The Road to Lisbon

by Martin Greig

  I see Willie Wallace, our prolific inside-right, Stevie Chalmers, the classic Celtic centre-forward, and big John Hughes coming out in a cluster. Any two from three.

  “If B-B-Big Jock wants to rummel them up he’ll go with Y-Y-Yogi. But I’ve a f-f-feeling he’ll play S-Stevie and Wispy,” says Mark.

  “For once, I think you’re right.”

  There’s the goalie, Ronnie ‘Faither’ Simpson, with that wizened face; Scottish Player of the Year. An absolute stick-on.

  Not just fine footballers, but fine men too. Men you are glad to believe in, proud to have represent you. Men who all hail from either Glasgow itself or the surrounding area. It’s a bloody miracle. Who do they think they are taking on the might of Inter Milan!

  There is Bobby Lennox, always cheery, loves the fans – as skilful and graceful an outside-left as you will ever see, and with the kind of pace that defenders hate. That makes 10 . . .

  Jimmy ‘Jinky’ Johnstone bursts from the stadium’s main doors, and a crescendo of good-natured ribaldry goes up from fans and players alike. His shirt tail is hanging out and he grins as he dashes across the car park, stopping to shout over to us. He is hustled away by a steward as a familiar chorus, to the tune of Ging Gang Goolie fills the air:

  We’ve got Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy Johnstone on the wing, on the wing.

  We’ve got Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy Johnstone on the wing, on the wing.

  He gets onto the coach, waving at us, and I wonder at this cheeky, reckless, ginger-haired midget who strikes terror into the greatest defenders in Europe. Mesmerising, flamboyant, imaginative, and in terms of sheer skill, utterly sublime.

  Mark can’t contain himself.

  “Jinky’s the m-m-man. If we do this, Jinky will be the man. Eh Tim, know what I mean? Know what I m-m-mean?”

  “I think, if I hear you correctly, you are saying Jinky’s the man!”

  We burst out laughing and join in again lustily.

  Jimmy. Oh Jimmy Johnstone, oh Jimmy Johnstone on the wing!

  That’s my side. It’s got everything. Balance, ability, courage, fitness, strength, invention and belief. Belief in one another. Belief in their captain. Belief in their manager. Belief instilled by their manager. Jock Stein. Big Jock. The Big Man. My hero.

  Finally he emerges from the stadium, shaking hands. Including mine. The hefty steward doesn’t even try to stop him. He knows better. My mouth is dry. I am struck temporarily dumb. Then I find some words.

  “Good luck, Mr Stein. We are with you every step of the way.”

  “Thanks for your support, you have no idea how much we appreciate it.”

  He says it like he means it. He does mean it. I catch the look in his eye as his huge paw envelopes mine. A look that says he wants to win it for the people that matter. Really matter. Us.

  “We’ll see you over there, Mr Stein,” I shout after him, as he hurries towards the coach. “We’ll see you in Lisbon!”

  I turn to Mark. Offer him my hand.

  “Want to shake the hand that shook the hand of God?”

  He bursts out laughing, grabs my hand and then hugs me. We bounce up and down manically like the couple of star-struck kids we are.

  I walk Mark to his home in the Gorbals. Gives me a chance to score some blaw. Afterwards I will head back over the river to court. We cut through Glasgow Green to avoid any Tongs but a few of them are hanging around the wee bridge, guarding their border.

  “Tim! W-w-what are we g-g-g-gonnae do?” Mark hisses urgently.

  “Keep your knickers on. Get ready to do whatever I do.”

  The leader is a serious-faced individual with a terrible scar who looks a bit like a youthful Jack Palance. I recognise him from the summer, when the Tongs ruled the waltzers during the carnival. He knows who I am. But he lets us pass unmolested. A miracle.

  “H-h-how come they didn’t have a g-g-go?”

  “It must be ’cause of the gemme. It’s mesmerised everyone.”

  The Gorbals seeps into my nervous system like a narcotic. It’s only a year since we flitted from here to nearby Toryglen but already I sense the hostility from the younger team, not helped by my lengthening hair and increasingly outlandish clothes. But I’m six foot and known.

  A Gorbals tenement seethes and teems and pulsates and throbs and hums and buzzes and screams with human life. The air is continually punctuated with the sounds of people. Doors slamming, children shouting, couples fighting, babies crying, dinners cooking, radios blaring, the groans of copulation. Wakes, receptions, parties and sing-songs. Now lots of these buildings have been demolished and the land they stood on lies vacant or is being prepared for high-rise developments.

  “I love this place. But they’re murdering it. They’re murdering the Gorbals. The whole community.”

  “So w-w-what?”

  “Don’t you care?”

  “It’s alright for y-y-you. You don’t have to live here any m-more.”

  “Fair enough. But what about those auld yins?” I say, nodding towards a boarded-up, half-demolished tenement, where some former residents have congregated. “I saw them dragging auld kitchen tables and chairs into that parlour for a bevvy, just so that they could be together again. Except the parlour no longer has a ceiling, or a roof. Poor bastards. They’re scared.”

  “Of w-w-what?”

  “Of what’s gonnae happen to them. Of where they’re gonnae go.”

  “They’ll get a n-nice house in the schemes.”

  “They don’t want to go to the schemes. They want to stay in the Gorbals. Where the spirit is.”

  A wee old woman is walking by pushing a pram full of laundry to the steamie, a rain-mate on her head. She has overheard and turns to me with tears filming her eyes.

  “They’re knocking down the greatest place on Earth, son.”

  “You see?” I ask Mark, vindicated.

  He shrugs his shoulders. Mark has a boyishly handsome face, light-blond hair and intense, clear-blue eyes.

  “You realise what’s going on here? Why they’re really knocking this place down? They’re tearing apart the auld Irish neighbourhoods. The Calton, the Gorbals, the Garngad. Splitting us up.”

  “They’re s-slums, Tim. They need to be torn down.”

  “No. We’ve got ourselves educated, radicalised. They’re scared of us. They hate us.”

  “You’re being p-p-paranoid.”

  “Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re no out to get me. Understand this. An entire era is about to end, auld Glasgow is about to slip over the horizon. And something precious will be lost forever.”

  Just then we happen by a gaggle of bedraggled, malnourished children, playing in a filthy puddle. They watch plaintively as an ice cream van, painted baby blue and tinkling a cheery tune, motors slowly by.

  “Hauw! HAUW JIMMY!”

  I run and bang the side to catch the driver’s attention. He stops and clumps towards the serving hatch.

  “Five pokey hats pal.”

  “You want raspberry?”

  “Aye.”

  “Two and six, my china.”

  I give the children the cones and they skip off merrily back to their puddle.

  Mark looks at me. Now it’s my turn to shrug my shoulders. Deep down I know he’s got a point . . .

  . . . The darkness. I am 11 years old. The Gorbals. Fifty thousand people crammed into the most densely populated place on Earth: a ghetto of less than a square mile of filthy, rat-infested, jerry-built slums. Our tenement blackened and browned by poverty, worn down by four generations of hard living. The January gloom, the relentless cold. The stink of sewage. I can see it, for Christ’s sake, snaking down the stair. I don’t belong in this place. Hold on a minute – who do I think I am – better than these people? No. Nobody belongs in a place like this. But they see it in my eyes, hear it in the way I try to talk that bit clearer and use a bigger vocabulary, tell it by the fact that I go to the library, the fact that I ask the old Jewish intellectuals in th
e bathhouse about Marx, the fact that after the summer I’ll be going to Holyrood instead of St Bonaventure’s. The fact that I paint. You think your shite disnae smell! . . .

  . . . We amble to Hell’s Kitchen Cafe. Steam, the smell of hot fat, orders being shouted in warm, rough accents and The Who’s So Sad About Us blaring from the wireless. We sit by the window, the bustle of Gorbals life comfortingly close. I choose, Mark takes ages, I make lines with spilled sugar. Eventually he makes up his mind and the waitress comes over; fake gold, a fag on. Friendly but unhygienic.

  “Hullo boys, what yous for?”

  “Two rolls and sausage, and a mug of strong tea for me; just a plate of soup for the lady,” I grin.

  She flashes a row of crooked teeth at me and goes.

  Mark’s nose is bothering him. Wants a bloody heart-to-heart.

  “How are things between yourself and D-D-D-Debbie?”

  It’s been 12 days and . . . 22 hours since it happened. But the question is: was it actually a break-up? I don’t really know because she avoided me for a week and then went to Saltcoats on holiday. Now I’m off to Lisbon. Bloody hell. I cast my mind back. Analyse the events for the hundredth time, events in this very café . . .

  . . . She walks in. That familiar feeling. Excitement. The universe is fretted with meaning and I know this because Debbie Sharkey is my girl. Because she is in the same room as me. Because she exists.

  She comes over, a serious expression on her face. She looks businesslike and determined in her raincoat. I regard her figure. She is wee and slim, so her breasts are fuller than you remember. Sometimes my eyes are drawn there, in unexpected appreciation.

  She smiles weakly. Sits down. No kiss. Excitement turns to dread.

  “You okay, Debbie?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you like?”

  “Coffee please.”

  “Cup of coffee over here please, Agnes!”

  Smalltalk follows, skirting the issue. What issue? What is it that is troubling me? The coffee is brought over and Debbie stares into it, stirring relentlessly. Usually her eyes, which are hazel, large and clear, fix whoever is addressing her, impressing upon them her quiet self-assurance, honesty and genuine interest in others which I’ve always loved. Not today.

  “So what’s this good news of yours?” she asks languidly.

  “I’ve got a new job, at Hargreaves!”

  “Hargreaves on the Clyde?”

  “Aye. They do refitting for merchant vessels. What’s wrong? You don’t seem too impressed.”

  She sighs slightly, then looks at me directly. “Tim, this will be your fifth job in two years.”

  It’s actually my sixth, but I won’t correct her.

  “So?”

  “You obviously don’t like it. Working, I mean.”

  “You think I’m lazy?”

  Her gaze returns to her coffee. “No. I just think you hate working in the yards.”

  She’s right, of course. I’d be happier painting. I’d work 80 hours a week doing that – for two bob an hour.

  She looks away from the coffee cup and stares out of the window abstractly. I love it when she wears her lovely chestnut-coloured hair up like that. She has a button nose and her chin and mouth sit ever so slightly pronounced forwards. I hate to boast but people say that we make a very handsome couple. She’s got a hundred times more class than the wee hairies Rocky knocks about with.

  Rocky. At that moment I become more aware of his presence in a nearby booth. It might be my imagination but I fancy that he’s trying too hard to make out that he’s oblivious to us, talking self-consciously loudly to Iggy and Eddie about banalities.

  I need to ask. I don’t want to – Christ knows I don’t want to – but I need to broach the subject.

  “Is there something wrong, Debbie?”

  Finally she makes eye contact, falteringly.

  “I’m really sorry, Tim. But I’m having . . . doubts.”

  I try to swallow but my mouth has gone dry. I take a gulp of tepid tea.

  “Doubts?”

  “About . . . us.”

  I should be moved to a torrent of protest, to great feats of logic and persuasion. I possess a canon of evidence as to why we should be together – two glorious years’ worth. Yet I am silent. Only later will I realise why; because deep down I know that you can’t persuade people to feel such things. Because I know that it’s hopeless.

  She rises quickly.

  “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “But we need to talk.”

  “I know. But later. Somewhere else.”

  “Debbie!”

  She comes back for her handbag. It’s then that I detect it. A glance, no more than that, in which they catch one another’s eye. I know that the bet is lost. I feel a wave of rage. For a split second I fantasise destruction; my smashing the fuck right out of the place, banjoing Rocky, teeth and blood, fearful faces, then self-pity and booze. Anger, livid and ugly, finding its release like poison being drawn from a boil. Then, later, the darkness, except worse this time, much worse.

  But my wrath is restrained by the realisation that I might simply be being paranoid – it has been known. I need real proof. And even if it is true, maybe deep down I don’t even blame them . . .

  . . . Mark looks subdued. I feel bad for thinking he was just being nosey. There is sadness in his eyes. He cares about me. Cares about a lot of people in fact. I’m always doing that. Thinking the worst of folk.

  ~~~

  1966-67. We hit the ground running. Manchester United in town for a friendly. Charlton, Stiles, Law, Crerand and Best. Charlton strutting, elegant, an aura of greatness; Stiles, all toothless tenacity, the opposite of Charlton, but just as vital; both fresh from World Cup glory with England. The incomparable Denis Law. Greased lightning has nothing on the leaping Lawman, but it is his aggression, his lionheart that makes him the player he is. Crerand, the midfield warrior with the unsinkable spirit. I had him in my Celtic reserve team; I honed his character, polished off the rough edges, sent him in to buy me chips on the way home from training. Look at him now. I would gladly take him back. But the question now is, would he get in the team? My wee team. Then Best, the incarnation of a football god. The long hair, the glint in his eye, but substance as well as style – speed, control, courage, mental and physical toughness; an artist as much as a footballer. United have everything; a great manager too. Matt Busby. A fellow Scot and a former miner. A kindred spirit. A man whose hopes and dreams lay in ruins on an airstrip in Munich eight years ago. A man who lost the core of a great team, but never lost the life-force; who glimpsed the other side, but fought his way back, to health and, ultimately, greatness. A man I am honoured to be in the presence of on this sun-kissed day in the east end of Glasgow.

  “Should be a close one today,” says Matt, before kick-off.

  “We’ll see Matt, we’ll see.”

  But it is not close. We annihilate them. We are faster, stronger and more ruthless. McBride scores and then Murdoch adds another. Bill Foulkes’ own-goal sums up their disarray, before Lennox adds another. 4-1 going on 10.

  I watch Charlton look at Stiles, Stiles look at Crerand, Crerand look at Law, Law look at Best. And Best shrug his shoulders.

  “It’s just a pre-season friendly, don’t read too much into it,” I tell the Press.

  I lie. Manchester United, the great Manchester United, do not play friendlies. It is not in their nature. Every match is a battle. We won the battle fair and square. “Well done, Jock,” says Matt after the game. “Your boys are in good shape.”

  “I think this could be a season to remember, Matt. A season to remember . . .”

  The fixture calendar has pitted us against Clyde on the first day of the league season. I have not even considered it yet. It is irrelevant. Our season starts against Rangers in the Glasgow Cup.

  “Forget about Clyde, forget about the league,” I tell the players. “The summer is over and the season starts now. T
oday. Against Rangers.”

  We may have won the title last year, but the memory of our Scottish Cup final defeat still rankles. It’s sat in my stomach all summer. Like a poison that’s gradually seeped through my whole system, disrupting my sleep, destroying my holiday. Always there. Whenever I closed my eyes all I could see was Kai Johansen sauntering to the edge of the box and firing in the winner. That moment. It’s not just about losing. It’s about losing to Rangers. It fuckin’ destroys me. Overwhelms me. It’s personal. But it fires me up. By God, it motivates me like nothing else in this world. Never again. Never a-fuckin-gain.

  Rangers have strengthened over the summer, but we are stronger, too, more confident and better prepared. Before the game, there is none of the usual pre-match banter. The players drift around quietly, going through their preparations. They can see the fire in my eyes. The madness. They know what this means to me. This is war.

  I spell it out to them.

  “Gentlemen, I want you to think back to the Scottish Cup final last season. I want you to remember Johansen’s goal. I want you to remember how it felt. Remember your disappointment, but then think about how Johansen must have felt. Johansen doesn’t score. It was a one-off, but he will want to do it again. The crowd will want him to do it again. He’ll be charging over the halfway line like a bull. We must be ready for him. Every time he gets up a head of steam, we will be on top of him. Bobby Lennox, you will be up against him, but don’t track him when he goes forward. Sit in that space and when we get the ball back, we will get it to you. Use that pace to tear them apart, Bobby.

  “Now, go out there and win. Fuckin’ tear them limb from limb. Destroy them. Or you’ll have me to answer to.”

  Billy McNeill opens the scoring and then Lennox starts to enjoy himself. As Johansen pushes forward, Lennox bursts from the traps like a greyhound, time after time. At the final whistle, Lennox grabs the match ball. The hat-trick hero. 4-0.

  The season has started . . .

  ~~~

  Iggy has a habit of ‘borrowing’ motors. Jaguars, Triumphs, Rovers, Austins, Fords, ice cream vans – he isn’t fussy. He even nicked a steamroller one time, just a half-hour nocturnal jaunt round a building site.