Chapter 299: Rudd I

Sadler and I watched Rudd do 4 more of them. Then Sadler went inside with his sheet, and I drove home, and Rudd was still out there by himself in the last of the light.

On the Monday I went to fetch the new left-back from his digs at half past 6. Priya had found him a room over the baker’s on the high street, and I wanted to drive him out to the training ground myself on his first morning.

The baker’s wife came to the shop door in her apron with flour to the elbows. ting of the bell over it.

"He went at half past 5, love," she said. "Said he could not sleep for the ovens. He asked me the way to the training ground and walked it."

It is 40 minutes on foot. Kieran had the sprinklers going on the far pitch, tick-tick-tick-tick, throwing water over grass the heat had been browning at the edges for days. Behind him, dragging the hose to the next corner in a black-and-white hooped Queen’s Park top, was Andy Robertson.

"He come over the fence at 20 past 6, boss," Kieran said. "Asked if he could help. I let him have the hose."

"You were meant to wait for me," I said.

"I am sorry, Mr Mercer." He put the hose down and came over, wiping his hand on his shorts. "They start the ovens at 4. I lay there smelling bread for an hour and a half, and then I thought I might as well come and see where I work."

"Did you eat?"

"She gave me a roll on the way out. Still warm." He grinned. "I think I am going to like it there."

At 7 o’clock a car came in at the gate, the car that came in at 7 every morning, and parked in the same space by the fence. Nobody got out of it for a while.

Then Charlie Rudd got out with his bag on his shoulder and came across the grass.

Robertson met him halfway. "Charlie? I am Andy Robertson. Mr Sadler said you would be in first."

"I normally am."

"Sorry. I will come at 8 tomorrow, if you like."

"Come when you want."

Rudd looked at the hose in the wet grass, and at Kieran.

"Do not let him give you the hose every morning," he said. "He will."

"I will, as well," said Kieran.

Rudd shook Robertson’s hand. "Charlie Rudd," he said, and went in to change.

At 8, in kit Stan had found him, Robertson stood in the second group on the left, a yard from Rudd. Joe Tredwell had set out a channel of cones 10 yards wide down the touchline, with the ball fed in from halfway.

"Left-backs," Joe said. "Charlie first. Andy, you are coming at him."

The first ball went in. Robertson took it and dropped his shoulder, and Rudd went through the ball and through him, hard and clean, thump. The boy went over on the dry grass and slid a yard.

He got up laughing and went back to halfway.

"Again," said Joe, and clapped twice.

The second time, Robertson pushed it past Rudd’s outside foot and went after it. Rudd turned with him and was a yard down after 5 strides and 3 yards down after 10. The cross came in low and hard to the near post, thwack, and Andre Gray put it in without breaking stride.

"Charlie," said Joe. "What did you see?"

"His left foot."

"Before that."

Rudd wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt. "Nothing. He was gone."

Joe wrote it down. Sadler watched from the far side of the channel and said nothing all morning.

At the water break the 2 of them ended up at the same crate of bottles.

"Where do you live, Charlie?" said Robertson.

"Crayford. Over the river."

"Is that far?"

"Half an hour, if the tunnel is clear." Rudd drank. "You walked here."

"I did."

"From the high street." Rudd looked at him over the bottle. "In this."

"It was not this at 6," said Robertson. "At 6 it was lovely."

Rudd put the bottle back in the crate and went back to the channel before Joe called them.

Priya rang me on the Wednesday at 2. "Can you come down? The queue is out of the door and down the steps, and my girl has gone home with the heat."

The ticket office at Marsh Road is 2 windows and a back room with a desk fan in it, whirr, pushing the hot air from one wall to the other.

The queue went down the corridor, round the corner and out into the sun.

Robertson was in the back room, waiting to have his photograph taken for the programme.

"I can do a window," he said, "if you show me the prices."

"Can you work a card machine?" said Priya.

"I worked in the ticket office at Hampden. Full-time."

Priya looked at him. Then she pulled out the second chair. "Sit there."

I stood at the back by the fan and watched.

A man in his 70s with a cap folded in his hand paid in cash for 2 on the Bovril End. chink of the coins going into the tray.

"Last season stood up on it," the man said. "Me and my brother. We want the same place."

"Where is your place?"

"Behind the goal. Near the back, on the right, by the steps."

Robertson wrote it on the envelope in capitals, BACK, RIGHT, BY STEPS, and slid the tickets across. "It is a terrace, so I cannot keep it for you. I have written it on anyway."

"Good lad," the man said, and put the envelope inside his cap.

The woman behind him wanted to know about Millwall.

"Sold out on Monday," said Priya from the other window. "All 1,600. There are 6 coaches going, and they are full as well."

"My son says he will go on the train, then."

"Tell him to come on a coach if he can," said Priya. "Margaret has had a letter from their police about away supporters."

Kelly’s lad was 6 back with 2 friends, all 3 in football shirts in the heat, paying the young supporters’ price for the middle of the end. When he had his change he looked up properly.

"Are you the Scottish lad?"

"I am."

"What are you doing selling tickets?"

"Priya was short."

The lad thought about it. "Are you better than Charlie?"

"I do not know yet," said Robertson. "Charlie is very good."

"He is from just over the river. He is one of ours."

"Then I had better be good as well," said Robertson, and printed the ticket and tore it off, rrip.

Priya came and stood with me at the fan.

"We passed last summer’s total this morning," she said, "and it is not August yet. It is the Championship, at last year’s price." She watched him a moment. "140 since he sat down. I have done 90."

"Pay him for it."

"I tried. He would not let me."

The heat held all that week and into the next. Kieran was out at 5 with the sprinklers and still losing ground by teatime. "It drinks it faster than I can put it on, boss," he said. "I done the far pitch twice before breakfast."

Doyle’s scholars had been back since the 1st, and Kieran’s bench ran the whole length of the corridor now. They changed on it every morning with their bags underneath.

"THAT BENCH, SAM," Doyle said, going past me with a net of balls. "BEST THING IN THIS PLACE. DO NOT TELL KIERAN."

In the second week Rudd’s car was in the car park by 6. By the Thursday Robertson was sitting on the kerb waiting for it, and on the Friday they were both out on the far pitch under Kieran’s sprinklers before Joe had his cones down.

"They are costing me my quiet, boss," said Kieran. "I used to have till 7."

Joe found me by the canteen hatch on the Friday dinnertime.

"Rudd went to Wilf on Monday and asked him for Millwall," he said. "Wilf gave him 3 of their games from last season on disc. Charlie asked me to sit with him after training and watch one."

"Did you?"

"Twice." Joe turned his notebook over in his hand. "He wanted the wide man on their right. Where he runs, which foot, what he does when you show him the line. He did not ask me about anything else."

"What did you tell him?"

"Only what he had seen already. He had been through all 3 at home before he asked me." He put the notebook away. "Craig asked for my notes on the 2 of them on Wednesday. He has not given them back."

Raj drove me to Saltcote on the Saturday in the Vauxhall, with all 4 windows down.

"Is Charlie playing?" he said, on the estuary road.

"First half."

"And the Scottish lad the second half?"

"So Joe says."

Saltcote Town play 20 minutes up the estuary, in a field behind a pub. There is a clubhouse with a tin roof, a grass bank down one side and a rope down the other. Margaret had arranged the game, and I had put one condition on it: the gate was all theirs.

A man at a card table by the gate was tearing a raffle ticket off the roll for every 5 pounds that went into his cash box.

"We have never had 1,000 in here," he said. "Not in my time. That is our floodlights paid for the winter."

3 summers ago we had been in administration, and a gate like that would have paid our wages for a week.

"Do you want a hand?" said Raj.

The man looked up at him. "Can you count?"

"I drive a cab."