Seven minutes into the match, when Gherab miskicked a back pass so that it hooked out of touch and the home crowd jeered, Jolyon got to his feet and started to sing, ‘Vous êtes merde et vous savez que vous êtes, vous êtes merde et vous savez que vous êtes . . .’
The crowd around him fell into a bristling silence. And then a voice shouted, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ and then hundreds of voices were chanting, ‘Who are ya? Who are ya? Who are ya?’
Jolyon, the nausea sloshing in his stomach, began to protest. ‘Because he’s French, their keeper is French. It’s you’re shit and you know you are. But in French.’
Some voices were abusing him, other voices were shouting, ‘Sit down, sit the fuck down.’ And then everyone was shouting it, ‘Siddown, siddown, siddown!’
He sat down. The eyes, the eyes. Jolyon stared out at the game as if he couldn’t sense the feeling of the crowd, the weight of their hatred.
He had until the twenty-minute mark to complete his next challenge, which was based around the fact that the United captain had the same name as a romantic poet.
And so in the nineteenth minute, Jolyon rose again. He felt faint as if he were caught in a cloud of gas. And then he began his second song, the tune taken from Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, his voice quavering over the rippling of the crowd. ‘We’ve got John Keats / And the best seats / He plays football potently / Like the ode / Composed to a bird / Keats is striking poetry.’
A stunned silence was followed by a torrent of vicious abuse. The crowd’s agitation was rising, their blood pulsing. ‘Look, he has the same name as a romantic poet,’ Jolyon pleaded. ‘And the ode to the bird is Ode to a Nightingale. And there’s a double meaning to striking poetry . . .’
And that’s when it happened, the opposition scored, the United fans threw their hands catastrophically to their heads. Part three now had to be performed. ‘Goal!’ Jolyon cheered. ‘Goooooal!’
Something struck him from behind, Jolyon felt an explosion of sparks behind his eyes. And next the sound of shattering as the bottle broke against the back of his head. He stumbled down onto one knee, palms hitting the backs of the men in front who were pushed forward with a jolt. Recovering, they turned and stood and one of them threw a punch. Jolyon felt the blow at the side of his head, the heat in his ear. And then there were more blows from behind. Fists and feet. Jolyon pulled himself into a ball on the ground, tried to protect his head with his hands. And now someone was stamping, a boot crushing his fingers, then more boots stamping his ankles, his knees.
Just as he thought he would pass out, the rain of blows began to slow and Jolyon was pulled to his feet. More punches were thrown but the worst was over. Someone was shouting at his assailants, ‘Enough. Stop. That’s enough now.’
It was Tallest dragging him to the aisle. And then Chad was there, Jolyon’s arms across two sets of shoulders. Up into darkness, down steps and cold corridors, out into the broken-glass light. They lowered him onto a bench.
Chad looked like he was about to be sick. ‘Jolyon, oh God, I’m . . . It wasn’t supposed to go like that.’
Jolyon felt his teeth grinding something hard and gritty like a small rock in his mouth. And then, prodding it with his tongue, Jolyon realised the small rock was a tooth. He spat it out into his hand along with his blood and phlegm. He stared at the tooth for some time, prodded it, turned the tooth over and over in his palm.
The others were making sounds, asking questions, but he didn’t hear them.
‘I know what this is,’ thought Jolyon, ‘the moment of tooth!’ And he started to laugh. He cleaned the tooth against his thigh and dropped it in his pocket. And then he looked up at them, three horrified faces, and started to laugh even harder. ‘Now you get it, right?’ said Jolyon, noticing that he could see through only one eye. ‘There’s no way you can beat me,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing you can do.’ The blood was bubbling from his nose as he snorted with laughter. ‘Nothing at all.’
LVIII(iv) Chad pleaded with Jolyon but Jolyon stared into the distance as if unable to hear, his fingers feeling like they had been crushed in a car door.
‘Please, Jolyon. And not so I can win,’ said Chad. ‘but so we can stop. If you refuse to give in, it has to get worse. What other choice do we have?’
Jolyon looked up with his good eye. ‘Well, you could quit,’ he said.
‘You do understand I can’t do that, Jolyon,’ Chad scoffed. ‘Which means anything more that happens to you is as good as self-inflicted. Logically, you’re pretty much doing this to yourself. Come on, this isn’t the time to make your big stand in life. You’ve already had your way with Emilia and Dee, so I get it, you’re the big man. You won, Jolyon, OK? But you have to let me have just one thing. Because if you don’t . . . Jolyon, what just happened was terrible and I’m sorry, I swear I mean that. But from now on, no apologies, we’re not responsible. Please, for everyone’s sake. There’s nothing more you need to prove.’
Dee crouched down and laid her hands on his knees. ‘Please, Jolyon. Listen to Chad,’ she said, tears gathering in her eyes.
Jolyon stood up and decided he could limp well enough. Tallest tried to take his arm but Jolyon pushed him away. ‘Why don’t you all get back to the game?’ he said, looking across at the stadium. ‘I was really enjoying it but things took a turn for the worse. And I think I should leave now.’ He started to limp away but then turned, looking thoughtful, and added, ‘Oh, Dee, you know I just realised something.’ Dee wiped her eyes and Jolyon gave her a grim smile. ‘You’re the only one who can stop this,’ he said. ‘It’s really all up to you now, Dee.’ He put his hand in his pocket as he turned again and left.
LVIII(v) In front of the mirror in his room, Jolyon decided he wouldn’t go to the dentist. The tooth was one of the lower molars and you could barely notice its absence, not unless he opened his mouth very wide.
He placed the tooth inside the mug with his pills and his toothbrush, the fork and the photos. And then Jolyon drew his curtains, lay down on his bed and closed his eyes. Tomorrow was the first day of Trinity, Chad’s final term.
LIX
LIX(i) I lost Dee today. Chad arrives tomorrow. A fine symmetry.
LIX(ii) And where was routine when I needed it? Dee’s book, the most important thing of all and I failed to find a place for it in my life. And now routine has abandoned me.
Did I take it on my walk? I don’t remember.
Where did I walk today? I don’t remember.
If I took the book out with me then it is lost. It must still be inside this apartment, it must be. It has to be.
Feebly I cast around my apartment as if the same old looking in the same old places might not have the selfsame result. But all I find is the destruction of my daily bread. Mnemonics scattered, life overturned. The only things I fish out from the stew are a whisky bottle and pills, prompted to find them by an itching beneath my skin. And laughably, amid all the wreckage, my evening routine ice-cube tray has held on to my pills as if cupped in a mother’s outstretched palm. Four pink pills, three yellow, three blue. I swallow them with swigs of whisky straight from the bottle. I have only my cravings to remind me how to live now.
This apartment, this miserable machine of my life, its laughable ticky-tacky parts discarded and strewn.