“Do you have kids, Grazier?”
Grazier didn’t like the question. “What does that matter? Does it give you a monopoly on caring? I’ve seen dead kids. Isn’t that enough?” Grazier seemed to regret the comment in an instant. Tried to give a compassionate look. It turned out better than Bish thought it would.
“For some reason, people talk to you, Ortley. The chaperones, the kids, the parents, LeBrac, Sarraf. The fucking French even talk to you. The prime minister’s thinking of sending you to the Middle East to get things sorted out over there.”
“Is that right?”
“No. But the consolation prize is that the home secretary would like you in Calais speaking to the French. Tomorrow, seven p.m.”
“So this was all just a formality? The meeting was going to happen whether I liked it or not?”
“What do you want me to say, Ortley?”
“Her mother will never agree to this,” Bish said. “Bee will never agree to this.”
“They’re not the ones making the decisions.” Grazier was searching through the cupboards now. “Where the fuck’s your green tea?”
34
Despite himself, Jamal can’t resist Haversham Park. His best memories come from that footy field down on Hoxton Bridge Road. He can see the kids out there training under the floodlights, while the wind carries the old guy’s threats from across the field. Nothing has changed after all.
In the stands he recognizes Robbie Tannous, with a few less pounds on him, and Alfie with a few pounds more. And the rest of the lads. Boys he knew as a kid, now grown men. Davie Kennedy. Charbel Bechara. The Ayoub cousins, whom he could never tell apart. They stand up when he arrives and he realizes they’re here tonight for him.
Robbie wordlessly embraces him. Alfie calls, “Jimmy,” in that singsong voice Jamal and the boys always used to greet one another. One by one the lads step forward to shake his hand.
Alfie takes out an envelope, a wad of bulging notes. “For you.”
Jamal stares at them all. Sees the guilt on their faces. He shakes his head. “I don’t need that. I’m doing fine over there.”
“It’s legit,” one of the Ayoub cousins says.
“It’s clean, brother,” Robbie says. “For Noor’s kid. If they arrest little Violette, you make sure she’s got the best to take care of her.”
Jamal’s overwhelmed, not wanting to insult them with a refusal. So he mumbles a thanks and takes the envelope. Beyond his childhood circle he can see his coach. Even when Jamal was a kid, Bill looked ancient.
“He’s getting old and tired of the little tossers coming through, yeah,” Robbie says.
“Bigger tossers than us?” Jamal asks.
“If you want to meet tossers you should see some of the kids I’m teaching.”
Jamal makes his way towards Bill. It would be disrespectful to let the old guy come to him. He tries not to think of father figures because that will remind him of his own father, Louis. And what he did. But Bill had been a father figure. He was his coach since he was a kid. He came to Jamal’s house when he was six and told his parents their son had a gift. There are times in Calais when Jamal finds himself threatening the kids he coaches with words that came out of Bill’s mouth.
They don’t speak for a while. Just watch the younger lads warm up. Alfie is shouting out some inane advice and his brother is telling him to shut up.
“I thought they weren’t letting you back in,” Bill finally says.
Jamal shrugs. “They’ve changed the rules for a couple of days.”
Bill doesn’t ask why.
“Any of them good?” Jamal asks.
“Lazy lot. No one says they want to play football anymore. Everyone wants to be a star.”
“You used to say the exact same thing about us, boss.”
That seems to lighten the mood slightly.
“What are you doing with yourself over there?”
“Bit of this and that. Training some of the local kids.”
“Any of ’em good?”
“Doesn’t really matter. Most are migrants. They just disappear after a while.”
Bill blows his whistle and walks towards the players and Jamal follows. It’s the smell of the grass. The neighborhood. It’s watching Bill’s bandy legs as he walks. It’s remembering the nights Noor and Etienne would walk down to watch him practice, and how Layla would be trailing them because she had been after Davie Kennedy with a vengeance. How they’d go to the chippy on the way home.
When training is over, Jamal runs that field with his Brackenham lads and a bunch of fourteen-year-olds. He can feel the Tannous brothers at his heels, just like the old days. They were never able to catch him back then. Jamal had never been as invincible as he was at fourteen.
The younger lads approach to taunt Alfie, who’s lying on the ground panting.
“The boss says you was even better than Rooney,” one of them says to Jamal.
“Yeah, better-looking.”
And then it’s time to go, and without saying good-bye he turns to walk away. Because he knows he shouldn’t have come. Nostalgia is a weakness.
“Jimmy lad?”