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

pens. Into the foyer and the club. The receptionists and the secretaries. The photographs on the walls. The trophies in the cabinets. The ghosts of Elland Road. Down the corridor and round the corner. Syd Owen, chief coach here for the last fifteen years, leading out the apprentices –

I put out my hand. I give him a wink. ‘Morning, Syd.’

‘Good afternoon, Mr Clough,’ he replies, without shaking my hand.

I put my hands on the heads of my sons. I ask him, ‘You think you could spare one of your young lads here to watch these two of mine while I make myself known?’

‘You’re already known,’ says Syd Owen. ‘And these apprentices are here to develop their capabilities as professional footballers. Not to entertain your children.’

I take my hands off the heads of my sons. I put them on their shoulders. My youngest flinches, my grip too tight –

‘I won’t keep you any longer then,’ I tell this loyal servant, left behind.

Syd Owen nods. Syd says again, ‘Not here to entertain your children.’

There’s a clock ticking somewhere, laughter from another room. Down the corridor, round the corner. The sound of studs stomping off, marching on together.

My eldest looks up at me. He smiles. He says, ‘Who was that, Dad?’

I ruffle his hair. I smile back. I tell him, ‘Your wicked Uncle Syd.’

Down the corridor. Past the photographs. Round the corner. Past the plaques. Into the dressing room. The home dressing room. Keep on fighting above the door. They have left out an away kit for me; yellow shirt, yellow shorts and yellow socks. The kids watch me change. I pull on my own blue tracksuit top. They follow me down the corridor. Round the corner. Through reception and out into the rain. The car park. The cameras and the lights. The autograph books and the pens. I jog through the potholes and the puddles. Past the huts on stilts. Up the banking. Onto the training ground –

The press shout. The fans cheer. The camera lights flash and my own kids duck.

‘Morning, lads,’ I shout over at them –

Them stood in their groups. In their purple tracksuits. There are stains on their knees, stains on their arses. Dirty Leeds. Their hair long, their names on their backs –

Bastards. Bastards. Bastards …

Hunter. The Gray brothers. Lorimer. Giles. Bates. Clarke. Bremner. McQueen. Jordan. Reaney. Cooper. Madeley. Cherry. Yorath. Harvey and Stewart –

All his sons, his bastard sons. Their daddy dead, their daddy gone …

In their groups and their tracksuits. In their stains with their names on their backs. Their eyes on mine –

Screw them. Bugger them. Fuck the bloody lot of them.

I do the rounds for the press. For the cameras and the lights. For the fans. For the autograph books and the pens. A handshake here and an introduction there. Nothing more. Hold your tongue, Brian. Hold your tongue. Watch and learn. Watch and wait –

Don’t let the bastards grind you down, they whisper.

The rounds done, I stand apart. The sun comes out but the rain stays put. No rainbows today. Not here. Hands on my hips. Rain in my face. Sun on my neck. The clouds move fast round here. I look away. My eldest in the car park. A ball on his foot. His knee. His head. In the potholes and the puddles, the rain and the sun, there he is –

A boy with a ball. A boy with a dream.

* * *

It started that first morning in the hospital, the day after Boxing Day, and it’s never stopped, not for a single day since. You wake up and for those first few seconds, minutes, you forget; forget you are injured; forget you are finished –

Forget you will never smell the dressing room again. Never put on a clean new kit. Tie on those shining boots and hear the roar of the crowd –

The roar when the ball hits the back of the net; the roar when you score –

The applause. The adoration. The love.

You wish you could see your wife. You haven’t seen her in days –

Not since Boxing Day. Not since they brought you here.

No one is telling you anything. Not a bloody thing –

You’d get up and go find her yourself, except you can’t.

Then on the fifth day, the door opens and there’s your wife –

‘I’ve been in bed,’ she says. ‘I’ve had a miscarriage.’

* * *

They take us on a tour, me and my kids and the press. Down more corridors. Round more corners. Past the lounges and the boxes. The suites and the clubs. The treatment rooms and the dressing rooms. Then they take us all out onto the pitch itself –

They stand me out there, out there in the centre circle –

The green blades of grass. The white chalk lines …

My arms raised aloft, a scarf in my hands –

I hate this place, this spiteful place.

Up this corridor. Round this corner. Down the next corridor. The next corner. The boys at my heels. To the office. The empty desk. The empty chair. Don’s office. Don’s desk. Don’s chair. Four walls with no windows and one door, these four walls between which he etched his schemes and his dreams, his hopes and his fears. In his black books. His secret dossiers. His enemy lists –

Don didn’t trust people. Didn’t like people. He dwelled on people. Hated people. He put them in his black books. His secret dossiers –

His enemy lists. Brian Clough on that list.

Me. Top of that list –

This the office. The desk. The chair. In which he schemed and in which he dreamed, with his hopes and with his fears. In his books. His dossiers. His lists. To exorcise the doubts. The codes