In The Family - Part 3

We all stared at James.

“Pardon?” I said eventually. “Are you mad?”

“What if the gaffer was drugged?” James appealed to the others. “What if we g-gave him something right now - no, listen, don’t interrupt, if we gave him something that he could have been given while he was out last night -”

“What kind of thing?” Donato asked. “We don’t want to poison our manager.”

“No, just - whatever,” James said, staring up at the ceiling as if searching for inspiration.

“GHB?” Sid suggested.

“Yeah, that’s a good one,” James said, an opinion with which I didn’t concur. I wasn’t behind the idea of ingesting anything you couldn’t buy in Marks and Spencer’s food hall.

“Is that not banned?” Donato asked. “I thought people used to use that for bodybuilding.”

“It’s a date-rape drug like rohypnol,” James said, busily searching Google on his phone. “Or it can be. Some athletes still use it. N-not for the bodybuilding so much but because it helps you sleep if you’re stressed out.”

“So does a mug of hot chocolate,” said Sid. “I know which I’d rather.”

“Wait a minute.” I decided to insert myself back into the conversation before people made decisions for me that I didn’t want to follow through on. “Are you saying you know somebody that has this - GBH?”

“GHB,” James said.

“Yeah, GBH is what we do to Rob Ryan when we get our hands on him,” Sid added.

“Is it somebody on the team?” I asked.

“Um.” James made the face of someone who realises he’s painted himself into a corner.

“He doesn’t have to say, does he?” Sid said.

“Yes, he damn well does,” I said. “I’m not having anyone in my team taking drugs.”

“You could look at it like, if they still have them, they haven’t actually taken them,” Sid suggested.

“Sophistry isn’t helping you,” I told him. “It’s my rule. No drugs. Even if they’re just hanging around in someone’s pocket. Everyone should know that by now.”

“Yes, but if it helps you -” Sid said. “Who’s got the drugs anyway, James?”

“And what makes you think I’m going to take them?” I asked, folding my arms.

The burgeoning impasse was interrupted by the entrance of my two new team members, now wearing our team’s black and white kit.

“Much more workmanlike,” I told them. “Fib, you’ve a bit of mascara running down your face. Yves, you’ll need to fasten your hair back somehow.”

“I’m not at all sure this lack of colour suits me.” Fib stared down at himself. “Could we not change it to something with a bit of red in it?”

“No,” I said.

“Blue?”

“No.”

“Green?”

“No, and before you go through the rest of the rainbow, it’s staying as it is. I like it that way.”

“But it’s so dull,” Fib complained.

“There’s nothing wrong with dull,” I said, my tone heartfelt. “Right. Why don’t we all go down to the training ground now and forget about - all the rest of it.”

“Because we want to keep our gaffer.” James was standing his ground. I decided I preferred him when he was shy and stammering.

“Is there some kind of problem?” Fib asked.

“You could say that,” Sid said. He looked at me and I shrugged. If it was going to be all over the newspaper this morning, no point in trying to keep it secret now.

I went to stare out the window while Sid described the situation.

“You should definitely take the drugs, Gaffer.” Fib gave his opinion. Yves just nodded in agreement.

“Oh, you think so, do you?” I said, turning round to look at them. “And why would you think that?”

“Because you’ll probably lose your job if you don’t,” he said. “This way, all you have to do is put up with a few hours disorientation, then we can make it look as if it’s all this reporter’s fault. We can even write an appointment with him in your diary to say you're meeting him to - I don’t know -”

“Talk to him about the new players you’re buying,” Yves suggested. “Me and Fib.”

“And Jelly,” Sid put in, which I ignored.

I had to admit they had a good idea. But - my players were attempting to run my life. And since they had a plan and I didn’t, it seemed they were making a slightly better job of it.

“Nobody’s going to have any respect for me after this.” I looked around at the grinning faces and realised I’d spoken the words out loud. I clutched my head which was still aching.

“Famous morning-after words, Boss,” Sid said. “Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to even know about this apart from us. And we’re not going to say anything, are we?” He looked around and everyone nodded.

“It’s not the kind of thing you want to get around, is it?” Fib said. “If people find out and start mocking you, Gaffer, we’ll spend all our time having fights with everybody and his uncle and his wee dog. I prefer a quiet life myself, when I’m not playing.”

“I don’t know,” I said, realising that I’d already given in and was now just playing for time. I went over to my desk and sat down, trying to look as though I was in charge of matters. “First we need to get some suitable drugs -”

“I’ll sort that,” Sid said.

“I didn’t hear that,” I told him.

“The only thing is,” Sid said, “the person I might get it from - could you like, overlook them having the stuff just this one time? Since it’s going to get you out of a mess?”

“Or kill me,” I said. “At which point, I suppose, I won’t be concerned about my current problems any more.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” Sid said. “I mean, it's not likely we will. Not at all.”

“Yes, if we meant to do that,” Donato added, “I am sure we could find ways that do not involve such fuss and trouble.”

I gave him a look.

“Theoretically, he means,” Sid said, giving Donato a look of his own. “Nobody wants you dead, Boss. Nobody wants you hurt. Or scandalled in the paper either. But it’s going to be hard to get someone to admit to having drugs if they think you’re going to fine them or get rid of them.”

“Fine, fine,” I said. “Immunity. Only this once, though. And I’m really not sure it’s not a good idea to take anything when I’ve been up all night.” That reminded me that I had some paracetamol somewhere in my desk drawers. I opened the top one and rummaged around. I could have gone and got some from the first aid box in the bathroom but that seemed like too much effort. After a few moments fighting through do-later paperwork I found the box and took out two capsules.

“I thought you didn’t want to take anything?” Donato said.

“Painkillers don’t count,” I said, gulping them down with the last of my coffee. “What I could do with is some breakfast.”

“No. No breakfast,” Donato said.

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Drugs need to have clear path to your bloodstream,” he said. “I think.”

“It’s all bloody thought, isn’t it?” I said. “You think this and you think that but none of you actually know anything. You might kill me just out of ignorance. It’s not as if I normally take drugs -”

“Apart from alcohol,” James put in. I resisted the urge to make a face at him.

“Apart from alcohol,” I agreed. “So I have no tolerance for anything like that. Who knows how I might react to it?”

“That’s a point, can’t you die from taking GHB and alcohol?” Fib said.

“You didn’t mention that!” I turned to James.

“Uh -” he glared at his phone as if accusing it of giving him false information.

“Good thing I didn’t drink much last night.” I let him off the hook.

“How much is not much?” Sid asked.

“Couple of bottles of Beck’s at the start of the night, then just soft drinks.”

“You certainly know how to have a night out, Gaffer,” Fib said. “I would think all the lager’s out of your system by now, wouldn’t you?”

“We’ll just give you a little bit of the GHB,” Sid said. “Just enough to show up on the dope test.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” I said. “You have no idea how big a little bit is. Or a big bit for that matter.”

“That’s why I’m looking up dosage on the internet,” James said, waving his iPhone at me. I started to love him a little bit more. But I still wasn’t happy about the whole idea.

“Can’t anyone think of anything else?” I asked.

Sid glanced at me and I knew he was toying with the idea of saying ‘can’t you?’ I watched him remember our relative positions in the organisation and decide not to bother.

“I’m not at my best,” I said, since I too felt that I should be the one having the ideas.

“Don’t worry about it,” James said.

“Yes, we all have done stupid things,” Donato added. I gave him another look but he just smiled back at me. Oh well. He was right, after all. I’d done a stupid thing. And I had the feeling that I was about to do another one.

“What if I say something while I’m under the influence?” I asked. “What if I tell the dope control doctor that I’m -” I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t say I’m gay out loud, even though it was obvious that everyone here already knew. “That I, uh, took the drugs on purpose or something.”

“One of us’ll go with you,” Sid said. “Keep an eye on you and divert you if you’re going to babble something you shouldn’t.”

“I don’t babble,” I said.

“You might if you’ve taken GHB.”

“Well. Possibly.”

“I will stay with you,” Donato said. “I will make sure you say nothing you should not.”

“Why you?” Sid asked.

“I am the biggest of us,” Donato said. “I can restrain the Boss if he should go berserk due to the drugs.”

“What?” I got up from my chair. I still felt roughly as exhausted as Rip van Winkle, but I couldn’t sit still any more while they came out with shockers like that. “Is it likely that I’ll go berserk? James?” I asked, since he was the one looking things up on the internet.

“Hm? No, shouldn’t think so,” he said.

“Shouldn’t think so? I don’t think that’s good enough,” I said. “Are you even listening to me?”

“No, you’re not likely to go berserk,” James said. “Don’t w-worry so much. You’ll be fine.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine.” I walked over to the window and stared out into the car park. I felt like going out there, getting in my car - in somebody else’s car, since mine was at home - and leaving. Of course then I’d probably be arrested for some mistake I’d make while driving under the influence of extreme tiredness and have a new set of problems to add to the ones I already had. “It’s all very well for you to say,” I grumbled.

“We’re doing our best to fix this, Boss,” Sid said.

“You maybe shouldn’t have gone out to gay club,” Donato suggested, which was just what I needed to hear. I turned on him.

“You think I should stay at home for the rest of my life?” I asked him. “All by myself? What kind of life is that?”

“It is life you picked when you decided to be a footballer,” he said, looking down at me, not angrily. Sympathetically, I thought. “And when you decided to be a manager.”

“I didn’t decide to be a footballer,” I said. “It was just what I did. By the time I realised that it didn’t fit in with the lifestyle I wanted to have, it was too late. And I’m a manager because -” I waved an arm around my office, at all the photos on the walls, the certificates, the trophies. My life. “What else would I do?”

“I’m not saying you should live life by yourself,” Donato said. “Nobody should be all alone.”

“No, it’s miserable having nobody,” Fib said.

“Yeah, it’s a lot better to wake up with someone else’s face looking at you,” Sid agreed.

“What about you?” I asked. “You’re -” again I couldn’t say the word. It was irritating me. A simple three-letter word and I couldn’t say it. What was wrong with me?

“I’m waiting for the right goalkeeper,” Sid said. “In the meantime, I enjoy life. It’s not the same. If you’re going out looking for love in all the wrong places because you’re desperate -”

“I’m not desperate,” I said. It sounded like a lie, even to me.

“There are gay men in football,” Donato said, returning to whatever his point was. “You can see this for yourself, here, apart from working it out from probability. You don’t have to be alone.”

“Huh?” I stared at him. What was he saying?
"You can keep it, what is it, in the family?" Donato went on.
"What, incest?" I asked.
"No, ew. Your other family. Extended family."

“Okay, I’m sorted,” James said. “I know what we w-want and how much.”

“Then I suggest we get a move on,” I said, abandoning the question of my lack of relationships with a feeling of relief. “Otherwise the paper’s going to be in the shops, the rest of the press’ll be round here asking questions and it’ll be too late to do anything about it.”

*********

“I know him,” I muttered to Sid. We were lurking just inside the park gates, looking across at the duck pond where Sid and James had arranged for a spy-novel type clandestine meeting with their drug dealer. “It’s Luke Macabeo. Why did you think I wouldn’t know a member of my own bloody team, Sid?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sid reached up and put his hands either side of my face to turn me towards him; while I was still staring at him open-mouthed about that, he gently took off my glasses. “Now. You don’t know who he is.”

“I do, though,” I muttered, but he’d already left, James in tow.

“Let’s go over by the bandstand,” I said to Donato, who, as my designated minder, had been given the job of sticking with me at all times. “It’s far enough away.”

We wandered over to the raised wooden platform where brass bands played on Sundays through the summer, most of them good, a minority making you wish you’d been born deaf.

“This is the stupidest plan I ever heard of,” I confided to Donato. I climbed onto the bandstand, looking up at the dome that topped it, the inside of which was inhabited by a variety of spiders.

“Me too,” he said. “Everyone thinks it’s stupid. I don’t know why we’re doing it.”

“It’s the only plan we’ve got,” I said. “Unless you can think of another one?”

“No,” he said.

I nodded, optimism crushed. Turning my attention to the activity by the pond, I saw that Luke seemed to be quite agitated. Perhaps he’d just heard that I knew he was in the habit of taking drugs. Serve him right if he was worried about it, I thought.

Sid was attempting to calm him down. He’d probably succeed. Sid was good with people. He was an excellent footballer as well. He and Wes, my captain, were my playmakers and on a day when I had them both on the pitch, I could feel that anything was possible, that we could beat the world.

Now if only we had a decent goalkeeper. Barry, my number 1, was good enough - well, he was adequate. James was appalling. What was I going to do about this? As an ex-keeper myself, having a decent player in that role was a high priority for me. It was all very well to compensate for my goalkeeper’s deficiencies by scoring at the other end but that wasn’t a foolproof way of going on. What if somebody crucial should be injured? Like Wes for example, or Donato, my centre-forward of choice?

Maybe Jelle de Lindekerke would do. I needed to have a good look at him. A cheap goalkeeper - a cheap good goalkeeper - was just what I needed right now. Especially if I could exchange him for James.

Over by the pond, Sid was still talking to Luke, hand on the bigger man’s arm, his straight fall of blond hair flopping around his face. I smiled. If I needed anything, Sid always seemed to be there to provide it. I wasn’t sure how he managed it. It wasn’t that he was trying to get on my good side. He was already there. There was nothing particularly sycophantic about it.

They seemed to have finished their business now, Sid and James coming over towards the bandstand while Luke hurried away in the other direction.

“Remember, what you said?” Sid said as they came up to me. “No consequences.”

“I can remember what I said half an hour ago, thank you,” I told him.

“It’s just you were giving Luke a filthy look.”

“I can look if I want to. Doesn’t mean I’ll do anything. Did you get it?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “It’s showtime.”

“Don’t be so bloody cheerful about it,” I said as we all set off back towards the park gates.

*********

I was wondering how I’d ended up like this; sitting in Sid and Donato’s kitchen, surrounded by woks and spice racks; Mary Berry's Baking Bible on the table in front of me and a vial of something poisonous in my hand.

Sid and Donato shared a house just outside of town. It was an old stone building with low windows, a low door that both Donato and I had to stoop to pass through, creaking floors and a number of short wooden staircases that seemed to run up and down at random. It had been decided that this was the most discreet place for what we were going to do, since, if the papers were full of my disgrace, my house was likely to be under siege by the press.

Now it came to it, I didn’t want to do this. I’d had time to realise how insane an idea it was. How did I know I could trust them, Sid and the others, to take care of me if I was in a state of inebriation? I didn’t allow myself to get into that state in public, not even with alcohol. This could be worse. I might say anything. Do anything. I might - who knows what I might do?

But the alternative - to resign from my job. Or, worse than that, wait to be asked to leave. Was there anything I wouldn’t do to avoid that?

I thought about it and what came to mind was the training ground. I loved the place, set snugly against a cluster of woodland, its rectangle blurred by long grass at the edges. I thought about how it would be, a few months from now, my favourite season. September, first thing, with the sun a golden ball rising in the sky; autumn beginning to crisp the green leaves and nothing to be heard but the sound of my feet and my breath as I ran, early, before anyone else arrived.

It was mine and I wanted it. I wasn’t ready to give it up yet and I had nothing I could put in its place.

I looked again at the vial.

“Get it down you,” Sid said. “Here, I made you some tea in case it’s got a funny taste.”

He passed me the cup and I felt quite relieved that nobody already seemed to know what the stuff might taste like.

“In fact, just get half of it down you,” Sid went on, glancing at the vial. “Or a quarter.”

“He’s got to take enough for it to turn up in his bloodstream,” James said.

“Do you even know how much that is?” Sid demanded.

“No,” James said, still frantically searching the internet, this time on his laptop which had been placed on the pine kitchen table next to the Baking Bible, Sid sweeping away a centrepiece of succulent plants and a bowl of fruit to make room for it. “I think - yeah, I think if he just takes half of it. N-no more. It’s not the amount that’s the problem - I think -”

“Too much thinking,” I said.

“It’s getting him tested quickly afterwards,” James said. “We n-need to be ready to take him to the doctor as soon as he starts showing any symptoms, because the stuff passes through your body really quick.”

“We wouldn’t want all this to be for nothing,” Sid said. “Go on, drink it.”

I looked around at them all. Donato was standing next to me, ready to do - whatever he was going to do. Fib and Yves had come along as well, training having been abandoned for the day due to the necessity for the club’s manager to spend the next few hours enjoying a chemical high. I wasn’t sure, but I thought Fib had been asked to join us because of his size. He might be expected to assist Donato, should I ‘go beserk’ as my centre-forward had so elegantly put it.

Feeling like Alice, I drank half the vial and handed the rest to Donato, who put it on the edge of the kitchen sink next to the washing up liquid.

“Nothing’s happening,” I said.

“I don’t think it’ll work immediately,” Sid said. “James? Does it work straight away?”

“Takes about ten minutes,” James said, after consulting Sid’s laptop. “C-can be up to twenty.”

“Fine,” I said, taking a sip of my tea. “Where’s the TV? You’ve got Sky, right?”

“Sky Sports, BT Sport, ESPN, all of it,” Sid said, leading the way to the living room. It was pretty well wall to wall posters and pictures of footballers, a lot of them looking as though they’d been printed off from the PC that occupied a desk in the corner of the room.

“There’s a lot of goalkeepers here,” I said.

“Those are Sid’s,” Donato told me.

“Yeah, I like em,” Sid said. “Dunno why. Just a thing. Fetish or something.”

“That’s a good picture of him,” I said, pausing to look at one of them.

“I like that one,” Sid said. “Having a big hug with his sweetie.”

“What, are they -?” I turned to look at him.

“Lovers? How should I know?” He shrugged. “But you don’t have to sleep with somebody to love them, do you?”

“I suppose not,” I said. “Although it can certainly add an interesting extra dimension to the relationship.”

“I’ve got some recordings of Jelle if you want to see em,” Sid said.

“May as well, I suppose.” I settled on the huge leather sofa and waited for what might come.

*********

“He’s a good goalie,” I said, some minutes later. “He catches the ball a lot. I like that. You punch it away and it can go anywhere.”

“He’s quick, isn’t he?” James was giving the athletic Jelle de Lindekerke a rather envious look from his place on the sheepskin rug in front of the gas fire.

“Very,” I said.

“This was all before his gaffer decided he didn’t like him,” Sid said. “There was some kind of incident. I dunno what, he hasn’t told me. There’s a post-match interview here if you want to see it.”

“I don’t speak Dutch,” I said, after I’d watched half the interview before realising I wasn’t understanding it. I’d been more intrigued by the close-up view of de Lindekerke I was being treated to.

“He’s just saying he’s happy to have helped the team,” Sid said. “Glad they won, other team played well, yada yada, usual stuff.”

“You speak Dutch?” I was impressed.

“Just a bit,” Sid said. “He speaks Flemish Dutch which is nearly the same as this Holland sort. We mostly talk to each other in French. Jelle speaks English as well, though, so you won’t have any problem if he comes here. He’s a linguist, like me.”

“Doesn’t that mean you give good blow jobs?” Fib asked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Sid said. “Actually,” he winked at me, “I do.”

“Um,” I said, feeling a bit too warm all of a sudden. I turned my attention back to Jelle’s interview but that wasn’t much better.

“He’s very nice looking,” I said. He was, all pale skin, long red hair and freckles.

“Cute as a button, isn’t he?” Sid said.

“Is that why you want him?” I asked, suspicion dawning. “Do you - want him?”

“No, he’s too young for me,” Sid said. He gave me a soulful look. “My heart belongs to Daddy.”

“Daddy’s going to spank you if you don’t behave yourself,” I said. What was I doing? Was I flirting with my number 6? What the fuck? More to the point, was he flirting with me?

“Oh, is that what you like?” Sid said. “Well, I suppose I could -”

“How old is he?” I said, pointing at the screen. I thought I’d worked out what was going on here. Sid was trying to distract me. He liked de Lindekerke, but he didn’t want anyone to know about it. I knew how he felt. “He only looks about nineteen,” I added. I was being generous at that. With his big brown eyes, heart-shaped face and pointy elfin nose, de Lindekerke could probably have got away paying half fare on the bus with a shortsighted driver.

“He’s twenty-three,” Sid said. “He’s good value. Get him cheap now, you could have him for years. Goalkeepers can keep on playing longer than everyone else if they want to.”

“I suppose I could have a word with him,” I said.

“Can he come over?” Sid asked. “He’s always wanted to visit England. Well, Scotland actually, but it’s near enough.”

“Might not be if they get their independence,” I said. “Why Scotland?”

“He’s got Scots ancestors on his mam’s side.”

“That’ll explain the red hair, I suppose.”

“Red haired Scots are often fay,” Fib said. “They can see the fairies riding by on hallowed nights.”

“Eh?” Sid stared at him. So did I.

“Er - that’s nice,” I said, eventually.

“Not if you get carried away to the land beyond the Hollow Hills for a year and a day,” Fib said. “Well, it might be nice, you know, like a wee holiday, but you’d no doubt come back and find all your bank accounts had been closed and the like.”

“I’ll just - I’ll just watch a bit more of de Lindekerke,” I said, turning back to the TV. “You can tell him he can come and have a meet if you want. No promises. We’ll put him up and pay for his flight though.”

“That’s very generous,” Yves said. He’d joined James on the rug and they were looking at each other cautiously, like a pair of cats forced to share the same basket. I decided to ignore the lot of them, the slightly odd, the downright weird and the flirtatious alike.

*********

“I want to see Wenceslao,” I said, some minutes later.

“Pardon?” Donato, sitting next to me on the sofa, leaned over in a way I found very endearing. He was taking care of me. He’d said so. What a nice man. So attractive, too.

“Dimples,” I said.

“What’s that?” He looked puzzled, but I couldn’t imagine why. He must have looked at his own face plenty of times before.

“You’ve got dimples,” I explained.

“Oh. Yes. Yes, I do. What’s that about Wes?”

“If we watch the match later, we can see Wenceslao in the crowd,” I said. “Cheering and so on.”

“Or tearing his hair out and weeping if they lose,” Sid said. “It’s a big crowd, Boss. We might not be able to see him.”

“We will,” I said. “He's Wenceslao. We're bound to see him. I wonder if he’ll paint his face green and white and red?”

“Time to go to the doctor’s,” Sid said. Donato put his arm around me, which seemed awfully familiar but somehow I didn’t mind.

“Where are we going?” I said as Donato hauled me to my feet. I felt a bit unsteady, so I put my arm around him as well. It was only fair. He felt wonderful. It had been absolutely ages since I was as close as this to any man. Well, apart from hugging after a goal but that wasn’t quite the same.

I became aware that we were on the move.

“Where?” I said. I felt that somebody had told me already, but I hadn’t been listening.

“The doctor for a dope test,” Donato said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll look after you.”

“I like that,” I told him. “Nobody ever looks after me normally.”

“I’m always bringing you cups of tea and coffee and Cornish pasties and stuff,” Sid said. “For God’s sake. So ungrateful.”

“People look after me all the time,” I corrected myself. “But not with hugs.”

“I’d have hugged you if you’d bloody asked me,” Sid muttered as we went out of his front gate.

“Bless,” Fib said. He was already outside, leaning on Sid’s Land Rover and smoking.

“Right, the Boss in the back with his minders,” Sid said. “James you get in behind and Yves can sit in the front with me. Everybody ready?”

I nodded vigorously, though I had no idea where we were going. Had anybody told me?

NOW GO TO PART 4....

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In The Family - Part 2

I slumped onto the chair behind my desk and looked at my motley crew. AKA part of the team I intended to take right to the Premier League, the pinnacle of English football according to one point of view. There were other points of view that took into account that only about a third of the players in the Premier League were actually English. Or that you might be tempted to wonder if this had some effect on how poorly England tended to play in the World Cup. I had my own views on all this and I kept them to myself, because I also wanted to keep my job.

I loved my job. Even though I had to remind myself of that fact several times during the course of certain days. This looked like being one of those.

“You look a bit fragile, Boss,” Sid said. He was standing by the window, blocking out the light, which suited me very well. The two newcomers had gone off to put on suitable attire and James was curled up on the leather sofa that I sometimes slept on when work had kept me here until the early hours.

“Cup of coffee, I’ll be right as rain,” I said, attempting briskness. It came out more like desperation but perhaps nobody would notice that.

“Yeah, good plan,” Sid said. “Pepsi, why don’t you make it?”

Donato raised an eyebrow but went over to the table where I kept a kettle and the makings. I noticed he now had bare feet.

“Is there something wrong with your feet, Donato?” I asked.

He looked down. Then he stood on one leg, lifting the other and turning his foot around to stare at it.

“You see something wrong with my feet, Boss?” He looked a little - offended? Distressed?

“No, nothing at all,” I hastened to say. “It’s just - you’ve taken off your shoes and socks.”

“My feet are clean,” he said.

“I’m not suggesting they’re not,” I said. “I just wondered why.”

“I like your carpet,” he said.

“Pepsi’s got a foot fetish,” Sid informed me. “He likes to take his shoes off and get his toes close to nature.”

“My carpet’s not nature,” I said.

“It’s wool, isn’t it?” Sid said. “That’s sheep nature. Sometimes he takes off his shoes and socks and sticks his toes into the pitch before we play.”

“I’ve never seen you doing that?” I looked over at Donato who seemed slightly embarrassed.

“I do it early,” he said. “I do it before everyone is coming. It is a superstition. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?” I couldn’t imagine what he thought he had to apologise for. Footballers were generally a superstitious bunch. I’d seen everything, from lucky socks to elaborate rituals involving particular music, urinals and position in the queue waiting to come onto the pitch. Some prayed, some made wishes, some wore their underwear inside out. It took all sorts.

“For being an ignorant Italian peasant,” he said with a smile. I got the feeling he wasn’t smiling inside.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’ve all got things we like to do that make us feel better. Who said that to you? Didn’t they know you were German?”

Donato laughed.

“We’re all hybrids in this team,” Sid said. “You should change our name to the Knightley Mongrels instead of the Knightley Wanderers.”

“I don’t think the Board would like that,” I said. “Donato, don’t be embarrassed about doing whatever you need to do before the match. Just go ahead and stick your toes in wherever you want.”

“Oooh, I bet he thought you’d never ask,” Sid remarked.

“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked to cover up the awkward moment.

“I just -” Sid glanced at Donato. Then he glanced at James. “Me and Pepsi and James were out last night,” he began. “In Leeds. We saw you.”

“You saw me.” I thought about that. “While you were out?”

“Yeah. Um.”

“So - you were out in the same places I was out?” I was trying to understand what was going on here. Was Sid saying that they knew I was gay? If so, then - what? Did they want a pay raise out of it? Were they just offering me some kind of solidarity? “What about it?” I asked.

“That guy you were with,” Sid said.

“Which guy?”

“Not the one with the pants falling down,” Donato said, with a frown. “He was - Hure?”

“Slut,” Sid translated. “Whore. No better than he should be. Tarty little -”

“Okay, okay, the other one, then,” I interrupted. “Adrian.”

“Is that what he told you his name was?” James sat up on the sofa looking interested. “That’s n-not his name. That shows you he w-was up to no good.”

“That’s not necessarily the case,” I said. “I don’t use my real name when I, uh, go out. I don’t want everyone to know what I’m doing.”

“No, but your name’s n-not Rob Ryan,” James said.

“Well, no, it isn’t,” I agreed before comprehension dawned. “What, are you saying Adrian’s that bloody reporter from Middlesbrough?”

“Yeah, him that’s always got it in for the team,” Sid said. “Saying we’ve done this thing and that thing wrong. Thinks he’s a sports reporter.”

“He works for the Knightley Herald now,” James said. “He's moved.”

“Oh - fuck.” If I hadn’t been already sitting down I’d have sat down. As it was, I felt it might be appropriate to slide off my chair and onto the floor. “That’s who I was drinking with?” I found it hard to believe. “It didn’t look like him. I mean, I’ve only seen him from a distance at the odd press conference and whatnot -”

“You should get contact lenses,” Donato said.

“I beg your pardon?” I glared at him.

“If you don’t like to wear your glasses when you are going out,” Donato said. “Or at the press conference.”

“I don’t mind wearing them,” I said. “It’s not vanity. I just forget to put them on apart from when I’m driving or watching a match. And contact lenses are bad for your eyes. I have this American friend who has a friend who’s an ophthalmologist and he’s forever having to operate on people who’ve damaged their eyes with contact lenses. ”

“Then remember your bloody glasses,” Sid said. “ At least then you’ll be able to tell who you’re talking to.”

“Good point,” I conceded, wondering what kind of trouble I’d got us all into.

“He’s probably going to publish an article all about you and where you go out of a night,” James said. “It’ll be in this morning’s paper.”

“He’s well ignorant,” Sid said. “I don’t think he’s ever sat down and watched a football match in his life. He’s probably decided to make a career out of causing a scandal because it’s easier. He probably sees himself as a paparazzi -”

“What do I do?” I said, cutting through my players’ estimation of the probabilities. It was the first time I’d ever asked them that question. I wasn’t in the habit of asking for advice from my team. Things were supposed to be the other way around. We’d never get anything accomplished, if, say, I went out onto the training ground and started the session off with, well lads, what do you think we ought to practise today? How about some fitness training? Unless, you know, you don’t really feel much like it…

This, however, was different. This was a situation.

I’m a successful football manager. My team are successful, so much so that, with a few tweaks here and there, we hope and expect to finish the coming season with a place in the Premier League. I put a lot of this down to the fact that throughout my career with the Knightley Wanderers, I’ve managed to avoid situations. Everything on an even keel has been my watchword, together with a few other of those useful nautical expressions involving not rocking the boat, a busy crew is a happy crew and so on. No drama. Drama is bad for the players and therefore bad for our results.

Now here it was at last. Drama. Right in my face.

“Maybe I should resign,” I muttered to myself. Now, I thought. Right when everything I’d worked for was about to come to fruition. I didn’t have any words to express what I felt about that little piece of celestial irony. I thought about looking through my desk drawers for some paracetamol instead. Being up all night always gave me a headache. It was the least of my worries but the only one I could do something about.

“Don’t be daft,” Sid said. “Resign, honestly.”

“You can’t!” James looked horrified and no wonder. Who else would put up with his dreadful performance?

“You are best manager I have,” Donato said.

“I’m the only manager you’ve got,” I told him.

“He means you’re the best manager he’s ever had,” Sid interpreted. “Don’t you, Pepsi?”

“Yes that’s what I mean,” Donato said. “Sorry. English flying away. Stress. You don’t resign though. Why will you do that?”

“Because - scandal,” I said, a bit incoherent myself. “Besides I might as well, before the Board of Directors ask me to. They don’t like anything like that.”

“I can’t believe we’re living in the twenty-first fucking century,” Sid said. “There’s places have gay politicians and all sorts.”

“There are places have laws that mean you are put to death if you are gay,” Donato said.

“And all the places where the local c-citizens kill you informally,” James added. “Remember what Wes was telling us about Peru?”

“Where is Wenceslao?” I asked. I restrained myself from the urge to look around and see if my team captain was lurking somewhere. My guilty conscience was suggesting that he might abruptly materialise out of my office walls. I didn’t want him to find out about any of this.

“He’s in Brazil, isn’t he,” Sid said. “Watching the World Cup. He posted on Facebook about he’s off to see Mexico play Holland today. Lucky bastard.”

“You could have gone,” James said.

“I can’t leave my mam for that long,” Sid said.

Donato and I exchanged a look. He raised an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes.

“Who is Wes supporting?” I asked, mostly to avoid discussing my lack of a future with the club. Or Sid's mum.

“Mexico,” Sid said. “He started off, you know, with England but, well.” We all nodded, gloomy expressions all round.

“Worse than usual,” James said. “Mexico are good, though. That Herrera, their m-manager, he’s a laugh a minute.”

“Well, Wes is half South American,” Sid said. “So now England are out he can support his other half with Mexico. Since Peru aren’t playing.”

“Mexico’s in Central America,” I said.

“Whatever,” Sid said, dismissing half a continent’s worth of geography with a wave of his hand.

“It’s not where they are,” Donato said. “Wes just likes them as a team. Likes the way they play.”

“They’ve got a good g-goalie, the Mexicans,” James said. “That Ochoa. Very nice.”

“Yeah, he is nice,” Sid said, somehow managing to use a raised eyebrow and a slight smile to put a completely different meaning on the word.

“That’s shameful, thinking of sex when we have all these problems,” Donato said.

“Who says I was thinking about sex?” Sid asked.

“Your face,” Donato replied. “You had ice cream face.”

“What’s ice cream face?” As soon as I asked I wished I hadn’t.

“When you see ice cream and it’s your favourite flavour and all you want to do is lick it,” Donato said.

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling that I was turning the same roseate colour that James’s face was so fond of.

“Yeah, I’d lick Ochoa,” Sid said. “Right between the goalposts, I would. Uh - I’ve lost the thread of this conversation now, somebody remind me.”

“We are distracting ourselves from our problems by talking about the World Cup,” Donato said. “You are having sex in your mind with a Mexican goalkeeper.”

“Situation normal, then,” Sid said. “What are we gonna do about this reporter, Boss?”

“I don’t know.” I wished I had an answer to give him. I wished I had an answer to give myself. “I suppose I’m just going to have to see how bad it is and what the Board say about it. I can always say I was drunk and didn’t know where I was, but that doesn’t exactly show me in a good light either, does it?”

“That gives me an idea,” James said.

“I’m glad somebody’s got one,” Sid said, then looked across at me apologetically. “Not you, Boss. I mean, none of us know what to do.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m not ashamed to admit I’m clueless.”

“What if -” James, everyone’s eyes on him, blushed again and cleared his throat. “If, B-boss, you weren’t in your right mind, say, and didn’t know where you were.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to improve matters,” I said. “That’s as bad as being too drunk to know what I’m doing. Oh, Mr Stewart, we’d like you to leave because not only do you frequent gay clubs, but you’re also subject to fugue states. Can’t see that going down too well.”

“No, I mean -” James took a breath and tried again. “What if he d-drugged you?”

“Who?”

“The reporter. Rob Ryan. What if he gave you, I dunno, w-what’s that stuff?”

“Roffies?” Donato suggested.

“Roofies, you mean,” Sid said. “Rohypnol. Date rape drug.”

“I wasn’t raped,” I protested. “And he definitely didn’t drug me.”

“Are you sure?” James persisted. “Can you remember everything that happened? I mean, with no p-possible gaps? N-no time missing? Because if he d-drugged you and we had you dope tested -”

“I see where you’re coming from,” I said. “Make it all his fault. But it won’t work. I’m not that clear about what time everything happened, because you never are when you’re out. It’s just music and dancing and so on. No time markers. But I know he didn’t drug me.”

“How c-can you be so sure?”

“Because I didn’t drink the drinks he bought me,” I said. “I only drank the ones I bought myself. Straight out of the bottle. I never drink what anyone else gives me, for that very reason. I’m more or less in the public eye and you never know when somebody might recognise you and think it’s funny to get you completely off your face.”

“Whoa. Points for paranoia,” James said.

“What did you do with the drinks?” Sid asked.

“Poured them into empties on other tables when he wasn’t looking,” I said.

“You didn’t have sex with him, did you?” Sid asked. “In a sauna or something?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Not that it’s anything to do with you.”

“It is if it loses us our manager,” he said, which I had to concede was a good point. “Dancing is one thing, but sex - that’s a lot more.”

“He wasn’t my type,” I said. “And I’m not given to groping around in saunas. It’s tacky.”

Everyone in the office was silent. I stared down at some lists that were lying on top of my desk. Players I’d been thinking of bringing into the team during the summer transfer window - should we be able to afford them - and players I was thinking of trying to pass on to somewhere else, hopefully for as much money as possible. I noticed James Halliwell’s name on the second list and quickly shuffled the papers together so that one was no longer visible. I glanced up at the miserable faces surrounding me.

“This is all my fault,” I said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone out last night.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sid said. “You can’t just hide away all your life with no company. You’re not the only gay man in football.”

“I’m aware of that,” I began.

“You’re not even the only one in the Wanderers,” James said.

“I think he will have noticed that by now,” Donato said.

“You’ll never wander alone,” Sid said.

I smiled at him. I couldn’t help it. “I might be wandering over the bloody hills and far, far away by day’s end,” I said. “What time does the paper come out?”

“Round about now, I’d think,” Sid said, looking at his watch. “Want me to go and get one?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“Such a shame James’s idea will not work,” Donato said. “If you had been given drugs, Boss, it would make the reporter look bad, not you.”

“Yeah, everyone’d say, oh, that reporter, he goes to gay clubs and took our manager with him in a state of druggedness,” Sid said. “I’d love to see that. Bloody Rob Ryan hoist with his own, what’s that thing?”

“Petard,” I said as the expert on proverbial phraseology.

“It doesn’t matter,” James said. He’d been sitting in deep thought for a few moments and now looked very much like a man with a plan. I was slightly hopeful in that he seemed to be better at planning than he was at goalkeeping. “You don’t have to have been d-drugged last night, Boss. We can do it for you now.”

NOW GO TO PART 3....

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COPYRIGHT ALEX SWEENEY SEPTEMBER 2014

In The Family - Part 1 (for Queer Romance Month, published early for Rainbow Laces weekend)

He was wearing his trousers a size too big.

It had to be that. Why else would they keep falling down if they weren’t a size too big for him? I had another look at what was revealed by the falling-down trousers, then sighed as the owner of them took off for the dance floor.

I’m not all that keen on out and out bumcrack exhibitionism. Well… no. I take that back. Given the right bumcrack and the right ambience, there wasn’t anything better. But in the day-to-day run of things, less was probably more. I didn’t want to get all worked up twenty-four-seven, did I? It would be too distracting.

I liked Sid’s way of doing things better. Sid came across as sexy, a tiny bit slutty, without ever doing anything I could pin down. For instance, his clothing always had gaps. A tiny gap between tracksuit pants and top. A zip pulled down too far. A bootlace undone and now I was contemplating a new shoe fetish I hadn’t been aware I had.

Too much imagination, I told myself. That had always been my problem. And my blessing, of course, but in this case - not really.

I pictured things. Whole stories from a single scene. Like the time I’d walked into the dressing room and seen Donato sitting on the bench in his kit, his shorts riding up to show olive-skinned thighs; legs akimbo, he was doing nothing more enticing than looking at Facebook on his phone, Sid leaning over, hands on Donato's shoulders.

I had to turn around and leave the room, lean against the corridor wall and calm down, getting a funny look from the cleaner walking past with the floor buffer in tow. Definitely too much imagination.

Donato’s gorgeous; tall, well-built, with a cut-just-anyhow mop of untidy dark blond hair that he has to tame with a hairband when he’s playing. He’s interesting, too, now that he’s learned to speak English reasonably well. He’s - mostly Italian - and was brought up in Germany, which has left him with an unfortunate tendency to support BVB. Still, Dortmund’s twin city is our sin city of choice for a night out, so we can live with it.

When he’d turned up, with a name like that - with any other surname he’d have been doomed to be The Don or even a Donna. But since his full name was Donato Cola, he’d been Pepsi straight away and it had stuck. When he’d protested, Sid told him he might have ended up playing at a club in Spain and Donato had never said another word about his soft-drink-related nickname.

“What’s Spain got to do with it?” I’d asked Sid later.

“It’s his name,” Sid told me with a grin. “Cola. Means arse in Spanish.”

“What are you doing, Robert?” Adrian had returned from toilets and now leaned over me, a pout on his face. “You’re miles away. Where are you?”

“Um, just wool-gathering,” I said. I was grateful he’d thought to call me Robert. By now I’d totally forgotten what pseudonym I’d used tonight. It might be a good idea, I considered, to create myself a personality for these occasional nights out instead of grabbing the nearest name off my mental shelf. Not that it was much of a night out so far. Quite boring, really. “It’s late,” I said. “I should go.”

“Dance with me first.” The young man with the falling-down trousers was back and he was smiling. Well, why not? I shrugged and got up to dance.

*********

It was late. Or possibly early. I looked up at the sky, which rewarded me with a vista of frowning cloud and a splash of light rain in the face.

“I probably needed that,” I told it. I looked around. I was - somewhere in the centre of town. Leeds, that is. West Yorkshire. A long way south of home.

I was looking through the smeared window of an all-night cafe, where two members of the aged homeless were sitting at separate tables. A man in a dirty apron was standing in the open doorway, smoking. Every so often he’d flick ash onto a battered metal table and chair that disgraced the pavement, or turn and blow smoke into the cafe as he spoke to those within.

I was hungry, but I decided I wasn’t quite that hungry. I walked on.

Adrian had disappeared. I was quite glad as it saved me telling him I didn’t want to go home with him. He was nice enough but honestly? I couldn’t be bothered. Not for him.

A Land Rover pulled up alongside me and I did a mental check to see if I’d done anything at all or was wearing anything at all that would make me look like rent. No, didn’t think so. Well, maybe the leather trousers. I looked into the open window of the car, just for a laugh, hoping they weren’t policemen on the pull for an arrest quota.

“Jesus, Boss, what happened to you?”

“Sid?” I said. My holding midfielder, Sebastian Sidney, was looking back at me, his rather goggly eyes as alarmed as mine felt. “I’m uh - what do you mean what happened to me?” I asked.

“Your shirt’s hanging off,” Sid said. “And your jacket’s got a button missing.You look like you were dragged through a hedge backwards.”

“Here you go, Boss.” The back door was open and I automatically got into the car before realising who’d opened it.

“Oh. Donato,” I said, trying to look as if we were in the habit of meeting up in the back of cars with my clothes falling off me. “Been for a night out?” I asked, aiming for cheerful. It didn’t work too well since I hadn’t slept all night, but what the hell, I was doing my best.

“We have been looking for you,” Donato told me.

“Yeah, we’ve been d-driving around the streets f-for ages.” The front seat passenger turned round to speak to me. James Halliwell, my awful goalkeeper. Awful substitute goalkeeper, thank goodness, if we had to rely on him starting for us we’d have no hope of ever getting into the Premier League.

I had no idea why I’d ever taken him on. Of course, he had red curly hair and cute green eyes. And the - other attributes, only visible in the dressing room; but I didn’t really want to think I’d let my personal preferences overwhelm my common sense to that degree. Besides, I prefer blonds. I glanced sideways at the particular blond sharing space with me and found Donato smiling. I wondered why. Was he laughing at me? That was all I needed.

“Well, since you’re here,” I thought I’d better take command of the situation; that was my rightful place after all. “You can take me to Darkhill Park.”

“You want to go to the training ground?” Sid, who hadn’t set off yet, also turned round to stare at me. “I mean - Boss - are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “We said we’d get some extra sessions in over the break, didn’t we? We don’t want everyone putting on weight and turning up all flabby after a summer full of Walkers crisps.”

“I suppose -” Sid looked dubious but started the car.

“Why were you looking for me?” I asked. “It’s not something at the ground is it? Did we have burglars? A fire?”

“No, nothing like that.” Sid spoke. “Um, can we talk about it when I’m not driving?”

“Okay,” I said, deciding that if it was something that needed that much of Sid’s concentration, it was probably something I didn’t want to hear about anyway.

“Sid said you m-might be getting a new goalie,” James said.

“Eh?” I glared at the back of Sid’s head. “No, Sid wants me to think about getting a new goalie. I didn’t say I would.”

“He said you wanted to get Jelly,” James said.

“The eating sort?” I asked. “Or the kind you rub on your chest when you’ve got a cold?”

“It’s pronounced Yell-uh,” Sid said. “Jelle de Lindekerke. Belgian keeper. Plays in Holland.”

“Oh, him,” James said, thoughtfully. “Holland. They speak D-dutch there.”

“Indeed they do,” I said. “But I don’t need another keeper right now,” I lied. “I've got you -” God help me “- and I've got Barry.”

“You might get on with him, Boss,” Sid said. “His ancestors are some old Belgian nobility.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” I asked. I could feel myself shrinking back in my seat; literally shrinking, to a smaller me being told by a bunch of much bigger boys that I was too posh to play football. Of course, they were wrong, but those moments never really leave us, do they?

“You’re the Queen’s something-ninth-removed c-cousin, aren’t you?” James said.

“Only as much as a few thousand other people are, I’m sure,” I said. “I just happen to know about it, that’s all. And so do you. How did that happen?”

“Uh…I, er, d-d-d-d-”

“I told him,” Sid said. “I thought it was interesting.”

“Thank you so much for taking an interest in me,” I said. “What’s he like, de Lindekerke?” I asked, not being able to place his style of play straight away.

“I told you all about him the other day, Boss,” Sid said.

“I wasn’t listening,” I said. “Tell me again while I’m a captive audience.”

“Bouncing,” Sid said. “Like Jorge Campos only, you know, European.”

“Without the garish dress sense as well, I hope,” I said. “He’s short, then?” I didn’t want a short goalkeeper. He wouldn’t be able to reach everything. I wanted a goalkeeper the size of a Potsdam Giant, as wide as he was tall and with the speed of a released rubber band. I did realise that some of these things were probably mutually exclusive but what’s life without hope?

“Kind of medium,” Sid replied.

“Medium what? Bigger than a breadbox? Bigger than a midget?”

Sid, not very tall himself, took one hand off the wheel and indicated a spot a couple of inches above his head.

“You’re sitting down,” I said.

“If I was standing up.”

“That’s not very big for a goalkeeper.”

“What size did you want?” Donato asked.

“Manuel Neuer,” I said.

“Doesn’t everybody,” Sid said. “He’s proper huge. He’s like a bloody troll lurking under a bridge in that goal of his. And then he runs halfway down the sodding pitch, does something wonderful and he’s back in his goal before anyone knows he’s gone.”

“He’s like the Hulk,” James said.

“Only with the green on his clothes instead of his skin,” Sid said. “And prettier.”

“You think he’s pretty?” Donato said.

“Well - not as pretty as me,” Sid said, which cracked everybody up.

“And de Lindekerke’d be cheap.” Sid returned to his theme when they’d all finished laughing. “His gaffer doesn’t like him.”

“Why not?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him? Why am I supposed to like him if his current gaffer doesn’t?”

“Hang on while I get on the motorway,” Sid said, leaving me to wonder what was wrong with my potential goalkeeper. The only reason I could see not to like your goalkeeper, unless he had some really vile personal habits, was that he didn’t save goals. Even then - James didn’t save goals and I still liked him. I didn’t want him in the team but I liked him personally. Most of the time. I certainly didn’t want more of the same though, Belgian nobility or not.

“He’s got a few phobias.” Sid, cruising on the motorway, decided to enlighten me.

“What kind of phobias?” I asked. “Grass? Men in short trousers?”

“No, nothing like that. Dead bodies is one of them.”

“W-what, is he one of those n-nutters who believes in zombies?” James asked.

“No, he just doesn’t like corpses,” Sid said. “Any corpses.”

“What kind of person does like corpses?” Donato wondered.

“N-necrophiliacs,” James said.

“Let’s not go there,” I said, before the jokes started. “What else is he afraid of?”

“Chocolate,” Sid said.

“Eh?” I stared at him. Well, at the back of him. “Chocolate? Milk, dark or white? Comes in little squares? That stuff?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “His parents died of it.”

“What?” I tried to make sense out of nonsense. “Were they very obese?”

“They were chocolatiers,” Sid said. “They made chocolates.”

“I know what a chocolatier is, thank you. What did they do, eat too much of their own products?”

“They fell in.”

“Pardon? Fell in what?” I asked, after a few moments during which I worked out that Sid thought he had actually given me information.

“They fell in the vat while they were experimenting with some new chocolates,” Sid said. “They got covered in boiling chocolate and they died.”

“I don’t think you are supposed to boil chocolate,” Donato said. “When I am making a cake, my recipe is always telling me to heat it gently to preserve the shine. If you watch Great British Bake Off -”

“Maybe it was like that James Bond story where people get covered in g-gold,” James said. “Getting c-covered in anything stops your skin working. I think.”

“It was bloody hot, right?” Sid said. “And they died and when Jelle went in next morning to find out where they’d disappeared to, all that was left was a couple of screaming chocolate people.”

“Eeew,” James said. “Nightmare before Easter.”

“I don’t want to make chocolate cake any more now, even with Mary Berry,” Donato said.

“How the hell do you know all this, Sid?” I asked.

“I talk to him on Facebook.”

“Maybe they’d exchange me for Jelly,” James said. “I’d like to g-go somewhere I c-could learn another language.”

The rest of us were silent for a moment. I imagine none of us knew how to ask why James felt he’d like to learn another language when he had enough trouble speaking the one he’d got. I was also preoccupied with the idea that James wanted to leave, be still my beating heart.

“I’d like to go somewhere in Europe,” Sid said. “But I can’t leave my mam.”

Now it was the turn of everyone who wasn’t Sid to say nothing. Sid’s mum was ill. She’d been ill for a long time and nobody had been able to find out what was wrong with her. Opinion around the team had settled on a bad case of laziness with a side order of swinging the lead. Those sailors. They have a phrase for everything.

“I have been almost everywhere in Europe,” Donato offered. “It is better here. Apart from the government. And the taxes. And the weather. But even that’s not too bad just now.”

“Sometimes if you have a s-stutter,” James said, “It d-disappears if you speak a foreign language.”

“Like singing,” Sid said. “We used to go to this church where the priest stammered - he was worse than you, James, he nearly strangled himself trying to get a word out - but when he sung, no problem.”

I leaned back and closed my eyes, letting the usual chat drift over the surface of my mind; soothing backing and forthing waves of blah. I was disturbingly aware of Donato, next to me. I opened my eyes again as I found having them closed was a bit too much like being in bed with him. Hm. Yes. In bed with him. No. Don’t think about that. Don’t ever think about that.

It was a long way home from Leeds and I must have slept, despite my reservations. I woke to find we were just entering Knightley and someone had wrapped a travel rug tightly around me. I appreciated the gesture although it had left me far too warm and dreaming of bondage.

“Who’s that?” Donato was staring out of the car. We were just going past Bandhill, our actual football ground, on the way to where we trained at Darkhill Park.The ground was a bit of a dump, which was the reason why work was starting on a new stadium not far down the road. At this very moment it was made slightly more decorative by the two women in clubwear that were leaning against the wall near the main doors. No, one woman and one man. Possibly. The shorter one - who was the more probable male - seemed familiar to me.

“I’m - not sure,” I said. I didn’t know where I knew the short man from and I was worried it might be somewhere I didn’t want to admit to going.

Sid had slowed down and the two - people - were staring at us. The taller one, who I thought was probably female and had long pink hair, started waving at us and they both hurried out into the road as if they’d never heard of traffic.

“Bloody hell,” Sid said, pulling to an untidy stop near the curb. He wound down his window. “What are you two up to? You’ll get yourselves run over.”

“They’re d-drunk,” James said. Then started blushing as the taller of the two leaned down into the car. She had masses of earrings all the way up ears that looked surgically altered to be pointed at the tips.

“I heard that,” she said, staring at James who was now departing tomato and approaching beetroot. “I’m not drunk. Well, only a wee bit. Aren’t you Noel Stewart? The Knightley Wanderers manager?” She had turned her attention to me so I supposed I had to answer. It would have been difficult to deny my identity while sitting in a carful of people who knew who I was.

“Um, yes?” I said. Close up she looked familiar. She was over six feet tall and with that hair, surely I should remember her? Or him, I qualified after taking a good look at her.

“I’m Fib Feary,” she went on. “Fullback.”

“You’re our new fullback?” Donato asked.

I nodded. “This is Fib,” I said. The hair had finally given it away, although when he played it was tied up into a kind of knot with a hairnet over it. “Nice to see you,” I told Fib. Not quite sure about that, to be honest.

“Fib?” Sid said.

“Aye, that’s me.”

“Feary?” Sid added, his face full of wonder. I could see he was spoilt for choice when it came to choosing a nickname.

“And this is Yves Palomer,” Fib said, dragging the shorter man forwards. “Midfielder.”

“Hello again, Yves,” I said, nodding at Yves, who seemed to have a permanent smile on his face. I wondered if he’d had some kind of consciousness-altering substance before turning up here. “Nice to see you too. Um, aren’t you here rather early?”

“We didn’t bother to stay at a hotel,” Fib said. “We got in touch on Facebook when we found out we were both coming to the Wanderers and arranged to meet up. Yves’ plane got in late so we thought we might as well go out for the night. Then we came here.”

“We left our luggage at the railway station,” Yves said in a voice that combined Paris and New York. He was short, about five five and had blond curly hair straggling down his pretty olive-skinned face. He was wearing very little and the little was covered in glitter.

“That’s why you’re - dressed like that?” I ventured, glancing at Fib.

“No, these are my travelling clothes,” Fib, who spoke with a gentle Scots Highland accent, smiled at me. “I like to travel as a lady. Even in a place as modern and mundane and obsessed with uniformity as this, some men still open doors for me and offer to carry my bags.”

“You’re a footballer,” I protested. “A fullback for goodness’ sake. A position traditionally known for having persons filling it who are built like the proverbial brick shithouse. I can’t believe you aren’t fit enough to carry your own bags.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Fib said.

“Did you say your name’s Fairy?” James was leaning across Sid for a good look at our new team transvestite.

“Feary,” Fib said. “Like Fear. As in Fear Me.”

“Sorry,” James said, ducking back into his seat, his face reddening again. I rolled my eyes. It was that kind of thing made him a terrible goalie. He’d see the opposition rushing at him with the ball and instead of confronting them he’d look for a place to back off to. If that place happened to be the inside of his goal, we were in trouble.

“You’d better get in,” Sid said to our two new team members.

“Don’t be silly,” I told him. “We need to get out. They can’t come to the training ground dressed like that. Let’s go into Bandhill and get them some spare clothes and I can ring round from the office and find them somewhere to stay.”

Sid pulled into the car park and we all piled out. By the time we got to the side door where I’d told the newcomers to meet us, Fib had a six-inch-long cigarette holder out and was smoking a Sobranie Black Russian through it, occasionally passing it to Yves to have a puff.

“You can’t bring that in the building,” I told him. “You can’t have it anywhere in the ground. It’s illegal. Go outside with it. On the road.”

“Please, Boss?” Donato said as we watched the two of them sashay off to smoke by the roadside.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Please could you tell me why you have hired us a smoking transvestite?”

“She’s nice looking,” Sid said. “I wouldn’t say smoking.”

“Shut up,” I said as I unlocked the door. “For one thing I didn’t know she smoked. For another, I didn’t know she was a transvestite. And for a third, she was the best fullback I could afford for the meagre pittance of cash I had available to spend on her.”

“What if somebody should see them out there?” Donato asked. “Smoking and wearing a dress and next to nothing?”

“Nobody’s going to know they’re part of the team,” I said. I hit the light switches and illuminated the dingy corridor that led to my office. Scraped and battered by boots for years, it was a reminder that nearly all the money we had was going towards the new stadium. “If anybody sees them out there, they’ll just think they’re a couple of sleazy football groupies waiting to get laid. Nobody’ll ever realise they’re players.”

“Just one more problem then,” Sid said.

“What’s that?” Halfway through negotiating the broken and temperamental lock on my office door, I turned to look at him.

“You'd better stop calling Fib she, Boss.”

“Oh. Well. Yes, you’re probably right.”

NOW GO TO PART 2...

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