Читать книгу Galactic Keegan - Scott Innes - Страница 9

THE IRRESISTIBLE FORCE

As predicted, the second match of the Galactic League C season against Groiku IV was a disaster of, well, disastrous proportions. With barely enough fit players to field a team, I was left with just young Booth up front on his own – the very idea of playing with only one striker made me feel physically ill but I had no choice. Or at least none that I was prepared to make.

Gerry was vehemently against my decision to leave young Rodway on the bench. The kid was itching to play and had been on his best behaviour in the few days since his dressing down, but listen, people need to understand that actions have consequences. Like the time I sent Joey Barton home from training when he wore a baseball cap that read F**K THE POLICE. I was disgusted. I said to him, ‘Sting is Newcastle’s favourite son – he deserves better.’

‘Kev, our goose is cooked without Rodway up top,’ Gerry said when I handed him the team sheet before kickoff. ‘He’s our star man. We need him.’

‘I can’t believe you have so little faith in our squad,’ I scolded him. ‘Little Dunc has come on leaps and bounds in pre-season. He lobbed the keeper from the halfway line in that practice match last week. That takes a special kind of quality.’

‘Yeah, but that was an own goal,’ Gerry said doubtfully. ‘He was aiming the other way and scuffed it.’

‘Look, you can’t get bogged down in details,’ I insisted. ‘We’re going with Alex Booth up front, Tilston as an advanced playmaker behind him.’

‘Tilston? He’s the goalkeeper, Kev.’

‘I know, but I want to play a high pressing game against this lot – he’s wasted back there in his own box.’

An emphatic 6–0 defeat later and Gerry gave me just the faintest ‘I told you so’ look as our lads trudged off the pitch dejectedly. The boys from Groiku IV were a good side; their crusty red skin made them fairly impervious to most of our attempts to tackle them – in fact Wiggins, our midfield general, knackered his own knee going in for a crunching tackle on their number nine.

Still, despite everything, I didn’t feel too downhearted. No one enjoys a defeat (least of all John Gregory, who once lost a game of Connect 4 to me in the green room before we appeared on Football Focus in 2003 and hasn’t spoken to me since) but I saw this capitulation as simply a means to an end. Gillian was up there in the stands and she’d have seen just how little I had to work with. And with a record crowd of over forty-one people in attendance, she’d be feeling the pressure even more. In a strange way, this defeat was going to turn into a victory in the long run. I just had to wait for Gillian to call me up to her office – which, an hour or so after the match, she did.

‘Shall I come too, Kev?’ Gerry asked as he put the boys through a warm-down after the match. ‘Moral support and all that.’

‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ I assured him. ‘I can fight my own battles, you know.’

And that was true – like when that Hollywood studio tried to make that film based on my life back in 2003. I was told it was going to be a straight biopic job, my life story from A to B to C and then however the rest of the alphabet goes. I’d insisted ahead of time on being given script approval and input on casting – Jack Lemmon to play me was a deal-breaker, but they kept fobbing me off with ‘he looks nothing like you’ and ‘he died two years ago’, and so in the end I had no choice but to pull the plug. Their loss.

Anyway, I made my way up to Gillian’s office once again, trying hard to disguise the spring in my step. We certainly hadn’t thrown the match – I would never do that – but I’d known going in that we’d more likely than not end up taking an absolute battering. Now the ball was in Gillian’s court. Cough up or watch the football club slowly drip away down the plughole.

‘There you are,’ Gillian said as I came in. I hurriedly wiped the expectant smile off my face as I entered – it was crucial that I look depressed. I tried to focus on sad memories to contain my exuberant mood, like the death of my childhood hamster, or the time Rob Lee told me that he didn’t like Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.

‘Hiya,’ I said in a solemn voice. ‘I assume you saw what just happened out there. Now, I want to say, we did our best but at the end of the day—’

‘Close the door, please,’ Gillian said ominously. Slightly perturbed, I did so and took a seat opposite her desk. She looked quite pale. It had been a dismal performance, sure, but she seemed to have taken it quite badly. Well, so much the better. I reached over her desk and extended a hand and, as ever, failed to prepare myself for her iron grip. My eyes were almost watering by the time she released me, entirely oblivious to her own strength. She’d have given that Arthur Schwarzenegger a run for his money, I can tell you that much.

‘Now you can see what I’m up against,’ I continued. ‘But the important news is that it’s a problem that can be remedied. There are thirty-six more games and plenty of time to mount a promotion push. I’ve taken the liberty of drawing up a list of potential signings…’

‘No, Kevin, be quiet for a minute,’ Gillian said as I unfolded the sheet of paper from my pocket and placed it in front of her.

‘I’m not asking for every name on this list,’ I explained to reassure her. ‘We already have the spine of a good team, we just need to add a few limbs. A good six or seven of these players and we’ll be well on the way.’

To my astonishment, Gillian screwed up the piece of paper and tossed it towards her waste paper bin (missing by a fair distance, which just about summed up the day really).

‘Oh, I see,’ I said, folding my arms across my chest. ‘You want to play hardball. You’re killing this club, you know.’

‘Kevin, there is no football club. It’s over!’ she said, voice cracking with emotion. I was taken aback.

‘Bloody hell, Gillian,’ I said. ‘Steady on. It’s only one defeat – you realise we have another match in midweek, yeah? A few of those new signings that you just dismissed out of hand and we’d get some points on the board for sure.’

‘Kevin, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s done. The plug has been pulled. Palangonia FC is no more. The Council voted on it this afternoon. I’m… sorry.’

My stomach was in knots – surely it couldn’t be true? Had my decision to leave Rodway on the bench and consign us to inevitable defeat really had such devastating repercussions?

‘I voted against it,’ Gillian went on as I just sat there, frozen, ‘of course I did, as did Dr Pebble-Mill, but it was a 3–2 majority. Something has happened and, well, all but the essential Council expenditure is to be redirected to General Leigh.’

‘Oh, I might have bloody well known!’ I snapped, breaking out of my trance. ‘Leigh’s been waiting to bring me down all year – you know full well he thinks Palangonia FC is a waste of time and money. And now he’s got his wish. Brilliant. Well done! Happy now?’

‘Kevin, if you knew what I know, you’d understand—’

‘And if you knew what I know, about how important football is to the morale of the people in this Compound, people who’ve been displaced by a bunch of bad alien sods without so much as a by-your-leave, you’d realise that this is the worst possible decision!’

‘Kevin, it’s not like that at all – yes, Leigh is opposed to the football club, but we still enjoy broad support on the Council—’

‘Do we?’ I huffed. ‘Funny way of showing it!’

‘It’s not a personal attack on you or the club,’ she insisted, adopting a calmer tone in an attempt to defuse the palpable tension in the room. ‘It’s a matter of necessity.’

I was flabbergasted.

‘What could be more necessary than this?’ I asked, waving my arms at the room and the wider stadium beyond. The fire had gone out of my voice now. I sounded helpless. An immovable object had met with an irresistible force, and the irresistible force had won. The dream had died.

‘So, that’s that then?’ I asked, getting to my feet and trying not to pout. ‘After all you and I have been through?’

‘Well,’ she said, sounding a little surprised, ‘I mean, we’ve only worked together for a year.’

I gestured to the framed photos on her desk – happy scenes of a man and two young children, taken years ago on Earth. The bloke was, by any estimation, quite the looker. Ordinarily I’d have assumed these were pictures of family or friends but Gillian didn’t have any of those. Although she was a confident, gregarious person in her working life I had noticed that she was a solitary, closed-book of a person with few apparent friends beyond her professional capacities – it was entirely likely that the pictures in the frames were the placeholder templates and she hadn’t got around to putting anything in them yet. (Pride of place on my own desk at the stadium is a photo of the 2003 Man City youth team squad, signed by Ronan Keating. I forget how that came about.)

‘Your family must be so proud of you – I hope you tell them all tonight what you’ve done today,’ I said bitterly, knowing it was a low blow. Gillian looked like she’d been punched in the gut and I instantly regretted what I’d said. She didn’t respond and, stubbornly, I pressed on. ‘I really did think you were better than this, you know. Gerry said you were a tight-fisted penny-pincher but I always stuck up for you. And yet here we are.’

I reached for the door handle to leave Gillian’s office for surely the final time. Maybe Gerry was right – a fresh start was the best way. My hand stopped in mid-air at what Gillian said next.

‘There’s a L’zuhl spy in the Compound, Kevin. And by hook or by crook, Leigh is going to flush them out. Until that happens… everyone on Palangonia is a suspect.’