Where Are We Now?

by Glenn Patterson

  Herbie was looking about for a place to stand, preferably with a bit of shelter (the day again slow to declare), when he heard a voice – the man who had taken his ticket, he would almost have sworn – over the Tannoy… Big welcome… Prize-winner… Herbie Murray… The couple of dozen men and three women distributed about the terraces applauded.

  Another voice, from close to one of the corner flags and channelled by cupped hands, sang, ‘Herbie, Herbie, give us a wave… Herbie, give us a wave,’ which he did eventually, after a fashion, fingers fluttering, like he was owning up to a fart, and the applause rose again.

  There was no way now he was going to be able to slip away unnoticed.

  A few moments later the teams ran down the steps of the pavilion-cum-social club and on to the pitch. A couple of the players – he couldn’t tell which team was which at first – looked as though they wouldn’t make it to the end of the warm-up, with its sprints and turns and stretches, never mind to the end of the match, but then the referee called them all to order and the captains shook hands and – one trill on the referee’s whistle – the match kicked off… and Holy God, Herbie felt as though he had been thumped in the chest. The players were close enough that he could hear the thud of their boots on the turf as they passed in front of him at speeds he would never from the warm-up have imagined they had in them. He could hear their calls – use me, use me, use me – and even their comments to one another – I was shouting to you to use me – when the play had moved to a more distant part of the pitch. He could hear their laboured breathing. And as for the tackles… Ooof!

  ‘Referee! He’s a fucking hallion!’ the taller of the men two steps back and slightly to the right of Herbie nearly lifted off the ground as he shouted after one particularly brutal-looking takedown. From various comments his mate made in the course of the next few minutes (because the commentary, like the play, was unrelenting), Herbie worked out that this tall man was the father of the player who had been tackled – one of the home team – not that that stopped the same player getting stick from other quarters.

  ‘Take your boots off and give them up here to your da, wee man… Tell that eejit beside you to do the same.’ (‘Ah, now, Davy’s da’s in the hospital.’ ‘Sure, I know, and he couldn’t do any worse.’)

  The boots all the while continued to thud as the ball – seemingly outside of anyone’s control for more than a second or two at a time – moved from one end of the lush grass to the other without once troubling either goal.

  One end to the other, one end to the other, one end to the other.

  And then like that the referee was trilling on his whistle again and it was half time.

  A bearded man three steps in front of Herbie turned.

  ‘Well, be honest, what did you think?’

  But before he could answer the man’s mate chipped in, ‘The best thing you could say about that is nobody’s eye is out.’

  ‘There’s still forty-five minutes,’ the bearded man said ominously.

  A couple of people appeared at the door of the redbrick building, pints in their hands. Herbie went in and ordered a half, thinking only of the time available, and was given a pint regardless, with no money accepted in return. ‘We’ll call that a bonus prize,’ the barman said.

  A large screen in the corner was showing a match from somewhere where the crowd was bigger and the grass less green. A player appeared in close-up. It was like looking through a keyhole. Where was everybody else?

  Sound of studs on tiles. Smell of wintergreen rub. The teams were coming back out. Herbie tipped his head back and swallowed. And again… and again, until finally he had seen the pint off.

  Midway through the second half – which until that moment had been as formless as the first – one of the away team’s wide men cut inside from the far touchline, dragging the ball this way and that with the bottom of his right boot, trying to make an opening, then just when it looked as though the three men in front of him had shut him out – when he seemed himself to have abandoned all hope of finding a way through – he flipped the ball up with the toe of his left and with the same foot walloped a shot that came off a post (nearly broke it in two), off the other post and into the net.

  Even he looked stunned, slowly raising his arms, palms upturned. Jesus Christ.

  Only the goal didn’t stand: the referee gestured with both hands – a push on a defender by one of the wide man’s teammates inside the box. ‘Aw, come on, Ref,’ said the player the teammate was adjudged to have pushed, ‘it’s a friendly, give him the goal.’

  ‘Do, Ref,’ the wide man said. ‘When I am ever going to do something like that again?’ He turned to the terraces. ‘Did any of yous have your phones out there?’

  ‘Sure, it looked like you were running away from the goal,’ the tall man behind Herbie called.

  ‘Typical. I bet you if I’d fallen on my frigging arse yous would have it all over Instagram before I’d even got to my feet again.’

  He complained so much in the end the referee showed him a yellow card and ten minutes later showed him another – although the consensus was it was a straight red – for going into a tackle with his studs up.

  He protested all the way off the pitch: ‘Swear to God, I was trying to pull out.’

  ‘That’s what your da said to your ma when they had you,’ came the answering shout from the terraces. And so it went on. Less Theatre of Dreams than music hall. The match finished – the remaining twenty-one players on the field embracing, spent – scoreless, which felt about right.

  Herbie imagined people beyond the rendered concrete wall asking him how it went and rolling their eyes at the ‘nil–nil’ with no idea of all that the players and spectators alike had gone through to arrive at it.

  The bearded man in front of him pumped his hand in parting. ‘That’s you now,’ he said, ‘inducted into the cult. You’ll curse the day you ever won that raffle.’

  And the best, or the worst, of it was, it wasn’t even him that won.

  His guard must have been down (replaying the goal that never was: even the second post shook) or the pint was belatedly kicking in. He found himself, a quarter of an hour later, standing at the till in M&S Simply Food facing Brian.

  Whose eyes lit up.

  ‘Here, what about this one: man goes to the doctor. Doctor, he says, I keep hearing voices. Doctor says it’s not a doctor you need, it’s a psychiatrist, but your man says no, doctor, they’re coming from my leg. Your leg…? Doctor’s saying to himself, this fella’s worse than I thought, but then – humour him – he listens a moment…’

  ‘Brian’ – the patter had brought Herbie to his senses – ‘you do know there’s a queue behind me?’

  ‘That’s all right, they’ll all wait, won’t you?’ he said and, before any of the four of them could reply, ‘Doctor listens and right enough he can hear this tiny wee voice from somewhere, so he takes his stethoscope out, puts it to your man’s thigh and the wee voice says, “Lend us a tenner,” clear as a bell. That’s strange. He moves the stethoscope down to the fella’s knee, there it is again, “Lend us a tenner,” down to his shin, “Lend us a tenner.” Doctor straightens up, frowning. He says, I’m sorry to have to tell you, your leg’s broke in three places.’

  The lanky boy three back in the queue laughed.

  ‘Did you like that one?’ Brian said, past Herbie, who took the opportunity to pocket his change and beat it out the… Oof! Referee! A woman was coming in the door, at speed, as he was going out. His hands shot out towards her shoulders as her hands – her hands – went up as a buffer against his chest. For a moment they were looking into one another’s eyes. He knew from her expression she recognised him too.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ (Both of them together.)

  ‘I was rushing.’ (Just her.) ‘Late for my shift.’

  ‘That’s a better’ (him) ‘excuse than mine.’ They took their hands back, their fingers in withdrawing making small unconscious adjustments to one another’s
sleeves and shirtfronts. ‘You sure you’re OK?’

  ‘I’ll be sitting on my behind for the next four hours. That might just have been the jolt I needed to keep me from nodding off.’

  He could sense even as the words were forming that he might be about to embarrass himself, but it was too late to stop. ‘Well, if ever I can help by slamming into you again, I’m just around the corner.’

  She looked at him, eyes narrowing… (and, lo, was the man who said he would curse the day about to be proved right… oh, wait…) no, not narrowing, creasing: that was a smile of sorts. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

  ‘Good. I mean, do. I mean, right.’

  ‘Right.’

  It had been a bit of a while since he had had cause to speculate, but he was pretty sure something had just happened. Even assuming it had, though, there was absolutely no reason to suppose that there was the slightest possibility or expectation of anything more.

  What was Tanya’s term? Mini-flirts? Entirely without consequence. (And in fairness to Tanya they had played no part in her separation from him.) ‘Just a wee recharging of the self-esteem batteries.’ Zap. That was nice. Now move on.

  He managed to stay away a week, well, a working week, well, nearly all of it anyway. Thursday night he stopped by a couple of minutes before closing to see what bread had been reduced.

  It was pure chance that her till was free. She didn’t look at all surprised to see him and his 50p sourdough.

  ‘So, your name’s Herbie… Brian told me… And I probably shouldn’t have asked, and he probably shouldn’t have said, but your buying habits strongly suggest a man shopping for one… most of the time…’

  ‘Daughter’s staying for a while,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘And despite your dubious lines about slamming into people you actually seem quite nice, and sane.’ She whispered behind her hand. ‘This is the part you pay me.’ All his fingers of a sudden thumbs. He held out a palm full of coins from which she selected a twenty and three tens. ‘If you wanted to do something some time, I would not be averse to that,’ she said and smiled. ‘Don’t forget your receipt.’

  ‘I’m all right without it.’

  ‘Go on,’ she held it out, folded, between two fingers, which she twitched, ‘take the receipt.’

  It felt like contraband in his trouser pocket – past the four remaining tills he smuggled it, past the security guard, who might, he thought now, have been there to guard against precisely this sort of carry-on, across the car park, the lights just beginning to pink against the navy-blue sky, past, or rather between, a couple of short-shirt-sleeved officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, stepping aside and saying, ‘Right?’ in that tone that seemed to anticipate the exact opposite… He didn’t take the receipt out until he was well down his own street. The ridiculous sensation even five hundred yards from the supermarket door that he was being watched. She had folded another slip of paper inside it with a mobile number on it in purple pen. No name, no need, he had known it from the start.

  5

  Herbie, or the person who had been using his name, had taken the train, the summer of the year he turned seventeen, down the Rhine Valley. Him and the girl who he had been going out with since the summer before, and who he had seriously begun to think – because those were the times and those the mores – he might one of these days propose to. There was a photo in one of the evidence boxes, the two of them standing at the station on York Road with their rucksacks, wide of smile and trouser leg, waiting for the two-carriage boneshaker that would dump them three quarters of an hour later, smiles only just intact, at the Larne–Stranraer ferry terminal. Twenty-four hours after that again (after sex on the deck of the night ferry – mad – and in the toilets of the Stranraer-to-Euston train – stinking – and again on the ferry, entirely unnoticed in broad daylight – ship’s rail, rear-fastening skirt – ingenious) they were squeezed up against the window of the SNCF, France already far behind them, staring out at hilltop Schlosses: ‘I’d have that one…’ ‘Nah, that one over the river there…’ ‘I’ll flash a light from mine to yours, ready when you are…’ ‘Like the boxes of Daz.’ ‘Daz?’ ‘In the living-room window… women in Craigavon… to let their fancy men know the coast was clear.’ ‘That’s OMO: Old Man Out.’ ‘No?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Hold on, my mum’s just switched to OMO.’

  Alice, you called her, Alice Clark, which amused the Germans they met no end. ‘Alice Clark,’ they said and laughed. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘what’s so funny?’

  ‘Alles klar, alles klar: “everything is fine”.’

  They got off the train the second day at a place called Treis-Karden for no other reason than they liked the look of the station. Their introduction to Rhine wine (to wine of any origin for her) and in pretty short order to being sick on Rhine wine. Oh, Christ, were they sick, in tandem and in turn. They slept outside the first couple of nights, not even bothering to pitch a tent, then got jobs in a restaurant on the river’s edge, clearing tables, washing dishes and salting away unfinished bottles of wine. (They had only got sick that first night, not completely sickened.) It paid buttons, but there was a room thrown in with two single beds that they wasted no time in pushing together under the window. At nights when really and truly they could fuck no more they knelt on the mattress, passing a bottle of leftover wine between them, watching the enormous Rhine barges passing silently with their cargoes of coal in this direction, of timber in that.

  ‘It’s not that hard being happy, is it?’ she said.

  And he said, ‘Alles klar, Alice Clark, alles klar.’

  Three weeks went by. Then, as abruptly as they had arrived, they packed their rucksacks again and got back on the train, headed down through Saarland. She sang in his ear, ‘this land is Saarland, this land was made for you and me’, her own bilingual gag. At Saarbrücken (‘over bridge of Saars, to rest my eyes in shades of green’) they kissed goodbye… for now. She was going on to Switzerland to see a girl she knew from Guides. (That she herself had been a Guide – was still – only added to the delight that they both took in their Rhine-bank bacchanal.) She was to write as soon as she got there with the arrangements for meeting up the following weekend – Kehl, they thought, and from there to Strasbourg – but the letter when it came was a Dear Herbie. She hadn’t intended it, not for a minute, but she had met this amazing guy – ‘he got on the train in Saarbrücken as you were getting off, came all the way down the carriage and stopped right beside me, wanted to know if the seat was taken’. (Did I walk past him on the platform, in the aisle, even? He ran through the suspects in his mind. He thought he was probably looking for a guy with a wispy beard, beat-up guitar slung across his back, coloured string for a strap.) ‘I mean,’ she ended, ‘what are the chances of that?’

  He had been writing her a letter with all the things she had missed out on – the Mithraic cave temple that frankly would have been an open invitation to them if they had gone in there together. This land was Saarland now, but it had been many things besides in recent centuries, slipping this way and that over the French border, or the border slipping this way and that about it, making Northern Ireland look like a model of stability and easily parsed identity. He had taken a photograph of the bronze hand coming out of the wall of an old church, just off the main road from the train station, a twist of bronze rope connecting it to another hand further down. Just some ancient craftsman’s idea of a joke, he had thought – handrail, get it? – until, bending, he read the inscription, in French, on one of the hands: à mon seul desir… and his heart flipped.

  He tore the letter up. Alles fucking klar.

  He decided not to hang around there but caught the train the very next day, back up the valley, back through Treis-Karden – there went the restaurant with the window from which they had watched the Rhine barges, there went the his-and-hers Schlosses – all the way – at last, at last – to Calais. Almost the first person he saw when he arrived at the ferry terminal was a girl hi
s own age sitting on her hunkers in front of a bright blue rucksack building a tower of coins, one centime at a time. Twice he watched the tower fall and rise again before he went over and asked if she could do with a hand. She told him as they worked, centime about, that she had had her passport and all her money nicked in a hostel in Paris (two words into her story he knew she was from Belfast too): a pair of American ‘sisters’ she had taken pity on in the street outside, the two of them acting all like, oh, this is our first ever time in Europe, and, oh, we don’t even know what anyone is saying to us, and, oh, maybe the three of us could, you know, share… The smiles on them when she said, sure, why not!

  The cops told her later they had been working this con for a couple of years at hostels up and down the country. The elder one was actually in her thirties. The cops were working on the theory she was the younger one’s mother. I mean, how creepy was that?

  The British embassy had given her a temporary passport – it looked like something from a war movie, the kind of thing you’d be sweating over when the German guards took it off you for inspection – and twenty francs, of which she had already spent – she ran her fingers up the pile of coins – seventeen francs and thirty-six centimes. He pulled out the last ten francs he had to his name and bought her a coffee and a baguette with cheese hanging out the end of it, and in between slurping the one and horsing into the other she told him about her boyfriend who had chickened out of travelling with her the day before they were due to leave home. ‘Here he was to me, “you never know what could happen over there…” I know what wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been such a lapper and come with me, I would never have started talking to those American bitches in the first place.’

  Two conclusions she had reached: never trust a perfect smile and always carry a second passport. ‘Yous tell me I’m Irish as well as British? Fair enough, give me the passport, then. There has to be some advantage to living in that crummy country of ours.’