Chapter Text
It was obvious within ten minutes that the whole session would be a write off. The sleet was beginning to stick now, banking up in grey scuds in the mouths of the practise goals. The boys shouted gamely through it, but they were all of them soaked through - simply keeping the ball moving on the soupy pitch was effort enough.
“Okay, let’s pack it up, lads,” Eric called from the sideline. He drew his hands from his pockets so he could clap each of them on their sodden shoulders as they trudged off the pitch, a few of them breaking into a heavy jog, the sooner to reach the changing room and its intermittent supply of hot water.
“Complete waste of time,” he muttered to Seejou as they headed inside themselves.
“Meant to be nice tomorrow,” Seejou said. “Dry, at least. Tell them to watch those videos again, innit.”
Eric pulled his beanie off and wrung it out. “Can you tell them? Need to give the chairman a ring, he’s off to Jakarta tonight.”
Seejou grinned. “You’re the boss.”
“Fuck off.”
Eric turned the shower up as hot as it would go, and felt a little feeling throb back into his limbs. They’d shipped three goals at home to Charlton at the weekend, and a new stab of shame went through him as he replayed all three in his head. At least West Brom had already sacked Glenn Murray, just over a month into the season. So he wouldn’t be the first to go. Four points from the last fifteen. Abject.
He was still towelling his hair dry, dripping all over a pile of tactical reports (Lincoln at the weekend, tough as boots, third favourites for automatic promotion), when the chairman picked up.
“We are on the runway, Eric, be quick.”
“Just – is there any news?”
Eric heard the chairman say something to the flight attendant. He wondered whether it was possible to learn that busy, important tone.
“The plans are signed off. Tomorrow – video conference with the board about naming. I still say – Eric, you can help with this, I say this often.”
Eric closed his eyes. Outside, the sleet had turned to snow. “You know I think it’s a bad idea.”
“Is not a bad idea. Great image, great legend, very good role model.”
“I just – I don’t think it’s a good idea to…you know, immortalise players that are still playing. Or even players that are still alive.”
The chairman made an impatient noise. Eric heard ice clink in a glass. “I wish you will talk to him. Convince him.”
“No,” Eric said flatly. He hadn’t quite washed the cold out of his bones. “Not my call, anyway. I just worry about what goes on on the pitch.”
“Well. Okay. I have to go now. We talk on Sunday. You will start Morgan?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Eric said, relieved for the change of subject. “He looked sharp when I went over there yesterday.”
“I will be watching.” More of a threat than a promise. “Looking forward to the three points.”
“Yeah,” Eric said. There was little hope of that. “Safe flight, boss.”
*
Though the snow had eased by the time he left Standing Way, the residual traffic meant it took him longer than he’d planned to get back into central London. He let himself into the flat and felt the day seep away. Axel was in his study, his laptop casting blue shadows up his face. It was clear he’d been there for hours; the rest of the study was in darkness, as though night had fallen without him noticing.
“Hey,” Eric said softly, shrugging off his coat.
“Hey,” Axel replied, twisting round in his chair. His glasses were perched on top of his head, and his hair was all askew, as though he’d been running his hands through it repeatedly, which was what he did when exasperated.
“Thought you were in Amsterdam til Thursday.” Eric leant down to kiss him.
“Me too. It all fell through. So – not much point to just stay there when I can be here, you know?”
“Nice surprise.” He rubbed Axel’s shoulder gently.
“There is still risotto, if you want some.”
“You’re alright, think I’m gonna –” Eric yawned. “Fuck, I’m knackered. Mind if I head straight up?”
Axel shook his head. “Nearly finished. Twenty minutes, I’ll be up too.” He pulled Eric down again to kiss him.
Axel had been part of the legal team that had overseen the sale of the club, eight months after Eric’s appointment. The chairman pulled Eric off the training pitch to meet them, and Eric, in his tracksuit, felt sloppy and sweaty and uncultured as he shook hands with a row of waistcoats, pencil skirts, and rimless glasses.
Things had been different a few days later, though, when they’d been seated next to each other at a gala dinner arranged to greet the owner. Eric spent most of the evening wondering whether the carefully neutral language Axel was using to discuss a previous partner was merely a quirk of his being German. Two weeks after that, sprawled on the sofa in Axel’s Kensington flat, with Axel’s face between his legs, he’d thought perhaps it wasn’t. Three months after that they were living together.
Eric was reading his tablet when Axel climbed into bed beside him.
“Lincoln?” he asked.
Eric took his glasses off and folded them neatly on the bedside table. “Pompey. Week after next. Needed a head start.”
“At home?”
Eric nodded. Axel pulled him down the bed until his chest was pressed up against Eric’s back. “Maybe I could come.”
“See what happens at Sinny Bank this weekend first,” Eric said, laughing. He grabbed Axel’s arm and pulled it tighter across his chest. “Might get my P45 before then.”
Axel kissed him on the neck. “I don’t think so.” Another kiss, warm with promise. “Anyway, I will look after you.”
“Don’t you know I’m very rich,” Eric said drowsily. “Don’t really need looking after.”
Axel wrote patterns on his shoulder with his thumb, until they were both falling asleep. It was strange to think there was a world outside, dirty and cruel under the fresh blanket of late November snow. Axel’s colleagues thought him too dour, too conscientious to find space for another person in his life – male, female, or otherwise. Strange - his lips occasionally brushing against Eric’s shoulder blades – to think of him as anything less than loving. And here they were, talking about a future that might not come to pass, between kisses, and MK Dons were a point above relegation, and without a decent fullback or their first choice striker.
*
“Did they show you the plans?” Axel asked the next morning, rifling through the briefcase perched on his lap.
“I saw the drafts a few months ago. Don’t think they’ve changed much.” He yawned.
“See, I told you to have that coffee.”
Eric snorted. “I’ll kip on the train. Anyway, they said they’ll set up a model in the atrium. Now the planning permission’s all done.” It was barely seven, but the traffic was already mounting.
“What will they call it?”
Eric’s thigh began to twitch. If they got to Euston in the next ten minutes, he’d make the fast train.
“Oh, they’re still debating,” he said. His mind was half on the scout reports loaded on his tablet. As though they had anything resembling a transfer budget. “Club legends, that sort of thing.”
Axel raised an eyebrow. He looked remarkably calm for someone about to miss his Eurostar. “Club legends?”
Eric poked him in the thigh, and then drew his hand back across the gap between the seats. The driver was not the usual man.
“We do have some, you know,” he said. Axel was a Dortmund fan, and snobbish about it. They were nearing Euston Square, and running out of time to discuss it, so he felt there was no harm in adding, “they’re probably going to name it after Dele.”
Axel was still rummaging in his briefcase. “That’s a stupid idea,” he said.
“That’s what I told them. I’m meant to be convincing him.” The chairman would be in Jakarta now, shaking hands and signing cheques.
“What, not big enough for his ego? Is he waiting for the Bernabeu to be renamed after him?”
Eric felt a brief stab of annoyance. “He’s not like that,” he said quietly. “It’s – complicated. Can you pull over here, mate?” he added to the driver, more sharply than he’d intended.
“Get some coffee on the train,” Axel said. He glanced at Eric, and Eric understood the look to mean I love you. Eric stood on the kerb for a few seconds after climbing from the car, gathering London into his lungs. Yesterday’s snow had given way to a bright, clear morning. It looked sublime in Axel’s greying hair.
bring me back a croissant he texted as he strode across the piazza. And three kisses, to make up for having been tetchy.
*
Eric gave up on the scouting reports somewhere around Hemel Hempstead, and thought about the weekend, and his team, and all the holes in it.
Dewi Morgan at right-back, he thought, watching grimy, ramshackle gardens zip by. A baptism of fire, but it couldn’t be any worse than playing poor Pavel out of position for the third match in a row. That left – Jamal and Ade in front of the back four. Sam up front. Poor Sam. He’d been toothless since Santi’d done his Achilles, and Benji’s crosses were wasted on him, too.
At least Mikey might be able to neutralise their big man in the air. Five goals from set-pieces, Lincoln’d scored so far. They were behind on their drills; the snow had seen to that. Eric drained the last of his grey, scummy coffee as the train began to slow before Milton Keynes.
He went straight across to the academy when he arrived at Standing Way. Paul was standing grimly at the side of one of the five-a-side pitches, arms folded. He nodded pleasantly enough at Eric. He’d been academy coach for five years, and often made it subtly clear he remembered Eric’s playing career, and didn’t think much of it. He’d probably outlast Eric.
Eric watched the lads skate jerkily over the pitch. They looked like baby deer, sometimes drawing a bit of magic out of their spindly limbs – more often, falling over themselves. The skinny fourteen year old they’d picked up from Norwich at the start of the summer tumbled to the ground, and Paul tsked in annoyance.
“Can you spare Morgan?” Eric asked, watching the boy dust himself off and go bright red when he realised who was watching them.
Paul nodded. “Thought that might be what you were after. Don’t send him back here with his collarbone bust like you did with the last one.”
Eric didn’t feel this required an answer.
“Dewi!” Paul yelled. A rangy ginger kid with grass-stains all up his back looked up, then loped towards them. The rest watched enviously.
“I need a right-back, lad,” Eric said as they walked towards the first team pitches.
“Okay,” Morgan said, a little too hastily.
Eric glanced at him. “Don’t panic,” he said. “We’ll just give it a go today. Won’t put you on unless I think you’re ready.”
“Okay,” Morgan said, again, breathless. Eric had to stop himself smiling.
“Stick close to Jules and Jamal. They’ll look after you.”
“Okay.”
Then there was just the sound of Dewi’s studs skittering on the tarmac, and Eric’s coat rustling. He still wasn’t good at this bit. The arm around the shoulder, the sage, sincere tone. Given his family, and his role in most of his friendships, he’d stupidly thought he’d have a natural aptitude for that sort of thing. Perhaps it came with age.
*
Jan was waiting for him by the helipad when he landed, looking weathered and distinguished. Eric ducked through the downdraft and felt his hair ripple.
“Look good, mate,” he said, hugging Jan.
Jan snorted. “Look old. Stop trying to kid me.”
“All set?” Eric asked as they stepped into the lift. Jan’s foot was tapping absently, and though they hadn’t seen each other in eighteen months, Eric knew him well enough to know, without really looking, that his jaw was tight.
“You know,” Jan said with an affected breeziness, “you worry about these things. And then they go fine in the end. And it’s for a good cause. If it’s a disaster – anyway, I think it will be fine.”
They stepped out of the lift before Eric could offer a few words of comfort. The ballroom was festooned in the foundation’s colours, and Jan wove fluidly between the tables, his spine straight, smiling permanently, shaking hands, pausing for photographs.
Mousa accosted him near the pledge table. “Big man!” he said, clapping Eric’s shoulder so hard his whole body vibrated.
“Wouldn’t have shown up if I knew you were going to be here,” Eric said, grinning. Four years since they’d seen each other. More than that, maybe. They’d both been pundits for the BBC, and had spent more time exploring Sarajevo’s wine bars than researching Denmark’s chances against Lithuania.
“Good result,” Mousa said, ignoring him. He’d said nothing about the tattooed Bosnian bartender who’d still been in Eric’s bed when Mousa came to pick him up before the semi-final, and Eric was still trying to find a way to thank him for his discretion.
“Don’t pretend you were watching. Bet you’ve been trying to calm Jan down all afternoon anyway.”
Mousa shrugged, his hands in his pockets. “I checked the score. Be glad of that point in May, I think.”
It had ended fractiously against Lincoln that afternoon, but it had ended goalless, which was far, far better than he’d been anticipating. They’d sloped off the pitch with one split lip, one sprained ankle, a handful of yellow cards, and one precious, precious point. The atmosphere see-sawed between relief and trepidation. Two hours later Eric was in Bruges.
“Haven’t fired me yet, anyway. Better turn my phone off in case they try anything while I’m here.”
He had two messages from Axel waiting. He pocketed his phone without reading them; they would only make his absence worse. Axel was tactful enough to schedule important work trips to coincide with public functions Eric might be obliged to attend. That way, they could both pretend that Eric might one day invite him.
Jan reappeared occasionally, looking more harried each time, as the ballroom filled. The string quartet cycling through incidental repertoire on the stage was eventually drowned out by the chatter of the guests. Kompany passed Eric’s table, waving a vague hello at them, as though they knew each other. Eric spotted Toby across the room, and resolved to give him grief for the ill-advised mullet he seemed to be sporting later.
“Thought you’d have made an effort for Jan’s big do, Diet.” Eric heard Dele’s voice behind him, and felt him nudge his shoulder with his hip. Eric craned round in his chair. Dele was wearing something watery grey and double breasted, and his teeth flashed as he looked down at Eric, his fingers resting lightly on the back of Eric’s chair.
Eric clambered to his feet and hugged Dele. Six months since they’d last seen each other, not that Eric had been counting. “Full-time job, looking this good,” he said, gesturing down at himself. “Those glasses got lenses in them?”
Dele pushed his glasses up his nose distractedly. “Fuck off,” he said good naturedly. “You seen Sonny?”
“He’s not coming,” Mousa said. “One of the twins has got colic.”
“So weird Sonny’s kids are so fucking ugly,” Dele said, scowling.
Mousa’s wife hit him gently on the arm. “They are babies. All babies are ugly.”
“I was beautiful,” Dele said. “Dier, you ain’t shaved your head for a while. Otherwise you’d look like a big angry baby.”
Eric drained his champagne to drown whatever was stuck in his throat, and then Jan was leaning over the lectern on the stage, and tapping the mic, and beginning. Dele slipped into the chair next to Eric, his legs sprawling open with a disregard that in his early twenties had been insouciant, and now was faintly irritating.
There was no real reason for either of them to be there. Eric’s assistant had transferred his donation weeks ago. Mousa would make a speech, of course, and say the usual nice things about Jan, and they would all applaud the award winners enthusiastically, and wolf-whistle at Jan when he tried to thank the audience for their generosity. And that would be that. The helicopter would have him back in England before midnight.
“Those two shagged yet?” Dele murmured in his ear, after the starters were cleared away, and Jan was shaking Mousa’s hand and welcoming him to the stage. His voice, suddenly close, made Eric’s stomach constrict.
“Shhh,” he said, pretending to frown. Silently, he cursed H, who had texted him two weeks earlier to let him know he was taking Ivy to the Cardiff open day, and wouldn’t be able to make it.
“They definitely have,” Dele said, settling back in his chair smugly, somehow with his arm draped louchely across the back of Eric’s chair.
Eric toyed with his napkin. It was easier not to think about it – or about who might have asked the same about him and Dele.
The speeches and the courses went on. A thousand dinners just like this one. Eric span his champagne flute by the stem, and felt as though he’d been here a thousand times before, in the same suit, or one just like it, his body a little older, creakier each time, a little closer to the end of his career, a little closer to being found out.
His phone buzzed, and he glanced down at it.
Phone me when you can
It was a relief to have an excuse to step outside, away from Dele’s fidgeting. Axel picked up on the third ring, as Eric was slipping out onto the veranda.
“Hey,” Eric said softly. It was a cold night, and he’d left his coat inside, but the night breeze was not unpleasant.
“Hello, you,” Axel said. “Are you having fun?”
“It’s okay. Nice to see Jan, Mousa, that lot.”
“I wish I – well, you know. Sorry I can’t be there with you. Will you take a photograph?”
“What, of Jan and Mousa?” Eric laughed.
“No, of you. You know I like you in that suit.”
Eric said nothing. Axel’s frankness had floored him from the earliest days of their relationship, and he still found himself flustered by it nearly a year later.
“I’m – I didn’t want to disturb you. It’s only – I have to go to Amsterdam again.”
Eric huffed. “Again?”
“Three days, probably. Someone needs to go. It is sensible for it to be me.”
“Are you going tonight?”
“I’m on the way to the airport. That’s why I called you.”
Eric chewed his lip. He wondered, if he counted up the nights their paths had crossed over the past month, whether they’d fill a hand.
He saw the door to the veranda open from the corner of his eye. Of course it was Dele, his skin faintly blue in the winter night.
He listened to Axel’s steady breathing for a second or two, and then said, “I’ve got to go.” Dele was leaning over the balcony, watching headlights arc across the square below.
“Okay,” Axel sighed.
“Are you –” He stopped. “Hope it goes okay.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Love you.”
“Yeah.” Axel would know he wasn’t alone, would understand why he couldn’t say it back. Three days. He slipped his phone back into his breast pocket.
Dele straightened up. “Who was that?” he asked.
“No one you know,” Eric said, which wasn’t a lie. Things had been new with Axel, and fragile, the last time he and Dele had seen each other, back in May. He’d thought of telling him. But they’d not found themselves alone. And besides, Dele hadn’t asked.
“You trying to be mysterious?”
“No,” Eric said, half-smiling.
“Good.” Dele grinned suddenly. “Come back in, Toby’s dying on his arse.”
“I’ve – actually, I’ve gotta go.”
Dele’s face fell. Years hadn’t made his face any harder to read. It was all still there, written plain. “It’s not even eleven, Diet.”
Eric looked down at his hands. “Yeah, I know. Gotta – you know how things are. Not out of the woods yet. Still might –”
“They serious about the reserves stadium?” Dele asked suddenly. And that was the same as before, too, the ricochet of conversation with him, changing direction suddenly enough to leave a man whiplashed.
“What – naming it after –”
“Yeah. They serious?”
Eric stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “Who else they gonna name it after?”
“D’you – fucking stupid idea. Haven’t even finished playing yet, know what I mean?”
Eric said nothing. Dele’d started twice that season. Come off the bench four times. His career, limping to the finish line, but no-one willing to call time quite yet.
“What if I said yes?”
Eric sniffed. Snow in the air again. “Might buy me a couple of weeks. Meant to be persuading you, y’know. Get me in their good books.”
Dele laughed. “Tell them I’ll do it then.”
“Yeah?” Eric asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah, Dier. If it’ll save your dumb job. Sally’ll be pleased, anyway.”
Eric nodded, his mouth tight. That remained the same; Dele’s family, and how he wanted to be better for them, always, in case they decided they didn’t want him after all.
“How long you back for?” he asked, instead of telling Dele that he didn’t need to please Sally, that there was such a thing as unconditional love.
“Flying back a week on Wednesday. Got a – Milan, a thing. Bulgari.” He flashed his wrist, so Eric could admire the watch sparkling there.
“Nice,” Eric said. He meant Milan, or Bulgari, or the fact they’d be on the same continent for a few more days. “Let me know if you’re in London before then, yeah?”
“I will.”
“I’ve really gotta go.”
“Feel like we ain’t caught up at all.”
Eric shrugged. “Not much to catch up on, with me. With any luck they’ll give me the boot before Christmas, then I can come and see you. New Year in LA. Be alright, wouldn’t it?”
“Need their heads looked at. You’ve barely got a starting eleven. What else they want? Miracle you’re not bottom, with that lot.”
Eric didn’t ask why he’d been keeping up with the Dons. Because they made him, or because their manager was – whatever Eric was. An old friend. Both, maybe. Dele always did have a sentimental streak.
“Cheers, mate,” he said. “They’re not bad, you know. Played with worse.”
“Don’t talk about H like that.”
They both laughed. Dele’s teeth glowed.
“You doing okay?” Dele asked, suddenly serious. Whiplash again. Years he’d spent, caring for Dele, being the one to ask that question. Somewhere along the way Dele had shed the need for that sort of comfort. Now there was something approaching balance between them – the giving and receiving of care. They’d never managed to work it out, when they were playing together. Though that had been the least of their problems.
Eric looked at Dele for a moment. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m alright, Del. I’m doing alright.”
The cars streamed by on the square far below. Laughter from inside. Toby wrapping up, maybe. “What happened to Karim?” Dele asked. His voice was brittle, as it always was whenever the conversation strayed anywhere near Eric’s sexuality, or his own.
Eric shrugged. His throat felt constricted. “He moved to Guimaraes. Opened his own gym.”
“With your money.”
“No, with his own money. Don’t be a dick.”
“Right.” Dele’s tone went flinty. “So he left you?”
Eric paused. It was none of Dele’s business. None of it was. It never had been. He’d given up any right to know – anything. But it was the habit of a lifetime – secrets were always easier to tell than to keep, around Dele. It was why he’d let things get so out of control; because it was easier than stopping it.
“He – no. Who cares? You didn’t even meet him.”
“You wouldn’t let me.” That much was true. Karim was funny and kind, and the combination had gotten Eric through the tail end of the 26/27 season, when his hip was finally giving up the ghost, but Eric was pretending otherwise, and his personal trainer was the only person he saw for days at a time, stuck in the gym, the two of them pretending he might buy himself another year, another half a season, another ninety minutes. The two of them. Eric could barely remember what being in love with him had felt like.
“I’ve really got to go,” Eric said. “I’m getting a chopper to –”
“You are trying to be mysterious.”
It became too much, suddenly. It was cold on the roof, and would be colder on the helipad, and Axel would be gone by the time he got back. His job was hanging by a thread, and Dele was smiling smugly, as though he knew everything. He could have asked about Karim back in May, but he hadn’t.
“We broke up because I wouldn’t come out. Isn’t fucking mysterious. It’s my fucking life, Del.”
Dele looked taken aback. He paused, then said, “Couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t what?”
“Couldn’t. You said wouldn’t come out. You meant couldn’t.”
Eric shrugged again. “What’s the difference. Same outcome.” Same outcome. Axel was the only man he’d been with who wasn’t secretly waiting for him to come out.
Dele said nothing.
“I’m alright, Del. I promise.” This was where he should tell him. Friends would do that – fill each other in on the most important bits of their lives. He could show him the photos he had on his phone – Axel, in Porto, looking bronzed and relaxed in a white linen shirt, bending down to pet a bored street cat. But the photos were secret, or private – whatever the difference was.
“If you say so.”
“Yeah.” Now he’d noticed the cold, it was hard to think of anything else. He had match footage to review, and emails from the medical team that probably heralded more bad news. He should have left an hour ago.
“I’m going,” he said, as though saying it might make it truer. “So I can tell the board yes?” he said. “About the stadium?”
Dele looked up. For a moment he looked lost. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Tell them.”
Eric nodded. “Okay. Say hi to Mia for me.”
Dele paused, and then nodded. A decade ago Eric would have told him to get inside, get a coat on, stay warm, not much meat on those chopsticks. But Dele was a grown-up now, and didn’t need Eric to look after him.