Heartland (24 page)

Did he say anything to them?

No, he's stubborn. Like his mother, I spose.

Her hand was shaking, he noticed, as she reached for a half-drunk cup of tea.

Look, if it was me, I'd give it a couple o days an if he still ay sayin nuthin, tek him back to the hospital, at least to the doctor's.

Yer cor goo to the doctor's for being quiet.

It might be shock or summat. Is he talking to yow?

Stacey smiled. She took a plastic Winnie-the-Pooh beaker from beside the sink and turned to walk past him. She looked up at him for a moment before he stepped out of the doorway, the last of the smile still flickering and her face suddenly alive.

He might have said a bit.

She slipped past him to give Gemma her drink. She kissed the little girl on top of her head like Andre had.

We'll have we tea in a bit, Andre. When Rob's gone.

Andre nodded, looking at the screen.

She came back out, pulled the door shut behind her.

Rob felt a bit deflated, more or less being asked to leave.

Yow shunt play games, yer know. Then a pause. If he's talking to yer.

I'm his mother. Anyway, I ay the one playin games.

Woss that meant to mean?

What yow really here for?

What dyer mean? I wanted to see how he was.

Comin rahnd tonight and textin me and that?

I've tode yer. I wanted to see how he was.

He's all right.

Obviously not, he said. Rob took a step towards her, unsure what to say, uncertain how to play things. They were standing close together.

Gemma shouted from the living room – a sudden yelp and then a long scream. Stacey pulled away from him suddenly, pushed him in the chest as she hurried to open the door.

The top had come off the beaker and there was Ribena all over the floor and the cardboard Gemma'd been playing with. Andre was already trying to mop it up with tissue. Stacey picked Gemma up, holding her with one arm, righting the beaker and picking up the cardboard with the other. Rob followed her and went to take the cardboard from her, but she shook her head and he had to step out of the way again.

Through the open door, he saw her put Gemma in her play-pen, and stroke her hair while she cried, before folding the dripping cardboard into the bin. She took a cloth from the kitchen, Gemma still crying loudly, and walked back through to Andre.

Rob's gorra goo now, Andre, she said, as they worked on mopping up the carpet. I've tode him how glad yer was he was theer to help yer. She got up, cloth in hand, nodding towards the door and at Rob.

All right, mate. I'll come an see yer soon when yome a bit more chatty. Yer look better than when I last saw yer, any road. Rob put his hand on Andre's good shoulder; Andre patted Rob and grinned. Stacey ushered him towards the door.

The door was open and he was halfway out of it before she put the flat of her hand without the cloth in against his chest, her face relaxed for a second. He touched her hair with his hand and she ushered him again out of the door.

And then he was sitting in the flats' car park, smoking and trying to relax, trying not to think about Glenn and what his reaction might be if Rob carried on like this. He'd gone round there for more than just to check on Andre, of
course. After a few moments he threw the unfinished cigarette out of the window, deciding to drive home, pick up some cans and sit and watch Sky Sports with his dad.

Sven was talking to Sheringham on the touchline.
The board went up for Heskey to come off. There was warm applause through the clubhouse as Sheringham came on. It felt slightly out of place, the kind of thing you'd hear in a different setting in response to a decent cover-drive or a violin solo. The lull saw a procession to the bar. Rob had lost track of whose round it was, thought he'd better buy Glenn a pint in return for his.

She was reading a book of Greek stories to a small group of Year 7 kids
who'd assembled in her room when it hit her. It hadn't happened for ages. She'd go all the time when she first went back to Riverway. It hadn't happened here until now. She'd be doing well and then it would hit her again and she'd feel like the building was coming down around her and she'd struggle to get a grip of herself, have to grab the table edge to steady herself.

It was Icarus and his wings. She'd always secretly enjoyed his demise, the way he over-reached himself, enjoyed Daedalus's grief as revenge for building the Minotaur's labyrinth. She remembered feeling strange about the Minotaur as a girl; he was referred to as a half-breed in a book they'd got at school, locked away in his maze, frenzied, until Theseus, the blue-eyed boy, came along to get rid of him.

They'd talked about this in Crete, looking at the ruins that day at Knossos. Standing at what they decided was the entrance to the labyrinth, thinking about the bright, clear light outside, the darkness of the maze. She thought that was what had spurred him into telling her that stuff about Robert and Crete that night by the water.

When she turned the television on that evening and saw
the planes and the towers it was like the catastrophe had come from deep within her. The way they splintered and tumbled was like they were inside her, like she'd made it happen. There was part of her even then that knew there was a long way back from feeling like this, even if she wanted to get back.

She paused in the story, the children looking at her. Her throat felt tight. She looked down at the book, the picture of him falling and burning, back at the children's faces, and took a deep breath. She was back. She was OK. It was just that some days now she felt stretched, distorted, like she'd once been pulled too far out of shape.

Tom got some boots like the Hungarians, Goliath ones like Stanley Matthews wore
. The older players joked with him about them, but out of earshot he knew they were asking who he thought he was. When he put them on he felt different, like he could move now, like he really could float across the mud. When they split, which they did regularly, and he had to go back to the old boots, it was like he was anchored to the ground.

Stan Cullis had him running. He had them all running. You were meant to run a hundred yards in ten and a half seconds. There were times for the other distances too. He could do the mile and three-mile runs easily; it was the shorter ones that were the problem. All Tom's speed was in his head. He ran though, had no choice, chest bursting, up and down the terraces, up and down the hills. It was how they did it. How they'd become the best team in England. After the Honved game Cullis said they were the best team in the world. Forward, always forward, running, pounding, unrelenting, with themselves and the ball. Square passes were banned. Balls inside were banned. Too many touches were banned. Forward, always forward, in waves of golden hordes.

In spring the pitches hardened. They weren't as good as the early season ones, but at least you could lift your feet from the mud. Tom got called into a practice game. Early on, the ball came into his feet, he could feel a player bearing down on him, it felt something like a stampede behind him, and then everything slowed and he took a touch out of his feet to show his opponent the ball and then rolled his foot over it, dragging the ball backwards, swivelling on his other foot as he did it. A pack of muscle shot past him, like a doomed bull. He got his head up, took another touch, hit it out to the wing for Deeley to chase. He'd put Billy Wright on his arse. Only Puskas could do that. Well played, son, Billy had said afterwards, clapped him on his back, I knew there was something in them boots. There was a running joke about how he'd laughed that the Hungarians hadn't got the right kit when they ran out at Wembley, before they'd beaten England 6-3. Tom thought he'd be in the first team soon enough but Cullis had him running, running, and the shout didn't come. They didn't need him yet. They had great players in front of him, Broadbent in his position, Deeley, Mullen, if they wanted to play him outside. He didn't mind. He had time on his side.

The next season he had a run in the reserves. He scored five in a Central League game against Stoke, just roamed all over the place. Give me the ball, give me the ball, he'd demand of players five, ten years older than him. There was a write-up in the paper: ‘Five Star Catesby looks bound for glory'. His mother cut it out and put it up over the kitchen sink.

Nobody was ever sure where to play him; he'd wander all over the place and expect his team-mates to do the same, and it took the next season for him to settle in at inside-right. He started the season in the reserves, his head down, working away, but the doubts began to creep in.
This was the year the rumours started at Molineux about the great player they'd got in the reserves. Tommy Catesby, ex-England schoolboys and set to be the next Wolves great, said the
Express & Star
. There was a picture of him running next to Flowers and Shorthouse in training. One report referred to him as a will-o'-the-wisp. Charlie Buchan's
Football Monthly
called him ‘skilful but lightweight'.

He wasn't lightweight, though, not in the way they meant. He knew what hard work was. It was just that he couldn't play in the way they wanted – he wanted to roam, take people on, pass it, all the time pass it, and move, and make shapes that would end in goals. He was stubborn and thought he knew best. It frustrated him when he made a run and nobody saw it, when he hit a pass into space and no one was there. There were teams playing like this now: the Hungarians, Real Madrid, Manchester United. The days of working at it like you were putting your shift in at the factory were dying.

Who does he think he is? came the whispers from the older pros. The challenges came in harder and harder.

He started to pick up a few knocks. He tried to play on a bad ankle through November 1957 and suddenly wasn't getting picked. His National Service was looming. He needed to be playing to get looked after, to get an easier ride.

The United plane crashed in the February, 1958. A fog hung over Cinderheath, down in the dip, like a cloud of ash. Duncan Edwards died after fifteen days. Tom sat on the back step in the cold looking at the banks of slush. He said a little prayer, apologizing for having been jealous of all the players at United. There was a rumour that Tom might go up to Old Trafford as one of the loan players to keep them going. They were taking players from all over. A few had gone up from Villa. Tom wanted to go, knew that it would be his chance, his chance on the back of the
ruins – mangled steel, dead bodies, piles of ash and dirty snow. Nothing came of it. The season carried on, forward, forward, the Wolves were winning the league. He was back in the reserves, against Birmingham just before Easter, playing outside-right now. It was no good. He wasn't quick enough to go past the full-backs. He'd never been able to run fast, it was speed of thought he relied on, even in his carpet-slipper boots. That afternoon he kept drifting inside, had made a couple of goals. They were three-nil up, he was still getting shouted at! Twenty minutes left, he ghosted inside again, picked it up in the mud, got his head up, saw their left-half coming at him, flicked it past him to buy him some time, too many touches, always too many touches. That was when it happened.

He knew it was bad straight away. The left-half kept coming. Tom couldn't get his foot out of the mud, his body going one way, his right leg staying where it was. He felt something rip and tear inside his knee, felt it shatter like crystal. Straight away he knew it was the end.

They got him back in the dressing room and then to New Cross. He wasn't with it, knew it was bad though, knew it was the end. No pain, not really. Not when it happened. Nothing. The pain came afterwards. Everything had gone, his ligaments torn, kneecap shattered. The doctor talked about a couple of injuries he'd treated in the war.

We need to talk about ways of getting you walking again, Thomas; it's going to be a long process.

What about football?

The doctor had smiled and shook his head.

He lay looking at the tiled ceiling, then later through his bedroom window at the Cinderheath gantry, wondering what he was going to do now, a thought slowly forming in his head, through the gloom, that if it was hard work that they wanted, if that was all that mattered, that was what they were going to get.

They met at Starbucks at Merry Hill.
She'd got an hour or so before she had to see her mum. He blushed when she got there, could feel it. She smiled at him, made him feel more relaxed, like things were going to be OK.

He'd enjoyed sitting there waiting for her. There was jazz playing. The coffee was strong. He'd been surprised she'd suggested a Starbucks. He'd imagined she'd have avoided it, not been a fan of giant American corporations. The thought must have crept across his face when she mentioned it.

Oh no, she said. Is that bad? I bet you think that's awful. You're quite political, aren't you? It's a guilty pleasure. I can't help liking it. We can meet somewhere else if you want.

No, no, that's great.

Quite political? He wondered how she'd got that impression in the few stuttering conversations they'd had since she arrived at Cinderheath. He'd mentioned his uncle, he supposed. Maybe she'd been asking other people about him at school. The thought filled him with a sudden excitement, although he doubted many of the teachers would've described him as quite political. He was actually a Labour Party member, if that counted, hanging on to his card at least until there was a leadership election and he could vote for Gordon Brown. He'd see after that. He wouldn't have described himself as political, wouldn't have known how to describe himself, not these days. It was all relative. He looked at the faces walking past, wondered how many of them would give the council elections a second thought. He was only bound up in it because of his family. Even in Cinderheath, with the whole pantomime that was going on, there'd be people unaware there was an election happening. Why should they be aware? Most people just wanted to get through the day. That was one of the things his Uncle Jim couldn't grasp. He needed it spelling out to him.