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

lounge and Longson stands at the other; Longson telling the press and the television, the pens and the microphones, the cameras and the lights, telling them all how your resignations have been accepted, accepted but ‘with a certain amount of sadness’.

‘It surprises me a little,’ you answer back, ‘that people, the very people who want to stop me putting two words together, can’t put them together themselves.’

But Longson keeps blinking into the lights, keeps stuttering into the cameras, blinking and stuttering on and on about acceptance and sadness.

‘I feel deeply embarrassed for the chairman,’ you tell the same cameras and lights, not blinking and not stuttering. ‘And deeply ashamed for Derby County.’

Finally, Jack Kirkland drags the chairman away from the heat of the lights and the gaze of the cameras, drags him back into the board meeting and, as he goes, as Longson goes back into that boardroom, Longson turns and looks into your eyes and spits upon his hand, he spits upon his hand again and winks –

‘Right then, Brian, we’ll see, shall we?’

And you, you push your way through the press and the television, the pens and the microphones, the cameras and the lights, you push your way back down that corridor towards that boardroom, and those doors they close in your face, slam shut in your face –

In your face, in your face, after all the bloody things you’ve fucking done for them, they close those doors in your face, slam them shut in your face, and you pick up the jug of water from the table and you’re going to throw it through those bloody doors, throw it in all their fucking faces, when Peter takes hold of your arm, Peter takes hold of your arm and lowers the jug back down to the table and says, ‘Leave it, Brian. Leave it.’

* * *

The bad boy of British football doesn’t knock. The bad boy of British football just opens the office door and says, ‘You wanted to see me?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Have a seat, William. Have a fag and a drink too, if you want.’

Bremner takes a seat. Bremner takes a fag. Bremner takes a drink.

‘You’re going to miss the Man. City match on Saturday,’ I tell him. ‘Then the Luton game the following Saturday, the League Cup game against Huddersfield, then the league games against Burnley, Sheffield United, Tottenham and Everton, and also the first round of the European Cup. That means your first match back for us will be the return leg of the European Cup game in Zurich.’

‘I’ve read the fixture list,’ says Bremner. ‘I know what I’m missing.’

‘That’s another eight games,’ I tell him. ‘Top of the three you’ve missed already. Eleven bloody matches all told.’

He takes another one of my cigs. He takes another glass of my whisky.

‘I’ve told you before,’ I tell him again, ‘if I had to pick any member of the first-team squad here at Leeds to miss games through suspension, the last name on that list – and even then, way behind any other name on that list – would be yours. Clarkey, Giles, Peter Lorimer, Norman Hunter; anybody but you. There’s not another bloody player in this whole fucking club we could possibly miss more than you.’

Bremner puts out his cig. Bremner finishes his drink. ‘Is that all?’

‘Sit down,’ I tell him. ‘Sit down and listen, will you?’

Bremner sits back down. Bremner stares back across my desk.

‘Like I’ve told you before,’ I tell him again, ‘I don’t want to lose you on the field but, if I must lose you on the field, I don’t want to lose you off the field. Now I’m not going to ask you to travel with us to away games, not unless you want to, but what I am going to ask you to consider is coming to the Central League home games, watching the reserves for me, giving me an extra pair of eyes.’

Bremner doesn’t speak. Bremner just stares back across my desk.

‘So instead of travelling to Maine Road with us this coming Saturday,’ I continue, ‘you’d be here watching the reserves play Bolton. If nothing else, it’ll be good experience for you, especially if, as I hear it, you’re thinking of going into management.’

Bremner doesn’t speak. Bremner just stares –

Into my eyes. Into the silence.

Then the door opens again. No knock. Just John Giles standing in the doorway –

‘Thousand apologies,’ he laughs. ‘Not interrupting, am I?’

Bremner stands up. Bremner asks, ‘Can I go now, sir?’

* * *

You and Peter push your way out to your club car in the space reserved for the club manager and then you drive through the press and the television, through the pens and the microphones, the cameras and the lights, past the group of night-shift workers from Rolls-Royce who bang on the roof of your grey Mercedes and beg and beg and beg you –

‘Please don’t bloody go, Brian. Please don’t fucking go.’

But you and Peter drive away from the Baseball Ground, drive away to a garage to have the tyres on your club car changed and the tank of your club car filled up on the club account, and then you and Peter drive on to Peter’s house –

To the silence in his sitting room. The silence and the cup of tea –

‘What will you do now?’ you ask him.

‘I think I’ll catch a bloody plane to Majorca,’ he says. ‘What about you?’

‘I haven’t a fucking clue,’ you tell him –

It is Tuesday 16 October 1973, and you are out of a job.

Day Thirty-one

Under another bloated grey Yorkshire sky, they are