Heartland (14 page)

Rob called to Glenn and tapped the side of his head.
Just think, eh? he said quietly. Glenn wouldn't have heard. Glenn nodded his head. Rob could hear Chrissie clapping his gloves together behind them, Come on, lads!

The lad with the beard was talking in Urdu to Zubair. Zubair's Urdu was about as good as Rob's.

There was no one in when Jim got home.
He'd made the mistake of driving the quick route back right through the estate. There were flags everywhere. On Juniper Close there was a house with red, white and blue bunting up, as if dropped in from the Shankhill Road. He reckoned the red, white and blue were BNP and the St George's were football ones. There were some BNP posters, not just the ones on lampposts and street signs; he'd seen three tonight in people's front windows. One of them was in Nancy and Wesley's front window, and she was his bloody cousin! Mind you, he'd never liked Wesley, he had to admit, and had never bothered to help him when he came to complain about the kids making a noise out at the bus-stop in front of their house.

In a bad mood about the posters, Jim opened a bottle of wine, picked out his
Madame Butterfly
CD and went upstairs to get five minutes on Michael's computer. Jim loved opera. He'd got into it in his forties. When he'd been with Jackie they'd listened to Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and he'd loved that stuff then. It was too much for him now. One morning recently at work he'd heard the organ at the start of ‘Like a Hurricane' from the radio and had to walk out to the yard with that pain in his chest, thinking about playing that album over and over at a cottage Jackie and he stayed at near Aberystwyth, the year of that great summer, when they'd slept naked with all the windows open and a breeze blowing through from the sea. Before he'd met her he'd preferred R'n'B, Blue Beat,
Ska, Motown, that they used to play on Fridays in Dudley. He'd gone to see Stevie Wonder once at Dudley Plaza, seen him led on to the stage like a lost little boy.

Pauline liked pop – all sorts as long as it was cheerful. She had the radio on all day at the salon but could never name the songs and that was OK, but Jim liked throwing himself into things. He started liking opera when the Three Tenors sang at the World Cup Final; before that he'd sort of assumed, as people did, that it wasn't for the likes of him. He began getting CDs from the library and then started to learn more about it. Now, he liked nothing more than getting in on a Friday, or maybe some time on Sunday morning when he was doing odd jobs, and putting the stereo on and turning the sound up with the windows open to the whole street, blasting out a bit of Puccini or Verdi. They were his favourites.

That was a trip to plan, when he'd been mayor and retired from the council. Or in a few weeks when he'd lost his seat, he thought darkly. He would've liked to go to Milan, to the opera house. He imagined a weekend taking in
La Bohème
at La Scala and the Milan derby at the San Siro. Cigars and good suits, red wine and pasta. Or to Verona and that festival they had in the amphitheatre. Yes, a cheap flight to Italy and they could spend his stash of money he'd put away after a couple of lucky bets, intending at the time for it to be for when – if – Michael went to university. For a moment, he felt quite bright about losing the election.

Michael's stereo had a better sound than the one downstairs. He'd found a game Michael had been playing where you were a soldier running around shooting people. There were a lot of people he felt like shooting and it got things out of his system. So he sat there, knocking back some cheap French wine that Joey Khan delivered in crates, the aria drifting out of the window and across the houses and
gardens bedecked with flowers and flags, wrestling with the mouse to get his figure to forward roll and jump and shoot and dodge in and out the burning buildings against a bright, dusty, mountainous background somewhere in the Arabian desert, instead of ringing Bill or going through the postal votes list, or any number of jobs that he'd planned to do while watching lorries coming and going into the yard at work earlier that week.

Batistuta lost Campbell completely.
It was inevitable, really, that they were back at the England end, the nervous ebb and flow of a game like this. England hadn't capitalized on their little spell.

He moved across Campbell. The ball came in and he flashed a header goalwards, his long hair like an explosion around the ball. More screams.

Great save!

His Uncle Jim threw his head back. Rob leaned against the fruit machine, like he was burrowing himself away from the screen, through the wall into the street outside. His dad sat like a statue. Batistuta looked reborn suddenly, eyes bright.

After the computer he had a cigarette in the conservatory and listened out for Michael to come back,
realized he should've been more worried than he was, with everything that was going on.

Michael's key sounded in the door at five to nine, five minutes before Pauline was due back.

All right, mate, where yer bin?

Aht.

I know, but where out?

Just aht.

Oh. Was yer playin football? I sid there was a game gooin on at the park when I drove past.

No. Michael moved to go upstairs. Jim thought he heard him mutter, I doh even like football.

Onny yer need to be careful, me mate, with everything thass gooin on. Yer know wheer I've been tonight?

No response.

Dahn the hospital, thass wheer. Yer know Andre Brown from yower school, he's Stacey's son, who yow've heard us talking about. He's younger than yow, yer know him, got attacked tonight, stabbed, the back o the shops. Yow've gorra be careful, mate.

Mom tode me. Is he all right?

Michael looked at Jim for the first time, worried. Jim was relieved, thought that even this news might have been met with a shrug.

Well, he ay great. He ay gonna die if thass what yer mean. He'll be all right. Iss his arm and shoulder an a mark across his face. Imagine that, eh. He'll be scarred across his face. He's in shock. Still in the hospital tonight. Imagine how his poor mother feels.

Michael shook his head vaguely.

Nobody was sayin nothing at school today was they? About a fight or nothing. I know how these things goo on.

Michael shook his head again. Yer know who it ull be, he said. They'll have all come up from Dudley Road or summat, probly.

Well, yer shunt just assume that, Jim said. There was something in his son's tone:
they, them, yer know who it ull be,
that sounded borrowed, reminded Jim of all the voices on the estate he'd hear at his surgery or at the bar in the clubhouse or sitting down for a sandwich at work.
Them who get everything, yer know who that ull be for, yer might know, them, them, them.
Them and us.

But yer day hear nuthin abaht what was gooin on? Nor tonight when yer was out? I'm surprised people wor talkin abaht it. Yer know what folks am like.

Michael shrugged.

Jim decided he didn't have the energy, tried a different tack.

I got to the bridge on Gulf Strike but got shot. I was a ghost for a while and found out where all the terrorists were.

This caught Michael out and his face brightened. For a moment his face was open and happy and the cloud seemed to lift.

Yow always play as the goodies.

Well, yer know, get the girl an kill the baddies. Thass what it's all about. Iss just like life, son.

The cloud started hovering again.

Gulf Strike. Ay yer got council work to do or summat?

I'm doin it now.

What he was doing was doodling a map of the ward. It helped him think. There were just under ten thousand people in Cinderheath ward, of those, two thousand were Muslim, the vast majority of the rest were white. The Muslim population was younger than the white one – say five hundred were kids, so couldn't vote anyway. That left fifteen hundred, say turnout would be thirty-odd per cent, if that: that only left five hundred people. Even if all five hundred voted for him there were still a couple of thousand votes in the rest of the ward. Most of them should've been Labour voters. In fact, they all should have been Labour voters, allowing for a few hundred Tories around the park, except now suddenly they were all going to vote BNP. It was a fashion. It was ridiculous to even think he might lose. It wasn't just the posters – Wesley and Nancy, for God's sake – it was a strength of feeling, an undercurrent, a lingering resentment that Jim could feel, throbbing from the streets all around him, from people he'd known all his life, and getting into his head,
us and them, what they get, what we doh
. He rubbed at his temples and stared at the map.

The turnout would be bigger because of the BNP. Maybe it would mean more Labour voters would come out too because of the threat of losing the seat, but he wasn't sure people were that bothered. Why should they be, given the evidence of what use it was to them? There'd be loads who'd never voted before, not kids but young ones in their twenties and thirties, queueing up to vote for Bailey. He'd asked Stacey the other night if she'd ever voted and she just looked at him blankly, like he'd asked if she'd ever been to the moon. Mind you, if he was being honest, it had never bothered him that much before. People would tut about the turnout at the count and in the days and weeks afterwards, but what did it matter, really, if you got elected? In most wards you knew exactly what was going to happen. Who cared if two-thirds, three-quarters, four-fifths of the population couldn't be bothered to vote if you knew you were going to win?

Jim pictured queues of people at the polling stations, minibuses flying St George's flags running up and down Juniper Close ferrying people back and forth. No, you reap what you sow, he thought for the second time that evening, even muttering this as he carried on drawing on the map, worrying that he hadn't checked up on the postal votes at the old people's flats because he'd been busy at work – some bloody problem caused by the price of cheap Chinese steel. Yes, you reap what you sow, he decided, drawing a line of question marks around the old Cinderheath works-cum-mosque and then tapping his pen to the rhythm of the angry American shouting that passed for music snarling from Michael's room.

Zanetti hit another cross.
Campbell was nowhere again. The ball fell for Kily Gonzalez. Rob tried to push himself back through the clubhouse wall. Kily Gonzalez volleyed it –Rob had spent the whole season watching him do this,
had loved the Valencia side that had done so well that year, loved sitting watching them on Champions League nights with his dad – but there was Beckham closing down, working hard, only one foot or not.

Thass great stuff from Beckham.

Yow cor fault his effort.

On the Friday, Glenn arranged some training.
Glenn had got them sprinting up and down on shuttle runs when Rob got there, having to swerve around piles of shit and people walking their dogs. Rob had arrived late on purpose, trying to miss the running. He was Paul McGrath at this level, he told himself, didn't have to do any running.

Also, this was what you might do in July, not with a game of the season left to play and with a title to decide. A bit of ball work would be fine. Get the people who'd be playing together in the match playing on the same side now with a bit of five-a-side, get their confidence up, no problem. Instead they were sprinting up and down the park with Glenn staring at a stopwatch.

All right, Glenn.

The park changing rooms were locked. They'd been exiled from the clubhouse just behind the far fence when Bailey bought their new kits. There was a pile of clothes and bags where Glenn stood, not lifting his eyes from the stopwatch.

All right, Rob. I'm abaht to stop this now and get some ball work going. (Thank God for that, Rob thought.) Dyer wanna do a coupla laps just to warm up?

Not really, mate. Rob slipped off his trainers and pulled on what was left of his boots. His sock poked out of the split right boot like a lizard's tongue. I've just come from football wi the kids. I bin outside all day, pretty much.

Important game, Sunday, Rob. Couldn't be bigger.

Glenn looked at him from underneath his eyebrows.
Running a team that was doing well and now getting involved with all this political stuff had gone to his head. He got things organized, Rob would allow him that, and always had enthusiasm. That was how he'd ended up in this BNP business. Rob could imagine him drawing up little maps of the estate and ticking off voters and those who needed to be seen. Planning everything as a proper campaign, like you were supposed to. He could probably even get the trains to run on time. Rob smiled to himself, imagining Glenn in a uniform with a big hat. It was nothing to smile about, though.

Glenn was still staring at him, while Rob flicked a ball up.

All right, Cloughie, he laughed and set off on a desultory jog around the park. He tried to attract Lee's attention as he trotted off but his mate was bent double next to one of the cones, throwing up after a sprint. He'd probably had a couple of pints after his shift.

Rob actually enjoyed the run, and at the far end of the pitches strode up the bank and alongside the fence to look into the gardens of the big houses that backed on to the park, had a glimpse at the lives inside: a woman washing up and looking out of the window, two kids wrestling over a toy car, a girl, still in her Cinderheath uniform, her face lit by the glow of a computer screen, talking on her mobile phone. Where he turned to run back, he could see the roof of Zubair and Katie's house. He and Karen used to walk along this way on Sundays and imagine living in a house like one of these, maybe not in Cinderheath. If he made it somehow as a footballer it would be somewhere else, but there were worse places to live. It was a small ambition, he thought now. Back then, even when he was dropping a league a season, when he was twenty-two, twenty-three, he thought it would still come together. Failure hadn't seemed so inevitable then. He and Karen bought a new
flat by the canal with the promise of her money from the beautician's – she was already managing it – and a deposit from her grandad. There was money left over from years before, from cash that her grandad had buried when he robbed the post office. He'd kept quiet about where it was, served the full sentence and then dug it up the night he got out and went and deposited it in an account at the same post office. Rob had thought then that he'd be able to tell their kids about how they'd paid for their first house with buried treasure. He'd have done anything to be able to buy a house by the park now.