Chapter 305 Pieces I

It stayed round 131 for most of an hour. I sat at the kitchen table with my coat still on and watched it go up a dollar and come back, and go up again.

At 1 o’clock I took the gas bill off the side and turned it over. On the back I wrote 2 lines: Robbie’s block, and the new Bovril End.

In the life before, the coin climbed through October and went past 1,000 dollars at the end of November.

Then, in the first week of December, the Chinese central bank told the country’s banks and payment firms to have nothing to do with it. It lost a fifth that day. By the week before Christmas it was worth less than half of what it had been at the top.

I remembered it as the first week of December. I could not have told anybody which morning.

So I wrote a third line under the other 2 and drew a box round it. It said: Nothing after 30 November. Everything I sold for the club would be in pounds, in the club’s account, by the end of November. Whatever was still on paper after that would stay on paper.

I went to bed at 2 and lay awake adding it up.

On the Wednesday at 10 I was at the training ground for Robbie Doyle, and I heard Craig Sadler tell Lewis Carrow where he stood. They were by the dugout on the first pitch. Sadler used the same level voice with a player wherever they were, so I heard all of it.

Carrow had on a club tracksuit Stan had found him. The sleeves came down over his hands.

"Jamie starts at Hillsborough," Sadler said. "You are on the bench. I am telling you now. You need the 10 days."

"Right."

"If we want a goal in the last 20 minutes, you go on, you go to the far post, and you stay there. You do not come short for it. You do not go looking for it."

"And Ipswich, on the Tuesday?"

"You start at Ipswich. Jamie plays off you."

"Does he know?"

"He will when he comes in. You first, then him."

Carrow looked at the far goal for a while. "I have not played 90 minutes since March."

"Dev says you can. If you cannot, I will see it before you do, and you will come off. 6 months without a full game does that to anybody. Joe has Robertson and Rudd at 11. You are with them."

Sadler went in. Carrow stayed by the dugout and did some stretches nobody had asked him to do, with his eyes on the goal the whole time.

Behind the clubhouse, a man in a hi-vis jacket was walking the strip of grass between the car park and the second pitch with a can of white paint. pssst. He sprayed a cross on the grass, walked 20 paces, and sprayed another. pssst.

Kieran came round the corner of the clubhouse at a run.

"Boss! There is a man painting my grass."

"He is marking out Robbie’s block."

"I done the drainage under there in March." He crouched down by the nearest cross and touched the paint with one finger. It came away white. "I am going to have to look at that every day till November."

Doyle came out of the clubhouse with a letter in one hand and a mug in the other, and he was talking before he was down the step.

"THAT IS MY BLOCK, KIERAN. THAT CROSS IS THE CORNER OF DEV’S ROOM."

"It is my drainage, Robbie."

"THEN DRAIN ROUND IT." Doyle held the letter out to me. "THE CONTRACTOR. READ THE SECOND PARAGRAPH."

I read it. Proof of funds by Friday 25 October. Margaret’s name on the contract by Friday 1 November. His men on site on Monday 18 November. If not, he could not hold the men past the end of October.

"It will be in the club’s account by the 25th," I said.

"WHY NOT NOW, SAM?" He put the mug down on the bonnet of my car, clunk. "EVERYBODY IN THIS TOWN THINKS YOU HAVE MONEY COMING OUT OF YOUR EARS."

"It is not in the bank yet. It goes in a piece at a time, and yours is the first piece, the week before the 25th."

"THEN COME IN THAT CORRIDOR AND SAY IT TO MY LADS."

"No."

He looked at me. Kieran looked at the paint.

"If anything goes wrong between now and the 25th, I want you shouting at me in this car park," I said. "I do not want you stood in front of 16-year-olds, explaining why the chairman told them something that did not happen."

"NOTHING HAD BETTER GO WRONG."

"Then nothing will need explaining. I am telling you, Robbie. The 25th of October."

Doyle picked his mug up off the bonnet. When he spoke it was quiet.

"You are telling me."

"Yes."

"Then I will tell them. And if it is not there on the 25th, I will tell them whose fault it is."

"That is fair."

On his way back in he took the marker off the whiteboard by the corridor door and wrote 18 NOVEMBER across the top of it in capitals a foot high, squeak, squeak. Then he underlined it twice.

At 11 Joe had the 2 left-backs on the first pitch with a bag of balls each, 30 yards out on the left. Carrow stood at the far post, rocking on his heels.

"Andy, early," Joe said. "Charlie, to the line. Lewis, you are not moving till the ball is struck. Go."

Robertson hit the first one early and hard, from 30 yards. It went a yard over Carrow’s head. The second went over as well. The third, Carrow got his forehead to, and it went wide.

Then he walked 2 yards further out towards the touchline and stood there.

Robertson’s fourth ball dropped onto his head, and he put it back across the keeper into the far corner. thock.

Joe clapped twice. "Why did you move?"

"He hits it earlier than I am used to," Carrow said. "It goes past where they used to drop. I was waiting where the ball came 2 seasons ago."

Joe wrote it in his notebook.

Rudd took the next one to the byline and cut it back low and hard, between the keeper and the penalty spot. Carrow had to turn and stretch for it and it went over the bar.

"Sorry," said Rudd.

"Again," said Carrow. "Same ball."

Rudd did it again. Carrow met it on the half-volley, thump, and the net lifted.

Jamie Vardy was standing on the halfway line with his hands on his hips, watching all of it. I went over.

"Well?"

"He wants it in the air at the back stick," Jamie said. "I want it on the floor in front of me."

"Can you play together?"

"Craig thinks so." He watched Robertson’s next ball come over. "He goes where I do not go. That is all right with me."

On the Thursday the engineer from the firm near Chelmsford came to Marsh Road with a model of the new end in a box. It was white card, the length of my arm. The roof was a strip of clear plastic on matchsticks.

He set it on the boardroom table. Margaret and Maureen stood on one side of it, and I stood on the other.

"Down the Monday after your last home game," he said, and put his finger on the front rows. "Steel up through May and June. Seats bolted down in July. Open for the first home game of next season, if nothing goes wrong."

"What goes wrong?" said Maureen.

"Mostly the steel." He took a sheet out of the box. "The mill rolls it in December. The fabricator makes it from January to March. It comes down the A12 on lorries in April."

He turned the sheet round so we could read the dates. "For that, they want the order by Friday the 15th of November, with the money, or a letter from your bank saying the money is there."

"There will be no letter," said Margaret. "There will be the money in the account, or there will be no order."

"The money by the 15th, then."

I looked at the model. "Could it be the 29th?"

"The 29th misses their December rolling. The mill shuts for Christmas, and the next rolling is March. Steel in June. Seats in October, if you are lucky. You would play the first 2 months of next season with that end shut."

"How much is the steel?" said Maureen.

"1,400,000, near enough. I will have it exact by the end of the month."

Maureen wrote it down. Margaret did not write anything. She was looking at me.

The 15th of November was 2 weeks before I had meant to sell anything big. What would those 2 weeks cost? I did not know. I looked at the plastic roof on its matchsticks and could not make the sum come out.

"The 15th," I said.

That night, at the kitchen table, I crossed out the second line and wrote 2 under it: the steel, and the rest of the stand.