Heartland (25 page)

Rob liked the jazz, wanted to find out more about things like that, different types of music, other things too. How did you find out about jazz? He'd go to the library. He liked sitting here, the way you could be anywhere, America even, in an air-conditioned, artificially lit shopping mall drinking corporate coffee. He liked the sense of space, of blank space, the sense you could be who you wanted to be, just sitting here, listening to jazz. When he'd driven past the giant Beckham hoarding over the motorway it struck him that was one of the reasons he was so popular – people lived through him, projected their own hopes and fears on to how well he could kick a football.

He'd put all the reading work he'd done into a folder, made some notes in the margins.

God, you're really organized, she said when he sat down. He'd gone to the counter to get her a latte. I took a quick look in your folder, I hope you don't mind.

Of course not. He'd grinned, tried not to look too pleased with himself.

They talked about the reading scheme. Next year would be different. There'd be kids withdrawn from lessons to follow a reading recovery programme similar to the one he'd shown her. It was work she'd brought with her from her last school. They'd be in small groups, come out for three or four lessons a week. It was all about getting their reading age up to an appropriate level. He thought, as she explained it, how much he liked the way the school year followed the same pattern as the football season.

How about you? he asked. How are you settling in? What's it like coming back to Cinderheath after all this time?

Strange, she said. At first. I mean, the whole thing really. When we moved back here before, it was to live at my gran's. She had cancer. Then my grandad became ill, so we ended up here, what, for two years. You know this bit,
class four and five. She smiled and he nodded. We'd never really lived anywhere very long in one place. My dad was moving around with work. They did settle, after that, my parents, my dad became a consultant when they opened Russell's Hall hospital. We moved to a house near Bridgnorth, by the river. That time at primary school, that class, made me want to become a teacher, I think, memories of it anyway. You remember when we all had to sit on the carpet at the end of the day to listen to
Narnia
?

Rob nodded again.

I loved that feeling. You'd have thought we'd have been too old for that sort of thing by then, but we loved it. I did anyway. The way that Miss Johnson could make us feel safe. I don't know. I tried to track her down, by the way, years later when I was doing teaching practice but I didn't have much luck. She'd moved pretty soon afterwards. I don't think there's any teachers left at the primary school who would know now. I might try again. I wanted to tell her, Jasmine shrugged, I don't know what I wanted to tell her, thanks I suppose. I was a bit half-hearted with my search, maybe, like she might not live up to what I remembered. Julia Johnson. She probably got married, changed her name. Anyway, here I am, back in Cinderheath. It feels strange. I think the job will be great. It's a bit of an adjustment being at my parents'. I hope that's not for too long. They're so lovely but, well, I didn't think I'd ever live with them again. I'll sort out my own place.

She stopped, took a drink of coffee. My God, that was a long and rambling answer, wasn't it? She smiled, was winding her hair in her left hand, looking at him.

How come you're at your mom and dad's?

She paused. He started to apologize.

No, no. I split up with my boyfriend, partner. I'm not sure what you're meant to say. We'd been together four, five years. There was stuff at his flat, at mine. It happened
quite quickly. This job came up. You know I worked with Helena at Riverway? At my old school.

It was strange to hear the new Head, that everyone was so wary of, referred to as a normal person.

It's really hard, he said, more forcefully than he wanted to. That happened to me. I'm still there. At my mom and dad's, that is. I've been back there ages.

It had been nearly five years. He almost told her that, then stopped himself. It was ridiculous. Sleeping in a single bed at his parents' house. A man nearly thirty.

I used to live with Karen Woodhouse, he said. We had a flat together, down by the canal. We were together six, seven years. Girlfriend, partner. I doh know what yer say, either.

Jasmine didn't say anything. Perhaps she didn't remember Karen.

She left me for a bloke who sells fake tan. She runs a beautician's.

Handy for business then, I suppose.

They're doing very well.

It was the other way round with me. I left him. For someone else. It wasn't what I thought.

She bit her lip. He thought she was going to cry. He could tell she thought she'd said too much. They looked at the people going past outside.

The conversation went back to the reading scheme. She'd need people to deliver some of it, would he want to be interviewed?

What me?

Well, yes, as you've done so much work on it already. It'll be a lot of the kids you work with now. She'd misunderstood his response. You've got your sports stuff to do, I wouldn't want to take you away from that.

Don't you need qualifications?

Not really, she said, then asked him what he'd got.

Rob wasn't sure what he'd got. Not much. It hadn't seemed very important at the time. He'd got his coaching badges.

They're teaching assistant jobs, so it's the same as you're doing now.

He didn't say much. He knew that by not saying anything it would seem like he wasn't interested, but he couldn't think of what to say without making an idiot of himself. He really wanted to do it. He could tell her he'd thought about it tomorrow or next week. He'd love to do it.

He asked her about the years after Cinderheath. They jumped around different topics, each assuming the other knew more than they did. One minute she was talking about private school, which she'd hated, then university, which she'd loved, then teaching in Ghana and east London.

What do you mean when you say, At the Villa? she asked him.

Erm, Aston Villa, yer know, football club. I used to play for them. A bit.

Aston Villa? What, against Liverpool and Arsenal and teams like that?

Well, yeah. I wasn't in the first team. I was there when I was sixteen until I was eighteen, then I played for Wrexham. I played for Wolves for a bit.

As a proper footballer?

Well, as a professional, yeah. I mean, things didn't work out that well cos I'm not a footballer now but, yeah, I was.

That's amazing!

Well, not really.

No, really, that is amazing, Robert.

He liked the way she called him Robert.

It was amazing I believed I could mek me living at it.

No, it is amazing. I remember you were really good at football. Is that what you always wanted to do?

Yeah, I spose so. That an a few thousand other things but, yeah, yeah it was. Me dad was a footballer, yer know, played for the Wolves. He got injured.

He didn't know why he was saying this. She probably didn't even know who the Wolves were.
What do you mean when you say at the Villa?
That was great.

It's wonderful, though, to do what you always wanted. To achieve what you wanted to. No wonder you're such a hero to all those boys.

It didn't end well.

The start and the middle hadn't been too glorious either, he thought, but he didn't want to lay it on too thickly.

Some things don't. It doesn't stop them being wonderful at the time.

She was late for meeting her mother. There was so much to say.

I haven't told you about your dad, have I? he said, as she was pulling on her jacket.

What, my dad?

Yeah, he saved my dad's life. Operated on him after his heart attack. A triple bypass.

Oh my God, Robert, that's too much!

We're very grateful, he said earnestly.

They were both conscious she was late.

Oh my God, she said again, smiling, shaking her head.

Maybe we could do this again. It's nice finding out what happened to you. I mean we could, if you'd like to –

He realized he should try to finish his sentences. Especially as she was smiling and nodding, saying that would be great, she'd love to.

Later, on the escalator, heading out to the car park, looking up to see if he could see her with her mum, he thought about how they hadn't talked about Adnan. She'd mentioned a few names from school but not his. He remembered the fuss about the quiz that time. Adnan had
been jealous he'd won. It was funny how things came back to you. It was twenty years ago. There was something else he thought of it now, that time they did the Diwali play. Adnan got picked to be the Demon King because he was the best actor, but that left Rob and Jasmine to be Rama and Sita. Adnan had been pissed off about that as well. Rob wished he'd asked her if she could remember it. She seemed to remember everything. There was all the time in the world to talk about Adnan, he thought.

A hero to all those boys, he muttered to himself, as he walked through the car parks. It was a new way of looking at himself.

The voice in Jasmine's head, the voice she thought with, was her mother's.
Her mother's before that, probably. It used to worry her. If the voice in her head was her mother's, where was the room for her own voice? When she spoke, it was her own voice, gentler than the one in her head. Not that the one in her head wasn't caring, compassionate, more so in some ways. It was tougher, that was all, had more knowledge of the boundaries of things, of what was possible and what wasn't.

Her mum had trained to be a nurse, left for London. Her parents had been horrified, wanted her there. It was the sixties; she was independent. She'd met Jasmine's dad when he was a junior doctor at the Royal London. Jasmine used to go past it on the bus when she lived in Stepney, on the way to Matt's flat. Her parents got married at Marylebone Register Office, the same as Paul McCartney, her mother would add.

Jasmine understood now that it was only when they came back in those years, to nurse her grandparents in turn, that those old wounds were healed. She remembered there had been a picture of her parents' wedding day on the fireplace. Her grandparents hadn't gone to the wedding.

She'd liked it best in those years when she could help her mum. They'd bring her gran ice-cubes or crushed ice lolly to hold to her lips. A few times her gran talked about growing up. Not here, no; in Dudley, near the zoo, before there was a zoo. It had been crowded and dirty. They'd knocked those houses down. They all came to live here. She talked about it like it was a great sea crossing. Years later, when Jasmine mentioned it, her mum had said that was the only time she'd ever heard her talk about it.

It used to be about as easy as getting your dad to talk about his growing up.

His dad had died when he was a baby, she knew that. He said he'd decided to be a doctor when he learned about his dad. His mother died when he was at medical school. They'd lived in Karachi, with his sisters and cousins and his dad's uncle. Jasmine had family in Pakistan and the States she'd never seen. One of the things she'd planned in her brief summer with Adnan was visiting her cousins in Pennsylvania, didn't know why she'd never pushed to do it before. It was complicated. Her dad was never keen. After that they could go to Pakistan. One day.

He'd arrived in England in 1966, the week that England won the World Cup. He joked that he thought the celebrations were for his arrival. Only half-joked.

Never underestimate the size of a man's ego, he said to her.

England had kept the ball for about five minutes.
The clubhouse had quietened. Scholes had it when Rob looked up from the bar, knocked it, got it back again. This looked all right. Scholes again. It was opening up for him. Rob glanced at his dad, nodding his head. Scholes again. Argentina nowhere, all over the show, thanks to England's movement. Scholes, Ferdinand, Sinclair, Cole, Sheringham, Scholes again. How many passes? Twenty-odd, thirty. A
hundred? This was amazing. Sheringham floated free on the right-hand side of the box. The ball came in to him. Volley. He hit it.

Rob leapt away from the bar. Jim and Glenn jumped from their seats as well. Everyone's arms in the air.

Yeeeaaaaaa –

It flew just over.

– ooooohhhh!

There were screams throughout the clubhouse, probably the biggest shout of the afternoon, everyone together, nobody feeling on their own now. Tom thumped his hand down on the table.

Of all the strange things to happen, England suddenly almost conjured up one of the greatest goals of all time.

It hadn't even been that good a game, not really, too cagey, not enough space, so to have produced that was something else. The feeling buzzed back through Rob, that feeling of victory, that feeling of everything turning out OK; better than that, that no matter how unlikely, you might just get everything you ever wanted. What was that saying? It was the hope that killed you.

England would win the World Cup.

Rob put the pints down on the table.

Bloody hell, what's going on? Van Basten.

There was that volley Van Basten scored in the European Championship final. Sheringham struck it the same way. Except Van Basten's head had dipped in, of course.

His dad was smiling and shaking his head. You just never know what's gonna happen, son. Yer never know.

He'd met Lee at the Lion not long after opening on Saturday.
It was really to keep him company. Lee had given up his ticket for the Wolves game at Norwich, said he was sick of it, but regretted it now. He'd been to every game that season. He'd agonized week-by-week as Wolves managed
to give up a ten-point lead at the top in the new year and fade away to let West Brom catch them in the last weeks of the season. He was fed up of losing, he'd said, sick of it, claimed he was never going back. It was all Lee had got, really, no girlfriend or anything, a job pulling boxes around a warehouse on the Stourbridge ring road, no car to spend his money on, no interest in anything else really, all his money going on the Wolves.