The French windows of the clubhouse had been opened and the scent of curried chicken was wafting enticingly over the field. From the tacky plastic warmth of the stretching mats Tom watched the burly little assistant groundsman moving in and out of the ground-staff shed, his quick hands and busy energy so different to Liam, who was back at the stadium, no sign or sound of him present now to cloud the simple clear air.
The fitness coach called them over for a doggies drill and Tom sprang to his feet. By the time they broke for liquids the roots of his hair were crawling pleasingly with sweat. A bag of balls was released and a forgotten tingle of expectancy moved inside him.
They took turns at dribbling around a line of cones. The number two timed each effort. Tom’s focus was total. He guided the ball nimbly around the cones, his brain, his feet, his toes inseparable. After two attempts each he had recorded the two fastest times. Wilko walked over and, in full view of the whole squad, pointed at Tom. “That, people, is what Premier League quality looks like,” he said, giving Tom a wet pat on the kidneys that Tom could feel long into the keep-ball routine that followed.
Finch-Evans was struggling. Town were on top at home against Morecambe, leading 1–0 and pushing for a second, but the winger’s every contribution was a mistake—a cross shanked into the crowd, a pass to Fleming without looking up that squandered possession—and by the closing stages of the half it was obvious that he was lost. The Morecambe left back stationed himself high up the pitch to attack Town’s right and in injury time set up a chance for the tattooed number nine which was volleyed with enough power, just wide of the post, to take down an advertising hoarding.
Wilko did not substitute him at halftime. He wanted him to be a man, he said. To go back out and turn his performance around. Finch-Evans acknowledged these words with a slight dip of his head. Wilko then turned to the rest of the squad and clapped his hands. “Bloody superb. These are promotion material, and you’re matching them, better than them, man for man, almost. A second goal kills them off, lifts us above the drop. Get out there and more of the same.”
Finch-Evans lasted another eighteen minutes. A rumble of satisfaction went around the ground when his number was held up. He sloped across the pitch, only looking up from the grass to acknowledge Tom with an expression of humiliated relief on his face as they exchanged on the touchline.
The crowd cheered Tom’s introduction. He received the ball just after play restarted and passed it forward, simply, to the feet of Gundi. A neat touch a few minutes later worked him a few seconds of space; he put his head up and spotted the overlapping run of Fleming—into whose path he played an easy measured ball. Each choice was suddenly clear. Uncomplicated. As if it had never been any different. Every part of him functioned at once. Even when he misjudged one cross, the conviction of the effort gave it the impression of being intended: the ball floated over Bobby at the near post straight onto the impending forehead of Gundi and hurtled past the goalkeeper. Tom squawked with delight. Some of the players rushed to converge on Gundi, others to Tom. He could hear from amid the breathless thicket of them a thin chorus of “One Tom Pearman…” and he resisted the urge to look out into the crowd, to search the faces across the pitch, where the staff and scholars were gathered to one side of the disabled supporters’ stall.
Some of the players wanted to go out afterwards. The win had moved the team clear of the relegation zone and they were in a mood to celebrate. Beverley tried to persuade Tom to go with them.
“Come on, man. You never come out.”
“True. I’m pretty fucked, though.”
“You played half an hour, mate.”
“I know. My body’s not used to it.”
Beverley laughed. They clasped hands and Beverley pulled him close. “Next time, OK?”
Tom turned up the volume on his television. He took four deep breaths. The phone was cold against his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“Tom. How are you?” There was a faint electrical buzz on the line. Liam’s voice sounded different over the phone. “Tom? You OK to talk?”
“It’s fine. I’m in my bedroom,” he added, as if he was a little boy gone upstairs to play after dinner.
“Good result today. You did well when you came on.”
“I didn’t expect to get that many minutes.”
“They sang your name.”
“I know.”
Beneath the floorboards he could hear the Scottish boys going into Bobby’s room.
“So. Are we going to meet up?” Liam said.
“It can’t be anywhere in town.”
“Obviously.”
“No one can recognize us.”
“Wigs?” Tom met this with silence. “OK,” Liam continued, “we could go to some small place somewhere. You know Darm? It’s this village a bit of a drive away with a couple of all right pubs.”
Tom had heard of Darm. A few of the players carpooled from around there. “Is there anywhere a bit further?”
Liam laughed. “You’re not that famous, mate.”
There was the muffled sound of voices underneath Tom. He turned up his television still louder.
“There’s a Beefeater,” Liam said, “north up the dual carriageway, about fifteen miles away. That’s about the most nothing place I can think of. What do you think?”
The commuter traffic moved slowly out of town. Tom turned on the radio, and loud dance music startled him. He had been too preoccupied on the way home from training to put it on, so it was still tuned to the station that Bobby and Steven insisted on every morning. He switched it off, alone again with the smell of his deodorant, the blatancy of his sharply combed hair in the mirror. He turned the radio back on, quieter, changing the station.
Liam’s car was the only one outside the pub, parked beside a line of wheelie bins against a wall. Tom drove past to the far end of the car park, where a couple of other vehicles were positioned by the entrance to a hotel.
Liam was sitting in a corner, partially obscured by a partition. Tom walked over, glad at the choice of table, then at the handshake when Liam stood to greet him.
“What are you drinking?” Liam asked.
There was a pint on the table, almost half drunk.
“Lager’s fine.”
Liam went to the bar. He exchanged a few words with the barman, more than just the drinks order. He was wearing the same jeans and sweatshirt, Tom thought, that he had worn to meet Easter’s wife at the furniture store. Tom looked around the bright room, at the fake beams and the pale brick pillars festooned with meal promotion placards that glimmered under the copper lampshades. A recollection of his first date came to him. In a burger restaurant with Jenni Spoffarth, the small quiet girl he had seen throughout most of his final year at school—happily, for the most part, at least when he had been able to ignore the hidden roiling desperation that ate at him on the occasions he had touched her slight, rosy body, and which had overcome him eventually one blustery wet afternoon in an underpass on his way home after breaking up with her.
Liam returned and placed Tom’s pint on a coaster. “Good win, that, Saturday.”
“It was. Fair chance we’ll be safe now.”
“Couple more wins.”
“Something like that.”
Liam’s right hand was splayed on the table, as coarse and yellow in the table light as a starfish. He noticed Tom looking and withdrew it.
“When did you start supporting Town?” Tom asked.
“Four. That was my first game. Five when I started going properly.”
“A lot of games.”
“Yep. Lot of shit football.” He took a drink of his pint. “Following Town’s the one thing that’s always been, you know, simple.” He smiled. “Most of the time.”
“Not when they released you.”
“Not when they released me, no.”
Tom nodded. He wanted to say that he knew how that felt. “You ever miss playing?”
“Yes and no. Some of it, I do. Stupid stuff. Holding the ball in my gloves. Shouting. I don’t know if I’d even have been up for playing pro, though. You’re supposed to be eccentric as a keeper, but…” He looked off to the bar and said, “What about you? What was your first game?”
“Think I was about seven. Rochdale, home to Hull City.”
“Rochdale?”
“It’s where I was born. Me and my dad used to support them.”
“Didn’t know that.”
“We moved away when I was eleven, season after I signed academy terms. We used to drive in before that. There was a sixty-minute rule for my age group that meant Rochdale was in the catchment area. Took my dad the full hour to drive it, though. He used to drop me off, drive back to Rochdale for work, then come back and pick me up. It got too much in the end. That’s why we ended up moving.”
Liam was listening closely. “Must’ve been tough, not getting a contract after your family made a sacrifice like that.”
Tom mumbled agreement and looked away. They became quiet. A man in a suit and sagging tie came into the pub. He bought himself a drink and made for a tucked-away alcove on the other side of the room. Liam continued to look over, even when the man was out of sight, and Tom took in the wide forehead, the smooth line of his jaw. A seizure of longing at the realness of this stranger across the table made him lean forward and jam his knuckles together until they hurt. He had no idea what Liam was thinking, feeling. There was so much between them that was unsayable. “Another drink?”
Liam drained the rest of his pint. “All right.”
When Tom came back to the table Liam remained quiet. He seemed distant, thoughtful. Tom wondered if he was waiting for him to push the conversation. He tried to think of something to talk about. He took a long gulp of his lager, put the glass back on the table. The anxious need to understand why Liam had met Easter’s wife wrung inside him, but there was no safe way of bringing that up. Apart from football, there was nothing. When a long time had passed, he said, “You’re back at the stadium, then?”
“We swapped over, yes.”
“How long will you be there?”
“Until the end of the season. And then I’ll stay there, getting the pitch renovation done for the start of next.”
“Must get a bit boring.”
“It doesn’t,” Liam said, shaking his head. “It’s my life, mate.”
He said nothing more, and Tom could not think what his next question should be, so they lapsed again into silence.
Condiment holders were lined up along the steel shelf of an unlit hot pass. Wedged between two of them was a collection of breakfast menus displaying the logo of the hotel at the other side of the car park. Tom took another slug of his pint. He had drunk nearly half of it already and he knew that he should slow down. He needed to eat too, but he did not want to suggest it.
“Day off tomorrow?” Liam said.
“Yes.”
“What will you do?”
“Not much. Relax. Go to the gym.”
Liam gave a hum of response, and the topic was at an end.
They finished their drinks and decided against another. They walked into the dim cold of the car park, coming to a stop in front of Liam’s car. It was still on its own beside the pub. The man in the suit must have come from the hotel, Tom thought, or been dropped off, or walked up the dual carriageway. Liam went round to the driver’s side of his car and got in, shutting the door behind him. Panic tore through Tom, thinking that he was going to drive away, but he stayed there, completely still, not looking round, not looking anywhere.
Tom approached the passenger door and opened it. They sat in the darkness, unmoving. There was a machinery catalog in the door storage pocket. A floodlight above the car illuminated the path to the pub entrance, shining on the pebbledash of a shrub tub, the thick tarpaulin of a steak deal banner. Tom closed his eyes. At the touch of Liam’s fingers on his thigh he tightened. There was the sound of their breathing. The dual carriageway beyond the car park. A thumb moved in a small gentle circle on his jeans. Tom could sense the warmth of Liam’s face near his own and turned away from it.
His neck froze at the touch of Liam’s lips, momentarily against it, then gone, leaving a cold tingling on his skin. The hand on his thigh moved over his own and they knitted together in a fierce cat’s cradle as Liam pulled towards him, breathing at his ear. Tom twisted further away from the brazenness of his lust. The metal fence of a beer garden was diffused in the purple bloom of the hotel entrance sign. In the half-light a fox darted underneath the wheelie bins. A large dry fingertip ran across Tom’s temple, around the hairline of his sideburn and onto his earlobe.
“It’s OK,” Liam said, sliding the finger over his cheekbone, pulling his face back round, and Tom realized that it was because he was crying.
He shut his eyes again, their lips coming together. His mouth was numb, sucking and pushing against the shocking muscular strength of Liam’s lips. He forced himself not to let go to the dreadful intimacy of it, panning out until he was experiencing the whole thing from outside himself, outside the car, the image through the windscreen of two men’s heads moving together in the dark.