Steve Bloomer is captain that day, the first time, and he leads his men past the bodies and back out onto the pitch. It bothers him that he should have said no, respect the dead. They ferry people to hospital on makeshift stretchers as the match goes on. There is a black hole in the stand where the wood gave way; men of iron towns, laid out by the side of the Ibrox pitch. It will happen again, at regular intervals in the century ahead. The authorities decide to replay the match at Villa Park in the end. They give the gate receipts to the families, at least.
When he looks at great tides of people he always sees that black hole. There are people absent from every crowd.
…
Ally looks relieved, is what he looks. Jesus, Liam thinks. How terrible can managing this club be if you don’t feel too bad about passing up a game against Man United, putting the final nail in the place’s coffin with this last mess-up. Ally won’t work again.
With the money and attention from the United match they would have had a chance. Without it, now, out of the cup, near the bottom of the league, struggling to pay the players, there is very little hope. The cup draw was a miracle. To ask for another seems to be stretching the bounds of reality. Although with this club you never know…
Dave Willis did a piece on Midlands Today last night. They found the most dilapidated corner of the car park to film in, both the factory wall and the Chain End looking like they might fall into the canal at any moment. There were kids jumping around in the background, giving the fingers, one of them was even wearing a United bobble hat. There are no kids in the Anvil Yards any more, god knows where they had come from, maybe the people from the telly had brought them with them.
Ally looks like a man who has slept sound in his bed all night. Fifty years in football, he’s had, just over, signed for Celtic at fifteen, has managed Irontown for more than twenty of the last thirty years. When he became player-manager in 1984 the club was one place in the league better off than it is now, except what Ally will tell you is that he has never taken the club down. He would win promotion, leave for somewhere else with a bit of glamour, more money, then come back when Irontown had been relegated again. That was the pattern. Hail, hail.
He is thanking everyone. Last night in an interview he said he’d be off to Portugal for a bit of sunshine and golf, was looking forward to spending time with the grandkids.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong,’ he said, ‘I’ll sleep soundly in ma bed.’
Dave Willis tried to press him, wasn’t it the manager’s responsibility to check these things?
‘It’s the club’s,’ Ally said. ‘We acted in good faith.’ Then he was off, the camera lingered on the Mercedes come from Lionel Ahmed’s garage which Liam guessed Lionel would be calling to get back. The club say they’ve sacked him, Ally says it’s mutual.
He could speak to Lionel about Dee Dee. About the situation. What else to call it? The situation, the emergency, the trouble. He might have been describing the Iron Towns themselves, he knows. Thirty years of it, three hundred nearly, just times when you might not have noticed. Lionel might know what to do. He thinks of going to the police. She might thank him in the end. She might not.
They’ve got the heating on full blast for once, everyone crammed in the canteen, the carpet threadbare, there are framed photos of old players and matches on the walls, there’s one of Ally on Archie Hill’s shoulders with the Welsh Cup, from the days when Midlands sides could enter, Ally wrote to UEFA to try to allow them into Europe. Liam feels like his eyes might close. He is not a man who sleeps easy in his bed, any bed, any more. Ally is thanking Ted Groves, really hamming it up now. Ted and Ally have got tears in their eyes. Liam puts his head in his hands. He hears a camera whirring.
They’ve revived talk of the curse with this latest catastrophe, especially because it involves the cup. There are two versions that Liam knows of, probably more if you asked around. One is that when the team arrived back on the train from the old Crystal Palace after the last final they won, to be greeted by great crowds at Hightown Station, men in caps hanging from the castle walls, the Crusader stone, the trees at the arboretum, James Greenfield took the cup in his new car, his latest toy, the first to be seen on Iron Towns roads, and drove across the Heath. His driver slowed for an old gypsy woman, picking flowers at the roadside. It was a hot day and she called out to them to ask for a drink of water. They slowed and Greenfield laughed and told her to go and get a drink from the brook. She pointed at the cup, sitting next to him on the seat, and told him that it would never be seen in the Iron Towns again.
The other story involves the cup when it was stolen from Birmingham, when the Villa put it on display in a jewellers’ shop. There was a rumour the Carter family took it, melted it down for coins in an Anvil Yards furnace. Another version has them burying it out on the Heath and forgetting where they left it, like that Saxon gold they say is somewhere, piles of coins stamped ‘Offa Rex’. This forgetfulness has always seemed unlikely to Liam, from what he understands of the Carters, the Greenfields, the Ahmeds, well, some of them, and from what he understands of Saxon chieftains, for that matter. People who make money keep it, most of them, anyhow.
All football grounds have curses on them, it’s just some of these curses work better than others, that’s what he thinks, really. They could undo the curse by playing well.
Ally says Liam’s name and eyes turn towards him. Ally is telling them all to pull together. Through the window Liam can see Steve Stringer on the phone. No one has made a decision at this club for years. Old Dorothea is almost a hundred, no family left. From the way that Steve is pacing up and down and the bags under his eyes, it seems to Liam that he’s taken a stand about this and now regrets it. Who’s going to want to come here? Big Archie has been named as caretaker, but he’s not a manager. There’s a rumour going round that they’ve asked Wayne Coombs, just been sacked by a club in Malta, back at his ex-wife’s in Calon. That’s all they fucking need. Liam moves to put his head back in his hands, realises it might not look good. Ally says his name again, talks about fighting spirit, the embodiment of the club.
Liam clenches his fist and nods his head to murmurs of support. Julius pats him hard on the back.
Steve Stringer is nuts letting Ally talk like this. Ted Groves is crying.
And then he’s done. ‘This club will go on,’ he says, and they’re already clapping, on their feet. ‘and maybe we’ll meet again, you never know, Happy New Year, everyone, Happy New Year,’ and he’s gone.
Out the door he goes and towards his car, ignores Steve who moves towards him and then gets the message, so hangs back and maybe he’s even pretending to be on the phone, no one is going to want to talk to him except Dave Willis for the latest gossip. Liam can see brake lights from the cars out on the Heath road, they shine blurred through the dirty window and damp January air, through the leafless trees and then move around the corner and out of sight, it’s where he came off the road, keep going half a mile and it’s where Goldie drove into the river, there’s a turn-off for the clearing where they used to go in summer, up there on the hill is where the people took that German parachutist and killed him and stuffed his body down an old mine shaft that no one still is meant to talk about, and there’s the Goat Wood, where the witches still go on full-moon nights and the solstice, and it’s already getting dark.
…
It starts to rain.
They missed the floods before Christmas, just a postponement against Torquay to show for them, as the weather skirted the Iron Towns, but now it comes hard and Liz and Joey watch the rain gutter down the steep Black Park hill.
‘It’s coming now,’ Joey says, his nose almost touches the steering wheel. White water froths up out of the drains, comes in a wave down the kerbs, a pink child’s wellington boot tumbles over and over.
‘What was he thinking?’ Liz says.
‘Nothing, nothing.’
The light is falling, either that or the rain is coming even harder now, picked out
in the streetlights. ‘That’s not true. Himself, of course, thinking of himself, as usual.’
Liz sighs.
‘You warm enough, love?’ he asks. He has the window open a crack to stop the windscreen steaming up.
‘I’m OK.’
Eli is missing, out when he should be in, not for the first time. They have told him not to try the hill on his own any more, certainly not just with his stick. He refuses a walking frame, laughs when they suggest a scooter. All talk of him moving has long since gone. They’ll have to carry him out, as the saying goes, unless the houses fall down or wash away first. It is possible.
The water has gathered at the bottom of the hill, meeting other water in brown swirls, a lagoon, cars pull in, hazard lights blink in the water.
‘Well, I can’t go through that,’ Joey says. On the radio an excited woman’s voice plays at low volume.
‘There’s boxes of stuff just floating along the road. What’s this? Saris and communion dresses and flat caps,’ she says.
The Lowtown Bull Ring is flooded. The radio says to avoid the area if possible.
‘I’ve avoided it for twenty years,’ Liz says, pleased with her joke.
A bus ploughs into the flood, headlights on full beam, sends up a plume of water. It is not a designated stop but the bus creeps carefully along the kerb, opens its doors. The driver leans half out of his cab. Sure enough, there on the platform is Eli. In the rain’s din they can see but not hear the conversation, but can imagine, they get the gist.
‘Don’t get out in this, mate. Wait till it knocks off a bit.’
‘I’m all right, what’s the matter with yer? I’m all right.’
Eli teeters on the bus steps. A young woman’s arm stretches out to help him. Joey jumps from the car, headfirst into the deluge, grits his teeth. There’s his dad ankle-deep, the water rushing over his smart brown shoes, spreading up his trouser legs, neatly creased by Liz.
‘What am yer doing?’ Eli says. ‘What yer playing at?’
‘What do yer think?’ Joey says and takes his elbow, half expects to feel it in his ribs.
The last time he did this was in the riots. Well, he did it all the time, but the last time he put himself in danger that they knew of.
‘He puts himself in danger every time he inches down them stairs in his carpet slippers.’ Liz says.
‘Yer couldn’t even get a stair-lift in here. Yer couldn’t fit one,’ Eli’d say right to the face of the occupational therapist come from social services, moving his teeth in agitation so the bottom set nearly came flying out, some girl young enough to be his great-grandaughter telling him otherwise about the lift, come to visit him at home and assess his needs, as they put it. Joey and Liz would smile and apologise with their eyes.
At least the riots were in the summer. He’d got the bus out towards the flyover to go and have a look at the trouble himself, a bonfire burning in the Tesco car park at four in the afternoon. Young lads tried to nick trainers at the shopping village. Joey could never get to the bottom of whether Eli had gone to tell them all to go home or whether he thought the revolution had come at last.
‘Not even any proper trouble, just some young lads setting fires and the police watching ’em do it,’ was Eli’s only comment afterwards.
That night, some of the Bullet Krew attempted to burn down the police station, set squat and flat just off the Wrexham Road on the rise between Oxton and Cowton, but the flames didn’t take, it was a night of soft drifting rain coming out of Wales, the last night. The men went home, the boys got their new shoes, people too tired to riot any more.
…
Dee Dee stands in her boots, the water darkens her jeans. A couple of empty barrels bob in the water and make hollow sounds on the cellar walls. The rain beats on the iron doors which rattle and threaten to fold in on themselves with the weight of the water. She tells herself not to breathe in, does anyway, concentrates for any smell of shit in the water. She needs Roni to descend. All she can smell is dead leaves, mulch, the usual damp cellar wall smell. She should be worried about the beer spoiling, she knows that, is not sure of the insurance procedures. This could mean the end, but the actual fact of the water sweeping through the Anvil Yards streets exhilarates her. She thinks of the language of survival, keeping your head above water, going under, holed below the water line, and the like. She imagines the door at the top of the steps swung shut, the water at her chin, her mouth, nose, ears. The temptation to let go, her hair floating in the water.
‘Mum, what you doing? Come on.’
The door is open and the lights on. Alina stands at the top of the stairs with that rope in her hands, coiled round her slim body.
Alina floats down the river towards her. The child saves the parent in the end, she thinks, wishes for a moment she still tried to write songs.
…
The rain comes through the whole building. There is glass in the skylights and he is afraid they might give way with the force of the rain but it comes in everywhere else anyway. He’s got a candle lit, eats a cold tin of beans with an old carpet wrapped round him. Goldie would never have thought he could’ve coped with something like this. The one time they went camping at school he walked back from the Heath himself, wanted his own bed, his mum. He wishes he had never left his room, imagines himself there now, the water washing time backwards.
There’s a glow that comes from the motorway flyover that enters at the far end of the building. He can see the rain guttering down in the orange light, holds his hand to the candle and shivers, the fire escape stairs at the far end of the building dissolve in the rain. They were only held together by rust, he sees them peel off the wall and crumble and disappear without even making a sound. He wonders if it’s the end of the world.
…
‘Death by fire, death by water, death by fire, death by water,’ Mark Fala stands at the window, rocks back and forth, looks out into the storm. Half the lights are out up the hill, so he is left with the sounds. He knows that when they found her there was mud and brick dust under her fingernails where she’d tried to claw herself out, stones in her pinafore dress, clothes her own mother wore.
The inquest was inconclusive. She might have slipped down the bank in the rain. It was possible. He almost went in himself a couple of times, when he used to go down there just to sit and think about things. He went there a lot during that last season, thought a lot about packing it all in right there. Not just the football, everything. You could see the back of his dad’s old works from the bank, no one ever mentioned that at the inquest and he didn’t feel any urgent need to say.
He told himself she didn’t mean it. It was one thing to wish yourself dead. It was another thing to actually go ahead and do it. She wouldn’t have left him. That was what everyone said. But then, they hadn’t been there in the dark nights, had they? They hadn’t heard her crying, or not crying, other noises, just shuffling from room to room in a small flat she said she wouldn’t leave, even though he was earning the money then. Ally had got them with money coming in hand over fist. The older players loved it. What use was it to him? He used to ask sometimes, and they took it as some quirk or other, but he knew there was something wrong with him. They’d have put up with anything as long as he kept performing, as long as they kept winning.
He’d beckon with his hands for the ball, had never been one for saying much on the pitch, never one for saying that much anywhere, really.
‘Give it to Mark, give it to him. Hit Mark’s feet. Release him. Just fucking give it to him!’ Liam’s monologue coming from the other end of the pitch. At first the older players didn’t want to be spoken to like that, not by Liam, big and cocky and decent player as he was, but still just a kid, and then they looked at Mark, and knew that he was right.
He’d always known. He’d chased around the flat as soon as he could walk with a little ball at his feet that the dog had chewed. His dad always liked to keep a dog. They had two scrappy puppies once that his dad called Jacki
e and Bobby. And he’d have the ball at his feet when they went down the shops and would play one-twos off the kerb before he even knew what a one-two was. His dad had been a good player, his mum’s dad too. His mum had been a great one for dancing. His balance he got from her. She’d always had great balance, something else he was glad no one ever mentioned at the inquest. The bank was steep and it could be slippery in the rain, but still, it was hard to see her floundering about like that. She always walked with her head up. Not two pennies to rub together, as they used to say, not a pot to piss in, except maybe the last few months, years, with the pay-out for his dad’s accident and the money Mark had started to get paid. He got offered adverts, a boot deal. Those other clubs came in for him. Everyone was mad to go to Italy then. Imagine, him on the same pitch as Van Basten, as Baggio. What was strange was that it almost happened, like with the Torino thing. There was talk of Lazio too. He was meant to get an agent. Liam’s dad looked after it all for a while. A lot of good the money did her, anyway.
It suited everyone to think it was another accident, there was the mud under his mum’s fingernails. She always kept her hands nice. He could sit now and conjure up the smell of the cream she used to use on them, there was probably some in the back of a drawer somewhere. He’d never thrown her things out. It suited them all, meant the priest could come round and sort out the funeral without any complications. Very good for everyone, they could all feel a bit better about themselves.
She couldn’t swim. That was why she chose that way, he supposed. It was a while before they found her. Just under the surface, face down, bobbing against the wooden planks that held off the bank there, her skirt billowing out behind her. The police had taken a picture. He hadn’t seen her until the hospital. Her body was all swollen up because of the water, three times the size she’d been in life. He’d been worried she’d got too thin. He’d got his build from her as well.
He knew well before he missed that penalty that he was going to walk away. In fact, missing it almost made him think he’d go back, even just for the start of the season, if only to shut everyone up.
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