MORE THAN a GAME

by Sylvester Young

  As Nestor and Desmond entered the Star and Moon club it quickly became obvious to them that they were at the centre of attention. At first they were nervous, but then they relaxed as several women – the sort that would normally cuss their ras if they came too close – were smiling in their direction. All became clear once Lenley Greene sidled up next to them. ‘This coffin ting,’ he said, while pulling anxiously at his little goatee beard, ‘is it for true?’

  Nestor exchanged a glance with Desmond before he said, ‘Yeah, man. ’Ow much you ’ave?’

  ‘’Ow much you want?’

  ‘A grand minimum.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s wha’ me ’ear. An’ the money comes back double in a week?’

  ‘Nah, money back in two weeks an’ whatever you put in comes back again a week, or two weeks after that.’

  ‘Me ’ear it come back double in one week.’

  ‘Then you ’ear wrong. But don’t fret yuhself, Lenley, plenty people want in an’ there’s only a couple-a grand lef to raise. If you don’t want it there’s plenty who do.’

  ‘Wha’ if I call aroun’ your yard tomorra?’

  ‘We’s busy tomorra, we ’ave bisniss in Nottingham.’

  ‘You mean the football ting?’

  ‘Yeah, the football. Check me Monday an’ if there’s space me let you in on it ’cause me know you a long time.’

  ‘Thanks, Nestor, man, me appreciate it. Me see you Monday.’

  The club was starting to heave under the weight of the hot and sweaty crowd as Nestor and Desmond used their newly found popularity to ease themselves to the front of the stage. Horace McIntosh was seated at the judges’ table and beckoned them over. ‘Dis ting you were tellin’ de guys about last night, is it some kind-a skank?’ he asked them. ‘Horace, man, we might do some tings,’ protested Desmond, ‘but we ain’t gonna skank our own spars, are we? I mean the team is like family to we an’ there’s certain tings we nah do fe money,’ he went on, as though thoughts of torturing his own father had never crossed his mind.

  ‘An’ it Steve Patel who’s bringin’ in the stuff?’

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘The coffins.’

  ‘Oh yeah, man, the coffins. But the minimum is a grand.’

  ‘Me might raise a lickle more than dat. Me know me don’t ’ave to remind you guys about Nottingham.’

  A hand came onto Desmond’s shoulder and he looked around to see the club’s manager. ‘Horace,’ said Uriah Cunningham, ‘is dis fine young man one of your players who ’as done so much fe black footballers in de town?’ Horace nodded proudly. ‘An’ is dis de same young man who ’as de hinterestin business plan?’

  ‘Yes, dis is Desmond an’ im friend Nestor.’

  Uriah Cunningham searched the two faces, looking for some sign – eyes too close together, or a pair of horns – something that might give him a clue about their true character. He saw nothing to dissuade him. ‘You two men mek sure you come to my office before you leave an’ we’ll ’ave a lickle chat about some business, okay?’

  ‘Don’t keep dem long,’ said Horace, ‘we ’ave a tournament in Nottingham tomorra.’

  Desmond was smiling broadly, but it was the realisation that he and Nestor were about to make the easiest money of their lives, rather than the thought of comely Nottingham girls, that was bringing copious amounts of saliva to his lips.

  With the air conditioning switched off and the beauty contest running more than an hour late, the audience began to get restless. The warm-up artist was having a hard time drawing anything but abuse. After he had finished his third song, the MC came onto the stage and asked for just one round of applause, only to be met with more abuse and shouts for him to ‘Bring on de gal dem!’ Wolverhampton had a reputation of having audiences that were the hardest to please in the whole country. Many a famous artist had been met with icy silence – if they were lucky. The not so fortunate, whatever their reputation or record sales, were often told to remove ‘dem clart’ from the stage after one or two songs into their act.

  In amongst the crowd, two predators remained silent and nodded in acknowledgement to each other. Cecil Grant and Bryce McBean were at the club for the same reason – and it wasn’t the allure of scantily clad women. The possibility of big money had them making their own separate plans. Neither man was thinking of leaving Nestor and Desmond with much of their own money: they planned to take it away from them and Steve Patel once the transaction had taken place.

  Uriah Cunningham mopped his brow and, returning to where Desmond and Nestor were, asked them to come to his office to discuss some business. The young guys frowned: they were waiting to see a parade of almost naked women and thought the business could come later. Uriah dabbed his forehead again and explained that there were some difficulties with a few of the contestants and it might be some time before they appeared. Reluctantly, they followed him and within two or three steps there was a surge in the crowd and their places were taken. Uriah sat behind his desk and gestured for the two men to pull up chairs for themselves. ‘First tings first,’ he said, ‘is dis ting a skank? ’Cause me is willin to put in five grand but me is also willin to pay a man to kill unno if me nah see mi money again.’

  He felt comforted by the way Desmond and Nestor laughed so easily; it communicated that they had no fear of reprisals. ‘Look, man,’ said Nestor, ‘we ain’t skankin. We need a lot more money than five grand to buy into the coffin ting an’ that’s the only reason we’s offerin the people we know a chance to come in on it, seen? Believe me, if we had the money none-a you guys would know about it until you see we drivin’ in our brand new cars.’

  It was the perfect answer for Uriah Cunningham, as he immediately identified with Nestor’s admission of greed and selfishness. He unlocked the cash box he had taken from his drawer and pushed five bundles of notes across the desk. ‘Me wanna receipt but count it first,’ he said. The bundles were of single and five-pound notes but Desmond and Nestor would see it as a labour of love. They were only halfway through their first bundles when there were the sounds of uproar from inside the club. Alarm spread across Uriah’s broad face. ‘Stay deh an’ carry on countin’,’ he said as he rushed for the door. It was only the texture of the money on their fingertips that stopped the two guys from following Uriah to see what was going on.

  He had been gone for almost half an hour and the money had long been counted before Uriah unlocked his office door and re-entered. He flopped down onto his chair, muttering to himself, seemingly oblivious to the men sitting opposite him. ‘Receipt,’ he said vaguely. Once it was written and Uriah had repeated his threat to have them killed if this turned out to be a skank, they filled their pockets with banknotes and left his office to find a scene of utter devastation.

  It turned out that the ‘beauty contest with a difference’ was far more different than any of the punters had imagined. The women were fit, some said crisp, and when they got into their swimwear they were, if anything, even a little more forward than most of the crowd had hoped for. Every one of them had come to the front of the low stage and jiggled their batties; and when hands made a grab for their loveliness they had responded with smiles rather than the usual cursing. Although Horace was one of the three judges, it was the audience who had picked the winner by giving the loudest cheer to their favourite. The winner was a statuesque black woman called Grace; her face wasn’t the prettiest but most of the crowd agreed that her figure was way more attractive than that of any of the other women’s. And this was where the problem lay. A guy who was sweeping up the broken glass explained to Nestor and Desmond that the contestants weren’t women at all but drag queens. Those who had groped their batties became enraged by the questions that were instantly raised in their own minds once the contestants had lined up and taken off their wigs. The thought that their friends had witnessed them feeling up another man filled them with horror, and despite Uriah’s intervention to say that it was all a joke, the only way they felt able to reclaim their masculinity wa
s by way of that old, tried and tested method of mindless violence.

  ‘So all we missed was a load of battyman dressed up like woman,’ laughed Nestor as they drove home.

  Desmond remained quiet for a few miles. ‘Them guys mashin up the club,’ he said, ‘them hinsecure an’ need to mature themselves, to ras. Them drag queens are entertainers, man, dressin’ up like a woman don’t mek them battymen.’

  Nestor Riley had never before heard his friend give such a considered opinion that challenged the conventions of the day – and that worried him. ‘Er, right,’ he said. ‘Is Jas still workin on ya cars dem?’

  Not picking up on what lay behind Nestor’s enquiry, Des proudly said, ‘Yeah, man! Him like mi slave, him do anyting me want.’

  Nestor thought it best not to ask any further questions about Jas and turned the conversation to the money they had raised so far.

  9

  The tournament in Nottingham had started in the 1970s after a number of black football clubs from across the Midlands had got together with the idea of setting up a black league or cup competition. Sabina Park Rangers had been subjected to frequent racial abuse; they had had their minibus stoned and refereeing biased against them – experiences shared by all too many teams that were made up of black players. But any idea of a separate league was eventually dismissed because of logistics; there were too few teams and, most importantly for several coaches, such a move would only confirm the racist notions in some minds that black players were neither mentally nor physically tough enough to play the ‘English’ game. The Nottingham cup came about because it was thought it would be a good idea if black teams could play for at least one day in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. The theory may have been a good one but it was not a tournament without hostility just because it was black teams playing each other.

  The Sabina Park Rangers’ players were the ones who seemed to have most problems getting out of the way of the hard tackles that were flying from the first whistle. After the wrecking of the Star and Moon nightclub several of them had gone straight to a blues party, and had turned up for the tournament without having had any sleep at all. With the cup final so close Horace McIntosh had intended to leave many of his best players on the sidelines for long periods but he soon found that he had to employ them as substitutes as his players continued to be fouled with an increasing frequency. At one point the referee halted a match and called the captains together to get them to tell their players to cool down before a mass brawl broke out. Horace turned to the coach of the host club and wondered out loud if the other clubs were jealous of his team’s success in the more prestigious Watney’s cup. The man snorted and replied that the rough play had nothing to do with the Wolverhampton men’s ability on the pitch, but was instead provoked by what they had got up to at last year’s dance.

  It was the arrogance of the SPR players, as well as the fact that they had come with the sole intention of chatting up the local females that had the Nottingham footballers well and truly vexed. As usual, the Wolverhampton players had spurned the use of a minibus so they could turn up in their highly polished cars. Still pulling Afro combs through their hair, many of them stepped out of gleaming BMWs, Ford Capris and Granadas or sporty Toyota Celicas – the sort of shiny cars designed to mesmerise and then steal away the women the Nottingham guys thought ‘belonged’ exclusively to them. They had agreed before the tournament that they would not allow it to happen again.

  True to form, the Nottingham women had turned up in new hairdos and clothes that accentuated their feminine forms. They were supposedly there to cheer on their boyfriends but their presence only served to provoke the local players into even more aggressive attempts to wipe the knowing leers from the faces of the SPR team, who were quite certain that the female presence was all down to them.

  Nestor Riley and Desmond Palmer were doing more talking than playing. Suddenly it seemed everyone wanted in on the deal, even Norman Longmore and Audley Robinson who had previously been the most vocal in their scepticism. Once it had got around that businessmen like Horace McIntosh and Uriah Cunningham were prepared to invest their money, no one wanted to look foolish by refusing the chance to have their money doubled. The talk went back and forth to reinforce the opinion that the idea was a good one: people died every day and they all needed a coffin – it was one of the few things in life (or more correctly, death) that everyone was going to use. It seemed so simple that it had to be brilliant. Even as Nestor and Desmond took pledges of cash that were to be handed over at the next training session there was feverish activity going on back in parts of Wolverhampton: areas of poor housing, poor job prospects, and, most of all, poor judgment. Those who had only a few hundred pounds to their name were trying to find a friend or relative to come up with enough cash to bring it up to a thousand. Groups who were running ‘pardna’ saving schemes met to see if they should invest the money they pooled every week. Around the town there were pockets of something approaching hysteria.

  ‘Hey,’ Desmond said to Nestor, ‘if only there was a way we could keep this money without gettin’ killed.’ The same thought had crossed Nestor’s mind. He was busy thinking about possible places they could hide if they did go down that route just as Cecil Grant shoved an opponent off the ball and began to make a run towards goal. Cecil had once shot and wounded a man over a video recorder worth about four hundred pounds and even though he had yet to hand over any, Nestor figured he knew the lengths Cecil would go to if they ran off with his money.

  ‘Put it out your mind, Des, ’cause me already give it serious thought an’ it’s the kind-a ting that could put me an’ you in a couple-a Steve’s mahogany boxes.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Desmond said regretfully, ‘but it was a nice thought while it lasted though.’

  On the pitch, the sliding tackles that were catching the Sabina Park players earlier on were now being avoided. Retaliation took the form of ‘accidental’ falls onto the tacklers that normally left them needing the trainer’s wet sponge. Now the SPR players were only thinking about football – and not the pleasurable activities that might follow during the evening. The deft touches returned for the final match and Ian Beckford began to show the sort of skill that had so interested the Villa scout. Horace had told them that they had to prove that they were the best black football club in the Midlands now or else, so that whatever happened in the much more prestigious Watney’s Cup final, there would be a few players in Nottingham reckoning that their achievement was not up to much.

  The first half was a scrappy affair and it was one-all as the referee blew his whistle to bring it to a close. The Beeston Caribs scored shortly after the restart and began playing with an intensity that revealed how much winning the tournament meant to them. SPR responded by bringing on Mark Beckford and Bryce McBean to start winning more possession of the ball midfield. With only five minutes to go, Beanie threaded a free kick to Ian Beckford who then passed the ball to Cecil Grant. He shrugged off a feeble tackle and slammed the ball into the corner of the net. Even though the game had restarted, the Beeston players were still arguing amongst themselves about who was to blame for the goal, as Ian Beckford began a run that took him past three opponents. As a fourth closed in he released the ball to his brother. Mark had been forced wide as the goalkeeper came off his line to close down the angle but Mark kept cool and forced the ball through the gap between the keeper and the near post.

  When the final whistle blew and superiority had been restored (at least in the minds of the Wolverhampton side) the more belligerent amongst the Nottingham men tramped off the pitch shooting glares at the female spectators that dared them to even applaud Sabina Park Rangers.

  As was the custom, the teams showered and changed before making their way to a nearby church hall where there would be food, speeches and presentations, before those who were young and willing enough would spend the rest of the night – and following morning – at a dance.

  The remnants of fried chicken, rice and peas and a variety
of green salads were gathered from the long tables as the players and officials waited for the speeches and prize-giving. As with weddings, baptisms and funerals, the speeches at many West Indian functions are noted for being excruciatingly long – and in anticipation of the ordeal backsides shuffled impatiently on the plastic seats. Horace McIntosh anxiously looked around for those of his players who were absent from the meal (they were preparing for the dance by chatting up what girls they could). As the guest speaker was about to take the podium, SPR’s missing players walked in – just in time to make a ‘bad bwoy’ entrance and receive any prize that might be going their way. Tournament organiser Sammy Sterling finally said, ‘Ladies an’ gentlemen now dat unno belly full I would like to hintroduce unno to Brotha Joseph. Not only is him a member of de Jamaican Footballers hAssociation an’ de Midlands Afro-Caribbean hAssociation of Football Clubs but also him a cherished member of dis church dat ’as kindly given us de use of dis hall. Come on, put your hands together fe Brotha Joseph Swaby.’

  The applause was less than enthusiastic for the tall man with the bald and bulbous head. He smiled appreciatively at the effort that had been made by those seated closest to the podium and showed off a mouthful of gold teeth that made him look the epitome of a sixties gangster. He waited for Sammy Sterling to stop clapping before he said, ‘I’m ’onoured that I was axed ’ere today to wha’ really is a celebration of young black talent. Talent that ’as been bestowed upon you by God Almighty …’ He had played his ‘God card’ much too soon and most of the audience immediately stopped listening as he launched into the parable of the servants and the talents. By the time he had come to the end of his speech several people had fallen asleep and had had their snores halted by an elbow to the ribs. ‘… An’ finally, you are all pioneers. A great scientist called hIssac Newton said he couldn’t ’ave done the tings he done if it wasn’t for the people who ’ad gone before him. He said he was standin’ on the shoulders of giants. Well, all of you are giants because of wha’ you do. Because of wha’ you put up wid to play football means that black men play for Englan’ now. An’ I’m proud it was a Nottingham Forest player, Viv Anderson, who became the first black man to become a full English international. He is a real credit to black people an’ I know more young black players will play at the top level an’ become a instrument of God Almighty because of the foun- dation that ’as been laid by clubs like those playin here today.’