A Natural

by Ross Raisin

  “You all good, Tommy?” Richards asked.

  “Fine, mate.”

  “I know you’re quiet, man, but you look a bit zombied out, you know?”

  Finch-Evans, on the tea run, approached with two mugs. He stood above them. “Carry on, ladies. Don’t stop your chinwag on my account.” He gave them each a mug, tousled their hair and walked off.

  “You get to see your family much?” Richards said. Tom’s body immediately tensed at the mention of them.

  “Saw them a couple of weekends ago.”

  “Swindon postponement? Me too. Miss them like hell, to be fair. My brothers, they think I’ve got this footballer life and all that, and I’m telling them, nah, come on, most of the time I’m just playing Call of Duty with Hoyley.”

  “Could be worse.”

  “Right, like if he tried to engage me in conversation or something.”

  Tom sipped his tea. A memory of the visit home stirred: Rachel joking about him being out on the pull every night, and the way his dad had looked at him. A paranoid idea went through his mind that the thing in the ground-staff shed had already happened then, and that his dad had been looking at him so closely because he had understood; he knew what Tom had done.

  The room was filling with noise. There was a movement outside the French windows and Tom’s eyes darted towards them, only to see a scholar dragging a bag of balls across the concrete.

  They assembled for the ten thirty meeting to talk about why they weren’t able to replicate their Paint form in the league, before going outside. Tom kept his eyes on the ground. They warmed up alongside a gang of rusting wire mannequins, which the number two started to position inside a penalty area after the players were sent off around the pitches. Tom stayed in the middle of the line. He focused on the rhythm of Boyn’s flashing heels. His breathing, coming thickly, was drowned out by the noise of their footfalls as they skirted the long side of the pitches until, up ahead, he heard the distant sound of the tractor starting up.

  Only when they had completed the full circuit did he let himself look through the mass of panting bodies at the tiny figure on top of the tractor, moving slowly over the furthest pitch. Even from this distance, he could see that it was the other groundsman.

  —

  Tom arrived each day and scanned the pitches. Once he had identified the squat shape of the assistant groundsman he would go in to change and stretch and then surrender himself to the training, driving his body to its limit until every part of him ached and cramped.

  On finishing, he took off in his car. He filled the enclosed space with music or talkSPORT and drove, it did not matter where; he just needed to be alone. He often took the same road, turning over and over in his head whether it was just because of a normal schedule rotation that Liam and his assistant had swapped over. On these drives he timed the exact moment that he would need to turn round and go back to the Daveys’ in time for dinner.

  One day, after again shunning the canteen, he got onto the motorway. A couple of junctions down it, ravenous, he pulled off into a service station.

  He sat down in the central seating area shared by the outlets and ate a clumsy damp burger. The place was busy. Lone men in suits. A group of teenagers in rugby tracksuits. An old couple grappling with a jumbo road atlas. On the other side of the seating area a man in a gray shirt and gray tie met his eye for a second and Tom had the flinching realization that he had been staring in the man’s direction. Tom lowered his sight, holding it on the family of legs arranging themselves under the table opposite him. His face was hot. His fingers, on the dirty tabletop, trembling. He let the bland muddle of noise wash over him, trying to block out the fear of what his eyes would do if he allowed himself to look up at the man—resisting the horrible compulsion to do so, to see if the man was still looking.

  His mobile was ringing. He took it out of his pocket and breathed deeply before putting it to his ear.

  “Mum.”

  “Well, here’s a turnup. He answers. We’ve been thinking there’s something up with your phone. Your dad’s left quite a few messages.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine, love. Did you not get them?”

  The smell of the opposite table’s paninis reached him. Across the seating area, the man was gone. Tom looked around—at the entrance, the toilets—but could not see him.

  “Sorry, Mum. It’s been really busy with games and training and that. Can you tell Dad sorry?”

  His mum was quiet for a moment, and Tom wondered if she could tell that he was lying. “Yes, I’ll tell him. But you’re OK?”

  “I’m fine, Mum. Everything’s fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  —

  After the third Wimbledon goal a few drunk youths moved to the bottom of the away terrace, directly behind the dugout, and started to chant, “Clarke out.” When the team left the pitch at halftime the boys shouted and gesticulated at the substitutes surfacing from the bunker. Yates looked round, mouthing at them to fuck off, and the teenagers were seized with such disbelieving rage that more supporters were attracted down the steps and a nervous delegation of stewards came to stand nearby.

  By the time the players reappeared, a small mob had formed, which, ignoring the stewards, sang lustily for the manager’s sacking. Clarke did not acknowledge the insults; he maintained his normal routine, stalking the technical area, abusing the officials. After one penalty claim was dismissed he charged at the fourth official and, as the referee later described it in his match report, “acted in a manner that was above and beyond the understandable tensions of competitive football,” calling the man “a disgrace,” “a bender” and “a ginger nonce” in one particular outburst. He was banned from the touchline for two matches. For the first round of the FA Cup he sat high in the main stand, sheltered by empty seats and a docile buffer of season-ticket holders. For ninety minutes, Town’s third defeat in succession, he wrote furiously in a notebook, giving no attention to the chants of “Remind me: how do I spell shit?” and “You’ll be sacked in the morning” from the away, then the home, supporters.

  Clarke was called to a meeting with the chairman. He sat in silence, picking at the frayed vinyl of an armchair. The chairman recommended that he play Easter. Clarke continued to pick at the vinyl as the chairman stood at the side of his desk, looking down at his manager. “We’re paying that much for him, Paul. It’s making us look stupid, keeping him on the bench.”

  “Making who look stupid?”

  “All of us.”

  The fingers went still on the armrest. “What does it make me look like if I put him back in the team now?”

  The chairman moved round to perch on the front of the desk. His trousers pulled against the soft straining beef of his thighs. “You could play Jones and Easter together.”

  “You are fucking joking.”

  The chairman appeared taken aback. Then he laughed. He shifted his legs and slid down from the desk. “Well, you’re the manager.”

  Clarke said nothing. He watched the two moist receding marks on the desktop and stood up, leaving the room without looking at the chairman.

  —

  The number two rounded up the squad in the clubhouse lounge.

  “Paint next week—the gaffer wants to put as many fringers in as he can again. I’ve got the team for you here already.” He took out a notepad. “Hoyle, Jamie F, Bobby Hart, Chris Easter, Boyney, Tommy Pearman…”

  Nausea climbed the insides of Tom’s stomach. He shut his eyes, and on opening them again looked at Bobby, who, to a murmur of surprise, had been named captain. Despite the instant sick anticipation that had taken hold in Tom’s gut at having to appear before hundreds, maybe thousands of people, he felt a needle of jealousy at the wide childish smile that Bobby was not attempting to conceal.

  The Paint team lined up against the rest of the squad. Bobby was everywhere, directing play, shouting, relishing the contest alongside Easter with Jones in the center of
midfield. He got onto the ball at one point and looked up towards Tom on the wing. “Go,” he mouthed, signaling the area ahead of Tom. He played it into the space, but Tom held his position and the ball went out of play, rolling off into the bushes at the foot of the fencing.

  “Eyes open, Tommy. See the pass.” Bobby stood with his hands on his hips, his face all comic bright cheeks, ridiculously serious.

  “Too heavy,” Tom muttered.

  Everybody else was watching. Nobody had gone to retrieve the ball. Bobby gave a loud clap and addressed his team: “Right, boys. Got to communicate. Move for each other, OK.” His breath came in a jet of condensation. It clung about his head in a dumb fog. He turned to look at the bushes, then at Tom. Tom stayed where he was. There was a slight but unmistakable shake of Bobby’s head before he sprinted to the fence, scooped the ball up and ran back with it. “Let’s go. Come on.”

  Gale, Tom’s opposing left back, was standing near him. “That’s you told, mate,” he said and jogged back into position, laughing. From the throw-in, play drifted towards the other wing.

  The match was likely to be on television. His family would watch it. His dad—and sudden dread came over Tom at the thought that his dad might come down for it. Gale was powering towards him with the ball. He kept coming, confident of running right by him. Tom, in a flare of decision, dived in. He felt first the ball against his left foot then the tender tearing flesh of some part of Gale with his right. There was a hot sharp pain in Tom’s ankle as he fell, Gale tangled and falling with him.

  His first thought, as a hand clutched his forearm and held it to the grass, was that he would not have to play in the Paint match.

  Players were leaning over them.

  “You fucking clown, what was that?” came through the mist of collected breath.

  Tom’s ankle had gone numb. He could hear Gale whimpering beside him, and he turned over—their faces, before Tom drew back, almost touching—to see him looking up at the sky, his eyes bright, confused, like a stunned animal. Tom propped himself onto his elbows. Through the scrum of faces he could see Bobby, and a contraction of pleasure passed through him when he understood from the look on Bobby’s face that he had no idea how to deal with this situation.

  By the next morning the ankle was too swollen for Tom to drive or wear trainers. However, a scan that afternoon revealed that the injury was not serious: a sprain, with only minor damage to the ligament fibers. His foot and ankle were wrapped and strapped, and he was instructed to report for training half an hour early until he had recovered.

  For the next few days, Mr. Davey drove him in with Bobby and Steven. There was something different about the way the Scottish pair were behaving around him. They were even tighter than usual—closed off. Tom did not care. He ignored them, trying to occupy his thoughts with the radio until they had passed the staff car park and Mr. Davey let them out in front of the clubhouse.

  He watched the squad train from the bench, next to Price, who had a thumb fracture and fingered miserably at his phone with his good hand. By the end of the week they’d been joined by Gale, now with a deep gouge in his thigh muscle. On his return he promptly sought Tom out and held out his hand. “No grudges, yeah?”

  “No grudges.”

  The three of them sat and watched the others going through their routines.

  “I’m bloody freezing here,” Price said, scratching at the dead crust of his cast. “How’s this going to help me recover?”

  Tom and Gale said nothing.

  “They link up all right, you know, Easter and Jonah,” Price said, and all three stared at the shape drill going on across the field. Away towards the other side of the pitches, the tractor engine started up, and Tom turned towards it. Liam was there. “I thought they’d be too the same, but it sort of works, never mind they want to kill each other.”

  “Maybe why it works,” said Gale.

  Price made a noise of agreement. “Think he’ll start them together Saturday?”

  “Got to,” said Gale. “Pretty obvious the chairman’s leaning on him to, if you read what he said in the paper yesterday. And then it’ll be Easter and Hart for the Paint on Tuesday.”

  “Well,” said Price, “that’s me bombed out then, isn’t it?”

  The session was ending. The three waited for the squad to leave the field before going in themselves. They sat in the unlit passage outside the dressing room until the squad came out for their lunch. When Price and Gale got up to go with them, Tom slipped into the empty dressing room. He took off his tracksuit and went to shower, turning the dial colder and colder until he was nearly unable to breathe.

  —

  Zoning out of Price and Gale’s conversations, Tom watched with silent creeping animosity the lumbering figure going about his work every day just as normal. He never appeared to look up from the tractor, the mower, the line marker, working slowly, methodically. Even when he came closer to the clubhouse he always remained totally focused on the ground, though when he got to within a pitch’s distance Tom would go inside to sit in the treatment room and let the physio talk at him while he gaped at medication and military fitness certificates and anatomy posters, taking in the bright musculature, the exposed systems of blood and tubes and bones.

  In the lounge one morning Tom picked up an old newspaper from underneath a chair by the breakfast trolley and it occurred to him that he had paid no attention to the Paint result a couple of nights ago. They had won, he read. Easter had scored the only goal, which probably explained why he was still in such a good mood as he moved about the room doing the tea run, humming a song of his own name that Tom presumed to be from his first spell at the club.

  Tom went for a review of his ankle. The swelling had reduced and he felt no discomfort when the physio began changing the strapping, peeling off the layers of bandages until his foot appeared, gray and stinking as a fish. He was not yet able to kick, so he was employed later that morning fetching any balls that strayed beyond the touchline as the players attempted cross-field passes to a partner. Within seconds, three or four balls had sailed past him and he shuffled onto the neighboring pitch to collect them. Approaching the furthest ball, he raised his head. Liam was standing by the ground-staff shed, looking in his direction. Tom picked up the ball and walked back to the others.

  He entered the canteen that lunchtime to a chaotic scene. The youth team coach had cut short the scholars’ session so they were in early, massed near the doorway waiting for the seniors to get their food, filling the room with banter, deodorant. Price and Gale were among them, waiting too. The two stood close together, stiffly protective of their damaged body parts. Tom walked past and nodded; they nodded back.

  He placed himself at the end of the furthest table and began cutting into his pile of rice with the edge of a fork. From his isolated position he observed all the comings and goings, quietly eating, aware of Liam the moment he came into the room. He joined the back of the line, patient, undistracted, and once he got to the front stayed a while by the glass counter, staring down at the bowl of rice, then at the remaining jacket potatoes sitting in the cracked dishes as soft and rumpled as toads.

  He took a seat near the counter, facing away from Tom, and began to eat slowly, his head moving rhythmically towards his plate each time he took a mouthful. Tom continued to fork rice into his mouth, dry, chewy, taking draughts of water to swill it down. By the time he moved on to his fruit salad the canteen was less full. Scholars were bunched around one table but most of the firsts had gone. Only one group of five was left, on the table in front of Tom, crowding around a newspaper that Fleming was reading aloud from. Tom was still eating when Liam got up to leave: he finished his drink standing at the table then moved away to the door without looking round once.

  A thin cold rain had set in by the time Tom left the building. He hobbled hurriedly towards his car, not wanting water to soak through the holes in his plastic cast.

  “Tom.”

  He kept walking.

/>   “How’s the ankle? I heard you tore Gale open.”

  Liam caught up and walked at his side. Tom did not look at him; he kept going, listening, watching for anybody else who might be about, until he got to his car. His ankle was twinging. He needed urgently to be inside the car, driving off.

  “Tom?”

  “This isn’t your car park.”

  Liam gave a short laugh. Teeth. The ugly insides of his mouth. “Clear off then, shall I?” he said but stayed exactly where he was, standing next to the bonnet, fidgeting inside his pockets, the scrunching noise of his hand clenching and unclenching a set of keys. The last group of players was coming out of the building. Tom reached for his door handle and as he did so Liam touched him for an instant on the arm. Ignoring him, Tom opened the door, lowered himself inside and shut the door.

  He drove away down the lane, putting the radio on. There was a discussion about music played over the PA after goals. Listeners were tweeting in with suggestions of the perfect song. He stopped at the road junction, waiting for a gap in the traffic, letting the sound of the radio drain through his brain, not permitting the violent desire that was ripping at the inside of him to take hold, trying to block out the sensation in his forearm that felt as though it had been trapped in the car door.

  8

  Jones or Easter—if we could only keep one?

  Started by Town Legend

  Replies:

  11

  5 Dec 2011

  Views:

  94

  Town Legend posted Mon at 7:22pm

  Open and shut case for some of you on here a few weeks ago but since Easter’s come back in the team who would people choose if the budget’s not there to retain both of them come January?

  Road to Wembley 2010 posted Mon at 7:30pm

  Easter is contracted until the end of next season so this topic is redundant.

  Mary B posted Mon at 7:55pm

  Andy Jones every day of the week. Best player to sign for Town since Our Glorious Leader and his chequebook arrived at the club.