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A hat-trick of torturous days.

Of excruciating days.

The black mares in free gallop.

Running amok over field and furrow.

Early. Only Harding and Brompton in before him. No fucking surprises there. He walked the empty corridors, grabbed a mug from the cupboard in the Inclusion room and filled the kettle.

7.15 a.m. Quiet hour. Deathly still. Into his classroom. No fucking heat from the radiators, staring into the courtyard at the pathetic trees, the hard-packed earth, a lonely Bic biro, the torn-off cover of a kid’s planner. Hunched over his mug, motionless, searching for motivation. Footsteps passed by his doorway. McCarthy, white shirt and black tie, like he was heading to a funeral. No hint of the week in his face.

McCarthy the machine. Smiling.

‘Shit the bed, John?’

‘Thought I’d take a leaf out of your book.’

‘Grand. See you in briefing then,’ said McCarthy. ‘You can say a few words about that course we sent you on.’

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

7.50 a.m. He stared at his planner, at the blank pages, at a full day in the classroom, five fucking lessons in a row, hardly time to take a breath.

Kirsty Watson the first in, as always. She only lived across the street but was one of the rarities, happier in school than out. And here she was, leaning against the door frame.

He set her off changing a display. She was glad enough doing it.

‘Did you see your mum lately?’

Without a blink.

‘I never see my mum.’

Enough said.

One by one the rest of his form dribbled in. He left them to it, fucked off to briefing.

Mullholland. Irish. Fit as fuck. Her and the rest of the English honeys huddled in the corner. He attached himself to their edge, listened to their stories of Thursday night shenanigans until attention fell his way.

‘How was the training?’

‘Like a slow death.’

‘At least you had an easy few days.’

He shrugged, brushing the training under the carpet. But the carpet was threadbare, on its way out.

Silence.

So he told them all about it, or what he remembered about setting meaningful targets, difficult conversations, the importance of self-evaluation and the appraisal of others. When he thought back to the hotel everything was monochrome.

Even his face in the mirror.

‘Did you hear about Cloughie?’ he asked.

Two of the girls looked at him.

‘Who?’

Simultaneous fucking ignorance.

At least it was Friday.

P1–Year 8. Fucking mad bunch. He stuck a DVD on, kept them in their seats. Animated Chaucer.
The Pardoner’s Tale.
Fucking Chaucer to that crowd. Fucking education system.

P2–Year 9. Testosterone and hormones. It hardly mattered what he planned. Ten minutes handing out pens. Ten minutes ridding the room of mobile phones. Ten minutes chasing homework. Ten minutes issuing instructions. Ten minutes repeating them. Ten minutes blocking the door to prevent the fuckers getting out to break early. A healthy routine that suited both sides.

P3–Year 11. All boys. It was Friday. There was the weekend’s football to talk about. Chelsea. Arsenal. Spurs. West Ham on the TV. Hardly any of the fuckers had ever been near a ground. He pitied them for it. He really did. He showed them some video footage of Cloughie in his prime. They laughed at the length of his shorts.

P4–Year 12. Lazy bastards. Literature students with not the slightest interest in English fucking literature. Pick a poem. Any poem.

P5–Year 7. Drama. Fuck me.

Duty at break. A mug of tea outside the toilets, the reek of piss, discount perfume and teenage sweat. Lunch in his room, ham sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil, a packet of crisps, an apple. Kelly’s killer cuisine. Department catch-up after school. Tea and biscuits. The girls calling him a miserable bastard each time he risked a contribution. At least Davies didn’t piss about or pontificate. They were done in a half an hour.

He drove home in the forlorn twilight, past the leafy grounds of the local grammar school half a mile up the road, felt the familiar resentment and a faint glimmer of pride in himself. He hadn’t succumbed. He still had his principles in place.

Not that it fucking mattered.

He spent the day on the sofa, watching the tributes to Clough, listening to the updates from grounds he knew and grounds he’d never know. In the evening he collected Kelly from her shift, fetched Chinese food, shared it with her whilst staring at the TV, the two of them shirking the subject of where they were heading, their elephant filling the space between them on the sofa, in the bedroom, in their double bed.

Together apart.

Later, he wrestled his mares in the darkness.

He took himself out along the river, trudged up the path, hands in pockets, sometimes stopping to stare at the rolling water, sometimes looking down at his reflection, not liking what he saw, wondering what was coming next, how long it would be before Kelly brought the subject up again, where it might lead them.

Because she would do.

Five years and all the associated baggage, the good times and the bad times. Five years in this singular relationship. The road ahead paved with expectation. Him floundering, tripping on the flagstones.

Mares and elephants.

Elephants and mares.

How the fuck had it come to this?

Monday morning blues.

He couldn’t face work, got Kelly to call in sick for him, tell them his voice had gone. And it had. He wasn’t fucking lying about it. He lay under the covers listening to her move about the house, tense until he heard the door slam and her footsteps disappearing down the garden path and away.

He collapsed in on himself.

Dark clouds trooping in. He shut his eyes against it all.

When he woke later the house was fucking freezing. He cranked up the heating, made himself a mug of the good stuff and retreated to bed with a handful of ginger nuts. He sat there propped against the pillows, dunking each biscuit and savouring the sheer indulgence. He looked at the time and pitied the poor bastard that had been taken to cover him. Well, fuck it, he needed a rest. He stayed in bed until lunchtime, ignoring the phone twice, hearing the post land on the doormat, half dreaming these things, slipping in and out of consciousness. When the phone rang the third time he was in the kitchen, trying to make himself a sarnie. It was Kelly.

‘You’re up then.’

‘Just.’

‘Feeling better?’

‘Not really.’

‘Have you called the doctor?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Are you going to?’

‘No.’

‘He’ll give you something.’

‘I don’t want anything.’

A pause.

‘So you’re okay then?’ she asked again.

‘I have a bad throat.’

Another pause.

‘Are you going to fetch me?’

‘If you like.’

‘5.15, the usual place?’

‘Yep. All being well…’

He heard her sigh.

‘Stop being so morose,’ she said. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘Revel in my freedom. Be the life and soul…’

‘Fuck your sarcasm,’ she said. ‘Are you going to make some room in the attic? You said you were.’

‘If I feel up to it,’ he said.

He didn’t bother with a sandwich in the end. He made himself soup instead and stuffed the bread into it, sat in the living room watching the Boating Channel, thinking about buying a canal boat and fucking off into a netherworld. When the soup was done he went upstairs, opened the hatch to the attic. He carried the ladder up from the garage and set it in place, switched on the light and peered into the fucking shambles beyond.

Boxes of shit. His and hers. He hoarded stuff like he hoarded memories. Wasn’t that the fucking problem? The immediate passed him by but the past lingered.

On his hands and knees, shuffling about, his shadow forever blocking the way. Suitcases full of clothes. Her clothes. Her handbags. Her shoes. More clothes than fucking Elton. All as good as new. The box of tricks they’d collected and had fun with in their livelier days, now consigned to the attic. Another fucking life. What if he called her now, ordered her home, told her he had the box out and wanted to try a few things? He
sat with his legs dangling from the attic hatch, pondering the thought. Given the circumstances it was best to leave it.

Crawling. Forcing his way into the darkest corners. Somewhere. Fucking somewhere. Boxes. Another life. Before Kelly. Before teaching. Before all the middle-aged mediocre bollocks. Uni files. Before those. A box in the corner. Cardboard. Taped shut. Maybe. Just maybe.

They were piled together, a couple of hundred at least. Two hundred games. Two hundred days. Two hundred great adventures. Home and away. He dragged the box into the light, down the ladder, down the stairs, out into the garden, out to the summer house. He kicked away the summer chairs, the wheelbarrow, the gardening tools, cleared the worktop. It wasn’t meant to be a shed. It was never meant to be a shed.

He raised one from the box, lifted it to his face, buried his nose in it, breathed it all in, the agony and the fucking ecstasy, the magic and the mayhem. His first forays into manhood played out in squalid away ends, on dirty British Rail trains and tired city streets. It was all here, written on these pages. He could smell it. He could fucking well reach out and touch it.

In the bottom of the box, an enamel badge, a subtle thing, the simple tree, the heraldic treatment of water, red, white and gold, a centimetre square. He rested it on the worktop, placed it there with precision and reverence.

He started sorting the programmes, season by season, match day by match day. Virgin trips to Anfield, Old Trafford, Highbury. Chaz and Dave at White Hart Lane. Short-sleeved on a pitch-level terrace at Goodison in August. Huddled with the others at Upton Park in dark November. There were implausible gaps and omissions, games he remembered not evidenced by a programme, games long forgotten with a programme to prove he was there.

Snakes and ladders.

There was one complete pile. One full season. Every single minute of every single game.

88–89.

A season to remember.

A season to forget.

And not forget.

To never, ever forget.

He was waiting in the car park when she finished work, sat with the engine idling watching the other women. When she opened the passenger door he was miles away, lost in a dream of slender ankles and tight arses.

‘Alright now?’ she asked.

He shook his head.

‘I’ve felt better,’ he said.

‘Well, thanks for coming out,’ she said. ‘I didn’t fancy the bus.’

‘Couldn’t any of these have given you a ride?’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But I wanted you to do it.’

She leant over and kissed him on the cheek.

‘Can we talk later?’ she asked him. ‘Just talk.’

‘You know we can,’ he said.

He felt a tinge of affection for her, a stab of guilt too. She was like that, able to catch him off guard. For a few moments, as he pulled out and joined the queue of cars shifting towards the ring road, he felt his spirits rise. But it was stop-start after that. All headlights and tail lights. Rain too. Spray and mist. The wiper blades made a poor job of it all, had him squinting through the smeared windscreen, the lights a blurred collage, his head pounding, Kelly talking through all of it about work, about women he didn’t know and processes he had no interest in. It took a lifetime to reach their driveway, to slip the car on to it, to unlock the doors and get into the house.

She disappeared upstairs for a shower then.

Mercifully.

He lifted the key off the hook in the hall, slid open the French windows and stepped outside. Beyond the gardens, the sound of evening traffic on the High Road. He floated across the lawn to the summer house, stared through the beads of water on the glass at the neatly stacked piles, slid the key into the lock. And then he stopped. He stared at his dark reflection in the glass, stared at a seventeen-year-old version of himself, gazed into the eyes, fought his way behind those eyes, searching for a sign, not knowing what parts of himself were shaped by the things those eyes witnessed one day in April long ago and what parts were not, but knowing they were coming at him all the same, galloping freely through the fields, heading his way.

He braced himself against them. There was nothing else he could do.

And they didn’t talk, not about anything.