1
On Tuesday evenings, Sabina Park Rangers’ training sessions took place at the YMCA in Whitmore Reans. It wasn’t really that suitable a venue as there was no football pitch, but there were showers in the changing rooms and once the netball players were done, their court was used for five-a-side sessions. Horace McIntosh continued using the YMCA facilities partly out of sentimentality, as it was the place where he’d brought his first team together over a decade before in 1970. But also it was out of practicality, as his house was less than a quarter of a mile away, a mere petrol bomb’s throw (as they used to say in those days) from the nearby Dunstall Road police station. There was also another reason for him persevering with the YMCA: the shapely figures of the JA City netball players always ensured good attendance at training. The young women were acutely aware of the admiring glances they drew and were always immaculately turned out. Without exception, their legs were smooth and oiled and their pleated short skirts ensured every male who watched them play became admirers of the large rounded batty long before Jennifer Lopez brought hers to the attention of the world. They were the scented roses for Horace’s team of bees who were only too ready to pollinate if they were given the chance.
As usual, the first player to arrive was Ian Beckford. He did not even bother to go home and change out of his school uniform. Such was his stamina, he would usually play a game of football with his friends in West Park before trotting half a mile to the YMCA to train and play for another hour and a half. Norman Longmore, the team captain, nearly always turned up next. He had played for Horace McIntosh’s teams for nine years and at thirty-one was the oldest player. He was a few years past his best and as he put on weight the rest of the team used to joke that he was the only one who wore a padded shirt. Yet despite his thickening waist, he remained a good passer of the ball and an all-round sportsman who was already looking forward to knocking a cricket ball around during the summer months. Yet in some ways Norman embodied why Sabina Park Rangers languished near the bottom of the league. He could still amble about the pitch and be effective in a Sunday or a town league, but against fitter, more dedicated players of an area league he was at least a yard too slow in pace. Not that he was the only player who found it difficult to compete at a higher level. Horace McIntosh put their lethargy in the league down to losing the first six games of the season. The cup run had shown what the team was capable of if properly motivated and Horace was already thinking about how he would break it to his captain and most loyal player that the cup final would be his last game for the team.
Norman Longmore had arrived in Wolverhampton at the age of nineteen, found himself a college place and eventually become a primary school teacher, which, back then, was even rarer for a black man than a career in football. His Jamaican education had left him with a puritanical streak, and throughout his training course he was constantly reminded that corporal punishment was not permitted, even if he used his own belt. Once Norman had qualified, he had returned to Jamaica and, as promised, married his childhood sweetheart Euphemia – which had led to a two-year long battle with the immigration authorities to allow her to join him in England.
Norman had rubbed horse liniment into his thick legs and put on the strip that, because of the similarity in their names, had been chosen to resemble that of Queens Park Rangers, when the massive goalkeeper Carl Hooper arrived in the changing room. Carl did not talk to Norman; then again, he did little more than grunt to anyone else. Carl was suspicious of authority and in his view, as Norman was a teacher he was part of an establishment that had never done him any favours. All the players thought Norman talked to them as if he were still in the classroom and his big trouble was that he thought he had to know all the answers, even if no one was asking the questions. Carl had arrived in England six years before, at the age of thirteen, from the island of Grenada. While at school Carl had been thought of as backward, until it was discovered in England that in fact he was hard of hearing. But by then he had lost all trust in adults except for his maternal grandmother, whose death had made his journey to join his mother in Wolverhampton a necessary one.
‘A’right, mi spar?’ Norman said to him on his way outside. Carl had had an operation to rectify his hearing and now he was ‘selectively’ slightly deaf – particularly when talking to someone from Social Security. When there was no reply Norman convinced himself that Carl had not heard him.
By the time the whistle blew to signal the end of the netball game more than twenty guys had turned up for training, as although quite a few were not officially registered as SPR players, success as well as short skirts had proved alluring. The players made two lines. A man with a camera clasped to his chest looked nervously over his shoulder as Cecil Grant inspected the photographer’s gleaming Ford Escort RS 2000. ‘Nice car, man,’ Cecil said as he jogged past to join his teammates. The newspaperman mumbled something back in acknowledgement. He should have been more grateful: Cecil rarely talked to white people and when he did they were often the other side of a counter and he was yelling for them to stay away from any alarm and to hand over all their money. The JA City netball players hovered before changing and called out to the man to take their photo. They were never lost for a pose but when they turned around and bent over to show those lovely round batties they produced a fearsome roar from the assembled SPR players and the photographer quickly turned around. What little colour he had drained from his face as he tried to make sense of what they were screaming at him, but by the time his frightened mind began to realise the girls were heading for the changing rooms playfully shaking their heads. Try as he might, the man from The Wolverhampton Ad News could not get the men in front of him to lift the scowls from their faces and the only one who smiled for the photo was Horace. ‘A idyatt like that nah deserve a nice car,’ growled Cecil. ‘I would-a even paid him for that photo, to ras.’
‘To ras!’ spat several others in unison.
Norman Longmore led the players through the warm-up exercises as Horace chatted to the photographer and gave him the names of the players he had photographed. ‘Which one’s Mark Beckford, Mr McIntosh?’
‘Well, now you mention it, I can’t see Mark.’ Horace turned and called out, ‘Hey, Ian, where ya brodda?’ Ian Beckford looked up and responded with a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Arks Marcia when she’s finished changin,’ he called out. ‘She sees more of him than I do.’ Marcia Yuell was the captain of the netball team and it was an open secret amongst the team that she and Mark had been seeing each other for a while.
‘Pity,’ said the photographer, ‘our sports reporter Alf Turley wanted me to take a photo of him on his own. He reckons that goal he scored has Aston Villa very interested.’ Horace tried to act as if he already knew. ‘Yeah, but Mark’s not the only player that has interested professional teams, you know. Over the years we’ve had a few go fe trials an’ ting.’
‘But it must be a thrill to have the champions interested in one of your players.’
The lines on Horace’s face deepened. On one level he was proud that the newly-crowned First Division champions even knew of one of his players but at the same time he was also concerned that he might be about to be deprived of his best player for the cup final. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t call it a t’rill. There’s a lotta hurdles for a young player to climb before him mek the big-time. There’s a couple more if him black.’
The photographer, neither interested in nor prepared to believe Horace’s stories of racism in football, glanced anxiously back to his car again. ‘Alf will probably give you a call in the week and have a chat about that,’ he said before he scurried back to his prized possession.
The five-a-side games were more competitive than usual. Those who had not played in the semifinal were now doing their best to stake a claim for a place in the cup final – the exception being Nestor Riley. Because he had been sent off during that famous victory he would be automatically banned from taking any further part in the cup. Jealousy as well as per
sonal ambition put a little extra bite into his tackles and had Horace bringing the session to a premature halt. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘nice to see so many at trainin’ ’ere dis evenin. We got circuit trainin’ at Aldersley Stadium on Thursday an’ me want to see all-a unno there. Friday night we ’ave been invited to de Star an’ Moon nightclub because we reach de final, yours truly has been hinvited to be a judge fe de beauty pageant an’ you all will get a free ticket from me …’ Horace waited for the whoops and whistles to subside before he added, ‘… after trainin’ on Thursday.’ His players groaned as he went on, ‘De weekend after dat we ’ave a tournament in Nottingham. It a long-standin’ commitment an’ because it’s not long before de final we gonna ’ave plenty-a substitutions. As usual, as guests of de Beeston Caribs Football Club, we will go on to de dinner an’ dance. Now we ’ave reached de Watney’s final all me arks heveryone is to realise wha’ a great hachievement it would be fe a black team to win dis cup. Dis is more than football, more than jus a game, it is about wha’ it represents fe all-a black people in dis town. So stay fit an’outta trouble. An’, please, please, dis year stay away from de Nottingham gal dem. Please!’
Norman Longmore nodded his head vigorously – he was happy to shoulder the burden of representing the cause of black people throughout the town, but the young men around him just laughed. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t a sense of representing their community; it was just that they were more sceptical about how winning a cup might change anything. They also laughed at Horace’s pleas to stay away from the fair maidens of Nottingham: several of them had already made their plans for the dance that took place after the tournament and nothing their coach could say would change that.
2
It had taken sixty-three years for Mervyn Palmer to get himself banged up. He woke in the early hours of the morning to muffled screams from the cell next door and tried to figure out where he was. There were angry shouts from the corridor outside and the jangling of a large set of keys before the screaming stopped. Mervyn kept his ear close to the wall and tried to hear what was going on. The opening of a metal flap in the door straightened him up and a set of hard blue eyes peered through the slot.
‘’Ello,’ said Mervyn, ‘where am I?’
‘Red Lion Street police station, Mr Palmer. Sobered up, have we?’
‘Wha’? You mean you was drunk too?’
‘Watch your lip, sambo.’
‘Oi, there’s nah need fe the habuse, superintendent. When can I go ’ome?’
‘I’ll give it half an hour and see if your attitude has improved, all right?’
Mervyn was about to give an assurance of his sobriety but the flap slammed shut. After a moment or two wondering about his now silent neighbour he sat down again on the slatted bench and tried to recall what had happened since Saturday afternoon. He’d gone out feeling like the king of the world in his platform shoes of green and red patent leather and the pair of purple flares he saved for special occasions. But instead of his local in Whitmore Reans, Mervyn had gone to the Little Swan pub on the edge of the town centre. He thought he might have gone home that night but couldn’t be sure – he’d ended up being arrested while walking through town the following evening, or was it the evening after that? The tip of his tongue found the caked remains of vomit at the corners of his mouth and it was only then that he realised that his false teeth were missing. A vague memory shifted his eyes to the corner of the cell, where there was a foul-smelling toilet with all sorts of stuff streaked down its sides. He hoped that it was his ‘stuff’ and tottered over and looked into the bowl. ‘Rasclart, mi teet dem,’ he whined as he saw his upper plate in amongst what looked liked vegetable matter. There was no sign of his bottom teeth.
He put his top set back in. They tasted no worse than the inside of his mouth. Mervyn needed his teeth in to think properly; had he said anything, had he let the reason for his celebration (like his teeth) slip out? He thought not. When he was younger he could always handle his alcohol and there wasn’t enough liquor in the town to dull his sharp brain. He lifted out his teeth and wiped them on his best purple flares and by the time they were back in his mouth he was convinced that his secret was safe. There were two pieces of bad news waiting for him as he collected his belongings from the custody sergeant. Firstly, he had been bailed to appear at the magistrate’s court in a fortnight on a charge of being drunk and disorderly, and secondly, this was not Monday morning, it wasn’t even Tuesday; it was Wednesday-rahteed-morning. Mervyn hurried outside; all certainty had vanished. If he had not realised his celebrations had lasted for nigh on three days how could he be sure that he hadn’t blurted out something during that length of time? The answer lay with his friends at the barber shop. Mervyn called on Horace and Frank almost every day and knew there wasn’t much that happened around the town without them hearing about it. If there were rumours, they would have heard them by now.
After going home and finding his spare set of dentures, Mervyn washed and changed before driving his Austin Cambridge to the Newhampton Road. Up until very recently he had been happy with his car despite it being fifteen years old and having the aerodynamics of a brick on four wheels. Now he was thinking of something a bit more stylish, something like a sleek Austin Princess – he’d often fantasised about one day owning the 2000cc HL model with metallic bronze paintwork and black vinyl roof covering. He parked outside the barber shop, decided against taking a diversion through the door on the left, and went straight upstairs. As soon as he opened the door he could tell by the looks on their faces that they had found out. Mervyn tried to return their smiles. ‘So wha’ happen?’ he asked them, hoping he was wrong.
‘Whoy,’ laughed Frank Grant, ‘t’irty-five t’ousand pounds, to blues beat, t’irty-five t’ousand pounds!’
It crossed Mervyn’s mind to deny it, or at least to make out that the amount had been exaggerated. ‘An’ who de ’ell tell you dat?’ he said scornfully.
Frank was still shaking Mervyn’s reluctant hand as Horace McIntosh walked over and showed him the front page of Monday’s Express and Star. Under the headline ‘Local man wins pools’ was a photograph of Mervyn holding up what the article called his ‘winning coupon’. He studied the photo. His bottom teeth were missing and his eyes were glazed as he smiled idiotically for the camera. Mervyn blasphemed; he thought he had only dreamt of walking into the newspaper’s Queen Street offices and demanding that he see a reporter. A list of gravelitious – money-grabbing – relatives and ‘lady-friends’ ran through his mind. They had probably been trying to track him down since Monday evening. He pulled his hand from Frank’s and turned on his heels and made for the stairs.
‘Oi,’ called Frank, ‘where you-a go?’
‘De hAustin dealer in Chapel Ash before de vultures dem come try an’ tek all mi money.’
‘There goes a worried man,’ Horace said to Frank.
‘Him’d be even more worried if you’d told him wha’ it seh in de paper ’bout him givin money to im five pickney in Jamaica,’ Frank said. ‘An’ him got four pickney ’ere an’ me know dat dem all will want dem share. It don’t leave a lot fe sponsorship. You still goin to arks him fe money?’
‘I’ll arks him once he gets im new car, Mervyn will be in a better mood by then.’
Frank Grant laughed quietly to himself. Both he and Horace knew that Mervyn Palmer was rarely in a ‘better mood’. He had called into the shop for the best part of twenty years and shared his unremittingly gloomy view of the world. For Horace, one compensation was that once a week Mervyn would come in with a blackened dutch-pot full of ‘cow-cock’ soup. But that would normally only happen on Saturdays; on weekdays Mervyn would arrive at about ten, sit in a corner and spend a few hours sipping a cup of tea sweetened with condensed milk, while sharing his opinions about the various articles in his Daily Mail he thought interesting. Frank agreed with most of his points of view and saw Mervyn as a kindred spirit, or a ‘breddren’, as he called him. Like Mervyn, Frank had ha
d his share of ‘thankless’ children and thought the black youths in ‘Hinglan’ needed more beating than understanding: what was the matter with them all? They had free education and then welfare payments when they left school; they had it soft and yet they were still bleating about unfairness. Unfairness to Mervyn was working six days a week, twelve hours a day, chopping sugar cane under an unrelenting sun for a pittance. ‘True, true,’ Frank had often murmured on hearing such pearls of wisdom, ‘de pickney too hungrateful, to ras.’
‘To ras.’
But Mervyn saved his strongest abuse for Rastafarians (who featured with surprising regularity within the pages of his daily newspaper) or any black person who had ideas above their station. ‘The Rastaman,’ he would say, ‘him like a beast on hind legs, a dutty beast. In Jamaica we used to ’unt dem down. Wha’ dis ’bout hAfrica? We nah hAfricans, to blues beat, we’s West hIndians. A hIndian his a different ting from a hAfrican! … You hear ’bout dat woman who set up a Caribbean takeaway in Worcester Street? Rasclart,’er ’usband should control her. Who de ’ell is goin to buy stuff dem can cook in dem own kitchen?’
‘White people?’ Horace had suggested.
The notion of people actually buying rice and peas that someone else had cooked seemed ridiculous to both Mervyn and Frank but the thought that those people might be white was a cause for side-splitting hilarity.
MORE THAN a GAME Page 2
