Jam

by Jake Wallis Simons

  The football

  It was weird playing in the orange glow of these tall, tall lights. Like playing under floodlights, but with a crowd all sitting in their cars. A drive-thru footy game, Shahid thought dryly. Watching the Pakis. Knobheads.

  It was two in the morning, and they had been playing on and off for a while. When the rain returned, they had scurried back to their car; when it passed they came out again, kicked it around for a while, then gave up when a man emerged from his van and told them that some people were trying to sleep. But as time went on, and sleep evaded them, and still there was no sign of the traffic jam moving, their listlessness stoked their bravado, and they headed out onto the tarmac again.

  Compulsively, as he received the ball, dribbled it, juggled it on the wet hardtop of the London Orbital, Shahid’s mind returned to the trial, running through the events again and again as if revisiting them would exorcise the demon. He, Kabir and Mo had planned it all carefully, and it had all gone smoothly at first. They had borrowed Baba’s car, driven round the M25 to the Blues’ training ground in Cobham several hours early, sat outside in the car listening to the radio, saying little. The windows were open so that the smell of the car wouldn’t stick to their clothes. Chelsea! This was beyond all of their wildest dreams. Professional football invariably began as the stuff of fantasy, and for the vast majority of boys it never progressed beyond it; most British men had somewhere locked away their personal dream of playing for club and country, of scoring spectacular goals. For some the fantasy was elaborate, worked out to the finest detail; for others it was confined to snapshot moments of glory. And for the talented and ambitious minority – of which Shahid was one – the dream existed as a signpost indicating how his present reality should be lived. He was the sort of person who believed that the world, if challenged enough, would eventually have no choice but to yield up its fullest fruits. The reward, in his eyes, had always been his destiny. Now he needed to make it happen.

  Half an hour before the allotted time, the three of them entered the reception area, the sun at their backs. Shahid was wearing the black Adidas tracksuit he had bought for the occasion, and was humping on his shoulder his sports bag. The other two were in jeans and trainers; Mo held a ball under his arm. Shahid felt springy on his feet, jittery, a champion boxer approaching the ring. Hearts fluttering, they approached the desk.

  The man who greeted them was like nobody they had ever seen before. He was bright-eyed, tanned and svelte, and dressed in a Chelsea tracksuit; there was something in his manner that exuded affluence and ease.

  ‘Here for the trial?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Shahid.

  ‘You’re a bit early, mate.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘Welcome.’ He took Shahid’s hand in a hammy grip, then picked up a clipboard.

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Not too bad.’

  ‘Just relax and be yourself, OK? Now, is it all three of you?’

  ‘No. Just me.’

  ‘Just you.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Shahid Anwar.’

  He consulted his clipboard. ‘Ah, that’s the one. Great stuff. And these two are?’

  ‘They’re my mates. Team-mates as well. London APSA.’ Shahid felt himself flush.

  ‘But they’re not booked in for a trial.’

  ‘No. They’ve just come with me. Like, for support. We do stuff together. They didn’t want to miss it.’

  The man looked doubtful. ‘Did you let us know you’d be bringing your mates?’

  ‘No. Is that a problem?’

  ‘Bear with me.’

  With another flashing smile he turned and disappeared through a door, pulling out his mobile as he went. The three friends sat in dark blue plastic chairs, and marvelled at everything around them. The Chelsea crest was everywhere, and everything was in the Chelsea colours; on the walls were framed pictures of famous players, photographs of their crowning achievements. The opulence of the place was beyond what they had imagined, what they had been capable of imagining. The cream tiled floor, the deep-pile carpet beyond, the oak-panelled walls, the sliver of emerald grass just visible through the windows on the far side. It seemed more like a luxury hotel.

  At one point, a cleaner, also in a Chelsea tracksuit, passed through and mopped the floor. He didn’t make eye contact and cleaned around their feet. He paid special attention to an ingrained smudge of mud on one of the tiles by the door; within a few minutes, it was as sparkling as the rest. Then he steered his cleaning trolley around the desk and disappeared through the same door as the man who had initially received them.

  Slowly but surely, other lads began to arrive. They strode past without a second glance, talking and laughing among themselves, and clustered around the reception desk. None of them looked awestruck, or even impressed. A woman in a Chelsea tracksuit came out and registered them, shaking them each by the hand, and one by one they were waved through and down a corridor. Several seemed to know each other already. They were tall, broad and confident, these athletic boys, and many were silent and deadly-looking; they had cobra-like bodies.

  When eventually the man came back, it was with a dazzling grin of apology. The three friends hurried to their feet and approached the desk. Shahid became aware that neither Mo nor Kabir had said a word since entering the ground. It was as if the whole thing wasn’t happening.

  ‘OK,’ said the man, ‘it’s been cleared. Your friends can come in and watch. They can go in the family stand. But they can’t come down to the pitch.’

  Shahid nodded, sighed with relief; but when he glanced at Mo and Kabir, he saw that their eyes were downcast.

  ‘We’re going to try and make you extra welcome,’ said the man confidentially. ‘We understand how hard it is.’

  ‘How’s it hard?’ said Shahid.

  The man was scrolling through something on his phone. ‘Now, straight down there, third on the right is the changing room. Go and get your kit on, then go straight ahead down to the pitch. The geezer’ll be arriving in a minute.’

  In the changing room, Shahid felt very young and alone. Around him on the benches were the kitbags of the other lads, all shining in the bright light, all spotless and professional and slick. The trainers lined up beneath – a sports shop. Shahid added his inadequate bag to the line, his inadequate shoes. He took a long time putting on his shin pads. The place was strangely quiet, and there was a barely audible hum that he could not ignore now that he’d noticed it. He wanted to get out there; he didn’t want to get out there. They had probably started already. He needed to move. The thought of that emerald pitch – was he cut out for this? Kabir and Mo were probably in the stands right now, looking down at the pitch, looking for him. He needed to move. He opened his bag and pulled out a banana, peeled it, began to eat. It was important for the sake of the blood sugar, he knew that much. In one of the other bags, somewhere around him, someone’s mobile went off, buzzing insistently. He finished his banana. The door opened, and a tall, redheaded boy jogged in, his white boots – twin fangs – clicking loudly on the tiles.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, ‘you gave me a shock.’ He laughed, unzipped a bag at a stroke, dug into it. ‘You ain’t here for the trial, are you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shahid.

  ‘Nice,’ said the boy. ‘Where’d you play?’

  ‘Up front.’

  ‘Me too.’

  A pause, and they avoided each other’s eyes.

  ‘Well, good luck, mate,’ said the boy, rezipping his bag with a flourish. ‘See you out there, yeah?’ And he was gone.

  Shahid got slowly to his feet, feeling sick to his stomach; he tilted his head one way, then the other. Exhaled violently. And again. He clenched his fists, brought them up over his head, brought them quickly down to his sides. Snap out of it. This was his chance. He was not going to let it slip through his fingers. He shook his head, bared his teeth, blew out his cheeks. He had to get o
ut there. He began to stretch his hamstrings.

  Preceded by a chain of footsteps, the man entered, smiling that summery smile. ‘Everything all right, Shahid?’ he said. ‘Got your boots on? Good stuff. We want to give you the best possible chance, right?’

  Shahid nodded.

  ‘Come on then,’ said the man, ‘get yourself out there. We’re about to get cracking, OK?’

  Shahid went back in goal. After saving more than a few shots he let one in. It was Mo who had struck it, drilled with his left low to the right-hand side, and Shahid was out of position. The ball ricocheted off the tarmac and clipped the top of the motorway barrier, which sent it shooting up almost vertically into the blackness. Shahid vaulted the barrier and, scrambling ten yards down the grubby bank, managed to catch the ball before it hit the ground. He skidded to a halt, picked his way back onto the road and jogged out into the middle lane, the football at his feet. ‘You go in goal now,’ he said to Mo. ‘You scored, innit?’ And he slipped a peach of a ball into the path of Kabir, who had been steaming in as if for a massive shot. He wound up to strike; Mo, now in goal, cringed; and at the last minute Kabir reigned in his swing and trapped the ball instead. ‘Cunt,’ said Mo. Laughing, Kabir backheeled it into the path of Shahid, who he knew would be running around in a crescent behind him. Shahid received it with the toe of his trainer, where it remained for a moment as if glued, then slalomed around three imaginary opponents before turning tightly and unleashing a shot on goal. It was from the finest of angles; Mo palmed it stingingly away and it rolled out to Kabir. But the shot had been on target. That’s more like it, thought Shahid, my touch is proper back. Typical that I should be on form with my mates on an empty motorway, and two left feet at Chelsea. Typical.

  It had started off OK. He had pranced out on to the emerald sward, blinking in the brightness, trying to appear composed and confident, and managed to hold his own during the warm-ups. But they were tougher than he was used to; within minutes he had a stitch. In the back of his mind, a suspicion was surfacing like a snake from a swamp. What if the Essex Senior League was piss-easy? The other boys ate up the ground as they sprinted; when they took a strike on goal the contact was crisp, and the ball fizzed through the air like a dart. The keeper, too: he seemed to fill the goal, saving ball after ball in his thudding gloves. After the warm-ups, while the teams were putting on bibs, Shahid took a shot. The keeper met it with his body, gripped it comfortably, rolled it back out. The next one Shahid, overcompensating, blasted high and wide into the stands. The keeper impassively picked up another ball and threw it out to another boy; it was returned on the volley with some pace, and this time, although the keeper dived full-length, the ball ballooned in the snowy net. Then it was time for the game.

  Ah, his two left feet. Under normal circumstances, Shahid would enter another plane of existence, one in which his unconscious instincts were king. When this happened, he was unstoppable, like a fish reading perfectly, instinctively, the currents. But this time he was thinking too much.

  The first ball that came to him squeezed under his boot and out of play. The second he trapped fine, but the pass he released went straight to one of theirs. Frustration was building inside him. Why couldn’t he play? He made a good interception, one that provoked a few handclaps from the touchline, but then attempted a long ball to the opposite wing and again it fell to one of theirs. Why was he throwing this away? The ball fell to him again, out on the flank, in a position that he knew he could shine. But he tried too hard, was clumsy in the dribble, lost control of the ball, pushed it too far in front of him, and the centre back – who had the build of a wrestler and the blondest of hair – nicked it easily and turned him inside out. This time the handclaps were for the defender. Someone yelled at him to release it sooner. In his fury at having been dispossessed, Shahid went in hard on the next tackle and brought the lad down from behind. They rotated as they fell and the boy landed hard on top of Shahid. It was as if a fire had been ignited; he had caught a knee in the balls. He rolled over and over, unable to stem the whining that spilled out of his mouth like vomit. Somebody kicked the ball to touch and a few of the players gathered round.

  For some minutes the pain was blinding. He lay on the floor like a miscarried foetus, in an ocean of the brightest green, and all he wanted was to be back on the muddy field for London APSA, weaving past defenders as he used to. He raised his eyes and caught sight of Kabir and Mo shouting encouragement, and this pricked his sense of pride. He wasn’t going to allow it to end here, like this. This could still be his moment. He was going to fight. Feeling the rush of the playground scrap, he struggled to his feet and heard polite handclaps at his bravery. Then, just as he was steeling himself for the resumption of play, somebody said just two words: man’s game. What? Nothing, came the reply. Nothing.

  And he had seen red.

  Afterwards, in his grandfather’s car on the way back to London, Kabir and Mo described what had happened. He had bore down on the other boy – the big defender – shouting shut up, you fucking cunt. Want to feel what a knee in the balls feels like, brah? Before he reached him he was seized by many hands, and he struggled, ripping his top. On the touchline there was much shaking of heads, drinking from water bottles. Finally he had strode off the pitch, chucked his shirt into the stands and run off down the tunnel. Kabir and Mo had found him waiting in his grandfather’s car with the windows up, still in his kit, his boots, his bag and trainers on the back seat behind him. Come on, he had said. This was one big fucking mistake. It’s not my time, I’m not ready. It’s not my time, I’m not ready. Let’s get the fuck out of here. And they had.

  Now Kabir went in goal. Mo clipped the ball across the tarmac and Shahid met it perfectly, struck it clean and true; the ball sailed, curling slightly, through the night air, blocking out a moving circle of stars; it soared smartly into the goal, smacked off the barrier and bounced back onto the motorway. Kabir hadn’t had a chance of saving it; it had been one of those shots so perfect that you don’t feel the impact of the ball on your boot. Shahid trotted off to retrieve the ball and found it nestling against the wheel of a white van. He looked up; for an instant his eyes met those of a man a little older than him, turning an empty bottle of cider in his hands. It took him a moment to recognise him as the one who had stolen those crisps.

  When he returned to his friends, Shahid was surprised to see a pair of gauche-looking white boys with them. One was holding a Frisbee, twirling it like a plate on his finger.

  ‘They want a game,’ called Kabir. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘What, Frisbee or footy?’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ said the shorter lad, tossing a long fringe over one eye.

  ‘Football,’ said the taller one.

  ‘All right with me, brah,’ said Shahid, dropping the ball and cushioning it with his instep. ‘But we can’t play three-on-two.’

  ‘I’ll be goalie to start with,’ said Mo. ‘We can play two-on-two, with one goal.’

  The white boys nodded their agreement. Both were smiling broadly. Cunts, thought Shahid. Fucking cunts.

  Initiative

  Ursula had been slumped in the front seat of the Chrysler for a long time, in the whale’s belly of sleep. This was not unusual; once a month, her body would tend to shut down almost without warning, she would sink into a blackness so profound that it was like a pre-birth state.

  As she slept, Max, in a variety of forms, had faded in and out of view, sometimes as a forest, sometimes as an oppressive weight, sometimes as a malevolent child that she both loved and hated, sometimes as a cloud, sometimes as the razor-like tooth of an alligator hanging limply on a cord; sometimes as a theatre, sometimes smothering pillows, sometimes the rush of heat that comes from a hot oven when it is opened. And also he appeared in a more recognisable, humanoid form – though sometimes monstrously huge, or monstrously small, or with distorted limbs and head, a distended belly, wings, or the leathery skin of a walrus. Frantically she found herself trying
to close windows on an Internet browser, but the more she closed the more there were, and they were multiplying all around: all of this was Max. And when these dreams deserted her, and, bereft and alone, she swam to the surface and emerged, gasping, into the stuffy air of the Chrysler cockpit, she had no idea where she was.

  ‘Max?’ she said. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Two,’ came the reply. He was sitting upright in his seat, wiping his face and head with his T-shirt.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Traffic jam, that’s what.’

  ‘And we’re still stuck?’

  ‘Still stuck. And it’s raining outside. I’m soaked.’

  ‘Christ.’ She struggled upright, rubbing her eyes, then looked back at the children. ‘Are they OK?’

  ‘Carly was tossing and turning, so I felt her head and I think she has a temperature. But I got a bottle of Calpol. For when she wakes up.’

  ‘What? Calpol? Where from?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Ursula leaned into the back and felt her daughter’s brow. ‘She’s fine, Max,’ she said. ‘You must have just been panicking.’

  ‘Maybe the fever’s subsided.’

  ‘Fevers don’t come and go like that, Max.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got the Calpol. So that’s all right. And if either of them wake up and won’t go back to sleep, we can give them a double dose.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Max. Even you wouldn’t do that.’