by Nick Hornby
“He never touched him.”
“He hasn’t moved since he got kicked.”
“He’ll be right as rain in a moment, you watch.”
“You’re not even supposed to be standing here, mate.”
He wasn’t. He was supposed to be with the other parents behind the goal—only coaches and the substitutes were allowed on the touchline. The rules didn’t apply to John, though. Lucas was the third of his sons to play for the Turnpike Lane Under-12s, which meant that he predated the rules.
“Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref.”
The ref was refusing to look at him now, so he kept going.
“Ref. Ref. Ref. Ref.”
Finally, some attention.
“Ref, you’re a fucking cheat.”
The referee crouched down to check on the injured boy, then turned and jogged toward them with a great sense of purpose.
* * *
—
A couple of years ago, Joseph had run into his old deputy head in the Wood Green shopping center, and Mr. Fielding had asked him what he was up to. “Ah,” said Mr. Fielding. “A portfolio. You’re portfolio working. That’s the future. Except not for you. It’s the present for you.”
Joseph hadn’t known there was a name for it, nor even that anyone else was thinking along the same lines, but Mr. Fielding’s explanation made him feel better about what he was doing. Until that moment, he’d been worried that he’d just cobbled together a way of making a living, taken on part-time job after part-time job as a way of avoiding a full-time job. He worked more hours than anyone else he knew, but at least he’d never had to make a decision about his future, the kind where you went one way and not the other and that was that. He did Saturdays in the butcher’s, two evenings a week coaching and one supervising the Friday-night games, three mornings at the leisure center, the after-school care for Marina’s twins with the odd bit of babysitting thrown in, and the D.J.-ing. He hadn’t yet earned a penny from the D.J.-ing, the job he wanted to do most, and in a couple of months it would actually cost him money. He was going to spend six hundred quid on the Ableton Live 10 Suite—he’d been using a crack for a while, but it didn’t work properly, and if he was ever going to get anywhere, he knew he’d have to invest. That meant not going out much, which meant not hearing what other D.J.s were doing, which meant not knowing whether the kind of thing he was working on now was a waste of time, because it wasn’t what people wanted or because it was already dead.
* * *
—
Joseph knew he wouldn’t regret leaving the butcher’s or anyone in it if the D.J.-ing worked out, and he wouldn’t be bothered about the leisure center either. He’d call in to see the twins, because he was very fond of them, and their parents. He’d always thought he’d miss the coaching the most, but it was getting harder and harder—kids who didn’t show up even if you called them two hours before a match, abusive parents, opposing coaches applauding their players when they stopped an attack with a shirt-pull or a rugby tackle. And everyone—kids, parents, uncles, and aunts—saw football as a way out. Any middle-aged white bloke wearing a hat was a scout from Brentford or Spurs or Barcelona, and if there was no middle-aged white bloke in a hat, it was somehow Joseph’s fault: the team wasn’t good enough, Joseph didn’t talk up the boys in the right places. Only one player from any of the Lane teams had ever been scouted since Joseph started coaching, and Barnet let him go when he was seventeen.
Some of the parents and grandparents who came down to watch talked about John Terry and Jermaine Defoe and Sol Campbell playing for Senrab over in Wanstead Flats, but those days were gone, Joseph thought. The Lane boys were no longer competing against kids from Wanstead or Liverpool or Dublin for places in the big teams. They were competing with kids from Senegal and Madrid, kids who didn’t eat junk food and smoke weed the moment they turned thirteen. You had to play against the rest of the world now, and the rest of the world was both big and good at football.
Someone like Lucas’s dad, John, would say there were too many foreigners here, and the English kids didn’t stand a chance, but Joseph didn’t see why football clubs should commit to picking players who would make them uncompetitive. It wasn’t the same argument that his father made. According to him, all the Eastern Europeans who had put him out of a job worked for less than half his old wages, lived five to a room at the end of the Central Line, went home when they’d saved a few quid, blah blah blah. You couldn’t say Sergio Agüero and Eden Hazard and the rest were doing anything on the cheap. They were putting people out of a job because they were miles better than the locals, and Joseph didn’t have a problem with that. England was the richest footballing country in the world, but it was nothing to do with the English, not English players, anyway.
* * *
—
“Why don’t you take a moment, John? Go for a little walk?” said Joseph.
“I can’t now, can I? He’s walking over here. It’ll look like I’m running away. If he wants a fight I’ll fucking give him one.”
“He doesn’t want a fight. He wants a word.”
“I want a fight.”
“No, you don’t.”
The referee arrived, out of breath and angry.
“What did you call me?”
“A fucking cheat.”
Joseph noted with interest that in these situations, repeating the accusation put the accused at something of a disadvantage. The referee’s question rather presumed the answer “Nothing,” or maybe an apology, or maybe a change of subject. The repetition demanded action, which placed the referee in a difficult position. He was a referee. He wasn’t supposed to punch people. He settled for a push in the chest instead, a push hard enough to knock John over.
“Right,” said John. “That’s you reported.”
“Be my guest,” said the referee. And then he handed Joseph his whistle, his notepad, and his cards.
“I’m done,” he said, and he walked off toward the changing rooms.
“Result,” said John, still sitting on the ground. “You’ll have to ref. When you get on there, you can change his mind about the penalty.”
John was forty-five, the ref looked as though he were in his mid-fifties. Joseph was twenty-two. He went onto the pitch and told the kids that the game was abandoned. Sometimes he didn’t want to be the only grown-up at York Road.
* * *
—
It poured with rain all Saturday morning, and the shop was quiet. People would come in eventually, but they were putting it off, which meant that the afternoon would be busy. Mark got them sweeping and scrubbing and sorting through the condiments, but by eleven even he couldn’t pretend that there was much to do, so Joseph and Cassie left Saul on the counter and went next door for a cup of coffee. Cassie was a student at the University of North London, and her Saturday job was a torment to her, due to the exertions of the night before. Because she was more or less the same age as Joseph, she tended to presume that he was in a similar state, even though he never was. After the game he’d made himself dinner, watched a bit of T.V. with his mum, and gone to bed. He never told Cassie that they were different. It was too important to her that they were the same.
“I’m fucked,” she said, when they had collected their order and sat down.
“Yeah?”
“House party.”
“Ah.”
“Some of them were still going when I got up for work. Anyway. Don’t mess around with Ket when you’re working nine o’clock the next morning.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“I try. But then I take Ket and forget.”
She didn’t, really. She turned up, and she sold people meat, although he was guessing that it wasn’t her in the shop, only her body. He couldn’t know for certain, because he’d never seen her any other way, but he hoped there was more to her than she ever showed h
im on a Saturday.
“What did you get up to?”
“I had a quiet one.”
“Right.” She wasn’t really listening. He could tell she was distracted, and not just by her pitiful condition.
“Would you mind if I asked you something?” she said eventually.
“Probably not.”
“You sure?”
This was a white student version of the sentences that began, “Not being funny, but . . .” What followed wasn’t ever funny, and was always, always about race. He preferred Cassie’s approach to the same subject, but that wasn’t to say it was welcome, or appropriate.
“Not a hundred percent, no. That’s why I said ‘probably.’”
“Shall I not ask, then?”
“I can’t really tell. But if you think there’s any chance of offending, maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I don’t think there is. But just say stop and I won’t go on.”
Joseph said nothing, to indicate his levels of both enthusiasm and resistance.
“Is that you saying, ‘Go on’?”
“It’s me saying nothing.”
“Right. I’ve sort of forgotten what you saying nothing means.”
“Jesus, Cassie. Just get on with it.”
“It’s about dating.”
“Oh, well. I know everything there is to know about dating. I can see why you’ve come to me.”
“Well, it’s not just about dating, I suppose.”
“You amaze me.”
“It’s about dating black guys.”
“It’s now legal in just about every part of the world, as far as I know. But obviously in some places it will get you in more trouble than others. North London is OK.”
“Oh. Yeah. No. I didn’t mean . . .”
“I was joking.”
“Right.”
“So . . .?”
She took a deep breath.
“Is it true that black girls don’t like white girls who are dating black guys?”
“Are you seeing a black guy?”
“Not seeing. I hooked up with one. I’d like to hook up again.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
Cassie never looked her best on Saturdays, but Joseph could see that she wouldn’t have that much trouble hooking up with anyone, if she set her mind to it.
“Yeah, but am I doing the wrong thing?”
It made him tired, this shit.
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Would you go out with a white girl?”
“Why don’t you ask me whether I have gone out with a white girl?”
“Oh. Have you?”
“Of course I have.”
“And did anyone, like, disapprove?”
“Yeah. Her granddad.”
“Was he a racist?”
“No. He was a vegan. Didn’t like me working here.”
“Really?”
“No. He was a racist.”
“OK. But I’m talking about, you know. People in your community.”
His community. He still wanted his community to be the place where he lived, a community that contained old white women, young Muslim men, Lithuanian kids, mixed-race girls, Asian parents, Jewish taxi drivers. But it never was.
“No,” he said. “The neighbors were fine about it.”
“Why did you split up?”
“Because I cheated on her and she found out. You won’t learn very much from that.”
She looked at him disapprovingly.
“I was nineteen,” he said. “It happens.”
“Every relationship I’ve ever had ended because someone cheated on someone,” said Cassie.
“I suppose that’s how it goes,” said Joseph. “Until you marry someone and stay married, and one of you dies.”
They thought about this in silence, and did not return to the topic of relationships.
* * *
—
The pretty dark-haired woman came in when it was still raining, and there was hardly anyone in the shop. He almost pushed Cass out of the way to serve her. She’d stopped coming in with the loud blonde woman, and Joseph couldn’t work out whether it was a coincidence, or whether it was something to do with him. He’d been pondering this for the last three weeks or so, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. So while he was wondering whether the dark-haired woman was coming in without her friend because she was trying to flirt with him, he had also started wondering whether there was something wrong with him. Maybe he needed a girlfriend. It had been a while. Maybe a lack of sex was making him imagine that women who were asking for lamb shanks and free-range chicken breasts were actually asking for something else. Maybe when the loud blonde said something about pork loins, she was literally talking about a cut of meat. Perhaps he should find out whether Kayla was still seeing Anthony T.C.
“Hi, Joseph.”
“Hi.”
“So. What do I want? Oh, yes . . .”
“I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name, so I can only say ‘hi’ back. Seems a bit rude.”
“Oh, don’t worry.”
Was she saying don’t worry to assure him that she wasn’t offended? Or was she refusing to give him her name? If she was refusing to give him her name, he was going to train himself out of wondering anything ever again.
“So. Steak. Lots of steak. And burgers.”
“Right. How much steak is lots of steak?”
“They’d eat as much as I bought, but I can’t afford it and it’s not good for them.”
So no name. He didn’t often feel stupid, especially around women, not that he knew many women of her age, and not that he knew how old she was. (Thirty-five? He hoped she wasn’t any older than that. He could cope with a ten-year age gap, even though that would mean it was a thirteen-year age gap, but nothing more than that. What the fuck? Who was asking him to cope with anything? Not her, that was for sure. She wouldn’t even tell him her name.
* * *
—
How had this even started? The first time he noticed her was when she came in with the loud blonde, so maybe back then he’d somehow ended up asking himself which one he’d choose with a gun to his head. Sometimes questions like that passed the time. And then the next time he saw her he’d realized that the gun wouldn’t be necessary, and hadn’t even been needed the previous week. She had beautiful eyes, a smile that warmed even a refrigerated room, and she looked like she had gone through something that had wounded her. That wasn’t a good thing, of course, but so many of the people who came in here looked as though they’d never gone through anything. He hadn’t been through much, not compared to other young men in his “community,” but every time he got stopped by the police when he was coming home late at night and was forced to turn out his pockets, it took him further away from all the journalists and actors and politicians to whom he sold organic beef on a Saturday. He couldn’t see her shape because it was February, then March, and she’d been lost inside a giant parka. And he knew shapes weren’t important, except they were really if you were playing games in your head, and guns were involved. And in his defense the loud blonde had the sort of body that was supposed to tip the balance, but if he tried to think about her in that way, all he could see was stupidity, and all he could hear were loud embarrassing jokes. Perhaps the best thing to do was use the lovely brunette as a model. He would remember her, her eyes, warmth, and sadness, and try to find someone of his own age who came somewhere close.
“Lucy,” she said suddenly. “My name. You must have thought I was being weird.”
Someone else came into the shop, a guy with a dog. The dog wasn’t allowed in, but Cassie could deal with it.
“Oh. No. I just thought, you know, why should she tell me her name?”
“But now you can think, why
should Lucy tell me her name?”
He laughed, to show a) that he got it, b) that he was friendly, and c) that he absolutely wouldn’t need a gun to his head. She probably wouldn’t get the gun part of the laugh. That was complicated.
“Do you live around here?” she asked him.
“Not far. Tottenham.”
“Oh.”
She seemed disappointed. If twenty minutes on the bus was too far, then she probably wasn’t that bothered in the first place.
“I’m looking for a babysitter for tonight, and I wondered if you knew any responsible young people around here.”
“I do quite a lot of babysitting. You know Marina. With the twins? She comes into the shop on Saturdays?”
“Oh, yes. I know Marina.”
“Except I can’t really do tonight.”
He couldn’t really do tonight? He couldn’t do tonight at all. He was sitting for the twins again, the third time in the last six weeks.
“Oh, well. I don’t usually have my kids on Saturdays. Their dad has them. But this week . . . Well, he hasn’t got them. It’s OK. I’ll just cancel my thing.”
“No, no. Don’t do that. I’ll sort it out.”
“Are you sure? That would be fantastic.”
“No problem.”
“You’d better give me your phone number and I’ll text you the details.”
Cassie wasn’t dealing with the dog. She was just ignoring it and serving the guy his bacon. Joseph looked at her and nodded toward the dog. Cassie looked at him and shrugged.
“Sure.”
He took one of the business cards from the little Perspex container on the counter and wrote his number down.
“Thank you so much,” said Lucy. She tucked the card away and left.
“Would you mind taking the dog outside?” Joseph said to the customer the moment she’d gone.
“I’m nearly done,” said the customer.
“Yes, but you’ll get us into trouble if our boss comes in here and sees him.”
