Not at the bloody pitch, the pitch the last fucking place you can look –
Not at the pitch when Hector is brought down, not at the pitch when Davies is pushed over, not when the whole of the bloody Baseball Ground is screaming and screaming and screaming for a penalty; not when Boulton sends Martinkovic flying and the whole of the fucking ground goes silent, silent, silent, expecting a penalty for Trnava, a penalty that would bring the scores level again at 2–2, level at 2–2 but give Trnava an away goal, a penalty the referee does not see, just like you with your eyes on your watch, and so the fucking score stays at 2–1 and you –
You just look at your watch, just look at your watch, look at your watch –
The only place, the only place, the only place you can stand to look –
Not at Webster’s last-ditch tackle, at Nish’s vital, vital tackle –
You just look at your watch, just look at your watch –
Until finally, finally, finally Signor Angonese, the Italian referee, looks at his own watch and raises his right hand and slowly, slowly, slowly Signor Angonese, the lovely, lovely, lovely Italian referee, puts his beautiful, beautiful, beautiful black whistle to his red, red, red lips and blows that final, final, final whistle that puts Derby County –
Derby fucking County. Derby fucking County into the semi-finals –
The semi-finals. The semi-fucking-finals of the European Cup –
Derby County. Not Leeds United. Derby fucking County!
Later that night, drunk and half-delighted/half-depressed, you telephone Don, phone fucking Don at his family home, just to make sure he knows –
‘Just in case you fucking missed it,’ you tell him –
‘How did you get this number?’ he asks. ‘It’s half two in the bloody morning.’
You hang up. You go upstairs. To the bedroom and your wife –
Then you hear the phone ringing again and so you turn back round and walk back down the stairs and pick up the phone and it’s your older brother –
‘We’ve lost our mam,’ he tells you. ‘We’ve lost our mam, Brian.’
* * *
I go home early. I don’t give a shit. I kiss my wife. I kiss my kids. I take the phone off the hook. I put on an apron and I get stuck into the cooking. Bangers and mash, few sprouts and moans and groans from the kids, with lots of lovely thick bloody gravy; can’t beat it. Then I do the washing up and put the kids in the bath. I read them their stories and kiss them goodnight. Then I sit down on the sofa with the wife to watch a bit of telly:
Nixon and Cyprus. Nixon and Cyprus. Nixon and Cyprus –
So my wife goes up to bed but I know I won’t be able to sleep, not yet, not for a long time, so I stay up in the rocking chair and end up looking in the bloody paper again, the results spread out, working out a fucking league table on the back of one of my daughter’s paintings, a league table for the first two games, a league table that leaves Leeds next to bottom, next to last, so then I go through the fixture list inside my head, inside my skulclass="underline"
If Leeds win this game and Derby lose that game; Derby lose that and Leeds win this; if Leeds get five points from these three fixtures and Derby only three, then the league table will look like this and not that, that and not this, and so on, and so on, and so on –
Until the sun is shining in my house, through the curtains and across the floor, and it’s just another morning; another morning when I wish I wasn’t there –
I wish I wasn’t going back there.
Day Twenty-four
You go back home to Middlesbrough to cremate your mam –
The end of anything good. The beginning of everything bad …
When you’re gone, you’re gone; that’s what you believe –
The end of anything good. The beginning of everything bad …
No afterlife. No heaven. No hell. No God. Nothing –
The end of anything good. The beginning of everything bad.
But today, for once in your life, just this once, you wish you were wrong.
* * *
The board have called me upstairs, upstairs to their Yorkshire boardroom with their Yorkshire curtains drawn, upstairs to break their bad news: ‘The FA have ordered Clarke to appear before the Disciplinary Committee, along with Bremner and Giles.’
‘For what?’ I ask them. ‘That’s unbelievable.’
‘It is a bit of shock,’ agrees Cussins. ‘But —’
‘It’s more than a bloody shock,’ I tell them. ‘It’s a fucking outrage and an injustice. I’m not having any Leeds players put on trial by television. He wasn’t even bloody booked, he wasn’t even fucking spoken to by the referee, so the only reason they’ve called him down there is because of them replaying his bloody tackle on Thompson, over and over again, morning, noon and fucking night.’
‘Brian, Brian, Brian,’ pleads Cussins. ‘Look, calm down —’
‘I won’t bloody calm down,’ I tell them. ‘I’ve only just got him fucking back so I’m buggered if I’m going to lose him again for another three or four bloody matches, just because of fucking television.’
‘Brian, Brian —’
‘No, no, no,’ I tell them. ‘If this is what’s going to happen, then I want the television cameras banned from the bloody ground, from Elland Road. If that’s what it fucking takes to stop this kind of operation against me then —’
‘I believe Mr Revie often felt the same way —’
‘Fuck Don bloody Revie!’ I shout. ‘Ban them! Ban the television!’
‘Those who live by sword,’ laughs Bolton, ‘die by sword.’
* * *
You are still in your tracksuit playing cards in the hotel bar in Turin, playing cards with the team — your team, your boys — twenty-four hours before the first leg of the semi-final of the European Cup.
There was a magpie on your lawn when you left your house for the airport. There was also one on the tarmac as you got off the plane in Turin. Now one’s just flown into the window of the hotel bar. But you don’t believe in luck. In superstitions and rituals –
You believe in football; football, football, football.
Pete comes down the stairs, down the stairs in his tuxedo –
‘You not ready yet?’ he asks. ‘The dinner’s in half an hour.’