…
He sees the news on the ticker on Sports 24, the channel he now leaves on permanently in the room with the sound down low even when he is sleeping. It helps him sleep in fact, the shadows the images make on the wall and the low murmur of voices. He sometimes turns over in the middle of the night to see pictures of luge tobogganing and cliff diving and ultra-distance marathons through a desert somewhere. His body aches and his eyes close.
Real Madrid confirm the signing of Luis Fonseca Andrade from Petrosat Tajik Star for an undisclosed fee. Move to be completed at the end of the season.
He jumps to his feet and laughs, paces up and down the room. He phones Devon but it goes straight to voicemail, starts to blabber on about it, feels embarrassed, not even sure he should be phoning him and talking like this now he’s the gaffer, although Devon is his mate, his number two now. ‘Real Madrid,’ he says, ‘just you think about that.’
And with the news they play a clip that someone must have sent in from the dust bowl in the summer, filmed on a phone from the back of the stand, he thinks he can even make out the shape of his dad’s head, Liam’s hacked clearance wobbles through the air and Luis takes it on his thigh and spins and hits it off the outside of the post and into the hoardings and you see a few people’s heads cock like when you try to decide if a car is backfiring or the shooting has begun.
He sits on the edge of the bed. He’s got players’ names written on a cut-up cereal packet, a tea tray that represents the pitch. It will be very, very simple. Move Kyran inside and play him off Julius. Hit balls in to Julius and hope it sticks, hit passes into Kyran’s feet and let him run at people. If it doesn’t work, he can push him out wide again. If it doesn’t work he can yank Julius off, stick Shaunie McLaughlin up front to clatter people. Keep it simple, like Archie said. These people have all played with Real Madrid’s latest signing. He laughs to himself, the world is beyond all reasoning.
…
The Arms Park, 16 March 1896. Billy Meredith looks on from the wing, cannot get the ball, has not touched it, there’s an hour gone and not a mark on his kit. To think they fancied their chances in this one, had given Ireland a lesson at the Racecourse Ground. It just shows you how long you get to stay on your perch. He watches the pale arrow on the other side, this young lad Bloomer score one goal after the other. He can’t understand why Charlie Parry doesn’t kick him, maybe because he just can’t get near him, he’s like smoke, like a ghost. Nine now, is it? The kid has scored five, half a dozen maybe. Billy thinks the ref blows early, puts them out of their misery.
…
Ally looks at the sea below as the taxi climbs the mountainside, up, up out of the city. He’s been to the Ronaldo museum to kill some time, enjoyed the photos, enjoyed the chutzpah of a man who opens a museum of himself, wonders idly what he’d put in his own. Ally thinks of what George Best said about Ronaldo, about the passing on of a flame, cannot think for a moment how much he would have seen of him before he died. Ally had been at the funeral, never such a well of emotion had he seen, such love. They said Ronaldo’s daddy had been a drinker too. A drinker and a dreamer no doubt, Ally thinks, can afford to let his thoughts drift, to be sentimental. He can afford most things now, of course. He touches the paper of the contracts in the briefcase, his percentage from Luis, money from the Tajiks, from Madrid, all those years of watching and waiting for some kind of break like this. He is a man behind the men now, looks down at the breaking waves through his dark glasses, enjoys the feel of wearing a suit in the hot sun, business to attend to. He thinks of running across cinders in the Finnieston gloom.
Dorothea spends her afternoons on the nursing home terrace, a mirador that overlooks the cliffs. There are ships out on the water that she can’t see. Her head lolls over to one side, ninety-nine years old and counting. Her mother’s second husband owned a wine exporters, a last crumbling vestige of empire, that’s how she ended up here. She was the last baby born at the Greenfield Estate by the Heath. The big house burned down after an air raid late in the war, but everyone always said it had been done for the insurance. They had run out of money even then. Her lawyer and a nurse sit with her in the shade. They all drink lemonade and then a glass of the wine.
She doesn’t speak, just nods as they complete the formalities, she signs with a faint spider’s leg crawl. Ally has bought plenty of players before but never a whole club. Not that he’s really buying this one. She’s pretty much giving it him to pass on the debt. But the debt will disappear with the money promised in the briefcase and Iron Towns – he’s putting back the s, that’s first on the agenda – will rise again, from wherever they find themselves.
‘To the Iron Towns,’ he says as he raises his glass, sips the warming liquid in the hot afternoon. ‘There is one question I have for Dorothea,’ he says to the lawyer, a young man with his hair slicked back, he’s been warned not to fluster her, to just get the deed done. The lawyer looks not unlike Ronaldo himself, the boy from down the mountain.
‘What is it?’
‘Why she never sold before. Could maybe have got big money. Was it her love of the club?’
Her voice comes strong out of her tiny frame. Up until now, he has not thought she was entirely with it, assumed the lawyer was offloading the club now for tax reasons.
‘No one ever asked, all these years,’ she says, and she laughs a hacking laugh, and they all join in. Ally shakes his head, all the stories of the Greenfields’ legendary stubbornness, theories of why they wouldn’t sell. Money talks, people said. No one even offered. He wonders if she is joking. She raises her hand. The nurse leans forward, sensing something wrong, but the voice goes on.
‘No, I lie,’ she says, ‘Lionel Ahmed asked once, after he forced his brother out. I told him I wouldn’t sell to a crook.’ And she laughs again and they all join in and Ally turns his face to the sun.
…
At full-time they turn to each other to check the scores from Torquay and Northampton and Bristol Rovers and Wycombe. They have been terrible again, another three-nothing, the crowd too tired to even boo them off. There are hurried conversations and confirmations about the results elsewhere. Still third from bottom, win on Saturday and they still stay up.
‘There must be some bad teams in this league if we’re still in with a shout,’ Les Martin says as the players trudge off. Liam stands at the side of the pitch and applauds the Greenfield End even though there are fingers that jab out of the crowd towards him, some others clapping, fans arguing among themselves.
‘We can do it,’ Joey mutters, although as he says it, he knows he doesn’t believe it.
‘Fucked anyway, because of the money. It’s been nice knowing you, Joey, eh? Cowton Sports for us next year.’
Les taps his arm.
He thinks the bloke is honestly trying to be nice.
…
Dave ‘Iron’ Willis: Liam, you still believe?
Liam Corwen: A thousand per cent. I opened that dressing-room door and said anyone who doesn’t think we can do it should walk through it, go home now. No one did. I’ll say the same to the supporters, don’t bother next week if you can’t get behind us.
He had done nothing of the sort, of course, he’d got back through the door from the ref’s office to help Devon pull Tommy Starr off Shaunie McLaughlin. Afterwards, Devon told him he was worried that Tommy would break his hands on Shaunie’s head. They haven’t got another keeper. He says otherwise he’d have left him to it.
…
People are queueing all the way down Chain Street. They did the same for the United match that never came, and here they are again. Steve Stringer himself is at the booth, as they’ve got no one else in the office to sell tickets any more. Liam gets out of Devon’s car and the others follow. This is his idea, the first, the only one he’s had in the couple of weeks he’s been in charge. Well, that and playing Kyran inside and further forward, and the kid has barely had a kick.
‘Thanks for coming down here,’ he says to
an old bloke five or six places back in the line.
‘I want me head examined,’ is all the man says but Liam smiles and holds out his hand to shake and he nods to Devon and the others all do the same. A kid in school uniform wants his picture taken with Kyran, there are all manner of things being brought out for them to autograph. He should’ve phoned Dave Willis, told him what they were doing, dismissed that as too cynical, realises right now that there is no such thing.
‘Will you sign this Liam,’ he looks up to see Fraser Parks from the fanzine, the young lad who looks fifty if he’s a day, hold out a photo of the ’93 side, sees his own younger self looking out from the picture, sees Mark standing there next to him, looking nervous just for a team photograph. ‘It’s not for me,’ he says, ‘it’s to raffle for the children’s ward at the Bethel.’ That’s right, Liam thinks, he does the hospital radio, as well, this lad. Saints, all of them.
‘Could do with some of them players on Saturday,’ is what Liam says.
‘Think we’ll do it, Liam?’ he asks.
‘Course we will,’ he says, and he can see in the lad’s eyes that he really wants to know, that he really wants it to be true, standing here, selling his home-made magazines with it threatening rain on a Tuesday morning when he should be at work, if he had any work to get to.
‘That’s great,’ he says, ‘that’s great.’
And maybe it’s the tiredness, or the way he says this, like Liam has got any more idea than him of how things will turn out, or the way the line straggles along the broken pavement, mobility scooters and walking sticks and kids bunking school and blokes who look like his dad, his granddad, among them, that makes something shift inside him. Some reversal he thinks. All his life he’s had it the other way round, but it’s they who are the saints, this ragged line, and those like it, past, present, future.
It is the players who are the pilgrims.
…
‘What do you mean, a different direction? What does that even mean?’
They sit in Tony’s studio and look at the brick walls of the yard outside. They sit side by side at the desk for lack of space but also to look at Tony’s sketchbook. Liam looks at Tony’s reflection in the glass, Tony’s face turned towards his.
‘How do you want me to talk about it?’ Liam says. ‘I want to think about what we’re heading towards, about how this will finish.’
‘What do you mean, finish? There’s loads to do yet, you’ve said yourself. Groups, we talked about. Are we still going more for groups? That’s what I want to know.’
There are sketches of the Lisbon Lions, Billy McNeill on a white wall holding the cup aloft, of Brazilians, Pelé stroking the ball into Carlos Alberto’s path, of Romáro and Bebeto rocking the baby. There are team photos clipped from old magazines. For months Tony has been looking at groupings, of teammates. This is the work’s new phase. They have gone down different routes before, a whole season with Tony sketching famous stadiums only for them to decide it was figures, people they wanted all along.
‘Football is a team game. We need to show people together, with their mates,’ is what Liam says to him, a change of direction from the big portraits they’d started with, but now he’d thought one step further, about where this was headed. They had never talked about an ending before.
‘This is a group,’ Liam gestures to the scrap of paper in front of him, pen in hand. ‘It’s one big group. This is the whole point of it, Tone. Do you get it? It’s what we’ve been working towards.’
‘This is a mess.’
‘The crowd, the people.’
‘I ain’t fucking Lowry. What do we want with all these stick men?’
Liam wishes he hadn’t tried to draw it. Jari could do better with those giant crayons Greta let him scribble on the floor with. He wanted crowds, the people. He wanted the great crowd to cover the rest of his body, so the players were subsumed into the mass, so they disappeared, so he disappeared too.
‘The crowd are what makes them who they are. Don’t you see it?’
‘I see it, but this is too clever for its own good. It looks shit.’
‘Without the crowd they ain’t nobody. With no one looking. Football is the people’s game.’
‘What happened to Pirlo? I’ve been drawing his fucking miserable face all winter.’
Liam is glad of a bit of levity. Tony doesn’t really think he is serious, that’s why he’s smiling now.
‘Pirlo’s still playing. He’s gonna go on and on like Stanley Matthews. He’s missed the boat. There’s a cut-off date. They can’t still be playing after I finish.’
Tony takes a sip of his green tea and Liam continues talking to the reflection in the window, ‘It’s an idea, Tone, I want you to think about it. I want it to end when I stop playing, I want it to be complete.’
‘It would be like rubbing it out. Years of work, years to come.’
‘Just think about it. OK?’ Liam pushes his chair back, exhausted suddenly. He honestly thought Tony would think it a good idea. He doesn’t even like football, for god’s sake. He stands up and looks to go. Tony is still sitting, looking at the sketchbooks laid out on the desk, shaking his head.
‘I think this is your problem, Liam, you never see things through.’
‘What’s that meant to mean? I’m talking about seeing it through, this is seeing it through, this is an idea for an ending.’
He wants to get out of this small room now, does not know why he has even brought this up, thought this visit would be a nice distraction from trying to pick a team for Saturday.
‘I just don’t think you’ve got the bottle to stick with things,’ Tony says, his back to Liam now, and the way his face appears in the glass, the way he says this, Liam thinks of Dee Dee, some family resemblance, the kind of thing she said to him when she decided to take on Alina.
‘You never see anything through, just leave people to pick up after you.’
This was not true. He’d given the biggest part of twenty years to Irontown, he’d come back here for god’s sake, stuck by Ally, the club. It wasn’t him who left Dee Dee, not really, she chose the girl, he hadn’t left Greta and Jari.
‘You get too far into things and then get scared and want to pack them in and leave other people to deal with it.’
‘Fucking hell, Tone, I’m going, mate. It’s only a few pictures. And they’m my tattoos. Jesus.’ He clenches and unclenches his fist. There were times when he’d have gone for him. Picked him up by the throat and had him up against the wall. He wishes he’d never mentioned the crowd. It was a great idea, though, how the players would disappear back into the crowd from which they came, it was beautiful, it was what he was going to do at the end of the season, become invisible, start afresh, again. He knows deep down that Tony has a point. It isn’t even Tony speaking, Liam thinks, not really. It’s Dee Dee.
He turns and moves into the front of the shop. He expects Tony to follow him or say something else but there’s nothing. The bell rattles as he opens the door, surprisingly bright outside after the gloom of the studio and the yard. It occurs to him that this might be the end. They can stay on his body as they are, men running through the world, through other men’s heads.
…
The body of a man found near the Quaker Burial Grounds Burnt Village, has been identified as that of Stephen Williams, 37, of no fixed address. Mr Williams came from a well-known Oxton family and his death has shocked the community.
His sister, Anne Fraser, 33, also of Oxton, told the Chronicle ‘This has been the hardest week of my family’s lives. We are all devastated. Stevie was a great brother and son. He battled with drink and depression for many years so maybe he is at some sort of peace now but I can’t believe we won’t see his face again.’
Iron Town council have received numerous complaints about street drinking and antisocial behaviour in the Quaker Burial Ground area.
‘They come up here, sitting around all day and making a nuisance for decent people,’ said a local
resident who did not wish to be named. ‘I’ve seen a man using a neighbour’s front garden as a toilet in the middle of the day. If you say anything you just get abuse. Nothing gets done.’
West Mercia police issued a statement yesterday to the effect that Mr Williams’s death was not suspicious, although an inquest will be heard at a date yet to be fixed. It is assumed he died of an alcohol related illness.
Tributes to the dead man have been left along the north wall of the Burial Ground, these include flowers, cards and bottles.
Liz has one last glance at the paper and steps out into the sunshine, Joey is in the car, already looking at his watch again, sighing. He’ll have to wait. She knew the Williams family when she was growing up, the Prentices too, the boy’s mother, Maggie Prentice as she was, grew up on Red Lion Street, near where the pie shop was on the way to the Bull Ring. Liz had been born on Silver Street. It was named for the brook that ran behind the houses, under some of them, and out into the Chain, right near the bottom end of Lowtown. They’d knocked most of the houses down in the sixties, moved the families out to Cowton and Oxton. The water would rise into the houses in bad weather, in the summer everything smelled of mud and they were rotten with damp. She remembers being sent to peg the washing out as a girl and the mud squeezing up between her toes, being scared of the frogs that lived along the bank and that her brothers used to torture. The smells that came from the factories settled there in the valley, sank into your clothes. People look into the past one-eyed, she thinks, only remember the good parts. She is glad they’ve torn the place down. At the Heritage Museum they rebuilt one of the terraces, industrial age slum dwelling, typical of those through Lowtown and the Anvil Yards and still inhabited into the late 1960s, she’d read on the information card, was shocked to see the word slum at first, her mother kept their curtains nice, the place as spotless as she could, but later thought, why not call it what it was?
She used to look at the hills, at the estates laid out halfway up and the leaded bay windows of Salop and Calon and think that was where she was headed, Maggie Prentice as well, she knew. They kept their ankle socks as white as they could, out of the mud, dreamed of net curtains and broad avenues. And that was what she got, after a fashion. Her dreams had come true. They’d done OK and she’d been lucky with Joey and the girls. And Liam, well, Liam was Liam, was all she’d begun to think now. Tell a boy, a man, how good he is at something, all stand round and clap him on, and watch what happens. He always thought he could do anything, he didn’t need grown men egging him on.
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