Chapter 960 - 960: The Middle Of The Wall II

On Tuesday I came out of the gym and found him standing in front of it with his phone out, taking a photograph. He saw me and put the phone behind his back.

"It is for my mum," he said.

I said I knew.

"She does not believe me. I told her on Friday. She said show me." He took the phone out again and looked at the picture. "She is going to print it at work."

Ron had his Wednesday on the clipboard when I came through the barrier.

Connor Blake had made his debut for Middlesbrough at West Brom on the Saturday. 20 minutes off the bench, and Middlesbrough won 3-2. He had touched the ball 6 times, Ron said, and he had told Ron the number himself.

"I asked him if that was a lot," Ron said. "He said no. He said it was 6 more than last week."

Mitchell had played the whole match for Portsmouth against Doncaster at Fratton Park, 1-1, and been booked for the first time in his life.

"He asked me to tell you he was sorry," Ron said. "For the booking. I told him you were not his manager this month." Ron wrote something on the page. "He said he was going to tell you anyway."

Marcus had City's results down the side of the table on the canteen wall, small, in the corner, out of the way of Madrid. He did not take them down. He did not move them closer to the middle either.

On Thursday morning Bray had the first team on pitch 3 for 40 minutes of corners and nothing else.

Ours, not theirs. He had Hennessey in goal wearing a red bib to be Oblak, and 8 men in the box, and 2 men standing on the halfway line with their hands behind their backs. Neves and Konaté.

Every time the ball went in, the 2 on halfway did not move, and every time a header was cleared to the edge of the box, Neves walked forward 5 yards and stopped.

I watched it from the touchline next to him. He had the laminated card in the top pocket of his coat. I could see my own writing on it through the plastic.

"Those are my 2 for Madrid," he said, without looking at me.

I told him they were his.

"In Madrid," Bray said, "if you want 1 of them, you say it. Out loud. To me."

I said it back to him, out loud.

He nodded at the pitch and blew his whistle.

Fweeeeeeeeeet.

The next corner went in.

On Thursday afternoon Emma took me to have my suit made.

The tailor was above a shop on Lordship Lane, up a flight of stairs so narrow I had to go up them sideways.

He was a small man of about 60 with a tape measure round his neck, half glasses, and a radio on the windowsill tuned to something with violins. The room smelled of steam and wool. He had an iron on a board by the window, and when he put it down on a sleeve it hissed.

Fsshh.

He did not know who I was. I could tell that from the first minute and it was the best minute I had had all week.

He told me to stand on the box.

I stood on the box. It was a wooden box, painted green a long time ago.

He went round me with the tape. He measured my arms and my chest and then the back of my neck to my waist, writing it in a book with a pencil from behind his ear, and Emma sat on a chair by the door with her coat still on and watched.

"You stand with your weight on your left," he said.

I said I did not know I did.

"Everybody stands on 1 side. You stand on your left and you drop your right shoulder. Half an inch." He tapped it. "Do you carry something on that side?"

I could not think of anything. Emma could.

"His bag," she said. "Every day. On the right. He has done it for 3 years. He swaps it and then he swaps it back without noticing."

The tailor wrote something in his book.

"Then I cut the right side half an inch shorter," he said, "and on the day nobody will know."

Then he brought out the cloth.

It came in a book of small squares, hundreds of them, all blues and greys, each with a number on a sticker. Emma had a piece of paper in her pocket from her mother with 2 words on it: NAVY. NOT BLACK. She showed it to the tailor. He read it and nodded seriously, as if it was a prescription.

The tailor asked me if I had a preference.

I said Emma's.

He nodded and turned the book round to face her.

They chose between them, with me stood on the box in my socks. A navy so dark it was nearly black, which he said would be blue in the daylight and black in photographs, and Emma said that was the point. They talked about the lapels for 10 minutes.

I said nothing at all, and the tailor put pins down the side of a jacket with no sleeves on it and put it on me, and Emma looked at me in the long mirror on the wall.

She did not say anything for a while. Then she put her hand over her mouth, and her shoulders went, and a laugh came out from behind her fingers that she could not stop. It came out of her in short breaths, and she bent forward over her knees with it.

"I am sorry," she said, when she could. "It is the box. You look like a statue of yourself."

The tailor took a pin out of his mouth.

"They all look like that on the box," he said. "Wait until it has sleeves."

We had our fourth lesson that night. Moon River, eyes open this time, all the way through without stopping, and the teacher said nothing at all at the end except "Next week," and turned the CD player off.