Chapter 298: Not Any Of The 4 II

At 10 to 8, Joe Tredwell was on the far pitch with the first group’s goals, dragging them into place one at a time. Harry Maguire was helping him. They carried the last one between them, Joe walking backwards and talking, Harry nodding. thunk of the frame going down on the grass.

Ted was on the bench by the car park fence with his stick across his knees. He had come on the 7 o’clock bus.

“I came to see the lads come back,” he said. “The paper says Leicester want Jamie and Harry.”

“The paper is right about that.”

“Are they having them?”

“No.”

Ted nodded and settled his stick, and sat on that bench the whole morning.

Vardy was on the car park wall in his flip-flops, with his boots beside him. He kicked the flip-flops off and pulled the boots on.

“Told my agent to stop ringing round about it,” he said. “He said they will come back. I said let them.”

“Thank you, Jamie.”

“Do not thank me. I am going nowhere.” He pulled the first lace tight. “I rang Harry Saturday night. One Sheffield lad to another.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Wednesday let me go at 16. I was 23 and still at Stocksbridge when this lot signed me.” He did the second lace. “I told him there is no rush. He said he would think about it.”

Riyad found me at the canteen door with a cup of tea in each hand, one of them for Joe.

“Danny’s paper says Leicester asked about me as well,” he said.

“They did. I am telling them no.”

“For me it is simple. In October I play against them, in our shirt.” He went past me with the teas.

N’Golo was already on the grass, the first one out after Harry, doing slow laps of the far pitch by himself. He came past the fence on his second lap and lifted a hand to me without stopping.

“Chairman,” he said. “I stay here.”

Then he ran on.

At 8 o’clock Sadler came out of the building with his sheet and read out the first group. Harry’s was the first name he read.

peep. That was Doyle, on the next pitch with the scholars’ first morning back, his whistle round his neck and his voice already going. Lenny Marsh was over there with him, on one crutch, and Harry looked across at him twice during the warm-up.

Joe clapped, clap clap, and the first group went.

In the first drill Harry talked the back line through every ball, the way Lenny used to, and twice he went across to the youngest lad in the group and moved him a yard with a hand on his shoulder.

Charlie Rudd was in the second group, on the left, where he had been all last season, working away in the corner nearest the road.

At the break Doyle came over to the fence, red in the face, with a bag of bibs over his shoulder.

“I READ IT. 8 MILLION. THAT IS MY BLOCK 16 TIMES OVER, SAM.”

“It is.”

“AND YOU ARE SAYING NO?”

“On Friday.”

He looked across at the first group, at Harry heading a ball back to Joe, and Jamie walking back into position with his hands on his hips.

“THEN KEEP THEM,” he said. “AND GET MY LADS OUT OF THAT CORRIDOR BEFORE CHRISTMAS.”

He went back to his pitch, and was blowing his whistle at somebody halfway there.

At the end of the morning, across on the scholars’ pitch, Lenny Marsh touched 2 fingers to his left arm, just above the elbow, where the armband goes. Harry saw it, and nodded once, and went back to his drill.

At dinnertime I was at my car when Harry came out to his. His phone was ringing in his hand. bzzz. bzzz.

He looked at the name on it and let it ring till it stopped. It started again straight away. He turned it off, put it in the glove box, and went back inside without seeing me.

Ted went for the 1 o’clock bus. On his way past the wall he stopped and called across the car park, “Morning, captain,” and Harry, at the canteen door, lifted a hand to him and went in.

Sadler had seen it from the corridor window. He came out and stood by my car with his hands in his tracksuit pockets.

“His agent,” he said, and went back in to eat his dinner.

Joe caught me on the way out, with his notebook in his back pocket and grass on his tracksuit.

“Is the captain all right?” he said.

“I do not know yet.”

“Then I will watch him this week,” said Joe, and went off to find Dev about his knee.

Harry came up to my office on the Thursday after training, with his hair still wet from the shower.

“I am not putting anything in writing,” he said.

“All right.”

“I did want to go. I am telling you to your face.” He stood in front of the desk with his hands in his pockets. “I am staying because of Lenny, and because of what you said in that dugout. Not the contract. I wanted you to know that.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“Next summer, if somebody comes, I will want to talk about it.”

In the life before, he left Sheffield the next summer, at 21, for less money than Leicester were offering us now.

“Then come to me first,” I said. “Before your agent rings anybody back. I will give you a straight answer that day.”

He nodded and went down the stairs 2 at a time. I had a year to make him glad he stayed.

Margaret had brought me a draft of the reply on the Wednesday, 3 lines with a space at the bottom for my name.

“Add a line about approaches,” I said.

“Has somebody approached?”

“Harry’s agent says he has not spoken to them. Jamie’s agent has been ringing round about it, and Jamie has told him to stop. I would like Leicester to read that line anyway, from us, in writing.”

“Then it goes in.” She wrote it in the margin. “And it goes by fax and by recorded delivery. The fax gets there at 4 on Friday. The letter gets there on Monday with somebody’s signature on it, and then nobody at Leicester can say it never came.”

She took the draft away to type.

She brought the finished reply up at 4 o’clock on the Friday, on the club’s paper, with a copy for the file underneath.

TILBROOK TOWN FOOTBALL CLUB Friday 5 July 2013 · by fax and by recorded delivery For the attention of the Chief Executive, Leicester City Football Club Thank you for your letter of 28 June. The club does not accept either offer. Permission to speak to Jamie Vardy or to Harry Maguire is refused. Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kanté are not available for discussion. No player named in your letter is for sale. Any approach to these players, or to anybody acting for them, will be reported to the Football Association. S. Mercer, Chairman

“Do we give them a reason?” I said.

“No. If we give them a reason, they will write back and argue with it.” She held out the pen. “Sign it. Then I will send it.”

I signed it. She took it down to the fax machine by Priya’s desk, and I heard it go from the top of the stairs: the dial tone, the number, the long rising shriek of the connection, then the slow grrr-grrr of the paper feeding through, and a single beep when it was gone.

Priya rang the man from 1971 at 5 past, and then came up and stood in my doorway.

“He said he will renew his season ticket on Monday,” she said. “He said he had not, till today. He was waiting to see.”

Maureen came up after her, when the fax had been sent and filed.

“The stand stays in the back of my book, then,” she said.

“Till the winter.”

She went back to her desk without another word, and I heard her drawer open and close.

Danny rang at quarter past 5. I read him the reply and he took it down, and said he had his back page.

“Can I ask you one thing that is not for the paper?” he said.

“Ask.”

“Did you think about taking it?”

“For about a minute, last Friday, in Maureen’s office.”

“I will not print that,” said Danny, and rang off to write the rest.

At 20 to 6 Leicester’s club secretary rang Margaret. She wrote the time of the call on the file copy, under my signature, and then came and told me at the top of the stairs.

“They thanked us for the reply,” she said. “They said they understood. They said they would write again in January.”

“About who?”

“They did not say.”

I drove out to the training ground on the way home. Sadler was the last one there, standing at the edge of the far pitch with next week’s sheet in his hand, watching one player do sprints by himself in the evening light.

It was Charlie Rudd. 50 yards, walk back, 50 yards again. thud thud thud of his studs on the dry ground. He had played most of last season in the 3 shirt and lost it in April to a loan player Wilf had found.

“I told Rudd this morning,” Sadler said. “The Scottish lad is in his group from Monday, and he is coming for the shirt.”

“How did he take it?”

“He did not say anything. He did 10 more of those after Joe had stopped the rest.”

“And the Scottish lad?”

“Rang me from Glasgow last night to ask what time we start on Monday, and whether he should bring boots or would we give him some.” Sadler almost smiled. “I told him 8, and bring his boots.”

He held the sheet out to me. Monday’s groups. On the left side of the second group he had written 2 names, one above the other, in his small square hand: Rudd, C. and under it, Robertson, A.

Out on the grass, Rudd turned at the far cone and came back flat out, thud thud thud.