Fiddle City

by Dan Kavanagh

  Prosser laughed again.

  ‘Listen, if anyone was out to get me, they wouldn’t do it through the club. It’s nice having a club and all that, and believe me I’m committed to its future, but if I was the Big Bad Wolf out in the bushes looking to make it hot for Mel Prosser, I’d be going after some of his other business interests. Much easier. I wouldn’t be bothered to start by duffing up his Davey Matsons.’

  ‘Danny, chief.’

  ‘Danny Matsons. How is the lad, Jimmy?’

  ‘Bit down in the mouth, chief.’

  ‘He’s a good lad. Must be a bit of a blow, losing his first-team bonus.’

  ‘But if,’ Duffy persisted, ‘there was someone … some enemy—who would he be?’

  ‘Vic Rivers, Solly Benson, Wally Mountjoy, Fiddler Mick, Steve Wilson, Charlie Magrudo, Mrs Charlie Magrudo, Dicky Jacks, Michael O’Brien, Tom Clancy, Stacky Stevenson, Reg Dyson …’ Prosser spread his hands. ‘How many more do you want? My friends are my enemies. I like them, but I’d do them; same goes for them the other way round. I’m a businessman, do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’

  Prosser looked irritated. He looked as if he was being asked to squeal on a friend. He was, in a way.

  ‘Maybe Charlie Magrudo. Maybe. I did him a bit of naughty a year or two ago.’

  ‘What sort of naughty?’

  ‘Not very naughty. Heard he was trying to line a few council pockets and fix himself up with a contract or two.’ Melvyn smiled at the memory. ‘So I dropped him in it and walked off with them myself. He didn’t like it much. But I’m sure he’s forgiven me by now.’

  ‘Did he go down for it?’

  ‘Go down? Good God no. I wouldn’t do that to him. No, it was all kept within the old cream paint of the Town Hall. And then I got the contracts by laying out just half what Charlie had laid out. I liked that.’

  Prosser turned his mind back to Duffy.

  ‘And what have we found out so far that our friends in blue have missed? Any little leads? Giving young James his money’s worth, I hope.’

  ‘Not really. I’m trying to jog Danny Matson’s memory. And I’ve been down Layton Road.’

  ‘You’ve been down Layton Road? Harassing our residents and loyal supporters? That’s a bit out of line, I’d say.’

  ‘I wasn’t harassing them. They were very co-operative.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Yes, they wanted to tell me all about what the yobboes did through their letter-boxes.’

  ‘It’s a terrible area, this,’ said Prosser, hunching his shoulders in melodramatic resignation. ‘Born and brought up within the sound of Sainsbury’s supermarket, but it’s sometimes hard to be loyal to it.’

  ‘Mr Prosser, can I try out something else?’

  Prosser checked his watch.

  ‘You have three minutes and forty-five seconds.’

  ‘Is the club making a profit?’

  ‘You need to ask? No, the club is not making a profit, the club is making a healthy loss. It’s the thing this club does most efficiently. James and I had various schemes at the beginning of the season with which we hoped to allure the paying customers, but I fear it was all pissing in the wind. We’re lucky to get three thousand for a home game, and I’m afraid we’re not one of the League’s top attractions when we travel. What did we get at Rotherham? Under fifteen hundred, as I recall. No Cup run worth speaking of …’

  ‘Putting it bluntly, Mr Prosser, are you paying most of the bills out of your own pocket?’

  ‘Answering it bluntly, Mr Duffy, yes I am.’

  ‘Would the club be a viable proposition in the Fourth Division?’

  ‘Duffy, those are words we do not utter anywhere on these premises, do you understand? No one, but no one, mentions those words.’

  ‘Sorry. Sorry. But I was just … Look, in the extremely unlikely event of … of the worst coming to the worst, what would happen? I mean, what would actually happen?’

  ‘Well, if a certain sad day in the history of this distinguished club were to come to pass, the first thing to happen is that Jim-boy here would be on his bike and looking into his career prospects. Sorry, Jimmy.’

  ‘You’ve always been level with me, chief. I wouldn’t expect anything else.’

  ‘And then?’ said Duffy.

  ‘Then it would be a matter for the Board.’

  ‘Or at least for its major shareholder.’

  ‘Yes I am as a matter of fact. Clever of you to guess. Well, yes, there would be various options to consider.’

  ‘Any you’d care to share with us? Purely in the unlikely event of, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally. Well, the chairman would have to resign.’

  ‘Melvyn,’ said Jimmy with genuine surprise. ‘You couldn’t … Not after all you’ve done for the club.’

  ‘James, let’s not get sentimental. All I’ve done for the club in my two years as chairman is foot a not inconsiderable wages bill, redesign the players’ strip, appoint you, preside over a four-figure decline in attendance, and watch us go down the table from tenth to twenty-second.’

  ‘And what else?’ asked Duffy.

  ‘Are you always so persistently gloomy, Mr Duffy? What else? Well, I imagine the Board would go through the usual motions, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the playing staff would be reduced, the best players would be sold off, we might start looking for a cheap manager. Or we could just wind the whole thing up.’

  ‘If the chief shareholder said so.’

  ‘The chief shareholder would obviously have an influential say in the matter.’

  ‘You couldn’t do that, Melvyn,’ said Jimmy protestingly. ‘It’s not as if we were bottom of the unmentionable and applying for re-election.’

  ‘Times have changed, James. Times are hard. Every division has half a dozen clubs scraping along on the breadline, with some indulgent chairman holding them up by the bootstraps. Just because you aren’t bottom of that division which we agree not to mention by name doesn’t mean you’re safe. Who’s going to pay the wages? Where are they going to find another Melvyn Prosser from? I don’t mind telling you I’ve tried looking around a bit in the last few months, and I reckon I’ve got about as much chance of unloading this club as I have of selling choc-ices to the Eskimos.’ There was a silence. ‘But I’d better be on my way, before I cheer you up some more. Still, what I’ve just said ought to persuade you of one thing, Mr Duffy.’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘That if there is a Big Bad Wolf out to get me, his best tactics are to make sure we avoid relegation so that I carry on being bled dry paying the bills for another year.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Duffy, as Melvyn Prosser swept off for an appointment with his gold Rolls-Royce Corniche. Jimmy Lister was head down, and flattening his remnants of sandy hair with his fists. Duffy felt sorry for him. Eventually Jimmy stopped rubbing his head and spoke.

  ‘Bit of a choker, that.’

  ‘Sorry if I led him on a bit.’

  ‘No, no, it’s best to have the cards on the table. Just to check that you don’t have any trumps. It’s all going wrong, isn’t it? All going wrong for me, all going wrong for Melvyn. It must be costing him a packet.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Duffy wouldn’t commit himself this early. ‘Just out of interest, how did he get involved in the club?’

  ‘I don’t know, why does anyone want to do anything as daft as own a football team?’

  ‘Try telling me,’ said Duffy.

  ‘Well, sometimes it’s in the family. There are a few clubs that are almost like family businesses. Father to son, old aunt Mabel with the casting vote on the Board and so on. Can be very friendly places to work for, big happy family and all that; or they can be bloody awful, with the chairman picking the team. Then there are the people who want to own a club simply because they’re football nuts. Love the game, watched it from the terraces, made a pile, and can’t wait to have a set of toy footballers to play wi
th, like the toy soldiers they used to have as a kid. They’re really keen on the game, come to all the matches, don’t bother too much about the bottom line. If things go well, they’re probably the best sort to work for.’

  ‘Judging from the way Mr Prosser can’t even get the names of his players right, I gather we wouldn’t classify him as a football nut?’

  Jimmy laughed.

  ‘Well, he does his best, old Melvyn. No, he really tries. He likes saying things like “Class ball” and “Super skills” and “Screamer”—though truth to tell this old team doesn’t give him much opportunity to use his vocabulary. No, I think even Melvyn would admit that he’s the third sort of owner. Local boy made good, done well for himself, got all he wants, got the big house, the business, the money, and doesn’t know what to do with it all of a sudden. Buying the nearest team seems the answer. Nice bit of fame, picture in the paper almost whenever you want it. Local hero and all that. Takes you out of yourself as well—it’s a different world, seems glamorous at first, even if it seems a lot less glamorous after a couple of years. And everyone dreams of the Cup run—Wembley, the twin towers, sitting in the Royal Box, all the stuff that never comes.’

  ‘So what does the club need now, if Melvyn Prosser’s thinking of pulling out?’

  ‘It needs another nice sucker like Melvyn Prosser,’ said Jimmy ruefully.

  On the drive to Ealing Duffy suddenly remembered Don Binyon. Stocky, balding, and with an unkind sense of humour, Binyon had been an occasional drinking companion down at the Alligator. Duffy hadn’t fucked Binyon—didn’t really fancy him—but he’d enjoyed his company. Nice sense of humour, if a bit cutting. Liked to tell people the truth about themselves; very keen on doing that. One evening Duffy, who had been feeling a bit sorry for himself and was punishing the shorts more than he should have done, got a bit talkative. Even tried to explain himself in some funny sort of way. Went on about Carol, and the frame-up, and who he went to bed with. It was a mistake trying to explain himself; not just a mistake, but cheeky as well. Binyon was the guy who explained people. Binyon knew Duffy better than Duffy did.

  ‘Thing about you, Duffy,’ said Binyon rather impatiently after his companion had begun to ramble a bit and repeat himself. ‘Thing about you, Duffy, is: you’re queer. Don’t give me any of this bisexual shit. I’ve heard it all before. It’s just a way of saying, Oh no, I’m not really—I’m not really that. It’s a way of trying to pull back when you’re already in it up to your whatsit. You’re queer, Duffy. I’ve seen you operating here often enough to know what you are. You’re queer, Duffy. I’m queer, you’re queer, let’s have another drink.’

  They had another drink.

  ‘But if I’m queer,’ said Duffy, who was beginning to feel the strain of the conversation, what with all these shorts, ‘if I’m queer, why do I like Carol more than anyone else?’

  ‘Nothing odd about that. Most queers like women. Most women like queers. I’m sure she’s a very nice girl, heats a tin of soup up something wonderful. That’s got nothing to do with it. And the proof of the pudding, if I may briefly allude to the matter, is the fact that you have a winkle problem with her.’

  ‘But that’s because—that’s because of that thing that happened …’

  ‘No, Duffy, the thing that happened just brought it all out into the open. Your winkle problem is your body’s way of saying you’re queer.’

  ‘But I’ve been—I’ve been with girls since,’ said Duffy, feeling unaccountably shy all of a sudden.

  ‘How many, eh? How many?’ Binyon was almost jeering. Well, not as many as … but the reason was obvious … I mean, given that … Duffy’s brain was running out of petrol. Binyon patted him gently on the shoulder. ‘Don’t fret yourself, Duffy. And I’m not even trying to get off with you. But you don’t fool me, and I don’t see why you should fool yourself. If you’re not queer, then I’m Selfridges.’

  That conversation had worried him. In fact, the next person he’d been to bed with after it had been a girl; but no doubt Binyon would have had an answer for that too. Was he simply gay (Binyon, though gay himself, always preferred the word ‘queer’, as if he were telling some brutal truth)? In a way, Duffy didn’t mind if Binyon was right. He just disliked being regimented like this. You lot stay on this side of the street, and you lot over there keep to that side of the street. No jay-walking; use of the zebra crossing forbidden; and if you try leaping over the pedestrian barrier you’ll get run down by a balding man with an unkind sense of humour.

  Duffy had remembered this conversation from a couple of years back because of his current preoccupation. Bela Kaposi and his travelling sarcoma. Certificate X. They said you could get AIDS if you were either homosexual or bisexual. Presumably if you were bisexual there was a smaller chance, in basic statistical terms: every girl you’d been to bed with meant one percentage point, or tenth of a percentage point, less chance of night sweats and swollen lymph nodes. On the other hand, there were probably some bisexuals who ended up going to bed with more guys than some homosexuals did. Like himself, for instance. He’d always said that for him the difference between having a girl or a guy was the difference between bacon and egg and bacon and tomato. He still thought that was true. He also had to admit that he’d eaten a lot of breakfast in his time. He looked at the backs of his hands on the driving wheel. Still all clear there, at least. If only he’d known at the time, he could have asked Binyon where your lymph nodes are. It was the sort of thing Binyon would have been sure to know.

  Staverton Road, Ealing was a short cul-de-sac of inter-war mock-Tudor semis. Each stretch of pavement supported a pair of lime trees, freshly pollarded. At the end of the street, in front of a decaying brick wall that sealed it off from the railway line, was a car up on blocks; it was shrouded in grey plastic sheeting and its wheels had been removed.

  It wasn’t hard to spot the headquarters of the Red White and Blue Movement. One of the semis had a flagpole in its small front garden and was flying the Union Jack. Duffy didn’t even bother to check the number he’d been given by the Anti-Nazi League.

  The door was answered by a middle-aged man with a red face and small piggy eyes. For someone answering his own front door at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday morning, he was very smartly dressed. He wore the waistcoat and trousers of a dark three-piece suit, a white shirt caught above the elbows by a pair of elasticated metal armlets, a regimental tie, and well-polished black shoes. He also, for some reason, was wearing a bowler hat. Was this Mr Joyce, the organizing secretary, answering his front door; or was it perhaps some bailiff on the way out?

  ‘Mr Joyce?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I wanted to ask about the Movement.’

  ‘You press?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You from the Communists?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come in.’

  Mr Joyce turned away, hung his bowler on the hat-rack by the front door, and led Duffy into a sunlit kitchen. Duffy had deliberately not overdone the sartorial elegance this morning: denim jacket, denim trousers, lumberjack shirt, heavy boots. He didn’t look exactly like one of the Layton Road gang; but he looked fairly tough. He also tuned his voice to a plausible frequency.

  Joyce sat him down at the small kitchen table and went off into another room. He returned with a fountain pen and what looked like an application form of some sort. As he took a chair opposite Duffy and gave a perfectly normal smile, he suddenly looked less like a bailiff. More like a doctor about to ask your details. How long have you been homosexual, Mr Duffy? How long have you been bisexual? Would you prefer to be homosexual or bisexual? How long have you had this winkle problem? Maybe I’d better have a look at this winkle for you. No, I think I’d better have a look at this skin discoloration first. Yes, rather as I thought. No point worrying about the winkle problem now. Nurse, fetch me a large bowl of Dettol and the humane killer, would you? Aaaargh.

  ‘And what do you want to ask about the Movement, Mr—er—?�
�

  ‘Binyon.’

  ‘Mr Binyon.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I want to ask if I can join.’ Duffy had decided that he would play things a bit tough, but indicate that he could be respectful if need be to the proper authorities. Like Mr Joyce.

  ‘How did you hear about us?’

  ‘Well, some of the lads on the terraces were talking a bit at half-time. Down at the Athletic on Saturday, down the Layton Road end where I always go; these lads were talking about it at half-time, and I thought, that’s the sort of thing for me.’

  ‘May I ask what your politics are, Mr Binyon? First name?’

  ‘Terry. I’m British and proud of it, that’s my politics.’

  ‘Yes, well that’s a beginning.’ Mr Joyce was looking fairly benign, but Duffy couldn’t glance up without feeling that the little piggy eyes were examining him very carefully. ‘And tell me, what do you think the aims of our Movement are?’

  ‘Beating up the niggers and the Pakkis,’ said Duffy with a wolfish snigger.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mr Joyce, laying down his fountain pen, ‘we don’t seem to have a case of advanced political development here.’

  ‘Nah, it’s all right, Mr Joyce, sir, I was just having you on a bit. From what I could gather from the lads and the way they were talking, it’s about being a patriot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, you could start like that.’

  ‘I mean, I may be out of order here, Mr Joyce, but as far as I understand it, one of the problems with this country is all the politicians are corrupt. Lining their own pockets, going around in big cars, never listening to the people. I mean, if the people want something, then it’s their job to give it us, isn’t it? I mean, that’s what they’re there for. Like hanging. Everyone wants hanging, but they won’t give it us.’

  ‘I’m with you on that,’ said Mr Joyce.

  ‘Or repatriation. Everyone wants that, but they won’t give it us.’ Duffy tried to remember the handbill he’d been shown by Jimmy Lister. ‘I mean, my generation’—Duffy lopped ten to fifteen years off his age, and hoped he could get away with it—‘My generation, it’s all, you know, apaffy, that’s what it’s like. Apaffy. What’s the difference between one set of liars and another set of liars? What we need is where the politicians listen to the people and do what they tell them, that’s what we need. I mean I want to be proud of being British. I am proud of being British,’ he added hastily, ‘but I’m pissed off with the way this country’s been dragged through the mud lately. It is Great Britain, isn’t it?’