As the season entered October the bright, immaculate pitches of summer were already beginning to thicken and spoil. Goalmouths knotted with mud, and the lower-lying areas of many of the division’s slanted, undulating grounds were turning yellow with drowned grass. The non-league pitch on which Town played their reserve fixtures was even worse. During these matches Tom found it impossible to develop a settled rhythm. He would try to deceive himself into the actions that he had once done by instinct, conjuring the vision of belting down the smooth swathe of his academy-pitch wing, but whenever he tried to run with the ball now it would be up against his shins and knees, bobbling out of control.
The reserve starting eleven was as unpredictable as the pitch: a mixture of eager scholars like Steven and Bobby—who sometimes, to the annoyance of the older pros, captained the side—trialists and fringe players desperate to impress but at the same time reluctant to commit themselves for fear of getting injured. Tom, who was playing in most reserve games and also as a substitute for the first team, was sometimes involved in two encounters a week now, yet did not feel like he belonged to either side. He was determined not to be associated with the seconds but performed erratically. In four reserve matches he had drifted in and out but had still contributed the assists for two goals and scored once, a strike that he celebrated with the same muted animation as did the few dozen obsessives, scouts and parents in the crowd, who greeted each goal with cheerful seated applause, as if at a sports day.
Apart from the scholars, with whom he tried to appear confident and senior, Tom seldom mixed with the other reserves. Instead he increased his efforts to be around the first team. Ever since that fuzzily remembered night at the club he found that he could hold the attention of most for brief conversations while stretching or taking fluids or changing. He joined the back of huddles to look at images on phones, laughed, hand-clasped, always feeling like a fool and a fraud but reasonably certain that nobody noticed.
He ensured that he was one of the last to board the first team coach to Southend and sat himself with a rehearsed nod next to Richards, who nodded back but did not take his headphones off. When, nearly an hour into the journey, he did finally lift them from his ears, Tom was careful not to speak to him immediately, instead continuing to look at his laptop for a short time before turning towards his neighbor. “You seen this? It’s fucking class.”
Richards leaned in to look at the YouTube video that Tom had picked out the previous evening: a rival squad cheering and dancing in their training-ground lounge after hearing their manager had been sacked.
Richards laughed. “Yeah, I can guess how that feels.”
They watched a couple more videos together, then Richards got up to join the group of players standing about the back stairwell, idly watching the Sky match on the monitor while they queued for the microwave to heat their Tupperwares of Mrs. Davey’s chicken pasta.
They lost. Afterwards Clarke refused to speak to them—in the tunnel, the dressing room or on the coach, where Tom, like many of the others, sat alone, staring out of the window at the burnished golden estuary mudflats.
Because of the length of the next away journey, to Morecambe, Tom did not this time intrude on Richards. He sat instead across the aisle from the table of card players, occasionally joining in a game of brag and, in the quiet spells between their playing and betting, offering them funny videos that he had spent several evenings finding on the Internet.
“What’s that faggot’s problem?” Easter pointed at Lewis, a few rows down by himself. “You and him have a tiff or something, Yatesy?”
“Maybe his shrink’s told him to steer clear of us.”
A few days earlier Lewis had let slip that he had started visiting a sports psychologist. To help him prepare mentally for games, he had explained while they fell about laughing.
“Hey, CL,” Price shouted. “Your shrink told you yet why you never score any goals? It because your daddy never loved you?”
Lewis’s head appeared above a headrest. “He does have a theory about it, as it happens.”
“Go on. Enlighten us.”
“He says it’s because our midfield is shit.”
Lewis, to a hail of peanuts and an energy bar, ducked out of sight.
The goalkeeping coach had arranged, by calling in a favor, for them to use Blackpool’s academy base that afternoon, then there was an hour for a nap at the hotel, followed by dinner. On these Fridays they were the perfect guests: quiet, preoccupied, sober. They ate all together around three large tables in the restaurant before going up to their rooms just after nine o’clock, leaving the traveling directors to eat and drink themselves into a state of pink untucked recline in the hotel lounge.
Tom still roomed with Easter. He knew that this continued arrangement was to do with the manager, and he wondered sometimes if it was the main purpose of his place in the traveling party. They had established a routine: on going up to the room after dinner, Easter would immediately leave again, sometimes for a short while, sometimes for longer. Tom would switch Easter’s bedside light on for when he came in—quietly if Tom was asleep—to undress in the bathroom. In the morning they used Easter’s phone to wake them, then Tom went first for a shower while Easter sat on his bed and drank coffee, watching the television. They did not speak much, but Easter did not seem to resent Tom’s presence. He was quiet, considerate even. Tom suspected the reason he had grown not to mind the arrangement was because Tom left him alone. He had come to understand, with a certain amount of hidden pride, that there was a side to Easter, reclusive, reflective, that only he among the squad knew about.
So it came as a bit of a surprise that night when Easter got into bed and leaned over to hold out his phone.
“That’s my son.”
Tom looked at the bug-eyed thing on the screen. He did not know what to say.
“He’s big.”
Easter appeared not displeased with this response. He looked at the phone himself, smiling. “Fat little bastard, isn’t he?”
Tom was in two minds about whether or not to laugh at this so he took the opportunity to go and get them each a glass of water, staying in the bathroom until he was sure that the color on his cheeks had died down.
They were both on the substitutes’ bench. Tom was not used, but Easter came on to score the equalizer, a frantic scrambled effort inside the six-yard box, in reaction to which he sprinted the full length of the pitch towards the eighty away supporters and, in the fervor of the moment, turned round once he was before them to stretch down his shirt and thumb blindly at what he intended to be his number, but was in fact the lettering above it: YDV FINANCIAL SERVICES.
With no league wins, five draws and seven defeats, firmly planted at the bottom of the table, out of the League Cup, attendances dwindling and the board increasingly agitated, Clarke pulled off, as he himself described it to Peter Pascoe in the local paper, something of a coup. He signed a very reputable higher-division midfielder, Andy Jones, on a three-month loan. He did not state openly that he was signing the player to replace Easter, but the interview with Pascoe left nobody in any real doubt: “Andy is somebody who will run through walls for you. I’ve had him at previous clubs and I’ve always made him run through walls. That’s exactly what we’re needing now. I’d love to sign him permanent come January but the budget’s not there for it yet. If we can clear some of the wage bill by then, hopefully we’ll see what we can do with Andy.”
These words caused apprehension to ripple through the squad. Even the established first-teamers who played in different positions to Jones became unsure of their places. The January transfer window, still over two months away, loomed ahead of them, and they viewed Jones with caginess because, in their eyes, he had arrived as the embodiment of it.
Jones needed no time to settle in. He took charge straightaway, demanding the ball constantly during practice matches. He let them know if they were not working hard enough. He injured a scholar. He stayed behind after the rest of the squad had left the field to talk privately with the manager, and returned to the dressing room to plunge into the vacated ice bath, wincing and groaning in there for longer than anybody else ever did before rising enormous, glistening, his skin blue and purple with bruises that gave him the appearance, under the stark dressing-room lighting, of butchered meat.
He marked his debut by galvanizing the team to its first victory of the season. Tom, next to Easter in the away dugout, applauded Jones’s first goal but did not stand as the others did, yelling, slapping the roof. When they settled back down Tom looked round at Easter. His elbows were raised, head clamped between his fists, obscuring his face. For a second Tom thought about catching his eye, but the idea immediately dissipated and whatever sympathy he might have tried to communicate remained unexpressed save for the hot squash of their thighs, minutely increasing.
Upon Jones’s second, decisive goal the tight pocket of Town fans came alight—dancing, jumping on seats, rushing down the aisles towards the pitch, and a steward sprinted all the way from his position by the dugout to accost a young boy on the grass in front of the advertising hoardings. He caught the boy unawares, lifted him in a bear hug and began dragging him across the side of the pitch towards a solitary policeman, all the while pursued by a group of fellow stewards who had realized, along with most of the crowd and the overjoyed away dugout, that the detained youngster flailing in the big man’s arms was not in actuality an away fan, but a ballboy.
Hope grew that the team’s fortunes might be on the turn. Training sessions took on a new competitive edge. Every player apart from Jones lived under the permanent threat of being bombed out if Clarke thought they were not keeping up to the new standard. Even Boyn was punished, judged not to be running fast enough between cones during a doggies drill. The squad all stood and watched him walk over to the scholars, who paused their session under the huge balding sycamore tree to let him join their number. When the squad turned back to resume the drill Clarke glared, with a slight smile, at Easter. Easter did not meet the challenge but continued to stretch, waiting for his turn to sprint. The others had begun keeping their distance from him in the dressing room and around the ground. If Clarke was present they avoided speaking to him, or even, except in the moments that he and Jones fought for the same ball, looking at him at all.
The improvement in the team did not bode well for Tom’s standing either. Finch-Evans had played well in the win, replaced by Tom for only the last three minutes. Not enough for Tom to get into the game, barely enough to touch the ball. He had come in at the final whistle with his kit unmarked, ashamed to shower. A few days later he was not even picked to start in the next round of the Johnstone’s Paint despite his convincing performance in the first, which seemed to him now like a dream, and he walked off the pitch at the end without joining the celebrations of the others following another victory. In the showers afterwards, rinsing off a cursory lathering of soap, he realized that Easter, under the neighboring shower head, was laughing quietly.
“What’s the fucking point?” He did not move his gaze from the wall. There was nobody else left near them, and Tom could not tell whether Easter was speaking to him. “Seriously, what’s the fucking point?”
“Showering?” Tom said.
Easter turned to look at him. “Yeah, if you like, showering.”
“Don’t know.”
“No, me neither.” He moved away and reached for a towel to wrap about his waist. Tom did the same. “Seriously. Tell me. What kind of operation is it he thinks he’s running here?”
“Van hire?” Tom said on a whim, a remark that Easter found improbably hilarious, stepping forward to give him a short aggressive hug.
“You’re all right, you are, mate.” He laughed again. “Van hire.”
Tom paused for Easter to go ahead of him into the dressing room, grateful that they had been alone in the shower room, that they had been wearing towels.
To Clarke’s fury, the team’s momentum was curtailed by a period of heavy, near-continuous rain. Within three days the lower half of the stadium pitch was submerged. A home fixture had to be called off. A section of the car park wall collapsed. Brown puddles formed on top of the Portakabin club shop, leaking into the stock room; water ran down the steps of the two uncovered terraces to collect in secret pools in the foundations; cascades from the corrugated roofs of the Kop and the main stand poured down in windblown torrents that left a flotsam of litter and bird shit over the pitch.
The training ground, however, held out for longer. The squad continued to slog and slide, Clarke refusing to give in to the rain. He walked the touchline in his wellies under a giant golfing umbrella, bawling commands into the drenched air. Daring them to complain. One morning the players stood by the side of a pitch, water up to their bootlaces, waiting for Liam to finish clearing the area near a corner flag with a brush mounted on the front of the compact tractor. He drove off around the edge of the pitch when it was done, but instead of continuing on across the floodplain towards the ground-staff shed, he turned the tractor again, and came straight at them, speeding up. The others scattered, but Tom could only stand exactly where he was, anchored, Liam coming directly for him, his eyes fastened on Tom, until at the last moment he swerved away, creating an arc of spray that showered several of the players and caused the flock of seagulls around the goalposts to launch themselves into the air.
Some of the squad chased halfheartedly after the tractor as it roared away, Liam standing like a jockey, one arm raised in the air. The players soon gave up and trudged back. Liam slowed the tractor down and, on reaching the ground-staff shed, cut the engine, turning round as he did so to look back briefly to where Tom stood now in the midst of the group.
For the final two mornings of the week training moved to a local secondary school. In public view the sessions were less intense, less combative, than usual. The size of the sports-hall pitch allowed only for small-sided games, and each time there was a break in lessons an ebullient pack of children crowded onto the two balconies, where, to the disbelief of the squad as the hall echoed with shrill cries, Clarke let them remain and sometimes even looked up to joke with them or offer a criticism of a player. Two Year Seven boys, arriving early for lunchtime basketball practice, ran into the changing rooms while the players were still there. For a few seconds they stood dripping in their coats by the door, completely stationary. Men walked about the room in complete nakedness. One was sitting on a toilet, the cubicle door open. The smaller of the boys nudged his mate to leave, but the other stood hypnotized.
“Hey, Yatesy, I think he’s got a thing for you.”
Yates, drying himself, stepped towards the boys. He moved his towel aside. “What, you never seen one this big before?”
There was some giggling.
“I thought Asian lads were supposed to be huge. Bet your daddy’s got one like a baby’s arm.”
The two boys turned and fled. There was an eruption of laughter, joined in with by Price and Lewis stepping through from the showers, although they had witnessed nothing of the scene, and by Tom, staring through the doorway after the boys, away from Yates.
After a series of sucking footsteps and easily inserted fingers, Saturday’s referee declared the Swindon pitch unplayable. Tom, the whole weekend free in front of him, rang his dad and within minutes of the call ending was in his car on the way home.
On the motorway his mind turned to the past couple of days at the school. Being in that hall had felt achingly familiar. The squeak and scuff of the AstroTurf. The rubbery smell of the storage rooms. The constellation of shuttlecocks and soft tennis balls caught in the ceiling nets. He slowed to watch a column of Aston Villa coaches come past in the other direction and wondered how so much could have changed. It was not so long ago—school. Everything had been so clear to him then. All he had wanted—to play football—and never a doubt in his mind that he would make it. Another sound he remembered from those days, so well that he could hear it now: Give it Tom. Every lunchtime, every PE game, bouncing off the walls for years. Give it Tom. Give it Tom.
He arrived home to the sight through the kitchen window of his mum chopping vegetables. She waved when she saw him getting out of the car and moved to the sink to wash her hands as he came through the gate. The small lawn was waterlogged. Damp little flowers stood in solemn lines along both sides, like Town supporters. The image of his dad hunched with his trowel came to Tom, the door opening now, his mum waiting there, and it was an effort to hold himself together as he stepped into the house, her arms closing around him.
They pulled apart and she looked at him. “Are you allowed a beer?”
“There’s no match, Mum. And it’s not like I’d be playing anyway.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “No point feeling sorry for yourself. Go say hello to your dad. He’s in there, wrecking his head at the football. Rachel’s upstairs.” She turned round. “Rach! Tom’s here.” But his sister was already coming down the staircase, bounding towards him, hugging him. For an instant, her skin against his face, he remembered the girl in the nightclub.
“So, the fourth-division footballer returns.”
“League Two.”
“Fourth division. Dad’s been explaining it to me.”
Their father was coming out of the living room. He shook Tom’s hand at the same time as pulling him in close. Squeezing knuckles pressed against Tom’s stomach.
“Heard the Chelsea score?”
“I was listening in the car,” Tom said. “Crazy game.”
His dad was studying him. “Very crazy game. Beer?”
They ate a late lunch, sitting on the two sofas of the living room, talking, the television on in the background. It made a nice change, he told them, not having to eat around a table. When nobody responded he feared he might have offended them, so he went on to say how good the shepherd’s pie was, how much he’d missed his mum’s cooking. He told them about life at the Daveys’, concentrating on the lack of privacy, the Scottish pair playing Xbox into the night, the waiting for the bathroom. He felt somewhat sheepish pointing out these things, especially as it quickly had the effect of worrying his parents that he might not be happy in this place they had sent him to. They wanted to know if he was getting on with the other lodgers, if he was sleeping enough. He looked tired to them.
“He’s fine, Dad,” his sister stepped in. “He’s only tired because he’s out on the pull every night.”
Tom was at once hot with embarrassment. He was aware of his dad watching him, waiting for what he would say.
“I’m fine. Seriously. I’m not tired. It’s a good place to stay. It’s the club. The manager. That’s the problem.”
His dad seized on the change in direction: “Clarke’s teams have always played the same way. Fine if you’re winning, but if the results aren’t coming he’s got no plan B.”
“He’s brought in Andy Jones, to be fair,” Tom said.
“Yes. I remember Jones from when he was at Blackburn. Dirty player. Just the type Clarke likes.”
His mother and sister, with nothing to add to this conversation, began talking about the upcoming wedding of one of his mum’s colleagues, another health visitor alongside whom she had run a baby drop-in clinic for years. When there was a lull and he was sure his dad had finished his point, Tom turned towards them on the other sofa. “How’s A levels, Rach?”
“Hard. Coursework never stops. I shouldn’t even be down here now. You should feel honored.”
“You still planning on John Moores?”
There was a moment of silence. “I’m not sure yet.”
“Thought you were dead set?”
“Well, I was. Bloody Tories, though.”
They all looked at the television. Tom did not understand, but he said nothing more. He had always been proud of his sister’s cleverness, never threatened by it, because he had football. For as long as he could remember there had been an unspoken assumption in the house that they would both be successful. She wanted to do an events management degree, as far as he could recall, and he wondered now if he had got that wrong. But as he observed the look that passed between his parents, he thought that maybe he did understand; that it was about money.
He perused the small immaculate room while they listened to the half-time reports coming in. It was a world away from the busy clutter of the Daveys’. The pert, vacuumed sofas. The remote controls lined up on the television stand. His dad’s neatly organized plastic desk tucked into one corner of the room; wage slip, bank and utilities files boxed underneath it next to a pile of printed-out Town match reports that Tom had noticed the second he came in, which he knew his mum or sister must have shown him how to do. His dad was listening to the Bolton–Everton report. His plate and tray were on the floor by his feet. It struck Tom for the first time that he probably earned more than his dad. Barely playing, in League Two. He thought about the box upstairs, with all of his photographs and press cuttings and England age group caps. For years his dad had driven him to school matches, county matches, Centre of Excellence and academy matches, England matches, reserve matches. Taking time off work. Paying for kit. Overnight stops. Relocating the whole family. All while Rachel had never asked for anything, never been given anything.
His mum collected the trays from the floor. “You got plans for later, love?”
“Here, I’ll do that, Mum. No, I’ve not told anyone I’m up. Thought I’d stop in, watch Match of the Day. I’ll stick around tomorrow too, if that’s all right.”
He followed her into the kitchen to help her with the dishes. He had thought about texting some of his old friends but decided against it. The last time he came up he had gone out and it had been awkward. Not at first, when they came to the door to say hello to his parents, lingering for an appearance from his sister, and his dad had made them stop for a beer, but later, when they had exhausted all talk about football and what the other former scholars were up to. The conversation of the other three then was about the gym that they worked out in—they had all put on muscle—and girls. Tom wanted to entertain them by taking the piss out of Town, but they didn’t ask about his life playing football, and Tom did not feel that it was his place to bring the subject up.
He dried up the plates that his mum washed. He heard his sister going upstairs. In the other room his dad was on the phone.
“You can go out, you know, if you want,” his mum said.
“No, it’s fine. Don’t worry.”
“OK. But we won’t be put out if you change your mind.”
His dad came into the kitchen. “Just been speaking to John. There’s a guy off sick at the sorting office and he’s picking up the shift tomorrow. Says you’re welcome to his ticket if you want it.”
After Football Focus his dad drove them over to Uncle Kenny’s. Jeanette made coffee and they stood around in the kitchen, Jeanette and Kenny wanting to know all about his life down south, how he was getting on at his digs, what it was like playing senior football. Jeanette gave him a third cuddle as they were about to leave. “Oh, Tommy. My Tommy. You’re a man, look at you,” she said, and Tom looked down at the polished floor, feeling every inch a child.
Most of the familiar old faces were in the pub, his dad and Kenny’s crowd, though Tom was glad that none of their sons was there.
“You drinking, son?” Kenny asked him, turning from the bar. Tom looked instinctively at his dad.
“Yes, he’s drinking. Not playing this weekend, is he?”
Kenny waited to be served and Tom stood back from the group at the bar alongside his dad, hoping that they would move over to a quieter area of the pub where he would not have to speak to his dad’s friends and hear, in their questions and their joking, the unspoken pity behind their words at his failure to gain a contract.
“First match in a while, isn’t it?” his dad said.
“Since last season.”
His dad nodded. “Must feel a bit strange for you.” He nodded again. Tom did not say anything and they both turned to look at the television above the pool table. Outside, a small group of Arsenal fans was coming towards the pub, the bouncer smiling, shaking his head at them. Kenny was approaching from the bar. He had three pints of lager in a careful stranglehold.
“It’s all right, lads, don’t give me a hand or anything.” He smiled, offering Tom the first pint, and they moved away from the bar.
As soon as they left the pub, Tom felt the old excitement start to build. The routine of the walk to the ground automatically made his senses tingle with anticipation, heightening at each of the normally empty pubs now overflowing onto the pavements, the stalls crammed together on derelict scraps of land selling programs and badges and sweets, the tide of people thickening down the road, horse shit, police wagons, car horns, the tops of the floodlights appearing and the noise of the growing crowd riding on the air, soaring over the city. Throughout all the years no aspect of it had ever changed. The pre-match sausage roll from the tea bar. The queue to buy a program, which he would take home afterwards to pore over in his room. He followed Kenny and his dad into the toilets for the customary piss at the packed urinal, before hurrying out, up the steps and through the gangway for the sublime moment of seeing the pitch, the crowd.
They made their way to their row. The team was being announced on the Tannoy. There was the smell of pie fillings, Bovril, farts. Old men and women, families, were in the same positions they had sat in since Tom was little. All of this was deep inside him, ingrained yet altered now by the knowledge—shared by his dad, Kenny, all of the season-ticket holders they nodded past on the way to their seats—that Tom was not part of the club anymore. He was not going to play for it. He sat down in John’s seat. Kenny, beside him, held out a Yorkie bar for Tom to break off a block.
“We’re very proud of you, Tom, you know, me and Jeanette,” he said. “Very proud.” And he turned to the pitch, where the players were coming out of the tunnel to an escalation of noise. The Town players did not know what this was like. None of them would be able to handle it, Tom thought as he gave himself up to the mass of the crowd, becoming a part of it, the collective voice entering him, joining with the increased pumping of his heart and his lungs.
One of the scholars that Tom had played with was on the bench. Jamar Daley. At each break in play Tom looked over at him among the substitutes. He had been given a one-year deal. Inevitably, he would play only a handful of games, mainly in the cups, probably go out on loan and be released at the end of his year, but still the unfairness of it kept pulling Tom’s attention away from the game. Jamar had been good, a tidy midfielder, strong, competitive, but through all their academy years together he had never been as good as Tom. He was on five thousand a week now, according to one of the old scholars Tom had seen the last time he came up. If not for the couple of goals Jamar had scored in the FA Youth Cup semi-final he would probably not have got the attention, or the agent, that had followed, although it was Tom who had been given the man-of-the-match award for that game. Everything he had done that afternoon had come off. Every dribble, every through ball, every decision the right one because he had not hesitated or overthought any action, he had played purely on instinct—and it had been obvious, to the large crowd, to the agents waiting in the car park, his family, his teammates bouncing and shrieking in the dressing room, that he was the one, out of all of them, who was going to make it.
A quick throw-in caught the Arsenal left back by surprise, and Kenny, Tom’s dad, everyone around them, were all onto their feet as he slipped and handled the ball just inside the edge of the area. The referee straightaway indicated a penalty and a bellow went around the stadium. Tom remained standing, his stomach knotting. Kenny was making a low guttural sound as the crowd became quiet, waiting.
The ball went underneath the goalkeeper’s dive. All around Tom people were jumping about, doolally, released from themselves. Kenny was shaking his fist in the air. He turned to Tom and they put their arms around each other, bobbing up and down, fastened together, Kenny’s nose pressing into his cheek—“Yes, Tommy! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
The rain eventually gave way to a cold dry spell. Tom stood by his bedroom window and viewed through the night sky the glowing cigarette tips of the weekend’s rearranged bonfires on the hills. He drove Bobby and Steven to the stadium the following afternoon to look with the other players over the wasteland of the pitch. They walked up and down, shaking their heads, imagining injury. There was an atmosphere of abandonment everywhere. Small heaps of rubbish had accumulated on the grass and the terracing. Mildew flowered across the plastic roof of the dugout. Inside the bowels of the main stand the air in the dressing rooms and tunnels hung with damp. When they came past the referee’s room, a rat skittered across the floor just in front of Steven, who yelped and jumped back.
“You little fairy,” Boyn, following behind, shouted. “Look at the little bloody fairy, pissing herself.” And he got down on his hands and knees to give chase to Steven, pretending, it only dawned on Tom when Boyn was some way down the tunnel and he started sniffing at the concrete, to be a rat.
Tom sat in thermals then played for the last ten minutes of a heavy Tuesday-night defeat in Dagenham. The small flame of hope, ignited before the rain came, was put out by this loss to another relegation-threatened side—extinguished, if not by the first four goals, then by the fifth and the ensuing squabble between Daish and Gale as the teams left the pitch to the backdrop of “Girl fight, girl fight, girl fight” from the rapturous home support.
They stopped for takeaways on the way back, and the air of the coach became thick with the rich cheesy stink of two-for-one pizzas. Tom ate his slices slowly, looking out of the window at the hurtling dark while Clarke proceeded up the aisle, stopping at each seat to say, softly, “Cunt” to every player along the way.
The squad was ordered in on its day off. They gathered together outside the clubhouse and one or two players took shots at the crowd of seagulls that still loitered after the flood while they waited for Clarke to arrive. As soon as he appeared, gray and faintly unsteady, he made them start running.
The ground broke up like cake under their feet and a track began to blacken around the perimeter of the pitches. Two players collapsed and were removed to the clubhouse. Tom, however, had no difficulty coping and found himself wanting more, and it to be harder. He stayed at the front of the group, forcing the pace—past the clubhouse, the fencing, the hulking sycamore, the grass-wet mower outside the open doorway of the ground-staff shed—as if by running hard he might distance himself from the anxious mood that had settled on him since the visit home. He shut it out, focusing solely on the satisfying action of his heart, his blood, his limbs.
When the squad limped in to shower and change, Tom jogged over to the reserve goalkeeper, Hoyle, and asked if he would be up for staying behind to practice a few crosses and catches. Hoyle wavered a moment but agreed. A few of the others, near the back of the group, turned to look and exchanged words. They probably thought he was trying to impress the manager, Tom realized, regardless of the fact that Clarke had already left to drive to his van-company premises.
They practiced together for about twenty minutes, at which point Hoyle said that he was done.
“OK,” Tom said. “I might stay out a bit longer, though. Do a few drills.”
Hoyle laughed. “You’re not in the Premier League now, mate.”
When Hoyle had left, Tom spaced out half a dozen cones along the right-hand side of a pitch where the grass was still fairly smooth and emptied a bag of balls by the cone furthest from the goal. He repeated a shuttle: dribbling around each cone until he reached the dead-ball line, looked up and swung a cross in, aiming every time for the same spot at the near post. He did this until all of the balls were gone, scattered over the neighboring pitch, which he now saw that Liam was approaching. Liam stepped towards one of the balls and, when he reached it, booted it. Tom ran to apologize and collect them all up, but Liam jogged to kick another ball, then another, and as Tom got closer he could see that he was enjoying himself, firing each ball with deliberate aim towards the goal.
When all of the balls were returned, many of them into the net, Liam came over to where Tom stood watching at the side of the pitch. “Don’t want to try a few penalties against me, do you?” He was striding towards the goal before Tom even replied.
Tom struck his first attempt low towards one corner, but Liam was quickly down to stop it. The second he aimed for the same corner and this one went in, just, despite Liam sprawling to get a touch on it. Tom smiled to himself as he turned to get another ball. Liam was surprisingly agile, even in his heavy boots and canvas trousers. For five penalties Liam threw himself about, attempting to get one of the leathery palms of his groundskeeping gloves to the ball. He stopped three.
“You’re good, you know,” Tom said when they had finished.
Liam was sweating. He wiped a long muddy smear over his forehead with the back of a glove. “Too good for you lot.” He grinned and walked away. Tom watched him go, then collected the balls and the cones and returned to the clubhouse.
The other players, including Hoyle, had all left, so he took his time getting changed, enjoying the quiet echo of his studs on the floor and the still-steamy warmth of the shower room.
Afterwards, collecting his things, he began to feel a sluggishness descend through him, as if the strength was being sapped from his arms and legs. He sat down, staring ahead at the pool of shower water struggling around the drain. When he tried to get up, his kitbag was a lead weight. For some time he stayed there, watching the last of the water eddy and choke down the hole, before he forced himself to stand.
He went out onto the field. All he could hear was the noise of cars in the distance beyond the fencing and undergrowth. He started towards the breeze-block outbuilding at the far side of the pitches, trying to ignore the exposed, self-conscious sensation of walking across the expanse of reeking cut grass.
As he got closer he could see Liam through the doorway. He was pouring the last of one pot of white paint into another on top of a trestle table. He looked up in puzzlement and, Tom thought, amusement.
“What, more penalties?”
He looked down again to shake the last of the paint into the pot. Tom stood in the doorway. The roller shutters of the tractor entrance rattled momentarily beside him. He knew he should say something but he did not know what. Liam, however, did not seem perturbed by the interruption and carried on with his work. On the walls, among hanging rakes and shelves of canisters, paint, pallets, balls of string, there were old team posters and a dirty red and green scarf nailed to a ceiling joist. Somehow the sight of these things filled Tom with a distinct but unplaceable sadness. He watched as Liam pressed the lids onto the paint pots then took the empty one towards a dustbin by the door.
Liam was about to open the dustbin when Tom reached forward to clasp his arm. Liam shifted his eyes to him. Tom let his hand fall to his side and gazed down at the paint pot still in Liam’s hand, his boots, at his own trainers, stained green. He was conscious of how fresh and clean he was, this close to Liam’s work clothes. A dim thrum came from the road. He could not bring himself to look up. Liam moved away and Tom watched him step back to the table, hearing then the unbearable clunk of the paint pot being put down.
Tom turned to stare, for a long time, out of the doorway at the wide abandoned field. He heard Liam’s boots on the concrete floor. Then he felt the warmth of his body behind him. A hand touched Tom’s side, pressing, gradually, against it. Tom pulled himself away. He twisted to look directly at the large face and he was charged with a sudden glorious sense of risk as the man stood there, inspecting him.
“I have to go,” Tom said.
He made for the clubhouse, not deviating to avoid the patches of mud. Above the road noise, the baying of seagulls, was the sound of blood in his ears. His vision was constricting, the sky, the world around him, closing in until all he could see was the door of the clubhouse ahead.