The Damned Utd by David Peace (easy readers txt) 📕

turn over. Now you tell him, ‘There’s no answer to that.’

‘So now what?’ he asks. ‘Job’s yours if you want it …’

You blink into the sun. Sand in your mouth, sand …

‘On a plate,’ he says. ‘So do you want it?’

* * *

In their Yorkshire boardroom, behind their Yorkshire curtains. No Samuel Bolton today. No Percy Woodward. No Roberts. No Simon. Just Manny Cussins, Sniffer and me –

‘You have to give him more time,’ Sniffer begs Cussins.

‘There isn’t any more time,’ says Cussins.

‘That’s ridiculous,’ says Sniffer. ‘Bloke’s only been here five minutes.’

‘The players don’t want him.’

‘That’s rubbish,’ says Sniffer.

‘There was more than just him speaking yesterday.’

‘That was all wrong,’ says Sniffer. ‘To go behind the manager’s back like that.’

‘It was the only way to find out how they felt,’ says Cussins.

‘But players have always got axes to grind; be the same at any club in the land. And the minute the directors do that, the manager’s got no chance. No chance.’

‘You should have been a lawyer, not a footballer,’ smiles Cussins.

‘I’d like to be a manager one day,’ says Sniffer. ‘But I tell you this, if a board of directors ever treated me the way you lot have treated Mr Clough, I’d tell you where to stick your bloody job.’

‘I understand what you’re saying,’ says Manny Cussins. ‘I even agree with it. But the board have made a decision and Leeds United is a democratic institution –’

‘What?’ asks Sniffer. ‘You’ve employed the best man in the business and before he’s even had five minutes you’re bloody sacking him?’

‘There’s nothing more I can do,’ says Cussins.

‘Back him and let him get on with the job.’

‘It’s too late,’ says Cussins. ‘It’s too late.’

Sniffer looks over at me. Sniffer raises his palms –

I smile and I wink. I shake his hand and I thank him. He asks me if I fancy a farewell drink. Not tonight, I tell him. Not tonight …

Tonight I walk out of that Yorkshire boardroom and down that long, long corridor. There is a clock ticking somewhere, laughter from another room, behind another door –

I open that door on a meeting of the Norman Hunter Testimonial Fund. I look around that room, at the men in that room, and I point at Norman Hunter. ‘You lot who are looking after this lad,’ I tell them, ‘you work as hard as you bloody can to earn as much money as you can for him, because there is no one in this fucking club who deserves it more than he does.’

* * *

You put down the phone. You walk back out onto the balcony –

White concrete and sand, blue sky and the sea –

Your boys with a ball on the beach below.

You come up behind your wife. Your beautiful, beautiful wife. You put your hands on her shoulders. She tilts the ice in her glass. She has caught the sun –

‘You’ve never?’ she says.

‘I have.’

‘What will Peter think?’

‘He’ll think what I tell him.’

She shakes her head. She says, ‘Why, Brian? After all the things you’ve said.’

‘Because of all the things I’ve said.’

‘But you hate them. You hate him,’ she says. ‘And they hate you.’

‘All water under the bridge now.’

‘But it’s such a hateful place,’ she says. ‘Such a spiteful place.’

‘Back in the First Division? The European Cup?’

‘Silly bugger,’ she smiles. ‘You’ll regret it.’

‘I might,’ you tell her. ‘But I know I would if I turned them down.’

‘Can’t win then, can you?’

‘I hope I can,’ you tell her. ‘I bloody hope I can.’

* * *

Tonight I go straight back home. Tonight I make my plans. Tonight I make my calls. To my mate at the Inland Revenue. To my accountant. To my solicitor. I make my calls and I make my plans –

For tomorrow’s Big Match.

Then I get a taxi into Derby. To the Midland Hotel. To meet John Shaw and Bill Holmes and the rest of the Derby County Protest Movement. These people still want me back. These people who have not watched Derby County play in the year since I resigned. These people still want me back. These people who have not watched Derby play since the day I left –

These people still want me.

Day Forty-four

It is Sunday 21 July 1974, and your plane is late, your luggage lost. A silver Mercedes is waiting in the rain. A small man under a big umbrella. A small man with white hair and dark glasses. A small man with a cashmere coat and a Cuban cigar –

‘Mr Clough?’ says Manny Cussins, the chairman of Leeds United AFC Limited. ‘How do you do?’

You shake his hand. You ask him, ‘They brought back rationing yet?’

‘Not in Yorkshire,’ he says.

You follow the Leeds United chairman into the back seat of his silver Mercedes. You accept his cigars. You accept his brandy.

‘Of course,’ says Cussins, ‘your chairman is still playing silly beggars.’

You smile and raise your glass. ‘As is his right.’

‘Expects us both in Brighton tonight. To buy him his dinner at his own hotel.’

‘He’s disappointed,’ you tell him. ‘He’s losing me, isn’t he?’

‘Not just you either,’ says Cussins. ‘Peter Taylor too.’

You glance at your watch and you finish your brandy.

‘I told him, it’s both of you or neither of you.’

You look at your watch again. You hold out your glass.

* * *

‘Not a penny more,’ I tell them. ‘And not a penny less.’

‘£25,000 for forty-four days’ work?’ shouts Bolton. ‘That’s daylight bloody robbery.’

‘That’s not all,’ I tell him. ‘I also want an agreement that Leeds United will pay my income tax for the next three years.’

‘What?’

‘Plus the Mercedes.’

‘Bugger off!’ shouts Bolton. ‘Who the bloody hell do you think you are?’

‘Brian Clough,’ I tell him. ‘Brian Howard Clough.’

* * *

Beside the seaside. You are in the toilets of the Courtlands Hotel, Hove. The