Injustice and rage. And regret …
Now night is day, tomorrow today, and the morning of the board meeting here, your children looking at you with worry in their wide eyes, worry on their open mouths, for the things they’ve seen, the things they’ve heard –
The things they feel but do not understand.
* * *
I’m late out of bed, late to get washed, late to get dressed, late down the stairs and late out the door. Jimmy is picking me up this morning, Jimmy already parked waiting outside, Jimmy with his hand on his horn, and the first thing he says when I open the door is, ‘You hear about Bill Nick, Boss?’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s resigned.’
‘What?’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘No.’
‘It’s in all the papers, all over the radio.’
‘Why?’
‘Poor results and modern players, that’s what they’re saying.’
‘What about modern chairmen and modern directors?’
‘Never mentioned them,’ laughs Jimmy. ‘But, seriously, I think it was Rotterdam. I don’t think he’s ever got over that. He told Dave Mackay that he was physically sick, he was that scared. You know his own daughter was there in the stadium when all the Spurs fans were rioting. Dave was there and all and he says he’s never heard owt as sad as the sound of Bill Nick making his appeals over the loudspeakers for them to stop fighting.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I tell Jimmy. ‘But I do know one thing …’
‘What’s that, Boss?’
‘Never resign,’ I tell him. ‘Never ever resign.’
Then we pick up the Johns. Four big men in one small car –
No conversation. No chat. No banter. No jokes. No radio. Nothing –
Just four men on their way to Leeds. On their way to work.
* * *
You have prior engagements, prior to the board meeting, engagements you intend to keep; so you drive miles and miles out of Derby to open a new shop for an old friend, then you drive miles and miles back into town to visit some elderly patients at a hospital –
And at the shop and at the hospital, the customers and the patients, the staff and the doctors, they all shake you by your hand and say, ‘Don’t go, Brian. Please don’t.’
And you clasp their hands and nod your head and thank them for their hands and for their words, and tell them, ‘I don’t want to go.’
Then you drive to the Baseball Ground and park your Derby County club car in the space reserved for the Derby County club manager and walk through the press and the television, the pens and the microphones, the cameras and the lights, past a group of night-shift workers from Rolls-Royce who pat you on your back and plead with you, ‘Please don’t bloody go, Brian. Please don’t fucking go.’
And you clasp their hands and nod your head and thank them for their pats and for their pleas, and tell them, ‘I don’t want to go.’
Then you disappear inside the Baseball Ground, you disappear.
* * *
In the rain and in the sun, under the black and blue, purple and yellow Yorkshire skies, it should be business as usual today, training as usual for everyone. The club secretary has issued a statement on behalf of Leeds United:
‘Billy will be training with the rest of his teammates as he has done over the past fortnight when he has also been under suspension.’
But the press and the television still want more, the pens and the microphones, the cameras and the lights, still waiting for me as we pull into the Elland Road car park, as I slam the door of Jimmy’s car, as I do up my cuffs and tell them alclass="underline"
‘I am not saying a word about the FA decision. Not a word.’
* * *
Up the stairs. Through the doors. Round the corners. Down the corridors, Pete already here; smoking his cigs and biting his nails in the antechamber –
‘Where have you been?’ he asks. ‘I thought you weren’t going to show.’
‘I had things to do,’ you tell him. ‘Now let’s get in there.’
‘We’ve got to wait out here.’
‘For what?’
‘For them to consider our resignations.’
‘If they’ve got things to say, they can bloody well say them to my fucking face,’ you tell him and walk towards the boardroom doors –
‘Please don’t,’ Pete says, Pete begs. ‘It’ll just make things worse.’
So you turn back from the doors and sit down next to him and light a cig of your own, staring at the clock on the wall and the potted plant by the doors; and you know you’ve made a big mistake, sat out here, smoking your cig, waiting your turn, remembering all the bloody things you know you should have said, all the fucking things you know you should have done, all them bloody, fucking things you had forgotten –
Then the doors open and Longson shouts, ‘Right, you two, let’s have you in!’
But before you’re even halfway into the room, before you’ve even sat down, you’ve already told them: ‘Accept our resignations.’
‘Now wait, Brian,’ says Sir Robertson-King. ‘We’d like you to reconsider.’
But Longson is quick too, quick to say, ‘He’s resigned and he wants us to accept his resignation, so I propose we accept it and have bloody done!’
‘Now just you listen to me,’ you tell him, tell them all. ‘We’ve only resigned because of him, him and his narrow-minded ways. Everything I’ve ever done has been for the good of Derby County, everything! And that includes the television and the newspapers, the television and the newspapers that helped put Derby County on the bloody map, that put you all on the fucking map. And so I won’t be told by him — not by him or by the FA or by the League or by anybody — what I can or cannot write and what I can or cannot say. But if this board withdraw his daft ultimatum and banish that bugger from our sight and just let us get on with our job of winning the league and then the European Cup, of taking on every single thing in the game and of creating a footballing dynasty here at Derby County, then we will withdraw our resignations.’
The board nod their heads. The board mutter. The board will put it to the vote. The board ask you and Peter both to wait outside again –
Outside with the clock on the wall. The potted plant by the doors. The doors that quickly open again so they can call you back in:
‘Your resignations have reluctantly been accepted,’ smiles Jack Kirkland –
Only Sir Robertson-King and Mike Keeling have voted against accepting your resignations. Now Mike Keeling resigns, along with your own secretary.
‘Don’t even think of a settlement,’ Longson tells you. ‘You’re getting nowt!’
You stand in the centre of the room, naked and beaten, with Peter beside you.
‘Leave your car keys on the table and get out now,’ barks Longson.
In the centre of the room, naked and beaten before the board, their eyes down on the table, their fingers at their mouths, their feet shuffling and eager to leave –
‘Not one of you has the guts to stop this?’ you ask them. ‘Not one of you?’
But their eyes stay down on the table, their fingers at their mouths –
‘Cowards!’ you bark at them all and turn to the doors, the doors and the exit, the exit and the antechamber; through the antechamber and down the corridor, down the corridor and into the executive lounge you go –