by Alison Bond
‘I owe you a call,’ she said.
‘You don’t owe me anything.’
The sex had been hot, but they could teach each other all there was to know about playing it cool and they both knew it. She thought of taking him off to a quiet corner and screwing his brains out.
Just to relieve some of her stress.
The door to the executive box flew open and a party of six came noisily in. He greeted them warmly in Russian and left her by the window, but as he walked away he brushed his hand down her arm from her elbow to her wrist, his fingertips touching the bare skin where her sleeve ended, sending an involuntary shiver down to her toes.
Maybe after.
Joe slumped to his knees in front of the toilet and voided his tumultuous stomach, wiping away the choking strands of vomit from his lips and waiting for more. When he was satisfied that this violent attack of nerves was over he pushed himself to shaky feet and closed his eyes in silent prayer.
Let me play well, he said to his personal God, the one who was able to put the speed of the wind in his legs and the deft touch of inspiration in his feet.
Let me make her proud. ‘Her’ was his mother sitting out there in the stadium already, his biggest fan. ‘Her’ was also Samantha, whom he knew had been trying to underplay the importance of his performance. He appreciated her trying, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that two of the English Football Association’s employees coming all this way to watch was a big deal, the kind of chance that would perhaps never come round again in his lifetime. ‘Her’ was also Layla. He had sent her a pair of tickets. He still didn’t know whether or not she would come.
Let me score a goal.
An hour before kick-off and the changing room was buzzing with energy. One of the defenders had rigged up a music system, which was pumping out aggressive dance music, the sort of thing he went out of his way to avoid but somehow seemed to suit the pre-match mood. They all knew what they had to do. They had to win. Although they could not see the crowd they could feel a palpable air of expectancy gathering as the minutes ticked by.
‘Where’s the English?’ he heard one of them say, but he knew that they weren’t talking about him – they were talking about Gabe. None of them thought of Joe as English – he was ‘bachor’, the kid. The only person to make a fuss over his Englishness was Samantha, and for all the right reasons. He had dual nationality, he had never worn a national shirt for Poland, and so in theory he was perfectly eligible to play for England one day.
‘Do you want to play for England?’ she had asked, as if he might have some bizarre longing to wear the red and white of Poland instead of the Three Lions of England.
‘Since the first day I understood who I was,’ he’d said, ‘that I was half English,’ thereby throwing any ambiguity aside and making sure she knew just how much this meant to him.
Every footballer in the world would want to play for England. It was the spiritual home of football, perhaps not of the richest players or the sexiest skills, but it was where football had passion, where every player gave everything they had, where they gave a damn, where they gave their heart. Where the fans lived and died with their team’s success and failure. So they never won anything, not for years, so what? It didn’t matter. They had belief. Misguided, thwarted belief but magnificent belief nonetheless.
Did he want to play for England?
He would sell his mother for that kind of chance.
‘Where’s your buddy?’ someone asked.
Gabe wasn’t late quite yet, but a few more minutes and he would be. He hadn’t seen him since that night in Podgórze, and although they had spoken on the phone a couple of times neither one of them had referred to it.
What happens south of the river …
Just as he was thinking about him, Gabe appeared. He looked relaxed, far more relaxed than Joe, and Joe tried to tune in to whatever it was that enabled Gabe to saunter in with a minute to spare and not feel like he was about to risk everything he had on a ninety-minute game. But perhaps it was the same quality that allowed him to cheat on his wife, in which case he wasn’t sure he wanted to be like Gabe at all.
‘All right?’ asked Joe.
Gabe nodded. ‘Yeah, you all right?’
‘Yeah.’
Something had changed.
Samantha’s guests arrived and soon she was too busy playing hostess to pay any attention to Lubin. She extolled the talents of Josef Wandrowszcki. She knew that he was a better prospect than Gabe Muswell. Youth was a valuable commodity. The two men from the FA were politely interested. She hoped that Joe’s performance would make them sit up and take notice.
The players took to the pitch for the warm-up about thirty minutes before kick-off. Joe shielded his eyes from the low winter sun and looked into the increasing crowd. He had memorized the seating plan and knew exactly where the tickets were that he had sent to Layla, but the sun was too bright, it was too far away and he could not see. He ran with the rest of the squad; he tucked and jumped and side-stepped his way across the pitch. The crowd was still growing.
He told himself no, that she would not be there – she would be with her new boyfriend back at home. Why would she get on a plane to watch a game of football when she had told him again and again since they were seven years old that she didn’t even like football very much. He shouldn’t hope, and yet still he did. He hoped that she was there and that she was on her own. Not with the boyfriend. Not with Daniel. In fact, he sincerely hoped that she had broken it off with Daniel. He couldn’t bear the thought of someone else kissing those pink lips. He knew it wasn’t cool to care this much, but he did. He tried not to.
‘Looking for someone?’ said Gabe.
‘Layla,’ he said, and her name pierced his nonchalance like a silver-plated bullet. Once more he looked into the sun, but it was impossible to tell if she was there.
He needed to put his head down, stop looking and concentrate on his game. After all, what was more important: whether or not Layla had come to see him play or the chance to impress the men from England?
England, he told himself firmly. The team not the country.
What would his dad say, he wondered, as he stretched out his hamstrings, if he had the chance to play for England?
He ran twenty yards twisting at the waist and imagined his dad’s face when he told him.
Just as the players were about to go back in he heard someone screaming his name.
‘Joe! Josef Wandrowszcki! Joe, over here!’
Magically the sun slipped behind a cloud and when he looked in the direction of the voice, of her seats, he saw her. Too far away to be distinct, but he knew it was her. He could feel her presence. He felt as if he could see every windswept strand of hair on her head, every gentle crease of her pink lips when she smiled. He could smell the sweet scent of her. She was wearing a red woollen scarf and unfurling some kind of banner. If he screwed his eyes up he could just make out the words – HI JOE! – his heart mushroomed with pride. God, he loved her. He loved her so. He loved her.
I will be playing for you.
He waved, and she waved back and he couldn’t tell who she was with and he didn’t even care. She was here. She had come. His stomach settled and he felt as if he could do anything.
They were pitted against a lesser Italian side that hadn’t won any silverware since the seventies. On paper they were evenly matched and for the first twenty minutes it was that way on the pitch too. Each promising run on goal was swiftly closed down, a well-placed pass would be given away a touch or two later, each hard-won tackle came to nothing.
The crowd started to shift in their seats, thoughts drifting away from the action, and down on the pitch the players could sense it.
Stranded as a lone striker Joe was frustrated. He shouted constantly for the ball, especially when it fell to Gabe, but the defenders were playing so far up that twice he was (wrongly he felt) pulled back for offside.
How was he supposed to perform if he didn’t eve
n get the chance? He was morbidly aware of the minutes ticking by.
When the ball went out of play at the other end of the field he huddled with Gabe and suggested a change of tactic.
‘Let’s trade,’ he said. ‘You avoid their offside trap and I’ll feed you the ball.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Gabe, ‘I haven’t got your pace.’
‘The only thing my pace is getting me is some bad refereeing decisions,’ said Joe. ‘Come on, just for the last few minutes of this half.’
‘We’ll discuss it at half-time.’
‘Look,’ said Joe, his frustration spilling out into his tone of voice. ‘I’m dropping back. If you don’t want to be on the end of my crosses someone else will.’
The ball was back in play and Joe ran out of position to wrest it from a member of the opposing team.
Gabe backed up, struggling to keep a defender between himself and the goal and avoid the offside.
Meanwhile Joe ran down the left wing in world-class time, needing nothing more than speed to keep the defenders at bay. They couldn’t catch him. When the time came to pass the ball in to Gabe he found he was pulling it back slightly, which meant Gabe was able to shake off his defender and step forward for the cross.
Gabe collected the ball calmly and controlled it with one touch before firing it at the goal. The woodwork denied him. The goalpost trembled and he lurched for the rebound, but the rattled goalkeeper beat him to it, grasping the ball firmly in both hands and sending his players deep into the outfield before the goal-kick.
The crowd began to take notice.
And up in the executive box they were taking notice too.
She was not aware she had been holding her breath until Lubin pointed it out to her shortly after the half-time whistle.
‘You can relax,’ he said. ‘They are both playing well.’
It was true that in the last fifteen minutes of the first half Joe and Gabe were dominating the game, but she was glad he had spoken within earshot of the delegates from the FA.
‘You think?’
‘You clearly have an eye for talent. Why don’t you trust yourself a little more?’
‘I’ve been known to make some bad decisions.’
‘If I wasn’t sure that I’m the best thing to happen to you for a long time I’d think you were talking about me,’ he said quietly.
She wished that his arrogance was a turn-off, but she’d never been one of those women attracted to humility. As far as she was concerned unassuming men were only modest because they had little to boast about. The truth was that she liked how much he assumed.
‘I have to see you again,’ he said. ‘Tonight.’
‘It’s a bad idea.’
‘Impossible. I don’t have bad ideas.’
She didn’t want romantic entanglements, not now, not when her business was so close to being a reality. The transfer window was just round the corner. It was just sex. Fierce sex. But she should be able to resist nonetheless. She ignored the lusty signals that her body was sending to her brain.
Be cool. Be business.
‘I was planning on taking our two visitors for dinner,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you would like to join us?’
It would be good to show off to the FA with her Russian billionaire friend. Ever since Abramovich and Gaydamak sank their millions into the game people saw pound signs in Russian eyes and were inevitably impressed.
‘There is a late cocktail party at the Czartoryskich museum,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that is something that you and your friends would enjoy?’
A private cocktail party would be perfect. She just hoped there would be something to celebrate.
Joe started the second half with fire raging in his belly. His team mates could sense it and so could the opposition. He had been close enough to scent the tang of goal. He had a taste for it now. He allowed himself to think once more of Layla watching him in the stands, watching and waiting for him to impress, and then he closed his mind to everything but the game that he was playing, the pursuit of the ball and placing it in the back of the net.
Gabe watched him and found himself longing to be seventeen again and have that kind of talent. The boy was something special. The thought of what he might be like in ten years’ time was almost overwhelming.
Up in the executive box the two delegates from the FA glanced at each other. They had seen enough football games to know what they were looking for. Talent came in different packages. Sometimes a player was flashy, demonstrating flair in every touch; sometimes he was dogged and hard-working, unlikely to make a mistake, a safe player who would be a rock for any team. And sometimes a player was instinctive, the ball becoming part of his body, bending to his will. This was the kind of talent they saw in Joe.
But not Gabe. Gabe was tired and it showed. He had played a great fifteen minutes but that wasn’t enough. Not against Joe who looked as fresh as if he had just run out. Gabe felt old.
When the goal eventually, inevitably, came it was a good one. A solo effort from halfway up the field. Some pedants would argue that against better opposition, against a stronger defence, Joe’s goal might not have made it. But it hardly seemed fair to pick holes in a performance that fans would be talking about for the rest of the season.
The world slowed down for Joe and he was able to watch the satisfying path of his forceful strike inch by inch as it flew past the desperate face of the experienced goalkeeper and into the back of the goal, where it bounced twice and then was still.
Joe didn’t waste any time celebrating. He picked the ball out of the net and ran it back to the centre circle so that he might have the chance to score another.
And he did.
The crowd roared and somewhere someone set off a red flare so that half of the stadium was engulfed in choking crimson smoke. If anyone had known his name, this new kid – bachor, they might have been shouting it, but they did not and so they roared the name of their team until the cold night air shook with the sound of it.
When the full-time whistle blew Samantha turned and looked at her new friends from the FA and her face blazed with triumph.
‘See anything you like?’ she teased.
‘We’ll be wanting tape of the match,’ said one.
She felt an overpowering sense of relief. The kind that makes you relax and want to go to bed knowing you will sleep well. She needed to sit down. But the night wasn’t over yet.
‘I’m sure you’d like to meet Joe,’ she said. ‘And Gabe.’
The mention of Gabe sounded like an afterthought, and briefly she felt bad. Gabe had played well enough but the game had only one star. That much was obvious to all of them. She made sure that the two men had fresh drinks and then sat down for five minutes to enjoy the atmosphere of the triumphant supporters around her.
The dressing room was thick with the stench of mud and sweat. Players gathered around Joe congratulating him in the language that Gabe still didn’t understand, completely ignoring Gabe and ignoring his contribution to the game. It was as if Joe had done it all on his own when Gabe knew, he knew, that he had been there feeding Joe balls, two of which made it onto the scoreline.
It wasn’t just the attention and adulation – it was the talent, the youth, the limitless possibility that he saw when he watched Joe play. At seventeen Gabe had been juggling football with girls and beer, prioritizing nothing, considering whether he should do a City and Guilds in plumbing or take up the offer of a full-time job at the supermarket where he worked every Saturday. Why hadn’t he had the ambition to pursue football with the necessary single-mindedness, like Joe? This chance, this wonderful chance for which he had been so grateful, had come twenty years too late and only served as a constant reminder of a wasted life.
At least that’s the way it felt.
He was choking on the bitter taste of regret and felt like he needed a beer to wash it down.
Joe’s locker was next to his. They were friends, weren’t they? And when Joe came over and said, ‘N
ice one, mate,’ Gabe was able to grin and slap the kid on the back and congratulate him. Perhaps he should have been an actor. Because upstairs as people gathered around Joe, important people who could change his life, nobody would have guessed that Gabe was jealous at all.
Joe made his way back to the players’ entrance, the only place he could think to wait for her. Why hadn’t they made a better plan? Was it because he had never really dared to dream that she would show up? He was gripped by a sudden fear that he might have imagined her up there in the stands, like some kind of vision, an angel to inspire him. Was he going mad? Had love sent him that far into unreality? Samantha had been giddy with congratulatory praise and introduced him to the delegates from the FA with an unmistakable pride. So if Layla was a vision it had worked. But he realized, shockingly, he would give back both goals to see her here, to feel her arms around him, however briefly, however platonically, to spend a few hours here together, just the two of them, even if they were at the most crowded party in the city. To make some more memories to last him on those empty nights when she was thousands of miles away, when they were apart.
Please.
He closed his eyes and made a vow. If she was real, if his vision of her had not been a vision at all but the truth, then he would tell her how he felt. He would tell her everything. Tonight.
And when he opened his eyes she was there.
25
Samantha had been chatting away to a perfectly charming girl called Elizabeta for fifteen minutes before Aleksandr joined them, bowed deeply and addressed the girl as ‘Your Highness’. She stuttered on her next sentence. Royalty. And her, just little Sammy Sharp, sharing small talk and a bowl of stuffed olives. Not to mention the Russian billionaire-to-be by their side.
She was still on a high from the match and couldn’t stop smiling.
A short while later Elizabeta asked them both to excuse her as she had spotted an old friend. Aleksandr bowed again when she left and Samantha found herself instinctively bobbing a daft little curtsey to match. She may have been a meritocrat, but she was still a woman, and every woman had once been a little girl. And every little girl once wanted to be a princess.
