A Natural

by Ross Raisin

  There was an announcement at breakfast. Two new signings would be joining them the following night, after the second friendly. Both were from Oldham, in the division above. The pair would add genuine quality, Wilko told them: Mark Munro, a striker, and Michael Grant, a right-winger. When the squad left the room Richards walked out alongside Tom.

  “You’ve got your work cut out there, Tommy. I was with Grant at Millwall. He’s class.”

  Tom did not say anything, but the news of Grant’s signing had shaken him. It did not help when he read on the club website after lunch that the manager was keen to address the wide areas because he thought that Town were “a bit light in those positions.” He refused to let himself worry, however. His form, his fitness, his hunger to succeed, were all strong. Stronger than at any time since he joined the club. Even when it emerged on Twitter that Town had paid Oldham two hundred thousand, a club record, for Grant, he tried to remain rational. The shirt was his to lose. If anything, the others’ banter about his prospects helped: he understood quickly enough that it was the ones whose own positions were in some doubt who were giving him the most stick, and he was able to return it.

  After dinner he went for a walk across the campus. There was a small hill at the far end of the grounds, which he headed towards with the intention, for the first time since getting to Ireland, of calling Liam. He walked up the hill, nervous anticipation building as he thought up one or two things to talk about and took out his phone.

  Liam wanted right away to speak about Grant. “He’s good, you know.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “All you can do is keep doing what you’re doing. And Grant can play left side too, is what the Oldham forums say, so you don’t know what the manager’s thinking is.”

  “Right. I didn’t know that. Thanks. How are you, anyway?”

  “Fine. Pitch looks fucking beautiful.”

  “I bet.”

  “No, I mean it really does. Dad says it’s the best he’s ever seen it.”

  “Good.”

  Tom looked down at the concrete blocks of the campus buildings, the rich wet countryside spreading out beyond them.

  “I’m missing you,” Liam said.

  Through the windows of the college bar, Tom could make out the shapes of several players moving around the pool tables.

  “Boring here too,” he said. Then: “I’ll be back on Friday.”

  There was a small noise of Liam’s breath and Tom thought that he was probably smiling. “Friday, then.”

  “Yes.”

  Tom walked back down the hill. He recounted the conversation in his head, frustrated with himself, quiet anxiety playing on him that something had just happened, a moment, an opportunity that he should have taken.

  The starting eleven, except for Tom and Bobby, was changed around for the second friendly. They won 7–0. Tom performed well, if it was possible to perform well in such a contest, scoring once and setting up two more before he came off at halftime in a mass substitution of all the outfield players. When the journeyman forward who replaced him injured his shin, Tom was put back on the field for the last ten minutes, and scored again. In the dark cramped dressing room word got around that the two new players had arrived. They had been in the stand watching the game. Tom listened for more information, content that Grant had seen him play so well.

  The pair were in the clubhouse, where supporters, coaches and players from both sides were drinking and mingling. Wilko brought the new players over for a handshake with each member of the squad. Grant was black. For some reason Tom had not been expecting that. Automatically he made the assumption that Grant would be faster than him, that he would be a good dribbler—which is what people must have meant when they had described him as “class” or “quality,” words that Tom had rarely heard said about a black player before, unless he was foreign.

  But from the first moment Grant touched the ball the next morning it was obvious that he was a player. The session started with a non-contact game, and he seemed incapable of losing control of the ball. Whenever it was at his feet his first notion was to glide forward, and even though he was not in fact any quicker than Tom, he drifted with ease past his markers, cutting infield off either wing, his head always up, searching for a pass. His teammates responded immediately to his ability. Even Gundi found a new energy. Twice he ran on to one of Grant’s through balls and rounded Foley to score. When he sprinted towards Grant to celebrate, Tom realized that Gundi would soon be giving him the buttock-crossing code, that they would probably invent new codes between themselves.

  Munro too, was good, and Tom knew that it must have taken an attractive financial package to persuade them both to join Town. The two were naturally drawn into the company of Gundi, Jones and the other established players. The quiet Jamaican, Lloyd-Day, had also done well in the two friendlies, although he continued to keep to himself, walking about the ugly landscaped grounds in a different orbit to each of the bored little groups doing the same thing.

  One breakfast time the trialists were taken aside, one at a time, and both sent home.

  —

  Tom sat with Beverley in the empty cafeteria playing a slow game of cards. Liam had not texted for two days. It was clearly a very busy period for him, yet Tom could not stop himself wanting to know if Liam was thinking about him. If he had been spending his free time with Leah. When Beverley left to go for a nap Tom went outside. Concrete sculptures rose at random from the stiff, browning lawns. Water sprung rhythmically from some of them or bled down smooth sides into underground tanks. He reached the shore of a small lake, on the other side of which stood Boyn and Daish, skimming stones.

  “Hey.”

  It was Bobby, close behind him. “How’s it going, Tommy?”

  “Yeah, OK.”

  “No bad here, eh?”

  They looked together across the lake. In the distance a bank of cloud was coming in off the coast.

  “I was wanting to ask another favor. I know I owe you that three-fifty still, and I’m good for it, don’t worry, but see, I was wondering if you could lend me a bit more, for now just.”

  “Really? I don’t know if I can, Bob. How much?”

  “However much you’re able.” He was staring at Tom.

  “No, I don’t think I can this time.”

  “Oh. Right-o. Fair enough. No bother.”

  Tom watched him walk away. He could have lent him the money without too much difficulty, but he had not wanted to. Bobby’s new contract was probably more lucrative than his own, for one thing. But it was not so much that, or even that he knew Bobby was gambling, so much as an objection to Bobby’s obvious inability to control himself. He wondered what Liam might say. He imagined telling him or Beverley or any of them—how easy it would be to let them in on it, to expose Bobby.

  While they milled about before dinner he saw Bobby talking to Richards in a corner, the two of them turning their backs to the room, Richards very slightly shaking his head at Bobby. A nasty satisfaction crawled through Tom at the rejection on Bobby’s face, his helplessness in the shadow of a problem which, no matter how much everyone might continue to praise his development on the field, was only going to get bigger.

  Grant started the final friendly. Within minutes he was being double-marked—the spindly Irish winger tracking back to help out his fullback. Grant, although he dominated the pair, never tried to embarrass them. He was looking always for a teammate, for the right pass. Tom sat in the wooden dugout, impatient to get on. He could hear in his mind Liam’s words on the phone: He’s good, you know. The tiny drunk contingent of Town fans who had taken their holidays to follow the tour cheered Grant’s every involvement, and when Tom did get put on, Grant remained, switching to the left flank. The spindly winger, flummoxed by the change, followed him across the pitch, so that for the few minutes until his manager shouted out new instructions Grant was being tailed by three of the opposing team. Even then, with Tom completely unmarked on the other side of the fie
ld, Grant was still the player his teammates wanted to get the ball to.

  That final night they were allowed out in the town where they had just played, a small place that seemed to be located entirely along one short stretch of road. There were, however, eight pubs. In the second of them Tom spoke for the first time to Grant. Tom had been standing with Beverley and Richards when Grant got up from the table in front, just as the other two went off to the pool table.

  “All right, buddy, you want a drink?” Grant asked him.

  “I’m all right, thanks.”

  “Don’t reckon you mind coming to the bar with me, anyway? I think there’s some in here have never seen this many black guys before.”

  “Sure.”

  It did appear that some of the drinkers were looking over as they walked to the bar, but it was usual in some of the smaller towns the team visited for the arrival of twenty young men in designer jeans and stretch T-shirts to attract some kind of attention.

  “Good cross, that, by the way,” Grant said. “The third goal.” He ordered his drink, glancing about, conscious of being watched, and an instinct of pity moved in Tom. “What’s the standard like in League Two?” Grant asked. “Better than that, right?”

  “Better than that, yes.” Tom was surprised at how unguardedly he was talking to him. “You play left side much for Oldham?”

  “Sometimes. Kind of prefer it. I can cut in and shoot more. My left back at Oldham was really attacking, so it worked well there. He could get up the outside and stretch defenses for me. I don’t know if the manager here has decided how he wants to play me yet.”

  It hit Tom that Grant had been guaranteed a starting place. It had probably not even occurred to him that he and Tom might be competing for the same spot.

  “What’s he like, anyway, the manager?” Grant asked, stooping to pick up his drink from the counter. There was a long scar on the back of his neck, pink, like an earthworm.

  “Pretty fair.”

  “Good. Suits me. I like fair.”

  With some difficulty, due to the squad having splintered across all eight pubs, they were collected at the designated time and returned to the campus. Tom told Beverley that he was going for a short walk to clear his head before going up to the room. He went towards the hill. Hiccups bolted in his chest. He lay down next to the lake and waited for them to pass. Above him a black seam of night, massed with stars, cleft the layers of cloud. By the time he stood up, he knew exactly the words he was going to say to Liam. He mounted the hill, steeling himself, and dialed. The call went to answerphone. An image came into his head of Liam out with Leah, laughing, their friends around them, Liam taking out his phone to look at the screen then sliding it back into his pocket.

  When he got back to the room, Beverley was sitting up in bed. His face was shiny, the sides of his head damp.

  “Still up?” Tom said.

  “Yeah. Just thinking.”

  Tom sat down on his own bed. “What about?”

  “I was piss-poor today, wasn’t I?”

  “I thought you played decent. Just a friendly. I wouldn’t worry.”

  “Yeah, but I do, mate. Can’t stop it. This time’s always the worst, before the season starts. Just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  Tom started taking his shoes off. He fumbled at the laces, which he seemed to have done up in some complex and confusing way. They would not come undone. He picked away at them and sudden annoyance flooded through him, through his arms, his fingertips—at himself, for doing them up like an idiot, at Liam. “You’ve nothing to worry about,” he said. “Your place is nailed on. It’s me should be worried.”

  “Grant, you mean?”

  “Obvious he’s a starter.”

  “Might play him on the left, though.”

  “He might play him on the left, yeah.”

  He gave up on the laces and tugged the shoes off from the heel. Beverley twisted towards his phone on the bedside table, probably to set the alarm that they had woken up to without fail on each of the five mornings, a whole hour before breakfast. In the light of his bedside lamp Tom could make out the fading red area around Beverley’s tattoo. He tried to envisage the girlfriend, waiting with him in the tattoo parlor, but when he did so it was Leah sitting there, stroking a hand down Liam’s wide white back.

  “Bev? Can I tell you something?”

  “Course.”

  He did not know what he was doing. He was drunk. But he could not stop the words from coming. “Know I said I’d been seeing this girl but we split up ages ago before you were at Town?”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes…think so, not sure, but anyway the thing is, though, it wasn’t true. I wasn’t seeing anyone then.”

  “OK.”

  “But I am now.”

  Beverley was looking at him closely, trying hard to understand.

  “I am now, but it’s not the same girl. It’s not. Not the same.”

  “I’m not following, mate. Sorry. Bit pissed.”

  “It’s not a girl,” he said and wanted to laugh. The words came out of him and he did not care. He felt a surreal sense of abandon, as though he was talking about somebody else.

  Beverley’s face looked blank. He gave a short strange laugh, his eyes fixed on Tom’s. “I’m not sure what you’re saying to me.”

  “I’m saying the person I’m seeing is a man.”

  Beverley’s expression remained blank.

  “You’re telling me you’re seeing a man?”

  “Yes.”

  “You shitting me?”

  “No.”

  Through his drunkenness he was lucidly aware that he should not be doing this, that Liam would not want him to.

  There was a strange smile on Beverley’s face. “Fucking hell,” he said and nodded very slowly. “Right, well, that’s fine, mate.”

  Tom laughed.

  “I would never have guessed that,” Beverley said.

  “OK. Good to hear, actually.”

  “Sorry, I mean—well, no, that is what I mean. I’d never have guessed that. Who is it, that you’re seeing?”

  “You don’t know them.”

  Beverley sat upright in his bed. “Nothing changes,” he said. “Right. Nothing changes. I’m not going to tell anybody. I’m not going to ask to stop rooming with you. Full stop.” He held out his hand. Tom leaned over and shook it. “Nothing, OK.”

  For a few minutes neither of them spoke while Tom went into the bathroom to get undressed. He felt outside himself. Delirious.

  “My cousin’s gay,” Beverley said when Tom got into bed. “We think he is, anyway.”

  They lay in silence. Beverley’s bedside lamp remained on, as if keyed in to his thoughts. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do?”

  “You’re not going to tell anyone at the club?”

  “You fucking joking?”

  There was silence again. Tom shut his eyes, although he felt a long way from sleep. Beverley, quietly, started laughing.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m just thinking about it. If you told them. The look on their faces.” He turned out the light. But a moment later: “There any other gay players?”

  “No. How would I know?”

  “Point. Don’t know. Hey, Tom?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Seriously, I’m…I don’t know, I’m honored you told me that.”

  Tom opened his eyes. He stared up at the red pupil of the smoke detector. “This doesn’t feel real,” he said. “None of it feels real.”

  In the morning neither made any mention of the conversation. Beverley was exactly as normal—more obviously normal, in fact, in his perkiness and chatter, than usual. He stayed beside or near Tom throughout breakfast and the tour debriefing, and followed him onto one of the minibuses for the journey to the airport, where they occupied the same two seats as they had on the journey out, Beverley for a long time cleaning his iPad screen with a wet wipe, separating Tom from the aisle an
d the other players.

  A vague shifting unease settled on Tom as he looked out of the window at the fields and hedges and drenched gray hamlets, the lifeless roadside pubs appearing, disappearing. He had no doubt that he could trust Beverley—he had known it as soon as the words had started to come, with a sureness that he could not possibly have imagined before—and yet the more he went over what he could remember of the conversation, the more it disturbed him, the more distant from Liam it made him feel.

  —

  Liam finished at the ground early and was at Tom’s house by five. Through the living-room window Tom saw his car pull up at the curb. He went outside and met him in the graveled front garden, where, without saying anything, they kissed for a long time by the bins even as one of Tom’s Bangladeshi neighbors walked past the gate.

  They went inside, upstairs, and only later when they sat down to eat the burgers and chips that had been in the freezer did Tom tell him about Beverley.

  Liam was taken aback. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?”

  “I didn’t know. I hadn’t planned it.”

  “So, what…you just got pissed and told him?”

  “I wasn’t pissed.”

  “You were fucking pissed, mate. I heard your answerphone message.”

  “Oh, so you listened to it then?” Tom turned away towards the window. “It felt right, that’s all. He’s not going to tell anyone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do. You did it. You told someone.”

  Liam pushed his chair back. “You think any of this is fucking easy for me? Do you think you’re the only one that ever has a hard time dealing with what they are?” He stormed into the kitchen. Seconds later the fridge door closed with a thud. When he appeared again at the doorway, though, he looked calmer.

  “I’ve known Leah for years. She’s my friend. This guy Beverley has been at the club for, what, five months? He might be all right but he’s a teammate. You don’t know him.” He went back into the kitchen. Tom left him alone. Stupid injustice welled inside him, working into anger as he deliberated going through to appease him and imagined the scene, two gays making up after their tiff.