I walked straight in.
I hadn’t knocked.
I didn’t expect anyone to be in there.
It was a surprise to see the lights on and Dave sitting in the corner. He looked up as if my entrance had dragged him from some deep thought, which I probably had.
I felt embarrassed. I looked away and began to mumble and apology which Dave interrupted.
“Shut up you silly bugger and come in.” He waved vaguely around the room at the empty seating.
I closed the door behind me, took a step to my right and sat down.
Dave looked at me over the rims of his glasses. I had never seen him in glasses before.
“That wasn’t your place was it?”
I looked at him. “No”.
“Well sit where you should then”.
I stood, then walked around the central table and sat next to him.
“Christ you always did take up all the room”. He tugged his overcoat free from where I had sat on it.
“Balls,” I said too quickly, “you’ve put on weight.”
He grinned and although I knew I’d been had he had broken the ice.
Dave could always wind me up.
“I thought you might come, I looked for you but couldn’t see you.”
“I was late, traffic, you know. I came straight in and sat at the back. Too late to look for anyone. They had just kicked off.”
I didn’t mention that I was deliberately late. That I thought I might have been more embarrassed as to how I was greeted. It had been five years since I had last been here. Since I had last seen Dave, or any of the boys come to that. And that visit had been almost five years after we had all broken up. Or been broken up more like.
“Any of the others here?” I asked.
“Just one or two.”
He looked towards the hook furthest away from us. Alan’s hook.
“Did you hear?”
“Yes, they wrote and told me but I couldn’t face the funeral.”
“You wouldn’t credit it would you? Forty two. Massive heart attack they said. He was the fittest one of the lot of us.”
I sat grim faced, unable to speak.
His eyes moved along to another hook. “And what about Phil? He quit, got a pub, then a divorce, lost the pub and all that worry gave him diabetes and the last I heard he might be going blind with it.”
I was shocked at that news. Phil had been the youngest of us. I still said nothing.
We sat quietly, reflecting, for several minutes.
From outside the noise of the diminishing crowd could be heard.
“They did well,” I said nodding in the direction of the pitch.
“Yeah. Yeah they deserved to win.” He sounded just a little grudging.
“Top of the league. Champions. Almost ten years to the day since we did it”
“Yeah,” was all he said.
We sat in silence for yet more minutes. It was not an awkward silence at all.
Dave came to life. “Remember when we won that last game? And we’d done it? We got back in here and the world and his friend were all crammed in. All that Booze? And then Peter bringing in that stripper. Up there.” He pointed to the treatment table in the centre of the room. “Right bloody there. And she got all upset ‘cos she’s stripping away in a room full of bloody footballers and we didn’t take a blind bit of notice ‘cos we’d just won the league”.
I laughed. He was right. I had forgotten all about it but he was right. She had gathered her things and stormed off. Her “artistic” talent obviously affronted by our indifference.
“Yeah, I remember, what the hell was her name? Lady Lola or something?”
“Christ knows” said Dave as we laughed ourselves into another silence.
“Brings back memories eh?” said Dave as he reviewed the room.
I just nodded.
“Do you know what I could never stand?” Dave asked suddenly.
I just shrugged.
“The smell.”
“What? Of the stripper?”
“No you bloody fool. All that embrocation and spray before a game. Couldn’t stand it. Never could.”
I laughed out loud. “All those years and you never said a word.”
“Bloody right I didn’t. I’d have been covered in the stuff every bloody week if I’d let on to you lot wouldn’t I?”
I laughed again.
“Yeah I suppose you would have.”
We sat there on the bench again in silence for quite some time. Forearms resting on our knees, heads bowed, looking down at the old and still familiar tiled floor. In just those positions we had sat, exhausted, after many a game. We were not so exhausted now, just remembering. Reminiscing.
Dave’s’ shoes had a fine coating of mud and grass on them where he had obviously walked across the pitch from the new stand.
I pointed a finger at his shoes, “If old Charlie had still been alive and seen you walk across his pitch he’d have given you a right bollocking.”
Dave focussed on my shoes. They were in a similar condition as I had taken the same route.
“Yeah, and if he’d seen you he’d have said bugger all ‘cos you were the blue eyed boy who scored all the goals”.
I smiled smugly. He was right. I could get away with murder with any of the ground staff. Office staff too actually.
“Have you been in the new place yet?” Dave asked. The new stand and clubhouse had been completed just in time for these last few games of the season.
“Yup. I stuck my head in after the game to say well done. They seem like kids.”
“They are bloody kids” he said.
Again we lapsed into a silence.
“Did anyone recognise you?” he asked the question quietly and then looked sideways to watch me answer.
I turned and met his gaze.
“No. I even heard someone ask who I was as I left the dressing room.”
“Sad isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “All those years here. All those games. All those goals. And so soon forgotten.”
The next silence was broken by Dave asking “Shall we do what we used to do when we left this room?”
I turned slowly to look at him and grinned.
“Get rat arsed you mean?”
“Oh, you remember then?”
“Will you make sure I get home ok?” I asked in false innocence.
He stood. His big, imposing frame fuller than I remembered.
His eyes glinted mischief.
“I did after every home game for eight years didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did come to think of it.”
I stood and Dave put his arm around my shoulder and began to steer me towards the door when it opened. We stopped and looked at Peter
whose massive shoulders still filled a door frame. He obviously looked after himself. “I knew I’d find you two in here” he said, “what are you up to?”
Peter or Peter the Great as he didn’t like to be known, had been our team manager when we had won out title. He was the only real survivor too. He was still in overall charge of the club whilst everyone else from boardroom to boot room had changed.
“Just admiring the old changing room boss” said Dave.
“This shithole” said Peter turning to walk away from us down the corridor, “come and see the new one.” He stopped and turned to face us, a huge grin on his face, “then the three of us can get pissed for old times’ sake eh?”
Dave and I looked at each other, smiled and shrugged in an almost perfect sign of resignation and began to follow Peter through the door and into the corridor.
“’Ere boss” I called. Peter stopped and turned. “We were just remembering when we did it, you know, the league? You got us that stripper in. Remember?”
“Yeah” said Dave, “what was her name? do you remember Boss?”
Peter roared with laughter and turned on his heels.
“Come and ask her yourself, she’s doing a turn in the new dressing room.”
I looked at Dave. He was obviously thinking the same as me.
“She must be getting on a bit mustn’t she” he asked.
The boss was still laughing as he strode away, “It doesn’t seem to matter,” he called back over his shoulder, “they’re all ignoring her anyway.”