Chapter 264 - 6 Real Ones II

He took the notebook out of his coat pocket, opened it to a clean page, and wrote the date at the top.

"Afternoon session’s at 2," he said. "Stand somewhere else."

I stood behind the far goal by Kieran’s shed. For an hour and a half Wilf did not look across at me once. Every few minutes his pen moved.

The boy found me at 4, at the edge of the car park, with his kit bag over his shoulder. He stopped a yard away, the way he always stops.

"Mr Mercer. Can I ask you something?"

"Go on."

"Am I going back to Tottenham? Early, I mean. Somebody showed me the paper. It said you picked me Saturday."

"I did pick you. You are not going back early. You are here till the 22nd of May."

"I should have scored."

"Harry." I waited until he looked at me. "None of this is yours to carry. It is mine."

"Yes, Mr Mercer."

He looked down at the gravel.

"There was an old man at the fence all afternoon," he said. "In a flat cap. He wrote down everything I did."

"That is Wilf. He is our chief scout."

"Is that bad?"

"It is the best thing that has happened to you since you got here. He should have been there on the first day."

He nodded, and went back in toward the canteen.

At 5 the lights were on over the near pitch, and Quinn was out there with him.

The boy played the ball into Quinn’s feet at the edge of the box, and the moment it left his boot he was running into the 6-yard box for the return. pock of the pass. thwack of the finish. Over and over, until Kieran came out of the shed with his keys.

Wilf was in the canteen at 1 o’clock on the Tuesday with a mug of tea and the notebook open in front of him. He had filled 2 pages.

He turned it round so I could see. Small, sloping handwriting, full of arrows.

"2 sessions," he said. "I watched him the way you said. As if he walked in off the street."

"And?"

"He is a goalscorer with no goal in him this month." He tapped a line on the page. "The finishing is the best I have seen at this club. Either foot. He knows where the corners are with his eyes shut."

"But."

"But in a game, and I saw it at Oldham as well, he goes looking for the ball, because that is what he has been taught all his life. He ends up 30 yards from where the goals are scored."

"Will he learn it?"

"Give him 2 years and somebody else’s patience." He turned the notebook back round. "It is not here and it is not now. That is what I would have told you that weekend, over the crossword, if you had asked me."

"I know."

"I am saying it anyway. He is a good lad. I will say that as well. He stays out after training and he does not complain, and he says thank you to the tea lady."

"Thank you, Wilf."

"For bad news?"

"For telling me."

He shut the notebook. I had not finished.

"There is another one," I said. "A left-back. Queen’s Park, in Glasgow. He is 19."

Wilf looked at me over the mug.

"Queen’s Park are amateurs. They pay expenses. They are in the bottom division up there, with Rangers in it this year."

"He takes ticket bookings on the phone at Hampden in the week."

"And who told you about a 19-year-old on the phones at Hampden?"

"I cannot tell you where I heard it. I can tell you nobody has seen him play. Not me, and nobody I trust." I put both hands flat on the table. "That is why it is you, Wilf. And that is why it is first."

He opened the notebook at the back page and wrote at the top: QUEEN’S PARK. LEFT-BACK. PHONES.

"I will go after Easter," he said.

"If he is any good, somebody in Scotland will see it by the summer. Go before Easter."

He finished his mouthful of tea before he answered. Then he wrote NEXT WEEK under PHONES.

Alfie’s dad caught me at the kiosk an hour before kick-off on the Tuesday night, with Alfie on his shoulders in the KANE shirt.

"He wants to know," his dad said, "if he should still wear it. After Saturday."

Alfie had both hands on his dad’s head and was looking down at me.

"Wear it," I said. "He is ours till May."

Ted was behind them in the queue for a programme, with the Gazette folded to page 46 under his arm.

"You put your name on it," he said.

"I did."

"You should never have had a name to put on it." He tucked the paper inside his coat. "Go and sit down, Sam, and let Craig get on with it."

When Sadler walked out to the dugout, the Bovril End sang his name.

"ONE CRAIG SADLER. THERE’S ONLY ONE CRAIG SADLER." clap. clap. clap.

He did not look up. He touched the peak of his cap once, and sat down.

Crawley had come up with us the season before, and they came to Marsh Road to sit deep and take a point home. It was tight and quiet, and 0-0 at half-time.

Quinn was back in the hole, and every pass we had went through him. On 52 minutes he took a pass from Kanté on the half-turn and slid it between their 2 centre-halves, and Vardy was already gone. thump of the shot into the bottom corner.

Vardy turned and pointed at the sky.

"QUINN-Y, QUINN-Y," the Bovril End sang.

With 5 minutes to go the boy came on for Vardy. He touched the ball twice. The second time he laid it off to Reece and ran straight into the middle, the way Quinn had fed him on the Monday night, and the cross came a yard too long for him.

At the back Stokes ran the line with his right arm. Every time Crawley looked up to hit it long, the arm went up and our back 4 stepped out together, and Maguire shouted it again for the ones who had not seen.

The young ones held that line until the whistle, every one of them.

Crawley never had a shot on target.

In the corridor afterwards Stokes passed me with a bag of ice strapped to his ankle and stopped.

"It is March, chairman," he said.

"It is."

"I said give me till March." He hitched the ice up. "That was a clean sheet with a 20-year-old next to me and a 19-year-old at left-back. 46 points. You can write that down."

46 points, and 13 to play.

Marsh had asked Dev to get me out to the training ground after the game. Dev was in the physio room at 10 when I got there, on his knees by the treatment couch with a tape measure round Lenny Marsh’s knee.

snap of the tape going back into its case. "41 and a half," he said. "The other one is 38."

Marsh was sitting on the couch with his good leg swinging and his bad one straight out in front of him, bare, the knee bigger than the other one and a different colour. His sheet on the wall was red for every game since the Shorehaven one.

"Ask him," Marsh said, when I came in. "Go on, Dev. Tell the chairman what you told me."

Dev wrote the number on his card. "13 games left. Marsh is in the squad for every one of them. A start every third game, 60 at most. The rest on the bench, 20 minutes at the end when it is safe."

"Safe," Marsh said. "That is 20 minutes at 3-0 with the game already won."

"I mean the knee lasts till May."

Marsh looked at me. He is 34. He was captain here the year the receivers were in the office.

"I told you in February I was short of agains," he said. "I am shorter now. I would sooner have 6 real ones than 13 safe ones. 6 games, with no clock on me in any of them."

"The knee."

"I know what it means for the knee, Sam. I have been carrying it since August. I know it better than his wall does."

Dev stood up off his knees. "Chairman."

The first time this spring came round, Lenny Marsh’s knee went in March. I knew the month. I had never known the day or the minute. We were in March now, and a man of 34 was asking me to let him walk into it.

The map in my head said no.

"Do not look at me like that," Marsh said. "Like Dev looks at that wall. I have been looked at like that since Christmas."

"His knee is his, Dev," I said. "The wall was my rule, and I am taking it off his sheet. You keep counting the minutes. He picks his 6 and takes them to Craig, and Craig says yes or no."

"Then I want that tape on his knee every morning," Dev said. "And if it is up by a centimetre on the morning of a game, he does not play it. Whatever he picked."

"Done," Marsh said.

"Done," I said.

Dev took a biro out of his top pocket, went to the wall, and struck a line through the plan at the top of Marsh’s sheet. scrape of the nib on the card. He drew 6 boxes underneath it, freehand, and printed above them.

DEV’S WALL · MARSH, L. (own sheet) Squad every game. Start 1 in 3, 60 max. Else bench, 20 mins when safe. MARSH PICKS 6. GAFFER SAYS YES OR NO. NO CLOCK. DEV COUNTS. TAPE EVERY MORNING. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Marsh got off the couch, slowly, good leg first. He walked over and stood in front of the 6 empty boxes with his hands on his hips, and looked at them one at a time.

Then he turned to me.

"6," he said. "You can have the first one. I will pick the other 5."