Chapter 300: Rudd II

Raj sat down on the other chair and took the roll of tickets off him, and I went to find the tea.

The tea came out of an urn on a trestle in the clubhouse, hiss, into polystyrene cups too hot to hold. It was stewed, with too much milk in it, and I drank all of it.

Most of the 1,000 stood on the bank in the sun. Kelly’s lad and his friends were halfway up it with their shirts off and tied round their waists.

Sadler started Charlie Rudd at left-back in the first half, with Harry and Jamie and Riyad and N’Golo round him.

He sat on their winger’s shoulder all half. Halfway through it their centre-forward got a shot away from 12 yards, and Rudd threw himself across it and took it on the thigh, thud, and was up before the ball had stopped rolling.

The bank started it, and Kelly’s lad started it louder.

"ONE CHARLIE RUDD! THERE IS ONLY ONE CHARLIE RUDD!"

Rudd did not look up. He went back to his line and pointed at the man he was meant to be marking.

Raj came and found me on the bank just before half-time, with a burger and fried onions. We were 2 up at the break, Vardy from 6 yards and Riyad from 20. Sadler changed 10 of the 11.

Rudd came off with the rest, and Kelly’s lad shouted it down the bank after him: "CHARLIE! THAT IS YOUR SHIRT, CHARLIE!" Rudd sat on the end of the bench with a towel over his head, and Robertson went on at left-back.

Joe stopped at the end of the bench on his way past. "Good block, Charlie."

"It stung."

"Ice on it tonight, then. Dev will want to see it."

"Is that the new one?" said Raj. "He looks about 15."

"He is 19."

"Has he played? Proper games?"

"Not in England. A season in the Scottish Third Division, for Queen’s Park. Charlie started most of our games in League One last season."

On the hour Saltcote broke from a corner of ours, 3 men against 2. Robertson had been up for the corner. He came back the length of the pitch and took the ball off the last of them on the edge of our box with his left foot.

Then he kept going. He went past the man who had lost it, played it into Quinn, took the return on the halfway line and ran with it, and the bank was shouting him on before he was into their half.

His cross came in from the byline at head height, and Big Pete met it at the far post, whump, into the roof of the net.

The bank had no song for him yet. They clapped him all the way back to his position, and then the boys halfway up found his name in 3 claps.

"ROB-ERT-SON! clap clap clap ROB-ERT-SON!"

On the bench Rudd stood up with the rest of them and clapped with them. Then he sat down and pulled the zip of his training top up to his chin, in that heat.

Raj had stopped eating. "Who is better? Straight."

"The boy."

"So Craig starts him at Millwall."

"Craig told him in Glasgow he would not start in August. Craig does what he says."

Raj looked at the bench for a while. Then he picked his burger up again.

It finished 5-0. The man from the gate came round the rope with the cash box under his arm.

"5,000 and some," he said. "Tell your secretary thank you from all of us."

Afterwards Sadler came past us to the coach with his bag over his shoulder and a bottle of water in his hand.

"Both of them did what I asked them to," he said. "I pick on the Friday." And he got on.

Sadler was finding out what the boy was with his eyes. I had seen it before he ever came south. In the life before, he started Dundee United’s first league game of that season, on the Friday night before our Millwall game, and he played in 36 league games for them before it was over.

If Sadler changed his mind about August, Charlie Rudd would hear it in Sadler’s office with a team sheet on the desk. I wanted him to have the club’s word in writing first, whatever Sadler decided.

I went to Sadler on the Monday evening.

"I want to offer Charlie 3 more years," I said. "This week."

"Whose idea?"

"Mine."

"It comes off my wage bill."

"Yes. Out of what the club takes in, like everybody’s. It puts your centre-forward further off."

He thought about it with his eyes on the window. "Give it him."

"Whatever you pick at Millwall?"

"Whatever I pick. He is a good player, and he is ours. I want him here." He went back to the sheet in front of him. "And tell him it was your idea. I am not having him think it was mine."

The heat broke that night. Thunder came over the town from the west at about 2 in the morning, crack, and the rain came and went till the Tuesday afternoon.

Maureen put it on the wages page with the rain running down her window.

"400 a week more than he is on, for 3 years," she said. "That is 62,400 pounds, on the same page as Craig’s centre-forward."

"I have told Craig."

"Then I will tell Margaret, and she will have it typed by dinnertime."

Rudd was at the end table in the canteen at dinnertime by himself, with a jacket potato and beans, and the rain on the flat roof over our heads, drum-drum-drum-drum. I sat down across from him with Margaret’s envelope.

"3 more years," I said. "And a rise. Margaret has it ready. Read it at home if you want."

He put his fork down. He did not open the envelope.

"Has he picked the team?"

"Not that he has told me. He never tells me."

"Then why now?"

"Because the club wants you here for 3 more years, whoever plays at Millwall. It was my idea, and Craig said yes to it."

He looked at the envelope on the table between us. "In April I lost it to Kettle, and nobody said anything to me about years."

"No. We should have."

"So if I am playing on the 3rd, you would still..."

"Yes."

He pushed a bit of potato round the plate. "I am not... I do not want it like this. It looks like... You know what it looks like." He stopped. "I will sign it after Millwall. Whatever happens at Millwall. Not this week."

"It will be in Margaret’s drawer."

"Does Andy know? About this?"

"No. That is between you and the club."

"Right." He picked his fork up again.

I left him to it. Out at the car I sat for a minute with the door open and the rain coming in on my knees, and wondered whether I had just told him what was coming.

I took the envelope back to Margaret. She put it in her top drawer and locked it.

On Friday the 2nd of August the sun was back, and the far pitch was green again at the edges.

Sadler took the last session before the season himself, and it finished at 12. Afterwards Stan had the skips for the Den open on the corridor floor and was packing them, shirts last. thunk of a lid going back against the wall.

I was by Kieran’s bench when Sadler came to the door of his little office with a sheet of paper in his hand.

"Charlie," he said.

Rudd went in, and the door shut.

Stan straightened up from the skips with a pair of shin pads in his hand. "Which one is it, Sam?"

"Craig has not said."

"Then I pack them both the same." He went back to it.

Rudd was in there 4 minutes by the clock over the canteen hatch. When he came out his face had nothing on it at all. He walked past me and past Stan and the skips and out through the fire door to the car park, and I heard it bang shut behind him.

I took a step after him.

"Leave him a minute, Sam," said Stan, without looking up from the skip.

"Andy," said Sadler.

Robertson was in there 2 minutes. He came out red to the ears and stood in the corridor with his hands at his sides.

Then Sadler came out with the sheet, pinned it on the board on the dressing room door, and stood back from it.

"I was wrong in Glasgow," he said to me, low. "I have told him so."

"And Charlie?"

"He asked if he was still on the coach."

He went back into his office and shut the door.

TILBROOK TOWN · Millwall (away) · Saturday 3 August 2013 Braithwaite Pett · Maguire (captain) · Stokes · Robertson Kanté Mahrez · Murphy · Quinn · Reece Vardy Coach leaves Marsh Road 9am

Underneath it Sadler had written the substitutes. Charlie Rudd was the third of them.

Robertson read the sheet and did not smile. He looked down the corridor at the fire door.

It opened, and Rudd came back in with 3 discs in their cases and a sheet of lined paper folded in 4. He walked straight up to the boy and held them out.

"Wilf’s," he said. "Millwall. 3 of their games."

Robertson took them.

"Their wide man on our side goes inside onto his left foot," said Rudd. "Every time. Show him the line. He cannot cross with his right. It is all on there." He nodded at the paper. "Their crowd will be on you from the warm-up. Do not look up at them. Just do not."

"Charlie, I..."

"I want 3 points," said Rudd. "Show him outside."

He turned to Stan, who had stopped packing.

"Is my 3 going in, Stan?"

"Same as always, son." Stan held it up folded, so he could see the number, and laid it in the skip with the substitutes’ shirts.

Sadler’s door opened again.

"Stan," he said. "Charlie warms up from the first minute tomorrow."

The door shut. Stan took the 3 back out of the skip and laid it on the very top, where he could get at it first.