Chapter 273: Bramall Lane II

For 3 years I had walked into rooms like that one with something in my hand. A contract, or a training ground with a roof on it. That afternoon I had nothing to put on the bench but what I had just said, and 25 men looking at it.

I heard my own words as they came out. Before you play again was Tuesday night, at a quarter to 8. Tuesday night meant Monday. It meant finding Margaret’s 2 years of wages, 7 million in pounds, by selling on Monday into whatever the floor was by then.

I did not do the December sum. I had done it on Wednesday with my hand on the mouse, and it had cost me the 12th.

“You came all the way up here to say that?” Vardy said.

“I came up here to say that.”

“You could have rung. We rang you. All 4 of us.”

“You did. I did not pick up.”

I looked round the room at the rest of them, at Pett with his foot on Dev’s knee and Braithwaite with his gloves in his lap. “I wanted to say it in a room, with all of you in it. If it is happening to 4 of you, it is happening to all of you.”

“Chairman.” Gary Pett put his hand up like a boy at school. “The rest of us. Is our money all right?”

“Your wages went in on Friday, Gary, the same as every month. Everybody’s did, Stan’s and Dev’s included. This is my money, for these 4, on top. It is mine that is late.”

“And the bonus? If we go up?”

“It comes out of the same money. It will be there long before anybody is owed it.”

“Right.” Pett put his hand down. “Only my missus asked me last night.”

“Tell her it went in on Friday.”

Mahrez took his headphones off his neck and held them in his lap. “My agent rang me at 5 o’clock yesterday,” he said. “He says there are 3 clubs.”

“There will be more by Monday,” I said. “He will make sure of it.”

Maguire looked up. “Can he do that?”

“He can ring who he likes. He cannot sign anything for you. Nobody can, except you.”

“Where are they now?” Maguire said. “The contracts.”

“In Margaret’s drawer, with my name on every page. The minute the money is in the club’s account, you sign, she lodges them that afternoon, and you are paid the same day.”

“And Tuesday is Tuesday?” he said. “Not the Tuesday after?”

“Tuesday. Before you go out.”

Kanté finished tying his lace and pulled it tight.

“OK,” he said. He stood up and took his shirt down off the peg.

Vardy had not taken his eyes off me.

“Tuesday,” he said. He sat down and started pulling his socks up. “Gaffer. Are we playing or what?”

“We are playing.” Sadler came in and shut the door behind him. thunk. “That was the chairman’s 5 minutes. He has had 6. Out, chairman.”

“Can we have the music back on, gaffer?” Gray said.

“No,” Sadler said. “You can have me.”

Marsh was on the end of the bench by the boot bags, in his long coat, not in the 18, with his bad leg out straight in front of him. He did not look at me as I went past. He was looking at Maguire.

The supporters’ coaches were parked nose to tail in a side street behind the away end, every one of them empty but the first.

“Front seat,” the driver of the first one said, without looking up from the Racing Post. “He will not get off till 20 to. He says it is his knees.”

Ted was on the front seat with a pork pie in foil on his knee.

“The steps in that end are murder,” he said, when I climbed up. “I go in at the last minute or I am stood on them for an hour.”

“Ted.”

“Well?”

“We are keeping them.”

He nodded. “Then what is the other thing?”

“The money I was paying them with did not come on Friday. It is late. You will read it in the paper soon enough, and I wanted you to have it from me first.”

He folded the foil back over the pork pie, corner by corner.

“Late,” he said.

“Late.”

“That is what that Sully said at Shorehaven. Late. Then it was never.” He looked out of the windscreen at the turnstiles. “I watched that happen to the club down the road, son. I do not want to watch it twice.”

“I am telling you on a coach in Sheffield, Ted. He never told anybody anything.”

“Does Craig know?”

“He was in the room.”

“When, then?”

“Before Tuesday.”

“Tuesday I have got the chiropodist.” He put the pork pie in his coat pocket and took hold of his stick. “I will move him.”

He went down the coach steps one at a time, clack of the stick on each step, and across the road to the turnstiles.

A lad at the front of the queue saw him coming. “HERE HE IS,” he shouted. “MAKE ROOM FOR TED!” Half the queue turned round and cheered him across.

Their directors gave me a seat in the front row of the box. At 5 to 3 the teams came out, and the Kop sang the Greasy Chip Butty Song, their anthem, to the tune of John Denver’s Annie’s Song.

18,000 of them sang every word with their scarves up over their heads. The man in the club tie sang it too, quietly, with his tea in his hand.

From the far end, the lower tier of the stand opposite the Kop, the 2,600 answered them.

“FROM THE SEAWALL TO THE BOVRIL, THE TIDE IS COMING IN!”

The man in the club tie leaned over to me. “You beat us at yours.”

“3-1.”

He nodded down at the pitch. “Our lad got one.”

When the announcer read our team, he read Maguire’s name in the same voice as the rest. Half the main stand clapped. A whistle went up from the Kop, and then a lot of whistles.

Under them the clapping kept going, from people who had watched him since his debut. Some of them stood up to do it. Others in the stand sat with their arms folded.

“Go on, Harry lad,” a woman behind me said, to nobody. “Go on.”

Maguire looked up at the Kop once and lifted a hand. Then he went to the centre circle.

The season before I took him, this club made him their Player of the Year. In the life before, they gave it to him again this season, and the season after that. In this life he was 20 years old and in amber, in the away side, because I had gone and got him.

I knew their spring as well. 5th at the end, and a play-off semi-final lost to Yeovil. It told me nothing at all about what they were going to do to us between 3 o’clock and 5.

peep.

We were a yard late to everything.

It was the side that had won 7 in 8. Braithwaite. Pett, Maguire, Stokes, Kettle. Kanté. Mahrez, Murphy, Quinn, Reece. Vardy. Kane, Gray and Gayle on the bench. By 10 past 3 I could see that half of it was still sitting in that dressing room.

On 12 minutes they won a corner on the right. peep. Their big centre-forward went to the near post, and Stokes went with him, half a step off his shoulder.

The ball came in hard and low. He got there first and flicked it on with the side of his head, and it was in at the far post before Maguire, coming across, could get to it. swish of the net from the inside.

1-0. The Kop came down on top of us. ROAR.

“MY MAN,” Stokes was shouting at Braithwaite, slapping his own chest. “MY MAN, MY FAULT.”

The old director beside me clapped twice and stopped himself. Their caretaker was on the touchline with both fists in the air. Sadler stood on the edge of his area with his arms folded and did not say a word.

“SQUEEZE UP,” Stokes was shouting. “SQUEEZE UP, PETT. GET UP THE PITCH.”

We could not get up the pitch. Every time Kanté won it, the pass went to where Reece had been a second before. Every time Mahrez went past one man, the second was already there.

“HOLD IT, RIYAD! HOLD IT!” Vardy had his arms out wide on the halfway line. He ran in behind twice and was flagged twice, both times by the width of a boot.

“UNITED! UNITED! UNITED!”

On 34 Quinn hit the post from 20 yards. ping. It came back off the post into the keeper’s arms, and the 2,600 groaned with one voice. It reached the box from across the ground.

1-0 at half-time. A shower came across off the hills, warm for April. The rain blew in under the roof of the box and nobody moved.

“Your lads look like they have got something on their minds,” the old director said.

“They have.”

“Ours have had a long week.” He wiped the rain off his programme with his sleeve and put it in his pocket.