* * *
The cleaning lady is cleaning the office, under the desk and behind the door, not whistling or humming along to her tunes today –
I ask her, ‘How are you today then, Joan?’
‘I’ve been better, Brian,’ she says. ‘I’ve been better.’
I ask, ‘Why’s that then, love?’
‘State of that bloody bathroom down corridor,’ she says. ‘That’s why.’
‘What about it?’
‘You should’ve seen it,’ she says. ‘Mirror broken. Blood in sink. Piss over floor.’
‘No?’
‘I tell you, Brian,’ she tells me, ‘they don’t pay us enough to clean up all that.’
My face is red, my hand still bandaged as I say, ‘I’m sorry, love.’
‘Why?’ she asks. ‘Not like it’s your fault, is it, Brian? Not you that thumped mirror and bled all over sink then pissed on floor just because you lost, was it?’
* * *
You have your faith in human nature back, but you still have no job and no car. You have to take a taxi to meet the Derby players, your players, for lunch at the Kedleston Hall Hotel, your new headquarters. You have to pay for the taxi yourself. The Derby players are confused and waiting, their heads in their hands; the players are depressed and worried, their faces long; the players scared and furious, their eyes wide, on stalks –
‘It’s a bloody outrage,’ says Roy McFarland; Red Roy, as the press call him. ‘The way they’ve treated you, after all you’ve done for them. I tell you, last week was the worst week of my whole bloody life. Drawing with Poland and losing you as a boss, the worst week of my life. I didn’t hang around after the England match, didn’t go back to the hotel with the other lads; I just got in me car and drove straight back home to Derby.’
Eyes filling up and drinks going down, tempers rising and voices choking –
‘What can we do, Boss?’ they all ask you.
‘You’ve done enough,’ you tell them. ‘That letter was brilliant. Meant a lot.’
‘But there must be more we can do?’ they all ask. ‘There has to be, Boss?’
‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ you tell them. ‘We’ll have a bloody party. Tonight.’
‘A party?’ they all say. ‘What kind of a party?’
‘A fucking big one,’ you tell them. ‘So bugger off home and get your wives and your bairns and your glad rags on and meet us all at the Newton Park Hotel tonight.’
* * *
There should be no training today. There should be no players in today. They should all be at home with their wives and their kids, the girlfriends and their pets. But then Jimmy told me they were all coming in anyway, coming in for their complimentary club cars, their brand-new bloody club cars. But after Saturday, after Maine Road, they don’t deserve a club fucking bicycle between them and so I cancelled their days off and told them to report back here at nine o’clock, Monday morning, if they wanted their bloody fucking club cars –
‘The bloody chances you lot missed on Saturday,’ I tell them. ‘They ought to make you all fucking walk to the ground and back every game, never mind giving you a bleeding club car. Only you’d get fucking lost, you’re that bloody thick half of you.’
I turn my back on them. I leave them to Jimmy. I walk off the training pitch. Down the banking. Past the huts on their stilts. John Reynolds, the groundsman, and Sydney Owen are stood at the top of the steps to one of the huts. They are staring at a broken lock and an open door –
‘Be bloody kids,’ I tell them as I pass them.
Sydney says something that sounds like, ‘Bloody big mouth again.’
‘You what?’ I ask him –
‘I said, be bloody big ones then,’ says Sydney.
Least there’s no Maurice today. Maurice is in Switzerland to watch Zurich play Geneva. To spy on Zurich. To compile his dossier. To write his report. There’s no John Giles either. The Irishman is down in London with his Eire squad. To meet with Tottenham. His ticket bloody out of here.
This is what those players are thinking about at training today –
Not Stoke City. Not QPR. Not Birmingham or Manchester City –
Not the chances they missed; the chances they must take –
Against Luton. Against Huddersfield and against Zurich –
Johnny fucking Giles, that’s what they’re thinking about –
Johnny fucking Giles and Vauxhall bloody motors –
‘What kind you going to get, Boss?’ Jimmy had asked me first thing this morning.
‘I’m not off, am I,’ I told him.
‘Why not?’
‘Not been invited, have I.’
‘Why not?’ he asked me again.
‘Maybe they think I won’t be around long enough to need a new bloody car.’
‘I hope you’re fucking joking,’ said Jimmy.
‘I wish I were,’ I told him. ‘Wish I were.’
* * *
You leave the Derby players, your players, until tonight. You drive over to see Mike Keeling. Mike Keeling thinks the board have turned against Longson. He thinks there might be a wedge between them now –
‘They’re at each other’s throats,’ he says. ‘At each other’s throats!’
‘Bet you wish you’d not been so bloody quick to resign now, don’t you?’
‘What about you?’ he asks you. ‘Is that how you feel, Brian? Is it?’
‘You know it is,’ you tell him. ‘You know it bloody is.’
‘Well, just this once,’ he says, ‘we might just be able to turn back the clock.’
‘You really think so, Mike? Really?’
‘I can’t promise,’ he says. ‘But I really think we have a chance, yes.’
‘So what can I do to help you?’ you ask him. ‘To help you make it happen?’
‘An olive branch, Brian,’ he says. ‘Some kind of olive branch would help.’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking,’ you tell him, ‘thinking that if they’ll take me back, and when I say they, I’m not talking about that bastard Longson, but if the board will take me back, me and Peter, then I’d be willing to jack in all the telly and the papers.’
‘Really? You’d give all that up? The television and the papers?’
‘Course I bloody would,’ you tell him. ‘If it meant I could get my real job back.’
* * *
I finish my drink. I finish my fag. I leave the office. I lock the door. I double check it’s locked. I walk down the corridor, round the corner, up the stairs, round another corner, down another corridor towards the doors to the directors’ dining room. I can already hear their Yorkshire voices behind the doors, their raised Yorkshire voices –
I can hear my name, hear my name, and only my fucking name …
I light another fag and I listen. Then I open the doors to the dining room and their Yorkshire voices suddenly fall. The dining room silent. Their eyes on their plates. Their knives and their forks.
Sam Bolton looks up from his. Sam Bolton has his knife in his hand as he asks me, ‘What the bloody hell is going on with John Giles and Tottenham bloody Hotspur?’
‘What you all so bothered about?’ I ask him, all of them. ‘Not two bleeding minutes ago you wanted the bugger gone, didn’t you?’
They’ve still lost their Yorkshire voices, rest of them. Eyes still on their plates. Their knives and their forks.