A Week in December

  ‘The beautiful game,’ said Spike to the Egyptian left back, Ali al-Asraf.

  ‘Fuck off,’ said al-Asraf.

  Spike wondered whether he’d said the right thing. ‘Is what Pelé say,’ he explained. But had something been lost in the translation from Portuguese to Polish to English? ‘The beautiful game. The ... lovely play?’ He felt the links of interbabel.com clicking uselessly in his head.

  Al-Asraf spat at his feet and trotted off to run through some cones with Danny Bective and Sean Mills.

  The next part of training was ‘One-Touch-He’. The players assembled in a circle with one, a small African Spike didn’t know, standing in the middle. When they were ready, Archie Lawler threw a ball to one of them and he hit it first time to another, who side-footed it first time to a third, who chipped it to Spike, who nodded it on towards Vladimir. At that moment, Vlad turned and moved away, so the African in the middle was able to nip in and take the ball.

  All the players began laughing, and the one next to Spike came up to him and flicked his ear, hard, with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Then every player in the circle came up and did the same thing. Seventeen stinging flicks were administered by seventeen laughing millionaires, before the game resumed, with Spike as ‘he’. He was sweating and panting before a slightly underhit pass enabled him to dispossess Sean Mills with an ugly lunge. When Mills had stopped swearing, Spike enjoyed flicking his ear along with the others.

  After showering, Spike explored the ground-floor warren further. There was a resident doctor in a small office of his own and, opposite, was a glass-panelled door with the words ‘Nutrition Team’ stencilled in black. In the treatment room afterwards, Spike was offered a rub-down by Kenny Hawtrey, the chief physio. He saw that two of the other players were already stretched out on the green and white couches having their calf muscles worked over and thought it would be the right thing to do. On the table next to him was Danny Bective.

  Spike tried to remember what the assistant manager had said about him on television. Yes. ‘Archie say you have incredible motor,’ said Spike.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a Sherman Pathfinder.’

  ‘Er ... And you do much running.’

  ‘Yeah. They like that.’

  ‘What happens now?’ said Spike.

  ‘Normally we have dinner upstairs and go home. But because there’s an evening match we’ll have a big meal at teatime in the hotel near the ground.’

  When they had had their showers and were in the car park, nineteen men climbing alone into nineteen large cars, Danny said, ‘By the way, mate. Word of warning. Don’t let Kenny Hawtrey rub you down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Shirt-lifter.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Iron hoof.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Fuckin’ bummer, innit?’

  ‘Aah ...’

  Something about Danny’s pose made Spike understand. As he was about to climb into his car, one of the press liaison people took his elbow.

  ‘Tadeusz, do you mind giving a quick autograph? Young lad over there, he’s bunked off school to come and see you.’

  ‘Sure, I meet him.’

  Standing by the exit from the car park was a youth of about sixteen, slightly built, with curly brown hair and a few pink spots on his chin. He wore a tee shirt, jeans off his hip and a blue hooded top.

  ‘Hello. I am Spike Borowksi.’ He held out his hand to the young man.

  ‘Finbar Veals,’ he said softly, looking down at his new white trainers.

  None of the three syllables sounded like a name to Spike. English people didn’t seem to be called John Robinson any more; but linguistically it had been a bad day all round.

  ‘You want I sign your book?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks.’ Finn held out a battered school notebook.

  ‘How long you support the team?’ said Spike. ‘Since you a kid?’

  ‘No, I ... er, I don’t. I ... support a different team.’

  ‘What?’ Spike laughed. ‘Maybe you support Chelsea!’

  ‘No, I ... It doesn’t matter. I wanted to meet you because I’m thinking of signing you in my Dream Team eleven. Do you know that website?’

  ‘No. You tell me.’

  Finn blushed. ‘The Buyers’ Guide said you’re like Carlton King with a first touch, or Gary Fowler with an IQ.’

  Spike laughed. ‘Is very rude. Your newspapers too. They say something like I play like Orlando if he stop being a girl. Is not kind to Orlando. Just because he wear earrings.’

  ‘No, I think it’s because he dives. Do you think you are going to score a lot of goals? Are you feeling confident?’ The meeting was important to Finn, and he found his natural shyness ebbing.

  ‘If I get picked by the boss I will score. But we have four strikers, so is not easy.’

  ‘But he won’t play Vladimir Stoev now you’re here, will he? He hasn’t scored for months.’

  ‘Is strong player.’ Spike was thinking of the elbow to Charles Watiyah’s face.

  ‘They say he only scores if there’s a full moon,’ said Finn.

  Spike laughed. ‘OK ... Finbar? That your name?’

  ‘Finn.’

  ‘OK. Finn. You also go to training ground of team you support?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But here you come.’

  ‘It was important for me to see you in the flesh.’

  ‘For a place in your team which is not in flesh.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Finn. ‘I know it sounds weird, but all the guys in my year have teams in Dream Team and I don’t want to be relegated.’

  Spike looked at him oddly. ‘I think you live in dreamland. Like Disneyland, yeah?’

  ‘Well, no, I think it’s the real thing.’

  ‘And who else in your special team?’

  Finn went through his current eleven. There were two England international centre halves, a Congolese enforcer in front of them, a Brazilian show pony on the wing and a giant Dane in goal. They were his big-money signings. The rest had been squeezed out of the budget that remained to him; they included a psychopathic Guinean with a dyed white goatee, a Welshman on a short fuse and a one-sided Colombian. He had sold a French striker and needed a steady supply of goals.

  ‘I see,’ said Spike. ‘You make some good choice and some bad ones, I think. Now you meet me, what you say? Think I can score goals on the Internet?’

  ‘You have to score them on the pitch, then they can be counted on the—’

  ‘I know, I understand,’ said Spike. ‘But did you think I was good enough in training? You watch?’

  ‘Yes, I saw.’ Finn felt suddenly shy again. How was he to tell this man he needed to watch out for Sean Mills and Danny Bective, how they’d shafted the prospects of the last expensive striker?

  ‘I must go now,’ said Finn. His encounter with reality had left him drained.

  ‘You want I take you somewhere in the car?’

  ‘No, no, thanks. I’m fine. Thank you for the autograph.’

  Finn turned and jogged off, out of the car park and down the pavement by the suburban street.

  Spike watched him go and frowned. Why wasn’t the kid at school?

  Finn was already in the back of a black taxi. It was useful that the training ground was in the right direction for his second point of call on his day out: a pet cemetery in Esher.

  He’d set his alarm for 8.32 that morning and called the direct line to the school office while his voice was still sounding fogged by sleep. Registration was at 8.40 and the form teachers were in the classroom by 8.30 so he had every chance of getting Peggy, the friendly school secretary. His luck – or timing – was in, and it was easy to convince Peggy that he felt ‘terrible’. He did: he always felt awful when he first woke up. His father had long since left the house, while his mother, he guessed, would be drinking milky coffee in one of the larcenously priced delis on Holland Park Avenue. Finn went downstairs in his tee shirt and pyjama bottoms and made himself
some hot chocolate and a toasted bagel with crunchy chocolate spread. He nodded to Marla, the Brazilian cleaner, as she passed the fizzing iron over one of his father’s shirts in the laundry room. Marla spoke hardly any English and never got to the end of the few words she did know. ‘Good mor’ was as far as she went in greeting; she thought Finn’s mother was called ‘Vaness’.

  It was a big day ahead. As well as checking out a striker for his virtual team, Finn was going to a place recommended by Ken, his best friend at school. Ken wasn’t really called Ken, he was really called Leo, but when you typed Leo as predictive text on your mobile, it came out as Ken.

  Ken told Finn he was mad to score his dope in Pizza Palace from a runner working for that king of rip-off artists, Liston Brown in Muswell Hill. He should go to the main supplier – to a farmer. So, at Esher station, he gave the taxi an address near West End Common. Paying for cabs was easy for Finn, as he always had cash, thanks to his Allied Royal debit card. His balance was kept permanently topped up by a trickle-down from one of his father’s accounts; John Veals fiercely resented high-street bank charges and had set up the arrangement so that Finn could never overdraw.

  The taxi pulled up outside a large low villa with a gravel forecourt and a waist-high brick wall. Next to the wrought iron gates was a signboard, like those announcing bed and breakfast or a two-star hotel in Bexhill. In blue letters on a red background, it said ‘Snoozetime Pet’s Rest’. Finn rang the bell by the locked gates, wondering vaguely what his English teacher had said about apostrophes.

  The front door of the house opened, and a slightly hunched man came towards Finn over the gravel. He wore an anorak over tracksuit bottoms with brown leather shoes, had smudged spectacles on a long cord round his neck and grey hair sticking out under the sides of a purple baseball cap. There was something wrong about old people wearing baseball caps, Finn felt; and this man looked as though he’d slept in his clothes for a few days.

  ‘I’ve come about a cat,’ said Finn, as instructed by Ken.

  ‘I see. And is Pussy still with us?’

  ‘Er ... Yes, but it’s kind of on its last legs. Can you show me some, like, you know, what you do if I bring it.’

  The man unlocked the gate. He held out his hand to Finn.

  ‘Simon Tindle,’ he said. ‘This way please.’

  ‘Yeah, right, er ... Finn, yeah,’ Finn mumbled.

  ‘Now then,’ said Tindle, ‘I can begin by showing you the Garden of Remembrance. We have a special position here, backing on to the common. Would you like to tell me a little about the beloved? I hope you don’t think I’m being rude.’

  ‘Rude? No. Why?’

  ‘I’d hate it if you thought I was being rude. People can take things the wrong way and I don’t want to cause offence.’

  They were walking beside the house down an alley, through a gate and out into a large grassed area of perhaps an acre, criss-crossed by gravel paths.

  ‘Most of my friends,’ said Tindle, ‘prefer to take the departed home with them but one or two are buried here. You can see all our different stone memorials.’

  ‘When you say “friends” ...’

  ‘I call them friends because I don’t like to think of them as clients. You’d be my friend if you decide to leave Pussy with us.’

  ‘I see. So I, like, bring the ... like, the body ... and then what?’

  ‘I give you a special heat-sealed thermabag now. You pop Pussy into it when she passes, then you bring her down here on the train. Or in the car. It doesn’t matter, so long as it’s within twenty-four hours. After that, it can get a little ... I hope you don’t think I’m being—’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. Bring him down here.’

  ‘Oh. Pussy’s a boy is he?’

  ‘Well, whatever, bring her down and then?’

  ‘We have a crematorium. You see over there? With the chimney.’

  Finn followed the direction of Tindle’s pointing finger to a large outhouse.

  ‘Looks like Auschwitz,’ Finn said, without thinking. They were always doing the Holocaust at school. That and climate change.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Finn, ‘I didn’t mean to be—’

  ‘No, not to worry, it’s very upsetting when the dear one is ready to pass. I can show you inside the crematorium if you like. It’s very humane.’

  ‘No, that’s all right. I believe you. Then what?’

  ‘Then I give you the cremains.’

  ‘The “cremains”?’

  ‘Yes, the ashes if you prefer. I think that sounds rather coarse, though. Cremains is more dignified, don’t you think?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And we choose a casket. I can show you a selection when we go indoors. We can do that now, if you like. And most of my friends like a cup of tea after the cremation. And then you take Pussy home.’

  They were now standing outside the aluminium-framed French doors at the back of the house.

  ‘What I really wanted,’ said Finn, following the formula Ken had told him, ‘was the full deluxe service with grass covering.’

  Tindle stopped. ‘Oh, I see. Aren’t you rather ... I hope you don’t think I’m being rude, but aren’t you rather young?’

  ‘Eighteen,’ said Finn, pulling himself up to his full height.

  ‘All right. Come on then. This way.’

  Finn followed Tindle down some crazy paving, past a bronze bust of an evil-looking German Shepherd with the words ‘Ever Faithful’ on a plaque beneath it, round the back of the crematorium and into a dropped level of garden, where there was another low shed, this time without a chimney. Tindle took a bunch of keys from a purse in his anorak pocket and fumbled with the two heavy padlocks on the door. He held the door back for Finn.

  It took Finn’s eyes a moment to adjust to the overhead lights.

  ‘Ah, methinks I see the metal halide blink!’ said Tindle. ‘The 1,000-watt bulb can put out your eyes if you’re not careful. But they put out ever so much more light than your old fluorescent.’

  ‘Heat, too,’ said Finn.

  ‘It would be a lot hotter without the fan up there. But it has to be pretty hot. And humid.’

  Now that Finn was standing next to Tindle in the germinating atmosphere, he could tell his guess about the old man’s clothes was right.

  Marijuana plants filled the shed from wall to wall. They were potted on wooden trestles at about waist height, while the lights, in long galvanised metal shades, were suspended on chains from the ceiling, drenching each plant, forcing its growth, so that the room was filled with an odour that made Finn’s mouth go dry and his stomach tense in reflex.

  ‘This is a hydroponic system,’ said Tindle. ‘That means no soil. It’s cleaner, quicker and you get more weed. Instead of getting the nutrients haphazardly from the soil, the plants get it in exactly the right amount through what we put in the water.’

  Finn inspected the array of tubes and pipes that fed the flourishing plants in their plastic containers, sweating under the lights. They had woolly buds around the top, the promise of power, of great synapse-blocking and reality adjustment.

  ‘This is Aurora Indica, very potent,’ said Tindle. ‘This little madam is my version of Super Skunk, which was an attempt to beef up the famous Skunk Number One. I’ve crossed it with a strain of Purple Haze for quick effect.’

  ‘Sounds great.’

  ‘Let me show you through here,’ said Tindle, opening a locked door at the end of the room. ‘In here we use the sea-of-green method.’

  In the second area, the plants made a denser, lower canopy. The idea was to pack the space with smaller plants that matured earlier and force a continuous year-round harvest, Tindle explained. ‘We’re concentrating all the effort in the main cola, this bit here at the top of the plant,’ he said. ‘It gets so heavy that we have to support it with chicken wire. When they get nice and tall, we tie the top back down on the stem, like here, leave it for a week and then let it go – and hey pre
sto, it’s got twice as bushy. It’s a year-round harvest festival.’

  ‘Yeah, great,’ said Finn. Something about the room made him uneasy. It was all so unnatural. When he’d first read about marijuana he’d pictured it as a mild weed that grew beside the road in sunshine and was smoked by laughing girls in California. This shed looked like a factory, where everything was forced, intensified.

  ‘Well, anyway, that’s enough horticulture,’ said Tindle. ‘Now let’s do some business. Shall we go to my office?’

  ‘All right.’ Finn felt nervous. He knew how much he paid at Pizza Palace to Liston Brown’s runner for half a sandwich bag of weed and he knew it ought to be cheaper if he was cutting out the middle man, but he wasn’t sure he’d know the jargon. If he was confused, he’d be too embarrassed to reveal his ignorance.

  Tindle locked the grow shed and led him over the crazy paving to the French doors at the back of his house. With his foot, he cleared away a tortoiseshell cat that was in the way.

  ‘That your cat?’ said Finn.

  ‘No, it’s next door’s,’ said Tindle, pulling back the doors. ‘I haven’t got pets. I don’t like animals. I’m allergic.’

  Indoors, he pulled the flap down on a walnut bureau, raised his greasy glasses on their string and opened a notebook. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what can I do you for?’

  ‘I want something that’ll give a great high. Big, powerful, but you know, no ill effects.’

  ‘And what quantity are we talking about, young man?’

  ‘I ... Er, what, you know, what do you, like, deal in?’

  ‘Half a kilogram is the minimum I do. I could do you half a kilo of Super Skunk Two, cut with Aurora. That’s a popular mixture. It’s good value, too, because you don’t need much of it.’

  ‘What’s it feel like?’

  ‘I don’t smoke myself because of my allergies. But I believe it’s as good as anything you’ll get in London.’