Heartland (29 page)

He went to the staff toilets and sat in a cubicle for a while with his head in his hands and thought he might cry, repeating, I've got loads of football shirts, over and over, then jumped up and kicked a hole through the partition wall, smacked the cubicle door off one hinge with the flat of his hand.

Sinclair kept going.
He'd got it again now, head down again, got a shot away, still all England.

Now time went slowly. Rob asked Mark again and he said four and a half. They'd got Zubair wide on the left, trying to launch it into the box. Kyle Woodhouse seemed to have ignored Rob's instruction to just fuckin stand on him. In fact, he seemed to have disappeared completely, which left Zubair trying that ball again, hitting it crossfield, trying to get it over Rob and behind the full-back. Now Rob was in control, though. He got up, flattened the lad with the beard in winning a header. Then another one. The next one Chrissie started to come for, was never going to make it, Rob got across, facing his own goal but managed to turn into it, got a bit of distance on the header.

As he turned to try to get them out again, he saw a figure standing up on the hill, clapping his clearance. His old man hadn't been to see him play for nearly twenty years.

Mohammed came to see him the day Andre started speaking again.
Getting stabbed had raised Andre's status at the
school no end. Girls fussed around him. The boys seemed suddenly to want him to hang around with them. He swaggered along the corridor with a new cockiness. He didn't turn up to the reading session Rob had agreed with him.

All right, Mo. Have yer got a lesson?

Mohammed waited around at the edge of the PE store.

Maths.

Yer gonna go to it then, mate. Yow'll be late.

Mohammed stood there.

Come on, mate.

Yer know if there's a fight?

Yeah. Is there gonna be a fight?

Nah, not today, but yer know if there's a fight?

Yeah?

What if there's a fight and someone's there but the person fighting gets really beat up and there's someone just there but the person gets really beat up or even stabbed or summat, what happens if you was there? Would you be in trouble?

What you on about, mate? Has somebody been beaten up?

Mohammed shrugged.

Is this about what happened to Andre?

Who's Andre?

Yer know, the boy who's just come back to school. Someone did attack him with a knife.

Just say, say something happened that was like that. Say someone gets beat up but there was loads of people there. Do they get into trouble?

Depends if they get caught, I suppose.

Rob realized that wasn't the best thing to say, had another think. It just depends, mate. Depends on the circumstances. Yer know what's been said in assemblies. If you hang around trying to mek people fight one another that's just as bad as the ones fighting.

Say someone got beat up or stabbed and someone filmed it?

Filmed it?

Yeah, filmed it.

I really doh know, Mo. Is this something that's really happened?

Mohammed shrugged again.

Look, is this about something yow've seen?

No, I was just asking.

A voice called over from the fire-exit doors. Have you got a lesson to go to? The new Deputy, Mr Bell, shouted across towards them. Rob got the impression that he was talking to him as much as to Mohammed, pictured smacking him in the mouth. Mohammed could film that if he wanted to.

Yes, sir. Mohammed started to shuffle towards the doors. Rob got his head down, continued counting bent and broken tennis rackets.

Argentina put together a series of one-twos around the edge of the England box.
Aimar got it again, put a shot over.

There was a story that Stan Cullis had come to Tom's house in his overcoat in the middle of the night to sign him for the Wolves. There were people who swore they'd seen the car edging down Cinderheath Lane. It was what Matt Busby had done with Duncan Edwards. No one was comparing them, really. Duncan Edwards was a one-off, a freak of nature, could do anything, everything. Norman Deeley from down Wednesbury was a better comparison. But the midnight visit, the drama of cups of tea in the front room in the early hours, just showed there was a ghost of Duncan Edwards before he died. Some people just rearrange the world in their wake without even noticing.

The story was when Cullis and the Wolves officials left
that morning, men were already on their way to the early shift up Cinderheath Lane, Tom's own dad stuffing his sandwiches and bottle of cold tea into his pocket, Tom heading slowly upstairs to bed for a couple of extra golden hours in bed, secure in his own destiny.

Jim asked him about it once.

Iss a load o rubbish, Tom said. I signed in the office like everybody else. I'd already bin there for years anyway, by then.

One night, after a few too many, Bill told him the story of how he'd seen Stan Cullis's hatless head in the back of the Wolves car as it drove up Cinderheath Lane, the morning they'd signed Tom Catesby.

There was a turning off the road between Worcester and Stratford.
Then another turning, then another, into smaller and narrower roads. The last road had grass growing up the middle, fattening hedgerows, and hills on either side with tended fields. Two magpies sat watching on a fence-post, looking down at something in the hedge. A tractor spewed blue smoke halfway up a field. They drove on these roads for twenty minutes or so. Glenn watched through the minibus's back window, his arm across the seat backs, around Lee, so he could see where they were.

Anne hadn't wanted him to come. It was unusual for him to do anything without her and the kids, apart from go out to work and to football. And to election meetings, these days. He'd been flattered, though, by the invitation, but Lee had probably swung it. He wouldn't have come on his own and his eyes had lit up when Kenny had passed them the invites.

Kenny turned to pass a couple of cans back to Glenn and Lee, had to turn all the way around so he could see them with his good eye. Lee grabbed the drinks; said, Cheers. Glenn told himself to drink slowly, holding the
wet can – they had two twenty-four packs sitting in a bag of ice leaking over the floor up the front. Something about Kenny didn't add up. They hadn't known him long; he was from Wolverhampton. He'd been in the army, been in Northern Ireland, talked in half-stories, like he always thought you knew more than you did. All those weeks discussing the election in the Lion, Glenn had just nodded his head, kept quiet, offered practical suggestions about where to get the vote out, local grievances, from the mosque down to Nancy and Wesley and the people in that row despairing about the kids drinking and fighting at the bus-stop. When he'd added his bit of local colour to conversations in the pub's back room, Bailey had nodded his head seriously and made a few notes. Kenny would just grin and stand up to get a round in. You had to concentrate though, break things down to specifics, as small as you could, win people over one at a time. Glenn realized vaguely that he'd picked that up from listening to Jim on Tuesday teatimes when he was a kid. Not that it had done them any good in the end. Sixty-odd votes. It had been so close. So close for nothing at all.

Something made Glenn think Bailey wouldn't be there today. If he was, he wouldn't be there for long. Something made him wary, not just Anne's instructions to be careful, to think of her and the kids. What he thought, he supposed, was that Kenny wasn't Bailey. There were layers. Or rather, there were things that overlapped. April 23rd Club, the invite said, Gentlemen's Luncheon, 4th May. He'd been flattered, of course he was. Kenny had given it to him as if it was a ticket to say he belonged. The thing was, though, he didn't need a ticket to tell him that. He knew he belonged, knew where he belonged. That was the whole point of this business. Lee, of course, had come back from the bar, eyes shining, like someone had given him the winning Lottery ticket.

He was getting the feeling they'd gone down the same road a couple of times, that they were the same magpies cocking their heads towards the back of the minibus, not flying away like the other birds, not bothered in the slightest, when they turned again. This time they stopped at a gatehouse of some sort, a gravel drive leading away from it through the trees. Kenny leaned forward to speak across the driver's shoulder to two men wearing black roll-necks and holding walkie-talkies. The men stepped back and waved them on.

The driveway rose for a few hundred yards and then fell away steeply. In the valley was a big house, yellow stone and eight chimneys in a black roof. There were out-buildings, probably stables and the like, and a big marquee pitched in the meadow that ran from the garden. A stream ran down from the far hill. They parked in the field on the other side of the marquee.

The place was busy already. Men milled around in little groups, some holding cans, some pints from the bar that had set up in the marquee; they shouted to people arriving who they recognized. A bloke wearing a regimental blazer shouted over to Kenny in a Belfast accent. Glenn looked at the groups, wondered whether you could tell the soldiers from the civilians, wondered whether it mattered when it came down to it.

There were speeches in the entrance hall of the main house before they ate. Their group was introduced as Cinderheath and got a round of applause and some cheering, despite the result. Glenn was feeling the drink already. There were toasts to St George and the Queen. There was a portrait of the Queen halfway up the stairs. It made Glenn think of the police station, that picture of the Queen looking down on him the time he got arrested. The only time he'd been in trouble, he got picked up with Dave Wood-house for fighting some lads from the Wren's Nest outside
the Saracen's in Dudley. After a few hours the police let them go. They walked down Castle Hill as it was getting light.

The bloke who had been talking to Kenny clapped Glenn on the shoulder.

Grand job over there, Cinderheath.

We day win though, did we?

Don't worry, son. Our day will come, as they say, eh? He laughed and thumped Glenn on the shoulder again, too hard. Glenn didn't see what was funny.

Back and forth now, Rob rocking on his chair.
Cole had won a free-kick down the left, Beckham put it in, Sheringham got in front of his defender, flicked a back-header just over the bar. That would have finished it.

Rob brought it down on his chest when it ballooned up by the corner flag, got his foot through it, sent it up the line. Glenn almost kept it in. He was aware of his dad clapping again, his control, he assumed.

How long, Mark?

Mark made a big display of looking at his watch. One minute.

Glenn was shaking his fist. Come on, lads, this ull do it. Over the top if yer get it now. This ull do us. Discipline, keep it tight.

He ushered Lee further up the pitch.

Rob had a break in the lesson between lunchtime and afternoon clubs.
Jasmine did her admin in this lesson. He'd taken to bringing her a cup of tea and sitting chatting for a while.

He was exaggerating his role in his uncle's election campaign. His input so far had been helping to put up a few posters and trying to win the Sunday League for the BNP. He talked to her about how things were going, stringing her
the usual line about the BNP coming in from outside to exploit the vulnerabilities of a place like Cinderheath, how really it was still coming to grips with the end of industrial life. I blame Thatcher, he said, which he did, but the truth was much more complicated than that. Jasmine was too polite to question it, but seemed interested, even said he should be proud of himself, being so bothered about it, as people generally wouldn't put themselves out.

I need to talk to you about something, she said.

He knew it was too good to be true. She was going to tell him she hadn't wanted to give the wrong impression. It was nice he brought her a cup of tea, but maybe not every day, and that drink they'd arranged to meet for, maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

Well, I need to show you something, she continued. Look at this.

She motioned him over to the computer, clicked on something with the mouse.

I'd got some Year 7 boys in here this morning and while I was getting their tests sorted out, they were playing a game on the computer. When I walked over to get them they'd got this up on the screen.

She clicked the media player open. You could hear the wind and children shouting. The screen showed the view of a block of flats, a St George's flag draped from a balcony, they looked like the ones near the shops. Mohammed's face appeared on the screen, holding his fist like a microphone and shouting something unintelligible. A couple of other kids from that year group waved their arms around in the background. It was the flats by the shops.

They were in the alley behind the shops. There were twenty or so of them, kids running around. It looked confused, the film was of a camouflaged sleeve and rubbish strewn on the floor as whoever was filming ran or jumped. There were huge shouts. The picture focused again. Andre.
He was half-sitting on his bike, pulling the bike towards him while two or three pairs of hands tried to pull it from him. There was blood on his face. The hands pulling the bike were all wearing camouflage jackets, you couldn't see their faces. Rob thought he could guess a couple of boys from the older years. A shape jumped in and kicked the bike, buckled it under Andre. The boy doing the kicking was little Rhys Woodhouse. Up until then, all the other boys shown had been Asian. Rob assumed they'd been Asian. The screen went blurred again. Then back to Andre, bleeding, still hanging on to his bike; an arm came over, someone with a knife, hit Andre's shoulder. Another white kid. The screen blurred again, then went blank. Rob went to say something. Then it started up again. Kids running. Mohammed's face with his fist up commentating again, then he ushered towards the camera, more muffled sound and blurred camouflage. Then Michael's face as they ran along, out of the alley behind the shops and out near the entrance to the park. Michael was grinning and laughing, then the screen went blank again.