Kevin Mahoney
Authortrek.com
Copyright © Text Kevin Mahoney
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY:
Kevin Mahoney on Smashwords
A Fame of Two Halves
Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Mahoney
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Second Edition
The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Dedicated to my family: my wife Michelle, my father Con, my brother Paul, and my sister Karen.
In loving memory of Tim and Annie May Mahoney.
I’d like to thank the writing groups I’ve attended over the years, most notably Shepherds Bush Writers’ Junction (led by Anjan Saha and Dzifa Benson) and Slough Writers’ Group. I’d also like to thank the committee of the Society of Young Publishers for putting up with me for the last couple of years!
Many English teachers have also encouraged me, such as the great Elizabeth Hurst. Much of the humour in this novel is inspired by a spoof letter my brother wrote in an English lesson, whereby he complained that his teabag only had 999 perforations instead of the advertised 1,000, so you can blame him for that!
A big hello to all my former colleagues at Amazon.co.uk, where this novel will hopefully be on sale.
Many thanks also to Joanne Harris, for agreeing to read the novel at such short notice.
Elliot Gold stared at Doctor Tell's ceiling. He was used to the sight. He saw the Gucci doctor once a week, and told him all his woes. Elliot had tried to persuade the team to join him in a group session, but neither they nor Doctor Tell had agreed to it. Doctor Tell had a reason why, but just wouldn't tell. That was probably where it all began to go wrong, Elliot thought. Prior to that had been his revelation to a journalist from The Sun that he had learnt all his training skills from Duxford State Circus when he was a lad. Until that moment, Elliot’s timing, his ability to read the game and life itself had been perfect. Elliot had held the complete respect of the team. No one had ever questioned him before that. Not long after, with his confidence in his own abilities low, Elliot had sunk to introducing the long ball into Duxford’s game.
If truth should be told, as it should be in Doctor Tell's office, Elliot had only devised the tactic because he had heard that all first team players at Wimbledon regularly saw a psychoanalyst (and what better club to emulate than one which had come from nowhere?). So, Elliot had decided that Duxford United could do with some of the same mind quackery. He would have tried anything to have healed their confidence, and what better way than to confide their woes to a pro?
It never had occurred to him that the real reason why Wimbledon players went to see the men in white coats was that they were all nutters.
Doctor Tell's ceiling was fascinating. To the casual observer, the black and white blobs on each tile merged into a meaningless jumble, but to Elliot, they signified something far different. One of them had a semicircle of black with a curved swirl of ebony in the middle. It was obvious to anybody but a referee, Elliot reasoned, that this was Graeme Souness. To his left was a lanky and quite unpronounceable piece of soot - Kenny Dalglish. Another had a wispy effect - definitely the late Bob Paisley. And the one with the bold black strokes? Shankly. Frankly, it had to be Shankly.
He should never have listened to that man. What was his name now? That man he had met in the Duck and Cower? Mister Chadwick - that was it. One might well have taken advice from Mister Spud. And fancy ever trying to emulate Wimbledon, Liverpool's bogey team. No wonder Liverpool's majestic crowned heads stared balefully down at him from the ceiling.
“How are we today?” the impeccably dressed Doctor Tell asked.
“Oh, fine,” Elliot lied.
There was something about this room that reminded Elliot of the confessional: it was the bars on the window. Whenever a priest asked if he had sinned, Elliot had seen fit to invent a whole litany of crimes, falling just short of mass murder and littering. He hadn't wanted to disappoint the priest, since he could never remember them anyway, they were so numerous. But you just had to say something in that situation. Okay, so lying, and thus committing another sin, was not an ideal solution, but saying you hadn't sinned at all was positively sinful in Elliot's eyes, even if you hadn't. Still, he had only been a practising Catholic till the age of ten, and then he'd only gone to confession with his class. That was when you proved how hard you were by how long you took to do your penance.
“How's your schizophrenia coming along?” Elliot asked.
“Very droll,” the Doctor commented, although it was at least the thousandth occasion with which he had encountered the remark. “You know, Mr Elliot, the one danger of psychoanalysis is that the patient and the therapist will swap places. In your case, however, I believe we are quite safe.”
“Well, I certainly keep you in business, Doc. I'm your best customer.”
This was a slight fib on Elliot's part. He was, in fact, Doctor Tell's worst client. Doctor Tell resisted imparting this news to his client in case it made him depressed. He didn't want Elliot to get any worse.
It was hardly fair, Elliot reasoned to himself (thus making Doctor Tell redundant). Thank God he hadn't heeded Chadwick's other advice though: to hire a ballet dancer. Elliot couldn't see a weak little lass running through their SAS fitness regime, let alone lead it. But then again, Elliot had come to maturity in the late seventies, when no one had heard of a feminist movement, apart from the defenders at Arsenal.
“I believe we were talking about your recurring dream last time...” the Doctor began when he got tired of watching Elliot's eyes dart about the ceiling. Doctor Tell's mother had always told him to be suspicious of men whose eyebrows met, and it was in this way that Elliot became prime suspect on the many occasions when Duxford’s homicide squad had been forced to consult the good doctor.
Elliot leaned back in the couch.
“Well, now,” Elliot said, even although he wasn't. Otherwise he could have gone home. “I'm in a garden.”
“What kind of garden?”
“I dunno. It's not a very green garden.”
“And why is that?”
“It's summer. It's too hot to be green. There's hardly a blade of grass. The earth is so scorched.”
“Is this an English Summer?” Doctor Tell asked incredulously (having been brought up at a time when there was no talk of global warming).
“No, it's abroad.”
“What country?”
“I don't know,” Elliot lied. He could never actually remember his dreams, but he did have some quite vivid memories. One that especially shone in his mind was that of a childhood holiday in Malta. It was the first time that he had ever been abroad. Ah, he could remember it as if it was the day before yesterday, perhaps even last week. The sun had seemed so bright there, and the people so pleasant. It was a million miles away from England on a wet May morning.
Elliot liked to think of his childhood. He had been a happy child. Life had been so uncomplicated then. There were times when he wished he could return to that state, to have no worries in the world... To see the world beneath from a small womblike shell in the sky, just as that bloke did in 2001: A Space Odyssey… Perhaps that would be what old age would be like, having brunch in a Georgian palace with good acoustics.
“It was somewhere in the Mediterranean,” Elliot continued. He liked the name - Middle Earth. To him, it seemed solid, firm, and Tolkien.
“What are you doing?”
“I am sitting on the ground. It is warm, reassuring. There is a little brick wall running along the path. At the bottom, in a crack, is an ants nest.”
“What are these ants doing?”
“They are scurrying along the ground. They are carrying tiny leaves. I put my finger in their way. The ants just walk around. I squash some.”
“You kill the ants?”
“Yes. There are very many of them. They are like the ones in our self catering apartment.”
“Is the apartment infested?”
“No, they just marched up and down one bit of wall. They are living in their own world, totally unaffected by my presence. It was a beautiful sight - a moving wall.”
“Where are you now?” Doctor Tell prompted after a slight pause.
“I am in the garden again. I squash some ants.”
“What kind of ants are these?”
“They are worker ants. As soon as I kill some, bigger ants arrive on the scene.”
“What are these new ants like?”
“They have pincers on their head. They attack my finger by pinching it. Little ants hang off my fingers with their pincers.”
“Does their bite hurt?”
“No, the pincers are too small.”
“What do you do now?” Doctor Tell enquired.
“I retaliate.”
“You kill more of the ants?”
“Yes.”
“Please continue.”
“Soon there are very many bodies on the ground.”
“How do you feel?”
“I am enjoying it. Pretending to be a great warrior.”
Doctor Tell clicked his fingers. It was his method of signifying some kind of closure. It stemmed from his days as a stage hypnotist, from the time when he had very nearly been disbarred from the Mind Benders Association.
Elliot sat up and teetered on the edge of the couch. He found it very comforting to swing his legs in his posture, but Doctor Tell wasn't about to give him a big push. He left his real swinging for the weekend.
“So, what was that all about?” Elliot asked brightly.
“You tell me.”
“No, you Tell, me Elliot.”
“Your humour will be the death of me, Mr Gold,” said Doctor Tell as sternly as he could. “Well?”
“I haven't the foggiest,” Elliot said uneasily. He hated psychoanalysing himself; it made a mockery of paying Doctor Tell.
“Is it not possible that you feel yourself surrounded by enemies, and that you wish to strike back in some way?”
“What enemies? I don't have any enemies,” Elliot said worriedly. But hadn't he seen someone walk past his house with a bazooka the other day?
“Perhaps ‘enemies’ is the wrong word. Your critics, shall we say? Is it not true to say that your have more than your fair share of critics in the professional and amateur press?”
“Amateur press?” asked a mystified Elliot.
Doctor Tell waved a copy of The Sucks in the air.
“Ah, the fanzine,” Elliot said as the light slowly dawned. “What does it say?”
“You mean you haven't read it?”
“I write the weekly programmes. What do I need to read that for? I mean, I pick the teams and all that, so presumably I know what I am doing.”
“Well, according to this rag, you don't.”
“What!” cried an outraged Elliot. “Let me see that!”
“Are you sure? Some of it is quite virulent,” Doctor Tell warned as the fanzine was snatched from his grasp.
“’Elliot Gold, you should be sold! Always believing you’re indestructible. Well I’ve got news for you, mate’” Elliot read. “They can't sell me, I'm the manager! And why are all the pages stuck together?”
“Amateur press,” Doctor Tell reiterated as he prised the fanzine from Elliot's grasp. It was his professional opinion that Elliot shouldn't see all those old photos of his wife. Especially not the nude ones.
“I don't care what they have to say! I'll show them!” Elliot said furiously as he stormed out of the room in a way he’d last done when he was twelve. He’d been seeing Doctor Tell for a very long time.
Doctor Tell leant back and formed his hands into a steeple. He was highly skilled at metamorphosis.
“An excellent analysis,” he muttered evilly to himself, which only bearded Machiavellian men in good suits can really pull off.
“Mister Spud's been chipnapped again,” Elliot observed as his wife got in the car.
Helen looked at the spot on the pavement that was usually occupied by the shop sign that was Mister Spud. It seemed to her as if a massive void had just opened up (although this King Edward of the potato family had never sprouted above four feet). There had been something oddly comforting about that fibreglass shop sign. Helen had lived in Duxford all her life, as had Mister Spud. To see him gone made her feel like some great haddock of her life had just been swallowed whole along with some fried scampi.
“No doubt he'll be back soon,” Helen said hopefully.
“Yeah, they've probably got another one.”
“Oh that's a horrible thought!”
For Helen, there was only one Mister Spud. All other men faded into insignificance compared to he. Even the current plight of her husband unmoved her. No doubt Mister Spud was being well looked after by whoever had stolen him this time. If Elliot had been kidnapped by the tuber goblin brigade, then it is doubtful that his wife would have even battered an eyelid sent back through the post as a ransom demand.
“Anybody who is anybody has nicked Mister Spud in their time,” Elliot declared grandly.
“Well, it's hooligans like you and Jack Hoffman who are bringing this town down!” Helen snapped as she flung the Oxbridge Evening News at him.
Elliot groaned. “What's he done this time?”
“He's been fined for being drunk and disorderly.”
Elliot stared at the front page. There, sure enough, was Jack Hoffman, with his ageing perm and two of what he called ‘birds’ on his arm. Smiling. The big gob was open, revealing a multitude of much worked upon teeth. Still, nothing dentured, nothing pained. By the look of him, you'd have thought that he had just won a Championship medal, instead of being fined a couple of hundred.
“At least he wasn't on the pitch this time,” Elliot observed brightly.
His wife tutted fiercely to herself.
“You're just as bad as he is,” she accused.
“Am not!” Elliot protested.
“What about the bloke you hit last week?”
Recollection turned Elliot's cheeks a particular shade of rouge, as red as James Buck and his Fire Truck.
“Oh him.”
“Yes - him.”
“Well, he was drunk, off his head or something... And the first person people think of to pick a fight with seems to me nowadays.”
“And why is that?” his wife asked sarcastically. You see, she knew perfectly well the reason why huge simians now wanted to use her husband as a punching bag. Indeed, Helen had started to think about taking up boxercise, and what better punch bag than the lump sitting beside her?
“Oh, what do you know about football!” Elliot volleyed. Shakespearean actors have been known to be quieter and far less dramatic.
“Nothing! But that’s more than you know, if your current form is anything to go by,” said Helen gripping the steering wheel tightly. “It's just that I can't stand being shouted at in the street. I hate it when you come shopping.”
“You're always saying I should do more!” Elliot wore his 'I can't win, can I?' look. It was an expression that he was forced to adopt with increasing regularity nowadays.
“Well, I can't walk down the street without some tosser quacking at you.”
“That's hardly my fault.”
“Yes it is! Elliot, can't you see how crap you are? Everyone else can!”
Just for a moment, Elliot wondered whether his wife was criticising his performance in the bedroom. A second later, he was worrying about how many people knew about his diamond formation strategy. Perhaps the Christmas tree approach was better after all? But Elliot had always dismissed it as being far too seasonal, and besides, all those baubles just got in the way of a swift resolution to foreplay.
“We're just going through a difficult pitch,” said Elliot half-consciously (the Duxford ground had never been in great condition).
For a moment, Helen wondered whether Elliot was referring to the team, or to their marriage. But no, with Elliot, the team always came first. Well, second mostly, if truth were told.
“Elliot, your ‘difficult patch’ has lasted five years. You've taken the team down four divisions. You'll be lucky to qualify for the Mister Spud League next year!”
“Since when have you had any interest in football?” Elliot inquired angrily. He had always believed that it was the bane of his life to have never married a woman who appreciated the finer arts of ball control. Actually, Helen did appreciate this, more recently with men who were of a more burlesque nature than Elliot (the jugglers from the commedia dell’arte revival had just hit both town and Helen).
Elliot himself had started playing the field, as it were, in the days when shirts with tassels were considered the height of fashion. He stared at his reflection in the wing mirror. There was an alarming mop of perm on top flecked with grey, like something left by Kevin Keegan's barber, and an ever increasing girth, which wouldn't even fit in the wing mirror. His head appeared to have doubled in size since his youth, and there was an equal disproportion of chin(s).
“I think it's a stupid game,” Helen declared. “Grown men running around a field after a ball. I mean, what's the point? And why do men get so excited about it? And act like kids?”
“That's not fair. There's a lot of women goes to games these days. They seem to like it,” Elliot pointed out.
“So, you've got a few women watching... Well, unless I'm very much mistaken, they might well stick out due to the fact that there are fewer men there. Soon you'll be down to wives, girlfriends, daughters, and three men and a dog. For Christ's sake, even Oxbridge City get a bigger crowd these days!”
“Don't mention ‘the other place’!” Elliot hissed.
“Why not? Is it bad luck or something?” Helen inquired with an evil smile. “If I'd have known that, I would have been screaming it at the top of my voice for years. Maybe I have - in secret.”
“Oxbridge have got nothing on us! They're brook crossing cowboys!”
“They're twenty places above you and climbing,” Helen said icily. “I may not like football, but I know what's going on! I can't get to sleep at night for people chanting 'eight - nil' outside the house!”
“We haven't lost by that much for over a fortnight,” Elliot contended.
“No, last week it was only six - nil. Oh, Elliot, why can't we move to the country like we discussed?”
Elliot sighed. This was an even older argument.
“You say you don't want to live in the Fens because it's full of Fen Landers. You want to live fifty odd miles away in Essex. Well, Helen, Duxford United is a family club, and it's going to stay that way. It's not going to be a good example to the lads if the manager has to make a hundred mile round trip every day, is it?”
Helen bowed her head over the steering wheel and thumped it.
“When are we ever going to leave this dump and get on with our lives?” she cried despairingly.
Elliot looked aghast. Well, someone's got to.
“Oxbridge is not a dump. It's respected as one of the highest seats of learning in the entire world. ZX Rectum doesn't just invest anywhere, you know.”
“When are you going to learn? When?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“If you don't know, then I won't tell you.”
“Well that's good. How am I supposed to know?”
“You should know!” his wife said with a voice that was so shrill that it could cut through a whole plate of plastic cheese.
“There is the bedsit, for instance,” Helen said, walking her fingers along the dashboard in an attempt to replicate walking up to the front door, but which Elliot just saw as an advert for Yellow Pages.
“What about the bedsit?”
“It's a dump,” Helen said slowly, adding a sudden thump to the dashboard to jolt Elliot out of his daydream. She wondered briefly whether a Chinese hopping vampire, with no knowledge of English, would have got the point sooner.
“I know it's not as nice as some of other places we’ve had, but it's all we can afford at the moment.”
“Elliot, the most disgusting drug infested student came round to look at our spare room yesterday, and even he turned his nose up at it!”
It had been Helen's idea to get a new lodger for the bedsit, although she was dreading living in an even more confined space with Elliot. She had wanted a nice lodger. But then she had resorted to students. There were a lot of students unliving in Carlisle Street.
“Students - don't know their porn nowadays!” Elliot said contemptuously. “Scruffy gits.”
“Well, they're better than those vandals I saw get out at the ground yesterday.”
Elliot turned pale. Duxford had had a disproportionate number of hooligans recently. Well, disproportionate if you discount the solid, slippery concrete fact of Duxford’s recent losing streak, like a banana on a steamy chip shop floor. Elliot seized the door handle, a sudden reflex action, which was going to precipitate a visit to the police, but somehow the rest of Elliot's body never got around to it.
“It turned out to be the players,” Helen added after a pregnant pause, probably the most fertile that their union had ever known. Obviously, no one had ever told her that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Which is probably just as well, as she would have punched their eyes out.
“You need new glasses, dear,” said Elliot in a particularly bitter way.
“From where? The Eye Fairy? I certainly can't afford to buy them.”
“Well now, honey, you know we've all had to have our wages docked. It wouldn't be fair to the players otherwise.”
“It's damned lucky you don't get paid by results!” Helen snapped. She waved the front page of the newspaper in front of Elliot's eyes. “How is it that Jack Hoffman can afford new teeth?”
“Well, he's sponsored by the Duck and Cower, isn't he?”
“He certainly drinks enough to pay them back!”
“No - that is the sponsorship - free drinks,” said Elliot, being pedantic as usual, even although it was going to get him into trouble.
“The man is your lead striker. He can barely stand up most mornings.”
“I don't know why I bothered getting up,” Elliot groaned. “This is supposed to be my day off.”
“If United were playing today, they'd probably win!” Helen retorted. “Do you know what some joker said to me today?”
“What?”
“That you were like King Midas gone into reverse. A touch from Elliot Gold and anything would transmute into crap!”
“You have to expect that kind of comment in a university town. Most of their noses are so high in the air that they have to use street lights as handkerchiefs.”
“God - you're so stubborn!” Helen shrieked.
Elliot prised his wife's hands away from the steering wheel, in an attempt to calm her down with the warmth of his faecal touch. It certainly took some doing, and had it have occurred anywhere else other than a stationary vehicle in a car park, there might have been a serious accident.
“Darling, listen - tomorrow's the last game of the season. There'll be no more football for a couple of months. Why don't we get away? Go somewhere nice. I know a cheap hotel in Scunthorpe.”
“A cheap hotel in Scunthorpe? You really know how to impress a girl, Elliot Gold!” cried Helen as she snatched her hands away from his grasp.
“As you said yourself, we are limited money-wise.”
“Well who's to blame for that? You stopped me from working. You gave me the ultimatum.”
“Surely you don't want to go back to that sort of life!” Elliot protested. “I thought I took you away from all that.”
“Only because you were ashamed! You can't even say it, can you?”
“You're too old to be a stripper now,” said Elliot brazenly.
“That’s what you think!” Helen snapped. “Plenty of men still notice me. You don’t, because you’re full of oestrogen.”
“I’m full of what?” Elliot asked. He was sure he hadn’t had a drink for days.
“Oe-stro-gen,” said Helen more slowly, as if to a Chinese hopping vampire with little knowledge of English.
Elliot looked as blank as his account in the sperm bank. Elliot was therefore doubly impotent, which was very reproductive of him.
“The female sex hormone!” cried an exasperated Helen.
She did the finger-walking thing on his jeans up to his groin.
“There’s so much pollution from estrogens in the environment that all you men are losing your bits. You’re not any kind of man anymore, Elliot Gold, and I’m more woman than you’ll ever be able to handle again. Then again, pseudohermaphroditism is probably your wildest dream.”
With that, Helen got out of the car and slammed the door. If they hadn't have been in a car park, there might have been a serious accident. As it was, Helen crushed a little butterfly on the adjacent car door, which then caused the banks of the Mississippi to overflow, due to chaos theory. Helen also stamped her feet, coming dangerously close to precipitating a hurricane in the Bahamas. Elliot reached over his voluminous stomach (thereby causing a tsunami off the coast of Japan), and opened the driver's window.
“Come on, love. Why don't we go home and have a nice cup of tea?”
Helen turned on her heels and stormed off.
Elliot could make a ghastly cup of tea.
“Where are you going, love?” Elliot called out after her.
“I'm going to buy some bloody potatoes!”
For those of you who are easily offended, Bloody Potatoes are a speciality in the Fens, and are actually quite tasty.
In the heart of bedsitland, a telephone rang. Elliot rushed to it. There was no telling what his wife would do if she got there first. She might do the worst, which would be to start talking. He had a mobile, of course, but he'd never used it since that documentary about cancer. All he could down the other end was the shattering of a million fragments of glass. It was the Duck and Cower.
“What?” Elliot shouted.
There was definitely a voice mumbling on the other end, but they were having difficulty to get themselves heard over the Karaoke. Someone was absolutely murdering John Lennon.
But then Elliot did not need to hear anything. He knew. A call from the Duck and Cower was like the Bat sign over Gotham City. It meant that somebody somewhere was getting drunk, and had to be rescued, before they missed an open goal the next day. Hoffman was in trouble.
So was the Elliotmobile. For starters, it wouldn't… start. And the rain poured down ducks and cows, a peculiar phenomenon reserved for the residents of Duxford. A bedraggled duck smacked into Elliot's windscreen. Just as the duck was getting its wings back, Elliot drove off, and so it lost its balance, falling with a great splash into the gutter. It's just as well that there was no pig there, or else the duck would have been obliged to get up and walk away, but its dignity was unfortunately already impaired by the absence of its right leg. Meanwhile, a shaggy and bedraggled calf mooed piteously from the top of a nearby block of flats.
The Duck and Cower was a petrol bomb's throw away from the airfield. Like many an airfield in East Anglia, it had seen a great deal of action during the war. There were grown men and women walking around in Stetsons and shellsuits without the slightest idea that they were entitled to American citizenship. A slight twang in their Rustic Fen accent would be enough to betray themselves to the trained observer, but there hadn’t been any of those around there since 1826. They were people to whom ‘Have a nice day’ was just an involuntary reflex.
Elliot stared at the Duck and Cower. It was quiet. The Duck and Cower was never quiet. There was a pantomime going on in Elliot's head. He looked behind himself, just to make sure. There was a fair wind blowing up, and so the pub sign screeched hideously, like a witch upon the pyre.
Dave, the landlord, was an insomniac. He had been the drummer in a famous band from nearby Oxbridge. That was before all the drugs he took finally backfired - too much aspirin had ruined Dave's timing, and he had been trying to get it back ever since. So, most of Dave's neighbours were insomniac too. This was not, however, a side effect of that accident with the nuclear missile lorry, which had crashed through Duxford ten years earlier. The official investigation had revealed that no great harm had been done. Still, you try sleeping when someone's bashing a cymbal out of tune at two o'clock in the morning, even if you, like little Johnny Cadogan, were born with only three ears.
Elliot pushed at the door nervously. It was open. Yet all was still dark within. It just had to be an ambush. Elliot gulped. He had come too far to be afraid of the dark. Not since his mother had had to hold his hand at bedtime had he been as afraid. It seemed an awful long time since he had been a frightened fifteen. Yet, when he was sure his wife wasn't looking, he still checked to see if the hobgoblins were there. The Hobnobs too, because they both liked them.
Elliot glanced at his fluorescent watch. It was only half past nine. Far too early for a lock in. He took a breath and walked in. The hobgoblins switched on the lights just so as to blind him, and Elliot screamed in surprise, jumping like a Chinese hopping vampire, only with half the comprehension. When he opened his eyes, he saw all his friends wearing black. Mister Chadwick even removed his hat. It was a wake all right.
Hoffman came up and patted Elliot on the forearm jerkily. He was wearing a black armband on the sleeve of his cashmere sports jacket that itched liked frenzy when he was warming up on the touchlines.
Elliot breathed a sigh of relief. Hoffman was still relatively sober. He had his vision, for one thing, and that was going to be quite important for tomorrow's match. It could even become the deciding factor.But only in Elliot's dreams. Especially since they were playing the team at the top of the league, whilst Duxford were currently bottom. Still, if Duxford won, they'd be unlikely to go out of the football league, depending on other results. And yet, by the way that everyone was staring at him, with few struggling to contain a single tear, it was obvious that Duxford United's supporters had given up hope. The bastards.
“This is all I need,” Elliot said bitterly.
“I'm sorry,” sniffled Dave, crying into his beer. “But we all wanted to pay our respects, like.”
Elliot stared around him. There was something touching about the scene. The people still loved him, Elliot realised. He who had been successful at Duxford, he who had raised them to the top of the old First Division, albeit for only twenty seconds, before Liverpool scored that goal away at Old Trafford. In many ways, Liverpool had always been Duxford's bogey team. Duxford had been the sorry losers in the 1990 Cup Final. A lump always rose in Elliot's throat whenever he saw that photo of him collecting his loser's medal on that lugubrious day, which had eventually been won by Liverpool, the first of a rapidly increasing collection of Duxford bogey teams. Now, only Duxford supporters could remember their team's participation in that great final. The rest of the nation had somehow blocked it from their collective psyche. Elliot had always blamed it on the sheer disbelief of their defeat.
“All right, I'll have a drink,” Elliot declared.
There was a rapturous round of applause from the supporters gathered therein. They then proceeded to beat seven shades of shit out of him, which was quite an achievement, for Elliot had thought that there were only six. However, it was just their way of heartily patting him on the back. One of them even managed to propel Elliot's slipped disc back into place, the disc that had ended Elliot's playing days. Elliot, ever the ungrateful swine (ex of the West Ham Pigs), pretended to yawn, and managed to smash his elbow into the faces of two incipient back slappers. It was a trick he had learnt on the pitch, and one he still got away with. Everyone laughed at the two unfortunates with the broken noses, even themselves. Years from now, they would tell their grandsons that they had been set upon by twenty gorillas outside the pub, due to a mass escape bid from Duxford State Circus.
Elliot was secretly annoyed though. He never drank before a game. That was his superstition. He was especially proud that Italian nutritionists had come round to his way of thinking. No young Guiseppe at an Italian club would ever be allowed to down six pints before a match nowadays. Still, Duxford had lost the last six games in a row without him drinking, so maybe it was time to change. If the team didn't win the next day, he would undoubtedly be out of a job. There was no other way of looking at it. The chairman, Frank Mallard, had stood by him whilst Duxford slipped down the divisions. Surely there wouldn't be any support for a slip out of the divisions? Thus the demon drink ensnares us all. No matter how many times we wake up and swear that we will never touch another drop.
Elliot made his way to his favourite place at the bar. The truth was that he could be an over-moderate drinker on the very many days when a match wasn't imminent. No doubt his footprints would soon be there cast, not because he was a star on Broadway, but because there could soon be very few football matches to look forward to.
The American airmen had obviously frequented the Duck and Cower, and Dave the publican well knew this. There was an antique jukebox in the corner, constructed way back in 1986. The walls were furnished with that old red velvet wallpaper that looks best in a cinema. However, it was the ceiling that really gave the game away. Up there, on the flaking flesh red painted plaster, were the signatures of hundreds of airmen. Of course, the Duck and Cower had been derelict for many years after the war; so a few old wags had suggested that Dave had made all the signatures himself with the same black marker pen. However, the older clientele, including some grandmothers and great-grandmothers, did tend to come in on quiet afternoons, and reminisce about some of the men they had known.
Elliot liked to position himself beneath the penmanship of one particular bold fellow, Thaddeus. The writing was so strong, so confident, that he had always tried to emulate it in his own signings. So much so, that he had been refused credit even before his recent bout of bad luck. There were those who remembered the young American, Thaddeus. He was someone who had embraced the local community, so the story went, but this was something that Hoffman always sniggered at.
Hoffman grabbed his elbow. “Hey, you wanna go see Jimmy Stewart's signature?”
“Jimmy Stewart was never stationed here,” Elliot scoffed. But all the same, he allowed himself to be pulled along by one of Hoffman's burly forearms.
Sure enough, in a suitably obscure corner of the bar, there bore the legend 'Jimmy Stewart woz ere', accompanied by the cartoon picture of a rabbit.
In his heart of hearts, Elliot romantically dreamed that Jimmy Stewart had come here after the war, and written on the wall. Elliot needed a little of that Stewart optimism. Well, obviously not the optimism of It's A Wonderful Life, where George Bailey nearly killed himself, nor the alarming doom and zoom of Vertigo, or the predetermined fatalism of The Glenn Miller Story... Let's face it; James Stewart was a manic-depressive.
This was always a prelude to Hoffman's James Stewart impression.
On receiving a half pint: “No, I wanted a big one!”
On being asked his opinion of women: “Okay, so I like cows!”
On seeing a pink elephant: “With a trunk like that, I could use it as a raft in case the boat sunk!”
Dave drew Elliot aside. Not that he was Leonardo Da Vinci; he just wanted to speak to Elliot.
“You have to admire that one, don't you?” Dave said, positively going dewy eyed at the sight of Hoffman's masculine physique. “It will be a shame to see him go.”
“Oh, Hoffman's still got some surprises under his hat. Just you see tomorrow. He'll pull us out of trouble.”
“You think?”
Such a question as laid down by the Spanish Inquisition has been known to make grown men tremble, especially with such an emphasis on the ‘k’, and there was that rhyme with ‘sink’ to contend with too. Elliot had been determined to soothe the waters, to play down the supporters' anxieties, but he could see that he was fooling no one. Unless...
“Hoffman's never kept anything under his hat!” Dave punned, in what he thought was a really subtle way, but which we'll just see as crude and vulgar.
“Look at the bird he's got with him tonight,” Dave continued, oblivious to the fact that he could speak pure Neanderthalsperanto. “She must have the biggest...”
Elliot squirmed in his seat, and somehow didn't hear the rest. Why had Helen suddenly jerked up into his mind?
Helen stood shivering on the doormat. It was typical of a man to be so late. Especially when she had laid down the plans so carefully, so meticulously, that nothing could go wrong. They're worse than bloody trains. What's even worse is when the man who's late is named after one of the fastest trains on Earth.
“What do you think you're playing at, Mallard?”
Mister Mallard turns his face away so that she can't see his mighty frown. No one calls him Mallard, only Mister Mallard. Still, did he really expect respect from a woman like Helen Gold?
“You called me away from my supper,” he said reproachfully.
“Well, you could do with a diet,” she says as she removes his thick winter coat (although it's spring). She says it as if it were a compliment, which to Mister Mallard, at least, is very insulting.
Helen leads him into the lounge. Three china ducks ascend the wall (in Duxford colours, of course - blazing orange combined with a dash of lurid green). It is the 1970s. John Travolta stands frozen in one corner, still waiting for Quentin Tarantino to briefly revive him. Carmen Miranda forms part of a ghostly ancestry on the walls, accompanied by the only Elephant painted in Africa, jostling for position amongst a group of dogs playing billiards. All of us have been in this room. Some of us have never left it.
Helen goes over to the drinks cabinet, and pours herself vodka. Mallard is left to his own devices. He chooses to sit, knowing full well that he would never be invited to. Helen Gold may have been common, but she did not have the courtesy belonging to that class.
“How are things going at the club?” she asks with an unpleasant sneer on her face.
“You know full well that I cannot discuss your husband's future, even with you, Mrs Gold,” Mallard replied arbitrarily, although he had never been slow to pat Elliot on the back and throw big parties whenever the club had done well. People are so very much more discreet when it comes to bad news.
“I couldn't give a toss about Elliot,” Helen declares.
There is an uncomfortable pause. Mallard already fervently desires to have a glance at his watch, but dares not. A mild flush passes over him as his mind takes on an odd, very uncomfortable thought. All of a sudden, he feels like Dustin Hoffman. As you do.
“You don't seem very surprised,” she says slyly.
“I know that relations between you haven't been what they once were,” Mallard says uncomfortably.
Helen cackles in an ugly fashion. Which is not to say Helen is ugly. Far from it, for she looks far better than most women her age. Time has been kind for her. It has not been so kind for Mallard. Although he is a relatively young man (in his eyes, fifty is young), he has been blighted by the most serious loss of hair on his head. He catches his reflection in the corner of a mirror and grimaces. To think all these years of how much he had fancied Helen Gold, but had never dared to ask...
“Relations?” Helen sneers. “Elliot and I haven't had relations for years.”
But all Mallard can feel is pity for his old friend. For many years he has resisted the temptation to make a move on Elliot's wife, because he could never betray him.
“Is any of this leading anywhere?”
“I wish you to act on my behalf.”
“Your behalf?”
Mallard suddenly feels pale and runs a finger around the collar of his sweaty neck.
“You're a solicitor, aren't you?”
Mallard nods his assent, although he is actually a barrister – he just didn’t want to spend a great deal of time explaining the differences, as the Nessun Dorma device has yet to be invented.
“Well, then, go ahead and solicit me.”
“I beg your pardon!” Mallard roars in fury. So much so, that Helen's Easter Gin is certainly shaken, if not a little stirred.
“I just want you to represent me,” Helen says, puzzled by Mallard's reaction. Had she said the wrong thing?
“I want a divorce,” she says as if speaking to a Chinese hopping vampire.
“Oh,” replies a subdued Mallard. He had rather much thought that Helen had been suggesting something else.
“So, you'll do it?” Helen eagerly enquires, dragging on her cigarette as if there were no tomorrow.
“Well, I'm not really that kind of solicitor. I'm practically retired. Besides, I couldn't do anything to hurt Elliot.”
“Are you sure of that?” Helen asks acidly.
Mallard just sinks his face into his hands.
Elliot came out of the toilet, shaking his digits. Damn hand dryer not working again. Besides, he had asked Dave to put paper towels in there months ago, as they were far more hygienic. That was what was probably adding to Duxford's ever-expanding injury list. The players must have picked up those flu's from somewhere, and not all of them gored Southern Hong Kong Fried Chicken. Hoffman hands back his pint. Well, half of it anyway.
“And the rest!” Elliot protests.
An innocent expression overtakes Hoffman's face.
Dave beckons Elliot over.
“You're too kind to that lad,” the landlord articulates drunkenly.
“I am?” Elliot asks, but Dave doesn't notice the sarcasm.
“Yes, you are. You're too nice to the players.”
A lot of heads nod in agreement. This is the first time Elliot has heard anything of this.
“What do you mean?”
“You treat them too kind, and people take advantage of you. Exploit your good nature.”
“I think I do fine, thank you. Whenever any one of them steps out of line, I soon knock them down.”
This is true. However, Elliot's idea of discipline is rather sneaky. What he does is this: if any player seriously steps out of line, then all Elliot does is slide in a badly timed tackle during training. Anything to avoid telling them that they should be confined to the bench.
“No, no, you're a pussycat. You let them get away with murder,” Dave continues. He would seem to know something about this, having served considerable time at Her Majesty's Pleasure for a bloody bought of manslaughter.
“You're saying that if I come down on them very hard, then we'll win?”
“Exactly!” Dave beams, proud that his message had got through. Talking to Elliot was sometimes like trying to talk to a Chinese hopping vampire.
“So, how long have you known this? For the last four years?”
“Yep,” Dave grinned.
“So, during those four years, when we sweated blood to get through, took to making bone crunching tackles in our desperation, and got twice as much punishment back from stronger teams and blind referees, while half the first team got divorced and lost their families, you kept the big secret ingredient for success from us?”
“Yep,” Dave grinned.
Elliot punched Dave on his red red nose, and Dave fell like a sandwich from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was just as well that there was no one beneath him.
Mallard stands in the Elliot front parlour and fiddles with the hands on the ornamental gold clock that Elliot had bought from Ratners. Helen has disappeared, presumably to the toilet, where no doubt she is flushing the remains of her many vodkas out of her system. Mallard has a drink now, to which he has helped himself. A double helping of Easter Gin cooled down by some ice. Mallard holds the mixture to his forehead at times, as if to forestall his imminent headache, although he should have been more concerned about the effects to his other head. He doesn't worry about being stopped driving by the police. The Greedy Lawyers Association could hardly disbar him now.
“Well? Will you help me?” Helen demands when she returns.
“Are you sure the situation cannot be rescued?”
“You tell me. Surely when someone has led you into such a mire, the only thing to do is to let go of their hand,” Helen said sagely. It was probably just as well that she never had cause to visit Dartmoor, or to go for a walk with her beau.
Helen takes Mallard away from the mantelpiece and leads him to the sofa. But Mallard cannot tear his eyes away. There is Elliot twenty years younger, embracing Helen in a kiss at their wedding. There is Elliot with his Championship medals, evidence of a hard slog through the lower divisions. There is even, for some inexplicable reason, a faded monochrome baby photo of Elliot, staring out in surprise from the safety of his plastic bathtub.
Helen takes Mallard's glass away, and places her hand in his. She even rubs his palm across her cheek, but he pulls his hand away.
“Why ask me? Why me?” Mallard asks bitterly.
“There was a time when you would have done anything for me.”
She knew. Dammit, she knew. But Mallard said nothing, desperate not to give the game away - even if he had done so already. So, she had known all those years ago, and still ignored him. Not that Mallard would have done anything. Desire is one thing, action another. Inaction was better than being the one to hurt Elliot. Or, at least it had been.
“There are plenty of other solicitors in the world. I do not think that you would best be served by me. There is, after all, rather a large conflict of interest.”
“That doesn't bother me,” Helen says. “I don't want any other lawyer. I trust you.”
“I'm afraid my judgement has come in for some not unreasonable criticism within the last few years. My reputation is not what it once was,” Mallard points out.
“So what have you got to lose?”
Mallard stares at the beautiful woman before him, and he is tempted. Anyone could see that the Elliots' marriage was never destined to succeed. And yet, in the earlier days, especially when Elliot was always on a roll, ceaselessly rising through the ranks of meagre players and then managers, there had been a time when they had been truly in love. Unfortunately, Elliot only rose so high, before all the king’s men came for him. This is why Mallard now grabs his coat. He has stuck the knife in; it is not for him to push it in further. He knows why Helen wishes to hire him. Well, to use him, to utilise him as just another twist of the knife. He wasn't going to let her do it. Elliot was a good man, and not beyond salvation. Just as long as the paramedics could get all those knives out of his back in time.
Mallard slams the door behind him. He sees Helen framed in the window as he opens his car. Damn, he thinks as he gets behind the wheel. It wouldn't have been that bad. Why do I always find a good moral reason for turning down a shag?
Repressed and unrequited, Mallard drives off. He's going to have a busy day at the office tomorrow.