1.
The big clock has passed five, but Bobby Hollander is still waiting. People are streaming past on all sides and he is beginning to feel nervous; he takes out his mobile, just to have something to look at, and brings up his daughter’s number. He presses call, but again it goes straight to voicemail; after he hangs up he keeps the phone pressed against his ear and tries to look like he is listening to something important.
Hollander has never got used to being recognised. He knows a lot of players who love the attention, but he could never feel comfortable talking to strangers who think they know him. And it does happen; these days even lower league players can expect to be pulled up on the streets. Some of the kids are even in the tabloids every now and then, grainy pictures of them falling out of expensive clubs with cheap women trailing behind.
He tries to be reasonable; as club captain it is his duty to try to understand the younger players coming through, to protect them. They’re just kids, he thinks; and anyway, hasn’t it always been like this? Footballers have always misbehaved. But now it seems so much worse. Now the world pays attention. So he tries to guide them gently towards a quieter life. He tells them they should settle down, build a family. And some of them listen, or at least they pretend to listen. For some of them it’s all they can do not to laugh in his face.
He looks up briefly and catches the eye of a young man hurrying past. The man recognizes him, he is sure of it, but thankfully he doesn’t stop. Hollander turns to face the timetable boards, and then the phone pressed to the side of his face begins to ring. He fumbles at the buttons and accepts the call.
‘Jen? Where are you, honey?’
‘I’m here, Dad. Where I said I’d be. Where are you?’
‘I’m here too, hon, but… erm, remind me again where I’m supposed to be?’
He finds her by the cash points, and hurries her out of the station into the warm April afternoon. The weather has turned, finally. The days are so much longer now. They cross the Strand, and head up towards Covent Garden. His daughter is talking about school. She is thirteen, and conversation seems to come out of her like water from a busted pipe. He doesn’t exactly understand it, but her chattiness is accepted by Hollander with relief; he has never had to put much effort in with her, he just listens and makes the odd comment here and there, and yet they seem to him as close as any father and daughter.
His son is eleven, and quite different. Hollander is aware the boy has drifted from him in the past year, and that he hasn’t done enough about it; but he just doesn’t know how. He offers the boy lifts, hovers by him at the kitchen table. Sometimes he goes into his room and watches him shoot Nazis on screen, but he can never find anything to say and almost always leaves feeling dejected and useless.
‘So I’m thinking either a scarf or a pair of earrings. What do you think, Dad?’
Hollander looks blank, says, ‘I don’t know, hon. Just get whatever you think is nicest.’
The market is full of folksy stalls selling handmade bits and pieces, second-hand jewelry. It’s the kind of stuff Lisa hates, but recently Jen’s style has become more and more bohemian and Hollander isn’t going to break this particular illusion on behalf of his wife.
They married when Hollander was signed to the club that had made him captain at the age of 23. He was a prospect then, and Lisa had seen in him a future of money, glamour and fame. Then they moved North, and playing at the highest level Hollander had struggled to assert himself. Most of his Saturday afternoons were spent on the bench watching more illustrious pairs of heels fly down the touchline. He took three years of that, before asking for a transfer back down South. Nobody minded very much, and running out of the tunnel the following May into a new stadium, with a new set of fans, he had felt a strange sensation of returning home. That was when he had moved the family into the big farmhouse in the country. And that, he thought, was when Lisa had started to go off the rails.
Jen holds a flower-embroidered hair band against her head, examines herself in the mirror.
‘Dad, this is beautiful.’
Hollander nods in agreement. The stall displays the worn-looking pages of gossip magazines that had once featured this particular style. He sees Kylie Minogue, Jordan, Charlotte Church. He thinks that Lisa might like this present. Behind the stall the woman is smiling at him; he returns the smile half-hearted.
Out in the square a juggler is climbing onto the shoulders of a man. He has chosen well: the man is big, bald-headed; he has the look of a German. The big man tries to look good-humoured. The juggler makes a joke and a smattering of tourists laugh, but the effect is underwhelming; the crowd is thin. Hollander leads his daughter up to Long Acre to find a café. Settling in seats by the window, Jen tries the hair band on once more, and Hollander smiles appreciatively.
‘She’ll love it, hon.’
But Jen seems suddenly doubtful, away from the mirrors and the smiling woman and the celebrity endorsement. Hollander wonders how much she understands of her mother. How much has she known of the last few years, how much has she understood? There are times he sees her frowning; he wonders what troubles her. But now she is talking again, this time about a television programme he has never seen. She is never so happy as when she is talking. He watches her and feels the strain leave him.
It has been a disastrous season; in this moment of peace he can face that. Just disastrous. He is still at a loss to explain the previous season’s relegation, and now this… the words escape him. He thinks instead with a kind of numb despair of all the inexplicable losses, all the late equalizers and winners that have left his team appealing silently to each other with hands on hips, unwilling to begin the trudge back up to the centre-circle. They used to remonstrate with each other, cast blame; but they hadn’t done that for months. Hollander knew at the time this was a bad sign, but there is only so much you can do as a bench-ridden veteran whose club captaincy is owed to the Chairman and resented by the manager.
And he had spoken to the manager, but the manager had refused to listen. They have to fight, Hollander had told him. They have to get each other going. But Palmer had ignored him; instead he had gone softly, tried to encourage positive thinking. He was afraid of losing the dressing room, but what Palmer didn’t realise was that the dressing room was already lost – not to him, but to an awful sense of resignation that he himself shared.
They had plummeted. A good start to the season that saw them holding a play-off place in January went quickly bad. They began dropping points, and in the most unexpected places. Worst of all, having drawn away in the big local derby, the return was a humiliation: 0 – 4. The fans had turned at that point. They called for Palmer’s head; but Palmer wouldn’t quit. And the simple truth, Hollander realises now, is that the club couldn’t afford to sack him: the prospect of successive relegations has the accountants in enough of a panic without having compensation payments to worry about. So they just limp on together.
The café has crowded up now with people. Outside it is turning to dusk. Hollander drains his coffee and watches as Jen finishes the last of her juice, then they both get up to leave. Covent Garden is as busy as ever. Down James Street the mimes are trying to scare passers-by with sudden movements. Hollander steers Jen wide of them; he has always hated those people, with their fixed grins and make-up, all about drawing you in and then humiliating you. There is something unsavoury about it all. Leave it to the tourists. Away from the square things are calmer. They reach the Strand. The traffic is stalled heading into Trafalgar Square; Hollander and his daughter weave between crammed buses and cabs to get to the other side.
Jen pulls at his arm. ‘What about your present, Dad?’
He smiles down at her. ‘Don’t worry, hon. I’ve got it covered.’
‘What did you get her?’
‘It’s a surprise.’
‘But I won’t tell her!’
‘Doesn’t matter, hon. It’s a secret.’
Now he sees the screens outside the station, and they have to run to catch the train; by the time they get on – the doors closing seconds after – she seems to have forgotten all about presents, and begins talking about her best friend’s holiday to Mauritius. Easter holidays seem to be the thing among the kinds of families Jen has made friends in. Christmas too. But Jen has only ever been able to go anywhere in close season. It’s an old wound and Jen returns to pick at it every year.
‘Next year, hon,’ he says. ‘Next year we can go anywhere, whenever you like.’
And she keeps her expression sulky, but he can see in the corners of her eyes that she is pleased.
He knows it is bad to spoil the girl with promises like that, but it has grieved him always to be saying no. And next year he thinks it really will be time. His knees are going, he knows that. But it’s more than just his knees. He could play on for another two or three years if he dropped a league or two. The life has become boring – that’s the real reason why. In his career he has been praised, even loved, for the style of his play. He has been the kind of ball-winning midfielder that fans respect the most. A goalscorer is cherished with a special tenderness, a winger can get the crowd behind him like no other player, and a goalkeeper or defender’s hero-mould is ready-cast; but all these positions are subject to the worst fickleness of fans. It is the ball-winning midfielder who is loved most consistently, because he is honest and does the same job over and over again: he wins the ball, and keeps it; he plays the simple passes.
And Hollander has loved that job, but it has come to a natural end. He doesn’t play much anymore; he doesn’t do much of anything. He is popular in the dressing room and enjoys his role as the old hand, but it doesn’t match the excitement of leading the team out under floodlights, to battle and scrap and harry for three more points and the adulation of the crowd. All that is over for him now. He feels the disappointment keenly. Not that the end has come – he has harboured no delusions on that score. What hurts him is that it will end like this, in failure, and under a man like Ray Palmer.
He had been at the club for four years before the resignation of the man who had brought him here, who had rescued him from yet another false start after all those wasted years up North. It came entirely out of the blue. But Graham Pendleton said he had come to feel like a piece of furniture. He had been around too long, and if Hollander is honest, he would say that things were beginning to go stale. But at that point the club was still a fixture in the top flight. After Pendleton’s departure the Chairman panicked; he installed another rookie, as Pendleton had been when he took over. But the new man was no Pendleton, and a series of bizarre and worrying complaints from the players led to his removal after only ten games.
Then came Palmer. He dragged a heavy reputation behind him, and Hollander had disliked the man immediately. He was known as a bit of a snake, and all the stories seemed so plausible, in the way he held himself, the way he shook your hand – too firm, too brief, eyes fixed off to the side – even the way he smiled. He was arrogant, but there was more to it than that: he seemed to be acting always. You never got a true sense of the man. It was like he was always trying to pull the wool over your eyes, and in the way he looked at you, it was like a kind of challenge. Play with me, he seemed to be saying, see if you can find me out. But the game he wanted you to play was of his own devising; he was the only one who knew the rules.
Hollander hadn’t bothered to try. He has always seen himself as a straightforward man. He lives as he plays: honestly; no fancy stuff. He tries to play it square. The problem is, Palmer was a ball-winning midfielder too; but then he always wanted more: for Palmer, the square ball has never been enough.
They get off the train and it is evening. There is a nip in the air; Hollander takes off his jacket and puts it on his daughter. The jacket overwhelms her, but he wants her to be warm. They walk to the car park, find his car, and begin the drive home. In the darkness Jen falls asleep, her little head resting against the window pane. Hollander feels a surge of love in his chest. The girl holds so much of his hope; he feels stupidly grateful to her. But she is so good. Thinking of her future, he can’t help but imagine her as a remedy of a woman, the girl who will reverse all the hurt caused by that other woman of his life. And he knows how absurd it is, to place so much hope on young shoulders. But he has sometimes felt like she is all he really has.
They reach home. Hollander opens the gate remotely and the car tyres grind on the pebbled driveway. He stops the car, goes around to the passenger door and tries to lift Jen from the seat. He is amazed at how heavy she is, how quickly she has grown. She wakes up.
‘Get off me, Dad. I can walk on my own you know.’
He steps back and she jumps out of the seat. He watches her go to the door and ring the bell. Lisa answers, and Jen runs past her, the shopping bag concealed at her side. Lisa looks over and smiles; he turns back and locks the car door. She kisses him as he passes her. He goes straight on into the hall.
‘Good trip?’
‘Fine,’ he says. He goes into the kitchen, and she follows him. ‘You eaten already?’
‘It’s in the oven,’ she says. ‘It’ll still be warm.’
He peers through the oven window, opens the door. Some kind of pasta bake. He takes the heavy dish and sets it on the table. Jen joins him and Lisa watches them both as they eat. No-one talks. When he is finished Hollander scrapes his leftovers into the compost caddy and puts his plate on the side.
‘Are you going to leave that?’ Lisa’s voice has a note of harshness. He turns back around, takes the plate and slides it into the dishwasher.
‘I’ve got a programme thing to do,’ he says, and runs upstairs. In the study he fires up the laptop and sits down at his desk. They had made the room a study shortly after moving in, the main reason being that the house just had too many rooms, and they couldn’t think of anything else to do with this one. But they told themselves the kids needed somewhere to do their homework, and Lisa still had ideas in her head about courses in sociology, philosophy, modern history. Over the years she has started a number of these courses but always quits within the first term. And the kids do their homework in their bedrooms or at the kitchen table. The study had gone unused, so Hollander had adopted it as his own. Mostly he uses the room to write his regular column for the matchday programme. It is always a struggle, and what gets printed never bears much resemblance to what he submits. Still, week after week he agonises over it, and this time is no different.
It would be easy if he just trotted out the same old stuff about how much the last defeat had hurt the players, how they are still upbeat, how determined they are to turn it all around; it would be easy if he wrote from the off what he always ends up with anyway. The trouble is, he feels he has something more to communicate. He wants to tell the fans that he is with them. He wants to tell them about his anger, and his frustration. What he really wants is to stir them up; he wants them to boo and jeer again, to hear them chant, ‘Palmer out! Palmer out!’ But that awful 0 – 4 loss had been followed by a minor upturn in fortune; the team had scrambled a few points together, and the crowd’s anger had subsided. He wants to change that, but it isn’t something he can just come out and say. So he tries to weave it into his column: a subtle plea for revolt. It hasn’t worked so far, though; his sentences are too stilted, too awkward. The club’s Communications people invariably send the column back plastered with ‘suggested changes’ that aren’t really suggestions at all.
And this time is no different. After an hour of fumbling at the keyboard, he gets up and goes into the hall. He listens; downstairs the TV is chattering away. At the other end of the corridor the sound of blasting tells him Danny is safely occupied. He goes as quietly as he can to the bedroom. The floor is carpeted but the boards beneath are old and have a tendency to creak. He goes softly. He crosses the bedroom to his wife’s walk-in wardrobe. Four shelves up on the left, there is a cardboard box in which she keeps old bills and receipts. He feels down the back of the box, and pulls out the mobile phone hidden inside.
Lisa’s first affair – or at least the first he was aware of – happened shortly after the family had moved back down South. Had Hollander taken his eye off the ball? He was so determined to succeed at his new club; he felt it was a rare chance to kickstart his career. But he hadn’t noticed the unease that he caused in the other players. Or, if he had noticed, he had blamed himself, his own nerves. As it turned out, Lisa had been seeing the team’s captain, a big smooth bastard of a centre-back named Ryan Cross. They had met at the Christmas party. Cross’ infidelity was legendary, and the whole squad had known about the affair for months before Hollander eventually found some of Lisa’s underwear at the training ground. Her knickers had fallen out of Cross’ kitbag; he recognized them as an old Christmas present he’d had embroidered with her name.
His anguish drove him out of the changing rooms and onto the training pitches, where Cross responded to his first swing with a neat sidestep that left him free to deliver a quick series of blows to Hollander’s head before he went down: a cuckold laid out on the turf. The laughter he heard as he lay there returns to him sometimes at night, with the dreadful feeling of a nightmare.
Hollander was desperate after that. His career was on the ropes, again. But the efforts of his agent eventually caught the attention of Graham Pendleton, and within a couple of weeks he was out on loan, with a view to a permanent move that came off that summer. Pendleton was regarded by many as one of the last of the old-school football men, and Hollander found the workmanlike atmosphere at his new club a haven after the debauchery of his last. Pendleton was like a saint. He put his arm around Hollander’s shoulders, told him he could boss games if he put the work in. And for four wonderful seasons he did exactly that.
But Pendleton is gone now, and Hollander has once more to fight.
In the gloom of the wardrobe he switches the mobile on. The PIN is easy, the first four digits of Jen’s birthday: it is Lisa’s password for everything. He knows what he is looking for; he goes straight for her inbox, finds the message and sends it over to his own mobile, then quickly shuts the phone down and returns it to its hiding place.
Downstairs they are watching some kind of celebrity rubbish. Hollander pours himself an orange juice and sits on the sofa. Jen pads over to him, and rests her head against his shoulder.
He says, ‘You’re ready for bed, hon,’ but she ignores him.
Lisa gets up. ‘Daddy’s right, Jen baby. Up you get, now. You’re bringing me breakfast in bed tomorrow morning, remember?’ She puts a hand on her hip to emphasise her authority. ‘Give Daddy a kiss, then.’
When they are gone Hollander switches the TV over to some current affairs programme. In truth, he barely listens to what the presenters are saying, but he likes to make the point to Lisa that her tastes are inferior to his own. She comes back, registers the change, and walks back out of the room.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she calls from the kitchen.
How often it goes this way. Hollander, alone once more, flicks through the channels. But there is nothing interesting on; he checks Sky Sports News for a minute or two, then turns the TV off and follows his wife upstairs.
Hollander wakes early; there is a shaft of light that falls between the curtains directly onto his face. He gets up, stops at the bedside to watch Lisa sleeping. She really is a beautiful woman. He thinks of how much he has loved her in his life, and it makes him nervous. Her reddish hair is messed on the pillow. In the morning light she looks clean and lovely. To think of Palmer’s hands running through that hair, it makes him feel sick. To think of Palmer’s greedy smiling eyes, his thin lips curling. Hollander turns away from her. Get hold of the ball, Bobby – put your foot on it. He thinks of the day ahead; there is so much to do.
He is showered and out of the door before anyone else has woken. He drives towards the training ground, where John Banbury will be waiting for him. Everything is set up now. He leaves the fields behind and the old familiar streets begin to nestle and twine around the dual-carriageway. The day is a stunner; touched by the morning sun, Hollander can’t remember the suburbs ever looking so sweet as this. It is a drive he has made almost every day for the last five years. This time, though, he feels a sense of exhilaration: today is an ending.
It had all come undone the night before, after he had followed Lisa upstairs. By the time he was finished in the bathroom she was tucked in bed with the lights still on. She was reading a magazine, or waiting for him. He undressed.
‘Have you got me a present, Bobby?’ There was something girlish about her voice; it irritated him. And he thought, ‘Well, no, I haven’t.’ He folded his trousers and left them on the chair.
‘Are you going to leave those there?’
He turned around and picked up the trousers, placed them on a hanger in the wardrobe.
‘Have you got me a present, Bobby?’ she repeated; this time there was nothing girlish or soft about it.
‘No,’ he replied.
And she started to cry then. Just out of nowhere. He watched her for a moment, then walked around the bed and got in under the covers. Her body was shaking and she was making little whimpering noises. He lay beside her on the big bed and waited for her to calm down. But she only got worse.
‘Don’t you care about me?’ she hissed at him.
‘Don’t you care about me?’ he said back, coldly.
‘What do you mean?’ Her tears had thickened her voice; she sounded muddled, confused.
He opened his mouth and it all just came spilling out. He told she had stopped caring about him after Jen was born, that he doubted she even cared about the kids now. He was up on one elbow, his face twisted in anger. In a moment of lucidity he thought, I’ve lost it. He told her that she’d got what she wanted: she was a footballer’s wife, through and through. He told her he was sick of her, the house, his life; he was sick of everything. He told her that all she had ever given him was deceit. Deceit and lies and fucking betrayal. And as the words shaped in his mouth he felt ashamed.
She was watching him, aghast. He went on. He asked her if she had any idea of the things that people had said about him. He asked if she knew what she had done to him. It was all her fault. He told her he should have thrown her out a long time ago, like any other man would have. But like a mug he had carried on. Like a mug he had put up with her.
‘So don’t just lie there whimpering about it all.’
But she had stopped whimpering a while back now.
She told him she had never had anything to do with Ryan Cross. That she had barely spoken with the man. It was the same old story; he had heard it so many times. He clapped his hand in imitation of a mouth jabbering away.
‘No, Bobby!’ It was loud enough that it might wake the kids. He put his hand roughly to her mouth, but she struggled away from him. ‘I never did anything. How many times do I have to say it? God! I can’t take it anymore.’
He spoke deliberately low. ‘You can’t take it? You can’t take it?’
‘No! Your jealousy. Your suspicion. I can’t have a normal life.’
‘You mean you can’t go round cheating like the other wives? Listen, Lisa. You’re the only fucking cheat around here.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, her voice heavily laden with sarcasm. ‘I’m awful, aren’t I? I’m just the fucking bitch who raised your kids…’
He interrupted her. ‘I know about it, Lisa.’
She looked startled. ‘About what?’
He smiled. ‘That’s all you need to know, that I know about it. So don’t worry, go to sleep.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she said. She turned away from him.
‘That’s right, darling. Roll over.’
‘Well we could go on for hours, couldn’t we?’ Her voice was hard and quiet and resentful. ‘But it’s my birthday in the morning, and Jen wants to make it special for me. And I don’t really want to ruin that for her.’
‘Fine by me.’ He turned his back on her. ‘Sweet dreams, honey.’
They must have lain like that for hours before either of them had got to sleep. Hollander knows he did. He had been turning it all over in his mind, how she had given away her guilt. He had thought long and hard about what to do. And he had come to a kind of decision. He needed to impose himself, his way of doing things: he was going to play it square. So he had texted John Banbury. He had begun to make his plans.
And now the training ground is close. The suburbs have darkened; concrete is everywhere. Banbury will be waiting for him, with that old familiar laugh he uses to throw away doubt and fear and worry. Hollander thinks he needs that now, a bit of the old man’s hardy nonchalance. He has come to depend on his Chairman, especially since the departure of Pendleton. Together they have been the old guard, and when you’re the old guard you tend to find safety in numbers.
Banbury welcomes him like a favourite son.
‘Bobby! Good to see you my friend.’
Hollander meets the outstretched hand, is shaken about a bit.
‘So what’s it all about then? Summons in the middle of the night. Must be something important, no? But sit down, sit down. Cathy! Cathy!’
Hollander sits; there is a shuffling in the hall and one of the catering ladies appears in the doorway.
Cathy smiles at him. ‘Hello, Bobby love. You alright?’
‘He’s fine,’ Banbury tells her. ‘Listen, my darling. Could we have some coffee, please? And some biscuits. Right away, dear.’
Cathy shuffles out of view, and when Hollander turns back around he finds Banbury watching him expectantly.
‘John,’ he begins, and falters. He feels dreadful. It’s a dreadful thing to do. John Banbury has been wonderful to him in the years they’ve known each other, but now all he can do is flail for the words to say, ‘I’m leaving you in the lurch, old man.’
Ray Palmer pats him on the back and he sprints onto the ball. But the pass is stray; he changes pace to meet it and lashes it high over the bar.
‘Nice try, Bobby. Maybe next time, eh?’
Hollander trots to the back of the line, and watches as each man in front of him puts his shot safely past the reserve keeper into the back of the net. The next turn he gets, he puts the ball just wide.
‘Bastard,’ he mutters. ‘Bastard bastard bastard.’
Palmer calls for a break, and the players drift away in groups to sit in the shade. The manager goes with his assistant to set up cones for the next exercise.
Hollander takes his chance. He runs into the building, as if heading for the toilets, but he carries on down the corridor. His studs clack on the floor and he tries to run more lightly. At Palmer’s office he tries the door, and finds it open. He steps inside, closes the door and locks it behind him. He searches the desk, the coats on the coatstand, even a cardboard box stacked full of scouting files, but he finds nothing. The thought hits him, what if Palmer had himself broken protocol and taken his mobile out on the training field? He gets tense, frustrated. He gives the box a light kick and it slides against the coatstand, knocking off its hook a pair of jeans that must previously have been hidden among the coats. He feels the jeans desperately, and relief hits him – there it is, the telling weight in the pocket. He takes out the mobile – it is on – and unlocks the keypad. Then he pulls his own phone from his jogging bottoms. He has endured hours of unpleasant heat for this moment; all the other players are wearing shorts: light, airy, pocketless shorts.
He sends the message from his phone to Palmer’s. For a brief moment Palmer’s ugly dick flashes onscreen before he presses send. He deletes the image from his phone, banishes it. The message appears in his manager’s inbox. The text reads: Cum on baby hav a go on this. He selects forward, copies in all the players he can find in Palmer’s address book, and presses send again.
Five minutes later, dressed and driving away from the training ground, it all feels more real than anything he can remember. It has taken so long to reach this point. But he is free now. He winds down the window, breathes deeply. Whoo, he exhales. What a way to go.
On the way home he stops at the estate agent in town, registers to sell, and picks up all the necessary forms. Then he goes to the travel agent, asks for everything they have on Spain. Driving home the back seat is awash with brochures that slide back and forth at every corner. Paper glides on paper, and he enjoys it, the quiet sound of whooshing.
He pulls up on the driveway, kills the engine. He sees the house fresh, free of the label ‘home’. Because it has never been a home to him, not really. It has been the point on the map where his life lost its bearings. And now he is finally putting it all right again. His wife, his kids, himself: all of them had labored in that place, been diminished by it.
But he is a man. It feels good to remember that. And a house is only a house. Spain is in his future now, easy years in the sun, and all of them happy. He had told his wife he had no present for her. And it was true. But he believes things will be different now.
Well look, honey, he imagines himself saying, the two of them sat at the kitchen table. I don’t have a present for you, but how about this for a future?
[...] Bobby Plays it Square [...]