‘Ex-wives, ex-gaffers,’ Lionel says, ‘ex-brothers, ex-sons, daughters. I don’t know. Any idea what he’s up to, where he’s staying?’
‘He looked in a bad way,’ Liam says, remembers he thought it best not to say he’d actually seen him. ‘That’s what Dee Dee told me, said he had a knife. Homeless, maybe, you know. I don’t know if his mum still lives on the Peng or what.’
‘She went years ago, son. Got together with a bloke I used to know. Things turned out all right for her. They went to live somewhere near Malaga, I think.’ Lionel smiles at this.
‘He wants to see Alina.’
‘Of course he does, it’s only natural, son. Man wants to see his children.’ Lionel looks at Liam now, for the first time that morning it seems, Liam looks away, ‘Wonder he never come back earlier, really. He knows where they are.’
‘You told him you’d kill him.’
Lionel nods. ‘We warned him, that’s all. We thought that was for the best, give Dee Dee a bit of time and space. We thought of telling you we’d kill you if you didn’t stay with her, look after the girl. Then we thought she might be better off without you.’
He says these words very quietly and Liam finds it hard to follow and there’s a delay before the shock of what Lionel is saying to him registers, so he sits there and nods his head and feels the colour drain from his face. It strikes him later that Lionel might have been joking.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort it,’ Lionel says. Liam goes to speak and Lionel puts his hand up to quieten him, rises from the desk at the same time, ‘Don’t worry any more about it. We’ll smoke him out. The problem will go away.’
‘Come on,’ Lionel motions down the interior stairs, ‘have a look at what you might get when your ban’s finished.’
Outside, under the awning, a rainbow forms where they spray the cars clean. Liam sees a figure move quickly around a black jeep, all limbs like a spider, a cloth in each hand, with which he works on the metal. Something in the movement, the way the boy, the man, turns on the balls of his feet makes Liam pause. It’s Bobby.
‘How’s he doing?’ Liam says, tries to disguise the shock of seeing him here.
‘He’s OK. I’ve got him working down here now, as you can see. I can keep my eye on him. He’s doing OK.’
Liam raises his hand to the figure through the window. Bobby moves gracefully with long strides between the cars, stops to peer through the water-splashed glass, grins when he sees Liam, looks like the kid he once was, puts his thumb up to him.
‘He’s doing OK,’ Lionel says again and motions with his head towards the showroom floor. It is quiet. Liam looks at his own reflection in the shiny machines, cars to drive away from everyone he has ever known, to drive past ruins, through hedgerows, to park up in quiet clearings, to drive into the waters of shallow rivers.
…
Hampden Park, again, April 1956, one hundred and thirty-three thousand people there, Scotland winning until the very last minute. Big Duncan Edwards never gives in. See him now, driving up the pitch out of his own half with the ball at his feet and his head up, looking at Johnny Haynes, as if he is operating in a different time and space to everyone else, as if he has all afternoon, and then he strikes the ball and Haynes is in, and he strokes the ball into the corner and England have equalised. The goal means all four countries share the Home Nations trophy – an unusual enough event – but that is not really the point. When the ball goes in, Duncan gives a little skip, might look strange on a big man, but is the kind of foot movement you see with great boxers, like a kind of Ali shuffle, so balanced and alive, he is a great dancer in fact, and now comes a clenched fist. Sometimes we get the faintest glimmer of who we might truly be.
…
‘But what is it, all this stuff?’
It’s a map, is what Alina wants to say to him, a map of the Anvil Yards and of her own life. She has not thought about it in this way before, but Tyrone is the first person who has asked her what she is doing here. No one has ever known what she is doing before other than a few scraps of film she has put on the internet, a few photos of the huge Greenfield mills with tree branches coming through the roofs and the sun on the gravestones on the far hill in the distance, comments from a lonely girl in Gary, Indiana, from a Japanese man who sent details of the Nowa Huta steelworks in Kraków and posted photos of the workers’ broad, sad faces at shift-change, an industrial glow in the sky beyond endless chimneys and blocks of flats, and she was flattered to get any kind of reaction at all but she knew that it was not the places themselves that she wanted to capture. It wasn’t about sunsets, it wasn’t even about steelworks, not for her, not really.
It was a map, of that she is now convinced. That was why the rope had been important to her. The thread had been something with which to find your way through the labyrinth, to wind yourself up towards the light, to escape the monster. The rope had gone nowhere very fast, another failed piece of work, but it had led her to Tyrone. It was good to feel these separate pieces – the photos of graves and empty buildings, the names she’d tagged on crumbling walls to be glimpsed from passing cars, Bobo and Goldie and Sonia, the artefacts of rusted chain, the apple blossom that blew through giant empty buildings and that no one saw – as part of a whole piece of work, a body, her body. Maybe the work was her own life. The rope had led her to Tyrone, had not had to go anywhere else.
Her own life and everyone else’s, and the map spiralled out of the Anvil Yards and out across the Heath and up the hillsides because there was the turn in the road where the car skidded off and there is the river, not even a river, not really, a culvert with steep concrete sides and there is the car within it, there is the dockside where her great-grandad, not really her great-grandad at all, hauled boxes from barges and dreamed of the Bay of Bengal, here are the lanes that pattern the valleys like spiders’ webs and maybe give rise to those stories, and here the rows of empty terraces where the people have gone, and tunnels that wind through the hills, and here is the tent of a homeless man, she guesses, empty pill bottles and drink cans scattered around on the banks of the canal, on the land where the navvies pitched their tents in the mud to cut channels between the rivers. And there are the graves and the ash, marked like her mum’s, and unmarked like the cholera pits and the body-shaped hollows where the men drank themselves stupid at the Quakers for want of anything else to do and no one seemed to care. And there are the lives, she thought, there are the lives. It is a map of her own life and of innumerable others, to show her the way, to show her who she is.
‘It’s a kind of map,’ she says, takes a deep breath.
…
A couple of postponements and the cup matches, which feel a long time in the past now, mean they have three games in hand. Trouble with this kind of thing is that you have to win them. They are bottom of the league now, games running out, games coming twice a week, with a back four with a combined age of one hundred and thirty-four and when did you ever hear anything given as a combined age, when and where in life would that ever be useful? But that is what the Chronicle write about the Irontown defence, like they’ve even got anybody else to stick in there really, and Liam clips the line out of the paper and puts it in his wash bag to use as a kind of charm, a curse. He is going to play for ever.
But what Liam knows is that he has not played two games a week like this for years, he can barely move now, on the pitch or off, but here he is tonight, under the floodlights, heading everything that comes near him. They defend deep, deep, deep, hanging on for a point, the clock ticking down, ticking down, a point takes them off the bottom and that’s a start. Archie has not won a match in charge yet and spring is here. You can feel it in the blood-warm earth beneath the pitch. No one has been paid. Supporters’ club members collect change in buckets outside the turnstiles in order to pay for the electricity for the floodlights.
Last minute, a nothing ball towards the box and they get a shout of ‘Keeper’s ball,’ that echoes up the empty East Stand. This is t
heir seventh goalkeeper of the season, must be some kind of record. They can’t get any more, have been banned from loan deals by the league because they can’t pay anybody anything, administration beckons, a points deduction and then it will be all over. Tommy Starr this lad’s name is.
‘Fuckin’ Freddie Starr, more like,’ a voice comes to Joey, who sits biting his nails in the stand.
But he’s kept a clean sheet tonight and they’re heading off the bottom except now, as Tommy shouts, he realises he’s misjudged it, is underneath it, and the ball goes over his outstretched hands, and all in one go, Liam has realised this too, and this man who can barely move, who has headed every ball that has come into the box that night is getting back, getting back, stretching, and he gets his toe to the ball just as it hits the sandy goalmouth, as it is about to bounce inside the post, and is able to flick it wide and continues his run full into the post itself and the whole goal frame shakes and he lies crumpled on the floor.
Liam stays down even though he is not hurt, thinks he can probably eke this out to run down the clock, realises they will still have to defend the corner, so may as well have a breather. He could go to sleep right here curled around the post. Devon has his hand on his shoulder.
‘You all right, skipper? Stay down, stay down if you’re hurt,’ all in one breath. ‘Give him some space, eh?’ Devon says above him. They are clapping, proper applause, people on their feet, even in the stand.
If Irontown do go down, it will not be through lack of effort on the part of Liam Corwen. He has been a colossus tonight… goes Dave Willis’s radio voice across the warm night.
‘I bet Archie enjoyed that,’ Les Martin taps Joey on the shoulder, and Joey nods, but doesn’t take his eyes of Liam, not able to tell if he is really hurt, the goal frame is still wobbling, something in Joey’s chest and stomach tightens as he claps his hands louder, they should carry him off on a shield, his son, the way he’s playing for them, what he’s doing, keeping them up with the strength of his will. Another hand thumps Joey on the back from behind. Devon puts his thumbs up to the Greenfield End to signal Liam is OK. They sing One Liam Corwen, there’s only one Liam Corwen and then Irontowns, Irontowns, Irontowns.
But Archie Hill has not enjoyed tonight one bit. In fact Archie did not even see this clearance, there are men wearing luminous jackets running with a stretcher down the touchline, Tyrone running from the other direction with the defibrillator that he prays to God they don’t ask him to use, because Archie is lying on his back with the soles of his shoes facing towards the pitch and his heart has stopped.
…
On the way to the camp Steve Bloomer remembers another train ride years before, how they had changed stations in Birmingham with all their things in a hand cart. Had he really ridden on board like a visiting maharajah?
They had been nailers, his family. Across the river in Cradley Heath they made chain. They’d moved up to Dudley, his mum and dad, come back for his dad to work in the foundry, a puddler. It was a steep hill in the mud and the houses ran in, were falling down.
In Derby the houses were new and the factories lined the railway lines and gleamed in the sun. There was always the sound of metal and the beautiful arc of a ball, these two certainties.
The men work hard to improve the conditions in which they are kept. The winter mud, the threat of dysentery is kept at bay, they sleep in the dry, rooms more sound, perhaps, drier certainly, than the houses they’d flitted from all those years ago, houses that sagged with the water. They organise themselves. They play football, cricket all through the summer to the bemusement of the Germans, write the scores in heavy ledgers.
All his life he’s been around hard men, tough men, in Cradley and Derby and Middlesbrough, and now here in Ruhleben, in Spandau. He moves between them. Run into the spaces between them and someone will pass the ball there. There are things that are more simple than they appear.
The war goes on and on, sun and rain and snow. They play whole league seasons, test matches. He scores a double hundred one afternoon. His eye is good, has never left him. Often it’s best to sit and watch and wait, he thinks, move through the gaps when you can.
…
They got him going on the side of the pitch. They said his heart was stopped and they brought him back to life. He lies with his head on the pillow now with his pyjama top open and pads with wires coming from them stuck onto his chest, a big man with grey skin. Liam watches his body rise and fall gently as they talk, like it will stop if Liam loses concentration.
Just a few minutes, is what the nurses said. It’s family visiting only in this hot private room off the ward. Archie’s wife, Anne, had gripped Liam’s hand at the door when they came in. He heard her say to his dad that she told Archie not to take the job on, let someone else do it, he’d done enough for them over the years, a few weeks in charge and it had almost killed him.
Liam is wearing his club blazer in case there are any photographers about. The crest catches his eye as he moves his arm. He tells Archie that Steve Stringer called him in this morning, after he and Devon had taken training. That he is in charge for these last few games. Tells Archie not to worry, that his job is to get better, to rest. Archie tries to nod his head from the pillow. He’s in a bad way.
Liam waited for Archie’s autograph once, as a kid, by the Players’ Entrance in the rain. Archie was wearing his club blazer, his hair was slicked in a side parting. Liam had never stood next to such a big man, a strong man. Where they sat, the crowd would groan when Archie put a clearance over the stand, the Greenfield End cheered, Liam loved it. He told Archie he played at the back, just like him.
‘Remember,’ Archie said, as he signed his looping autograph, ‘just keep things simple back there. That’s the most important thing, the first thing you need to do.’
He still said it sometimes. It was the last thing he’d said before he sent them out the other night.
Keeping things simple is easier said than done, that’s for sure, Liam thinks, sighs.
He holds Archie’s hand, is surprised by how soft it is. His dad stands behind him, puts his hand on his shoulder, which is his signal that’s it’s time.
‘All right, Archie,’ Joey says, ‘you take it easy.’
Liam keeps hold of his hand as he gets up from the plastic chair. He can feel his hip, his thigh, there’s a bruise that’s spread up his leg from where he crashed into the post, from Socrates all the way up to Yashin. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to play on Saturday. He tries not to limp in the hospital, thinks it looks like he’s taking the piss.
‘He’s in a bad way, Dad, eh?’
‘He didn’t look very well, son, no.’
They are barely speaking, him and his dad, they sit in the car with the radio on while his dad drives him around. He asks Devon to drive him when he can, gets on the bus, the tram, the drivers and conductors nod to him, ask him when results will improve. He wants to avoid talking to them about Archie, about the side he is going to pick now he’s in charge. His mum has barely said a word to him since Christmas.
They parked on the far car park, the one near the old Bethel, which was the workhouse and is now the psychiatric hospital. He sees that lad Tyrone coming down the path, an old woman bent over a walking frame with him. Tyrone the hero, Liam thinks, probably does hospital visiting in his spare time, he got that thing on Archie’s chest with the St John’s ambulance people, saved his life, everyone said.
Tyrone has the woman’s arm and she has both hands on the frame, stares at the path. A blackbird flits past. They can hear the traffic on the flyover.
‘Come on, Mum,’ he hears Tyrone say, ‘you’re doing really well.’
He is aware that they have slowed their pace to look at the woman attempt an incline, not get anywhere very fast, ‘You’re doing great,’ they hear him say.
At the car his dad asks him if he fancies a pint and he nearly says no, I’ve got a team to pick, but says, ‘Yeah, that would be nice,’ and they talk ab
out that time they played Liverpool in the League Cup and Ian Rush kept fouling big Archie, clipping his heels, when the midfield slipped the ball through. Archie got more and more angry but couldn’t get anywhere near Rush or Dalglish.
Liam goes back to their house for his tea, asks his dad to pull in so he can pick up some flowers from the Lowtown Bull Ring on the way, tries not to look at the back of the Chronicle while they eat. They have printed a kind of doomsday clock above the Anvil Yards, set at five to midnight.
…
He moves like a breaking wave, a sense of deep power locked within. Eusébio is broader now, at twenty-six, stronger. Bang the ball in at his chest, his back to goal, and watch him hold the defenders at bay.
He receives the ball in space, side-on to goal, and the couple of strides he takes give him the start he needs. Nobby Stiles hurtles at him, as he does all night, as he had done two years before in the World Cup, a fierce little dog yapping at the tide, but this time Eusébio is gone. He strides past him, over him, lengthening his stride with the ball, until he slows for an instant. Sadler backpedals and keeps going, skittering, as Eusébio pauses. Space opens out around him, even as the United players converge. He looks up, strikes it. The bones of his foot which whip through the ball are called the cuboid, the lateral cuneiform, the metatarsals. They will one day become relics. The ball veers and rises and crashes down and back off the crossbar. Béla Guttmann’s curse and the ghosts of Munich fall like dew on the Wembley night.
His free-kicks come back off the United wall, Stiles clatters his ankles again and again. When he glides through the United defence he can’t quite get purchase on a left-foot shot on the run. And then the ball falls into his path and he thumps it, the soles of both feet off the ground, and Stepney, the United keeper, clutches it to his chest in mid-air. Eusébio stands and looks and applauds. Then George Best cuts through the Benfica lines, like an elf skipping between summer foxgloves. Eusébio feels heavier. Tides come in and they go out. Time moves one way.
Iron Towns Page 20