Chapter 137: Sinner

"Who Is Right And Who Is Wrong?"

The ending of that game was a long way from settled. Not long after Saint got back to the dressing room, Cadman came in with the news. The match had been suspended, but whether it would end in a Chelsea win by default or a replay, the Football Association had not yet decided, and it was not going to decide in a hurry.

Of course, by then hardly anyone cared about the result. What people really cared about was the fight between Saint and Strickland.

"Who Is Right And Who Is Wrong?" was the headline of a survey run by the Daily Courier, which had asked a thousand supporters to judge the clash between Chelsea and Villa.

What came back was incredible. Eighty-one per cent of them thought Strickland was in the wrong, and a good many added, in so many words, that he had brought shame on English football.

Even among that thousand there were several Chelsea fans, and not all of them stood by their captain.

"I can’t stand that Villa manager, and if he were in front of me I wouldn’t mind swinging for him, but a player has no business doing what Jamie did. He’s embarrassed the whole club."

"A man like that shouldn’t pull on an England shirt again," another supporter said.

"A player like that will not be playing for any England side I pick." Within a day, the England manager, Sir Gordon Hale, had said his piece, and it landed like a stone in a pond.

Everybody knew England was being built around Strickland, and the European Championship was only a year away.

Sir Gordon was no ordinary man, either. He was one of the most respected coaches in world football, and the weight of his reputation was well known well beyond England.

Puzzled? It was not hard to understand. If Strickland had spat at a fellow player, the England manager might have kept quiet, or even defended him a little. But Strickland had spat at a manager, and that was a different matter. Every manager in the country had to ask himself the same question: what if it happened to me?

Managers shared one creed, and it was that the authority of the man in the technical area must never be challenged.

After Sir Gordon spoke, others followed. Sir Harold Wexford, now the country’s elder statesman of coaching, said that Strickland should understand his behaviour affected not only himself but the whole league, and that an apology was the least he owed.

"I know Jamie has always been a decent lad, but this was plain stupid," added Dennis Aldous, another great of the dugout, who was not about to be left behind.

Hallam was the unlucky one in all this. He was Strickland’s own manager, and while every coach in England had a word for the captain, Hallam, who ought to have had the most to say, could say nothing at all.

It was not only the managers. Former internationals queued up to criticise him.

"A man who doesn’t know how to respect others should be punished severely," said Ray Whitcombe, widely held to be the best goalkeeper England had ever produced.

"There is no excuse for it, and the lad will have to pay the price," added his old teammate Kevin Dunmore, in an interview that evening.

Things had gone well beyond Strickland, beyond what Chelsea had expected, and beyond what anyone could have predicted. In only two days the whole country had pointed a finger at a man who had barely left hospital.

Back at the team hotel, Cadman had spread the morning papers across the table like a man laying out evidence. Saint read the headlines one by one, rubbing his jaw, and for a long time he said nothing.

"Not one of them is calling you a thug," Cadman said at last, almost as if he could not believe it himself. "Not one, gaffer."

"Give it a day," Saint said. "The mood will turn if the Football Association does."

"And if it does?"

"Then we’ll deal with it. We play Sunday regardless."

It was typical of him. He had kicked a man in front of forty thousand people and a live television audience, and what worried him was the next training session.

Saint’s kick had been a heavy one. At the time Strickland had gritted his teeth, but once he was inside the Chelsea dressing room he could hold on no longer, and he and Rennick were taken straight in for scans.

"Damn it all!" When Strickland was discharged and saw the country lined up against him, the pride of London was so furious he almost lay back down in the hospital bed.

"Jamie, the most important thing for you right now is to stand up and admit you were wrong," said Chelsea’s chairman, Ivor Kessler.

Strickland had only dared to challenge Hallam because he knew where Kessler stood. If the chairman had sided with the manager, he would not have dared. Now the chairman’s attitude was the one that counted.

"I will not admit I was wrong," Strickland growled, hoarse with anger. "Least of all to that jumped-up nobody."

"Do you have any idea how serious this is?" Kessler had never spoken so sharply to one of his players.

"How serious can it be? A ban, at worst," Strickland insisted.

"A ban? Do you think it is as simple as that? Have you read the papers?" Kessler’s patience had finally run out, and his voice had hardened.

"It is not as simple as a ban. The man you spat at was a manager. By doing that, you insulted every manager in the world, and the story has now grown into an argument about the dignity of the whole game. Everything you do from here will be read in that light, and your wrong turn will not be forgiven lightly."

What did that mean? It meant that if this was handled badly, one man would end up carrying all the blame, and that man would not be Saint.

What Chelsea did not know was that Gerald Whitlock, Villa’s chairman, had already made his move. He had called the League Managers Association that very morning, and a formal complaint to the Football Association about spitting at a manager was already on its way.

Spitting at an opponent was one of the most serious offences in the game, and aimed at a manager in his technical area it was almost without precedent. If Whitlock framed it as an attack on the authority of every coach in the league, countless people would step forward to back him.

"I thought those people were meant to be on Chelsea’s side," Saint said, with a dry smile, when Whitlock rang him that afternoon. He had been getting ready for the whole country to write him up as the villain. Now the villain, it seemed, was somebody else.

Soon Saint saw the whole picture. He was a manager, and what Strickland had done to him was a provocation, even an insult to every manager in the league’s technical areas.

Saint had not been a manager long, but this was the first time he had felt how hard the job could be.

Still, the matter was far from over. Whitlock had not been content with a complaint, and neither was Saint, so he gave the chairman’s plan his full support.

Only this way could he escape the Football Association’s punishment. No, he would never escape it entirely, but a reduction was surely possible, and perhaps a modest one.

But just as Whitlock was getting ready to push harder, an unexpected guest arrived at Saint’s home, a person he had never expected to see again.

A graceful figure stood at the door.

Imogen Vale.