Silent Striker (11 page)

‘See? Have a go, Leonard,’ said Mr Davies.

Marcus knocked the ball over to Leonard. Reluctantly, Leonard stepped into position. All eyes were on him. Jamil and Horse did their runs. Leonard walloped the ball. It flew up too high, and five metres beyond Jamil.

‘Again,’ said Mr Davies.

Leonard stepped up again. His mouth, bruised lip and all, was screwed up with determination. Leonard’s second attempt was no better than the first. His head dropped. Someone kicked the ball towards Leonard for him to have a third attempt but Leonard had turned his back on the ball and it rolled past him. Marcus trapped it and dribbled it up to Leonard. As he placed the ball at Leonard’s feet, Marcus nudged him. Leonard looked up. His eyes were fierce and sad. He was being humiliated. Marcus knew what Leonard was doing wrong. All he needed to tell him was, ‘lean over it more, Leonard, and it’ll stay down’. Leonard stared at him. His eyes begged Marcus to help. Marcus weakened. But then, he thought, why should he help him after all that Leonard had said and done to him?

‘Again Leonard!’ shouted Mr Davies. ‘We’re going to do this till we get it right!’

Marcus retreated to the sidelines.

‘Okay, go!’ cried Mr Davies.

Jamil and Horse shot into position. Leonard hit the ball, this time he leaned even further back. The ball drilled through to Jamil but way high. Jamil leaped to take it on his head, but even Jamil couldn’t make the height.

This was useless, Marcus thought. He turned away, bored. Something else was on his mind and had been on his mind for a long time. He got out his phone and wandered away from the pitch.

Dwayne and Mohammad, the two Bowker Vale players who had hung out with Marcus during summer school were in his contacts list. The two of them had to have felt it when Mr Vialli had called the ref a black bastard. They were black too. He texted them both.

Few things were bigger than football, Marcus thought, but this was one. He just managed to finish the text when the coach came calling him. ‘Marcus, you’re needed!’

He looked over. Leonard was in a sulk and the other players had their heads hanging. Leonard still couldn’t flight a simple ball.

‘I can’t teach him,’ Marcus said, ‘I don’t know how, I just do it.’

‘I know you better than that, Marky,’ said Mr Davies, walking with him over to the ball. ‘Show him how, like in slo-mo.’ Mr Davies did a slow-motion action of a man running to strike a ball. It got him laughs. Marcus smiled but shrugged.

‘Do it!’ Horse said, approaching him. Horse’s brow plunged, like he was going to drop Marcus there and then if Marcus didn’t do as asked.

‘Why should I do anything for him? Eh? Eh? Eh?’ Marcus said to Horse. Now who’s amused, Marcus thought.

‘Don’t push me, Marcus,’ said Horse.

‘Alright boys, easy now,’ said Mr Davies. ‘Are you going to show him or not, Marky? Go on, lad, just once.’

Reluctantly, Marcus planted the ball down on the free kick spot. Everyone got in position. Mr Davies waved play. Marcus skied the ball. There were groans all round.

‘I don’t know,’ said Marcus, ‘the moment I think about it I can’t do it.’

‘I’m disappointed in you,’ said the coach. ‘Not angry. Disappointed. I thought you were better than this pettiness.’

Marcus shrugged. Yes, he’d deliberately skied it. But he didn’t feel bad at all. Maybe it would teach Leonard something.

Leonard tried again. By his tenth effort he was getting it in the zone at least. Finally Jamil managed to pluck one out of the sky. He let it drop, took it at half-volley and smashed it home, then did his jig. A desperately relieved Leonard joined in with him.

‘There you go boys,’ said Mr Davies, ‘that’s what it’s about. Never give up. And again!’

Half an hour later, as they trooped back to the changing room, Leonard had made all of three good passes, but the coach was happy and was making out like Leonard had it all nailed now and they had every chance of winning.

When they got to the changing room, Mr Davies went off to deal with the broken-down water heater.

‘This Cup final’s gonna be Ghana versus Germany!’ Jamil shouted excitedly above the general racket.

‘What are you talking about … Sparrow?’ someone jeered back. Jamil had his eye patch back on and looked like a pirate again. ‘Jack’ was the word that had been said before ‘Sparrow’, Marcus worked out.

‘Simple. It’s Black versus White. Our team’s black, Bowker’s is white!’ Jamil declared.

‘So I’m black am I?’ said Dinners, the centre-back. He was white, with orange freckles.

‘You can’t talk Bowker white can you?’ said Jamil. ‘Oh excuse me chaps, what a good game’, Jamil imitated a posh accent.

‘Nope,’ said Dinners.

‘And would you have said what that Bowker captain’s dad said?’ Jamil quizzed him.

‘Hell no!’ replied Dinners.

‘Then you, my friend, are a brother, you are black, bro!’

Everyone cheered and Jamil duly conferred honorary black player status on all three of the white players in the changing room. Ghana v Germany stuck in the team’s imagination and the shout of ‘Ghana! Ghana!’ rang round the dressing room, even though, Marcus reflected, neither team was all white or all black. The Ducie team was
mostly
black and the Bowker team was
mostly
white. But no-one cared for that distinction. Ideas were funny like that Marcus thought, they stuck, independently of the truth. Ideas just had to feel right to a group of people and that was that. Like the idea that Leonard could replace him.

Marcus began unlacing his boots as the general din rose. What was ‘black’, anyway, he thought. They had done a family tree exercise in Year 8, and, of the players he knew for sure, Horse was a quarter Jamaican, a quarter Guadeloupian, a quarter Turkish and a quarter English. Jamil was half Jamaican, a quarter Nigerian, and a quarter Polish. Andrew was half Ghanaian, half Scottish-English. Sanjay’s parents were from Uganda and India, and Ira was a hundred per cent Jamaican though his family were all light skinned and looked Indian. It was more like the United Nations v Germany, than Ghana v Germany, but Marcus kept that thought to himself. What was flavour of the month was what won the day, not necessarily what was true.

Jamil was in fine form in the changing room. He got the conversation going about what Mr Vialli had said. Everyone on the pitch and everyone on the touchline had heard it. Jamil said the referee had rung the authorities and it had become a ‘racial incident’ and Mr Vialli had been told to write a personal letter of apology to the referee. Jamil called for a vote on whether Mr Vialli should be banned from the touchline. It was carried unanimously.

Mr Davies made it back. The showers were off and they’d have to head out as they were, he explained. Nobody minded that much; everyone knew the school didn’t have the money to fix the showers properly so they broke down every month.

As Marcus walked home on his own, the weight of being out of the school team had him dragging his feet. Going to the training sessions was like getting ready for a party that you knew you were going to be turned away from. The new tactics might work. If they could drag Bowker’s centre-backs out of position and drop the ball into the gap for Jamil to run onto. They had spent most of the practice session on it and they knew what they had to do. They had worked on some neat set pieces too, working out when to play long, when to play short and what the options were and how the dead ball kicker – Leonard – would signal what he was going to do: left hand high meant long ball. Right hand high meant short ball.

Marcus knew he would be out tonight on the pitch practicing shimmies, left-right ball switches, knee traps and dead ball kicks. Practice. Practice. Practice. Yet what point was that practice when he was banned from the team? He’d be a spectator at the Cup final. He might have lost his only chance of being in a final. And the Man United scout would be there for sure, watching Anthony, not him; and possibly Leonard. That would be the pits, if Leonard got the glory and the agent’s signature.

Somebody slapped Marcus’s head. Marcus balled up his fists, thinking it was Leonard. He was about to fling a punch when he saw who it actually was.

Horse.

Going past at a trot. Horse turned, so he was jogging backwards.

‘Caught you there,’ Horse said. ‘You didn’t hear me shouting?’

Marcus shook his head.

‘Anyway, don’t be such a … at training next time!’

Marcus couldn’t make out what the ‘…’ was but he could guess. Horse had never slapped him like that before. His head still hurt. He watched Horse disappear.

Had he been out of order not to show Leonard how to drill a ball? If it had been anybody else he would have, but not Leonard. His whole body tensed even at the thought of the name.
Leonard.
Marcus turned the name round in his mind, trying to weaken its spell. Leonard the Lip. Leonard the Loser. Lemony Leonard. Leonard had made fun of him. He had wrecked his shin. He had taken his place on the team. Why in a hundred years should he help him?

Of course Horse never let the team down. He’d once been hospitalised clearing a ball in a goalmouth scramble. He’d whacked the ball off the goal line but run into a goalpost. Next day at school Horse had shrugged it off and only wanted to know if they’d won. The team was everything for Horse. Maybe Horse was right and he should think only of the team, even if that meant helping Leonard. It rankled too much though. And Marcus simply couldn’t bring himself to do it. Not after what Leonard had put him through.

That evening on the pitch, Marcus practiced like never before. He was still vexed with Leonard and now with Horse as well. He did half his routines but felt feverish and decided to sit on the wall for a minute.

All around him people on the estate were busy doing their things: fixing cars, taking in washing, smacking golf balls around the park, yammering into mobile phones as they walked along. Dogs roamed across the park in packs the way the dogs of Westfield did. The familiarity of everything calmed him. He got his energy back.

He practiced dead ball kicks. He struck the ball on the left side so it span left, then had it spinning right and finally (it was the hardest thing to do) span it on its horizontal axis – so it rotated forwards as it travelled. The forward spin was the Holy Grail of spins. It made the ball balloon up, but then dip viciously and suddenly as it neared the goal. It was almost impossible to pull off. Only the great Cristiano Ronaldo could do it every time. Marcus managed it once in thirty attempts that evening, but he was content with that. It was one more than he had ever achieved before.

Instead of going home, he phoned his mum and said he was going to grab a bag of chips then do his homework with a mate. His mum moaned but had to let him.

M
arcus slid past the Hawaiian pub. Smokers were standing outside nursing their cigarettes and pints. His dad had sung there every Saturday years ago and some of the regulars still recognised him from when his dad had taken him along. Adele was waiting for him by the pipes outside the swimming pool. He slumped next to her. She was looking up into the sky when he arrived.

‘See that bird hanging there without even moving its wings?’ she asked.

‘It’s thermals,’ Marcus said, ‘a current of—’

‘I know what thermals is, I’m not thick you know,’ she glared at him.

‘What maths do you need to practice?’ Marcus said, thinking, he should have spotted Adele was in a mood, she had her bottom lip pushed out and her arms crossed around herself.

‘Geometry.’

He quizzed her on basic formulas as he juggled his ATC. She got most of them right.

He asked her why she didn’t like doing her homework at home.

‘No-one’s ever there to help,’ Adele replied. ‘Dad lives in his office. Mum’s a zombie. You could set the house on fire and she wouldn’t notice.’

‘What’s your mum depressed about?’

Adele shrugged. ‘Me? “What do you want to do with your life? What subjects are you choosing? Are they suitable? Are you going to University? Don’t sit with your legs like that, it’s not ladylike! Don’t pick your nose! Where are you going? You can’t wander round town on your own!”’

‘Um.’

‘It’s never Anthony. He can get away with anything. Why? “Because he’s a boy!”’

‘Um.’ Marcus was trying Zidane’s signature Marseille Roulette: the double step on, then spin out.

‘This morning she sits in the bathroom looking at her face, saying she’s getting old. I tell her, “you’re not getting old, you are old, silly cow!” She bursts into tears. Total waterfall. I give her a kiss, say I’m sorry, and she’s not really old, just old-ish, and we sit there putting each other’s make up on. And she’s happy and hugs me like she’s trying to squeeze toothpaste out of me. Next thing I know she’s … out on her bed.’

‘Um.’

‘Say “um” again and you’re toast.’

‘What? Oh. How’s your brother?’

‘He told Dad off about what he said to the referee. They had a blazing row, you should have heard it.’ She imitated Anthony’s voice. ‘“You make me sick, how could you say something like that, you could of got the whole team banned!”’

‘Your Anthony wouldn’t lend me money for a sandwich at summer school,’ Marcus said, still trying and failing with the Zidane move.

‘Yeh, well, my brother takes after his dad. Don’t be fooled by his nicey nicey talk. I can’t stand either of them.’

Marcus did a flick and cradled the ball between his shoulders while still looking at Adele.

‘My dad would so not like this,’ said Adele, watching him for once.

‘Because?’

‘Duh. Because you’re black.’

‘I’m not going out with your dad though, am I? I’m going out with you,’ Marcus said.

‘If we was going out,’ Adele corrected him.

‘Yeh, yeh, that’s what I meant. Anyway, I can’t talk tactics with you.’

‘Uh, tell me then Marky,’ Adele, said, in her spy voice, ‘you’re gonna start with 4 4 3, then at half-time switch to 6 3 1, but if you go a goal down its 15 1 and bring on an elephant?’