Putting the Boot In Read online

  There were a lot of jokes about Jimmy having no hair left after a year in charge of Athletic; but the fact was, he didn’t have much when he joined. He’d lost most of it by the time he’d finished as a player, so the stress that was getting to him now was probably going somewhere else. Ulcers, he expected.

  He’d had a good run, on the whole, had Jimmy Lister. Started off as a wing-half in the days when such things still existed. Not quite the best, but pretty classy all the same. Three England B caps; a dozen years in the First Division, then three in the Second; and he’d come out of it all with a good reputation. Bit of a thinker, they said of Jimmy; bit of a card, too. He curled a nice cross-ball into the box, did Jimmy. A good reader of the game, they said; never played the obvious ball; always ghosting in from deep positions without being picked up. They said a lot of other junk about Jimmy Lister’s game, and he was crafty enough never to deny it. Go bald and they immediately think you must be brainy; well, if that’s what they wanted.

  He made the jump into management early, and avoided that depressing slide through the divisions towards some Mickey Mouse team in the Toytown League. Two years as assistant, then three in charge of a Second Division club in the West Midlands. Sixth in the table when he took over; nineteenth when he left. Not brilliant. Not disastrous, either; not really. And there’d been the usual frustrations: not enough money to buy new players, because not enough people through the turnstiles; not enough people through the turnstiles because no exciting new players for them to come and see. Too many sag-bellied senior citizens nearing the end of their careers; a number of new lads coming along, but not coming along all that quickly. One really good find, quick lad, clever as a monkey, and the Board sells him to pay off the overdraft. One reason we’ve got an overdraft, he told the Board, is that we’re selling lads like this one before they’ve had a chance to pull in the crowds. We admire your loyalty to your players, Jimmy, they told him; but we’ve got a loyalty to someone with a big stick called the bank. You’d rather have a bank manager than a football manager, he’d said. Don’t get cheeky with us, Jim lad, or we’ll have to let you go.

  Just before the end of his third season somebody had tipped off the local paper about him and the physio’s wife. All that free booze poured down the sports page and look what they do to you when you’re on the ropes. The job went; Mrs Lister thought she’d call it a day too; it was a bad time. He had a year away from the game: did a little schools’ coaching, just to keep his eye in; wondered about going overseas; and for a year he didn’t buy himself a new shirt. When the call came from Melvyn Prosser he was finding it easy to get depressed. He didn’t know who to thank, so he thanked Melvyn Prosser. Whoever he might be.

  Athletic’s trouble had always been that they were one of the least glamorous teams in London. Cup semi-finalists in the middle Thirties, decent run one year in the League Cup, a few bits of yellowing silverware in the boardroom; but year in, year out, a team of huffers and puffers who never looked like blowing anyone’s house down. The Board’s answer had been Melvyn Prosser (or at least Melvyn Prosser’s chequebook); and the new chairman’s answer had been Jimmy Lister.

  Jimmy had decided to play this one a bit more high profile. Image isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing. You buy a foreign player, for instance: he isn’t necessarily better than someone you could have picked up for less money in Scotland, but a Dashing Dane or a Swanky Slav makes good copy in the local paper, and brings a few more in through the turnstiles, if only out of curiosity. It was the same with a manager. It couldn’t do any harm to let them know there was a bit of a character loose among them, could it? And this time, he promised himself he’d keep his hands off the physio’s wife, however tasty she might turn out to be.

  He dressed himself carefully: the blue double-breasted blazer, striped shirt, scarlet tie, grey slacks, white shoes. A sort of bald Robert Redford, he thought. And always the white shoes, even in the rain. He’d thought of a fedora, but that had been done before; besides, the bald head was an item in itself. And the white shoes were a good touch. He did well by the press; he was always available; he opened a couple of shops in the first week after taking over; and he was pictured in the local paper with Miss West London sitting on his lap. He rang up the Playboy Club and asked for the loan of eleven Bunnies to do a photocall with the first team. He was given to understand that Athletic were not considered glamorous enough to merit the loan of Bunnies. But that’s why I want them, he answered, to make us glamorous.

  When he told Melvyn Prosser of this snub, the chairman said, ‘I expect we could get the Dagenham Girl Pipers.’

  Melvyn and Jimmy understood one another. Instead of the Bunnies, they hired a biplane to fly over the ground at half-time with a big banner attached to its tail reading COME ON YOU BLUES. The Blues were two-nil down at the time, and some of the crowd suggested that the plane’s petrol money should have been kept in the piggy bank and put towards a new player. So the next week six girls dressed in Athletic strip came out before the game and each kicked a free football into the crowd ‘with thanks from Melvyn Prosser’, as the public address announced. Two of them were thrown back.

  Athletic started the season well, with three home wins on the trot; they got through the first two rounds of the Cup without any trouble, but had the misfortune to land a tough set of Second Division cloggers in the next round. Away from home; robbed in the last minute by an offside goal.

  ‘Pity about that, Jimmy,’ said Melvyn. ‘Nice little cup run would have done us a world of good.’

  ‘Still, it leaves us free to concentrate on promotion,’ said Jimmy. The remark was a little speculative, given that Athletic were then fourteenth in the table.

  ‘You didn’t say relegation, did you, James?’ Melvyn inquired.

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. For your sake as well.’

  The only trouble with concentrating on promotion was that there were many other sides in the Division with better powers of concentration. The bad weather came; they redesigned the players’ strip, and got a decent news story out of it; they tried bingo in the official programme; but the team continued to slide. In early February Melvyn called Jimmy into his office. He had a way of standing, did Melvyn; sort of not quite looking at you, as if you weren’t really central to his scheme of things, as if he was really addressing some misty figure a few yards behind you who might well turn out to be your successor. It unnerved Jimmy a bit.

  ‘Jimmy, you know the trouble with this team I’ve bought?’

  ‘I’m always listening.’

  ‘It’s a dog. That’s what’s wrong with it. A bow-wow.’

  ‘So what do we do about it?’

  ‘What we do about it, James, is that I tell you what to do about it. If it’s a dog, then there’s only one thing to be done.’

  ‘Chief?’

  ‘You must teach it new tricks.’

  ‘Yes, chief.’

  It was time to take risks. He pensioned off a couple of senior citizens whose legs were falling behind their brains, introduced Danny Matson and another scrapping youngster, pushed big Brendan Domingo further forward, demanded more fight, sympathized with players shown the yellow card, and indicated more openly than before which of the opposing players he expected to be shut down at all costs. His job was on the line, and this was the bottom of the Third Division. Keep it tight, take no prisoners, and push the big men forward whenever you get a corner. Back to basics.

  None of this gave much pleasure to the former England B wing-half, who could still curl a ball in more accurately than those he managed; and it gave him mixed feelings when the change of tactics worked. They picked up a few points, climbed a couple of places, but still weren’t out of the wood. Little Danny Matson had worked, though: come on fast, seemed to have struck up a real understanding with big Brendan. The coloured fellow was gaining a lot of confidence from having Danny always prompting him; he’d pointed this out to Melvyn, and Melvyn had agreed. He’d po
inted it out because even Melvyn could see most of the other changes Jimmy had made—like the fact that his team were fouling a lot more vigorously than they used to—but you had to have a bit of a smell for the game to see how Danny and Brendan were knitting together.

  What an idiot the boy had been. Jimmy had seen it before with lively little players like him. Full of fire on the pitch, can’t believe it isn’t the same off it. Put a win bonus under their belts and a few Bacardis in their bellies—or even the thrill of a draw plus a half of lager—and they start picking fights. The worst ruptured Achilles tendon he’d seen in twenty years of professional football. At least six months out of the game; possibly more. What they said about the Achilles tendon was always true in Jimmy’s experience: however well it mends, you always lose a yard or two of pace afterwards. And Jimmy had seen enough football to know that Danny’s game was all about pace.

  Jimmy knew something else as well: that when the day came for him to be sacked, Melvyn would be very nice to him, and would call him James.

  Duffy had had the flat in Goldsmith Avenue, Acton, for three years now. It looked as if he had moved in two days ago and the rest of his stuff hadn’t arrived yet. But there wasn’t any ‘rest of his stuff’, this was it: bed, table, kitchen, telephone. These, along with the rusting F-reg van outside, were the entire visible assets of Duffy Security after its initial operating period of six years. It didn’t bother Duffy: the less you had, the easier it was to keep tidy. It might have bothered a few clients, but they never actually got to visit the ‘offices’ of Duffy Security. Duffy explained the condition of his van—if he caught one of those looks which said, ‘Why did I pick you out of the Yellow Pages?’—by saying that it made surveillance work easier. Any wally can buy himself a new motor and put it against tax, Duffy would add confidently. In his early days he would sometimes joke, when the clients seemed unimpressed by his van, that he was still saving up for the dog. He soon found out that clients didn’t like jokes. They also, in a funny sort of way, wanted dogs. Duffy didn’t want a dog. Dogs bit. Dogs worried Duffy.

  Other things worried him more.

  ‘Can you look at me back?’

  ‘Nnn?’ Carol was only half-awake. It was eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and she’d come off duty at two.

  ‘I’ve looked at me legs, can you look at me back?’

  Carol slowly opened her eyes and looked him up and down from shoulders to bum.

  ‘It’s all still there, Duffy, it hasn’t run away.’

  ‘Does it look the same?’

  Carol squinted again, as carefully as the time of day allowed.

  ‘You’ve got hair on your shoulderblades, Duffy, did you know that?’

  ‘All the same otherwise?’

  ‘It’s disgusting, you know, Duffy.’

  ‘What is?’ Christ, had she spotted something?

  ‘I should shave it off if I were you. It isn’t a bit sexy.’ Oh, that. ‘I wouldn’t mind doing it for you, Duffy. I mean, it’s never going to be a feature.’

  Duffy had gone back to sleep; Carol too, but less easily.

  Over breakfast that morning he suddenly said to her, ‘Do you know where to look for lymph nodes?’

  ‘Some sort of cereal, are they, Duffy?’

  He’d scowled a bit, and got on with his muesli. Carol knew it never did any good asking. Either he’d tell you, or he wouldn’t tell you. Perhaps it was something to do with his football. He liked to start fretting quite early before a match.

  ‘You be here when I get back?’

  ‘Don’t think so, Duffy. Stuff to do.’

  ‘I see.’ He knew not to ask things as well. Sometimes, they seemed to spend their time not asking. He looked across at the pretty, dark, Irish morning face of WPC Carol Lucas, and thought how even after all these years it was something nice to see in the mornings. He didn’t tell her that, either. ‘Only, you see, I thought we might … do something.’

  Do something? What did he mean? They never did anything. When had they last done anything? That Greek meal the previous summer? Or had he taken her for a drive in the van since—yes, that time when he had something worth nicking in the back, and one of the door locks didn’t work, and he’d had to see a client on the way to somewhere else. Carol had sat in the van guarding a cardboard box containing she didn’t know what for half an hour. That was the last time they’d ‘done something’.

  Her friends assumed they didn’t go out much because they were always in bed. She’d told them Duffy did a bit of weight-training (well, he had a couple of dumb-bell things too heavy for her to lift which he kept in the fitted cupboard in the bedroom) and they’d jumped to the obvious conclusions. ‘Pumping iron again, last night, was it?’ they’d sometimes ask. That was very far from being it, but Carol always smiled. She and Duffy had held the world chastity record for—what? five years? It didn’t bear thinking about. Odd that she could still go for him, she thought. Odd that he still wanted her around. When that terrible thing had got him thrown out of the Force, when they’d framed him with that black kid who claimed to be under-age, he’d stopped being able to get it together with her. Tried everything for a bit, but no good. That would have been it for most people; but in a funny way they’d stuck together. Only by not asking a lot of questions, though.

  ‘I could come back tomorrow if you like,’ she offered.

  ‘I’ve got a new dish I heat up in the oven.’

  ‘That sounds smashing, Duffy. I’ll put on my best dress.’

  As he drove to the game, though, he started worrying if Carol had looked properly. Little brown irregular blotches, that was what he had read. Duffy shuddered. It had a nasty name, too. Kaposi’s sarcoma. That didn’t sound like something you got better from. Who the hell was this Kaposi guy? He had a name like one of those old Hollywood movie stars. Bela Kaposi.

  Of course, there was nothing to show that he’d got it. But on the other hand there was nothing to show that he hadn’t got it. This didn’t strike Duffy as a very good deal.

  At first, it had just been a scare story in the papers. KILLER PLAGUE HITS U.S. GAYS. One of those things they have over there, he thought, like Legionnaire’s Disease, WHAT KILLED GAY PLAGUE MAN? Over-indulgence, Duffy thought, as he read the headline and passed on. U.S. CHRISTIANS SAY GOD IS PUNISHING GAYS. And so it continued, NO HELP YET FOR AIDS VICTIMS. Then: SHOULD GAYS CHANGE THEIR LIFESTYLE? And finally, dreadfully, one morning: KILLER GAY PLAGUE AIDS IS HERE.

  Duffy soon learnt what the initials stood for. Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Attacks Homosexuals, Heroin Addicts, Haitians and Haemophiliacs. Everyone with an H in their name: like only eating shellfish when there’s an R in the month, or something. Homosexual includes Bisexual, Duffy read. Duffy had been pretty bisexual in his time. Well, all that would have to stop. If he’d picked it up, though, everything would stop. Everything. One hundred per cent death-rate after three years or so for all diagnosed cases. No way of knowing whether you were going to get it, no way of knowing whether you’d already got it, and no cure.

  Promiscuous homosexuals especially at risk. Passive homosexuals especially at risk. Well, of course he’d been promiscuous. He’d also been promiscuous with women—did that help in any way? He’d been very promiscuous after things had all gone wrong with Carol; in fact he’d made a rule only to have one-night stands, because he didn’t want to get involved. He also wanted to hang on to Carol, and having nothing but one-night stands, however many of them, was in a funny way being loyal to Carol. Not many other people would probably see it that way, but Duffy did. He’d had a year or two of being, yes, well, up for anything that moved, really. Then it sort of settled down, and he was just averagely promiscuous now. He didn’t necessarily keep to his one-night-only rule, because he didn’t feel his relationship with Carol was under threat any more. At least not from his side. Her side was another matter. He didn’t like to think about that.

  Passive homosexuals especially at risk. No comment, Duffy muttered to hims
elf.

  First you get infected, they said. Someone who’s been on a package tour to San Francisco; a tasty American who’s found the Alligator Club in his Spartacus Gay Guide to the World and dropped in for a trawl. Then nothing happens. That was the scary bit. Nothing happens for six months or so. Then you feel a bit unwell, you get night sweats, lose a little weight, get the runs, have a high temperature; and these lymph node things swell up. That’ll go on for a bit—perhaps as much as a year—and suddenly it goes away. Completely. You feel fine. Never better. Back down the Alligator and no problem. The only problem is, your entire immunity system has been wiped out. No resistance left: a common cold blows you away, or some odd form of pneumonia. Or, most likely of all, this Bela Kaposi comes along with the old sarcoma, and the brown blotches start, and that’s it. You might as well put your head in a polythene bag and save the National Health Service some money.

  Had he felt unwell in the last year or so? Of course he had. Of course he sometimes woke up sweating in the night; who didn’t? Temperature? Occasionally. Weight-loss? Yes, but he thought that was a good thing at the time; he didn’t want to get fat, so he’d started pumping iron and watching his diet. Bit of a health-food kick, almost. Diarrhoea? Who doesn’t find himself doubling back to the toilet once in a while? You don’t keep a record, though, do you?

  Or on the other hand he could still be in the six-month incubation period. The first cases in Britain were only just being officially confirmed. But by ‘cases’ they meant deaths. And these ‘cases’ wouldn’t have lived their last couple of years any differently from how they’d lived the earlier ones. So think of all those six-month incubation periods stacked up one behind the other, waiting to burst out. No wonder people were getting so jumpy down at the clubs. No wonder anyone with an American accent couldn’t even get a drink. Duffy still called in at the Alligator; there wasn’t any reason to boycott the place—it wasn’t as if they put AIDS in the beer there, though some people behaved as if they did. But he always went home alone, nowadays.