A Natural

by Ross Raisin

  Most did not, so Boyn read it out for them to put into their phones. For a few minutes they consulted over what to write. Lesley came through to see if the fruit juices needed refilling. She observed the pensive faces with puzzlement and looked for some explanation to Wilko, who ignored her.

  Once the texts had been sent, the players relaxed somewhat. There was a little conversation as they piled out of the room. If any of them was still dwelling on the thought of Easter in his hospital bed, his phone now convulsing to the arrival of twenty-two identical messages, they did not let it show. They had done the right thing. They moved eagerly into the dressing room. There was a buzz of anticipation about the first full week of the new era. The club secretary could deal with the flowers.

  It was soon evident, though, that this morning was going to be unlike the few others that had followed a victory. A cloud of fear weighed over the session. They held back, reluctant to throw themselves into it—attentive to the intricate mechanics of their bodies as they ran, jumped, collided. The straining hollows of each other’s knees. Flexing, jackknifing ankles. These bodies were managed and monitored more than anything else at the club, the physio always at hand for a massage or a tablet or an injection, their fitness levels charted, urine samples given up. All they ever needed to concentrate on was applying themselves on the pitch. But the careful order of things had been unbalanced, despite the encouragement of the new manager and his sprightly drills. Now they could not stop thinking.

  Another victory followed nonetheless. The largest crowd of the season turned up for an unexpected 1–0 win over Charlton in the first leg of the Paint area final. Tom played for the last four minutes. When he returned home, Mr. Davey and Steven were watching the highlights on the television.

  “I knew it was a penalty,” Mr. Davey said as Tom sat down next to him. “They just showed it. Blatant handball, clear as day.”

  The remaining highlights were all of Charlton’s late pressure. At the final whistle the Town players and coaching staff ran towards the home fans behind the goal. Tom could see himself hesitating by the center circle, being passed by the departing Charlton players.

  “Next stop Wembley, maybe,” Mr. Davey said, getting up to go to bed. “You never know.” When he had gone upstairs Tom went through to the kitchen to look for the date of the second leg on the calendar and his eye was immediately drawn by the coming Sunday: LIAM FOR BREAKFAST.

  —

  From the moment he entered the house to a flurry of plates and kettle and toaster, Tom was determined not to look at him. He made sure to say hello at the same time as Bobby and Steven, but with his back turned, getting cutlery. He kept his eyes down or on the others throughout the whole ordeal. He heard Liam give his opinion on the Charlton game, Wembley, the new manager, as if everything was normal. He listened to the enthralled responses of the blind adoring Daveys. Liam did not once attempt to get his attention, to speak to him.

  Only towards the end, when they had finished eating, did Tom momentarily falter, peeking over as he collected the plates. Liam was looking at him. Not smiling or communicating, but watching him directly with an unreadable expression until Tom turned away to the sink, needing, in the action of twisting on the tap then scouring at the egg-congealed plates, to work off the muscular agitation of his hands and forearms.

  —

  A low bright sun flared between the office buildings and industrial units on the far side of town. His dad had called just before they left. He had a plan to visit him with his mum and sister. Rachel had agreed to the weekend of the Crawley home match in a couple of weeks. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t play,” his dad had said. “It’s you we’re coming to see.” Tom pulled down the windscreen visor, anxious to put the prospect of the visit out of his mind. In the rearview mirror he watched the Scottish pair, busy at their phones, and it occurred to him, from their fixed expressions, that they might be watching one of the videos of themselves. There were three, of varying duration and focus, but all with the same soundtrack of pounding music and manic laughter, which was instantly recognizable whenever it erupted from some part of the canteen or the coach. Both boys had their headphones on, though, so Tom could not tell.

  He turned onto the lane. The pitches were flooded with sunshine. It burned on the windscreens in the staff car park. He slowed into his bay, and they got out without talking, at once buffeted by a strong wind that had picked up in the short time since they had left the house. Liam was by the near wall of the clubhouse. He was talking to a couple of scholars, telling them something. When he had finished they both laughed then moved off, and for a moment Liam watched them as they jogged away.

  All morning Liam was occupied with aerating the pitches, drawing slow columns up and down, his big head barely moving, contemplating the grass, and Tom began to bridle at his total ease—chasing a pigeon, in the canteen tucking into a fish pie, casually chatting to Lesley when she came over to speak to him. As if it was all so simple. Typing on his phone, tucking into the large helping of dessert that Lesley gave him with a wink, drinking the last of his tea to go back out onto the field and get on with his jobs, whistling, his sure routine continuing freely under the cold winter sun.

  —

  The roller shutters had been left up to accommodate the tractor’s roll bar and a bitter wind poured into the ground-staff shed. There was nowhere to sit, even if he had wanted to, so Tom stood against the far wall, facing the entrance. The sound of the tractor faded, or got suddenly louder, carried by the wind. A gust bristled through a rack of birch brooms. Above his head, the club scarf trembled between its two nails along the ceiling joist.

  On the wall near where he stood, between two posters of former players, was a photograph. He stepped over to look at it: a youth team, the page neatly torn out of a black-and-white match-day program. The picture was grainy, but he recognized Liam immediately, at the center of the squad, the taller of two goalkeepers. His face, his haircut, exactly as now. He looked older than the other boys, most of whom—cheeky, skinny, acned—seemed like young children. It took Tom a moment to spot Boyn, then Easter. Easter’s head was shaved and he was smiling. The front row had been instructed to place their hands on their knees and Easter’s extended arms looked frail and boyish next to the coach’s. There was a noise behind him and Tom swiveled round. An empty canister scraped at the floor, shunted by a new spurt of wind. He moved back to his position against the wall, working to recover his composure.

  Even though Tom was standing in clear sight of the entrance, it took Liam a few seconds to notice him. He locked his eyes on Tom for a moment, then concentrated on parking the tractor. The sound of the engine thundered inside the shed. When he turned it off, there was ringing silence.

  “Tom.” He climbed from his seat. “Cup of tea?” He gestured towards a small filthy kettle on a shelf beside a sink. Two tin mugs hung from nails in the wall.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Sure? I’m having one.” He walked to the sink, passing Tom closely.

  Liam bent towards a trestle table on which were collected washers and bolts in different-sized jars and a sprinkler head. Under the table he opened the door of a rusted mini fridge. He was like a tramp in his domain, Tom thought, surrounded by his hoarded junk. He took out a pint of milk and Tom noticed a couple of cans of lager inside the door before it closed.

  Neither of them spoke while the kettle boiled. Liam perched on a pair of upturned wooden pallets wrapped in sacking and bound with twine. He did not point for Tom to sit anywhere so Tom stayed where he was. The tractor engine ticked and gurgled in the middle of the shed floor, spent.

  Liam was winding a piece of string around his finger. “Those two.” He poured the milk into his tea. “Bobby and Steven. What’s the story there? They’re like two puppies every time I’ve met them before, but there wasn’t much banter between them on Sunday. It because of Bobby being in the team now Easter’s out?”

  “I don’t know. I think they’re fine.” He would
not tell Liam anything about the party. To expose the pair further. To let him imagine them up there on the stage, Tom watching.

  “I saw the picture there,” Tom said. “You in the youth team.”

  “Glory days,” Liam said, moving over to a shelf, from which he picked up a wooden box. Inside it, heaps of assorted tines glinted in the dark of the divided sections. The cords of his neck showed as he lifted the box and carried it over to the aerator mounted on the front of the tractor. “Never stood a chance, did I? Keepers never get taken on.” He released the tines from the aerator and knelt to the floor to collect them. There was a heavy metallic clatter with each handful that he dropped into the box. One of the tines had rolled underneath a stand of rubber rakes. Tom moved to pick it up. It had the weight and shape of a bullet. He walked over to Liam, still on the floor, and stood over him. A fine trail of gingery hairs ran along the back of his neck. Tom handed him the tine.

  “Cheers.”

  The wind had lessened and the only sound in the shed, in the silence between the tines dropping, was the ticking of the tractor engine. Something livid surged through Tom, watching Liam carry on with his machines and his boxes in this private shithole, forcing him to stand there like the queer. He wanted to hurt him, to push him to the ground and press his head against the concrete. Liam stopped boxing the tines as Tom’s fingers moved slowly around his neck, finding the soft hollow of his throat, the delicate spokes beneath the skin. Liam stood up. Tom could see the movement of his breath through the wide pink nostrils. A spasm of disgust leaped inside his stomach at the touch of Liam’s fingers on him, moving aside his shirt and resting on his stomach. Liam was pushing against him now. Tom closed his eyes against the heat and the smell of his face, the deviant excitement of their stubble coming together. Their lips touched, then came apart, and as they touched again Tom was certain that he was about to be sick into the man’s warm stinking mouth.

  They were both in some pain at first. Tom stopped, not knowing what to do. This had happened the other time, two years ago in the bedroom of an empty house, neither boy sure how to go on, so they had not and had tried other things instead, frustrated. But now, after a moment of calmly guiding Tom’s fingers, Liam moved once more up against the tractor’s side, drawing Tom’s hands behind him, one at a time onto his waist—and Tom let himself succumb to whatever ugly thing was within him, released, until it was over, from caring.

  —

  He sat in his car for some time with his hands closed around the steering wheel. He could still see the grass cuttings in Liam’s hair, working themselves loose. The thick stench of diesel when his nose had pressed into the back of Liam’s head had been so strong that he could smell it even now, filling his car, coating and seeping into every part of him.

  12

  “I only sign players who fit the right mold,” Wilko told the assembled media in the directors’ lounge. The BBC correspondent put down his doughnut and asked what the fans could expect from the two new signings, recruited hours before the close of the transfer window.

  “Honesty, integrity, excitement. Jay Beverley is an attacking left back I’ve worked with before so I know exactly what I’m getting from him. As for Jacob Gundi—goals. He’s a big fast boy and he’ll always get you goals at this level. It’s a real testament to what the chairman wants to achieve here that we’ve got him, believe me.”

  “Michael Yates—a word about him?”

  “Michael Yates has gone out on loan to Luton for the remainder of the season with a view to a permanent move.”

  An hour later, Jacob Gundi, a once-prolific forward who had been third on Wilko’s target list due to a recurring back problem, sat in the main stand posing for photographs at the side of his new manager. Peter Pascoe loitered by the edge of the pitch in a shirt so threadbare that his cold pink skin shone through it, waiting to secure a quote for the next day’s paper. When the photo shoot was over and he did manage to catch Gundi in a stairwell it was apparent that nobody had informed Gundi who he was. It was later adjudged by the paper’s sports editor that the quote—“It’s good to be here. Peterborough can get stuffed”—was not quite suitable for use.

  On the coach to Port Vale, Wilko assigned Beverley to Tom as his new roommate. Beverley ate the evening meal on a different table to the one at which Tom sat, silent and detached, so the two spoke for the first time only when they were in their room together. They quickly agreed on which bed they would each take. Tom said that Beverley could go into the bathroom first. When he came out sometime later in his boxer shorts there was a pack of wet wipes on the mirror shelf.

  When Tom had brushed his teeth, Beverley was sitting up in bed.

  “How are you finding him, the manager?” Beverley asked.

  “All right. Anything’s an improvement on Clarke.”

  Beverley smiled. “Yeah, I’ve heard some stories about him.”

  Tom moved over to his bag and turned away from Beverley to pull on tracksuit bottoms before getting into bed.

  “Tell you what, though,” Beverley continued. “Wilko’s got some fire in him too when he wants. Just wait. You don’t see it much but when you do…” He pursed his lips, shutting his eyes and blowing out. Tom noticed a collection of items lined up on the floor at the base of his bed: a banana, headphones, protein bar, white socks tucked into a pair of slippers.

  “Night, mate.” Beverley’s bedside light went off.

  “Night.”

  —

  Town were leading when Tom came on. He stationed himself near the touchline in a daze of uncertainty, letting the pulse and heave of the match pass him by until a headed clearance from Bobby spun in his direction, dropping at his feet. There was space in front of him, so he ran into it. Nobody closed him down so he continued, the suddenness of the action preventing him from thinking about it. He cut inside—there was noise from the Town fans at the other end of the ground—and was into the penalty area. He swung his left leg to shoot and, as he did so, felt the bite of studs on his standing foot.

  Gundi took the penalty and scored. He ran across the pitch to the away fans and planted himself before them with his arms outstretched while his teammates jumped onto his back and supporters streamed down the terracing towards him.

  Some of the others came up to Tom in the dressing room and the showers to praise him. He smiled and turned to the wall. When an unseen hand patted him on the bottom he let out a small terrified sound, which was lost in the happy steaming commotion.

  —

  Tom walked with Beverley and the last remaining group out of the clubhouse. When they were as far as the car park, Tom stopped.

  “Damn. Forgot my skins.”

  He moved quickly through the empty corridors, not looking up as he passed Lesley mopping the floor inside the doorway to the canteen. He let himself out of the back of the building. The pitches were deserted. He continued at the same pace, checking often over his shoulder, the sour fragrance of cut grass all around threatening to overwhelm him.

  Liam looked up from where he was kneeling in the shed, pulling tangled stalks from the wheels of the rotary mower. He returned to his task, and Tom felt his entire body shudder. He stepped forward, pushing out of the way some piece of equipment that blocked his path. Liam’s eyes shot up, and for a split second Tom savored the alarm in them.

  He did not let Liam lead this time. He was unhesitant, aggressive, forcing Liam’s cheek flat against the top of the trestle table and watching with hot revulsion his pale lips stretching, catching against his teeth. Liam’s shirt had ridden up and Tom fastened his grip on the flesh of his side until the skin darkened. He moved his hands to Liam’s neck and felt the breath constricting inside his throat, the need rising again to make him hurt, to make himself hurt, to know without any doubt that he was abnormal, worthless.

  Liam straightened his clothes without looking at Tom. He reordered the top of the trestle table. There was the gentle rattling of the shutters on the other side of the shed. Tom, not wan
ting to hear Liam’s voice, to talk to him, left.

  As soon as he was outside, self-loathing enveloped him. There was no relief in the walk to the car or the drive back, entering the house and locking himself in the bathroom to scrub at himself in the Daveys’ shower, scouring his penis and the insides of his thighs until the skin gave and bled.

  He found antiseptic cream and bandaging in the medicine cabinet. He attended to his legs, then spent a long time kneeling on the carpet removing any traces from the shower tray.

  —

  A replacement coaching team was present at the training ground one morning: a new number two, fitness coach, and a goalkeeping coach who had retired as a player only a couple of seasons ago after a long and successful career in the Premier League but whose face and body were already so swollen that none of the squad recognized him until he was introduced.

  The new number two spoke to them before the session. He was considerably older than Wilko. Standing together—both tall, arms folded, thick uniform haircuts—they looked like father and son.

  “I’ve got no time for reputations, good or bad,” he said, pacing the breakfast table with the bunched, sprung knees of a long-retired player. His face was weathered, the back of his neck rucked with folds of skin. “I’ll be taking training from today, and I’ll be assisting the manager by having a good look at what we’ve got in the building.” He looked about the squad. The pouched apparatus of his neck drooped vulnerably beneath his chin, like a testicle. “There’s talent here. We shouldn’t be where we are in the table, I’ll tell you that right now.”

  The number two supervised the session with little pause or interruption. He took them through the existing drills and set plays for the weekend. His instructions were short, clear, authoritative. When finally there was a break he walked over to Wilko on the touchline and the two men exchanged a few words, looking over towards one group of players. The duo and the goalkeeping coach—on the next pitch now firing low shots at Foley and Hoyle—had worked together with great success the previous season. There had been some difficulty negotiating their release because their previous club had wanted a considerable sum in compensation, but Town had wanted to pay none so had ensured that the matter was handed to the FA. Now that they were here the players were keen to find out from Beverley what life would be like under the new regime.