Chapter 260: Home Debut II

In the second half their manager pushed a second man up beside the first, and for 15 minutes they got crosses in.

Stokes won the first in the air. thock. Maguire got his head to the next one in a crowd of shirts and sent it back out to halfway.

"OUT," Stokes was shouting, walking up the pitch with both arms wide. "OUT. Make them go long. Let them go long."

bang of a clearance against the hoarding in front of us. Raj ducked and spilled his tea.

"Every time," he said. "Every single time I sit in the posh seats."

The boy had a second chance on the hour. Reece cut it back to him at the edge of the box, and he hit it first time with his left, and their keeper tipped it over at full stretch. fwip of glove on ball.

"Unlucky, Harry," a woman shouted from the front. "Next one, darling."

On 72 minutes Sadler took him off. Dev had him down for 70, and Gray was stripped and ready.

The board went up and the whole ground stood. The boy jogged off clapping all 4 sides. Sadler shook his hand at the touchline and said something short in his ear.

Then the boy went and sat on the bench next to Vardy and pulled a tracksuit top on over his shirt.

"HAR-RY KANE. HAR-RY KANE."

Raj was already up. He went down the steps to the front of the stand, by the end of the dugout, and held his phone up over the wall. click, then another. He came back up and turned the screen to me.

They were side by side on the bench in club tracksuit tops. Vardy was holding a water bottle out to him without looking, his eyes still on the game. The boy was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, out of breath, taking it.

"Like a pair of lads waiting for the same bus," Raj said.

"Send me that."

"What for?"

"Send it, Raj."

The other time round, this was the Tuesday he scored his first goal for Leicester, at home to Blackburn. By May he and Vardy were sat together on Leicester’s bench at Watford, in a play-off semi-final, and somebody took a picture of that bench as well.

bzz of my phone in my coat pocket. I left Raj’s picture where it was until I got home.

On 80 minutes Mahrez swung a corner in from the left. Stokes got above everybody at the near post, thup, and their keeper beat it out, and Gray, on for 8 minutes, was first to it. He bundled it over the line from a yard out with his knee.

thump of the ball into the netting. 2-0.

The Bovril End went up again. Gray ran to the bench with one finger up, straight at the boy, and the boy stood up and held his arms out.

fweeeet of the whistle on 90. 42 points.

Kieran caught me at the top of the tunnel with his hands black from the goalmouth. "Lovely feet, that lad, boss. He goes over my grass like it is carpet."

In the corridor the boy was coming out of the dressing room with a towel round his neck and a plastic cup of chocolate milk in his hand.

"Well done, Harry."

"Thank you, Mr Mercer." He looked at the cup. "I should have had 2. The second one I snatched at."

"It went over off a good save."

"I snatched at it." He turned the cup round in his hand. "Is it always this loud here on a Tuesday, Mr Mercer?"

"It is this month."

He nodded at me, polite, and went off down the corridor toward the physio room.

Stan had the kit skip half full in the kit room and was sorting the wet shirts into piles. He is 71, and he was washing this club’s kit before I was born.

"I want the boy’s shirt," I said. "From tonight."

"It goes in the wash with the rest."

"Not that one. Put it in a bag, Stan. Write the date on it."

"For the lad?"

"For the club."

He held it up. Mud down the front and grass on one sleeve, and it smelled of rain and liniment. "We have never kept a shirt in this building," he said. "Not one. The ones with holes in went to training, and the rest went in the skip."

"Then this is the first."

He folded it into a carrier bag from under the bench and wrote on the bag with a black marker, slowly, the way he writes the names on the boot bags.

squeak of the marker. 26/2/13. HOME DEBUT. KANE.

He put it on the top shelf behind the spare nets. I wanted it on a wall in the new building one day.

Maureen had the night’s numbers on my desk at 9 the next morning, with Priya behind her holding a printout.

"5,312," Maureen said. "1,000 more than Shrewsbury last Tuesday. 680 of them on a pound. Erol says they sold 400 pies." She turned a page. "That gate paid more than some Saturdays did in November."

"And the shop," Priya said. "41 shirts sold last night. 17 of them want KANE on the back. We had 6 K’s in the building, so I have rung the printer."

"Ring him again and ask for 50."

"50 K’s?" She wrote it on her hand. "And this." She put the printout on my desk.

It was a page off Tottenham’s website from that morning, where they keep a round-up of the boys they have out on loan. Halfway down, in among the Championship clubs, was our name, and his, and the score.

"I am putting it in the shop window," she said.

"Put it in the shop window."

"Now the other thing." She sat down. "I practised this on Maureen in the car park, so let me get to the end of it."

"Go on."

"Season tickets for next year go to the printer in 3 weeks. I want 10 percent on, whatever division we are in. They are queueing round the corner on a Tuesday, Sam. They would pay it tomorrow."

Maureen had her pen out already. "2,600 season tickets at about 270 pounds each. 10 percent is 70,000, near enough. I am with Priya on this one."

"No," I said. "Same price as this year, whatever division we are in. And the under-16s stay at a pound on a Tuesday."

"If we go up, that is one of the cheapest season tickets in the Championship," Maureen said.

"Good."

"You are giving the shop away," Priya said. "Why?"

"Because a man brought his boy in for a pound last night. Put 10 percent on and he looks at the price in July, and the boy watches us on the telly. I want that boy in here every year until he is bringing his own."

"You sound like Ted," Priya said.

3 years on, the clubs at the very top would agree to cap an away ticket at 30 pounds, in the same month that thousands of Liverpool supporters walked out of their own ground on 77 minutes over a 77-pound ticket.

I wanted Marsh Road’s prices settled long before that fight got anywhere near us.

Maureen wrote the 70,000 into the ledger in ink, as money we would not see.

"And your Easter money?" she said.

"Before Easter."

She picked up her pencil for the Easter line, held it over the page, and put it down again without writing anything.

At half past 2 that afternoon I had my office door shut and the exchange page open on the laptop.

The coin had been climbing all week. hum of the laptop fan. I watched the last figure change and change again, and leaned in toward the screen without meaning to.

At 14:40 it printed 31.94, and then, quickly, it went through 32.

31.91 · 9 June 2011 31.94 · 27 February 2013, 14:40

The first number was within a few cents of where I had sold the lot in June 2011, to pay this club’s debts. That summer it was right to sell. By the autumn the same coin was worth 2 dollars, and the club was clear.

Now the same number was on the screen again, and this time I was holding.

I clicked into the sell box and typed in what I would have to sell that afternoon to cover Maureen’s Easter money. I looked at it.

By the end of March the same coins would cover it 3 times over. By the second week of April, 8 times. I knew those months as well as I had known the summer of 2011.

I deleted the figure one digit at a time, and shut the lid.

At Swindon on the Saturday Sadler went by the wall and rested 5, and we lost 2-0.

They scored after 11 minutes when we gave the ball away on halfway, and again 3 minutes into the second half from a free kick, and we had 1 shot on target all afternoon. Vardy chased everything up front on his own.

The boy warmed up along the touchline for the last 40 minutes, at 2-0 down, and the call never came. Every time he jogged past our end I saw the 5,000 go by with him.

"SAT-UR-DAY. TUES-DAY," our 400 sang right through the second half anyway. It was the first game we had lost since the night at Goodison.

bzz in my pocket at the final whistle. Margaret, who had listened to it on the radio at home. "Fit and not started. 15,000. M."

THE LADDER · after Saturday 2 March 2013 Played: 30 Points: 42 Position: 11th 6th place: 46 To play: 16 Ted’s slip, taken 13 February: 100 to 1 Ted’s price, 26 February: 40 to 1

On the coach home, somewhere past Membury services, Mahrez came down the aisle and sat on the arm of Dev’s seat.

"I could have played today," he said. "I could play 3 games in 8 days. I could play 5."

"You did 180 minutes in 4 days," Dev said. "Tuesday you are green."

Mahrez went back to his seat and put his hood up, and did not take it down again till Essex.

The coach dropped us at the training ground at 20 past 9.

The players went off across the car park to their cars. crunch of the gravel. The light went on in the physio room, and Dev was already at the wall with his flask and his felt-tips, putting the afternoon’s minutes up.

Sadler went in. I went in after him.

"Read me today’s reds, Dev," Sadler said.

Dev kept his back to us. He ran his pen down the Saturday column and read them off like a shopping list.

"Kanté. Maguire. Mahrez. Murphy. Rudd. All 5 played every minute at Oldham and every minute on Tuesday. Today would have been 3 full games in 8 days."

"I wanted 3 of them," Sadler said. "I stood in this room on Thursday and I went by your wall."

"You did, gaffer."

Sadler spoke to me without taking his eyes off the chart. "And we lost at Swindon with half a team, Sam. I picked it. I will be the one in the paper on Monday for it."

"It stays on the wall, Craig. All of it. Today included."

"Swindon had their best 11 out."

"And on Tuesday they play again on the same legs, and so does everybody else in this division. Our 5 will be fresh." I looked at Dev. "Won’t they?"

"All 5 green for Tuesday," Dev said. "Vardy, amber. He did 90 today."

Sadler found the boy’s row. One box filled in for the 21 minutes at Oldham, one for Tuesday, and today’s empty.

I said it before I had decided to.

"And the boy, Tuesday?"

Sadler tapped the empty box twice with his fingernail. tap. tap.

"One goal," he said. "Against Hartlepool. Let him come off the bench and show me against somebody."