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

Boulton and Ron Webster running down the streets outside the Baseball Ground. Colin Boulton and Ron Webster banging on the roof of Jack Kirkland’s car –

Bloody Kirkland telling Boulton and Webster, the cameras and the microphones, the whole of fucking Derby, ‘You’ll have a new manager in the morning.’

You switch off your telly. Door locked, curtains pulled. You sit in your house –

In the dark.

* * *

Under the stands and through the doors, round the corner and down the corridor, I still haven’t left the office, still daren’t leave the office; the feet and the voices outside the door, whispering and whispering and whispering, over and over and over, the fists banging and banging and banging upon the door, again and again and again, the phone on the desk ringing and ringing and ringing, over and over and over –

‘Are you there, Brian? Are you still there?’

I don’t open the door. I don’t answer the phone. I just keep my feet up on the desk, with a fag in my gob and a drink in my good hand –

‘Are you there, Brian? Are you still there?’

The door opens and in walks Bolton. In walks Bolton and throws another letter onto the desk and he says, ‘Don’t you ever answer that bloody phone? Upstairs, now.’

* * *

There have been protest marches through the centre of Derby. There have been rallies in the bingo halls of Derby. Tonight, there is the first meeting of the steering committee of the Derby County Protest Movement. John and his mate Bill Holmes pass the bucket around the room. The bucket brings back £150.53½.

‘The Derby County board will have to listen to us now,’ declares Bill Holmes. ‘The Derby County board cannot ignore the mass transfer request of an entire first team. The Derby board cannot ignore the wrath of 30,000 protesters.’

You sit on the stage and you want to believe Bill Holmes. Desperately. But Bill Holmes is a Nottingham Forest fan, and there are only 300 people here tonight.

But then Mike Keeling arrives. Mike takes you to one side. Mike gives you hope –

‘I’ve spoken with Bill Rudd,’ Mike tells you, ‘and Bill says he’d consider taking you and Peter back if you were prepared to toe the line. I told him everything you told me, about how you’d be prepared to give up your newspaper columns and your television appearances if they’d have you back, and Bill said that was good enough for him.’

‘That’s fantastic,’ you tell him. ‘Bloody fantastic.’

‘It gets better,’ says Mike. ‘Bill thinks that he’ll now also be able to persuade Innes, and even Sidney Bradley.’

‘Fantastic,’ you tell him again. ‘Fucking fantastic.’

‘Except for Longson and Kirkland,’ says Keeling. ‘Bill’s been trying to get in touch with them all day, to tell them he wants another board meeting –’

‘But?’

‘But he’s not been able to speak to them, not been able to find them,’ says Mike. ‘They’re not at their homes, not at the ground and they’re not at the Midland Hotel.’

‘So where the fuck are they then?’ you ask him. ‘Where are they?’

‘Nottingham,’ says Mike. ‘Reckon they’re at the Albany Hotel.’

‘Has he called them there?’ you ask him. ‘Has Bill tried?’

‘He’s tried all right,’ Mike says. ‘He’s just gone over there.’

‘And?’

‘And we’ll just have to hope and pray he’s not too late, won’t we?’

You bite your lip. You close your eyes. You nod your head –

You don’t believe in God, but you do believe in hope.

* * *

I walk down the corridor. The photographs on the wall. The trophies in the cabinets. Down the corridor and round the corner. Round the corner to the foot of the stairs. Then up the stairs until there on the stairs is Syd; Syd who says something that sounds like, ‘Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish that man would go away.’

‘Pardon?’ I ask him.

Syd stops at the bottom of the stairs. Syd turns back to look up at me and Syd says, ‘Round here they say if you pass someone on the stairs, it’ll lead to a quarrel or a parting, and that you’ll not meet that person again in heaven.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘Didn’t think I’d be seeing you up there anyway, Syd.’

‘And I didn’t think you believed in God or a heaven.’

‘Having been here thirty-four days,’ I tell him, ‘I’ve changed my mind, Sydney.’

‘Why’s that then?’ he smiles.

‘Well, if there’s a hell like this place, then there has to be a heaven somewhere.’

Syd is laughing now. Really laughing. Syd says, ‘If you think it’s hell now, you wait until you bloody lose at home to Luton on Saturday, away at Huddersfield Town, and then go out of the European Cup in the first fucking round to Zurich.’

‘And that’d be heaven to you,’ I tell him. ‘Wouldn’t it, Sydney?’

‘No,’ he says and turns away, round another corner and down another corridor.

I walk up the rest of the stairs, down the corridor to the boardroom doors. I can hear their raised Yorkshire voices again, I can hear my name again. I open the door –

There’s Bolton. There’s Cussins. There’s a man I’ve never met before.

‘About bloody time,’ says Bolton. ‘What you been doing?’

‘We were just about to send out a search party,’ says Cussins.

‘I’m sorry,’ I tell them both. ‘I was talking to Syd Owen.’

‘Well, I want you to meet someone who I’m sure will be much more pleasant to talk to than Syd bloody Owen,’ says Bolton. ‘This is Martin Hughes.’

‘How do you do, Mr Clough?’ says Martin Hughes.

‘How do you do?’ I reply.

‘Martin runs Mercedes here in the north,’ says