Still, she wasn’t Maggie Prentice, sitting there in Oxton still, in a house every bit as dilapidated as the kind they grew up in, just in a different way, grieving her lost boy. She remembers seeing her once in the street with a boy who must have been Stephen alongside her, gap-toothed and laughing and helping her with her shopping bags up the hill. She remembered thinking even then that she’d have her work cut out to get Liam to do that, the girls maybe, said as much to Maggie, gave Stephen some change for an ice-cream. There are many ways of being poor, she thinks, has never quite shaken it off, has never got quite far enough up the hill.
She will do a card for Maggie, she thinks, look for when the funeral is, although doubts she’ll go, has always wanted to keep her distance, not get dragged back, which is how she’s come to think about the football. She hopes they lose and get put out of their misery and she is only going because Eli passed up his ticket, he has not seen them win in the flesh this season and thinks himself a Jonah and so will listen to it on the radio instead as some kind of sacrifice. These boys with their rituals and magic spells. She wishes they would all grow up.
The weather today would suit a wedding better than a funeral, and she guesses that someone will be getting married somewhere today, blossom in the air like confetti, that not everything is concentrated on the Anvil Yards, and she silently wishes them well, while Joey glares at his watch and sighs again and, she can see, wants to sound the horn at her but considers that might make her go even more slowly. There is all the time in the world.
…
Cadwallader looks back across the wave-tops, sees the white cliffs fade in the sea spray, sighs. The island is undone, emptied with war and plague and famine. The hills are full of skulls, the rivers run with blood.
Voices come on the wind, faint across the sound of the sea and between the boat’s creaking. They say that none of them are dead, not one, that they will come again, from their caves and wooded valleys, that they will take new forms.
…
Ally sits in the car for a few seconds before he turns off the engine, the paint that says ‘Owner’ on the wall above the space has faded so it’s almost just a memory. He considers the gateman’s wide eyes when he wound the window down, takes a deep breath, reaches into the back for his suit jacket and opens the door.
‘Who’s parked there?’ Steve Stringer asks from his perch high up the stand. ‘You know to keep that clear. You can never tell, today might be the day someone turns up.’
In the room along the corridor, the directors and dignitaries, even the mayor is here in a great gold chain, munch on sandwiches and sip their drinks, like the Heath golf club has relocated for the afternoon for the funeral of an old acquaintance they’d all thought had gone years ago.
There’s the crackle of a walkie-talkie, words he can’t hear. There’s a voice behind him that says, ‘You’re not going to like this, but listen…’
…
Watching from where they sit is not made any easier by looking at the Morecambe fans dressed as red-and-white shrimps or wearing great sun hats and generally laughing and enjoying themselves no end, beach balls bobbing away above the Chain terracing, nothing to play for, an end of season fancy-dress party with the added bonus of being a part of football history, the last club to play at the Anvil Yards. There were fans swapping scarves outside the Chain End when they came past. They start to sing We’ll meet again, which Joey thinks is unlikely. The only thing he can hope is that the Morecambe players are already on holiday as well, but he knows things never work like that. They’ll probably play like world-beaters.
He keeps his eyes fixed on Liam, who he swears is hiding a limp, and groans inside as he calls the players into a huddle in front of the Greenfield End. These things just look daft. It’s noisy, a breeze comes over the East Stand. Liz puts her hand on his.
When the ref whistles Liam sends Devon up for the toss while he speaks to Tommy Starr, holding the keeper’s head in his hands, looking him in the eye. He’s probably scaring the kid half to death, Joey thinks, just leave him be.
The noise builds, and he needs the toilet but tries not to move, doesn’t want Liz have to get up, nods to Les Martin who leans across after he’s made a show of giving Liz a kiss and grins and says, ‘Thought you’d decided to give it a miss,’ and Joey can’t even raise a smile.
‘Hey,’ Les says now, ‘have you seen who’s here?’ and he nods his head over the directors’ box barrier.
Joey glances, aware they are about to kick-off and feeling that if he keeps his eyes on Liam then nothing will go wrong, and sees the glint of the chain and assumes Les means the mayor. The box is full for the first time this season, in years, Joey reckons, all come to put the last nail in the coffin.
That’s when he sees Ally, sitting there in his blue suit and dark glasses, relaxed as can be. He swears he’s got a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
‘He’s got some nerve,’ is what he says, drowned by the anxious high-pitched keening that greets the kick-off, too nervous, if you ask Joey, that will transmit to the players and whatever happened to the Irontown roar? That was deeper, came from the depths, and they said sounded like a furnace when a door is opened onto it. This was fear. It was what they’d sounded like for years, all of them, Joey thinks, but they all had reasons to be afraid and the fires were all out long ago.
Morecambe play a ball over the top almost straight away and Liam has the back line pressing up the pitch already, too far up, and the ball lands in space behind them and a red-shirted player simply glides in and onto the pass and Joey looks across at the linesman whose flag is down by his knees as he runs parallel with the forward. The keeper is out too, this lad Starr, who extends his yellow arms to make himself look big, and their player thumps it, hits it true. And Tommy Starr tumbles to his left and he saves it, and Joey is on his feet, shouting, ‘What a save!’ and they are all up with their necks craned to see the ball crash back off Tommy’s leaping frame and into Liam’s face as he chases the forward and then, everything slows down, as Devon and Liam both stretch their legs and both run after after the ball, and Joey remembers a man on holiday once when he was a kid, chasing a white handkerchief that had blown off his head across the broad green bank of the Great Orme, Joey was scared the man would chase it over the cliff into the sea, and there are Liam and Devon across the goalmouth sand and into the back of the net in a bundle with the ball.
Silence.
Some fucker with a radio on.
Calamity at the Anvil Yards. An own goal after what can only have been, what, twenty seconds of the match…
…
Goldie sees him across the empty factory spaces, his shoulders rolling, his hair wild. He has to think for a moment where he has seen him before, then remembers it’s the kid he sold those diazepam tablets to all those months ago, the bottle he’d found in the coat, who he asked about the Ahmeds and the boy had said, ‘Know em? I am one, sunshine.’
He comes towards him now, from a hundred yards away he sees him, from out of the shadow of the building opposite, looking all around him, puts his hand to his eyes to shield the sun and looks now at Goldie’s building, he kicks at the clumps of grass that grow from the cracked, bleached concrete, not intentionally, but a man in a hurry. Goldie doesn’t move, watches the kid approach, stays in the shadows.
The crowd noise stops, all of a sudden, just like someone flicked a switch. Then comes louder again, with Iron Towns, Iron Towns, Iron Towns coming across the water against the breeze and echoing off the brick. Goldie has taken to walking down to the edge of the market when they pack up, picking up scraps of all kinds, has seen Liam’s face on the back of the paper every night for a week. That fucker doesn’t age, in his club blazer, with his gelled hair, and all the rest of them, look at them, look at him. Goldie stares down at his body, pink scars across it, his ribs showing and the jut of his hip-bone above his trousers. He’s hoisted them up with a length of wire casing he found out by the docks wall where they’
ve started taking buildings down. He still does not know what he is going to do, story of his life, he supposes.
When he looks up the boy is much nearer, bigger. He wonders if he can see him, he walks with such purpose, sees that he is holding something up the sleeve of his hooded top, holds a jerrycan in his other hand, liquid sloshing from the top, which he guesses must be petrol, perhaps he has run out of petrol, and he watches from the broken-down wall where he sits, has plans to watch the light change on the abandoned buildings, until he realises the boy is very near, his shadow walking with him, and so Goldie ducks back in through the open factory doorway and up the concrete steps.
…
The pub is empty. Paul queued all Tuesday morning, came back telling her what a genuine bloke he thought Liam was, that he could understand what she must have seen in him. ‘Is that right, Paul?’ is all she said, in as even a tone as she could manage. No sign even of Mark today and she has bolted the off sales hatch shut. Alina is working on the stall. Tyrone is bringing a Chinese with him when he finishes his shift at the ground. They might wait to eat with her after closing time, sit upstairs at the kitchen table near to midnight, she told Tony to head round when he’s locked up the shop. They’ll sit like a family with the windows open and the telly on, talking and only half-listening to each other, and she will want the moment to last for ever.
She lets the radio commentary bleed quietly from the kitchen into the bar. They are losing. She thinks of Liam, sees him moving, running across the roof at the flats, Mark, Goldie too, a long time ago, like they could never fall, like they could fly. She stands under the chandelier, looks at the ticking clock, sings quietly to herself, breaks off every now and then, hopes for an answering call.
…
Bobby pulls the knife from his sleeve. It’s wrapped in newspaper. He has watched the buildings, knows he’s been sleeping in this one, that there’s an office on an upstairs floor where there’s even a bed. He’s been coming over here for years, first on training runs, then when he was off his head, as if he’s the full ticket now, he thinks to himself, almost laughs. He tears the newspaper into strips to use as firelighters. Try and smoke him out, is what his old man said, see what you can do. He’ll show him, he thinks, he’ll show him.
If he sets the fire on this stair he can chase him up and out, down the iron staircase that runs down the back wall, trap him on this side of the canal, although it’s wide enough to try to jump it there, he supposes, will take that risk. There’s that new rope that someone has brought down here. He plans to tie him up, secure him to one of the iron rings that are worked into the brick, text his dad who is over at the football. He can do what he likes with him then. Bobby doesn’t want to know. He never has. When he’s done this he reckons his dad will give him a car, some cash, something. Half a chance and he’s out of here, he tells himself, they’ll never hear from him again. He’s tried all sorts of ways of escaping apart from the most obvious, just to leave, to disappear.
He hears something on the stairs above, puts the strips down in among the rubbish that has already swirled with the breeze in the bottom of the stairwell, sloshes some petrol on the pile, there are pipes running out of the wall here and down through the floor, and he pauses for a moment, and then there’s another noise above him and he hurries and fumbles with the lighter in his pocket.
…
There are fires that have burned all their lives. It’s what Mark thinks as he drags the little boat down the bank. He can smell burning from somewhere, he is sure. He can see there’s a hole in the bottom of the boat and wonders if he risks drowning and thinks of all the ways to go maybe that would be best. They could all wonder whether he’d meant it or not. But you can stand up in this water and it’s only a few yards across. God knows how old the coracle is. It was tied up with fraying rope under the bridge, the one with the graffiti. Frank Hughes must have left it there on his last afternoon, thinking he’d be back for it. Frank’s dad had been the boatman before, possibly his dad before that, to fish the balls from the river when they kicked them in there, right back before there even was a stand, just an earth bank where the crowd would assemble after the factory whistle.
When they were ballboys here, Mark and Liam loved to get the East Stand duty, run up and down the empty, splintered wood and have the match played out to themselves. When someone stuck it over the low stand and they heard the ball bouncing across the iron roof they would race each other to the little door at the back which opened out over the water. Frank would be there, paddling slowly after it, wherever it had landed. In his last years he shared the river and the banks with swans, geese; before that the water had been dead, bubbles would rise to its brown surface and pop.
It’s the door Mark paddles towards, water sloshing in the bottom of the boat as it knocks against the back of the stand, no more than a hatch really. He thought he would have to force it but the splintered wood pushes open into the gloom and he remembers the smell of the place, pulls himself up and forward and through the hatch like a cat. He does not tie the boat up, let it sink, let it sail down the river to the sea, he thinks, knows it will drift to the bank, stay half submerged, a perch for herons. To get home he might walk across the pitch. Why not? He never really said goodbye. There it is, a strip of green in the sun, the players flicker across it in their red shirts, their Eton Blue shirts, a song starts up again at the Greenfield End. He hears his own name, they want to conjure him up like a spirit, cannot see him, perhaps never did, not who he was, saw who they wanted to see. One-nil down already. Well, he is here again. He thinks of how he used to run across that pitch like his feet didn’t touch the ground and sits at the back of the stand where the light makes a pattern through the missing slats. He is not quite alone. The fox sits, alert, upright, down near the Chain End. He has not seen her all winter, since she had her cubs, if it’s the same one, there’s so many now, her nose in the air. She turns her head towards Mark and then bolts away into the dark. There’s a gasp from the crowd as a pass goes awry and the players in red steam forward and there’s Liam, who clatters it up onto the roof of the stand and Mark hears the familiar bounce and roll of the ball above him, how he would groan when they did that when he was playing, and gesture to the defenders to knock it into his feet. The crowd cheer Liam who claps his hands, shakes his fist, until a new ball is found and they go again in endless to and fro.
…
Bobby waits, crouched on the stained concrete, a coil of smoke comes slowly up the stairwell. He waits for movement, for any sound from the man, knows it must come with the smoke, hears the cries and songs come from the Anvil Yards. He thinks for a moment about how wrong your life must have gone, to be living here in the ruins, in the shadows, getting so thin, becoming invisible. But not so hard to imagine. He hears the crowd cry again, a surge, and he thinks of those fights in the Assembly Rooms and up at the Casino. ‘Kill him, Bobby, kill him.’ He can sense the man’s movements above him, it’s like he hunts himself.
…
Liam has never known a half go so quick. At least they have kept it at one-nil. They are still in it, that’s what he wants to say to them, when they’ve got their breath, had a drink, resists the urge to say anything too soon. He looks round for Archie at some point, who always checks he’s OK at half-time, remembers, thinks of his grey face in the hospital bed. He cannot recall what he said to them before kick-off, or on the pitch in the huddle when he let Devon talk and it was too loud anyway. He is aware of the requirement for some grand speech, although he has never seen them work, the words have never mattered, just goes round the room and looks in their faces, tells them if they are patient it will come, moves Kyran back out wide where he might get some space. He asks Ted Groves to tell Shaunie to get warmed up after the hour, if it’s still one-nil. There’s nothing doing from the other matches, no favours anywhere, they need to win. He’ll throw Shaunie on up front and just sling balls in at him and Julius. He has never claimed to be a tactical genius.
At the mouth of the tunnel is a man talking into a microphone. Liam does not recognise him. He has the newspaper from a couple of weeks ago in his hand, waves it towards the camera.
‘Rumours swirling around the ground about a new owner and a dramatic late buyout but the fact remains that as it stands Irontown Football Club – founder members of the Football League – are on their way out of the league and most likely out of business. It’s about to strike midnight at the Anvil Yards!!’
It hits him now that this is probably it, his last game, and he bounces on his toes to get the blood running. Kyran sprints past him, late out of the tunnel after getting his ankle taped up. He turns in the middle of the pitch and flicks the ball up, drills it hard towards the reporter. The balls strikes the newspaper and it flies out of his hand. The crowd nearby cheers. The reporter just grins. They’ve got no shame, these people, Liam thinks, claps his hands. The crowd sing Iron Towns, Iron Towns, Iron Towns…
‘Was trying to get him in the balls,’ he hears Kyran shout, who runs on the spot now and pumps his knees high.
…
Goldie moves as quietly as he can along the old walkway that looks down on what was the factory floor. A couple of apple trees grow where he guesses they must have ripped out some machine or other, ripped up the concrete too. Blossom foams on their branches and he can smell it when the breeze comes through the open windows. He will pick the apples when the autumn comes, thinks he could stay here for ever, eke out less and less, waste away slowly and disappear.
Iron Towns Page 22