Fiddle City

by Dan Kavanagh

  Athletic started the season well, with three home wins on the trot; they got through the first two rounds of the Cup without any trouble, but had the misfortune to land a tough set of Second Division cloggers in the next round. Away from home; robbed in the last minute by an offside goal.

  ‘Pity about that, Jimmy,’ said Melvyn. ‘Nice little cup run would have done us a world of good.’

  ‘Still, it leaves us free to concentrate on promotion,’ said Jimmy. The remark was a little speculative, given that Athletic were then fourteenth in the table.

  ‘You didn’t say relegation, did you, James?’ Melvyn inquired.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. For your sake as well.’

  The only trouble with concentrating on promotion was that there were many other sides in the Division with better powers of concentration. The bad weather came; they redesigned the players’ strip, and got a decent news story out of it; they tried bingo in the official programme; but the team continued to slide. In early February Melvyn called Jimmy into his office. He had a way of standing, did Melvyn; sort of not quite looking at you, as if you weren’t really central to his scheme of things, as if he was really addressing some misty figure a few yards behind you who might well turn out to be your successor. It unnerved Jimmy a bit.

  ‘Jimmy, you know the trouble with this team I’ve bought?’

  ‘I’m always listening.’

  ‘It’s a dog. That’s what’s wrong with it. A bow-wow.’

  ‘So what do we do about it?’

  ‘What we do about it, James, is that I tell you what to do about it. If it’s a dog, then there’s only one thing to be done.’

  ‘Chief?’

  ‘You must teach it new tricks.’

  ‘Yes, chief.’

  It was time to take risks. He pensioned off a couple of senior citizens whose legs were falling behind their brains, introduced Danny Matson and another scrapping youngster, pushed big Brendan Domingo further forward, demanded more fight, sympathized with players shown the yellow card, and indicated more openly than before which of the opposing players he expected to be shut down at all costs. His job was on the line, and this was the bottom of the Third Division. Keep it tight, take no prisoners, and push the big men forward whenever you get a corner. Back to basics.

  None of this gave much pleasure to the former England B wing-half, who could still curl a ball in more accurately than those he managed; and it gave him mixed feelings when the change of tactics worked. They picked up a few points, climbed a couple of places, but still weren’t out of the wood. Little Danny Matson had worked, though: come on fast, seemed to have struck up a real understanding with big Brendan. The coloured fellow was gaining a lot of confidence from having Danny always prompting him; he’d pointed this out to Melvyn, and Melvyn had agreed. He’d pointed it out because even Melvyn could see most of the other changes Jimmy had made—like the fact that his team were fouling a lot more vigorously than they used to—but you had to have a bit of a smell for the game to see how Danny and Brendan were knitting together.

  What an idiot the boy had been. Jimmy had seen it before with lively little players like him. Full of fire on the pitch, can’t believe it isn’t the same off it. Put a win bonus under their belts and a few Bacardis in their bellies—or even the thrill of a draw plus a half of lager—and they start picking fights. The worst ruptured Achilles tendon he’d seen in twenty years of professional football. At least six months out of the game; possibly more. What they said about the Achilles tendon was always true in Jimmy’s experience: however well it mends, you always lose a yard or two of pace afterwards. And Jimmy had seen enough football to know that Danny’s game was all about pace.

  Jimmy knew something else as well: that when the day came for him to be sacked, Melvyn would be very nice to him, and would call him James.

  Duffy had had the flat in Goldsmith Avenue, Acton, for three years now. It looked as if he had moved in two days ago and the rest of his stuff hadn’t arrived yet. But there wasn’t any ‘rest of his stuff’, this was it: bed, table, kitchen, telephone. These, along with the rusting F-reg van outside, were the entire visible assets of Duffy Security after its initial operating period of six years. It didn’t bother Duffy: the less you had, the easier it was to keep tidy. It might have bothered a few clients, but they never actually got to visit the ‘offices’ of Duffy Security. Duffy explained the condition of his van—if he caught one of those looks which said, ‘Why did I pick you out of the Yellow Pages?’—by saying that it made surveillance work easier. Any wally can buy himself a new motor and put it against tax, Duffy would add confidently. In his early days he would sometimes joke, when the clients seemed unimpressed by his van, that he was still saving up for the dog. He soon found out that clients didn’t like jokes. They also, in a funny sort of way, wanted dogs. Duffy didn’t want a dog. Dogs bit. Dogs worried Duffy.

  Other things worried him more.

  ‘Can you look at me back?’

  ‘Nnn?’ Carol was only half-awake. It was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and she’d come off duty at two.

  ‘I’ve looked at me legs, can you look at me back?’

  Carol slowly opened her eyes and looked him up and down from shoulders to bum.

  ‘It’s all still there, Duffy, it hasn’t run away.’

  ‘Does it look the same?’

  Carol squinted again, as carefully as the time of day allowed.

  ‘You’ve got hair on your shoulderblades, Duffy, did you know that?’

  ‘All the same otherwise?’

  ‘It’s disgusting, you know, Duffy.’

  ‘What is?’ Christ, had she spotted something?

  ‘I should shave it off if I were you. It isn’t a bit sexy.’ Oh, that. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing it for you, Duffy. I mean, it’s never going to be a feature.’

  Duffy had gone back to sleep; Carol too, but less easily.

  Over breakfast that morning he suddenly said to her, ‘Do you know where to look for lymph nodes?’

  ‘Some sort of cereal, are they, Duffy?’

  He’d scowled a bit, and got on with his muesli. Carol knew it never did any good asking. Either he’d tell you, or he wouldn’t tell you. Perhaps it was something to do with his football. He liked to start fretting quite early before a match.

  ‘You be here when I get back?’

  ‘Don’t think so, Duffy. Stuff to do.’

  ‘I see.’ He knew not to ask things as well. Sometimes, they seemed to spend their time not asking. He looked across at the pretty, dark, Irish morning face of WPC Carol Lucas, and thought how even after all these years it was something nice to see in the mornings. He didn’t tell her that, either. ‘Only, you see, I thought we might … do something.’

  Do something? What did he mean? They never did anything. When had they last done anything? That Greek meal the previous summer? Or had he taken her for a drive in the van since—yes, that time when he had something worth nicking in the back, and one of the door locks didn’t work, and he’d had to see a client on the way to somewhere else. Carol had sat in the van guarding a cardboard box containing she didn’t know what for half an hour. That was the last time they’d ‘done something’.

  Her friends assumed they didn’t go out much because they were always in bed. She’d told them Duffy did a bit of weight-training (well, he had a couple of dumb-bell things too heavy for her to lift which he kept in the fitted cupboard in the bedroom) and they’d jumped to the obvious conclusions. ‘Pumping iron again, last night, was it?’ they’d sometimes ask. That was very far from being it, but Carol always smiled. She and Duffy had held the world chastity record for—what? five years? It didn’t bear thinking about. Odd that she could still go for him, she thought. Odd that he still wanted her around. When that terrible thing had got him thrown out of the Force, when they’d framed him with that black kid who claimed to be under-age, he’d stopped being able to get it together with her. Tried everythin
g for a bit, but no good. That would have been it for most people; but in a funny way they’d stuck together. Only by not asking a lot of questions, though.

  ‘I could come back tomorrow if you like,’ she offered.

  ‘I’ve got a new dish I heat up in the oven.’

  ‘That sounds smashing, Duffy. I’ll put on my best dress.’

  As he drove to the game, though, he started worrying if Carol had looked properly. Little brown irregular blotches, that was what he had read. Duffy shuddered. It had a nasty name, too. Kaposi’s sarcoma. That didn’t sound like something you got better from. Who the hell was this Kaposi guy? He had a name like one of those old Hollywood movie stars. Bela Kaposi.

  Of course, there was nothing to show that he’d got it. But on the other hand there was nothing to show that he hadn’t got it. This didn’t strike Duffy as a very good deal.

  At first, it had just been a scare story in the papers. KILLER PLAGUE HITS U.S. GAYS. One of those things they have over there, he thought, like Legionnaire’s Disease, WHAT KILLED GAY PLAGUE MAN? Over-indulgence, Duffy thought, as he read the headline and passed on. U.S. CHRISTIANS SAY GOD IS PUNISHING GAYS. And so it continued, NO HELP YET FOR AIDS VICTIMS. Then: SHOULD GAYS CHANGE THEIR LIFESTYLE? And finally, dreadfully, one morning: KILLER GAY PLAGUE AIDS IS HERE.

  Duffy soon learnt what the initials stood for. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Attacks Homosexuals, Heroin Addicts, Haitians and Haemophiliacs. Everyone with an H in their name: like only eating shellfish when there’s an R in the month, or something. Homosexual includes Bisexual, Duffy read. Duffy had been pretty bisexual in his time. Well, all that would have to stop. If he’d picked it up, though, everything would stop. Everything. One hundred per cent death-rate after three years or so for all diagnosed cases. No way of knowing whether you were going to get it, no way of knowing whether you’d already got it, and no cure.

  Promiscuous homosexuals especially at risk. Passive homosexuals especially at risk. Well, of course he’d been promiscuous. He’d also been promiscuous with women—did that help in any way? He’d been very promiscuous after things had all gone wrong with Carol; in fact he’d made a rule only to have one-night stands, because he didn’t want to get involved. He also wanted to hang on to Carol, and having nothing but one-night stands, however many of them, was in a funny way being loyal to Carol. Not many other people would probably see it that way, but Duffy did. He’d had a year or two of being, yes, well, up for anything that moved, really. Then it sort of settled down, and he was just averagely promiscuous now. He didn’t necessarily keep to his one-night-only rule, because he didn’t feel his relationship with Carol was under threat any more. At least not from his side. Her side was another matter. He didn’t like to think about that.

  Passive homosexuals especially at risk. No comment, Duffy muttered to himself.

  First you get infected, they said. Someone who’s been on a package tour to San Francisco; a tasty American who’s found the Alligator Club in his Spartacus Gay Guide to the World and dropped in for a trawl. Then nothing happens. That was the scary bit. Nothing happens for six months or so. Then you feel a bit unwell, you get night sweats, lose a little weight, get the runs, have a high temperature; and these lymph node things swell up. That’ll go on for a bit—perhaps as much as a year—and suddenly it goes away. Completely. You feel fine. Never better. Back down the Alligator and no problem. The only problem is, your entire immunity system has been wiped out. No resistance left: a common cold blows you away, or some odd form of pneumonia. Or, most likely of all, this Bela Kaposi comes along with the old sarcoma, and the brown blotches start, and that’s it. You might as well put your head in a polythene bag and save the National Health Service some money.

  Had he felt unwell in the last year or so? Of course he had. Of course he sometimes woke up sweating in the night; who didn’t? Temperature? Occasionally. Weight-loss? Yes, but he thought that was a good thing at the time; he didn’t want to get fat, so he’d started pumping iron and watching his diet. Bit of a health-food kick, almost. Diarrhoea? Who doesn’t find himself doubling back to the toilet once in a while? You don’t keep a record, though, do you?

  Or on the other hand he could still be in the six-month incubation period. The first cases in Britain were only just being officially confirmed. But by ‘cases’ they meant deaths. And these ‘cases’ wouldn’t have lived their last couple of years any differently from how they’d lived the earlier ones. So think of all those six-month incubation periods stacked up one behind the other, waiting to burst out. No wonder people were getting so jumpy down at the clubs. No wonder anyone with an American accent couldn’t even get a drink. Duffy still called in at the Alligator; there wasn’t any reason to boycott the place—it wasn’t as if they put AIDS in the beer there, though some people behaved as if they did. But he always went home alone, nowadays.

  No more men. Not for a bit. Watch out for night sweats. Try and find out where your lymph nodes are.

  It wasn’t Duffy’s brightest game for the Reliables that Sunday. He missed a punch on a corner: one-nil. He came out far too late when the back four was caught square: two-nil. He got an elbow in the side at a free-kick and was too winded to see who’d done it. And he ended up being scooted round by a fat midfielder who picked the ball out of the net for him, and proudly announced that it was his first goal in eighteen months: three-nil.

  He didn’t feel too bright in the shower afterwards, either. There had been times when he would glance around the flesh on display and have a quiet smile to himself. Pity they’re all straight, he’d think. Now he half-closed his eyes as the shorts were dropped, and winced as all these pink, healthy, heterosexual bums came waltzing confidently out of the shower. Herpes was the most they’d be worrying about.

  One of the bums belonged to Ken Marriott—Maggot, as he was affectionately known to the team, because of the way he kept getting under opponents’ skins. There was something about Maggot that really riled other outfits. Probably the way he kicked them; they never did seem to get used to that. Maggot was tall and thin and bad-tempered-looking, and didn’t have much hair left: most of it had been worn off on all those strikers he’d butted. But then, if he hadn’t been a touch on the physical side, he probably wouldn’t have kept his place with the Reliables. For Ken suffered from a terrible affliction: he was a thinker. He worked on the sports desk of the West London Chronicle; perhaps that was where he got his ideas. He talked a lot about ‘vision’, and ‘changing the point of attack’, and ‘spreading the ball wide’.

  ‘He’s got great vision, our Maggot,’ said Karl French after one match. Karl French was the fittest, youngest and smartest member of the Reliables, and they were lucky to get him. ‘Great vision. Only trouble is, the ball doesn’t go anywhere fucking near where he wants it to.’

  Maggot was always trying to play subtle chips round the edge of the box, or back-heel the ball at speed, or lay it off one-touch with a caress of the boot. The Reliables forgave him these delusions of grandeur because of his defensive qualities. He could mistime a tackle like no one else in the team; and since he was tall and thin and looked a bit uncoordinated, the ref often let him get away with it.

  ‘I know I’m a bit rugged,’ Marriott had once explained, almost apologetically, after an especially vicious game, ‘but I’ve got this vision as well, you see.’

  ‘Course you’ve got vision, Maggot,’ said French consolingly. ‘Anyone can see that. Great vision. It’s just a question of whether the rest of us can adapt our game to fit in with you.’

  Maggot thought he had made a friend for life.

  As they were leaving the ground, Marriott asked Duffy for a lift back. Despite his vision, he’d so far been unable to persuade any driving-test examiner to allow him on the road unaccompanied.

  ‘Been seeing a bit of Jimmy Lister lately,’ he began, as he untangled his seat belt.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Now there’s a man with problems.’

  �
�Uh-huh.’ Not like mine, thought Duffy. Bet Jimmy Lister doesn’t get night sweats. Or if he does, they’re only about something short-term, like losing his job.

  ‘Ever met him?’

  ‘No. Liked him as a player. Bit of a berk as a manager, isn’t he?’

  ‘You try managing Athletic with Melvyn Prosser breathing down your neck.’

  ‘What’s he earn? Fifteen thou? Twenty?’

  ‘Something like, I should think.’

  ‘Well, I’d let Melvyn Prosser breathe down my neck for that money.’

  ‘Pressure, Duffy. That job’s all about pressure.’

  ‘Why does he wear white shoes if he isn’t a berk?’ said Duffy aggressively. He had more things to worry about than Jimmy Lister’s employment prospects. They drove on in silence for a bit.

  ‘How’s business, Duffy?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Turning down work?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Want a job?’

  ‘Thought you’d never ask.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What is it? Nannying the rest of Lister’s mob so they don’t all go on the piss and get themselves into fights?’

  ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want work, from the fuss you make.’

  Duffy grunted. Maybe he should pack it in and take it easy for the last couple of years or so of his life. Perhaps he’d marry Carol on his deathbed at the hospital. Except that he might not even get admitted to the hospital. He’d read about some doctors and nurses refusing to treat AIDS victims. Too dangerous. Not enough known about the way the disease spreads. Filthy queers, anyway. Duffy wouldn’t be surprised if, by the time he got his Kaposi thing, all the guys with AIDS were being packed off to some leper colony in the Welsh mountains. Made to wear little bells round their necks so people could hear them coming. Ding-dong, ding-dong. No, dear, that’s not the ice-cream van, it’s the man with AIDS come to dig in our dustbins. Do go and turn the hose on him again, will you? Or why not just shoot him this time, darling?