Heartland (15 page)

As he ran back in, Glenn was explaining a routine he wanted them to go through. He'd put a couple of cones down to make a goal and ordered Chris between them. Chris was another odd character to be playing for a team that was being run by the BNP, an art lecturer at the college who smoked roll-ups. Rob went to join the others in one of the lines, but Glenn stopped him.

Right, wim gonna do this against a defender an all – Rob, yome defending – the attacker starts here, knocks it out wide – yome running already – and runs into the goal-mouth to look for the cross. Rob's job's to keep yer out. Got it?

Everybody nodded. Rob trotted back to the goal.

All right, Chrissie.

Chris smirked and lifted his arm in a Hitler salute and nodded at Glenn.

Right, I'll run through it fust as the attacker. On yer toes, Glenn shouted at Kyle Woodhouse who was at the front of the other queue. Kyle had got jeans and a jumper on, with his jeans tucked into his football socks and football boots. His head was shaved and he'd grown a wispy moustache since last week's game. Rob and Karen used to babysit him on Thursday nights when they'd first been going out and her cousin would be going to bingo. Rob
had given him his old
Star Wars
figures. Looking at him now, Rob felt old.

Right, go!

Glenn mis-hit the pass towards Kyle. A hospital ball, and even though Rob had been rocking on his heels, he worked out he could take off, nip in and get to the ball before it even reached Kyle, even if it meant sliding through him and everything else: all this in a fraction of a second. Not even a coherent thought, really, an instinct, a memory of all the times he'd made that kind of equation before. Slide through it and send the ball flying up the park to show Glenn what a pathetic excuse for a pass – he couldn't even kick it five yards – and a training session this was; how utterly far beneath him it was to be kicking a football around the local park with a load of grown men, who should've been old enough not to have cared less about a shit game in a shit league, when it was causing all sorts of problems, really was.

Rob's legs went completely from underneath him and he hit the ground with a crash. These fucking boots! The chaos of the other night meant he hadn't bought a new pair and with the ground still damp from the rain he'd lost his footing. The moulded studs had worn away to nothing.

Kyle waited for the ball to arrive and tapped it back into Glenn's path, who took great delight in placing it past Chris into the corner of the goal. Only then did Glenn wheel around and offer a hand to pull Rob up.

Rob tried a sheepish grin. He looked down at his boots. Jesus, he muttered.

He could hear kids' laughter as well and looked up to see Patrick and Leroy, his football boys, strolling past the end of the pitch. Rob grinned at them and waved half-heartedly.

All right, try it again. Glenn beckoned a different pair of attackers. Go!

This time the pass outside was firmer and Rob snapped into concentration, bent-kneed, side-on, he put his arm out to feel where Neil Twigg, the attacker, was. The cross came in along the floor towards the near post. Rob got his body between Twiglet and where the ball was coming from and took a couple of steps towards it.

His legs went out from under him. This time he landed on his back, which knocked his breath away. It was all Twiglet could do not to stamp on him as he tumbled across him.

Shit, sorry. Rob got up, shaking his head. He could feel Glenn staring at him, was aware of Patrick and Leroy looking as they walked away. They hadn't stopped to watch, at least.

All right, Rob, serious this time, eh, Glenn said, and clapped his hands. Rob told him to fuck off under his breath.

The pass went out again. Again, a couple of steps towards the ball as it came in and bang! Head first this time, but at least with his hands out to break the fall. His right hand slapped down on to a pile of dog shit. He stayed down on his hands and knees for a moment, fuming. He rarely lost his temper these days, not since starting at the school, in fact, not like when he and Karen used to row and he'd smash his fist against the wall in a rage, but he was angry now, disgusted with it all. It wasn't just the boots. He could feel himself deflating, any ability he'd once had leaking slowly out of him. There was no use pretending any more. Even as he'd slipped through the leagues he'd kidded himself he could play a bit. Now he thought it was a miracle, a fluke, or just because of his surname, that he'd got anywhere in the first place.

Bloody hell, Rob, have a break, ull yer? Lee, mate, come an be the defender for a bit. Wim gerrin nowhere wi this.
Yow'll atta get some studs in yer boots, Rob. Yome like bloody Bambi on ice.

Withdrawn from a pointless little training exercise like this, with a handful of shit, was a new low. Rob wiped the palm of his hand methodically on the grass before standing up with as much dignity as he felt he had left. What was worse was that no one was laughing, just staring at him, apart from the two schoolkids, who were now a long way down the other pitch sharing their cigarette and laughing their heads off.

Fuck this, Rob said, and he walked slowly but purposefully past the two lines of players without catching anyone's eye. A couple of them began to call after him as he walked towards his car. Glenn's voice was loudest but Lee, knowing his mate a bit better, said, Just leave him, he'll be all right, yer know what he's like.

They were back up the other end.
Another England free-kick. Beckham's familiar stance, his curved run, a much better strike. Somebody headed it up in the air and the ball dropped towards the edge of the box. Beckham was after it and threw himself into a challenge, Kily Gonzalez again, his arm flailing. Beckham flattened Gonzalez. Rob's eyes snapped towards Collina and just for a moment thought somehow Beckham had done it again, was going off again, and what that would do to him.

No, Rob said under his breath, took a few steps back to the table. Nobody else seemed to see it. There was blood. Gonzalez was standing now, his nose bleeding. People in the clubhouse were cheering.

And it was fine, no card or anything. Rob sat heavily back on his chair, took a few mouthfuls of his pint, remembered he was trying to take the drinking easy because of later, and turned to ask Stacey if she'd pour him another pint.

Rob appeared at the conservatory window.
He still entered the house the way he had when he was a kid, through the side gate and round to the back door, where he'd rattle into the kitchen. He was wearing his football kit, no shoes on his feet, no sign of any. He padded across the tiled floor in his socks and asked if he could use the shower.

Jim could hear him now, opening the bathroom door and walking across the landing. He put the kettle on, pushed away the notebook in which he'd been writing a letter about the new mosque. As he was writing he'd realized that he'd based all of the ‘community opinions' he'd referred to on a drunken conversation with Joey Khan in the clubhouse a couple of months before, told to him at least second-hand anyway, as Joey was hardly a regular at Friday prayers. It would've been easier if the other Labour councillors had still been speaking to him. Not that anybody had said that they weren't, but it was there in the way they wouldn't look him in the eye at council meetings or in the silence regarding helping him out with this election campaign. Not that he'd been too willing to accept any help, this election or any other. He used to pride himself on being a bit of a maverick. He was stumbling over the letter, though, because the truth was he didn't even know any Muslims, not really.

He knew Joey, obviously, and Mr Ali from the Muslim Parents Association, whose son had been questioned after the Tipton arrests and had now gone off to Pakistan. There were people he came across in various groups and meetings, people in the Labour Party, of course; the two other ward councillors, Abdul Haq and Sajid Mahmood, were Muslim. Nobody he could really talk to, though. And it got embarrassing, because he ended up pretending he knew more than he really did, about Islam in general, about Cinderheath in particular, about everything, and what was
worse was that he suspected that everyone else did the same. Anything but lose face and talk about things honestly.

This was the chink – no, the bloody great big hole – in the armour that the BNP could exploit.

Yome looking better than when yer come in, Jim said to Rob as he came down from upstairs. I've put the kettle on.

Ta, Uncle Jim. Rob was towelling his hair off and had changed into a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms with still no sign of any shoes.

Yer lost yer shoes?

Sort of.

What dyer mean?

Throwed em in the cut. Rob sat down, smiling to himself and shaking his head, his earring glinting in the sun coming in through the window. Jim noticed he'd helped himself to his aftershave.

Eh?

We was meant to have training tonight. I doh know. Iss ridiculous. Grown men chasing arahnd the park like kids. With kids. I lost me temper, just left. Threw me boots out the car winder when I got to the bridge. Me trainers am still on the park. Lee ull pick em up, I hope.

That was a bit of a saft thing to do, wor it?

The training or throwing me boots away?

Yome a bit old for this, son.

The boots was split, any road.

Jim got up to make the tea. Calling by when he was in some sort of trouble or things were on his mind was also something Rob had been doing since he'd been a kid, protecting his mum and dad, working out how to soften the blow. Jim remembered washing a bloody school shirt for him once, not asking any questions; remembered him sitting there when the Villa let him go, when Karen left, working out what he was going to say at home.

Does this mean yow've changed yer mind abaht playin next wik?

Rob shrugged. I'll atta play, woh I.

Yow woh atta do nuthin, son, if yer doh want to. Yow ay got no boots now, any road. Jim tried to make light of it.

Maybe they'll drop me now, after tonight, storming off.

Arr, course they will.

Maybe it'll get called off. Iss too risky in loads o ways. Stirrin up trouble.

Maybe, maybe. Do us all a favour if it was. Well, do me one, probably. Be one less thing to worry about.

Yer doh think they'll call it off, though?

No, not now. I've phoned the league and the police, expressed me concerns. They think iss a bigger risk not to play it. Means they'd atta give the title to yow lot without yer playing. Unless the Gurdwara score a hatful – I'll talk to yer abaht that in a minute. I told em back in January to throw yer out the league when it became clear who was paying for everything.

I know, sorry.

Back in January, when the original game had been postponed and the Sunday team expelled from the official Cinderheath Football Club, after the BNP had bought the team a new England kit, Jim had tried to get the league to throw them out as well. They were too scared or lazy to do anything. Then and now.

Listen, yer doh atta play in it, yer know. Yer can just walk away like yer did tonight.

I've gorra play in it. Iss ower team.

It ay ower team no more. Wim just gooin rahnd in circles, wi this. Woss yer dad say?

Not much, as yer know.

Maybe yer should try askin him.

He woh say nuthin. He'll shrug, tell me to do what I
think. He's thinking o voting for em, to hear him carry on lately.

Doh joke, son.

I wor.

Glenn was fuming after training.
He'd had it all planned out and Rob had ruined it. He was lazy, that was Rob's problem. Everything came too easy to him. He'd never had to work for anything so when it came to it, if you asked him to dig a bit deeper, there was nothing there. It was pathetic. Spineless.

The rest of Rob's family were the same, Glenn thought. His Uncle Jim was the worst. They thought everything would come to them. They were wasteful with their friendships and their attitude to life. Rob going off and having a drink with his Paki mate, his Uncle Jim cosying up to them all at the council, spending his council tax on the Rastafarian centre and Asian women's groups and on the wages of those people sitting up in the council offices doing nothing for their own kind.

He'd admit that they'd been good to him, really helped when he was a kid and things were bad – he used to go round there a lot – but that was part of his point, they were too nice to everybody, too soft. He'd driven past Pauline's salon the other day and seen Rob's mom talking to his sister Stacey outside the shop. Stacey had got the girl with her. He'd seen Kathleen give her some money, a couple of coins.

He'd spoken to his sister just once since she got pregnant the first time, to ask if she'd come and see their grandad before he died. She hadn't. It had all started with the big row about the type of bloke she wanted to hang around with. It ay right, his grandad, had said. It allus ends in upset. Yer should goo with yer own. He'd gone on on that theme before. Stacey had a go back at him. He'd
called her a slut, hit her. She spat at him. Glenn hadn't known what to think. She was fourteen, he was fifteen. He thought they'd been through the worst. Next thing she was pregnant.

The first bloke was never going to stick around, not at that age. She lived with their mother and the baby. Then, what a surprise, their mother threw Stacey out and she ended up on her own up at the flats. Jim had probably sorted the flat out. Eventually there was another bloke on the scene. Probably loads of them. Not for long, though. It never was, was it? Long enough for her to be pregnant again, though. What were you meant to think? It had all ended in upset. His grandad had been right about that.

It was actually Stacey who wasn't talking to him. If she backed down a bit, admitted her mistakes, maybe they could do something – those kids were his flesh and blood after all, although the idea of it made him shudder. He thought his wife Anne spoke to her occasionally, but she didn't say anything to him. She protected him, he supposed. If Stacey backed down, maybe they could sort things out. It was ridiculous now she was working behind the bar in the clubhouse. Jim had probably done that on purpose to force him out. He wasn't having it. It made trying to buy a round a problem, though.