Mark passes Pete a couple of cans, lays the bottle of sherry down on the tough grass. The ground here is uneven, the drinkers lie in little hollows where the graves subside.
‘Cheers, Mark. Good to see yer. You are a saint.’
He cracks open a can himself, takes a sip, lights a cigarette.
‘Not many here today,’ Mark says.
‘Some of ’em gone down the Assembly Rooms, there’s a way in round the back.’ Pete shrugs. ‘We’ll have to head indoors soon.’
‘We could head down the caves again, or the old shaft at Black Park.’ Stevie talks into the golden light and no one answers.
Mark enjoys the quiet, pulls long on the cigarette until his head buzzes. He has the odd one in the week, then a couple on a Saturday night. He is a man of moderation.
Tomorrow he will rise early as always. He will make the same walk up the hill, past the burial ground. He has often gone past and seen the shapes of bodies huddled against the stone walls. Pete and Jigsaw and Stevie sleep up here as late into the year as they can, come down with the first frost. If you’re only drinking, you can go on a long time.
He will walk the hill to the cemetery and the crem, has to climb the gate sometimes when he’s very early, clean his parents’ graves with a roll of toilet paper, flowers if he can, walk round to the rose garden and sit for a while near Sonia’s plaque. His weeks follow a careful pattern.
When Mark looks past Jigsaw, holding a fresh can out for him as he stumbles up the hill, he sees there are others, huddled by the bottom wall. He makes out Bobby Ahmed’s wild hair. Dee Dee’s nephew gone awry. He is not a boy for a nice steady drink on a late summer’s afternoon. Mark has a screwdriver in his back pocket, not that it would do any good against Bobby. Mark is not a fucking warrior. Bobby was a kick-boxing champ until he went off the rails.
‘Bobby Ahmed,’ Mark says.
‘Fucking headcase,’ Pete says. ‘It’s all right, he won’t come over if we’re all here. Won’t start nothing, anyway.’
Mark is dubious.
‘Who’s that with him?’
‘Fuck knows.’
The figure beside Bobby crouches, wears a hood. He raises his hand and it looks as if Bobby will pull him up but instead he just takes whatever he has been passed and sticks it in his pocket. So Bobby’s on the hard stuff now then, he reckons. So many dif ferent ways to kill the pain. There is something in the shape the figure makes against the wall that causes Mark to pause.
Jigsaw opens his can, tilts it towards the two men in a gesture of cheers.
‘Leave it, Jig, fuck’s sake,’ Pete says, ‘leave ’em to it, let’s have a bit of peace.’
The hooded figure stands, climbs the wall, and heads along the path which runs down below the village and arcs back towards the Anvil Yards, an ancient drover’s track that winds down to the old market where the rivers meet, through the ruins of Lysaght’s and Watkins Cylinder Works. Mark takes that way home sometimes, along the canal. He will not do so tonight. He looks at the shape of the man running away.
Bobby Ahmed strides towards them. There is a sudden charge to the air. Mark tenses, remains half hidden behind Stevie. He is not a fucking gladiator.
Bobby nods at each in turn. ‘All right, gents. Give us a can, eh.’
‘Here you go, Bobby, cheers.’ Mark holds a drink out towards him. Bobby takes it, looks at each of them in turn.
He clinks his can against Jigsaw’s, looks at Mark.
‘What you up to Bobby?’ Jigsaw says. Bobby sucks his teeth, this is not a question he likes. Pete says ‘fucking hell,’ under his breath, still lying back on the grass, a hand over his eyes against the low sun.
‘You should think about what you’re up to yourselves, boys, you should.’ His eyes stay on Mark. ‘Get yourselves indoors, maybe. Storm coming, I reckon. Storm coming.’
‘We’ll get ourselves in then Bobby, cheers.’
He turns and strides to go over the wall and the direction from which Mark came.
‘Storm coming,’ he says again.
‘Fucking headcase,’ Pete says when Bobby is at a safe distance.
‘He might have just meant the weather,’ Jigsaw says to no one in particular.
Mark sits down, lights another cigarette, plans a route home which means he won’t run into Bobby. He will not go anywhere for a while. When it starts to rain the world is safer. He thinks of the shape of the running man.
…
Corineus took his axe to the King’s throat, son of Brutus or not he would have his way. He had wrestled giants, would not be denied.
‘You must marry my daughter,’ Corineus said in the blade’s gleaming light.
So Gwendolen became queen, bore Locrinus a son. Corineus was pleased, watched his grandson play in the reflection of his polished axe as his own days grew short, dreamed of killing giants and of the Trojan sun he would never see again. But Locrinus loved another, Estrildis, the most beautiful woman of the islands. He hid her in caves and in shadowy clearings and loved her there out of view of the world. With Estrildis, Locrinus had a daughter, Habren, hidden away in the dark woods and as beautiful as her mother.
When Corineus died, Locrinus abandoned Gwendolen, took Estrildis as his new queen. But Gwendolen sought out the wild men of the south and west, brought an army to Locrinus’ lands. They fought a war along muddy riverbanks and Gwendolen fired an iron arrow across the water into Locrinus’ heart.
Gwendolen had Estrildis and Habren bound tight with chain at their ankles and wrists and then cast down the river to the sea, watched as their hair twisted in the current and slid under the brown water, saw the willow trees bow their heads, set the crown on her own head.
…
Gary Newbon: When Mark Fala puts the ball down on the spot you go over and say something to him. Can you remember what you said?
Liam Corwen: I know what I said. Listen, he’d been messing around when he took penalties since, well since I’d ever known him. In training, anyway. In matches he’d usually just stick it in the corner, but I knew he had it on his mind. We used to watch the same videos over and over as kids. They’d been his dad’s. They’d not long bought a video when he died so we only had a few tapes, George Best and whatnot, over and over again. That chipped penalty was on one of them. Panenka, for Czechoslovakia, you know? Mark always loved that sort of thing. I knew what was on his mind. I just said to him, ‘Don’t f—in’ chip it.’
Gary Newbon: And what did he say to that?
Liam Corwen: Nothing. I think I might have made his mind up for him, to be honest. Maybe. I wish I hadn’t said it now. He sort of waved me away, the way he always knew best, you know? The more I think of it now, it all had to do with his dad, all of it, of course it did. His mum as well, of course. Maybe that was worse, I don’t know. He never talked about it.
Gary Newbon: His parents were dead?
Liam Corwen: Died when he was a kid. You know the story. What’s that saying? The straw that broke the camel’s back or whatever, the penalty, that is. He saw his dad get killed, he was there for some reason, at the works the day it happened. Jesus. His mother couldn’t cope with it all after, not really. I mean, who would? It hit us all bad when she went, to be honest, so god knows how it must have affected him. Like I say, he never talked about it.
Gary Newbon: Something I’ve noticed.
Liam Corwen: What?
Gary Newbon: You always refer to him in the past tense. As if Mark Fala is also…
Liam Corwen: He’s dead to me, to a good many others as well. It was his choice. I think he died when he last kicked a football, the day of that penalty miss. He’s dead to us.
Gary Newbon: You never see him now? You’ve never been in contact since he stopped playing?
Liam Corwen: I saw him at another funeral not long after. A friend of ours who died on the day of the game, the play-off. You know all this. There was enough of it in the papers. He don’t want the contact. He wants to be left alone. There are days I don�
��t blame him. Can we stop talking about this now?
He should never have agreed to the documentary in the first place, thought it would disappear, but they still show it every now and again, late at night after the football highlights. It’s on Youtube, anyway. He has tried not to read the comments. He agreed to take part when he was in Finland, thought he was rid of the place, never coming back. As he asks to stop the interview and puts his hand to his face, they play footage of that goal against Stockport as Liam says these last words, the one they always seem to show, the one Mark scored on his eighteenth birthday. Wayne Coombs wins a header under his own bar at a corner and the ball goes up in the air and drops near the edge of the box. Mark nips in front of their midfielder who is watching the ball, about to hit it, and heads it over him, runs the other side of him and takes it on his thigh, bounces it once, twice, three times on his right leg as he runs, with a player having two kicks at him, they called it the M’bou, Mark and Liam, after the Cameroon player who ran with it down the line against Argentina in the Miracle in Milan. Liam has it tattooed on his left ankle, he has Benjamin Massing taking out Claudio Caniggia in the same match on his right. Sometimes he thinks the tattoos are just some kind of coded message to Mark. That he’ll see a photo of Liam, his body adorned, and the world will make sense.
And the Stockport fullback tries the Massing trick, throws his whole body at Mark, who lets the ball drop to his left foot, still midway inside his own half, and Mark twists and the bloke goes hurtling past him and crashes into his own player instead, and now Mark takes off. He runs straight up the middle of the pitch with the ball at his feet, defenders surging back and clipping his heels and falling away, they cannot catch him, running full pelt, he looks like a boy on a beach, and then twenty yards out or so, he gets it away from his feet for the first time, looks like he’s miscontrolled it, and there’s another defender sliding in from his right now, but he’s got his head up and he clips the ball, no back lift, over the sliding challenge and over the keeper too, and the ball arcs perfectly into the net and he wheels away. You can see Liam on the edge of the screen, he was on the bench that day and Ally had got him warming up, he runs on the narrow track between the East Stand and the pitch, arms aloft towards the Greenfield End, going crazy. People always forget they lost that game 3-2, won the league though, and that’s what mattered.
…
He is the eagle. There is low, hard autumn sun for the derby. The stadium is a bowl of light, rightly named, the white-shirted crowd shine. When Eusébio rises to meet the ball he sees his shadow ripple across the pitch and he is the eagle, of course. He hears this in Guttmann’s voice, but Guttmann has been gone two years now, yet his voice lingers on, whispering doubts, except not in Eusébio. For a moment he is not sure that this voice has not arrived with the ringing in the ears he got from the clatter of the Sporting keeper as he beat him to the ball’s bounce off the hard surface and zigzagged his legs to clip it past the brim of the keeper’s hat and have it bounce away from the direction he’d run and into the corner of the net. He takes the ball down and arches his back, head up, his eyes in their matchday squint, eagle eyes. The keepers wear hats like workers at the docks. Torres. Where is Torres? His arms reach, swim him through the light and past defenders, propel him, wings. He looks for Torres and races his own shadow across the grass.
…
She finds a length of broken iron pipe. Rust bubbles foam down one side. Goldie ’89 is painted in an unidentifiable media (correction fluid?). The G and o are formed in thick sweeps, the lettering fades until the ’89 appears in thin scratched strokes. It gives the impression of a boy in a hurry, a careless boy. The hairs rise on Alina’s neck.
She takes the pipe from the outside wall of Lisbon House, an abandoned block of flats near where they used to all hang about. It’s up the road from Stevedore House, where the Falas had lived, where that photo she loves had been taken. It’s there she was headed for, to see if she could get onto the roof, when she stops to take a look around Lisbon House. Then she sees the lettering on the pipe, the kind of thing she’d been searching for all along. She stands and looks at it for a long time, prises it free with the iron cutters she bought from the place in Lascar that sells stolen bikes and the equipment with which to steal them.
It’s the sort of place her dad would’ve appreciated from what she can tell.
She keeps it in a box with some other stuff at the back of Tony’s studio. If her mum sees it, she might get the pipe wrapped around her head.
…
Saturday teatime Mark likes to turn the telly on, sometimes he can face Final Score, sometimes not. The telly was a bit of company, his mum used to say. Not enough for her, it turned out. He likes quizzes. Right now a couple from Leicester are being shown around houses in Tenerife. They don’t seem very happy with the situation, red-faced and looking as though they are being shortchanged against a hard blue sky. He presses the tea bag to the side of the cup, adds a sugar and watches it spread and dissolve like a galaxy flaring and dying millions of miles away. He has his routines. The apartment is close to a water park. The Corwens all went to Tenerife one year not long after Christmas, during the season, of course. Liam missed a week of school and a Mercian Cup game. Freddie Rogers, their old coach at Lascar Boys Club got in a mood about it, tried to drop Liam for the next game, but then Joey Corwen got involved. Mark remembers watching from the minibus window as Liam’s dad pushed his bronzed head into Freddie’s bobble hat, ‘You leave him out then I’ll take him up to Cowton Sports, don’t you worry about that, you ungrateful cunt.’
It was always a bit like that, like Liam was doing them a favour. He started next match, of course, and all the others. Freddie was a good coach though, a bit soft with them maybe, still lived in the same house with gnomes in the front yard, roses and canes of runner beans in the summer, rode his mobility scooter up to the row of shops at the Ironport.
‘Yer fit?’ Freddie asks him if he sees him, same as he used to greet him as a fourteen-year-old out on the old Heath junior pitches.
‘I am, Fred. You?’
‘What’s it look like? I see your mate’s up to no good again.’
There had been letters about Liam and the Wolves supporters in the Chronicle. Ally has promised an investigation. Liam can do whatever he likes, just as he always has.
‘What, Liam? I don’t see him no more Fred, you know that.’
‘No, that other one. Him who robbed the shop, got that girl killed.’
‘What?’
‘That one. I seen him in the Bull Ring the other day, up to no good, most likely, I thought.’
‘No Fred, no, he ain’t ever coming back round here, must’ve been somebody else.’
But as he says it he thinks of a crouching man, a running man. ‘There’s a storm coming,’ is what Bobby Ahmed said.
Flies rise past the window. They are demolishing some old outhouses down near the docks wall, buildings gone the shape of cardboard boxes left in the rain. There is something in the afternoon paper about progress being made on the redevelopment plans, architect’s drawings.
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ is what Freddie Rogers mutters, on his way back from the new Ukrainian shop, when he sees these pictures of landscaped gardens between flats and offices with shiny windows, no men on mobility scooters or clutching oxygen masks or even straggling along with sticks and walking frames in these drawings, uniform couples and families, none of them old, or poor, not one too black, or too white for that matter, not one shuffling along with one shoe on and a football boot on the other foot, not one sprawled with a can on that neatly trimmed grass, no one sitting with their shirt off having a smoke, or dragging their kids and stepkids along with bags of shopping hanging off the pushchair with a dodgy wheel, and none of them reflected in any of the glass, these vampires.
When they knock the buildings down the flies come this way on the wind, rats scatter in all directions.
‘What are you thinking?’ asks the
young woman in the summer dress on television, who looks not unlike one of those figures in the drawing, of the couple from Leicester who look not unlike some of the people not present in the picture. Perhaps that’s where they’ll all get moved to, Tenerife.
‘What are you thinking?’
They stare at palm trees and lizard-backed mountains. If they don’t like the place they shouldn’t move. That life is very long, is what Mark thinks. He sips his tea, still too hot, like he does every afternoon. He waits for it to cool, for the couple to make up their mind and his afternoon quiz to start. You need routines. People always say life’s too short. He thinks they’re wrong. A fly taps the window glass. There are creatures that only live for a day, for a few hours. They have no memories, no sense of themselves at all, or if they do it’s all present, all happening right now, an endlessly running moment, so that in a sense they live for ever, like the way they say fish think, which he does not fully believe. The couple from Leicester say they expected more wow factor. Outside the flies rise.
…
A list of the proposed redevelopments of the Greenfield Ironworks and the surrounding areas of the Anvil Yards since British Steel finally ended production in 1984:
A shopping centre.
A J. R. R. Tolkien-inspired theme park (this in the days before Middle-Earth was outsourced to New Zealand. There was a story that a trip Tolkien made to the Iron Towns, west from Birmingham or Oxford, inspired his vision of Mordor. But travel the lanes that weave across the Heath, or go on the back roads through Far Valley or the Welsh Ridge and you could just as easily be in The Shire).
A site for the World Student Games and/or Commonwealth Games.
Another shopping centre.
A King Arthur-inspired theme park (a 1960s New Age paperback linked the valley with the journeys of the Knights of the Round Table. There was a plan to use one of the Lascar docks as the lake, from which the sword would emerge every afternoon).
Iron Towns Page 9
