Chapter 292: The Bovril End II

He left the other 2 drawings on the table and went down with Kieran to pace out the car park. tap of his tape measure case against the door frame on the way out.

"Peterborough were told what we have been told," said Margaret, to me. "Their terrace had to go at the end of this season, if they were still in the Championship. They went down in May. So they can keep it for now."

"We are not going down," said Maureen, without looking up from her pad.

"Then we will need the stand," said Margaret.

"Some of it comes off the sum," I said. "You said so. The building is out of the loss sum, the same as the academy."

"The building is out of it, yes. Every brick of it." She took her glasses off. "We are allowed to spend it. Where are 7 million pounds coming from, Sam?"

click of Maureen’s pencil, on and off, on the edge of the pad.

"The work would start after the last game of the coming season," I said. "May 2014. He says it is tight. About 14 weeks, if the steel is made over the winter. Seats for the August after, 2 years inside the rule."

"And the money?"

"Before a single contract is signed, it is in the club’s account, in pounds."

Margaret put her glasses back on.

"That is my rule," she said.

"It is yours," I said. "And it is the right one. I am not signing anything with his firm until the money for it is sitting in that account."

"Good," said Margaret.

Maureen wrote something down, in pencil, and turned the pad round. 7,000,000. Under it she had drawn a line, and under the line she had written nothing at all.

"When?" she said.

The coin was a little over 100 dollars that week. To put 7 million pounds into the club’s account at that price, I would have to sell a great deal more of what I had left than I meant to sell this side of Christmas.

"Not this summer," I said.

"Then when?"

"When the price is right."

Maureen looked at me over the pad.

"And what is the right price?"

"I will tell you when it is in the account," I said. "Not before. I gave you a date once, and the money came late. I am not doing that to you again."

She tore the page off the pad, folded it once, and put it inside the back cover of the green book.

"Then it lives there," she said, "until it is real."

The trust met on the Tuesday after, on the Bovril End itself. It was Ted’s idea. He said if they were going to talk about the terrace, they should be stood on it when they did.

186 of them came. They came at half past 6 in their work clothes, straight from the station and the shops and the building sites. They stood about on the steps in the evening light in little groups, the way they stand on a Saturday.

A man in a painter’s overalls had brought his little girl on his shoulders. 2 lads still in their school blazers stood right at the front, where they always stand, as if there might be a kick-off.

Somebody had brought a drum and been told to put it away. Bald Tony stood at the front with his hand bell in his fist, like a man waiting for a goal.

Margaret stood on the bottom step with a clipboard. I stood beside her. Danny Vine sat on the front wall, writing.

"The trust holds one share in this club," Margaret said. Her voice carried. It always does.

"It gives you a vote if the club sells or leaves the ground, renames itself, changes the colours or the badge, or borrows money. It does not give you a vote on a stand. The chairman knows that. He has asked to put this to you anyway."

"Go on, then, Sam," somebody said from the back.

I told them about the rule and the 3 seasons, and the 2 standing to 1 sitting. I told them about option one and why I had said no, and about option 2.

The end would come down after the last game of the coming season. The roof would stay. There would be a seat on every step and a rail along every row.

Then I told them the price would stay where it was, and that nothing would be signed until the money was in the club’s account.

"How many of us will fit?" That was Terry Brennan, from beside a barrier, with his hands in his jacket pockets. "Same as now?"

"No, Terry. About 4,500 in this end, where there are 6,000 now."

"So 1,500 of us are out."

"On a full day, yes. On most Saturdays last season we had room to spare. When we sell out, there will be a waiting list."

"There already is one," said Priya, from halfway up the steps. "There has been since March."

"Is it borrowed?" said Terry. "Any of it?"

"Not one pound," I said. "And if I tried, you could stop me. That part of the share does cover it."

He nodded once.

A hand went up near the front. It was Kelly’s lad, who is 16 and started the tide song in March, with his mother beside him.

"Will we be allowed to stand?" he said. "In the new one. When it is a good game."

Everybody near the front turned to look at him, and then at me.

"The law will say seats," I said. "I am not going to tell you different. There will be a rail in front of you. That is all I can promise."

"Then I am voting no," he said. His face had gone red, and he kept it up. "Sorry, Mr Mercer. I want to stand. That is what this is."

"Do not be sorry," I said. "Vote how you want. Nobody up here will hold it against you."

There was nothing else I could promise him, and he could see it.

There was a bit of noise after that, people talking to each other in their groups. Then Ted put his hand up from the old seat at the back. The noise went down a step at a time, from the back to the front, like water going out of a bath.

He did not get up. He said it sitting, with both hands on his stick.

"My father brought me in that gate when I was 9," he said. "1943. There was a war on. There were 300 of us on this end, and half of them were old men, and he put me on that barrier there and told me not to move."

Some of them turned to look at the barrier. Some of them knew it already.

"I had my legs till I was 70, and then I had a stick, and then I had this seat."

He stopped and got his breath. tap of the stick on the concrete, once.

"We have a roof now, and we are going up to play Leicester and Derby and them, and the League says I have got to have a seat to watch it in. I have got a seat. I have had one for 9 years. It did not stop me singing."

Somebody laughed, near the front, and stopped.

"The lad is right to vote no," Ted said, and nodded down at Kelly’s boy. "He is 16. He wants to stand. I wanted to stand when I was 16. If he had not voted no, I would have thought something was wrong with him."

Kelly’s lad looked at his shoes.

"But I am 79," Ted said. "I would sooner have 4,500 of us here with a roof and a rail and the price held, than 3,000 of us bolted on to these steps."

"Hear, hear," said somebody.

"Or no club at all, because it went broke on something it could not pay for. We had the receivers in here once. I am not having them in here again. So I am voting yes."

He looked round the terrace, at all of them.

"And I want it written down that it is yes as long as the price stays where it is, and the young ones keep the middle behind the goal, where the singing is."

He looked at Margaret.

"Can you write that down, Margaret?"

"I have written it," said Margaret.

She asked for hands. They went up all over the terrace, in the low sun under the roof. The painter’s little girl put her hand up as well, from his shoulders, and he left it there.

Margaret counted them with her pencil, row by row, while everybody waited.

Then she asked for the nays. Kelly’s lad put his hand straight up, and so did 8 others, scattered about, and nobody said a word to any of them. Then the abstentions.

ting went Tony’s bell, once, when she had finished. He put his other hand over it.

TILBROOK TOWN SUPPORTERS’ TRUST · MINUTE Tuesday 11 June 2013 · on the Bovril End · 186 members present The club chairman asked the trust’s view on rebuilding the Bovril End as a seated stand in the close season of 2014. The Special Share gives the trust no vote on this. He asked anyway. Motion (T. Cutler): the trust supports the rebuilding, provided the season ticket price is held, and the young supporters keep the middle of the end behind the goal. For 171 · Against 9 · Abstained 6 Minuted, M. Bell

I went up to Ted’s seat afterwards, while the rest of them were going home and Margaret put her clipboard away. Kelly’s lad came up the steps behind me. I thought he was coming to me. He went past me and stood in front of Ted with his hands in his pockets.

"Sorry, Ted," he said.

"What for?" said Ted. "You voted. Good lad."

"I still want to stand."

"So do I, son," said Ted. "Go home. Get your tea."

The lad went, 2 steps at a time, down to the gate in the corner by the front wall, where his mother was waiting. clang of the gate behind them.

I came back down to the front wall. Maureen had come down for the meeting with the green book under her arm, the way she takes it everywhere now. She stood beside me while the terrace emptied, and opened it at the first page.

The June line was there in her figures, the 2 million for the training ground and the academy, still in pencil. The folded sheet with 7,000,000 on it was still inside the back cover.

"19 days," she said. "Then I ink it, or I rub it out."

She closed the book.