Chapter 253: The Table Is Lying I

The run-in started with a groundsman telling me to get off his grass.

"Round the edge, boss," Kieran said. "Please. She has 11 more of these in her, and I am counting every stud."

It was 4 o’clock on the Tuesday and cold enough to hurt your teeth. He was on his knees by the corner flag, rolling up the last of the frost sheets. flap of the plastic. clink of the pegs going into a bucket.

Under the sheets the pitch was flat and tight, the best I had seen it in any February.

"11 at home," I said.

"And 11 away. 22 all told. I wrote them on the calendar in the shed." He sat back on his heels with his breath smoking. "Every Saturday. Every Tuesday. There is not a blank square on it till the end of April, boss. I looked twice."

The frost that took our January had taken everybody’s. From Carlisle to Yeovil the whole division had a month of football still owing, and the League had put it in the only place left. 22 games in 75 days, for us and for nearly every club we still had to play.

"What do you need?" I said.

"Nothing. I am all right."

"Kieran. What do you need?"

He kept his eyes on the pegs. "A second mower. The old one takes 3 hours, and I have not got 3 hours between a Saturday and a Tuesday. And a lad, 2 days a week. Somebody to fork while I cut."

"You will have the mower by Friday. Pick the lad yourself."

"Aye? Just like that?"

"You have asked me for 2 things in 3 years, and that was both of them. Go on. Finish your sheets."

Priya caught me on the stairs with a folder held flat against her chest.

"The building society," she said. "They have come back. They want their name on the training ground and on the sleeve of the shirt. 5 years, fixed price, money up front every August."

"How much a year?"

She told me. It was a good number, the best anybody had ever offered this club for a sleeve.

"And they want 5 years of it," I said.

"They called it certainty. Their man said a club our size ought to bite his hand off." She did his voice, plummy and patient, and Maureen laughed from the office doorway behind her.

"Tell him 1 year. The same money for the year. We sit down again next February."

"He will walk, Sam."

"He might. Then the sleeve goes to somebody else."

Maureen had stopped laughing. "That is 5 years of guaranteed income you are turning into 1. I would like the reason, for the book."

In August the money that runs down from the top of the English game was going up again. 3 years after that it would go up by a figure no man in a League One boardroom would have believed.

I had watched what that did to the price of every inch of cloth with a badge sewn near it.

"The reason is that I do not sell 5 years of this club at this February’s price," I said. "Put it down as the chairman being stubborn."

"I keep a whole column for that." She tapped the folder in Priya’s arms. "While I have you. Tonight. We have sold 3,900."

"It is a Tuesday in February, Maureen."

"It is, and Carlisle are bringing 61 people. I counted their coach list myself." tap of her pen on the banister.

"I have 11 home gates left to bank, and 6 of them are Tuesdays," she said. "A Tuesday takes about half what a Saturday does. That is what the freeze has cost us."

"Then make a Tuesday worth coming out for. Under-16s in for a pound with a grown-up, every Tuesday from now to the end. Put it on the gate tonight."

"A pound?"

"I want this ground full of 10-year-olds on a school night. They cost us nothing tonight, and they come back for 40 years."

Priya already had her phone to her ear, asking for the building society’s man by his first name.

Sadler had the team sheet done by 6. He was pinning it up outside the home dressing room when I came down, in the smell of liniment and wet kit, and he did not turn round. He only moved a shoulder so that I could read it.

No Vardy. Gray up top on his own, with Reece behind him.

"He did 90 at Goodison and an hour on Saturday, and he ran himself daft in the pair of them," Sadler said. "He sits in a coat tonight. I told him at noon and he looked at me like I had sold his dog."

"And the rest?"

"The rest start, and the minute it is won they come off. Kanté first. Then Mahrez. I want it won by half-time, and I want legs out of it by the hour." He pressed the last pin home with his thumb.

"This is Carlisle’s third game in 8 days," he said. "6 hours on a coach this morning. If we cannot run over the top of that, we have no business talking about anything."

"Nobody is talking about anything."

"Good." Now he did look at me, sideways. "Because Danny Vine rang me this afternoon, asking how many points I thought 6th place would finish on. I told him I do not look that far up."

"What did he say?"

"He said somebody ought to." Sadler picked his cap up off the kit skip. "If he asks you tonight what we are aiming at, it is 52. We stay up. Nothing else."

"It was 52 before you said it, Craig."

At a quarter to 8 Marsh Road was half full. There were a shade over 4,000 in the whole ground, and the Bovril End, made to hold 6,000, had filled along its middle and thinned to nothing at the edges.

In the far corner stood the 61, with blue scarves and a flag that said CARLISLE in white tape. They had come 330 miles to stand on an open terrace in February, and they were singing before the teams were out.

"U-NI-TED," they gave it, small in all that empty concrete. "U-NI-TED."

boom of the drum. ting, ting of the hand bell. "COME ON YOU TOWN," the Bovril End sang back, and the old song had gaps in it.

I went down to my place at the front, by the mouth of the tunnel, and put my hands on a rail so cold it burned. Kieran was there with a bucket of sand and a trowel. He was watching 22 men walk out onto his grass and wincing at every one.

"I never watch the game, boss," he said. "Not properly. I watch the divots."

"Watch the game tonight."

shriek of the whistle.

It took 9 minutes. Stokes hit a long pass out of defence, flat and hard to the left touchline. Rudd met it on the run without breaking stride and crossed it first time. crack of his boot.

Carlisle’s centre-halves were still turning. Reece came in behind them, late, the way a number 10 is supposed to, and put his instep through it from 6 yards. thwack.snick off the inside of the post, and in. 1-0.

"REECEY," Kieran roared, right in my ear, and then clapped a hand over his own mouth. "Sorry, boss."

"Do not be sorry. Do it again."

ting-ting-ting-ting of the bell. "COME ON YOU TOWN," the Bovril End had it again, fuller now.

At 1-0 I looked down and found I had let go of the rail. I could not remember the last time I had watched this team with my hands in my coat pockets.

Carlisle came at us for 10 minutes on pride alone. They won 3 corners in a row, and Maguire headed all 3 of them back the way they had come. thunk. thunk. thunk.

"U-NI-TED," from the corner, louder for the effort. "U-NI-TED."

"They are making a right mess of my 6-yard box," Kieran said. He had the trowel in his fist, waiting for them to clear out of it.

Then Maguire stepped out with the ball. He carried it 30 yards up the middle of the pitch, because nobody in blue had the legs to come and stop him, and he hit a pass down the outside of their centre-half for Gray to chase.

Nobody in our division catches Andre Gray over 40 yards. thump-thump-thump of his feet on the hard turf. The keeper came, and stopped, and came again, and Gray took it round him so wide I thought he had lost the angle.

clip of his instep. In off the far stanchion. 2-0, on 27 minutes.

ROAR off the terrace. "AN-DRE GRAY. AN-DRE GRAY." He went down on his knees and slid 5 yards toward the corner flag, and beside me Kieran sucked air in through his teeth.

"That is 2 lines of turf he has had up," he said. "I will be out there with the fork till midnight." Then, in the same breath: "Is that us 12th?"

I looked round. He had put the trowel down. He had a grass seed bag flattened against the top of the rail, the brown paper kind, and a stub of marking pencil. The back of the bag was covered in columns.

"What is that?"

"It is the table, boss. I done it at dinner, off me nan’s paper." He tilted it to the floodlight. "I only wanted to see how far we was off the bottom."

"And how far are we?"

"A fair way. But if it stops like this, and Crawley do not win, we go over the top of 3 of them. 3 places. For 1 game."

"Put it in your pocket and watch the match."

"I can do both. I do the divots and the match every week."

He could, as well. I let him.

Somewhere round the half hour the song started. I never did find out who began it.

It came from the middle of the Bovril End, 6 or 7 voices to a slow hand clap. The words were so plain that the whole terrace had them by the second time round.

"SAT-UR-DAY. TUES-DAY. WE’RE TIL-BROOK ALL THE WAY."

clap. clap. clap-clap-clap.

"SAT-UR-DAY. TUES-DAY. WE’RE TIL-BROOK ALL THE WAY."

"That is a new one," Kieran said.

On the front rail a girl of about 9 in a bobble hat was banging the hoarding with both mittens, a beat behind everybody else and louder than most of them. Her dad had paid a pound for her at the gate an hour before.