Fiddle City

by Dan Kavanagh

  He found himself looking down at his legs, at the white bits, the bits that were getting cold. A late March wind was blowing across the recreation ground. He wasn’t looking for goose-pimples, though; he was looking for little brown blotches. Still doing so, after all these months. He was probably safe now; probably. But at the time, when that whole business was going on, it had been just another thing to worry about. Actually, to get shit-scared about. There were a lot of very frightened people down at the bars and clubs then, and Duffy had been no exception. There were days when someone had only to put a hand on his arm for Duffy to send his jacket to the cleaners. And the funny part of it—yes, it was funny, he decided, looking back—was the thing about Carol. The thing with Carol. Very odd. Duffy smiled.

  Christ, that ginge again. Anyone would have thought the chief scouts of Juventus, Benfica and Manchester United lay concealed among the mute crowd of eight spectators that the game had attracted. Close him down, close him down, Duffy found himself yelling, even though the ginge was still in his own half. Bell had a go, with the usual lack of success, Maggot was caught too wide, everyone else backed off or stuck tight to the man they were meant to be marking, and suddenly the ginge was free and heading straight towards Duffy’s manor. He came out fast. Where was his defence? Where was his fucking defence? Duffy had only one idea—get out there, outside the area, and bring the ginge down.

  Perhaps the Benfica scout really was present. Duffy came roaring out, and had almost reached the edge of his box when he noticed something odd. The ginge had stopped running towards him. In fact he’d stopped running altogether. He’d put his foot on the ball. Before Duffy could cover another yard the freckly little fellow had flipped the ball up a couple of feet and volleyed it dippingly over the oncoming keeper; he was already turning away, index finger raised in modest triumph, by the time the ball hit the back of the net. One-nil.

  Christ, thought Duffy. And they’re only meant to be a pub team. Where had he sprung from? Had they brought in some cowboy specially? That didn’t seem likely: everyone knew you didn’t need cowboys against the Western Sunday Reliables. Perhaps he was some minor-leaguer coming back after injury and getting in a bit of extra match practice. Or perhaps he was just a chap who drank at the pub and happened to be a class above everyone else on the pitch. Somebody would certainly have to give him a whack pretty soon, or he’d be getting above himself.

  The Reliables didn’t even go through the motions of blaming one another. One or two nodded at the ginge as if to say ‘Good goal’. Duffy wondered if he would have had any chance of touching the shot if he’d been taller; or if he’d jumped. The only trouble was, it wasn’t so simple to jump when running full tilt; and if you did so, you’d probably signal it so obviously that the bastard would just toe-poke the ball along the ground underneath you instead, and then you’d really look a wally. This was one of the problems with goalkeeping. You needed to be several different sizes all at the same time. If you were tall, you could pick out high crosses all afternoon but got beaten by low volleys. If you were small, your ground work might be terrific but you often made the net seem invitingly large to opposing forwards. If you were chunky, there was a lot of you to spread in front of someone with the ball, but you might not be so nimble about the box. And if you were slim, you might move fast, but you might also find yourself on the end of a lot of agg when they brought up the big men for the corners. Duffy was medium-sized—just tall enough for the copper he’d once been years ago—and stocky. This seemed to him to be the worst of all worlds. It worried him.

  One-nil. There goes my clean sheet, thought Duffy. He liked that phrase: ‘keeping a clean sheet’. It made you understand the way goalkeeping was all about neatness, tidiness. He sometimes imagined conversations which went like this: ‘How did you get on yesterday, Duffy?’ ‘Oh, clean sheet again.’ He had to imagine these conversations because they very rarely took place. Not many people asked him about his football; and when they did he wasn’t very often in a position to give the response he dreamed of. Clean sheet. It was a funny expression. He gave a small smile. The only time he’d kept a succession of clean sheets had been when he was searching his legs for brown blotches and taking his temperature every other day; the time when the Alligator and all the other clubs were running scared.

  The Reliables weren’t the greatest outfit Duffy had ever played for. Some of them were a bit fat, a bit bald, a bit heavy in the leg; one or two of them were distinctly old. But they were keen; they turned up. It’s all very well having a teamful of ball-playing wizards, but if only nine of them show up, and one of those nine happens to run into a skilfully-placed elbow early on, then you’re in trouble. Duffy had kept goal for a few Sunday teams like this. The trouble with Sunday is that it follows Saturday, and as likely as not the creative midfield dynamo has been creatively on the piss until all hours the previous night, while the hunky ballwinner is gazing round some strange bedroom for the first time and realizing that he has six and a half minutes to get across London and he hasn’t got his kit with him. Duffy had had enough of such teams; for a start, they tended to leave their keeper a little short of protection. Whereas with the Reliables, you could always count on there being four players in the back four. When the team had been founded, all of three years ago, they’d called themselves the Western Sunday Casuals. It sounded pretty smart, and even hinted that they were some rather posh outfit who’d been going since the days when everyone wore pyjama tops and shorts down to their calves; but it didn’t really suit, and after a few months the Casuals had quietly become the Reliables.

  One-nil with ten minutes to half-time. A couple more scares for Duffy, but otherwise not too bad. They’d really have to sit on the ginge, though; maybe kick that winger about a bit too. And perhaps last night’s beer might catch up on the pub side in the second half. Just keep the concentration going and don’t try anything clever in the last couple of minutes. Go two down and they’d be sunk. Lost. Lost without trace. Like … like Danny Matson. Where was Danny Matson now?

  First Half

  THERE ARE TOO MANY ways of breaking a footballer’s leg. If you want to make quite sure, of course, you can simply drop a few hundred in the right direction and the delivery man will come round with a junior sledgehammer in his pocket. That’s a bit noisy, of course, but then it’s surprising how many people don’t mind being a bit noisy. If you want to be quieter, you might look up the right fixture, look up the right player on the other side—someone with good strong legs himself, for a start—and send a runner round to suggest a way of earning a little nest-egg. All for one awkward, mistimed tackle, a bit of over-the-top for a fifty-fifty ball, probably wouldn’t even get a yellow card. However, there are even quieter ways.

  Danny Matson was a bit pissed; even he would have admitted that. But the men who stopped him from taking his car out of the underground park that night weren’t primarily concerned with cutting down the number of drunken drivers on the roads. Later, Danny couldn’t even be sure how many of them there had been. ‘How many would you estimate?’ the detective-sergeant had asked him. ‘Too bloody many,’ was all Danny could reply. It had puzzled the detective-sergeant. Danny had only been carrying about thirty quid: hardly enough for a couple of lagers each nowadays.

  Danny had been feeling pretty good that Saturday. His twelfth first-team game on the trot. He’d fitted in; he’d done the business; and he’d laid on the pass for big Brendan to knock in the equalizer. He’d done some fancier things in the other games—five goals in eleven matches can’t be bad for a midfielder, and especially when the team’s struggling—but this time he’d been pleased with his all-round game. The lads had been pleased. The Boss had been pleased. They’d got a result. One-one against Barnsley wasn’t rubbish in anyone’s language. ‘I see light at the end of the tunnel, lads,’ the Boss said afterwards. The Boss always had this posh way of talking.

  And the nice thing about getting a result, for a change, was that it made the rest of Saturday mo
re lively. Sure, they’d get drunk regardless; but getting drunk to celebrate one-one against Barnsley was so much better than getting drunk to forget about getting thrashed. It also meant that you could look the bouncer in the eye when you turned up at The Knight Spot.

  That was another nice thing about making the first team: they gave you free entry at The Knight Spot. Free entry; the first drink on the house; and at some point Vince would wander over and have a chat about the game. The time Danny had tucked away that header at the far post and given Athletic their first win in eight outings, Vince had come along with the ice-bucket and the champagne. Personally. That was one reason people liked The Knight Spot: Vince wasn’t above doing things himself.

  So they’d had a bit of a knees-up that Saturday. A few of the lads were there and more than the odd Bacardi got drunk. Danny was even asked to dance by a girl called Denise, a bouncy, dark girl with more than a fair handout of flesh: most of it showing, and some of it pressed against Danny. Tasty. I wonder what two-one against Barnsley would have earned me, Danny reflected. He thought Denise looked more than all right under the strobe lights.

  When Monica turned up—Monica that he’d dated a couple of times recently—Denise chased her off. Not pushy; just firm. A few more Bacardis got themselves drunk, and when it was time to go Denise seemed to be with him. As far as the door, anyway.

  ‘You fetch the car round, love, there’s an angel,’ she whispered, shivering a little and parting from his arm, it seemed, with the greatest reluctance.

  Whoops, he thought, steady now, as he had a little trouble with his feet. They were getting uppity; didn’t seem at all keen on walking him to the car-park. Perhaps they knew something he didn’t.

  He got to the first basement level and set off in an approximately straight line towards his old Cortina. He hoped Denise wouldn’t be too disappointed. Just waiting delivery on the new Capri, he thought he might mention. There were lots of things wrong with the Cortina. Like the way its keys kept playing hide-and-seek in your pockets. Ah, there they were. Now, mind that puddle. Funny how they never worked out the drainage in these car-parks. There were always great lakes of oily water around even when it hadn’t been raining for days. Now, which way up did the key go?

  He thought they hit him on the head first, but later he couldn’t be sure. They certainly knocked him down and gave him a bit of a kicking and rolled him in the water and messed his suit and nicked his wallet and tore off his watch. He was drunk enough to find it a matter of curiosity why they were doing all this to him, and why they were being so rough when they already had his wallet. Why were they still holding him down, one of them sort of pushing his face into the oily water, and another one holding him by the leg. Perhaps he was trying to kick them; he wasn’t sure. There was no noise except for some scuffling and panting, and by the time Danny thought to let out a bit of a shout they had given him good reason to do so. Maybe he had been kicking or something, because all of a sudden he felt this tremendous thump on the back of his ankle, just down near the heel. Then another, sharper this time, and another, and another, and suddenly more pain than he’d had from any injury in his career so far, even that shoulder he’d once put out at Scunthorpe. He screamed, and when he stopped screaming the men had gone, and his suit was messed, and his Rolex was stolen, and Denise had given up and gone home, and his career was wrecked.

  Jimmy Lister was in his first season as manager of Athletic, and quite possibly his last as well. Fourth from bottom of the Third Division with ten matches to go. Every manager in the land knew what that meant. They wouldn’t sack you before the end of the season because anything, they reckoned, was better than nothing as a manager; and no new fellow would take on the job at that stage. So you had the next ten games. If the team was relegated, you were slung out—no question. On the other hand, if you saved the team from relegation, that didn’t make you a hero. Thanks but no thanks. Well done, Jim lad, good effort over the last six weeks, but I think we’ll be making other arrangements at the start of next season. No hard feelings?

  There were a lot of jokes about Jimmy having no hair left after a year in charge of Athletic; but the fact was, he didn’t have much when he joined. He’d lost most of it by the time he’d finished as a player, so the stress that was getting to him now was probably going somewhere else. Ulcers, he expected.

  He’d had a good run, on the whole, had Jimmy Lister. Started off as a wing-half in the days when such things still existed. Not quite the best, but pretty classy all the same. Three England B caps; a dozen years in the First Division, then three in the Second; and he’d come out of it all with a good reputation. Bit of a thinker, they said of Jimmy; bit of a card, too. He curled a nice cross-ball into the box, did Jimmy. A good reader of the game, they said; never played the obvious ball; always ghosting in from deep positions without being picked up. They said a lot of other junk about Jimmy Lister’s game, and he was crafty enough never to deny it. Go bald and they immediately think you must be brainy; well, if that’s what they wanted.

  He made the jump into management early, and avoided that depressing slide through the divisions towards some Mickey Mouse team in the Toytown League. Two years as assistant, then three in charge of a Second Division club in the West Midlands. Sixth in the table when he took over; nineteenth when he left. Not brilliant. Not disastrous, either; not really. And there’d been the usual frustrations: not enough money to buy new players, because not enough people through the turnstiles; not enough people through the turnstiles because no exciting new players for them to come and see. Too many sag-bellied senior citizens nearing the end of their careers; a number of new lads coming along, but not coming along all that quickly. One really good find, quick lad, clever as a monkey, and the Board sells him to pay off the overdraft. One reason we’ve got an overdraft, he told the Board, is that we’re selling lads like this one before they’ve had a chance to pull in the crowds. We admire your loyalty to your players, Jimmy, they told him; but we’ve got a loyalty to someone with a big stick called the bank. You’d rather have a bank manager than a football manager, he’d said. Don’t get cheeky with us, Jim lad, or we’ll have to let you go.

  Just before the end of his third season somebody had tipped off the local paper about him and the physio’s wife. All that free booze poured down the sports page and look what they do to you when you’re on the ropes. The job went; Mrs Lister thought she’d call it a day too; it was a bad time. He had a year away from the game: did a little schools’ coaching, just to keep his eye in; wondered about going overseas; and for a year he didn’t buy himself a new shirt. When the call came from Melvyn Prosser he was finding it easy to get depressed. He didn’t know who to thank, so he thanked Melvyn Prosser. Whoever he might be.

  Athletic’s trouble had always been that they were one of the least glamorous teams in London. Cup semi-finalists in the middle Thirties, decent run one year in the League Cup, a few bits of yellowing silverware in the boardroom; but year in, year out, a team of huffers and puffers who never looked like blowing anyone’s house down. The Board’s answer had been Melvyn Prosser (or at least Melvyn Prosser’s chequebook); and the new chairman’s answer had been Jimmy Lister.

  Jimmy had decided to play this one a bit more high profile. Image isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing. You buy a foreign player, for instance: he isn’t necessarily better than someone you could have picked up for less money in Scotland, but a Dashing Dane or a Swanky Slav makes good copy in the local paper, and brings a few more in through the turnstiles, if only out of curiosity. It was the same with a manager. It couldn’t do any harm to let them know there was a bit of a character loose among them, could it? And this time, he promised himself he’d keep his hands off the physio’s wife, however tasty she might turn out to be.

  He dressed himself carefully: the blue double-breasted blazer, striped shirt, scarlet tie, grey slacks, white shoes. A sort of bald Robert Redford, he thought. And always the white shoes, even in the rain. He’d thought
of a fedora, but that had been done before; besides, the bald head was an item in itself. And the white shoes were a good touch. He did well by the press; he was always available; he opened a couple of shops in the first week after taking over; and he was pictured in the local paper with Miss West London sitting on his lap. He rang up the Playboy Club and asked for the loan of eleven Bunnies to do a photocall with the first team. He was given to understand that Athletic were not considered glamorous enough to merit the loan of Bunnies. But that’s why I want them, he answered, to make us glamorous.

  When he told Melvyn Prosser of this snub, the chairman said, ‘I expect we could get the Dagenham Girl Pipers.’

  Melvyn and Jimmy understood one another. Instead of the Bunnies, they hired a biplane to fly over the ground at half-time with a big banner attached to its tail reading COME ON YOU BLUES. The Blues were two-nil down at the time, and some of the crowd suggested that the plane’s petrol money should have been kept in the piggy bank and put towards a new player. So the next week six girls dressed in Athletic strip came out before the game and each kicked a free football into the crowd ‘with thanks from Melvyn Prosser’, as the public address announced. Two of them were thrown back.