Chapter 92: Ground Held I
The Anchor on the Tuesday night was the loudest room I have ever stood in, and I include a Wembley I have not told you about yet.
DONG went the bell over the bar, which is not a barge bell, it is a brass thing Sid’s grandad nicked off a tug in 1971, and it had been going every ten minutes since four o’clock.
"ORDER! ORDER, YOU ANIMALS." Bald Tony, up on a chair, with a pint in one hand and his shirt undone to the sternum. "Right. Right. So Ted’s stood at the window, yeah?"
"He’s told this four times," said Raj.
"He’s told it six," said Murat.
"So Ted’s stood at the WINDOW." Tony had gone louder. "And he’s looking in through the glass. And he sees Sam’s face."
"I saw his face," Ted agreed, from his corner, in his scarf, with a lemonade.
"AND HE PUTS HIS ARMS UP." Tony did it, and slopped the pint down his own arm, and did not notice. "Like that. Not a word out of him. And there’s a hush. There’s a proper hush over that whole car park, right, like a church."
"There weren’t a hush," said Ted.
"There WAS a hush."
"Tony, there were about forty people screaming."
"There was a HUSH, Edward, and then there were screaming, and if you’d stop correcting me you’d hear how good it is."
Roar of the room, and somebody put money in the jukebox, and Murat came round the tables with a tray of chips he would not take a penny for from anyone, and the bell went again, DONG.
And Dennis Coyle sat at the end of the bar and didn’t say much and drank one pint slowly, and about half nine he leaned over to me and said, quietly, under all that noise:
"He’s in there for a hundred year now. Me dad."
"He is."
"Aye." He turned his glass round on the beer mat. "Just wanted to say it out loud to somebody who’d know what it meant."
He didn’t cry. He just nodded a lot, and went back to his pint, and I went outside and stood in the car park for a minute, on my own, in the cold, because I did not want to do it in front of him.
The team found out the next morning, in a dressing room that smelled of Deep Heat and wet grass, because Sadler would not have them hearing it off a newspaper.
He didn’t tell them. He stood at the back with his arms folded and he pointed at me with his chin.
"Go on then, chairman."
Sixteen men on the benches, in various states of undress, and Sid with an ice pack strapped to a knee that has no business still working.
"It’s done," I said. "We won. The ground’s ours. It can’t be sold, it can’t be built on, and it can’t be taken off this club as long as there’s football played on it."
Silence for about a second and a half.
Then Lenny Marsh, our captain, a scaffolder with three kids and a back that clicks when he heads a ball, said, "So we’re not moving."
"You’re not moving, Lenny."
"We’re not playing at some ground in Basildon."
"You’re not playing at some ground in Basildon."
And Lenny Marsh sat down on the bench with his shirt half on and put his hands over his face, and Big Pete started banging on the lockers, bang, bang, BANG, and then the whole room went up.
Cal Murphy was hugging the Crayford kid. Aiden Reece, who does not touch anybody, had Doyle round the neck. Mooney was doing something with a towel that I will not describe.
"I’VE PLAYED THERE SINCE I WERE SIXTEEN, YOU LOT. SIXTEEN."
And nobody laughed at him, and Doyle put an arm round him, and that is the only time I have seen that man’s eyes go.
Vardy didn’t say anything. He was sat in the corner pulling his socks up. He looked over at me once, and nodded, once, and went back to his socks. That’s Vardy for a standing ovation.
Then Sadler unfolded his arms.
"Right. Lovely. Beautiful." Clap, clap. "Out. Now. Seven games. Get out."
And they went, still shouting, and he held me back at the door with one finger on my chest and said, without any warmth at all:
"Don’t do that again in my dressing room in April."
"They deserved to know."
"They did. And now they’re eleven feet tall and we play Wrexham away on Saturday and I have got two days to get them back on the floor." He put his coat on. "You gave me a job, Sam. Let me do it."
Peep, peep went his whistle out on the grass, and he made them run until three of them were sick, and I stood at the fence and watched a man I paid deliberately ruin the best morning of their lives, and he was right, and I hated it, and I did not say a word.
Maureen found the number that afternoon. I did not tell her. She found it, because she does the books and I am not clever enough to hide anything from a woman who has done the books of this club since 1987.
She came into my office with the ledger and shut the door with her heel, click, which she has never done.
"Sit down, Samuel."
"Maureen."
"Sit down."
Scrape of the chair. I sat down.
She put the ledger on the desk and put her finger on a line. "That payment. February. The sixteen thousand." Her finger did not move. "Three thousand one hundred and forty of that came out of a bucket in the Anchor. I counted it. I did the banking."
"You did."
"So where," she said, "did the other thirteen thousand come from?"
And there it was. Eight months of lying to the best woman in Essex, sat on a desk with her finger on it.
I could have said the union pension. I have used that one twice and it holds. I could have said an investor, a loan, a thing I’d sold.
I looked at Maureen Tully, 68 years old, who worked for my father, who has not been paid on time since November and has never once mentioned it, and I found that I could not do it.
"I can’t tell you," I said. "I’m not going to lie to you, so I’m telling you that instead. There’s money. It’s mine, it’s legal, and I cannot tell you where it comes from. Not now. Maybe not ever."
She looked at me for a long, long time.
"Is anybody going to come to this club and ask me about it?"
"No."
"Is it clean?"
"It’s clean, Maureen. On my dad."
And that was the wrong thing to say and the right thing to say, and her mouth went, and she picked the ledger up and held it against her chest like a hymn book.
"Then don’t you ever say his name to me to win an argument again," she said. "That’s the once."
"That’s the once. I’m sorry."
"Aye." At the door she stopped, and did not turn round. "It’s not enough, though. Is it. Whatever it is."
I didn’t answer her.
"Thought not," she said, and went out, and shut the door properly this time.
She’s right. That’s the thing I have been carrying round this town for a week with a smile on my face, shaking hands, saying we did it, and I want to put it in front of you now because you have been decent enough to come this far with me.
Nine thousand two hundred and sixty-one.
That’s what’s left of 37,000 magic beans. I sold nearly twenty-eight thousand of them, and I sold them for two things. Thirteen grand into Sully’s furnace on the 28th of February, so a football club would exist on the 1st of March.
Four thousand three hundred and ten onto a mortgage book on my mother’s kitchen table.
One month’s rent, and my mum. That’s what three quarters of a miracle bought.
And I know what those coins do in June. That much still works, because I have not gone near it and not changed it. They go up, they go stupid, and then they die, and if I sell every one of them at the top I come out with a hundred and eighty grand.
Against a debt of two hundred and thirty-three.
Fifty short. Of everything. There is no version of this where the money saves us, and I have known it for eight days, and I have not said it out loud to a living soul until now.
[SYSTEM] LAND: held. In perpetuity. Non-transferable. Non-mortgageable. The strongest asset you will ever own and you cannot borrow a penny against it. That is the trade you made. Look at it in daylight. TREASURY: 9,261 units. June ceiling ~£180,000. Standing debt £233,330. BUILD: nothing. GROW: nothing. You have the bedrock, Sam. You have no bricks.
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