by Dan Kavanagh
Then, suddenly, Brendan was felled. He clutched the top of his head and keeled over heavily. The coppers, who had been looking on almost as puzzled as the yobboes, took this as their cue and waded into the terracing. The rest of the Athletic team, who had only caught the end of Brendan’s performance, were already rushing over. The fans in the main stand started booing the yobboes at the Layton Road end. Must have been a coin, or a brick or something. The physio came running across and bent over Brendan. The police were vigorously bidding an end-of-season farewell to the yobboes. The main stand carried on booing, until, after a couple of minutes, Brendan got slowly to his feet; then they started cheering. While Jimmy Lister and the ten other players began a lap of honour, Brendan, his arm round the physio’s shoulder, made his way groggily to the tunnel. Everyone knew exactly what had happened. Everyone except Duffy, that is.
An hour or so later he stood in the Athletic boardroom clutching a Slimline tonic and wondering whether he ought to be there. But Jimmy Lister had insisted. ‘Might be the last time I can invite you up. Next year, who knows? Abu Dhabi?’ It was clear to both of them that Abu Dhabi was a euphemism for the scrap-heap. Jimmy Lister hadn’t yet established whether the Board was going to treat him as a hero for saving the club from relegation, or as a villain for having got them into trouble. Duffy didn’t think this was the moment to float his private theory about why Melvyn Prosser had hired Jimmy Lister in the first place.
He had three conversations as he sipped his Slimline. Two of them were of professional interest, and related closely to the events of the last few weeks; and yet it was the third which intrigued him the most, and which he later wanted to tell Carol about.
The first conversation was with Ken Marriott, who was as surprised to see Duffy there as Duffy was to see him. Maggot told him, in an undertone, that soon after his article about the possible redevelopment of the ground had appeared, a number of long-time club supporters had founded a Reform Group.
‘Not much chance of reforming things around here, is there?’ said Duffy.
‘Well, you can’t be sure. The embarrassment factor is always worth something. And I’ll be giving them quite a few inches on the sports pages. Better than nothing.’
‘Sure.’
Duffy wasn’t quite so sure after his second conversation. A hand took him suddenly by the elbow and turned him through 180 degrees. Melvyn Prosser. What’s more, Melvyn Prosser smiling.
‘Good to see you, Duffy. Make free with the Slimline. Didn’t the lads do well?’
‘Very well, Mr Prosser.’
‘Can’t thank you enough for getting Brendan out when you did. Without him I do declare we’d be in that place which we aren’t allowed to mention inside this club.’ Meaning the Fourth Division.
‘I expect so.’
‘You saved us, Duffy. I have to give you that. Maybe we should keep you on the payroll.’
‘I’m not on it.’
‘No, so you aren’t. Well, come over here anyway, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ Prosser led Duffy across the boardroom towards a chunky, dark-suited man who had his back to them. Prosser elbowed him in the side to attract his attention.
‘Duffy, I’d like you to meet my business partner, Charlie Magrudo. Charlie, this is Duffy, I was telling you about. We’re thinking of putting Charlie on the Board.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Duffy. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Haven’t we met before?’ asked Charlie, shaking him by the hand.
‘I’ve got a brother,’ said Duffy, ‘I’ve got to go.’
What was all that about, he wondered. Was it a sneer? Was it a show of strength? Was it saying, You don’t understand me, Duffy, and you never will? Was it saying, Fuck you, Duffy? He really didn’t know. He wished Melvyn Prosser weren’t almost likeable. For a villain, he nearly had a sense of fun.
‘Hey, Duffy.’
‘Brendan. How you doing?’
‘Fine, terrific, never better. Thanks for the earplugs tip.’
‘Thanks for the floor-show.’
‘Yeah, well, I kind of lost me rag.’
‘That’s probably what most people would have thought.’
Brendan looked at him carefully.
‘Meaning?’
Duffy smiled. ‘Nice party, isn’t it?’
‘No, meaning? Meaning?’ Brendan put a big, friendly arm round Duffy’s shoulder and squeezed. Brendan was a lot bigger than Duffy.
‘Meaning, well, I was standing pretty close to the yobboes, and I was watching you, and I didn’t see anyone throw anything.’
‘Duffy, didn’t you see the way I went down? I was poleaxed.’
‘Yes, I saw you go down, Brendan. I saw you go down like a striker in the box. The other thing I saw was that a club can hardly expect a player to abide by the terms of his contract with however many years left to run if he’s just been felled by his own fans.’
Brendan’s arm tightened round Duffy’s shoulder.
‘You know, man, you’re a pretty clever fellow.’
‘So are you.’
Brendan gave a deep chuckle.
‘One of these days I might take you down The Palm Tree. Only trouble is, you’re a bit scruffy.’
‘One of these days I might come with you. Only trouble is, I’d steal all your girls.’
Duffy wondered why that made Brendan laugh so much.
‘I expect because he thought you were one of the other sort,’ said Carol when he related the conversation to her.
‘The what? Oh. Uh.’ Everyone seemed to think he was the other sort. Brendan thought so. Melvyn Prosser thought so. Binyon thought so. ‘Do you think I am?’
‘I don’t know, Duffy. I don’t really think about it much,’ she said, lying.
‘No, I don’t think about it much either,’ he said, telling the truth.
‘Well in that case …’
Yes …’
‘We’d better do the washing up, hadn’t we, Duffy?’
‘Of course.’
‘I thought you might say that.’
So they washed up, and then they put the things away, and then they wiped the draining-board and the kitchen table, and then Duffy put the catch down on the front door, and then they went to the bathroom one after the other, and then they got into bed and turned out the light, and then Carol felt Duffy probing surreptitiously in his armpits for his lymph nodes, and then they both tried to go to sleep. This is what being married for a very long time must feel like, thought Carol.
And then Duffy got an erection. At first Carol thought it might be his hand that was moving, looking for another lymph node somewhere. But they were lying like spoons so closely that there wasn’t room for a hand. She tried to breathe very gently, and listen to see if he was awake. Did she want him to be awake or not? She didn’t really know. That other time, she couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it. But this time, this time … She tried not to breathe at all, so that she could listen to Duffy’s breathing. It wasn’t giving anything away. Oh, this was just silly.
‘Duffy,’ she said quietly, ‘Duffy, am I awake?’
He stirred slightly.
‘You’re awake,’ he said finally, ‘I’m dreaming.’
Extra Time
THE FIRST TEN MINUTES of the second half were a bit lively. Both sides were deliberately playing it tight, and both had a victim marked for special attention. After two minutes Maggot, who had been looking a little jumpy since the whistle went, surrendered to his wilder instincts and tried to sandbag one of the pub team’s midfield. Oooff, went Duffy, as the midfielder seemed to forget about the ball and just drove through Maggot, one knee right on line for the wedding tackle. Oooff. Then, a minute or so later, in clear retribution, the speedy little ginge was slowed down by a well-contrived sandwich between Barney—bit of elbow there, too, Barney?—and Micky Baker. It almost made you glad to be a keeper, seeing bits of agg like that. But the funny thing was, by the end of the match everyone would be shaking hands and look
ing forward to next year’s game; being generous in defeat and modest in victory.
Was that what Melvyn Prosser had been doing, a year or so ago in the Athletic boardroom, when he had smiled, and checked that Duffy had enough Slimline, and introduced him to his ‘business partner’ Charlie Magrudo? And if so, which was Prosser being—generous or modest? Was he admitting Duffy had outsmarted him over the Brendan business, or was he, by introducing Magrudo like that, saying, Nice try, you little short fat goalie, but I laid out this game so that whatever happened, I won. Was that it? He tried to remember what Prosser had said to him in the Corniche. Something about throwing a lot of bread on the water and most of it getting soggy and being eaten by seagulls. And then something else, about the important thing in business being to look as if you knew what you were doing, even if you didn’t. Was that how Melvyn was deliberately behaving for Duffy’s benefit?
He must have been right, mustn’t he? It must have been Prosser trying to fuck up the club? Nothing else made sense. The planning permission, the connection between Prosser and Magrudo which they’d both tried to deny, the appointment of Jimmy Lister (that had been a clever move, he had to hand it to Melvyn), the use of Maggie Coleman to fix both Danny and Brendan, the Layton Road lawsuit. Yes, this had been the final bit of confirmation, when Mr Bullivant had winked and told him he’d sold his house a couple of months before. Sold it before the case came to court, in fact. Well, he wouldn’t have bothered, would he?
Proof? That’s what they always said, wasn’t it—where’s your proof? Well, there was proving and knowing, which were two different things in the eyes of the law, but the same thing in the eyes of people who weren’t in the courtroom. For instance, take the spectators at this Reliables game: that middle-aged man and his wife, both swaddled in toning sheepskin jackets of a mid-brown colour. If they had watched the first half attentively, and then the first ten minutes of the second half, they would know, wouldn’t they, that the pub team had decided at half-time to sit on Ken Marriott, and that the Reliables had decided to sit on the speedy little ginge? They wouldn’t be able to prove it, and they wouldn’t understand about Geoff Bell’s technology, but they would see it and know it. And they’d be right, too, wouldn’t they?
Uh-huh. The first ten minutes were over, with both the ginge and Maggot slightly the worse for wear. Now came the tricky bit. Two extra men pushing forward, looking for the killer goal. No time for mistakes, no time for Maggot’s vision. Still, the Reliables had swapped their full-backs over, and that seemed to be making a difference: not too much coming down the flanks at the moment. They seemed to be shooting from a bit further out, too. Like that—whoops, thought Duffy, as the big pub centre-back who’d been pushing up tanked the ball from thirty yards out. He started moving right and down, but suddenly the ball wasn’t coming. It had struck Geoff Bell on the hip and squirted sideways to Maggot. Duffy, from where he lay on the ground, watched Maggot look up, pick out Karl French up front, measure his pass, and hit it quickly.
What had young French said? ‘Great vision. Great vision. Only trouble is, the ball doesn’t go anywhere fucking near where he wants it to.’ Maggot’s pass went quickly off course, but as Duffy got to his feet again, he saw that the ball had unerringly picked out Barney, the Reliables’ other front man—the one characterized as fat and smarmy, according to Geoff’s earpiece. Barney gave a fat sideways glance and smarmily transferred the ball to French. Christ, he was fast, thought Duffy, as young Karl set off. Took three yards out of his marker in the first ten. Thirty yards out, only the fullback and the keeper ahead of him. Getting pushed too wide by the full-back—no, that was just a bluff, and suddenly French had cut back into the middle and skinned the back in the process. Closing on the keeper—Duffy didn’t know who to root for. On this occasion professional solidarity lost out. Do it, Karl, Duffy found himself urging. Do the biz. He almost couldn’t look. Karl did the biz—drew the keeper, waited for him to go down, slid the ball under his diving body. One-one. ‘GOAL,’ roared Duffy from his unpopulated end of the pitch, ‘GOOOAAAL.’ Karl French had turned away from the prostrate pub keeper, and stood with both forearms raised in triumph. His team-mates descended and embraced him. I suppose that’s what they call French kissing, thought Duffy. Perhaps one or two of the team ought to take French lessons.
Ha. Maggie Coleman. That was where he’d blown it. Of course, she was one tough tart, but he should have known that, shouldn’t he? You can’t put the arm on tarts that easily. Still eager to play the copper after all these years, Duffy. Sure, he’d had excuses—the real coppers would have closed down Maggie once Jimmy Lister had given them Geoff Bell’s photos—and he’d wanted to clear up his bit of bother before they did theirs. What he’d done, he now saw, was to screw both sides. She wouldn’t tell him who was paying her; and then, before the real coppers could get to her, she’d disappeared. Done a runner; packed up a few things from her flat off Twyford Avenue and scarpered. Never seen again. Moved up East, perhaps, changed her name—who knows? It meant, of course, that the charges against Brendan were officially dropped, but there would have been more satisfactory ways of doing that in the first place. Like by getting Maggie sent down for conspiring to pervert the course of justice and seeing Melvyn Prosser go down with her.
The breeze was freshening behind Duffy. The corner-flags to left and right of him were pointing straight up the touchline. Well, that should wear down the pub side a bit. No one likes facing a stiff wind in the second half if they haven’t had the benefit of it in the first: some elementary sense of justice makes you feel affronted. Still, that didn’t seem too … oh shit, the ginge, oh, ooooh, aah, now … a thump on his wrist as Duffy dived to his left and the ball pinged away for a corner.
‘Save, keeper.’
‘Great stuff, Duff.’
Duffy bounced about on his goal-line while the tallest pub defender stood directly in front of him and tried to block his view of the corner. It was an outswinger—he could tell that from the start. He came for it, the wind got hold of the ball, and Duffy was being dragged far out of goal. The all-or-nothing ball the keeper hates: the point at which you’re either a hero or a wally. There’s nothing in between. Not a wally, Duffy thought, not a wally, as he snatched the ball from the path of an approaching Pubman. Four steps and he was at the edge of his area. A memory of Athletic’s last game of the previous season flashed at him. With the breeze behind, he hoofed a drop-kick at the ball. Oh shit. Well, sometimes a wally, he reflected: the ball skidded slightly as he struck it, and flew directly into touch on the half-way line. Sometimes a wally, Duffy, sometimes. But I do have this vision, you see.
Mel Prosser had vision—vision of a fortune. Charlie Magrudo had vision of a parkful of bulldozers and changing his filthy Granada more often. Jimmy Lister had vision of Athletic playing cultured one-touch stuff in the lower reaches of the Third Division. Brendan Domingo had vision of not being booed every time he touched the ball. Mr Joyce had vision of a country where Brendan Domingo had no place at all.
What about Mr Joyce and the Red White and Blue? That was the one bit Duffy was prepared to put down to coincidence. An awkward coincidence, but it might well have been one: on the whole, he thought Prosser a bit too clever, and a bit too careful, to get tangled up with psychos like Mr Joyce. Unless—was he that clever? Duffy had once been picked up by a chubby journalist at the Alligator who had told him, ‘Never over-estimate your opponent.’ He’d thought it just a smart line at the time, but it had some truth. Prosser, after all, had said that the thing about business was looking as if you knew what you were doing. And Prosser, when it came down to it, hadn’t succeeded in his main ambition: fucking up the club he owned. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that anyone would be able to do that? Maybe he wasn’t so clever?
At the start of the present season Melvyn Prosser had made a great noise about having every confidence in Jimmy Lister. Perhaps he meant that he had every confidence in Jimmy Lister’s ability to get Athletic relegated second
time round. So Jimmy started the season as boss, and a slightly different boss from the previous year. He was even quoted in the Chronicle as saying, ‘I don’t want any fanny merchants in my squad. Hard work is what wins matches.’ No cultured England B wing-halves for Jimmy Lister.
Half-way through the season hard work had helped Athletic into a decent mid-table position, Jimmy had bought himself six new pairs of white shoes, and Melvyn Prosser had sold out. Just as there are always new players coming through, there are always new businessmen coming through, and Melvyn Prosser found Ricky De Souza, a bright lad with a chain of grocer’s shops and a sense that owning a football club was about the most English thing you could do. Ricky De Souza reached an understanding with the Reform Group, which quite frankly had been pissing Melvyn off with all the agg they’d been giving him, and the deal was struck.
The sick joke of it all was that as soon as Melvyn handed the club over to Ricky, Athletic began to slide. One or two injuries, a run of tough away games to top clubs, two-one defeats that could as well have been two-one victories, and suddenly the club was in the bottom six. And this time round, Jimmy Lister didn’t have Brendan Domingo to pull the side together. Brendan’s little floorshow had won him what he’d hoped: release from the terms of his contract. Brendan was now snuggling down with a nice mid-table Second Division outfit up North, where they had two other black players in the first-team squad, and where the local yobboes appreciated his silky skills. ‘Silky Domingo’ they’d taken to calling him, with something close to affection.
So this time round, it might be serious for Athletic and Ricky De Souza. Duffy would watch the results of their last ten games this season with more than a little interest. But if they carried on at their present rate, by this time next year Athletic would be in the Fourth Division, Jimmy Lister would be on a slow camel to Abu Dhabi, Ricky De Souza would be thinking he’d bought a real dog of a club, and Melvyn Prosser would be kicking himself very hard indeed.