepping forward to give him a short aggressive hug.

  “You’re all right, you are, mate.” He laughed again. “Van hire.”

  Tom paused for Easter to go ahead of him into the dressing room, grateful that they had been alone in the shower room, that they had been wearing towels.

  —

  To Clarke’s fury, the team’s momentum was curtailed by a period of heavy, near-continuous rain. Within three days the lower half of the stadium pitch was submerged. A home fixture had to be called off. A section of the car park wall collapsed. Brown puddles formed on top of the Portakabin club shop, leaking into the stock room; water ran down the steps of the two uncovered terraces to collect in secret pools in the foundations; cascades from the corrugated roofs of the Kop and the main stand poured down in windblown torrents that left a flotsam of litter and bird shit over the pitch.

  The training ground, however, held out for longer. The squad continued to slog and slide, Clarke refusing to give in to the rain. He walked the touchline in his wellies under a giant golfing umbrella, bawling commands into the drenched air. Daring them to complain. One morning the players stood by the side of a pitch, water up to their bootlaces, waiting for Liam to finish clearing the area near a corner flag with a brush mounted on the front of the compact tractor. He drove off around the edge of the pitch when it was done, but instead of continuing on across the floodplain towards the ground-staff shed, he turned the tractor again, and came straight at them, speeding up. The others scattered, but Tom could only stand exactly where he was, anchored, Liam coming directly for him, his eyes fastened on Tom, until at the last moment he swerved away, creating an arc of spray that showered several of the players and caused the flock of seagulls around the goalposts to launch themselves into the air.

  Some of the squad chased halfheartedly after the tractor as it roared away, Liam standing like a jockey, one arm raised in the air. The players soon gave up and trudged back. Liam slowed the tractor down and, on reaching the ground-staff shed, cut the engine, turning round as he did so to look back briefly to where Tom stood now in the midst of the group.

  For the final two mornings of the week training moved to a local secondary school. In public view the sessions were less intense, less combative, than usual. The size of the sports-hall pitch allowed only for small-sided games, and each time there was a break in lessons an ebullient pack of children crowded onto the two balconies, where, to the disbelief of the squad as the hall echoed with shrill cries, Clarke let them remain and sometimes even looked up to joke with them or offer a criticism of a player. Two Year Seven boys, arriving early for lunchtime basketball practice, ran into the changing rooms while the players were still there. For a few seconds they stood dripping in their coats by the door, completely stationary. Men walked about the room in complete nakedness. One was sitting on a toilet, the cubicle door open. The smaller of the boys nudged his mate to leave, but the other stood hypnotized.

  “Hey, Yatesy, I think he’s got a thing for you.”

  Yates, drying himself, stepped towards the boys. He moved his towel aside. “What, you never seen one this big before?”

  There was some giggling.

  “I thought Asian lads were supposed to be huge. Bet your daddy’s got one like a baby’s arm.”

  The two boys turned and fled. There was an eruption of laughter, joined in with by Price and Lewis stepping through from the showers, although they had witnessed nothing of the scene, and by Tom, staring through the doorway after the boys, away from Yates.

  —

  After a series of sucking footsteps and easily inserted fingers, Saturday’s referee declared the Swindon pitch unplayable. Tom, the whole weekend free in front of him, rang his dad and within minutes of the call ending was in his car on the way home.

  On the motorway his mind turned to the past couple of days at the school. Being in that hall had felt achingly familiar. The squeak and scuff of the AstroTurf. The rubbery smell of the storage rooms. The constellation of shuttlecocks and soft tennis balls caught in the ceiling nets. He slowed to watch a column of Aston Villa coaches come past in the other direction and wondered how so much could have changed. It was not so long ago—school. Everything had been so clear to him then. All he had wanted—to play football—and never a doubt in his mind that he would make it. Another sound he remembered from those days, so well that he could hear it now: Give it Tom. Every lunchtime, every PE game, bouncing off the walls for years. Give it Tom. Give it Tom.

  He arrived home to the sight through the kitchen window of his mum chopping vegetables. She waved when she saw him getting out of the car and moved to the sink to wash her hands as he came through the gate. The small lawn was waterlogged. Damp little flowers stood in solemn lines along both sides, like Town supporters. The image of his dad hunched with his trowel came to Tom, the door opening now, his mum waiting there, and it was an effort to hold himself together as he stepped into the house, her arms closing around him.

  They pulled apart and she looked at him. “Are you allowed a beer?”

  “There’s no match, Mum. And it’s not like I’d be playing anyway.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “No point feeling sorry for yourself. Go say hello to your dad. He’s in there, wrecking his head at the football. Rachel’s upstairs.” She turned round. “Rach! Tom’s here.” But his sister was already coming down the staircase, bounding towards him, hugging him. For an instant, her skin against his face, he remembered the girl in the nightclub.

  “So, the fourth-division footballer returns.”

  “League Two.”

  “Fourth division. Dad’s been explaining it to me.”

  Their father was coming out of the living room. He shook Tom’s hand at the same time as pulling him in close. Squeezing knuckles pr
essed against Tom’s stomach.

  “Heard the Chelsea score?”

  “I was listening in the car,” Tom said. “Crazy game.”

  His dad was studying him. “Very crazy game. Beer?”

  They ate a late lunch, sitting on the two sofas of the living room, talking, the television on in the background. It made a nice change, he told them, not having to eat around a table. When nobody responded he feared he might have offended them, so he went on to say how good the shepherd’s pie was, how much he’d missed his mum’s cooking. He told them about life at the Daveys’, concentrating on the lack of privacy, the Scottish pair playing Xbox into the night, the waiting for the bathroom. He felt somewhat sheepish pointing out these things, especially as it quickly had the effect of worrying his parents that he might not be happy in this place they had sent him to. They wanted to know if he was getting on with the other lodgers, if he was sleeping enough. He looked tired to them.

  “He’s fine, Dad,” his sister stepped in. “He’s only tired because he’s out on the pull every night.”

  Tom was at once hot with embarrassment. He was aware of his dad watching him, waiting for what he would say.

  “I’m fine. Seriously. I’m not tired. It’s a good place to stay. It’s the club. The manager. That’s the problem.”

  His dad seized on the change in direction: “Clarke’s teams have always played the same way. Fine if you’re winning, but if the results aren’t coming he’s got no plan B.”