The Scout or Welcome to South Bermondsey
Шрифт:
"Hey, Alex!" the Daily Mail sports columnist Sean O’Grady was the first to intercept me in the mixed-zone, "Tell me about this new bloke!"
"Hey, Sean."
"Hi, there."
"So, what do you want to know?"
"Me?" he laughed. "Don't spin things around! What do you want me to write about him?"
Oh, these journalists. They understand everything. I smiled.
"Write that he's nineteen years old. That he is very fond of children and his mother. That he has a brother in Montpellier, and then of course add that he's the new Gareth Bale."
"A little dark for a Welshman. No? Where did you get him from?"
"He was in Ajax, on the second team. However it’s true, he spent last year on loan in Belgium, in Mouscron."
"Does he even speak English?"
"Well, he can say a few words. But for a full-fledged interview, it would be better to get a French translator."
"He’s as far away from a full-fledged interview, as you are from the Premier League."
These journalists are really able to besiege one of course, nothing to say there. They know their own worth.
"Okay Sean," I shook his hand, "if you write a few decent lines about my ward you know what's coming from me."
"Noted!" He said and sauntered into the press-conference room.
During the press-conference itself, as usual the questions were about tactics, plans for the end of the season, refereeing, and so on. Only one of the reporters, a simple-looking bloke from some small newspaper, finally asked the old man what he thought about the new winger.
"It's too early to draw conclusions. He wasn't bad today. We'll be watching him during the next few games," which was all you could expect from old man Harris.
I did not get home right away that night. In the parking lot, as I sat down to warm up my old Range Rover, Johnny Martin came up to the car.
"Hey, Alex! Want to go missing for a little while?"
"Why aren't you with our people?" I was surprised, because usually Johnny would not miss an occasion to celebrate our success with the blokes, especially since this season we didn’t have enough special successes, only once or twice.
"Balls to them!" Johnny laughed. "We have a cup match this Tuesday, you know. That means that the victory will be celebrated in old non-alcoholic beer style. I'm a little old for that, you know. I want to get pissed."
"I am not promising that you will get plastered, but maybe a little tipsy. We’re just too close to home."
"I’ll leave my car here, then. We’ll take yours."
"Hop in then."
We then took off and then left my car at my place.
"Hell, Alex, I've always envied you," Johnny admitted. "If the old folks had left me a house like this," he gestured respectfully at the front of my house on Court-Road, "I'd be fucking sitting in our club."
"Johnny, do me a favour and don't give me a bunch of bollocks," I said, picking up on his joking tone, "even if you'd inherited the palace at Eltham, you'd still have been pounding the doors of our base and begging to be allowed into the locker room with our incompetent players."
"I guess you’re probably right." he answered with a strange look on his mug, a mixture of pride mixed with resignation.
"There's a great pub around the corner. It’s cheap and the food is tasty and they have a serious selection of ales, whiskeys and everything that you love to pour down your gullet. There's one problem though, on Fridays and Saturdays there's always a bunch of wankers from the Royal Blackheath Club who hang out there, you know, with golf clubs and caps, all of whom think they're at minimum Tiger Woods, but they drink whiskey like Vinnie Jones."
"Good company," Johnny laughed, "Definitely better than our gym students."
"Then let's go before my wife catches me or we’ll have to sit and have tea and biscuits instead of whiskey."
Since it was Saturday night the pub was full of people. Some students were downing drinks at the bar and there were a few local pensioners sipping ale with great decorum at tables near the windows. I therefore had to say hello a couple of times.
Johnny and I took an empty table in the corner and he ordered four pints straight off.
"Well, down the hatch!" he downed half a pint like a vacuum cleaner sucking air.
"So, what happened?" I stared at him in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
I put my glass down on the table and said, "I know you pretty well. If you start out like that, it's for a reason."
"Hmmm… this is boring…" he said and finished his ale.
"Come on, what's up? For once we won and were already five points clear of the relegation zone. But you don't seem yourself."
"Five points!" Johnny said and started to down the second pint.
It wouldn't last long at this rate, I thought.
"Look, Alex," he said, suddenly looking at me very seriously and as if with regret, "do you remember when we played the Cup match last year against Fulham?"
"Well yeah, I remember. How could I not remember? We left the Cup playoffs like a champagne cork, with a whoosh, and so what?"
"Do you remember the conversation we had after that?"
"With the Big Boss? Yeah I remember."
"Do you know what happened after that?"
"Well, apparently the old man was hanging by a thread…"
"Exactly, by a thread! And our wankers found out and then they all got together and gave away the series."
"And so what?" I watched Johnny pick up a mug again. "Hey, that's my ale!"
"So what?" he waved it off. "Just a minute. Hey barman!" He waved his big hand at the bartender. "Be a friend and give us some service!"
"So what Johnny did you come here because you want to get pissed or tell me something?"
"Tell you, tell you. And so, after that conversation, I was pulled into the inner sanctum…"