Chapter 312: Steel II

On the train I let myself do the sum. A lad across the aisle was asleep with his tie in his hand, and the carriage smelt of somebody’s chips.

Sold on the evening of the 18th, the coin I had given him for 2 and a half million pounds would have fetched more than 7 million. I had given up the difference so that, if Geneva was full in the last week, I would be 2 million short and not 4 and a half.

Maureen reached into the back cover of the green book when I came in and took out the sheet she had folded away in June, with 7,000,000 at the top and a line under it and nothing under the line.

She opened it flat on her desk and wrote under the line for the first time.

"Steel mornings, 500,000. Today, 3,500,000." She drew a second line and wrote the sum. "4 million in. About 3 million to come by the 29th."

"A million from the quiet man’s mornings, from the 18th," I said. "And 2 from the Mile End Road in the last week."

"His bank will let him start again on the 18th?"

"He has said so."

"And the Mile End Road has room?"

"That is what I will find out."

Margaret was in the doorway with her coat over her arm. "And if it has not?"

"Then I am 2 million short on the 29th."

"And the stand?"

"The contract waits till the money is in. I sell the rest in December."

"You told us nothing after the 30th."

"I did. If Geneva is full, I break it."

Margaret looked at the sheet. Then she took the pad out of her coat pocket and wrote on it.

"Then you tell me at this desk the day he tells you," she said. "Whatever he says."

"I will."

"The steel’s money is in the account." She put the pad away. "I am ordering the steel tomorrow at 9."

"The date was the 15th."

"The 15th was the last day. I am not sitting on 1,463,000 pounds for 8 days while somebody at that mill decides to put his prices up again." She went to ring the engineer.

That night I moved everything left on the laptop back onto paper.

The engineer drove over from his firm near Chelmsford at half past 8 on the Thursday morning with the order in a plastic wallet. He laid it on Margaret’s desk, open at the last page.

Maureen sat beside her with the club’s account on her screen, so that the same figure was in front of all of us.

"If the mill puts its prices up again in December," Margaret said, "what happens to this?"

"Nothing. The price is fixed the day you sign."

"Then I sign." At 9 o’clock she signed and turned the order round to him.

"May I use your phone?" he said.

He rang the fabricator in the north and read them the order number twice, and the figure. Then he listened for a long time.

"They have you in the December rolling," he said, when he put it down. "Fabricated in the new year, delivered in April. We start the week after your last home game."

He put the copy of the order in his plastic wallet and shook Margaret’s hand, then mine, and she walked him down the stairs.

Maureen wrote the order number beside the steel line in the green book. Then she sat with her pen over the page for a while without writing anything.

"So it comes down in May," she said. "Whatever happens now."

That afternoon the paper from my laptop went into the vault at Fenchurch Street with the rest.

Margaret had rung Danny herself at 10, with him on the speaker so she could write while he talked.

"Is it ordered?" Danny said.

"It is ordered. The money was in the club’s account before I signed. You can print that."

"Can I print that the terrace closes in May?"

"You printed that in June."

"I want to print it again, with a date on it." He paused. "Anything from you, Sam?"

"Tell them the price is held."

He had it on the front of the Gazette on the Friday.

TILBROOK GAZETTE · Friday 8 November 2013STEEL ORDERED FOR THE NEW BOVRIL END The steel for the new Bovril End was ordered yesterday morning. The terrace closes after the last home game in May. Its roof will be lifted onto new columns and carried back over the car park, with about 4,500 seats under it for next season. Season ticket prices are held, as the supporters’ trust asked in June. "The money was in the club’s account before I signed," said club secretary Margaret Bell.

By dinnertime Priya had a list on her desk 2 pages long.

"They want a piece of it, Sam," she said. "A step, a bit of barrier, anything. 61 so far, and the phone has not stopped."

"Write every name down."

"I have. Kieran says ask him in May."

On the Sunday, Wigan came to Marsh Road with 2 days’ rest after a European night on the Thursday. They had won the FA Cup in May and gone down from the Premier League in the same month.

At 11 o’clock, long before the gates opened, a man with a camera round his neck asked Kieran at the front gate if he could go and take a picture of the Bovril End while it was empty.

"He has got the paper in his hand, boss," Kieran said on the phone. "What do I say?"

"Let him in."

By half past 12 there were 30 of them. I went down and stood at the corner by the front wall.

An old man in a flat cap stood at the wall beside me and held his daughter’s handbag while she climbed halfway up the steps with a camera.

"Not me in it," he called up to her. "Just the end."

She took the empty steps and the roof, and came back down.

"He has never seen it with nobody on it," she said to me. "Not once, since he was a boy."

"There was always somebody in front of me," the old man said.

A dad lifted a little boy onto the bottom barrier and held him by the back of his coat. Somebody had brought a proper camera on legs and was taking the roof from the corner, click, click, click.

Kieran came and stood beside me with his hands in his pockets.

"They are all over my steps in their outdoor shoes, boss," he said. "I swept them at 9."

"Will you sweep them again?"

"Course I will. At half 1."

Kelly’s lad came in at 2 with his drum on a strap round his neck and the Gazette rolled up in his back pocket. He came straight to me.

"Is the rail in it?" he said. "The one you said."

"It is in front of every row."

"Every row? At the back as well?"

"Every row in that end."

He looked at the terrace, with all the people on it taking pictures of steps, and nodded once.

"Right," he said, and went up into the middle behind the goal, where his mates were unrolling the bedsheet. OUR END TILL MAY went up over the barrier at 20 to 3.

For an hour it was a poor game. Every pass we played was short or behind somebody, and Wigan’s legs were going. Neither side had a shot on target before half-time.

On 63 minutes Riyad took a corner from the right, in front of the Bovril End, and Stokes came in late from the edge of the box and headed it down into the ground and up into the roof of the net, thwump.

The end came forward over the barriers. "STOKES-Y! STOKES-Y!" A camera went up in the air in somebody’s hand and nearly came down on the lad below him.

Stokes ran to the corner flag and held both arms out towards the Bovril End, and stood like that until Maguire reached him.

Wigan had the ball for most of the last 20 minutes. They hit the side netting once, and Braithwaite went full length to a shot from 25 yards and got a hand to it and pushed it over the bar, whap.

Kelly’s lad started on the drum, dum, dum, dum. "1-0 TO THE TIL-BROOK! 1-0 TO THE TIL-BROOK!"

Sadler stayed in his seat and sent Joe to the touchline to move Robertson 5 yards inside. The referee blew with the ball in their half, peeeeep. 1-0. 19 points from 15.

In the tunnel Sadler stopped beside me.

"Stokes asked me for that corner on Friday," he said. "He said they stand in a line on the 6-yard box and leave the edge of it empty. He was right."

The internationals took the next weekend. On the Friday night Doyle rang at 10.

"HALF 7 MONDAY, SAM," he said. "THE MEN ARE ON SITE AT HALF 7. I HAVE TOLD THE LADS. I HAVE TOLD THEM TWICE."

"I will be there."

"BE THERE AT 7."

At 11 I was at the kitchen table with the laptop open on a screen I was only watching. It had gone through 400 that afternoon.

My phone went on the table, bzzt.

400 today. Geneva has taken from 5 other sellers since you. I will know about your last week on the 22nd. F.

I put the phone down on the table, face up, and left it there.

If he rang on the 22nd and said Geneva was full, where were 2 million pounds coming from before December?