Glory Of The Football Manager System

We walked down to the lake. There were 3 women with pushchairs on the path and a man throwing a ball for a spaniel, and none of them looked twice at us. On the islands in the water the dinosaurs stood where they have stood since 1854, grey and green and enormous, with the damp on them.

”My dad brought me here every summer until I was 12,” Emma said. ”That 1.” She pointed at the big lizard with a spike on its nose. ”The Iguanodon. That spike is a thumb. They found the bone on its own and did not know where it went, so they put it on the nose, and it is still on the nose, and every child in Croydon thinks that is what it looked like.”

”Who worked it out?”

”A coal mine in Belgium, about 25 years later. They found whole skeletons.” She leaned on the rail. ”And the man who made them had a dinner party inside the mould of that 1. New Year’s Eve 1853. A table full of men in top hats, inside a dinosaur.”

”How do you know all that?”

”I did a piece on this lake for a morning show, before I ever did football.” She did not look at me. ”I have wanted to bring you here since the day I met you.”

”Why did you not?”

”Because you have not had a Wednesday since the day I met you.”

We walked the long way round the lake and up through the park, to where the athletics stadium stands behind its fence.

”Your club played here,” she said. ”Here, where the track is. 1905 to 1915, until the war took the ground. The FA Cup final was here every year from 1895 until the war.” She stopped at the fence. ”I have been sat on that since August, Danny. I have got it all in a folder at work, and I cannot say the name of the club on air.”

”You just said it.”

”I know.” She put her hands in her coat pockets. ”It is a park.”

Bzzt.

It was her phone, not mine.

”Dad,” she said, and listened, and I watched her face change. ”Yes. Yes, we are out. We can be back by 2.”

She put it away.

”He has got the date for the knee. He wants to tell us in person.” She started back towards the car. ”And he says, since he is coming, he will look at the boiler again.”

He came at 2 in his work van with a canvas bag of tools and a stick, and he went up our stairs 1 at a time with the bad leg straight. He is not a big man. Emma gets her height from her mother. He shook my hand at the top of the stairs and kept hold of it.

”Tuesday the 11th of December. Sidcup. They are doing the whole knee.”

”About time.”

”11 months,” he said. ”Where is it?”

The boiler lives in a cupboard in the kitchen, and it had been losing pressure since the end of the summer. He got down on the floor in front of it with the bad leg out straight across the lino, and Emma put a cushion under the knee without asking him and he let her.

”Torch.”

I held the torch for 25 minutes while he tapped the gauge and followed the pipe back with his fingers.

Tink. His spanner on the pipe.

”There.” He put his finger on a joint under the boiler. ”Weeping. That was dry in June. How long have you been topping it up?”

”Since September,” Emma said.

”And you never rang me.”

”You had your knee.”

”I have had my knee for 11 months.” He got a new washer out of the bag, a tiny thing, and held it up to the torch. ”40 pence. You could have rung me for 40 pence.”

He fitted it. He brought the pressure up to 1 and a half on the gauge, tapped it twice with his nail, and watched the needle for a full minute. Then he sat back against the cupboard with his leg out and looked up at me.

”She told me I am not allowed to talk to you about football.”

”You can.”

”No.” He wiped his hands on a rag. ”I have had a season ticket at that club since I was 14. I am going to sit in my seat at the next home game and shout at you like every other man in there, and in June I am going to come round here and put a suit on.” He folded the rag into a square. ”So in your kitchen, I do not talk about it. I decided that in May.”

Emma was at the counter with her arms folded, looking at the floor.

”Help me up,” her father said to me, ”and do not tell her mother I got down there.”

I helped him up.

Fwump. The boiler lit first time, and the pipe under the window started ticking as it warmed.

When her show was due on, Emma took the little radio down off the top of the fridge, put it on the counter and turned it on.

Her jingle. Then a man’s voice she knows from the corridor, saying good afternoon, saying it is a quiet week with the internationals, saying he is only minding the seat.

4 minutes in, he said my club’s name.

He was good. He had watched Saturday twice, and he had a caller from Thornton Heath who had been at Wembley and a caller from Bolton who had not, and he let both of them finish. Emma stood in front of the radio with her hand flat on the counter for 20 minutes.

Then she turned it off.

Click.

”He is good,” she said.

”He is.”

She picked up her phone and rang Aisha. She did not go into the other room to do it.

”It is me. I heard it.” A pause. ”No, he was good. He was very good. That is why I am ringing.” She listened. ”I know it is only this week. I would like you to put that in an email, Aisha, today, with my Wednesday in it from next week, and copy in the man who signs my contract.” Another pause. ”Thank you. No. I am not upset. I am having a very nice day.”

She put the phone down on the counter.

”I am still not selling the clause,” she said. ”6 weeks.”

I picked my own phone up off the table.

”Is that Sarah?”

”It is Mrs Asare.”

Emma came and sat on the other chair and put her feet up on the rung of mine.

It rang for a long time. When she answered there was a till going in the background, and a tannoy.

”Mrs Asare, it is Danny Walsh.”

”I know it is. I am at work.”

”I will be quick. Yesterday you asked me whether anybody from Spain had been in touch with the club.” I looked at Emma. She was looking at me. ”Somebody had. I did not tell you. This morning I told our sporting director the answer is no, and I told my agent the same, and I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

The till went again, twice.

”Why are you ringing me?”

”Because you asked.”

A long quiet on the line. Somebody near her wanted a price check.

”Dion went at 6 this morning,” she said. ”He left a note on the table. It says first team. That is all it says.” A pause. ”Thank you for ringing.”

She put the phone down.

Emma took her feet off my chair.

”There,” she said.

At 6 she put a pan of water on the hob, a box of eggs next to it, and the timer off the fridge in my hand.

”In October I told you that you cannot boil an egg.”

”You did.”

”You have got an evening off. So have I.” She leaned back against the counter. ”Water first. Wait for it to boil. Properly boil.”

I waited. She did not help. When it was going I put the first egg in off a spoon from too high. It hit the bottom of the pan and cracked, and the white came out of it in a long ribbon and went round and round in the water.

Tk.

”That 1 is mine,” Emma said. ”Again.”

I lowered the second egg in the spoon all the way to the bottom and let it roll off.

”6 minutes. Do not look at me. Look at the timer.”

I looked at the timer. She put bread under the grill and cut it into strips when it came out, and the kitchen smelt of toast, and the boiler ticked in its cupboard.

Ding.

I got it out with the spoon, put it in the egg cup and took the top off with a knife the way she showed me.

The yolk ran.

Emma looked at it. Then she took a strip of toast off the plate, put it in the yolk and ate it standing up. She ate the whole egg like that, and then she fished the broken 1 out of the pan and ate that as well.

Afterwards she got the folder out.

It lives in the drawer under the cutlery. It has the venue’s letters in it, a menu with 2 lines crossed out, and the list: 90 names, typed, with pencil ticks down the side where people have said yes.

She turned to the last page and wrote a 91st in pen at the bottom.

Ron.

”What is his surname?”

I opened my mouth, and shut it.

She looked at me across the table. Then she wrote (barrier) after it, and closed the folder.

”I will ask him tomorrow,” I said.

”Yes,” Emma said. ”You will.”

At 9 Sarah rang. She had been at Beckenham until 8 going through the reps with Marcus.

”Aaron stayed on his feet 7 times in 20 by the end. Dion got past him on 13. Rebecca stopped it at 40 minutes, and Aaron wanted to carry on, and Rebecca said no.” A pause. ”He went and sat in the gym on his own and did not go home. Dion went and sat with him. Nobody told either of them to.”

”What were they doing?”

”Watching Saturday on Aaron’s phone,” Sarah said. ”The 85th minute. Over and over.”

When I came back in, Emma was on the sofa with the folder on her knees again, looking at the last page.

”Ask him something else as well,” she said. ”When you ask him his name.”

”Like what?”

”Anything.” She shut the folder. ”He has been on that barrier since 1999.”

My phone went at 10 to 11.

Bzzt.

JESSICA FINCH. 22:50.

Steve signed under you. He rang me for an hour first. It went Special Delivery at 5, so it will be on a desk at Old Trafford by 1 o’clock tomorrow.

***

Thank you for the Golden Tickets.