17
Gemma said she just wanted to turn around and get out of the place as it was making her feel uncomfortable with all the crowds and everything, but I didn’t see why we always had to do what she wanted. I wanted to stay and look around, because it was amazing.
All the people. I’d never seen so many.
‘Where do they all come from, Peggy? All these people here?’
‘You’ll cover biology and reproduction at City Island.’
‘Is City Island as big as this?’
‘Bigger.’
‘With more people?’
She laughed.
‘Martin, this is just a drop in the sky.’
‘Well, I don’t like crowds,’ Gemma said.
‘Me neither,’ Alain agreed. ‘I like individuals. Not masses.’
‘I might go back to the boat.’
‘Oh don’t, Gemma – I mean, you can if you want …’ Peggy said. ‘But let’s look around. Just for a while. It’s an experience.’
Well, the crowds were everywhere, and all heading for the huge stadium, and it was impossible not to get swept along, like a piece of flotsam on the solar tide. The currents of rippling red and blue took us with them.
‘Hey, where’s your shirt, kid? Where’s your colours?’ someone called to us.
‘You’ve got to be visitors, right?’ someone else said. ‘Where you from?’
‘You come to see the game, have you?’ the first man asked. ‘Well, why wouldn’t you? Football Island’s famous across the whole system! People come from all over, huh?’
And they were all so proud of their island and so pleased with what went on there that I daren’t open my mouth to tell them that up until a short while ago I had never even heard of football, never mind Football Island. I didn’t want to sound like an ignoramus.
‘Pies, pies, get your pies!’
‘Hot drinks! Get your hot drinks here. Chilled ones in the freezer.’
‘Souvenir programmes!’
The swelling crowd swept us along past street traders and stalls. The traders were all dressed in team colours too, and the blue-shirted traders got blue-shirted customers, but not a single red one.
‘Armbands! Shirts! Coasters! Key rings! Pennants! Flags!’
‘Team pictures! All your team pictures!’
‘Signed photos of Genaldo! Guaranteed genuine!’
‘Who’s Genaldo, Peggy?’ I asked as we walked by. A man in a blue shirt overheard me and started to laugh.
‘Hey, you hear that? Did you hear that? The kid don’t know who Genaldo is! The kid ain’t heard of Genaldo!’
And everyone around him within earshot – people in red shirts as well as blue – all began to laugh along with the man, and they looked at me until I was as red as the red shirts, and some of them even pointed me out to their own kids, and said, ‘How’s that for ignorant? The boy doesn’t know Genaldo!’
Then somebody turned to Peggy and said, ‘Hey, granny – you in charge of these kids here? Well, you’re not doing right by them. You want to see they get clued up. Fancy not knowing who Genaldo is. Shameful.’
‘Yeah, fancy not knowing that,’ someone in a red shirt agreed. ‘That’d be like asking who Stellingham is. That’d be unbelievable.’
‘Who is Stellingham?’ I said. ‘I don’t know him either.’
Whereupon the man let out a long, low whistle.
‘My, oh my. Have we got some ignorance here? Are these kids growing up stupid or what?’
‘The world’s bigger than your little island and what goes on in it, my friend,’ Peggy told him. ‘Maybe you ought to teach your own kids something along those lines.’
But the man was already gone, hurrying to join his friends, who had started up singing a chant of some kind as they moved on towards the stadium.
‘Reds! Reds! Alive or dead! Reds are winners! Reds! Reds!’
No sooner had their voices died on the air than the blue-shirted supporters around them picked up a chant of their own.
‘Blues are best! Blues are best! Blues are better than all the rest!’
And on they all went, and on we followed. They were all chanting at once now, each group of supporters trying to drown out the others, but unable to. It was as if exactly one half of the island supported the reds and the other half didn’t.
‘Peggy, what makes you a red supporter rather than a blue one?’
Before she could answer me, another passer-by butted in.
‘Hey, don’t you people know nothing? Don’t everyone know that the port side of Football Island is red jerseys and starboard side’s blue? Don’t the whole world know that? Cheeses! Where you been keeping the kid all these years?’
Peggy just kept her temper, shook her head and I heard her mutter, ‘No point in arguing with the ignorant. Especially the ones who think they know something.’
The passer-by was a woman this time. She had on a blue shirt, which looked a couple of sizes too small.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘So does that mean if you move from one part of the island to another you have to change your team?’
She looked shocked.
‘Whoever would do a thing like that, boy?’ she said. ‘Why, that would be turncoat treachery of the worst kind. You’d be shunned by your own family to do a thing like that. I never heard of such a suggestion. Who’s been putting notions like that in your mind? They should wash their mouths out. And why aren’t you wearing your shirt?’
‘Don’t have one. We’re just visiting.’
‘Visiting or not, you should still be dressed properly. Or it’s disrespectful.’
At that she strode off, kind of haughtily, like she’d somehow snatched the moral high ground away from right under our feet and was now marching away with it, leaving us without anything solid to stand on.
‘Why are they all so … fired up, Peggy?’ Gemma said.
‘You’d have to live here to know.’
‘But I mean – if all it depends on is which side of the island you’re born – that’s just so random, an accident of birth, right? I mean, if you’d been born a kilometre away, you’d support the reds instead of the blues. Or vice versa. Why are you supposed to care so much, all over a little bit of geography?’
‘Maybe not everyone does. Perhaps they just put their shirts on and go along with it for an easy ride.’
‘Get your hats! Get your scarves! Get your banners now! All your badges! Get your rosettes!’
The current of people was still bearing us along and the high walls of the stadium were getting nearer.
‘Peggy, I want to go back,’ Angelica said. ‘I don’t like all the people.’
‘Just take my hand. I don’t think we can turn back now, darlin’.’
And she was right. There was no way we could have turned back to the boat. There were thousands of people pressing us on. Soon the turnstiles were visible ahead. People were forming into two lines to go in – Reds to the left, Blues to the right.
‘Hey, you there. You people. You strangers!’
A man in uniform called us over.
‘Here! Step out of the crowd!’
He beckoned us aside to where he stood, sheltered by a pillar.
‘Where you going, friends?’ he said.
‘We wanted to see the game,’ I said. ‘We’ve never seen one. We want to go inside.’
‘Not dressed like that you’re not,’ the official said. ‘It’s Blues one end, Reds the other. Where do you think you’re going to sit?’
‘Can’t we sit in the middle?’ Peggy asked.
‘Middle? There is no middle. There’s no halfway or sitting on the fence here. It’s Reds or it’s Blues. You’ve got to choose a side. You can’t go in there with no colours. There’d be outrage – could start a riot.’
‘Then … Blues –’
‘Reds, Peggy!’
‘Does it matter, Martin?’
‘Just thought red looked nicer.’
‘Red, blue, I don’t mind.’
‘Then you need to get your shirts on.’
‘We don’t have shirts.’
‘Follow me.’
He led us towards some lockers at the back of the pillars.
‘Keep them here for visitors,’ he said. ‘Courtesy of the city. There you go. Bring them back, would you, when the game’s over?’
He handed us five musty-smelling red football shirts.
‘You get many visitors?’ Peggy said.
‘A few. Not so many. But then, we’re a long way from the next football-playing islands. It’s a two-week journey at the very least. We don’t get many other teams coming.’
‘So who do you play?’ Peggy said.
The official looked puzzled.
‘Who do you think? Reds play Blues. Blues play Reds.’
‘What, every week?’
‘Twice a week. Wednesday nights. Saturday afternoons.’
‘They play each other? Over and over?’
‘Hey, it’s Football Island, lady. It’s how we do things. If you don’t like it here –’
‘No,’ Peggy said, ‘we love the place. Just trying to find out a little more about it. How much are the tickets?’
The official looked perplexed once more.
‘How much? It’s free. You just go in. It’s all paid in the taxes. Why, it’s a citizen’s civic duty to attend all matches.’
Peggy pulled her football shirt on over her head. She looked kind of funny, an old lady in a football shirt. But then I must have looked funny too, as my shirt was so big it was down to my knees.
‘Tell me,’ she said to the official. ‘Do you have any religions on this island?’
The man narrowed his eyes.
‘We have football, lady,’ he said. ‘That’s what we have. We have football and we have the finest stadium this side of the Main Drift and the whole Southern Sky Line.’
‘It’s certainly something,’ Peggy agreed, looking up at the high walls and the statues of, no doubt, famous players, and a great sculpture of a football perched on a plinth. ‘It reminds me of a cathedral –’
‘It’s famous throughout the whole sky world,’ the official said proudly. Though up to a short while ago, I’d never heard of the place.
‘OK. Just follow the other folk in the red jerseys there,’ the official directed us. ‘You’ll find a seat. Plenty of room for everyone. And enjoy the game.’
‘Thanks. We will,’ Peggy said. ‘Or we’ll try, anyway,’ she added, when the man could no longer hear her.
So in we went, following the stream of red shirts to the left and then up into the banked stands of the stadium. It was immense, a great theatre of a place, with a band on the pitch playing music and cheerleaders twirling pom-poms and throwing batons into the air, while vendors prowled around selling drinks and snacks and programmes and souvenirs. We found seats and sat down. None of them were reserved. You just took any ones that were free. No matter where you sat the view would have been terrific.
Up on a huge scoreboard were some facts and figures.
THIS SEASON’S RESULTS TO DATE:
BLUES: 6 WINS REDS: 6 WINS
DRAWS: 6 DRAWS
I nudged Alain, who was next to me.
‘Alain – you see that? All the results are exactly the same. They’re neck and neck for everything. I bet that doesn’t happen often, huh?’
But he just looked at me like I was pathetic.
But how was I to know?
The stadium filled and the partisan chanting and singing and flag-waving began. Before I knew it, I was up on my feet too, and waving a flag someone had given me, and I was chanting along with all the other Reds supporters.
It was great. I mean, I didn’t know what it was all about exactly, but just standing up shouting and waving your flag was tremendous. Angelica was on her feet too. But Peggy and Gemma and Alain just sat there, and they even looked a bit glum. I mean, I felt that they were letting the side down a bit, to be honest, and they could at least have tried harder and demonstrated where their loyalties lay.
Then the Blues started singing, across on the other side of the stadium. So we started chanting again and we drowned them out. And our cheerleaders, down at the front, were going wild.
And then the teams came on, running out from different entrances but at exactly the same time. And other chants went up. The Blues began it.
‘Genaldo! Genaldo! One in the net. One in the net.’
While the people in red around us sang: ‘Stellingham! Stellingham! Does what no other striker can!’
And then the game seemed about to start.
Before it did, a singer appeared down on the pitch, and the band struck up a kind of anthem, and the players bowed their heads, and everyone in the stadium stood up, both Reds and Blues, and they all sang a song about what a great place their island was, and how lucky they were to live there.
And then the band and the singer left the pitch, and the teams took their positions, and the referee tossed a coin, and then the captain of the Reds took a short run up and kicked the ball, and the game was under way.