Chapter 290: Lesser Hampden II

"I am all right." He got up with the back of his trousers soaked. "Again."

The second time the boy showed him the inside and took it off him as he turned. The third time Sadler tried to go round him on the outside, and the boy got there first and put the ball out for a throw with his body between Sadler and the line.

"Now run," Sadler said, breathing hard. "Up the line and back. Keep going till I tell you to stop."

The boy ran. Up the touchline to the corner flag, and back to the other one. Sadler did not watch his legs. He watched his face, every time it came past.

After 10 lengths, the boy was still running at the same pace and his face had not changed. After 12, Sadler put a hand up.

"That will do."

"I can do more."

"I know." Sadler took his coat back off Wilf and put it on over his wet shirt. "Go and get dry, son. Then come and sit with us. We will talk."

He came back up to the covered stand and sat down beside me on the end of the bench. The rain had come on properly now. patter on the roof over our heads.

"Well?" I said, low.

"He tackles from the side, and he does not dive in. He does not stop." Sadler was watching the boy pull his trainers on at the far end of the bench. "He is not ready for August."

"And?"

"He is ready for October," said Sadler.

The boy came along the bench in his fleece with his hair wet and sat down at the end of our row. Margaret opened her folder and gave him the top sheet, and took him through it the way she had taken me through it in the taxi, every line, Queen’s Park’s money included.

He read it again for himself, slowly, and turned the sheet over to see if there was anything on the back.

"Nobody has ever given me anything in writing before," he said.

"Then read it with somebody you trust tonight," said Margaret. "Do not sign anything because 4 people stood in the rain for you."

He nodded. Then he looked at Sadler.

"Mr Sadler. Can I ask you where I would play?"

"You can, and I will tell you straight, because that is why I came." Sadler leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "Charlie Rudd is my left-back. He is 19, the same as you. He played most of last season for me, and he did nothing wrong. You will not start in August."

"Right."

"You will play in the cup, and you will play for the reserves. You will train with the first team every day. And the day you are better than Charlie, you will play instead of him. Not one day before."

The boy was quiet for a moment.

"Dundee United say I would be in their first team," he said. "They have asked me to go up on Monday."

"Then you should believe them," said Sadler. "They have watched you play more than I have. I have watched you for an hour, in the rain, and I have tried to run past you 3 times."

"Why did you come, then? You have got a left-back."

Sadler nodded along the bench at Wilf.

"He has been up here 3 times, son. He has never driven to Scotland 3 times for anybody. When he came back the third time, he came up the stairs to tell my chairman. I wanted to see what he saw."

"I did not know anybody from England came," the boy said. "I never saw anybody."

"I stood behind the far goal," said Wilf. "I always stand behind the far goal."

The boy laughed, quickly, and stopped. Then he turned to me.

"Mr Mercer. Can I ask you something as well?"

"Ask me anything."

"Why does a club in England want a boy off the phones at Hampden? I am not being smart. I want to know."

I took a moment over it. The first true answer I had was one I could not give him.

"Because the best scout I have ever worked with came back from here and said he would take you tomorrow," I said. "And because my manager would not say a word until he had seen it for himself."

"And you?"

"I watched you put 8 out of 10 on the spot in the rain after a morning on the phones. You were still running at the same speed when he stopped you."

"That is all?"

"That is more than most clubs come to see."

He looked down at the sheet in his hands for a while.

"I was at Celtic till I was 15," he said. "They called me in and told me I was too small. I nearly packed it in. I had it in my head I would go to university and be done with it."

He folded the paper once, carefully, and said nothing more about Celtic.

"How tall are you now?" said Sadler.

"5 foot 10."

"That will do for a left-back," Sadler said. "Nobody at my club will ever tell you that you are too small. They will tell you that you were late on the overlap. They will tell you every single time."

"Never mind Dundee, and never mind us," I said. "What do you want?"

"I want to play," he said. "I want somebody to pick me because I am the best one, and not because they were short."

He looked at the rain coming down over the empty pitch. "Can I have tonight? I said I would go up to Dundee on Monday. I want to talk to my family before I say anything to anybody."

"Take tonight," I said. "Take whatever you need."

"We are at the hotel beside the station," said Margaret, and wrote it on the back of the sheet. "Room numbers. And my telephone."

He stood up and shook hands with us all again, Margaret first, and went off round the end of the stadium at a jog, with his bag on his shoulder and the sheet inside his fleece to keep it dry.

Sadler watched him until he was out of sight.

"If he says no," he said, "we were late. Wilf was right about him either way."

"And if he says yes?"

"Then I have to tell Charlie," said Sadler, and went to find a taxi.

I did not sleep much. The hotel had a window on to the station roof, and the trains went in and out under it till after midnight. hiss of the brakes, each time. When I went down the corridor for water at 2, there was a light under Sadler’s door.

At 9 on the Sunday morning the street door went thump behind him, and he walked into the hotel’s front room in the same fleece, with the folded sheet in his hand. Margaret and Sadler were already at a table by the window. Wilf had a paper open by the door.

He did not sit down.

"I will come," he said.

Nobody said anything for a second. Then Wilf turned a page of his paper, very slowly, and kept his eyes on it.

"I have got one thing to ask," the boy said to Sadler. "If I am not playing by Christmas, I want to be able to go out on loan. Somewhere I will play every week."

"If you are not playing by Christmas," said Sadler, "it will be because you are not good enough yet. I will tell you so to your face. Then you can go out on loan, and come back better, and take the shirt off Charlie in the spring."

"Fair enough, Mr Sadler," he said.

Margaret uncapped her pen and turned the contract round on the table. He signed it in 3 places, where she had marked them, in a quick, neat hand. scratch, scratch, scratch.

"Queen’s Park have their money tomorrow morning," Margaret said. "I will ring their secretary first thing."

"I will ring Dundee United myself," he said. "Today. They were good to me. They should hear it from me and not from anybody else."

Then he held his hand out to me.

"Andy," he said. "Everybody calls me Andy."

His name was Andy Robertson. He was 19 years old. On the Monday morning, instead of going up to Tayside to sign a contract that was waiting for him there, he went back to work at the Hampden ticket office to give them his notice.

On the platform at Glasgow Central, before he went to find his car, Wilf gave me his notebook open at the back page, and stood beside me while I read it.

WILF’S NOTEBOOK · BACK PAGE QUEEN’S PARK. LEFT-BACK. PHONES. NEXT WEEK. March · seen once · going back 8 May · Hampden · Peterhead · lost 0-1 · best on the pitch 11 May · Peterhead · lost 3-1 · same again TAKE HIM. 2 June · signed.

"You can keep the page," he said. "I have finished with it."

He tore it out for me along the stitching. Then he went off to drive home by himself, with the radio on, which he said was how he liked the road.

"I have done 400 miles in that car this week," said Margaret. "I am taking the train."

Sadler slept from Glasgow to Carlisle with his cap over his eyes and his trousers still damp at the back. Margaret sat across the table from me and opened a second folder, a thick one, with the League’s crest on the front.

"This came on Friday," she said. "Everything a club needs to know when it goes up into the Championship. I have read most of it. I saved the worst part for a long train."

"Go on."

She found the page with her finger. rustle of paper.

"A club promoted to the Championship has 3 seasons to make its ground all-seated. The seasons count up, whichever of the top 2 divisions we are in. After that, the licence says seats, and nothing but seats."

"The Bovril End," I said.

"The Bovril End." She closed the folder on her finger. "We are allowed to stand on it this season, and next, and the one after that. By August 2016, nobody stands at Marsh Road."

The train went over the border in the rain. Sadler did not wake up.

Ted had stood on the Bovril End from when he was a boy until his legs went. He sat at the back of it now, under the new roof, where he could still see every face on the steps in front of him.

Margaret looked at me across the table.

"Somebody has to tell Ted," she said.